Ethan looked out the window, watching the rain splatter on the glass and drip down, blurring the parking lot outside. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and saw Crow’s name on the text bubble. He unlocked it and read the message:

‘Turn Around’

Ethan did, looking toward the bedrooms. There, Crow was standing, wearing a black t-shirt with the sides cut out wide so that his sexy obliques were on full display, gray gym shorts that stopped an inch above his knees, and… a long top hat that tilted to the left side. He put his pinky to his lips and donned a monocle with his free hand.

Ethan burst out with a snort. “You look like you’ve lost your mind.”

“What?!” Crow opened his arms and moved his head, modeling the hat. “Are you saying I can’t pull off this top hat?”

Ethan got up and started walking toward the exit. “You pull it off just fine,” he said, still laughing. “Come on, it’s leg day.”

“Ugh,” he heard Crow groan behind him, followed by the thud of a discarded top hat.

Over the past couple of weeks, Ethan had found that Crow was an endless fountain of practical jokes and charming little stunts. He woke the gang up one day while wearing a wolf mask he had painted up with Angela’s makeup (she was pissed about that for a few days). Another time, Crow had everyone thinking they had lost the tour bus, but he had just moved it around the corner (Angela was also pissed about that).

Ethan loved it. He loved the exuberant, youthful energy that radiated off Crow. It was the same energy that was amplified tenfold when Crow took to the stage, mic in hand and crowd in sight. Every single performance had been better than the last, if that were even possible. Ethan couldn’t help but be blown away night after night after night.

And every morning, he would wake up feeling a little better, a little less anxious. His decision didn’t feel as crazy, but more deliberate. Like this was all somehow planned. By who, Ethan had no idea, because he couldn’t have even pictured this in his wildest dreams. But there was no denying that Ethan was beginning to feel like he was meant to be on Crow’s tour. Maybe it was the couple of nights Ethan and Crow had spent awake, simply talking, way past the point everyone else had retreated to their bunk beds. There conversations were varied and always entertaining, sometimes getting deep but never to the core of what troubled Ethan. Or, maybe it was the cool little museums Crow kept asking to stop every time he’d spot one on the road. The rest of the crew seemed to have been getting annoyed by the fifth one, but Ethan was in heaven. They could never take too much time at the museums since they were on a schedule, but the experiences were still memorable in more ways than one.

On multiple occasions, Ethan had been struck by a deep desire to push in and close the troublesome gap between them. He wanted to feel the kiss that had rocked his core all those weeks ago, before all this was even a possibility in his mind.

But, he would always pull back at the last minute. He still wasn’t sure about where this was all headed, and he knew that another kiss would only bind him tighter to Crow’s fate. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. Could he give himself to someone again? Was he even capable of it? Weeks ago, Ethan would have quickly answered with a simple ‘no’.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“Should I wear the hat to the gym?” Crow asked from behind Ethan as they climbed down the steps of the tour bus. They hurried toward the hotel with their heads bowed against the rain.

“If it’ll help you squat more than me,” Ethan called.

“Ohhhh, ok, I see how it is.” Crow bumped his shoulder into Ethan as they walked into the hotel lobby. A blast of beige greeted them as they walked through, waving at the two ladies behind the front desk. They were helping two dudes that looked like they had just gotten out of prison, with dirty white tanks and baggy khaki pants. Clearly, Angela was stretching the budget with these hotel stays.

Ethan pulled out his room key and pressed it to the gym door. It buzzed open. No one else was inside the tiny gym, which only fit two treadmills and three weight machines. There were a few free weights missing and the bike machine was out of order, but, for the most part, they had everything they needed.

Ethan started them off with some stretching on the treadmill. He worked in a whole-body stretch, even if they were only working on legs. He started from the head down, having Crow mimic his every move. He admired Crow’s ability to learn and his commitment to fitness. For some reason, he thought working out would be a solo endeavor on the trip, but Crow was quick to ask for personal training sessions, even though Crow already had everything down. Ethan didn’t mind, he preferred working out with someone and Crow was the perfect spotter.

He also looked so damn good in workout shorts and those shirts with the sides missing. It gave Ethan an incredible view of Crow’s toned oblique’s and rippling abs. Ethan wasn’t someone obsessed with appearances, but there was no denying that Crow was someone your eyes just didn’t want to leave. Ethan had an especially hard time looking away when they started stretching their lower backs, reaching down to their toes with their legs spread apart.

Yeah. It was impossible to look away.

“It’s so quiet in here,” Crow commented as the stretches finished. “They don’t have a sound system. Want to put on the TV?”

“Sure,” Ethan said. “I don’t mind either way.”

“Ok, I’m turning it on. Working out in complete silence gives me serial killer vibes.”

Ethan chuckled. “You could regale me with one of your stories,” Ethan said, flourishing his sentence with a hand wave. He went to grab the forty pound weights and brought them over to Crow, who was trying to work the dusty television connected to the corner of the wall.

“Are you saying you don’t like my stories?”

“Not at all, I love them” Ethan said, actually meaning it. “You’re one of the few people I could actually sit down and listen to for hours without any input and be completely fine about it.”

“That’s actually really sweet,” Crow said, turning from his channel hunting and looking at Ethan with a smile. “But please add input because, again, too much silence is too serial-killery.”

“Especially if I’m just sitting there, staring at you with a vacant expression on my face the entire time.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” Crow said, laughing as he went back to surfing the TV guide. He landed on a show about first time house flippers just as a wooden cabinet dislodged from the wall with a loud crack and fell on one of the flippers. No one was hurt and the editing made it pretty funny, so they left it on while they went back to working out.

He turned around to find Ethan staring at him with a blank, vacant expression.

It lasted moments before they both broke into laughs.

“You’re crazy,” Crow said. Their gazes locked for a moment, their smiles wide and the air between them sparking. Ethan had to look away. If he looked any longer, he would fall down the rabbit hole without a doubt.

They started with the squats, which went fine. Crow and Ethan both pushed themselves, Ethan beginning to feel that pleasant burn in his thighs, both of them starting to get sweaty. It was during the lunges when things started to veer off the expected route. They were doing their lunges in place, but facing each other since that was how they could get the most room. This meant Ethan was forced to take in Crow’s flushed face and perfect eyes and that lip bite he did whenever he was pushing himself to keep going past the burn.

Holy fuck, he’s really hot.

The last times they had worked out together, they were always joined by Angela or Troy, who were also deep into fitness, so Ethan had other people around to keep his attention from honing in on Crow. Now, Ethan had no one to strike up a conversation with or to pretend to help with their form. Instead, he was lunging while feeling his cock growing between his thighs, held down only by the compression shorts he had on. Although if he kept getting any bigger, he wasn’t sure whether the compression shorts would even be enough.

“Alright,” he said, “let’s do the step-ups.” Those involved simply stepping up onto the bench while holding weights in both hands. It couldn’t be that sexy, could it?

Of course it was. Anything Crow did was sexy. So duh, his muscular thighs flexing every time he stepped up onto the bench was a mouth-watering sight. Plus, it didn’t help that he wasn’t wearing long shorts either. No, these were short shorts.

Ethan had never had so many involuntarily boners before. Part of him wondered if it was because it had been so long since he was intimate with anyone, but a much larger part of him knew it was because the chemistry between him and Crow was off the charts.

His cock gave a rogue throb in his shorts. He glanced down, double-checking to make sure he wasn’t sporting any visible bulges. There was definitely a lump in his shorts, but they were dark and it couldn’t be discerned from a quick glance. Since there was only one bench, Ethan waited for Crow to finish before he started. They swapped back and forth for the remaining sets, Ethan making sure to keep his mind from wandering down between his legs again. He had to keep it together. He wasn’t here to hook up and fall for Crow, as great as that sounded in his dreams. He still needed to work out his own shit before he could even consider going all the way with Crow.

Hell, he had never talked about what he was running from—about Adam—since he had lost him, and he could feel that weight pressing on him every day since. But, as the days on the tour went by, he could feel the story start coming unchained from his heart. He was scared to share it, but he knew it was something that had to be brought up. He knew Crow thought about it too, ever since Jordan almost dragged it out of him. He wasn’t sure what came over him, but he had been really close to opening up right there in the rest stop, with the scent of onion rings and French fries filling the air. Crow hadn’t brought it up since then, but Jordan wasn’t the same toward him. He was never ‘cool’, as Crow called him, toward Ethan. There was always a cold look or a comment that felt more like a stab than a joke.

They finished up their sets and went on to the next few exercises. The burning sensation in his thighs only increased, which was making him more and more turned on. He had forgotten how much his penis seemed to like leg day. That, mixed with Crow’s sweaty body feet away, and Ethan found that he had to cut the session short. He was either going to tear a hole in his shorts or spontaneously come during one of the exercises.

“Can’t handle the burn?” Crow teased as he turned the TV off and checked to make sure they weren’t leaving anything behind.

“I can. I just saw you looking like you were about to pass out, so I cut it short for your sake.”

“Oh, please. I was intimidating you, just admit it. Too much man in one tiny room.”

No such thing.

“Mhmm,” Ethan said, not paying attention to the ache between his thighs as they walked back through the lobby and toward the elevators. He was going to have to go straight to the bathroom and take care of things.