Danny’s Story
I couldn’t explain the dread that settled in my chest as I neared the exit to my old hometown. It had been years since I’d driven those familiar roads, and yet the thought of returning made my hands sweat on the steering wheel. There weren’t any traumatic memories that haunted me, no defining scars from those five years before college, but still, the idea of being back stirred something uneasy.
Sure, there were the typical taunts from the jocks. Being smart, openly smart, made you a target. Nerdy. Fag. Teachers' pet. They threw it all around with the lazy cruelty of teenage boys, not caring whether it stuck. Ironically, the loudest of them all ended up being outed in the most brutal of ways, caught in a compromising position with the captain of the baseball team just weeks before graduation. Rumor had it someone filmed the whole thing and passed it around like a dirty secret wrapped in justice. I never saw the video, but the idea of it lingered, tainted by both vindication and shame. That summer, the second worst offender drove drunk into a utility pole. Killed himself. The town mourned the blackout more than the boy. I never forgot that.
There was only one person I truly wanted to see again: Tate Hudson.
My first real crush, my only crush.
He was part of the popular crowd, confident, charming, always surrounded by laughter, but during sophomore biology, fate paired us on a class project. I still remember that awkward first meeting in the library, the way his smile lit up the room and made my chest tighten. I was hooked. Silently. Hopelessly. He was never cruel to me, but he kept his distance, like he knew something he didn’t want to admit. I never gave myself away either. High school was dangerous that way.
Even through college, his image lingered like a shadow I couldn’t step out of. He was beautiful: my height, naturally athletic with a runner’s build, sun-kissed blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes. That smile, it didn’t just light up a room, it warmed it. Two years out of college, I was still dreaming about him. Or maybe I was just in love with who I imagined he could have been, if life had been different.
And maybe that’s why I didn’t want to come back. Part of me wished I’d bump into him, see he was happy, married, maybe raising a brood of kids, and let that be the closure I needed. Let the fantasy fade and make room for someone real. But the other part of me, the part I hated admitting, wondered what I’d do if he wasn’t taken.
My parents had moved away during my time at UT Austin, so there was nothing left here for me but memory and longing. It was time to grow up. Time to stop obsessing. Still, I’d done some searching, online, through public records, even scanned a few old yearbooks for leads. Three possible addresses for “Hudson” in the area. I figured I’d try them the next day, just to satisfy my curiosity. Just to end it.
I arrived at the hotel around six, too tired to overthink. I grabbed a sandwich at the bar and grill and headed to my room. I was surprised how easily sleep came. Maybe my subconscious was ready to let go. The next day, I told myself, would be the first step in moving on.
But the universe had other plans.
The morning unraveled with a single text from my supervisor, urgent, as always. Hours disappeared in front of my laptop, the way they always do when someone else controls your time. By the time I showered and dressed, it was already past one. I rushed through the lobby with vague plans to visit those addresses, until I glanced toward the hotel bar and stopped cold.
It was like my body forgot how to move.
Tate Hudson, sitting alone, sipping a drink like he belonged in a movie scene. My breath caught, and I must have stood there longer than I realized because a clerk from behind the counter came over, concern etched into her voice.
“Are you alright?”
I nodded vaguely. “Is that… is that Tate Hudson?”
She smiled, recognition blooming instantly. “That’s Tate, alright. You know him?”
“From high school,” I said, barely audible. My eyes couldn’t leave him.
“He’s one of the kindest souls I’ve ever met,” she added. “Especially after all he’s been through.”
That made me turn toward her. “What do you mean?”
She leaned in slightly, voice low. “The beard? That’s an exception. Normally we’re only allowed mustaches, something about uniform policy, but they made a rule for him. Scar on his face, I heard. From his dad. It was ugly. Broke his arm too. I think he was going to be a tennis star, but… it ended things.”
I swallowed hard, my throat dry.
Assault. A broken arm. A dream shattered.
My heart twisted with sadness and sorrow.
The clerk gave me a curious look. “So… you know him?”
“Yeah,” I said, quietly. “Thanks.”
And I walked toward him.
He looked up as I approached, his eyes meeting mine instantly. He stood, too quickly, almost defensively, and stared.
“Remember me?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Not with words.
Tate’s Story
I couldn’t breathe.
There he was, Danny Brooks, standing in front of me like a ghost I’d never stopped dreaming about.
He asked if I remembered him.
How could I not?
Even now, my stomach twisted the way it used to whenever he walked into a room. All that old guilt came rushing back, thick and suffocating.
The first time I saw him, I remember everything, his smile, his laugh, the tilt of his head when he asked questions in class. But more than that, I remember the panic. The sharp, unmistakable jolt when I realized I was hard just from looking at him. That had never happened with a guy before.
He was beautiful. Smart, too smart. I felt like a dumb jock next to him, even though I kept a B average and had a killer forehand on the court. When we were assigned that biology project together, I was thrilled, and terrified. I wanted to tell him. I wanted to let down the armor and be real. But I was a coward.
My father was always angry, drunk, bitter, unpredictable. I couldn’t risk inviting Danny over, couldn’t risk showing him the mess I called home. So I kept things shallow, safe. Inside, I was screaming for something more.
Then the taunting started. Those assholes throwing around “fag” like a grenade. And I, forgive me, but I walked away. I didn’t defend him. Didn’t defend myself. I just left him there. And then graduation came, and he was gone.
After he left, I thought about him every day. The silence in the house grew heavier. I wanted to reach out. I needed to. So I started writing a letter. It was clumsy but honest, but I was scared and rewrote it a few times. I should have just sent it; I was going to send it to his old address, hoping it’d get forwarded. But my father found it first.
He beat the shit out of me.
Broke my arm in three places. Tore tendons so bad I needed four surgeries. I lost everything I had been building, my game, my scholarship, my future. And somehow that felt less painful than the way Danny disappeared from my life, not knowing how I felt. Not knowing what he meant to me.
Eventually, a friend helped me get this job at the hotel. It’s not glamorous, but it’s safe. It’s predictable. The people here are kind. I survive.
And then today happened.
Danny looked even better than I remembered. His voice hit me like a wave, pulling up every buried feeling I thought I’d forgotten. I wanted to grab him. Hug him. Beg him to understand. But the words wouldn’t come. Not yet.
He asked me if I remembered him.
Of course I remembered him.
He was the only one I’d never been able to forget.
Danny’s Story
He didn’t say anything.
His eyes, those impossibly blue eyes, locked onto mine, and something flickered behind them. Recognition, definitely. But also fear. Pain. Something deeper and older than time could account for.
For a moment, I wondered if I had made a mistake. If I had pushed into a life that had deliberately left me behind.
“I, ” I started, but my voice cracked, so I cleared my throat and tried again. “I didn’t mean to ambush you. I just saw you sitting there and… I guess I wasn’t ready for it.”
Still nothing.
And then, finally, a breath. A slow inhale like he was trying to hold himself together with every bit of strength he had. “Danny,” he said softly, almost like it hurt to say my name. “Of course I remember you.”
I let out a laugh, sharp and nervous. “Well, that’s a relief. For a second, I thought I might have just hallucinated this whole thing.”
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he looked down and rubbed the back of his neck, like he was working something out, like he was deciding whether to stay or run. Then he gestured to the empty stool beside him.
“Sit with me?”
I slid onto the seat before my heart could talk me out of it. For a few seconds, neither of us spoke. The bartender walked over, and Tate ordered me a drink without asking what I wanted. I appreciated the assumption, it meant he still knew something about me. Or at least wanted to.
“I didn’t know you were living here,” I said after a beat. “I thought maybe you’d moved out of state. Started over somewhere.”
He gave a half-smile. “That was the plan. Until… things fell apart.”
I remembered what the hotel clerk had said. About the scar. About the assault. His arm. His dad.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said quickly. “I just… I didn’t know.”
Tate’s fingers drummed softly on the bar. “No one did. Not really. I got good at hiding things.”
I looked at him then. Really looked. There was still that same golden glow to him, but it was dimmed somehow. Like someone had thrown a veil over a light bulb. His beard couldn’t fully disguise the small nick in his cheekbone, and his left hand trembled just barely when he reached for his drink.
“You deserved better than that,” I said quietly.
“So did you.”
The words hit me like a slap. I blinked.
“What do you mean?”
He turned his stool to face me more fully. His voice dropped into something raw and vulnerable. “In school… when they started in on you, calling you names. I should have said something. Should’ve stood next to you instead of walking away. I think about that a lot.”
My stomach twisted.
“I never expected you to,” I said. “You were one of them.”
He winced. “I know. That’s what kills me.”
We sat there in silence again, but it wasn’t awkward now. It was thick. Charged. A thousand things unspoken.
Then he looked at me, eyes softer than they had ever been. “I started writing you a letter once. After graduation. I never finished it.”
“Why not?”
He hesitated. Then: “Because my dad found it before I could. That’s… when everything changed.”
I swallowed hard. “Oh, Tate.”
“I thought if I could just tell you, on paper, where it was safe, I wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore. I was going to tell you everything. That I liked you. That I’d liked you since sophomore year. That I was too scared to do anything about it.”
My chest cracked open, slowly and then all at once.
“Tate…” I didn’t know what to say. I had imagined this conversation in so many ways, usually with a fantasy ending that involved his shirt coming off and some kind of dramatic, tearful kiss. But this wasn’t fantasy. This was real and damaged and alive.
“I don’t expect anything,” he said quickly. “I just wanted you to know. I thought about you. A lot. I still do.”
“I thought about you, too,” I admitted, my voice trembling now. “I came back hoping to find you. Just to see you. And maybe… to let it go. But now…”
“But now?” he asked, leaning in slightly.
“But now I’m not sure I want to let it go.”
That smile, the real one, the one that had once made me feel like I was glowing, crept across his face, tentative but unmistakable.
“You want to take a walk?” he asked.
I nodded, already standing. “Yeah. I think I really do.”
As we left the bar, side by side, our arms brushed once. Then again. Then, finally, they didn’t stop.
Danny’s Story
The air outside was thick with midsummer heat, but the sun had dipped low enough to soften the edge of it. A quiet hush settled over the streets as we walked, the kind of silence that only small towns seem to know. Sidewalks cracked and uneven, the same sidewalks we’d both walked as kids, though never together.
We didn’t talk at first. Just walked.
It was Tate who broke the silence.
“I used to run this route every morning,” he said. “Back when I was training for regionals.”
I glanced over. “Before… everything?”
He nodded. “Before my dad broke more than just my arm.”
There wasn’t bitterness in his voice, just a kind of resignation, like someone describing a scar instead of a wound. I let the silence sit with us again. I knew better than to try to fix it.
“Everything looks smaller,” I said eventually, trying to shift the air between us. “The houses, the streets… the trees.”
“You’ve just gotten bigger,” Tate said with a half-smile. “Or maybe the world outside of here stretched you out.”
We passed a corner store that had changed names twice since we were kids and turned toward the old high school. It rose like a monument out of memory, red brick, wide front steps, and the smell of cut grass still lingering from some phantom groundskeeper’s mower.
Tate slowed as we neared the building.
“Do you remember that bench?” he asked, pointing toward the small concrete seat near the flagpole.
“Of course.” I smiled. “You told me I was the only person who actually knew how to label a frog’s digestive system.”
He laughed then, genuinely, and it lit something up inside me.
“I wasn’t lying,” he said. “You made me feel like I didn’t have to pretend to be dumb.”
I looked at him, really looked, and the urge to touch him was so strong I had to fold my arms across my chest to stop myself. “I always thought you were pretending to be something. I just didn’t know what.”
He nodded slowly, then looked at the school, eyes drifting to the dark windows of the science wing. “I wanted to kiss you after we finished that project. I remember standing right there, trying to convince myself that maybe… maybe you’d let me.”
My throat tightened. “I would’ve.”
He turned toward me, the weight of years and lost chances hanging between us. “I wish I had.”
A breeze passed through, warm and still laced with the smell of asphalt and honeysuckle. It carried something electric with it.
We didn’t say anything else as we continued walking. Just the rhythm of our feet against the sidewalk and the occasional rustle of trees lining the empty street.
By the time we reached the hotel, the sky was the color of bruised peaches, the sunset fading into dusk. Tate opened the door for me, and we passed through the lobby wordlessly. I felt a thousand thoughts crowding into my head, but none of them made it to my lips. Not yet.
When the door to my room clicked shut behind us, the silence shifted again. Denser. Closer.
I turned to face him.
“I don’t know what this is,” I said honestly. “I don’t know what you want, or what I want, or if we’re just two lonely guys clinging to what could’ve been.”
Tate stepped closer, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his eyes. “I don’t know either. But I haven’t felt this… alive in years.”
He looked down, then back up. “Can I sit?”
I nodded, motioning to the small couch by the window. I sat beside him, not quite touching, but near enough that I could feel the heat of him. The hum of the air conditioner filled the space between us.
“I’ve imagined this,” he said softly. “Being near you again. Telling you the truth.”
“You didn’t owe me anything.”
He turned his head, eyes locking onto mine. “I did. I do. Because I cared about you, and I was too afraid to show it. And because I let you walk away thinking you were alone.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.
So instead, I reached out. My fingers brushed his. Just a touch, a question.
He answered it.
He turned his hand and laced his fingers with mine.
We sat like that for a long time. Just holding hands in the quiet room, two boys we used to be sitting beside the men we had become. The TV stayed off. The lights dimmed with the sinking sun. There was no rush, no need for anything more.
For the first time in years, my chest didn’t ache with want.
It was filled with something much softer. Warmer.
Hope.
Tate’s Story
I hadn’t walked this stretch of town in years.
Not by choice, anyway. There’s something about sidewalks soaked in memory that makes your stomach twist, as if every crack in the concrete is trying to pull you back into some version of yourself you barely survived.
But Danny was beside me.
And somehow, that changed everything.
We didn’t speak much. I kept stealing glances at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to measure how real this was, how close we really were, how long he might stay. He looked older, of course, but in the best possible way. Sharper around the jaw, more comfortable in his own skin. But the eyes were the same. Still kind. Still curious.
Still the same ones that haunted me at night.
We rounded the corner, and I saw the school.
It stopped me for a second. The red brick looked duller now, and the flagpole was rusted near the base, but it was still there. Still looming like it had never left me.
I pointed toward the bench under the flag, the same one I used to sit on after tennis practice when I was too afraid to go home. “Do you remember that bench?”
Danny smiled, and it made something squeeze in my chest.
“Of course. You told me I was the only person who actually knew how to label a frog’s digestive system.”
I laughed, surprised at how easily it came. “You were. God, I felt like such a fraud back then.”
He turned to me. “I always thought you were pretending.”
I nodded, almost ashamed. “I was. Just not the way you thought.”
I looked at the science wing, its windows blank and lifeless now, but my mind filled them in with memories. Mr. Sheridan’s voice. The clack of pencils on the counter. Danny’s laugh.
“I wanted to kiss you after we finished that project,” I said quietly, not sure where the courage came from. “I remember standing right there, heart pounding, trying to convince myself that maybe you’d let me.”
His eyes softened. “I would’ve.”
And there it was.
A truth that landed in my chest like a hammer, both heavy and freeing.
I stared at him, trying to find something to say that could carry the weight of what we’d just lost and what we might still find. But nothing came.
So we kept walking.
Back through the streets. Back toward something uncertain but no longer frightening.
By the time we reached the hotel, dusk had swallowed the town. The lobby lights were warm and low, and I could feel the press of silence between us grow heavier.
He didn’t ask me to come up.
He didn’t have to.
When we reached his door, he hesitated just long enough for me to wonder if he’d changed his mind. But then the key card clicked, and he pushed it open, stepping aside so I could follow.
I stepped in slowly, unsure of my place in this new world where Danny Brooks let me follow him into private spaces.
He turned to face me once the door closed behind us.
“I don’t know what this is,” he said, voice low, “or if it’s anything at all.”
I swallowed, hands at my sides, unsure whether I should sit, speak, touch, or simply stand still and hope.
“I don’t either,” I said. “But I know I don’t want it to be nothing.”
There was a small couch near the window, and he motioned toward it. We sat, not quite touching, both of us leaning forward like we were afraid of waking a sleeping animal between us.
He spoke first. “I used to wonder what I’d say to you if I ever saw you again. But nothing ever felt… good enough.”
I let out a slow breath. “Me too.”
The air between us thickened, not with awkwardness, but anticipation.
“I hated myself for what happened,” I admitted. “For the silence. For letting those guys say what they did. I wanted to be brave. But I wasn’t. I was scared of what it meant if I spoke up. Scared of my father. Scared of myself.”
Danny turned to look at me, his face unreadable but open.
“I wrote you a letter once,” I added. “Well… I started to. I never finished it.”
“You said your dad found it?”
I nodded. “Tore into me like he’d found some kind of betrayal in my handwriting. That letter cost me everything I thought I was going to be.”
His hand moved across the cushion, just barely brushing mine.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And somehow, those two words did more to stitch me together than years of silence ever had.
I turned my palm upward. He took it, slowly, as if unsure whether I’d pull away.
I didn’t.
We sat like that, fingers laced, the world narrowed down to the quiet hum of the AC and the rhythm of our breathing. The room was dim now, lit only by the fading light through the curtains. Outside, the world moved on without us. But in that moment, time stopped.
There were no promises made. No declarations. Just a hand in mine, and the slow return of something I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hope.
Tate’s Story
The silence between us had changed.
It no longer carried fear or hesitation; it carried permission. The kind you don’t ask for out loud. The kind you feel in your chest like a yes that’s been waiting for years.
Danny’s hand was still in mine. His thumb moved once, slowly, over the back of my hand, and it sent something hot through my entire body. Not just desire, though there was that too, but something deeper. The kind of need that starts in the heart and spills outward.
He turned toward me on the couch, legs folding up slightly, and I did the same until we were facing each other fully. I didn’t move right away. I wanted to take him in, his eyes searching mine, the lines at the corners of his mouth that hadn’t been there in high school, the quiet bravery in the way he didn’t look away.
“I don’t want to get this wrong,” I said softly.
“You won’t,” he said, and then: “I think we’ve had enough wrong to last a lifetime.”
His words undid me.
I leaned forward and kissed him.
Slow. Gentle. Like a question I’d been holding my whole life.
He answered it with a quiet breath against my cheek and a hand sliding up to the back of my neck. The kiss deepened, no urgency, just presence. We kissed like people who had imagined this for too long to rush it. Our lips learned each other with reverence, like remembering something we had never truly known but somehow missed anyway.
When he pulled away, his forehead rested against mine.
“I dreamed about this,” he whispered.
“So did I.”
I kissed him again, and this time it was warmer, fuller, tinged with hunger but still held in tenderness. His hands found my chest, the fabric of my shirt gripped between his fingers, and I felt the slow swell of something opening inside me. Something long buried.
We didn’t speak as we moved to the bed. We didn’t have to.
Clothes were removed gently, respectfully, as though undressing an old wound and wanting to make sure it wouldn’t reopen. His skin was warm under my hands, and I found myself pausing, again and again, just to touch him, to map the reality of his body against the dream that had lived in my mind for so long.
He looked at me as I hovered above him, our bodies barely touching.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded, eyes soft. “More than okay.”
And then he kissed me again, and we let go.
We moved together slowly, letting our bodies speak for all the years our mouths couldn’t. There was nothing hurried, nothing performative. Just two men, finally safe enough to be seen. Every brush of his fingers against my skin felt like a door opening. Every quiet sound from his lips felt like something blooming. He held me like he needed to be certain I was real, and I did the same for him.
At one point, I buried my face against his neck and just breathed him in. He smelled like clean soap and something familiar, something I couldn’t name but felt in my chest like home.
We didn’t say much. There were only small murmurs, gasps, and the occasional whispered name.
Tate.
Danny.
When we finally stilled, tangled in sheets and silence, I lay with my head on his chest, listening to the slow thrum of his heartbeat. His fingers ran through my hair, brushing it back from my forehead.
I wanted to speak. To tell him that I hadn’t felt this safe, this alive, since before everything went wrong.
But I didn’t want to ruin the stillness either.
So I let the moment hold us.
And he held me.
There would be questions in the morning. What this meant. Where we would go from here. Whether this night had been a beginning or an ending.
But those were tomorrow’s thoughts.
Tonight wasn’t about deciding. It was about feeling. About reclaiming something the world had tried to beat out of us.
And for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel broken.
I felt wanted.
Whole.
Home.
Danny’s Story
I had imagined kissing him for years.
But nothing, absolutely nothing could have prepared me for the way it actually felt.
The moment his lips touched mine, the ache I’d carried all those years cracked wide open. Every second of longing, every unanswered question, every night I’d pictured this,tangled in bed sheets and imagination collapsed into that kiss.
And it wasn’t some movie scene kiss, either.
It was hesitant at first. Soft. Fragile. Like both of us were still half-afraid we might wake up. But once it deepened, once our mouths stopped pretending this was new, it felt like coming home.
I kissed him slowly. Reverently. Like I was writing every movement into memory. His hands found the back of my neck, gentle and sure, and when our foreheads touched afterward, I realized I hadn’t taken a full breath in minutes.
“I dreamed about this,” I whispered.
His answer: “So did I.”
That broke something in me.
No one had ever said that to me before.
No one had ever meant it like he did.
We made our way to the bed in a kind of trance. Clothes slipped away, piece by piece, not with urgency but with something closer to devotion. His shirt was the first to go, and when I ran my hands over his chest, I felt every scar, some seen, some not. He flinched once as I grazed the inside of his forearm where the break must have been. I didn’t ask. I just held him.
He touched me like I was real. Like he was grateful. And I touched him the same way.
There was no rush. Just breath and warmth and the quiet miracle of being here.
When we moved together, body to body, slow and searching, physically joined together. It was like exhaling for the first time in years. I’d never felt anything so earned. We weren’t trying to prove anything. We weren’t trying to forget. We were remembering ourselves, each other, who we might have been, and who we still could be.
And when it was over, when our bodies settled, damp and trembling, into one another, I didn’t move.
He lay against my chest, and I held him there like a prayer I hadn’t known how to say.
The air between us felt sacred. Quiet. The soft hum of the air conditioner, the muffled rhythm of traffic outside the window, his breath against my skin, it all felt like the safest place I’d ever known.
He spoke first.
“I’m scared this was just tonight.”
I swallowed. “It doesn’t have to be.”
His head tilted up slightly, eyes catching mine in the dark. “You mean that?”
“Yes.” I nodded, my hand still running along his back. “I know it’s fast. And messy. And that we’ve barely even begun. But I’m tired of waiting for a perfect time to be honest. I don’t want to lie to myself anymore.”
He looked at me like he was still deciding whether or not to believe it.
But his hand curled around mine again, and I felt the yes in that grip.
We lay there, tangled and quiet, until sleep crept in and carried us both.
I woke to soft sunlight slipping through the hotel curtains, casting golden stripes across the bed. Tate was still asleep beside me, one arm flung across my waist, his face turned slightly toward mine. His mouth was relaxed, lips parted just enough to feel boyish again. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I was watching someone from a distance.
I felt like I belonged.
I stayed still, listening to the soft cadence of his breathing, and thought about everything that had brought us here, the missed chances, the bruised years, the pain we’d both swallowed just to survive. And somehow, after everything, we had landed in the same place.
I knew what I wanted.
And this time, I wouldn’t let fear talk me out of saying it.
Tate stirred just as the clock on the bedside table clicked to 8:03. He blinked awake, then looked at me, groggy and beautiful, and gave the smallest, most genuine smile I’d ever seen.
“Morning,” he whispered.
“Hey.”
He shifted a little, eyes narrowing with the sunlight, then turned toward me fully, hand drifting across my chest. “So… last night wasn’t a dream.”
“No,” I said. “It really wasn’t.”
He exhaled, slow and deep, and looked like he didn’t quite know what to do with that truth. I reached for his hand again and held it.
“Tate,” I said, “come home with me.”
His eyes flicked up. “What?”
I pushed myself to sit up slightly, still holding onto him. “To Austin. My place. Stay with me. Start over. Not just one night. I mean… really start something.”
He blinked, processing. “Are you serious?”
I nodded. “I know it’s a lot. I know this town is… familiar. But it’s also full of memories that you shouldn’t have to relive every time you walk out the door. You deserve something new. Something yours. I have a life there, and space for you in it. You could start over with me.”
He didn’t answer right away. He sat up too, one hand running through his messy blonde hair, then looking down at the sheets like they held some answer he didn’t know how to read.
“Danny…” he started, then shook his head. “No one’s ever asked me for that before. No one’s ever wanted me like that.”
“I do,” I said, simply. “I always have.”
He looked at me then, and the weight in his gaze was impossible to describe. His voice cracked just slightly.
“I don’t want to say yes just because I’m scared of staying. I want to say yes because I believe it.”
I nodded. “That’s all I want.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he leaned forward and kissed me, soft and slow, the way people kiss when they’re saying yes with more than just their lips.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s go home.”
Danny’s Story (continued)
Austin felt different with him in it.
It wasn’t the city that had changed, of course. The skyline still shimmered with heat. The traffic still clogged I-35 by mid-afternoon. The food trucks still perfumed the air around South Congress, and UT still buzzed with student life. But something had shifted in me, in us. The silence in my apartment no longer echoed. It breathed.
Tate arrived with just a duffel bag and a cautious smile. He’d told the hotel he was taking a leave of absence. He hadn’t said it, but I knew it was his version of giving this a real chance, no promises, but no one-foot-out-the-door either.
The first night, we didn’t do much. I made us pasta and we ate barefoot at my tiny kitchen table. He asked about my job, my friends, the things I liked to do after work. I asked about his recovery, the hotel, the scar I still hadn’t seen.
He showed me, eventually peeling off his shirt in the bedroom, turning to the side to reveal the faint, jagged line along his ribs. It wasn’t grotesque. It was human. And for some reason, seeing it made me feel even closer to him.
“Is it weird,” I asked, “that I think it’s beautiful?”
He looked at me and shook his head. “Not weird. Just kind.”
Tate’s Story
The first few days felt surreal. Danny moved through his apartment like he belonged to it, his coffee mugs stacked unevenly in the cabinet, his laundry always mid-cycle, a stray pair of running shoes by the door. He didn’t try to impress me. He let me in as I was, and took me as I came.
The first time he handed me a spare key, I stood there holding it like it might vanish.
“You don’t have to use it,” he said, “but I want you to know you can.”
He was like that. Gentle. Certain without being pushy. He never asked me to unpack fast. He didn’t press me for stories I wasn’t ready to tell. He let the silences stretch when I needed them to, and filled them with laughter or music or the rustle of pages when we lay beside each other reading in bed.
It was the little things that wrecked me.
He made coffee without asking how I took it. He let me choose which side of the bed I wanted. He noticed I sometimes flinched when loud cars passed too close, and instead of asking, he reached for my hand. Not to fix it. Just to hold it.
One night, we fell asleep without touching, just too tired, too full from dinner, and curled on our sides facing different directions.
But sometime around two in the morning, I woke up to the weight of his arm sliding across my waist. His chest pressed gently to my back, warm and familiar. He didn’t say anything. Just let his breath fall against my neck until we slipped under again.
I had never been touched like that before. Not for sex. Not for show. Just… to be kept close.
Danny’s Story
That Friday, we stayed in.
He made dinner, chicken and vegetables and something spicy that made us both sweat a little. Afterward, we shared a beer on the balcony. He stood beside me in the dark, the skyline lit behind him, the light breeze brushing his bangs into his eyes. He looked at me, and I knew.
I led him inside. No words.
We peeled off our clothes without ceremony. It wasn’t lust that guided us this time, but intimacy. He let me undress him slowly, watching me, vulnerable, willing. And I let him do the same for me.
When we got into bed, with the sheets cool beneath us, we didn’t rush. We explored each other like it was the first time again. My hands moved down his sides, learning his angles, the texture of his skin. He touched my face like he was memorizing it.
We kissed for a long time, long enough to forget time entirely.
When we made love, it was quiet and slow and unguarded. No pretending. Just need. Just pleasure rooted in knowing we were wanted, fully, truthfully, and without shame.
His body against mine, the slide of skin, the press of his mouth on my shoulder, it all built to something tender and wild. Not fireworks. Not frenzy. But release. Shared, sacred, and complete.
Afterward, we lay together, the sweat cooling between us, the comforter half-kicked to the floor. I traced lazy circles on his chest while he ran a thumb along the curve of my hip.
“I don’t think I ever knew what this was supposed to feel like,” he said, voice thick with exhaustion and something softer.
“Me either,” I whispered.
“But this…” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “This.”
He pulled me close, and I went willingly, resting against him, the sound of his heart slowing under my ear.
And for the first time in a long, long time, I didn’t need to imagine anything else.
I had everything I wanted.
Right here.
With him.
Epilogue
Three Months Later – A Saturday in Early Autumn
The apartment smelled like coffee, clean laundry, and cinnamon.
Outside, the morning sun angled through the window blinds in golden slats, warming the hardwood floor and the thick comforter still half-draped across our legs. I lay on the couch with Tate’s head in my lap, his long legs stretched across the cushions, a paperback resting on his chest, half-read. He wasn’t looking at the pages anymore; his eyes were closed, lips just barely curved into the ghost of a smile.
He looked peaceful.
Whole.
I ran my fingers slowly through his hair, which had grown a little longer. He’d stopped gelling it back altogether now, letting the bangs fall forward the way they had in high school. I liked it that way. It made him look soft. Lived-in. Loved.
We’d built a life so quietly it surprised me how quickly it began to feel like home.
It wasn’t perfect. The first couple of weeks were full of small frictions, Tate’s not being able to sleep with any noise, me accidentally waking him when I moved around the apartment in the morning. He had nights where I’d find him sitting on the balcony alone, staring out like he was still trying to convince himself he belonged here. I never asked what he was thinking; I just brought a blanket, wrapped it around us both, and sat down beside him.
That was all he ever needed. Not answers. Just someone who stayed.
He started working part-time at a local rec center, helping kids with tennis basics and tutoring a few of the high schoolers in biology. The first time he came home with chalk on his hands and a story about a girl who couldn’t stop calling him “Coach Tate,” he smiled like it meant something more than a paycheck.
“Feels good to be useful again,” he said that night, curled up against my side in bed.
“You’ve always been useful,” I whispered. “You just forgot.”
This morning had been slow. The best kind of slow. We’d made love before sunrise, wrapped in the quiet hush of a city not quite awake. There was no rush to it, just rhythm. The way I kissed him, slow and focused, made him tremble under me, and he gripped my back like he needed to hold onto something solid. It wasn’t about performance. It never had been with him. It was presence. It was trust.
Afterward, we stayed in bed a long time, barely speaking, our breaths syncing as the light crept across the sheets.
Now here we were, hours later, on the couch in the quiet, in the afterglow of everything.
Tate stirred.
“You’re staring again,” he mumbled, eyes still closed.
“Because you’re beautiful when you’re half-asleep and pretending not to be,” I said.
He chuckled low in his throat and shifted so that his cheek pressed more firmly against my thigh.
“You know,” he said, voice thick with comfort, “every time I think I’ve reached the peak of how good this feels… it gets better.”
I smiled and leaned down to kiss his forehead. “That’s how you know it’s real.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “Are you still scared?”
I considered it honestly.
“Sometimes,” I said. “But not of you. Not of us. Just scared something this good might slip through my fingers.”
Tate reached up and took my hand.
“Then I’ll just keep reminding you,” he said. “Every morning. Every night.”
“You’re serious?”
“Deadly.”
We stayed like that a while longer, hand in hand, hearts quiet, the world soft around the edges.
Outside, a breeze stirred the trees, scattering the first hints of autumn across the sidewalk. Inside, we held onto each other, wrapped in the kind of peace that doesn’t demand attention, only presence.
And for the first time in either of our lives, we weren’t just surviving.
We were living.
Together.
