Concerts and Funerals

 

 

IN THE end, they got two kittens, a brother and a sister, a boy with gray-and-white patches that they named Mal, and a girl with black-and-white patches that they named Zoe. Jesse had approved and helped Kit pick out the bowls and the cat boxes and the collars, and together they made the appointments for shots. They took the kittens home, and Kit had made what was now a very rare stop for takeout. They ate while the kittens played with their toes (and their sweaters and their hair) and they watched old Firefly episodes on DVD and tried to introduce the kittens to their namesakes.

The kittens were unimpressed, but the men who already loved them had a good time.

When dinner was cleaned up, Kit told Jesse to call Emmy.

Jesse made Kit stay in the room.

It was hard—even harder because although Jesse’s voice was all rainbows and lollipops, his face was all mortal wounds and broken bones. Jesse made it through, though, after a thorough description of black-and-gray patches and pink paws, rough tongues, and animals so thoroughly ensorcelled by their humans that they purred on command.

He finished because Emmy was tired, but before he hung up he said, “Yeah, Emmy. He’s the best. Thank you, sweetheart—I’m in good hands. Yeah. I love you too. Night night.”

He cried all over Kit then, and there had been no lovemaking that night. Kit didn’t mind, not even a little.

They stayed in bed the next morning, though, after a shower and a quick breakfast. Jesse was not a morning person, and Kit made a mental note to buy a coffeemaker, because Kit thought it might help. (It would also have helped if the kittens hadn’t spent all night purring on their heads and kneading their hair, but that was beside the point!)

Kit got his second, more thorough education on what two naked male bodies could do together. Kit leaned patiently on his hands and knees and allowed Jesse to invade his body, and the feeling had been… odd, at first. Stretchy and full and vulnerable, even.

And then Jesse had started to move, and it had become tingly, and then it had become pleasant, and then Jesse had nailed his prostate, and it became explosive. Jesse came first, moaning and sweating onto his back, and Kit found he was aroused and unfinished and aching.

“Good,” Jesse panted into his shoulder. “You can do it to me now!”

The condom was another first, and Kit frowned as Jesse rolled it on. (Jesse had put his own on as well, and Kit thought it was something he should practice. It looked sort of tricky.)

“I’ll get tested,” Jesse promised. “And I’m always careful, so it should be good. And then we won’t need them. How’s that?”

That sounded great, and Kit said so, but inside he was reminded: he had waited thirty years for a good thing, but Jesse’s friend Emmy proved that some people didn’t even have that long.

Jesse started out on his hands and knees, like Kit had, but Kit frowned some more. “Can we do this face-to-face?” he asked, pretty sure the mechanics would work. “I want to see you.”

Jesse turned over then and blushed. “You don’t ask much, do you?” His tone was edgy and impatient, and Kit realized something else about his young lover.

“I have to be naked, you have to be,” he insisted. Jesse’s grin was a little bitter and a little embarrassed, but then Kit took the lubricant and started doing what Jesse had done—squirting it on his fingers (it had been in bed with them, so it was warm) and then thrusting the fingers inside Jesse’s bottom.

Jesse’s ass came off the bed, and his head threw back and he moaned. “Oh, God… Kit… that’s good…but… oh… damn… you have no subtle… shit!”

Kit had thrust deep inside, and he’d found it—the walnut under the skin. He’d read about it, and Jesse had brushed against it, and he found he wanted to see what happened when….

Jesse’s hands scrabbled on the blankets, and his feet pressed hard into the mattress. “Kit?” he whined, managing to fasten his eyes on Kit’s face. His eyes were wide, and his cheeks were flushed, and he looked… eager and begging and soft.

Kit hadn’t known his cock would get this hard.

“Kit, buddy, is there any way you could… uhm… fuck me hard anytime soon?”

Kit grinned at him and moved his cock into position. For a moment, it looked… threatening. Jesse’s entrance, even stretched by Kit’s fingers, was still small and vulnerable, but Jesse whined, and Kit placed the flared head of his cock against that tight ring and thrust slowly in.

Jesse’s ass clamped down on him tighter than anything he could imagine, and Jesse’s body was so hot. Kit groaned and pulled back until his cockhead was stretching Jesse again, and Jesse groaned and begged, “Please, dammit, Kit, please!” His eyes were half-closed now, and Kit thought it was totally worth it to look at his face. He’d never seen anything as breathtaking as Jesse, abandoned to Kit’s body inside his own.

Kit felt a total sense of the moment as he drove his hips forward hard and watched Jesse throw his head back and howl. That worked so well that he did it again. And again. And again. He started thrusting harder and faster and made sure that every time he did, he at least brushed that little nerve bundle that Jesse liked so much until Jesse started begging for something very different.

“Let me touch you,” he panted, leaning up enough to fondle Kit’s stomach. “Want to touch you!”

Kit’s technique would go all to hell if he did that, but technique wasn’t what Jesse seemed to want. Kit fell forward onto his elbows then and kept moving erratically (he was close, so close, and this new angle was odd, but he was almost there…), and Jesse kissed his neck and stroked his shoulders and whispered wonderful, terrible, obscene things in his ear.

Kit would admit later, while Jesse was lying with his head on Kit’s very sweaty shoulder, that it was the dirty talk that did him in. The words were filthy and erotic. In fact, the things Jesse was saying were…. Oh God… the images were exactly what Kit was doing! And it was that reality that sent Kit heaving into orgasm, shuddering, groaning, lunging for that impossible peak and free-falling off it with a grunt and a howl and whoop of triumph as he went.

They laughed softly into each other’s arms then, and Kit collapsed on the bed and fell out of Jesse so he could pull Jesse right on top of him.

“Kit?” Jesse panted.

“Yeah?”

“You’re not a virgin anymore.”

“Fucking awesome.”

Jesse giggled and kissed the corner of his mouth, and Kit kissed him back. And it really was fucking awesome.

 

 

IT WAS hard telling him goodbye that evening. In two days, they had managed to turn themselves into a little family, complete with kittens for babies.

“I can get you tomorrow night,” Kit said as they were kissing at the front door, afraid to go outside. “I have to come home and work out and then go visit Ma, but then I can pick you up.”

Jesse pouted. He did that sometimes—he’d done it that morning when Kit didn’t have oatmeal, and he’d done it at the pet store when Kit had wanted a boy and a girl kitten instead of two boys. It was not the best side of Jesse—and it charmed Kit completely.

“Why can’t you come work out with me? The gym is a few blocks from my apartment. I can bring extra clothes—that’ll work fine!”

Kit blushed and shook his head. “I, uhm, don’t think I want to work out in front of all those people, Jesse.”

Jesse sighed and blew out a breath, but he didn’t press the point. “Well, how about you follow me home from work, and I can come here and work out with you?”

Oh Jesus. Jesse in the same room with Danny Fit? That would almost be like a threesome. It sounded dangerous—and vaguely icky. Fortunately, that didn’t solve the fact that Kit still needed to visit his mother, and Kit said so.

Another sigh, and Kit felt like shit, even though it was the truth. Jesse shook his head. “I swear, it’s like you don’t want me to meet the guy, you know?”

Kit shrugged and said, “Well, what Danny and I had together is very private,” with enough dignity to sound like he was kidding.

But Jesse wasn’t stupid. His eyes got big, and he put his hand over his mouth like a little schoolgirl. “Ohmigod! He’s your jerk-off buddy!”

Kit wondered if he could will himself to die of a heart attack on the spot. He knew his blood was certainly thundering in his ears enough.

“I… uhm….”

“He is!”

“Well. Uhm….”

Jesse shook his head and chortled some more. “Never mind, baby. You keep, uhm, working out. Anyone who waited for thirty years for the right person to come along gets to have imaginary sex with as many people as he wants!”

Kit could do nothing but stand there with Jesse in his arms and blush. Jesse was Jesse, though—he could laugh like the kid he was, but he picked up on Kit’s discomfort after a moment.

“It’s okay, Kit—I swear. Every boy has an imaginary stroke buddy—no worries.”

A part of Kit got indignant—he objected to hearing Danny referred to as merely a stroke buddy—but most of him got it. Jesse was being supportive. Jesse was being kind.

Kit kissed him, because, dammit, that’s what you did when the person who had just made love to you for two days straight tried to tell you that your weirdness was not terminal. Jesse kissed him back and then hurried out to his car.

The next day was surprisingly… normal. Kit and Jesse were good at their jobs, and they’d worked well as a team for a couple of months. Jesse didn’t shut Kit’s door during lunch and go down on him for a quickie, but he sat and talked to him instead. The companionship, Kit had realized long ago, was very much as important as the sex.

Kit picked him up after visiting his mother that night and got a chance to see Jesse’s apartment. He was surprised to find that he did not envy it—Jesse was right. It was a low-rent apartment occupied by four men (two of them straight) who (in Jesse’s words) went home to change, fuck, or drink beer. The posters were tacked on the walls, and the beige carpet was appalling. Jesse’s room was roughly the size of Kit’s hallway, and while Jesse had literally covered the walls with sci-fi posters—many of them cadged from local movie theaters—it didn’t seem to have Jesse’s warmth. It certainly didn’t feel warm enough to keep Kit’s Jesse safe.

Kit wondered at the lag time before sleeping with someone and living with them. He wanted Jesse in his home. He wanted him in his bed every night. What do you know? You were a virgin seventy-two hours ago!

I know that I love him. I know I don’t want anyone else—not even Danny Fit.

Kit took Jesse home that night and proved it.

They developed a pattern, a system, and it worked. Jesse was at Kit’s house more nights than not, and that was good with both of them. Kit always managed to get his Danny Fit workout in—sometimes when Jesse was at the gym, and sometimes when he was in the living room, reading or playing with the kittens. (Mal, it turned out, was a terrible troublemaker. Zoe was stoic and responsible and occasionally ate Mal’s head to keep him in line.)

Kit realized that he hadn’t been turned on by Danny Fit since Jesse first kissed him. That kiss had been his real-life switch—once Jesse was activated, Danny Fit became just another fitness guru, putting Kit’s body through some twisty-puffy cardio-strength pain.

They went and got a Christmas tree—a small one, so they could put it up on a bookshelf and the kittens wouldn’t wreak havoc with it. Jesse had never had a tree—he said something about his mom always promising and never delivering and left it at that. Kit took him to Target, and they picked out ornaments—Jesse made sure they matched Kit’s décor.

And then Kit took his courage in both hands and called his mother. “Ma, we’ve got a Christmas tree. Come see it.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and my boyfriend. You have to be nice to him, or I’m taking you home.”

“I’ll be Mary-fucking-Sunshine. Don’t gross me out or anything. You two fags neck, and I’m out of there.”

The words were harsh, but she actually managed a pair of jeans and a Christmas sweater to meet Jesse. She brought some smoke-flavored cookies, and Jesse ate one politely, and she played with the kittens for half an hour while bitching about the neighbors behind her and how their goddamned Christmas lights would flash to music until eight o’clock at night.

Kit considered the visit a success—especially when Jesse stopped at the drugstore the next day and bought a box of nicotine patches.

“Anything inspire that?” Kit asked innocently, and Jesse shuddered.

“I have seen my future, and it’s wearing a reindeer sweater and espadrilles,” he said back, and Kit nodded seriously. He was very conscientious about supporting Jesse’s efforts after that, and two weeks before Christmas, Jesse was proud to announce he was patch free.

Three days later, they got a call from Emmy’s parents, and Jesse cried all night. Kit called up the office and told the girl in personnel that neither of them would be at work until after Christmas. Jesse listened to him take charge with liquid eyes and lashes spiked with tears.

“What if I can’t make rent?” he asked, his voice clogged and listless.

“What’s wrong with living here?” Kit said, trying to keep it light. Jesse sobbed on him again without answering, and Kit wasn’t sure if that was a yes or a no.

The funeral was two days later, and they drove up together, listening to Jesse’s alternative rock music, which Kit had never really heard before.

They had just passed Auburn when Jesse started to talk, seemingly at random.

“You’re going to meet my mom—she’ll be there. She’ll have my little brother with her. See, she never kept promises. Like, she’d always promise to have a tree, or that the next boyfriend or husband wasn’t going to suck and hit on me or Jakey, or that her next job would last longer than it would take for welfare to cancel the check. So, you tell me that you want me to move in, and that’s a promise. You can’t just say that because it’s easy. You’ve got a home, Kit. A real home. You want me to be a part of that, I’m going to take it serious, and I don’t know how serious you can be when we’ve only been together for a month, you know?”

Kit opened his mouth to say he was serious, and Jesse cast him a sideways glance over the steering wheel. “Man, you still have a crush on Danny Fit—how serious can you be?”

Kit didn’t want to argue with him, but short of burning all the guy’s DVDs, he didn’t know what else to do.

The funeral was… was sad. A child had died in a small community—most of the town turned out to the little roughhewn funeral home off the main drag of Donner Pass. When the service was over, Jesse grabbed Kit’s hand and tried to drag him out before anyone could see him, but a woman—spit-whip thin with Jesse’s sharp cheekbones and a mouth as sour as Kit’s mother’s, came up to them, a sulky boy in her wake.

“Hi, Mom,” Jesse said weakly. Kit put his hand in the small of Jesse’s back and was proud when his back straightened. Jesse looked up, and a real smile thawed the pinched expression around his eyes. “Hi, Jakey.”

Jakey smiled back, and both of them looked unhappily at their mother.

“You coming for Christmas?” the woman asked, and Jesse shook his head.

“I’m staying with Kit.”

Jakey gave him a real smile then. “Can I come with you?” he asked eagerly, and Kit was opening his mouth to say, “Christ yes!” just to make Jesse smile again when Jesse’s mom sneered and shook her head.

“Come along, Jakey—we’ll have a real nice Christmas at our place this year. I promise.”

Jakey cast a forlorn look over his shoulder, and Jesse held up his hand, thumb and forefinger extended in the universal “call me” gesture. The two of them disappeared into the crowd, and Jesse said it was time to leave.

They went so Jesse could embrace Emmy’s parents and hug his ex—an extremely handsome, fit young man with beautiful blue eyes, who looked so thoroughly devastated that Kit couldn’t even think about him being Jesse’s ex and could only hope the poor man’s heart healed sometime soon. After Jesse’s murmured promises to call, he grabbed Kit’s hand and dodged people who seemed to want to talk to him, and they slipped out the back.

“You don’t want to stay longer?” Kit asked cautiously as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“That’s my past,” Jesse said resolutely. “Jake and Emmy were the best parts about it.” Kit was driving back, but he could still see Jesse’s chin tremble. Maybe when things didn’t seem to hurt so much, Jesse would go back there. Maybe he would get his little brother out of a home that obviously hurt to live in. But right now, all Kit really cared about was that Jesse was still hurt, and Kit needed to find some way to convince him that Kit could keep a promise, new lover or not.

“Jesse….” Kit reached out and took Jesse’s hand, keeping his eyes on the road.

Jesse didn’t say anything back, but he clung to that hand until Kit needed it to drive. Randomly, Kit remembered that he’d asked Jesse if he wanted to go to the soup kitchen Christmas morning. Jesse had flushed and looked away and said it sounded too much like the community Christmas breakfast at the Elks Lodge that had been meant for the poorer families in the community. “We were there a couple of times,” he said through a tight mouth, and Kit resolved to go alone on another day.

Then Kit remembered that moment in November, when Jesse seemed wondrous and perfect, and unattainable. That bony hand, tight and uncomfortable, was so much more important than the imaginary Jesse that Kit couldn’t figure out how he’d had the courage to love at all with only the illusion to hope for.

They went home—Kit’s home, but it was becoming Jesse’s too—and sat on the couch sideways, Jesse pulled back into Kit’s body, and played with the kittens and didn’t speak for a long time.

 

 

THREE DAYS later, Kit spotted the announcement on a flier in the newspaper.

“Look!” he said, trying not to sound like a schoolgirl. “Danny Fit is going to be in town!”

Jesse looked over his shoulder and smacked Kit in the arm. “Yeah, but you can’t go—it’s in two days!” Kit looked and sighed. He’d bought tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra that night—he’d never been. In fact, until Jesse, he never would have had the courage to go, but they’d been looking forward to it for two weeks.

Kit looked back at the flier. “But it’s only downtown—and he’ll be done by two o’clock. I can get here in time to get ready—totally easy.”

“Right,” Jesse snapped, abruptly angry. “Yeah—you do that. You go ahead and risk plans you’ve had with me for weeks so you can go meet your imaginary crush. Peachy. I’ll meet you there—I’m going home.”

It was late afternoon—they’d been planning on dinner and a movie.

“Jesse!” Kit stood up away from the computer. “Wait a minute! You said this was no big deal! ‘Stroke off to who you want to’, remember?”

“Well yeah!” Jesse snapped. “But look at you—you find out he’s, you know, real, and you can meet him, and you slobber all over yourself to go shake the guy’s hand. It’s like, I’m what? Second choice? You really wanted Danny Fit, but you ended up with me? Fucking awesome!”

“Fucking wrong!” Kit snapped back. He thought with wonder, Oh—this is a fight. Now I know. It sucks. I’ll try not to do this often. “I really wanted you….” His voice broke, just that suddenly, because he’d never said this. “I really wanted you. And you were so… so beautiful, so kind, and it just broke my heart. And I thought that getting you would be the one thing that never would happen. So I got the workout stuff, and I felt so pathetic, like here I was, trying to make myself perfect so I could get you….”

“I’m not perfect!” Jesse looked appalled, and Kit had to stop him, or he’d get hysterical about the wrong thing.

“I know that! You’re better than perfect. You’re you. You never hang your jacket up, I have to beg you to do the dishes, and your car is almost as disgusting on the inside as your roommate’s refrigerator. I don’t care. I love the real you! But if I hadn’t been stroking off to Danny Fit, I never would have had the courage to… to do any of it. To move out, to ask a friend to the movies, to… to….” Kit’s face softened, and he tried not to sound maudlin. “To let you kiss me. To open the door and hold you when you needed it. You went back home and said, ‘I’m going to put my past behind me’ and walked away. I think part of that was a mistake, because any idiot can see you miss your little brother like crazy, but not all of it. Don’t you see? Danny Fit is the only past I’ve got. I want to say hello to the human so I can say goodbye to the fantasy. Is that so goddamned bad?”

There was silence between them, and Jesse fidgeted in the middle of it. It was the first time in a while that Kit was reminded of how very young he was.

“I’ll clean my car,” Jesse muttered, and Kit tried not to laugh.

“I could give a damn about your car. I want your trust.”

Jesse’s head snapped up. “I trust you….”

He was so transparent—but Kit wasn’t going to quibble. “Then let me go visit my pathetic fantasy ex-boyfriend, Jesse. I promise—I’ll come back to you.”

God, those brown eyes were expressive. The hope in them was awful—as though it had been Jesse who had been holding back hope the entire time. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, and smiled as he moved into Kit’s arms, but his voice was as sober as a child’s funeral.

Kit woke up early the day of the concert and dressed while Jesse was still in bed. He looked… vulnerable in Kit’s bed, that honey-colored hair in disarray, his bee-stung mouth all swollen with kisses. He’d gotten his HIV test the week before, clear as expected, and since it had been three months since Jesse had been with anybody, they’d gotten to have sex without the condoms.

It had been good—really good—but the best part had been that Jesse had felt safe in Kit’s arms, safe with Kit’s body. Kit’s stomach was getting flatter, and his biceps and shoulders were becoming more muscular and less bulky, but mostly Kit was starting to think that the wonder of his body was that Jesse sought shelter in it like an unanchored boat in a harbor.

Being needed was a wonderful thing. Kit wouldn’t trade it in for all the Danny Fits in the world.

Kit started the coffee maker and left Jesse a note: Had some errands to run. Open the presents under the tree in blue paper. I’ll be back by two.

The boxes in blue paper had a coat and gloves and a hat—there had been a cold snap, and Sacramento had suffered temperatures in the thirties for the past week. All Jesse had was his denim jacket and hooded sweatshirt, and it just wasn’t enough.

Kit took care of his errands in time to get to the bookstore a little early, but it didn’t matter: the line was still really long. Kit grabbed the book on nutrition that Danny was selling and leafed patiently through it, thinking the recipes sounded good but that he’d have to get Jesse to look at it to see there weren’t any pictures of Danny besides the one on the front.

The crowd was not all gay men, Kit was happy to see—there were plenty of pretty, plump, engaging women who seemed to find Danny Fit’s warmth and style appealing. He wasn’t sure why, but for some reason, this made him feel much less perverted about his celebrity obsession. Kit watched Danny eagerly through the crowd so he could look for clues as to who he really was when he wasn’t the uber-positive workout buddy.

He seemed nice enough.

He smiled charmingly at people when they handed him their books, and cracked jokes with them if they looked nervous. A slightly younger man was sitting next to him, making sure he had water and being generally attentive. Kit, who had to admit he probably had the worst gaydar of any gay man in history, had no doubt that they were lovers.

When it was finally Kit’s turn, he found that he stammered, because what he wanted to say was so maudlin, so corny, and so awfully true.

“You probably hear this from about a thousand people,” he said, feeling inept and dumb, “but seriously—man, you really helped me get my act together.”

The handsome man with the toffee-colored hair looked up and gave Kit a tired but sincere smile. Kit realized that he was working—it was a job he loved, but he was tired too.

“That’s good to hear!” Danny said, making his voice warm and encouraging with an obvious effort. Kit was suddenly glad for the younger lover—Danny would have someone to go home to, someone to take care of him. “That’s awesome—how long have you been working out?”

Kit shrugged, embarrassed. “Only about six weeks. But I’m sort of committed now.” In a lot of ways, actually.

Danny nodded, and something about Kit’s quiet enthusiasm seemed to calm down the ragged edges in the sports superstar, and his next smile was less tired and more sincere. “Well good. The commitment is all you can hope for, you know? People fall off the wagon all the time, but if they’ve got a goal in mind, then I have faith that they can do it. Who do you want me to make this out to?”

Kit’s smile suddenly lost all hints of self-consciousness. “Could you make it out to my boyfriend Jesse?” He gave Danny an inscription, and Danny blinked and then laughed.

“I’m sure there’s a story there somewhere,” he said with an honest grin.

Kit nodded. “Yeah—but right now I have to go give Jesse the book so it ends happy.” He met Danny’s extended hand and shook it firmly, a meeting of equals. “It’s been an honor to meet you.”

“Likewise. Thanks for letting me into your life.”

His hand was warm and firm, and his tanned fingers were hard-boned and soft-skinned with moisturizer, and Kit was proud to shake hands with the man.

But that was all.

When he got home, Jesse was sitting outside. He’d been raking leaves (Kit’s yard didn’t have a tree, but the yard next door had a fruitless mulberry, and the yellow leaves were everywhere) and the lawn was now clear of them, and there were big full black bags in Kit’s green-waste can by the garage.

Jesse was wearing his hat and his gloves in the chilly December light, and he was drinking what Kit assumed was coffee, but when he got closer and could smell it, he could see that Jesse had made hot chocolate and poured coffee in it.

He sat down next to his lover, not minding that the concrete of the porch was cold as hell, and took the mug from him for a drink. Without a word, he handed Jesse the bag in his hand.

“What’s this?” Jesse asked, his voice not as hostile as his expression had been when Kit had pulled up.

“Presents,” Kit said between blissful sips of the chocolate coffee.

The sulky turn of Jesse’s mouth relaxed a little more. “You already gave me presents. It’s not even Christmas yet.”

Kit grinned at him and tweaked the brim of the forest-green skater’s beanie that Jesse was wearing. It matched the gloves. Green may not have been an average color, but it looked so nice with Jesse’s coloring, and Kit was besotted enough to see it on him.

“You like?”

Jesse’s smile was sweet and very, very soft. “I like that you’re back on time.”

“Good! Now open your presents!”

Jesse looked at him dubiously, then reached into the bag and grimaced. “The book? Seriously? You got me the Danny Fit book?”

Kit grinned. “Now read the inscription.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed, and then he laughed a little, as though he was embarrassed. “Jesse, Kit says you have nothing to worry about. Danny’.” Jesse kept giggling and aimed those good-natured, narrowed eyes at Kit. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said there was a story in there, and I said yeah, but I had to get home and give you the book so it would end happy.” Kit was practically dancing as he sat, he was so pleased with himself—and so nervous, too, because the book wasn’t the only thing in the bag.

Jesse leaned forward finally and kissed him on the mouth, and Kit opened for the kiss, and they scooted closer to each other to share some body heat on the chilly-assed porch. Kit pulled back and nodded to the bag. “There’s more in there! Look!”

The next item Jesse pulled out made him laugh helplessly. “A membership card to my gym?”

Kit nodded, still bouncing as he sat. “Uh-huh. We can go together now. You know, because….” He flushed and looked away. “Because, well, we’ll be together, so I can’t look that bad, right?”

Jesse kissed him again and pulled back with dancing eyes. “Are you saying I make you look good?”

Kit’s grin was blinding. “Yup! Absolutely. Best workout buddy ever!”

Jesse chortled some more and then looked surprised when Kit said, “But there’s more!” Jesse dug in the bag for a minute, because this next item was smaller, and when he pulled it out, he frowned.

“It’s a key.”

Kit nodded, absolutely sober now. “It’s your key.”

“My key?” There could be a lot of ambiguity here, Kit knew, but he’d meant it that way.

“It’s a promise,” Kit said earnestly. “And proof, you know?”

“A promise of what?” Jesse searched Kit’s face, his eyes very bright, and Kit tried very hard not to screw this up.

“A promise that whenever you’re willing to take me up on the offer, it will be there.” Jesse sucked in a sharp breath, and Kit kept talking. “You see? The key is yours. You can come by anytime. It’s like the place is yours. But better, because if, you know, one day, you want to come in and bring your stuff, you can do that too. But it’s a promise that it’s open to you, you know?”

Jesse looked at the key in his palm like he was afraid to touch it. “Jesus, Kit. What if I fuck this up?”

Kit remembered a tired man giving some good advice. “People fall off from good intentions all the time, Jesse. What matters right now is the commitment. This is my commitment, you know? You and me, we’re going to be real. All we have to do is commit that it’s real. It’s something. If we have that as a goal, we should be good, you think?”

Jesse’s hand started shaking, and Kit’s came up to cover it, closing his fingers on the key. He let out a big sigh of relief when Jesse’s hand clenched, and he cupped his other hand over it, like it was something precious.

“We’re good,” Jesse said through a rough throat. He slipped the key in his pocket and wiped the still shaking hand over his cheeks, and then took the coffee from Kit and set it down on the porch.

Then he threw himself into Kit’s arms and held on so tight, Kit thought maybe this moment would freeze in time, like their asses were about to freeze to the concrete porch. They held each other as long as they could, and then a moment longer, and when they backed off, Jesse was all dimples and bright, bright eyes.

“You dork! How are you supposed to impress me on Christmas if you give me all of this today?”

Kit grinned back and stood up, giving Jesse a hand up, too, and snagging the coffee mug to go inside. “Are you kidding? We’re spending Christmas in bed!”

Jesse practically choked on his own snicker. “You think you’ve got that much stamina?”

Kit opened the door and pulled Jesse through. Their home echoed with their footsteps and their laughter, and with the two kittens who came running with bells on their collars to greet them.

“Of course I do! I’ve been working out!”

Jesse was still chortling as the door closed behind them.