“Honey, I’m home,” Stef said.
From the couch, Roman shook his head, dog tags jingling, then hopped off Jav’s legs. Jav shook his own head and sat up. He’d slept so hard he drooled.
“What year is it?” he said.
“Twenty sixty-two. We cured cancer but have a new super herpes virus.”
“Whew. I didn’t miss it.”
Stef sat on the couch, letting the dog come up between his knees. “Yes. I missed you too.” His hands scratched Roman’s coppery ruff and ears. “Was it hard to be here with Jav all day? Was he depressed?”
“Depressed, but productive,” Jav said, stretching. “We ran three miles this morning, did laundry, cleaned the bathroom and food shopped.”
“Roman did laundry?”
“Then he walked the whole High Line with me this afternoon. Dinner’s in the oven. Beer’s on ice. Maybe I’ll leave this whole writing gig and be your domestic sex slave. Want to adopt some kids?”
Stef reached for his messenger bag. “I brought you a present.”
“You wish to give me a present?”
He drew out a small book and held it up. “Yours, I believe?”
Sometimes you looked at something and knew what it was, but it took several seconds to realize you knew what it was. Jav blinked at the brown leather covers. Once. Twice.
My notebook.
“Dude,” he cried, falling off the couch.
Stef stretched his arm long, holding the book out of reach as Jav went crawling up his chest. “How bad do you want me right now?”
“Where the fuck did you find it? Let me see.”
Stef switched the book from one hand to the other. “I don’t feel the right amount of gratitude here.”
“Oh you’ll get gratitude, don’t worry. Give me that. Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it.” Jav wrestled the notebook out of Stef’s teasing grasp and sat back in the couch cushions, fanning the pages against his thumb. His chest caved in with relief, sending up a cloud of happiness that nearly choked him.
Thank God. Oh thank fucking God.
“Where’d you find it?”
Stef got up and headed toward the kitchen. “Told you the day we met. I’m not an art therapist, I’m a professional thief.”
“What? Come on.”
Stef popped a beer and drained nearly half of it. “Let’s say it was in the wrong hands.” He leaned on the counter with a rough exhale and rubbed at the back of his head.
“Feel all right?” Jav asked.
“Yeah. Just one of those nights.” He cracked open the oven door and peered inside. “You’re roasting a chicken?”
“Pigeon. Roman found it in the park. I figured we should start eating on a budget if we lose my income. Of course, circumstances have changed dramatically since then.” Notebook still in hand, he hopped over the back of the couch and went to get his arms around Stef.
“Thank you,” he said. “I loved you before but now I worship you.”
“I know.”
“Where was it? Tell me.”
Stef wiggled out of the embrace and took a pull of his beer. “I can confirm you lost it in the kitchen at EP and it was found by a young, mutual friend of ours.”
“Geno?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Jav’s eyes widened. “That little punk,” he said. “Think he read it?”
“Can neither confirm nor deny,” Stef said. “Though I can say it’s odd to hear a little punk quote an extremely private, embarrassingly klutzy note you wrote to your lover.”
Jav’s entire body cringed. “Oh Jesus, really? No.”
“Yeah.”
“Dude, that ain’t cool.” Jav found the pages where the piece of graph paper was stuck. It was awfully close to that ridiculous little passage with Geno’s name. Did he read that?
Fuck. Oh well, it wasn’t making fun of him. It wasn’t insulting, it was just stupid.
And Jesus Christ, it was private…
“Good thing I won’t be in the kitchens anymore,” he said.
“I’m taking a break from him myself.”
“Really?”
Stef killed his beer and turned to get another one. “Had a little meeting with Ronnie and it’s for the best. I’m annoyed with him on a personal level now and until I get over it, I won’t be effective on a professional level. I’ll be bringing my shit into it.” He made an apologetic gesture with his bottle. “I can’t say much more than that.”
“No, no, it’s fine. I mean, not fine, but I got this back.” He hugged Stef. “You got it back for me.”
“It’s what I do.”
Stef’s body felt stiff in his arms. His tone was slightly edgy. A clever Stef impersonation with something essential left out, enough to make him weirdly not himself.
“You feel all right?” Jav asked again.
“Mostly right. I want to eat. Possibly I’ll want to get laid later.”
“Get plates,” Jav said, heading for the oven.
A long beat where Stef didn’t move from the counter or say anything.
“What?” Jav said, catching Stef’s penetrating look.
“You going to carry that around all night?”
“What? Oh.”
Jav looked at the notebook, still in his hand. He had to admit a reluctance to put it down. But he did, and served up dinner.
He resisted the pull as long as it took to eat. Then he took the notebook to his desk, a man on a mission. Determined never again to keep all his creative eggs in one easily-lost basket. What the hell was he thinking?
He put on his porkpie hat and glasses and started transcribing all his handwritten scribbles into a new document. He’d still use a notebook. It was more portable and his flow was more liquid from his mind to a pen. He liked the physicality of writing by hand. But he’d move it to electric copy once a week from now on, if not more. With double backups.
“Leave that,” he said, when he heard Stef scraping dishes and tearing off sheets of tin foil for leftovers. “Stef, leave it. I’ll clean up.”
“I got it. You cooked.”
Page after page after page. Grimacing at old, dopey things he’d jotted down. Re-reading others with raised eyebrows. That’s not bad. Sometimes an old idea collided with something new he’d been kicking around, in an immaculate conception that busted up a problem or gave a fresh perspective. Then he had to grab a Post-It and scribble it down, making even more to transcribe.
Behind him, Stef changed channels between this and that. Sometimes Roman trotted over and put his muzzle or a paw on Jav’s knee. Jav petted or scratched with one hand, typing with the other.
“Dude, he wants to go out,” Stef said, his tone full of sharp edges.
Impatient, Jav hustled Roman around the block, which naturally made the mutt take his sweet-ass time with business. Jav couldn’t get back to his desk fast enough to pick up where he left off.
Page after page after page. Another empty beer bottle.
“I’m hitting the sack,” Stef said at eleven. “I’m not myself.”
“‘Kay,” Jav said, head swiveling between the notebook and the screen. Notebook. Screen. Notebook. He looked up and over his shoulder when the bathroom door clicked. The kitchen was cleaned up, the dishwasher humming. The lights were all off except for Jav’s desk lamp. Roman curled in his bed by the French doors.
He went back to work, the apartment still and silent except for his fingers on the keypad and the occasional mutter under his breath. The scratch of pen on pad. A line of Post-Its now stretching across the bottom of the screen.
“Hey.”
Jav blinked back into reality. It was one-thirty in the morning. Stef stood in sweats and T-shirt, arms crossed and a shoulder in the doorframe. “It’s time to stop,” he said.
“I need to do a few more pages, then I—”
“I need you to come to bed now, okay?”
Jav took off his glasses. “Are you all right?”
Stef’s chin lifted. “I’m your lover and your partner and I want you to stop working and get in bed.”
The whole room crossed its arms now, staring Jav down. Without a word, he hit Ctrl+S, turned off the lamp and went to brush his teeth. He slid into bed a few minutes later. Punched his pillows into place. Moved up against Stef’s back and slid his arm around him. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
“For how I lose track of time.”
“I’m not expecting that to change. If I want you, I have to be a big boy, walk out there and say so. So I did.”
Jav pressed his nose against Stef’s nape and twined their fingers. “You feel all right?”
“Yeah.” Stef drew a long breath, his shoulders expanding against Jav’s chest. “No. Maybe. I don’t know. I took a Klonopin. Let’s just go to sleep.”
Jav lay awake. In his arms, Stef’s body was relaxed, but a precise, measured cadence in his exhales showed his mind was busy. A long breathing silence. The air between them prickled.
Something’s wrong.
In all their time together, Jav had never seen Stef play passive-aggressive games. He always said what was on his mind. Putting a label on every thought and feeling and problem.
Something is so wrong, even he doesn’t know what it is.
Is it me?
Jav backtracked through the night with a growing concern he’d missed something. As he went through everything said and done, lights began to turn on.
Just one of those nights.
Possibly I’ll want to get laid later.
Jav squeezed his eyes shut, now remembering the night Stef said he’d be taking on a difficult case. He said, “Sometimes I can only shake off the echo of a sexual abuse story by making love. Like I need to be fucked back to myself.”
I’m not myself.
Stef leaning against the doorframe tonight, arms crossed tight. The slight lift of his chin under the unwavering gaze.
I need you to come to bed now.
I’m your lover and your partner and I want you to stop working…
Jav’s vision blurred and focused, coming to rest finally on Stef’s bedside table. A glinting pile of all his rings and his watch. Stef only stripped off his hardware when he was in a mood. A signal he was worked up and capable of grabbing hard enough to leave marks. Or sometimes he did it because he wanted nothing between his hands and Jav’s skin.
Jav knew these things.
He was careful not to let a sigh out with his next exhale. He sucked it back, sucked it up and faced a fact.
He was trying to tell me something and I missed it. He wanted me and I didn’t notice.
A bit of bristling defense tried to elbow its way into the conversation. Well, why didn’t he just say so?
Jav pushed the excuses aside. Most of the time, Stef voiced his needs. Sometimes he wanted Jav to know.
Stef tested him tonight and Jav blew it.
I need to be better at this.
He slid his hand under Stef’s shirt and rubbed his back, knowing from the sound of his breathing he was drifting away. Floating back to himself with Klonopin’s help, not Jav’s. Jav was too late.
“I’m sorry.” He mouthed the words to the dark and meant them.
I can do more than this. I can be a better lover and partner.
He drew another breath to say so, but then Stef gave a little snore and his limbs twitched.
“Shh,” Jav whispered to both of them.
Don’t announce it. Talk is cheap. Just do it. Take your rings off and be better.