Run and Hide Pt. 03

The doc roughly dug into Tanner's back muscles again, dragging a groan from Tanner's throat.

"Ughhh, fuck, that's good," he grunted. "Mmmm, yeah, I can't wait to tell them how blind they've been."

Paul stopped mid-motion.

Tanner craned around again. "Oh, unless you don't want me to?" he asked innocently. He could see the color start to rise in Paul's face, like he was holding himself back.

Just like a fiddle. Fuck, closeted fags are so easy to spook.

"I think we're done here," Paul said blandly. "How does it feel now?"

Tanner shifted until he was sitting on the exam table and rotated his shoulders and neck sensually. "Oooh, better," he cooed. "Those hands of yours are magic."

He swung his legs out to brush Paul's side. "Do you have any other magic parts?"

Paul quickly stepped back, his face still a careful mask. "Make sure you incorporate some core-building moves into your workout regimen, to prevent future back pain."

Tanner rubbed his own hard stomach. "I make sure to keep these abs in six-pack shape, doc. Can't you tell?"

Paul handed Tanner his shirt. "My secretary can give you some literature with specific moves that can help."

Tanner slowly buttoned his shirt. "How about you show me personally?" He teased a finger up Paul's chest. "I'm sure you could give me quite a workout."

"That's enough, Mr. Caldwell," Paul clipped out. "Stop by Nicole's desk on your way out."

Tanner hopped off the bench and moved into Paul's personal space. "What's the big deal, Dr. Z? We're both adults here. You're hot, I'm hot. It's just fucking. Really hot fucking. Why deny yourself?"

Paul walked with purpose to the door and yanked it open. "Don't forget to see Nicole before you leave."

You think you can put me off that easily?

"Thanks for the hands-on help, doc," Tanner said with a smirk. "I'll be sure to tell my friends about you. It's hard to beat word-of-mouth, you know?" With a wink, he strutted to the exit.

Once he slid into his silver Mustang, Tanner rubbed his growing bulge.Fuck, that got me hot. Gonna have to hit up that slut in Foley Hall. He's always ready for my cock.

He was going to have to keep tabs on Ace after this. Tanner had a feeling things would be coming to a head soon.

Speaking of head, he pulled out of the parking lot and sped toward campus to get some.

Chapter 12

His appointment with Tanner Caldwell left Paul good and freaked. It was a struggle to calmly see the rest of his patients after that.

Paul rushed home after his last appointment and ripped off his clothes to change so he could go over to Ace's. At this moment, he really needed to talk to him about what that Tanner kid said. Mostly, though, he just felt antsy whenever he wasn't around Ace. His fingertips tingled with the need to touch him.

He had just grabbed his keys when he remembered that Ace wouldn't be home. He was out on a man date with that friend of his.

Was it called a man date when both guys are gay friends?Paul still didn't have a handle on all the vocabulary.

He tossed his keys down and reluctantly surveyed his condo, which had vastly improved under Ace's care, but something about it still bothered Paul. Now that he knew what a real home could feel like, this box with his furniture in it could never compare – even with the fetching new throw pillows scattered about.

Paul decided to reacquaint himself with his Wii – something he just couldn't find time for when Ace was so much more fun to play with.

Right in the middle of his bowling approach, the doorbell startled him into throwing a gutter ball. He growled and braced himself for one kind of sales pitch or another.

Instead, he found Steven at his door, red faced and positively livid. The sight threw him so much that Paul simply stared at him.

"You son of a fucking bitch," Steven growled, pushing Paul with both hands back into the foyer.

Paul recovered his footing and gaped at his brother.

"How could you do this?" Steven ground out, his teeth clenched menacingly. "To me?"

Paul's heart plummeted.Steven knows? About me? Fuck fuck fuck!

"Let me explain," Paul said carefully.

"Explain!? Explain!" Steven gained volume. "Okay. Explain betrayal, brother. Explain this knife in my back."

Um, what?Paul didn't understand how Steven could see his sexuality as a knife in the back. If this was how Steven really felt about homosexuality, this was not going to end well.

"I think you're overreacting –"

"Oh really!" Steven interrupted. "Well, tell me how I'm supposed to react when I find out that my only brother has been fucking my fiancé!"

Not what Paul expected.

Paul blinked. "Your fiancé?"

Steven laughed harshly. "Yeah. You remember her. Cute, fierce, the fucking love of my life!" He slammed his palm into the wall by Paul's head. "And yours too, I guess."

Paul pushed him back. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Steven ran his hands over his head and turned wild eyes to Paul. "Oh, you want the whole story then? Want to see how completely I was in the dark?" He began pacing like a caged, wounded animal. "We were at dinner and she goes to the bathroom. Her phone buzzes with a text. I'm nosy. I peek. It's from you." He lowered his voice to mimic Paul's: "'Had a great time with you last night, babe. Want you here again soon.'"

Paul groaned and closed his eyes. This was so not what Steven was thinking it was.

"This perplexes me," Steven continued, "because I thought she was with the girls that night. So I check her past texts. She's texting you six or seven times afuckingday! You're calling her all thefuckingtime! And I'm so fuckingblindI never saw any of it!"

There was a good explanation for all that, but Paul couldn't tell Steven now, not when he was like this. "Steven, buddy, it's not like that at all."

Steven continued his rant, unheeding. "So Holly comes back from the john and I ask her, point blank, what the fuck? One McDonnell just isn't enough for you? And you know what she says? She says talk to Paul. That's it. That's all I get from her." He stalks right up to Paul and invades his personal space. "So I'm talking to Paul," he growled. "My big brother. My best man. I'm talking to him."

Paul held his palms up, not quite touching his brother's chest. "Please, Steven, you've got it completely wrong," he said gently. "Holly and I are just friends – really good friends. She's been helping me with something." He lowered his hands, frustrated that he couldn't explain more fully. "I needed someone I could talk to, and you know what a good listener she is."

"Helping you!" Steven barked out. "Oh, I'll bet she'shelpingyou." He rakes his hand over his face and snorts. "And since when can't you talk to me about stuff? My whole life we've always told each other everything."

Paul could see the hurt in his brother's eyes behind the fury on the surface, and it cut him deeply. "Not exactly everything," he muttered.

"And what a lame fucking excuse! 'I needed to, like, talk to someone.' I call bullshit! Tell me the truth, damn it!" Steven thundered.

Something in Paul snapped. Steven was right – he was lying to him and he owed him some truth. And nothing was going to calm him down now.

"You want the truth?" Paul yelled back. "I'm gay!"

Steven's mouth hung open for a moment in the ringing silence that followed. Then he narrowed his eyes and sneered. "Now you're just being an asshole. You're really not going to come clean?"

"I am," Paul said, quiet again. "Though it's called coming out, not coming clean. I'm gay." His shoulders slumped and he leaned heavily against the wall, counting on it to keep him upright.

Paul met his brother's eyes, trying to read the emotions racing across them – disbelief, pain, anger, confusion.Fuck, this is harder than I thought it would be.

"This is the truth I have for you," Paul said. "This is what Holly has been helping me with. She figured it out."

The silence stretched painfully between them. Paul bit his tongue against the apology that was straining to escape. He wasn't going to be sorry for being gay – for being who he was.

"But you –" Steven spoke haltingly. "You're... I never... How –"

"I've kept it well hidden. Nobody knew until Holly." And Ace. He decided not to drag Ace into this right now. This was his own battle.

Steven hadn't moved from the spot where he had frozen. Paul could tell Steven was starting to believe what he was hearing.

One word, that's all he wanted. 'It's okay, Paul. I understand.' Or not. He could yell, he could scream LIAR, and he'd be right. Just not this awful silence.

"Please say something." Paul felt the break in his voice. "Steven –"

Steven held up his hands and backed away, his shocked eyes still fixed on Paul. He opened the door and left without a word.

Paul let the tears come then. He slid against the wall until he landed on the floor and he stayed there, staring at the closed door, wanting to rip his own weeping heart out.

*****

"Oh look. Somebody left you a treat on the porch."

Ace looked up from his phone at Erik's drawl and groaned. A treat on the porch had to be code for a dead bird from Lola. "What has that cat done now?" he mumbled.

Erik pulled the car into Ace's drive, and what he finally saw on the porch wasn't a bloodied robin, but Paul.

"Clearly, he couldn't stay away from you for even one night," Erik muttered under his breath.

"Now, now," Ace chided. "Come on up and really meet him. I want you guys to be friends."

As they got closer to the porch, Ace's heart stuttered at the sight of Paul desolately petting Lola. His normally hypnotizing blue grey eyes were ringed with red and he looked so ... broken.

"Hey babe," Paul sighed. He gave a weak smile and gently lifted Lola off his lap. "I'm sorry to interrupt your night, but ..."

It was bad, whatever had happened. Ace knew immediately that he had come out to someone and it hadn't gone well. He knew that look of loss.

Ace took Paul's hand in his own and squeezed. He searched Paul's eyes for the answer, and he knew suddenly that only one person could do this to him.

"Steven?" he guessed.

Paul ducked his head and nodded. Ace pulled him into a tight hug.

Behind him, Erik stood awkwardly, waiting for a cue.

"Do you want me to stay?" Erik asked quietly.

Ace looked up at his friend with a small smile. "No, but thanks."

Erik nodded and silently left.

Ace squeezed Paul's shoulders. "Come up here," he gestured to the porch. "Tell me."

Paul slumped against Ace on the porch swing. Lola immediately joined him on his lap, and Paul automatically started stroking.

"He thought I was screwing Holly, if you can believe that. He had no clue about..." Paul stopped and swallowed. "I just blurted it out. Yelled it, really. Then he got really quiet and he left. Just left. Just looked at me like I was some kind of alien, like someone he didn't recognize."

Ace felt a bolt of anger at the way Steven handled Paul's news. He considered Steven a friend, and it upset him that any friend of his would cause Paul such pain.

"Well, at least you're not guilty of aiding and abetting an adultery, right?"

Paul coughed a laugh and wiped the renewed tears off his face. "He probably would have preferred it if he'd been right about that."

"Have you talked to Holly?" Ace asked.

Paul shook his head. "After Steven left, I came right here. I forgot you'd be gone. But Lola filled in for you."

"Lola is my comfort ambassador." The cat in question craned up to prod Paul into more petting.

They were still on the front porch, and while it was a pleasant summer night, this was a discussion fit for a sofa inside. Plus, Ace was hyper-aware of every person who walked or drove by, and he didn't want Paul to worry about breaking down in front of witnesses, even anonymous ones.

It was a sign, though, of where Paul was. Of how far he had come. In the past, he never would have swung on that porch so long with Ace for fear of being seen.

"Wanna head inside?" Ace asked. "You probably don't want the whole neighborhood to see you like this, do you?"

"I don't care anymore," Paul sighed. "Not now. I just lost my best friend and brother with one little word. The G-word."

"I don't believe you've lost him forever," Ace said. "Imagine if he'd told you the same thing, no warning, no warm-up, no hints. How would you react?"

Paul sighed deeply and looked away. "True," he conceded.

Ace stood and reached down for Paul's hand. "Let's go inside."

Paul let Ace lead him to the couch, where he fell into Ace's arms. Lola, naturally, had snuck into the house between their legs and settled back into place on Paul's lap.

Ace stroked his back and neck, wishing he could make things better with words, but he doubted their effectiveness at this moment.

He was filled with a sudden, deep appreciation for how well his sister had handled it when he came out to her. What would he have done if Sonya had just walked away from him?

"The first person I came out to was my sister," Ace said softly.

"How did she take it?" Paul's voice was rough and muffled by Ace's shirt.

"Incredibly well," Ace said. "All the women in my life have been cool about this, almost from the beginning."

"Girls are like that," Paul said.

"Well, except my mom," Ace said. "It took her a little longer. But only a little."

Paul twisted his head to look up at him. "What happened?"

"Fireworks, tears, shouting, slammed doors. Ruined Thanksgiving."

"That was all your mom?"

"No, mom was only the tears. Dad did most of the damage."

Paul sat up fully and turned his body on the sofa toward him. "Was he like that before you came out?"

"We'd been having some teenage-related tension since my senior year of high school, so it was kind of in the air."

"Rebellious little Acelin?"

"Sort of, but not without a cause," Ace smirked. "My dad's an architect, and he assumed that I would become one too. Family legacy and all. But I insisted on majoring in interior design with an art minor. He was, in a word, displeased."

"Fathers can be like that."

"Every holiday was a rerun of that argument. The 'you're wasting your talents' argument."

"Officially, he's wrong," Paul said. He leaned over and gave Ace a sweet, closed-mouth kiss.

"Anyway," Ace continued, "so that's the base we were working from. Then came Thanksgiving of my sophomore year of college. Mom passed the potatoes and asked how classes were going, and Dad started up again with how worthless my major was and how he wasn't paying for them to turn me into a limp-wristed fairy decorator."

"Oooh, bad choice of words."

"No kidding. I think he'd gotten into the wine early. So I slammed the potatoes down and loudly announced to everyone that he couldn't blame the classes for that."

Ace shook his head at the memory. "Everything stopped. My grandpa left his arm in midair, holding a bowl of bread. The seconds just ticked by, like I could plainly count them coming from the hall clock. Then my grandma leaned over to him and asked, 'What did he mean, Joseph?' And grandpa said, 'He's a fairy, Margaret.'"

Paul snorted out a laugh, then covered his mouth. "Sorry, that's not funny."

"Actually, in retrospect, it was hilarious, especially the gentle, exasperated way that Gramps said it. But at the time, it just set off an explosion."

"The tears and slamming."

"Yup. I tried to explain myself, but the volume got away from me. So I just took off. Went to a park for a few hours, sat on a cold swing feeling sorry for myself. Sonya found me eventually and brought me a container of food."

Paul sighed. "What would we do without these wonderful women in our lives?"

"Amen."

"When did everything calm down?"

"By Easter. I didn't even go home for Christmas that year. Went to a friend's house instead. But by the spring, my mom had calmed everything down. She's a great mediator. She gave me time off from family, but then she called me back in, no excuses."

"There's no quitting family, huh?" Paul sounded both resigned and relieved at that thought.

"Not from my family, no," Ace said. "And not from yours, I imagine. Holly won't allow anything like that. She's like a tiny, fierce version of my mom."

Ace pulled Paul into a tight hug. "You're going to be okay, you know that?" he whispered into Paul's ear. "This is not the end of anything. It's a beginning."

Paul let out a ragged breath. "Not looking forward to finishing that beginning."

"Well, here's the lesson you can take from me," Ace said. "Don't come out during a major family event, like Thanksgiving dinner, for instance. Because I have to endure teasing every damn year when I go home and everyone tells the story of 'remember when little Acelin announced he was a fairy and dad nearly choked on his cranberries.'"

Paul laughed at the same moment his stomach rumbled. Ace felt it echo up their embrace.

"Another country heard from?" Ace grinned. "Have you not eaten dinner?"

Paul shrugged. "I guess I lost track of everything after, well, after," he said.

"Let Dr. Ace handle this diagnosis." Ace disentangled himself from Paul and stood up. "I prescribe Chinese food and silly-stupid movies. May I suggest, as a lead-off batter, 'Caddyshack'?"

Paul's face melted into a soft grin. "Whatever you say, doc."

"And that's only the first part of my treatment plan," Ace grinned. "The second part involves a variation on 'turn your head and cough.'"

Paul laughed, full and deep and echoing. Ace really liked that sound. "Now just relax and let Dr. Ace take care of you."

Ace ordered their favorite dish from Happy Garden, which he intended to feed to Paul by hand rather than eat any himself. He was still full after his dinner with Erik.

While they waited for the food to arrive, Ace reversed roles and gave Paul a backrub, albeit less thorough than that first massage the chiropractor had given him.

"I can see I'm going to have to give you lessons," Paul rumbled, his head bent low and loose as Ace dug his thumbs into Paul's upper back.

"Picky, picky," Ace murmured. "Know what they say about gift horses and mouths?"

"They bite?"

Ace chuckled and lightly bit the side of Paul's neck. "Something like that."

The doorbell rang, earlier than Ace had expected. "Damn. Thought I'd have more time to play here."

They groaningly rose from the couch. "Why don't you get us beer or wine or something equally strong?" Ace said. "Tonight calls for adult beverages, I think."

Paul headed toward the kitchen, and Ace took a moment to adjust his half-hard dick in his jeans. He was digging into his pocket for his wallet and looked up in the open doorway to see possibly the last person in all of Kansas he wanted to see.

"Tanner." A dull spike of fear pinched Ace's chest.

"Have you been avoiding me?" Tanner said, so sure of himself, so confident. "I call, I text. You playing hard to get?" He stepped into the foyer, causing Ace to take an involuntary step backward. "Cause it's working."

"Tanner." Ace worked to keep his voice low and panic-free. "You need to leave. I've got –"

"Oh, I know what you've got," Tanner interrupted. "And I want it." He ran one hand up Ace's chest while the other snaked down to his crotch.

Ace managed to not yelp at that unexpected and unwelcome touch. He wanted desperately to get rid of Tanner before Paul ever knew he was here. He hadn't told Paul about this persistent frat boy, and now was definitely the wrong time to air that news.

"Hmmm," Tanner grinned. "Someone's happy to see me." He squeezed Ace's package, still semi-hard from playing with Paul.

He grabbed Tanner by the arms and tried to walk him back to the door. "You need to leave. Now."