Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

“Teaching their kids the wrong dog breeds,” Simon muttered seriously and Jack squeezed his knee under the table, then left his hand on Simon’s thigh. After a minute, Simon rested his hand on top of Jack’s and a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

When Jack looked up, Jean was watching them with a knowing look.

“Shall we have dessert?” she asked brightly, standing to clear the table. Simon jumped up to help her, gesturing for Jack to stay seated. He glared at his leg.

“Soon, you bastard,” he muttered to the cast. He had a doctor’s appointment the next week to check in on his progress.

“Now, this I made,” Jean said, setting a coffee cake drizzled with icing in the center of the table. She cut pieces for each of them and Jack noticed that she’d cut his significantly larger than either of theirs.

“That looks amazing,” Jack said, mouth watering.

“I thought someone whose favorite cookie was oatmeal and liked snickerdoodles might enjoy something else with cinnamon and sugar.”

“Wow. Yeah, I love cinnamon stuff. That’s really smart. I see where Simon gets it from.”

Simon groaned, Jean winked, and Jack took a bite of the cake, sighing in bliss as the tastes of brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and walnuts burst on his tongue.

Chapter Thirteen

Simon

When Simon had arrived at Jack’s an hour earlier, shaking out of his skin with anxiety over their dinner with Charlie, Jack had decided that the most logical course of action was to screw him to within an inch of his life as a distraction.

Now, Simon lay flushed and sated across Jack’s bed, head on Jack’s thigh, Jack’s fingers combing through his hair.

“What if we had a signal?” Jack asked.

“Hmm?”

“If you can’t talk. What if you gave me a signal and I could... I dunno. Give Charlie a signal to stop talking to you? Or whatever you want.”

Reality broke over him like a wave, the blissful warmth and safety of the language of their bodies drowned.

Simon turned his head to rest his cheek on Jack’s hip, feeling the jut of bone, strong beneath sensitive skin.

“The signal would be when he talks to me and I can’t fucking answer,” Simon said. “And he’ll stop talking to me all right.”

“Sorry,” Jack said tightly, and Simon added guilt to his roiling mix of emotions.

Simon shook his head. It wasn’t Jack. It wasn’t Charlie. It was him. It had always been him. He tried to find the words to apologize but they wouldn’t come. And somehow, after they’d been so intimate, to not be able to say something so simple to Jack hurt worse than it usually did. Why was the language of touch so much easier?

But since it was, he used it instead. He reached for Jack’s hand and twined their fingers together. He kissed Jack’s knuckles and kissed his stomach. He kissed his chest and his throat and then he placed a final kiss of apology on his lips.

“Simon, I...” Jack’s voice was tentative. “We don’t have to go. I want you to be comfortable.”

I’m never comfortable, his internal voice snapped. But it wasn’t true. He’d been perfectly, blissfully comfortable five minutes before. And not just because of the hot as fuck sex. Because in Jack’s arms, in his own desires, he could lose himself.

Was there a way to do the same with Charlie? Not the sex, obviously, but a way to find a work-around. Another mode of communicating. Maybe not right away, but if this thing with Jack continued...maybe...?

Over the years, Simon had tried so many things. He’d tried glaring, tried smiling, tried a name tag that said Don’t talk to me, which people had thought was a joke. He’d tried learning German in the hopes that another syntax might come out easier. It didn’t, and even if it had, German speakers weren’t thick on the ground in Garnet Run, Wyoming. He’d tried sign language, chat rooms, internet support groups, pen pals. He’d tried therapy, astrology, and alcohol.

But over the last few years he’d stopped trying. Stopped trying to change. And he’d started to try and enjoy his life the way it was instead. Starting his business. Planning to get a dog. He’d begun to try and accept himself. Begun to try and accept that he might have limitations but it didn’t mean he couldn’t also have joy.

Meeting Jack had felt like the rainbow at the end of the storm. A chuck under the chin from the universe saying he was moving in the right direction. And Simon refused to fuck it up. Refused to let this one thing about himself unravel this beautiful gift he’d been given.

No fucking way.

Simon shook his head and sat up.

“I want to go.”

Jack looked for a moment like he might argue, then he nodded at whatever he saw in Simon’s eyes.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

* * *