Chapter Six

THANKSGIVING WAS a success.

They ate too much, and had leftovers for a week, but that was fine, because Ian had never had the full Thanksgiving works before, and he had become extremely fond of stuffing and gravy.

They made love a lot—but not every night. Some nights they just brushed their teeth and went to bed together. Joel started to wonder, in a very real way, if he’d ever be able to go to sleep again without knowing Ian was next to him, breathing in the dark.

They still talked over dinner and worked out on Monday/Wednesday/Fridays and watched every science fiction show on television. Supernatural was still their favorite, only now when they watched it, Ian confessed to a long-time crush on the shorter actor who played “Dean.” Joel wished he could have claimed a crush on the taller guy who played “Sam,” but really, “I’ve only got eyes for you right now, Ee. We can crush on other guys later.”

Ian flushed then, and Joel enjoyed watching that very much.

Joel told the story of his last girlfriend, Rachel, the “skank ho” who had slept with most of his dorm before breaking up with him.

“Everyone else had to get shots for chlamydia,” Joel muttered, shaking his head. “Brother, I was never so grateful for Sister Margaret in my life!”

Ian heard the story with wide eyes and the sudden shock of someone who realizes he’d had a near miss. “I never thought of that,” he confessed. “I- I guess I just wanted… a person there.”

“Someone to love,” Joel supplied, rubbing Ian’s calf as it rested on his lap. They were “handsy” lovers—the kind of people who didn’t do a lot of public kissing, but once they were alone, in their sanctuary, were always touching. Joel liked it like that; Ian close was good. Ian closer was wonderful.

And really, that was the wonder of becoming lovers. The good things didn’t change, they only got better. And the best things, like choosing a Christmas tree and buying decorations, well, those became amazing. Fun. Intense. Anything Joel could do to make Ian’s days different from each other, to make reality as compelling as the rabbit hole in Ian’s brain that he still disappeared down, well, that was Joel’s favorite thing.

Unfortunately, Joel didn’t realize that this meant the bad stuff got worse until he walked smack-dab into their first major fight.

Joel was early. At Ian’s request, he’d given up riding when it got dark early, and for once, driving actually got him home before his bike would have. As he opened the door, he heard voices coming from Ian’s bedroom, and then the door opened, and Ian appeared—sans shirt—talking to the person inside.

Logically, Joel knew it was a client. Logically, Joel knew this was Ian being Ian, completely unaware of his surroundings, including the weather, which was cold enough to make his chest goose-pimple and his nipples pebble, even inside. Logically, Joel knew it was no big deal.

Emotionally, the glare he cast Ian’s way was enough to make his “roommate” trip over his own toes and fall down, right there in the hallway as his client came up behind him.

The distinguished, middle-aged woman was sleekly dressed in a pantsuit with pearls, and she smoothed some of her silver-tinted hair back from her face and smiled at the man sprawled at her feet.

“Ian, good Lord! I always knew you were eccentric. I had no idea you were clumsy!”

Ian started to pick himself up and cast Joel a wounded look. “Sorry, Professor Kohl. My roommate sort of took me by surprise.”

“Oh!” The professor’s eyes lit up, and she extended a hand towards Joel. “Mr. Martinez, I’m so glad to meet you in person! We sure have appreciated your efforts in the department, that’s for certain.”

Joel smiled and hoped it looked sincere. “Anything I can do to help Ian, Professor,” he said through a dry throat, and he winced as Ian threw him a glare that said plainly the he didn’t need any help if Joel was going to look at him like he just did.

The professor looked from one man to another and took in the undercurrents. “I’m sorry, Mr. Martinez,” she said with a sophisticated smile, “you do realize we were just going over accounts.”

Joel inclined his head. “Absolutely. I knew that.”

“Well, next time I’ll be sure to remind Professor Cooper to put on a shirt before I come in. Now that I know he has a…” her eyes lit up ironically, “… ‘roommate’, I think that’s more appropriate.”

Joel didn’t even try to disguise his relief. “Thanks, Professor. That would be great.”

The woman excused herself then, even as Ian finally scrambled off the floor and stood to open the door for her, and the two of them were left in the silent, suddenly cold apartment.

Joel sighed and flopped down on the couch, gazing sightlessly at the Christmas tree. They’d gone to a craft fair, and damned near every ornament was handmade—carved tin, quilted, sculpted, crocheted—you name a craft, and it was on the tree, but Joel might as well have been staring at a blank wall.

“Jesus, Ian, you couldn’t remember to put a shirt on in December?”

Ian scowled at him. It was an unaccustomed expression for Ian, and it looked more hurt than anything else. Joel tried to not feel like shit. He failed.

“Look, Ee, I’m sorry. I know better, I do, but- but that’s your room, and she was in it, and you weren’t even dressed!”

“She’s twice my age!” Ian pouted.

“I know that, Ee! She could have been anyone. I didn’t know who you had back there! Can’t you, I mean, I can’t do this! I can’t just walk in and not know what I’m going to see in your room!”

“It’s our room!” Ian shot back. “You haven’t slept in your own bed in a month!”

“Okay, our room. Our bed. But, can’t you see that you being in there with someone when you’re not even dressed is bad?”

“Don’t you trust me? You’re going to just throw this in and break up with me and leave me because you don’t trust me and I didn’t even do anything—”

“Wait a minute—”

Ian stood up and shouted, his face twisted by anxiety and unhappiness beyond anything the situation warranted. “You promised, dammit. You promised you wouldn’t leave!”

Joel stood up and shouted back. “I’m not leaving, asshole! I just want some sort of promise from you that you’re not going to change your mind in the middle of this and go back to being roommates!”

“Well, it’s not like I can go out and buy you a ring—not in this manky-assed state!” Ian said, sounding completely baffled. “What am I supposed to do? What do you want?”

“Just a promise, that’s all. We’ve said all sorts of ‘I love you’s, but not once have we said ‘only you’—all I want is a promise!”

Ian’s entire demeanor changed, a light going on in his face that was brighter than the thin December sun. “Oh,” he said equably. “I’ll be right back!” And to Joel’s surprise he took off for the front door.

“Ian! Your keys, maybe? Shoes? A jacket? A shirt?”

Ian’s unbreakable grin answered him. “Oh yeah, mate. Right. If I must!”

Ian was gone in less than thirty seconds, looking very odd and very, well, gay in one of Joel’s T-shirts that left his navel bare, cargo shorts, and a pair of leather loafers without socks. Socks, thought Joel in complete exasperation, would have interfered with whatever stroke of genius that had sent him bolting out of the apartment.

Joel looked around the empty apartment and closed his eyes. What had possessed him? Here he was, sleeping with a man for less than a month, and he’d just thrown his first overblown hormonal bitch queen tantrum.

Well, shit.

He scowled and looked over at Ian’s room, like the location itself had caused all the commotion. It’s our bedroom, dammit! Ian’s words rang in his ears, and suddenly he got an idea of his own.

When Ian returned, nearly two hours later, Joel was covered in dust. He had two cuts on his hand from disassembling Ian’s computer desk and a swollen thumb from putting it back together. He also had a bruise on his hip from running into his bureau when it was in the hallway, and another on his shin from tripping over one of the drawers on the floor of Ian’s bedroom after he’d decided the damned chest couldn’t be moved by just one person when it was full.

But he was done. In fact he was sweeping up the dust buffalo and spare pen caps that had littered the floor under the desk even as Ian walked in.

“What are you doing?” Ian asked, and Joel looked up and grinned.

“I’m fixing our bedroom… wait. What is that?”

Ian looked down at the little fawn-colored fuzz-bundle in his arms, and the thing looked back at him and mewed.

“It’s our new cat.” Ian licked his lips nervously and ducked his head and then powered through. “He’s a boy, but they chopped off his balls, because at the vets I guess that’s what they do. He’s had all his shots, and he’s a baby. So he’ll be around awhile. So, you know. You need to stay, at least as long as he does.” There was a hopeful look from those wild-sky eyes. “He’s my promise, right? I even had a tag made for him.”

Joel closed his eyes, opened them, felt them burn a little and squeezed them tight again. Carefully he set down his broom and walked over to the fuzz-bundle and stroked it between the eyes.

Unlike Manky Bastard, who had never really warmed to him, this one started to purr.

“He’s awesome, Ee,” Joel said softly, wondering what he was going to get Ian for Christmas now. Didn’t matter. This meant the world to Ian. Joel wouldn’t take it from him for the world. “I think he even likes me.”

“He’s your color too!” Ian said out of the blue, stroking the light-brown fur.

Joel choked on a rather weepy laugh. “Are you telling me you went out and got a Mexican cat, pappi?”

“I don’t think so,” Ian said with a rather shy smirk. “He doesn’t meow with an accent.”

Joel laughed and wondered when he’d become such a cat person, and Ian reached around the little neck and pulled out a tag. “See, it’s got our names on it.”

Joel read the tag and smiled, and his eyes burned some more. “Joel and Ian’s Manky Bitch. If lost call…”

He raised up on tiptoe, leaned over the kitten, and kissed Ian’s cheek. “It even has my cell phone on it.”

“Yeah, in case I lose the handsets again.” It had happened the week after Thanksgiving in an experiment involving radio vectors and Lobachevskian geometry that Joel never did understand.

“I actually found them,” Joel said with a smile. “They were under your desk. Here, want to see what I’ve done?”

Ian blinked and stepped gingerly over the pile of dust on the floor. “You’re moving out?” he said with enough uncertainty to make Joel thwack him on the back of the head.

“No, genius, I’m moving in. See, there’s your computer desk in the guest bedroom. And that’s my drawers, in our room.”

“But that’s your bed!”

“Not after I get a new comforter, and that way Mel don’t have to stay on the couch, because that girl can sleep!” Joel was nervous. His accent, which he let slip more and more these days when he was at home, had suddenly gotten even thicker. “Anyway, here’s your desk, in here. Even if you don’t remember a shirt, it’s like an office now. No sex happens in here, I don’t pitch a big queenie fit if you forget shit, you know?”

“You didn’t pitch a fit,” Ian said softly. “You got mad. I’m the one who pitched a fit. I’m sorry about that.”

Joel shrugged. “I wouldn’t have gotten that mad if I wasn’t sort of committed here, you know?”

Ian put the kitten down to go chase dust buffalo and wrapped his arms around Joel’s shoulders. “I know, Joel. You’ve got to believe that I know.”

“So, now we’ve got a cat and an office and a bedroom that’s ours together. Can you relax about me leaving? I’m not planning on going nowhere, pappi. I like it here. And I really love you. So, you know, can you just believe in me?”

“Yeah,” Ian sighed, resting his chin on the top of Joel’s head. “If I must, mate, if I must.”

It was the best promise Joel could ask for, the only one he wanted to hear.