“Of course you can.” Tilda smiled.

“It’s too much, this is a rolex.”

“Oyster Datejust, that model came out in 1942. It’s classic and every man needs one.”

“But…”

“Just say thank you.” Epi suggested because he knew Nick was embarrassed.

Nick nodded and swallowed his pride. “Thank you.”

The family slipped apart once gifts were opened. Everyone seemed to have a new toy to play with, some new and very expensive gift that was simple luxury. Epi seemed the least amused by it all, but Nick noticed the way he rubbed at his knee and knew some of his distance and aloofness was rooted in pain.

“How about that hot tub?” Nick leaned over and whispered when Epi’s family became busy talking around them.

“You going in with me?”

“I didn’t bring swim trunks.”

“Neither did I.”

Epi was asking him to go naked into the far too tiny hot tub on their far too private deck. “Okay.”  He agreed when he knew he shouldn’t but the rare, real smile from the morning returned to Epi’s face.

“Good, because I’m not sure I could make it into the water without help.”

They made their excuses to go to their room early, which no one protested over since they were supposed to fly home the following afternoon. If it had been Nick’s family there would have been uncomfortable assumptions and would have ruined his mood. Epi’s family didn’t even think twice about it and it distracted Nick so much that he was pulling the cover off the small hot tub as the water heated up before what Epi said sunk in. Epi was going to need help getting into the hot tub. Naked Epi was going to need help getting into the hot tub. Suddenly, a long soak didn’t seem like such a good idea.

“Before I come out into the cold, is the water hot yet?” Epi called out from inside the warm bedroom.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Epi pushed the door open and was wearing nothing but a towel and a singular forearm crutch. He clung to the wall with one hand and balanced on the crutch as he made small tiny hops.

Nick hurried over to help. More frightened that Epi’s towel would fall away than that the man would fall trying to reach the water without his leg on. “Here, careful.” The deck was covered and sheltered enough that the snow and ice wasn’t underfoot but it was still slippery and cold.

“I’m okay from here.” Epi had gotten his ass on the edge of the tub of bubbling, steaming water and from his perch could easily swing into the waiting warmth. “Hurry up and strip.”

“Maybe I should…”

“Shut up and get in here. I don’t bite and how often can you sit in a hot tub with snow covered pine trees a few dozen feet away? I promise I won’t peek when you take your towel off.” He teased as he slipped his remaining foot into the hot water, turning his back to Nick before removing his own towel and lowering down below the water.

“Let me go get a towel.” Nick agreed and disappeared back inside long enough to strip down naked as well and wrap one of the large towels around his own waist. “Cold!” He hissed as the outside air hit his bare chest.

“Than get in the water, stupid.”

True to his promse, Epi’s eyes were shut. He’d sunk down into the hot water almost up to his chin and had his head resting back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed as he relaxed. “This feels so good. My back hurts so much all the time.”

“Hurt it in the crash?” Nick double checked that Epi’s eyes were closed before slipping the towel from his body and quickly rushing into the hot water before he froze.

“No, with the leg gone everything is screwed up. I’m carrying my weight differently and it throws everything out of place. Chronic back pain is a side effect of missing a leg.” He groaned as he stretched out. “The more I walk, the easier it gets to walk but the more pain it causes. It’s stupid. I’d stay in bed all day but Tori would kill me.”

“Maybe we should get you a hot tub for the house, if it helps. Seems like a simple enough thing to do.”

“Maybe. My parents think we’re fucking.”

The comment came from no where and so closely followed Nick’s own thoughts about hot tubs and naked skin that he almost blushed. “Excuse me?”

“They always buy my lover a watch at their first Christmas with the Whitmores.”

“About that…how can I give them back without being rude?”

“You can’t.”

“But, that watch had to cost a fortune, and add in the cost of the laptop and it costs more than my car.”

That made Epi laugh. “Maybe. Mom really does believe every adult male needs at least one nice watch. I think your ten dollar Wally World watch upset her.”

“It’s twenty dollars and it tells the time, that’s all it needs to do.”

Epi shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t wear one.”

“A watch or a fancy watch?”

“Either.”

“Well, I actually own six. Two are mine, three I inherited from my grandfather, and one was Timothy’s. He pawned it for drug money, so when I bought it back I never told him I had it. I just had to keep them locked up for so long I got used to not wearing one.”

“I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“Not your fault my family is predictable.”

“If I tell them we aren’t lovers can I give it back?”

“No, just smile and say thank you. You needed a laptop anyway.”

“My desktop is nice.”

“Yes, but you needed a laptop too. I was going to try to figure out how to buy you one without you freaking out on me.”

“I’m not poor.” Nick answered back a little harsher than he had intended.

“Nick…” Epi lifted his head and opened his eyes.

“I’m not. I don’t have no where near your money but I’m not poor.”

“I know you’re not, but I also know you don’t spoil yourself. You won’t buy new jeans until you wear your current jeans out. You won’t buy a laptop if the desktop will do. I know how you shop, I know you’d never let yourself get one because you’re so damned frugal and proud…did I mention you’re too proud?”

“I’m not…I just…I can do for myself.”

“Well, this time you can just say thank you and enjoy it.”

“Easy for you to say…I feel all cheap and kept.”

“Welcome to my childhood. I’m not looking forward to the trip back home but God I’m ready to be home.”

“We’ll get there safe.”

“Can’t be worse than my family.”

“They’re not that bad. You were a funny looking kid.”

Epi groaned. “You saw photos?”

“In the study. You were kind of hot in that school uniform.”

“I’ll have you know I can still fit into my senior year uniform. I used to wear it to Halloween parties. It was rather perverse.”

“I can imagine.” He could too and that wasn’t helping with the entire naked-in-the-hot-tub aspect of things. “You never told me about your brother.”

“Which one?”

“Stevie.”

“Oh.” Epi shrugged. “Never came up, I guess.” He sat a little straighter in the water. “Truth is, I don’t think about him as much anymore.”

Epi’s voice had grown wistful and Nick wondered if he should leave the subject alone. He doubted Epi would have trouble telling him to shut up if he was prying so he forged ahead, wanting to know more about the man that had become his friend. “Were you two close?”

“Closer to him than my other siblings. The age difference made it tough, and I was kind of a bookworm as a kid. Stevie was…well everyone liked him, he was friendly and comfortable to be around. He was good to me, you know? He could have been a jerk of a big brother or just ignored me but he didn’t. It’s my fault he died you know.”

“Way I heard it, it was an accident.”

“He wouldn’t have been out there if it hadn’t been for me.” He opened his eyes and caught the worried frown on Nick’s face. “Don’t scowl at me, I’ve been through enough years of therapy about it to know it was just an accident but I still feel…Anyway, family kind of died with him. Within the month I was being sent off to boarding school. I don’t think my parents could stand to see me. Stevie and I looked a lot alike.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” He shrugged and smiled but it was forced. “I actually did okay there. It taught me how to get along on my own and the education was one of the best money could buy. I liked school.”

Nick saw it then, in the slightly wistful and lonely tone to Epi’s voice. Epi had been little more than a child when his brother had drowned, when he’d watched his brother drown. His family had reacted with the pain of sudden loss had shut down. He’d been shunted off into very fine but impersonal care and left alone to fend for himself. Nick understood Epi now, understood why he kept himself so far away from others and why he’d warned that he didn’t do casual well. For all his protests about it being okay, Nick thought it had been a horribly cruel thing to do to a child who had also been grieving.

“I was miserable.” Nick confessed.

“Yeah must have been so hard being the hot looking jock.”

“I spent every waking minute worried sick someone would find out.”

“Oh. I never worried too much about that. That would suck.”

Nick grinned. “Made the shower room more amusing.”

“Subtracting out the whole fear of getting a hard on in a room full of straight boys.”

“There was that. I used to have nightmares about that.”

That made Epi laugh. “That would have been a wet dream for me, stuck, naked in a shower room filled with the hot guys from the football team. Guess none of them were into guys, huh?”

“No. One of the guys, linebacker if I remember, when he heard I was gay took a swing at me at our class reunion.”

“He hit you?”

“He tried.”

Epi grinned again, softer this time and eased into the hot water. “Oddly, I found that highly erotic, you getting into a fist fight with some bigoted jerk.”

Nick chuckled now too. The memory of a man he’d thought had been his friend suddenly hating him for being gay wasn’t one of his fondest. It was still a bitterly painful emotional bruise but some how now with Epi he was able to laugh at it. “I kicked his ass too.”

 

The long soak in the hot tub was just what Epi had needed. Sore spots he had gotten so used to had melted away and left him generally exhausted. He eased into bed and sleep clawed at him. The lack of pain, the soft bed and the gentle sound of Nick’s breathing soothed him. He’d missed having someone else sleeping beside him, missed it more than he’d ever been willing to admit. Sleeping was so much easier with someone else near by. He curled up into his normal little ball and gently drifted to sleep.

And woke up what felt like a single heartbeat later. He was no longer wrapped around a pillow but instead was cushioned on something warm and living. It didn’t take a genius to understand that somehow in their sleep they’d drifted together. It did surprise him that Nick seemed as comfortable and easy wrapping his arms around him as he was. He knew he should pull away, return to his own side of the bed before Nick woke and caught them cuddled together but he lingered where he was.

Nick’s arm tightened around Epi’s shoulder and his breath caught in his throat. He moaned a little and it held tightly hidden pain. It wasn’t some secret fantasy that had Nick caught up in dreams but something darker. Epi wiggled a little to gain enough freedom to be able to see Nick’s face and was surprised to see the normally passive and steady expression replaced with a deep, twisted frown.  Nick’s eyes were squinted shut tightly and the look of pain seemed so out of place that Epi just stared at him in the darkness. It wasn’t until Nick muttered again, the mumbled words carrying fear as well, that Epi broke from his own fears of being caught and moved to take action.

“Hey…” He whispered into the night light lit darkness. “Nick..?” Saying the man’s name only seemed to make his nightmare worse. “Hey…” Epi tried again and this time he snaked an arm up and carefully shook a tense shoulder.

Nick’s whole body jerked but it was directionless. “Wha?”

“Shhh you were having a bad dream…” Epi whispered, frightened of speaking too loudly when the only sound in the room was Nick’s rapid breathing.

Nick sighed and dropped limply back against his pillows but he didn’t release his hold on Epi. “Shit…I’m sorry…”

Epi could feel Nick’s hands shaking against his shoulder and he watched as a tear slipped from the corner of his eye. It might have been that single tear or the tremble in the strong hands. It might have been Epi’s own awareness of his loneliness or the old pain of isolation from his own family. It might have been the darkness or the fact they were thousands of miles from their normal day to day life. It might simply have been that Epi wanted to.

In the dark, Epi leaned down. His hand traced across Nick’s unsettled face and the stubble of beard was a raspy counterpoint. He saw Nick’s lashes flutter at the tender touch but before he could open them Epi pressed his lips to the side of Nick’s face. The stubble was scratchy but the scent of Nick was intoxicating. It hadn’t just been another warm body Epi had missed sleeping near by, he’d missed being physically close to another man. There was no doubt to any of Epi’s senses that Nick was very masculine.

“Epi…” Nick whispered.

There was a tone of warning to his name, but Epi ignored it. His lips dragged across the scratchy beard and found the matching pair they’d been seeking. Nick’s kiss stuttered below his lips, uncertain and shivering. Epi stopped thinking about consequences and gave himself in to what he wanted. He kept lightly kissing, teasing, until Nick surrendered and parted his lips. Strong hands stopped trembling as they slid across Epi’s body to physically pull him closer, and this time when Nick moaned it had an entirely different sound to it.

Next Chapter

Story Home

Home