TWENTY ONE

 

It was a summer utterly unlike anything that Taylor had ever experienced before. A summer that he would never forget, because, for once in his life, he just let himself enjoy it.

There was no school to worry about, no one to take care of. For the first week or so, that felt strange to him, and he called Danica all the time just to make sure that she was okay. She always was, and he was happy about that, of course, he was, but at the same time he couldn’t help but feel a little bit betrayed.

“Go have fun, stop calling all the time,” she finally told him, with her customary bluntness. He couldn’t help but be a little bit stung by that, even though his mother explained after she had laughingly snatched the phone from her daughter’s hands.

“She just wants you to have fun, and not worry about her, or us,” his mother informed him. “And it’s what I want, too. Don’t let anything hold you back, my darling. You have a bad habit of that, and I’ve appreciated it in the past, but it’s not needed anymore. You can live your life.”

After that, it got easier, and Dane had had the patience of a saint with him. Always there, if Taylor wanted him, but happy to give Taylor some space, too, if that’s what was needed, Dane was nothing short of the absolute perfect person for Taylor.

In the old days, he would have constantly questioned everything about this. He would have told himself that there was no point in getting too involved because really, nothing was ever going to change. There was always going to be something that he could point to and say that it wasn’t completely perfect, for the last few months of the summer and into the first part of the fall, Taylor was, maybe for the first time in a decade, blissfully free of all of that doubt and uncertainty.

Until, on a warm day in mid-September, when he realized that he had something that he desperately needed to say to Dane.

“I’m done,” he told his boyfriend, who understandably looked a bit startled by the abrupt comment. Taylor had been reading, or that had been the theory, anyway, but his eyes had glossed over the words, and his brain had flat out refused to assign meaning to any of them. He would read a paragraph five times, and still have no idea what it meant.

“Hmm?” Dane asked, glancing over Taylor’s body in that way that he had, slowly scanning him and then lighting up as though he enjoyed what he saw. It was one of his favorite things about being around Dane, the feeling that he was desired, and Dane seemed to know that. He never held back from letting Taylor know that he was wanted.

“I missed my school registration date,” Taylor told him. “At this point, I’ve missed the first day of school, even.” Taylor looked at Dane, who came to perch on the bed, but Dane didn’t look like he exactly understood the problem. But maybe that was because Taylor wasn’t saying it right.

“I want to go home,” he admitted. “I know you like to travel and so do I. I’ve had a good time, but I want to see my mom and Danica. I want to figure out what I want to do about school. I know you want to keep traveling, but …”

To his surprise, Dane was smiling at him. Smirking, more like, like Taylor was saying something funny instead of something that was, to him, at least, incredibly serious.

“What’s the joke?” he asked or started to, anyway, because Dane didn’t give him a chance to finish the question. Instead, Taylor found himself pulled close, right into Dane’s lap, and kissed thoroughly.

“How long have you been away from home, sugar?” Dane asked him, and Taylor frowned, not sure he understood the question. But it was easy enough to answer.

“Two months.”

“Right.” Dane nodded. “Two months, and had you ever been away from home for even a week before?”

Sheepishly, Taylor shook his head. There had been summer camp a few times growing up, but that had been only a week at a time. Otherwise, he had stuck pretty close to home.

“Honestly, darlin’, I was expecting you to want to cut out weeks ago,” Dane admitted. “Of course you wanna go home.”

Taylor sighed softly, resting his head on Dane’s broad, strong shoulder. He was being so understanding, but part of Taylor would miss this. And he had to wonder one very simple thing, but he wasn’t quite sure how to put it into words. Or if he even dared to do so.

On the other hand, it hadn’t ever benefited him to hold back, to not say what he wanted, and it had actually caused him quite a bit of grief.

“Does this mean it’s over?” he whispered, getting brave enough to say the words, because he did need to know.

“Is that what you’re thinking?” Dane asked, his face relaxing into a more serious expression. Taylor gave a slight shrug because they both knew how things were. How they had always been, and why they had both, at times, despaired of ever having anything work between them.

“Yeah,” Taylor told him, his eyes stinging, but he refused to burst into tears. That would be so completely undignified, and he didn’t want Dane to think that he was trying to use emotional blackmail to get what he wanted. He would hold himself together, even if this was the end. “You want to keep going, right? And I just told you I need to go home.”

“Sugar, you’re making a hell of a lot of assumptions,” Dane informed him. “But I’m gonna answer your question. No, it ain’t over. Not unless you’re telling me that you want it to be.”

“But …” Taylor started, and Dane sighed and shook his head, though there was a tolerant little smile on his face, too. Almost against his will, Taylor started to feel some hope. Dane wouldn’t be acting like this if he just intended to walk away. Would he? He had just flat out said that it wasn’t over, so that was something.

“Yeah, I think I’m always gonna wanna just hit the road sometimes. See something new. But only sometimes. The rest of the time, I want a life with you. In Snoqualmie, in Seattle, wherever.”

Dane paused, but Taylor couldn’t say anything. He just stared at the other man, sure that he must be dreaming. Dane didn’t seem to be joking with him, but there was no way that he could be serious about something like that. So the dream option made the most sense.

“Damn it, Taylor. Don’t you know?” Dane’s voice was low and urgent, that particular soft growl that it only got to when he was very passionate about something. “I love you, and I love your family. It wouldn’t be any sort of hardship for me to spend time around you guys.”

Taylor shook his head. To be honest, he hadn’t known. But as he started to believe, his voice seemed to be choked off, unable to get around the thick lump in his throat.

All of a sudden, what he had thought of as huge, insurmountable problems weren’t anymore. Neither of them would be giving anything up in being together. Dane didn’t need to travel all the time, and Taylor didn’t need to be home all the time. They could still be with each other and not sacrifice anything.

Taylor had been so braced to lose Dane. He had been ready, from the moment that he had realized that he needed to go home, to hear Dane gently, but firmly, tell him that things were over. That everything had been nothing but a pleasant, brief interlude, but it was time to come back to the real world now.

Instead, Dane had just, apparently completely casually, handed him everything that he could ever want, given him everything. Shown him that it wasn’t all or nothing, that they could, potentially, both be happy with each other. They had a shot, anyway, and Taylor had the idea that that was all that any couple had.

“Taylor? Darlin’?” Dane’s voice had gotten a touch uncertain, and it was then that Taylor realized that he had been completely lost in his head. That he had been so happy, almost euphoric, but Dane wouldn’t be able to see any of that because he wasn’t a mind reader.

It was something that Taylor was probably going to have to work on, but he was okay with that.

“Were you hoping that it was over?” Dane asked, and it was then that Taylor knew that he needed to speak. Because whatever his pride was afraid of, however much of an idiot he was sure that he was going to look like, it wasn’t going to be worse than losing Dane because Dane thought that Taylor didn’t feel the same as him.

“No,” Taylor whispered, and his voice got a little bit louder as he said the one word and each one after it. “I love you. And I would love to go to school with you, and travel with you, and have you be a part of my family.”

Dane pulled him close then and kissed him, and Taylor let himself get lost in that for a few moments. Being kissed by Dane was a very thorough experience, and as he let himself feel the probe of that hot tongue in his mouth, the scratch of Dane’s facial hair against his own smooth cheek and jaw. Everything else, the whole world, just seemed to disappear around them as Taylor shifted into Dane’s lap, arms winding around him, mouth and body and soul completely open to him. Loving and accepting love at the same time, in a way that he had never felt completely okay with doing before.

“So we can go home, then?” Taylor whispered, when the complicated, sweet kiss finally drew to an end, both of them flushed and breathing harder with the impact of it. In a second, he knew that he or Dane or both would take this further, but he just wanted to have things settled before then.

“We can go home,” Dane acknowledged, and Taylor couldn’t help but grin when he heard Dane say that word. Home. Dane considered Taylor’s home to be his own. That was something which he had not actually believed could ever happen.

“Hey, sugar, I got something to ask you,” Dane told him, and his voice was still highly casual but not as convincingly so, somehow. Like he wanted to make it seem like this was no big deal, though it was. So Taylor tried to be ready for anything.

There was no way that he would have expected what he heard, though.

“What’s up?” he asked, and Dane paused, like he might not say it at all, and then squared his broad shoulders and continued.

“You ever thought about topping?” Dane asked, and then, before Taylor could even speak, before he had time to do more than just be stunned, Dane was rushing on. “It’s something I’m considering. If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” Taylor, still stunned, managed, and then he gripped Dane by the back of the neck and pressed another sweet, but needy, little kiss on him. He had never thought that it was even an option. Dane had never expressed any interest, and honestly, bottoming to Dane had always been such an incredible experience that he had never felt all that sad about it. But he was intrigued, for sure. “Just let me know, okay?”

Dane was so strong, so powerful, so masterful, and the fact that he was even considering letting Taylor top was not something he had looked for, and it meant a lot to him. He would let Dane take the lead on that, though.

“I’ve never done that before,” Dane admitted, and Taylor nodded. There was no rush.

“If it happens, it happens,” he assured Dane and meant it. He liked the idea, but he could wait for it. And to prove it, he kissed Dane again.