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Nick winces, and Andy remembers the last time—the only time—he’s ever done this for anyone, nearly a year ago in the newsroom. It feels much longer ago than that, as if it happened on the other side of a divide, because then he was helping a friend, and now he’s helping—he’s helping Nick, and he doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t want to know.
The idea of not having been here—of Nick going to sleep with grit from the street still in his skin—makes Andy unaccountably furious. “This shirt is coming off now. No, don’t you dare try to unbutton it with your hands in that state.” He loosens Nick’s tie and pulls it over his head, then undoes the top button, then the next, all the while trying not to think about the fact that he’s undressing Nick. Which, he tells himself, is what he’d do for any friend in this situation. Hell, he’d probably do it for a stranger. But he doesn’t think it would feel this way with anyone else. He doesn’t think
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He feels as if he’s been turned inside out, as if he just learned that a part of his heart is on the outside of his body, in the possession of somebody else entirely.
“Andy.” Nick waves a hand in front of his face. “Join us back on earth.” “Hmm?” He makes an effort to look at Nick’s face, but can’t help but notice that water droplets still cling to his chest. Nick rolls his eyes, takes Andy by the shoulders, and steers him out of the doorway that Andy has, apparently, been blocking. Andy resists the urge to press his fingertips to the places where Nick’s hands have been.
The man puts his hand on the small of Nick’s back and Andy wants to hiss at him. That strange smile is back on Nick’s face, and Andy doesn’t like that smile one bit, partly because it doesn’t seem very happy, and partly because he thought he had seen all of Nick’s smiles already.
The worst is when Nick says Andy, sweetheart, and Andy says nothing at all because the only words his mouth could possibly form are I love you
And if Andy hadn’t already known he loves Nick—if Andy had managed to tuck that truth away where he keeps everything else he doesn’t want to deal with—he would have known it then, watching Nick laugh with the butcher on a sunny May morning.
“This is all my fault,” he says, wrapping his arms around Nick’s neck. “I thought you understood. But I forgot that you’re a goddamn idiot.” He kisses the corner of Nick’s stupid mouth. “I love you. I love you and I’m in love with you. I don’t know how to make this clearer. I’m not biding my time here. I’m here.”
And if a bomb were to go off in five minutes, I’d still rather feed the goddamn ducks first.”
He can feed the goddamn ducks and he can kiss his boyfriend. He can believe that the future they have is worth more than his fear, and he can do what it takes to make that future as safe and happy as possible.
“I want every first with you,” Nick says, because he can’t shut up. It’s like all that honesty earlier has loosened his tongue and now he’s going to say every stupid thing that never needed to be said out loud.
