But it was difficult not to feel foolish when you told your boyfriend you wanted to fuck him and he didn’t answer, went pale, and zoned out so hardcore that he didn’t even speak to you.
There’s nothing to be upset about. It’s not about you.
“Darlin’, can I touch you?”
Simon nodded, hard, once, and Jack pulled him into his arms. Something was going on and he didn’t know what it was, but this was still Simon. He adored Simon. Simon was the best thing on two legs.
Usually when Simon was upset, Jack could feel his heart pounding and his limbs shaking. But Simon was motionless in his arms, like he was a statue, shallow breaths the only indication that anything was going on.
Finally, he felt something damp on his neck and realized Simon was crying, silent and still.
“What’s wrong?” Jack said as gently as he could manage. “Please.”
“I c-c-c-can’t do that,” Simon said. And he sounded like his heart was breaking.
Chapter Fifteen
Simon
A war was raging inside Simon. On one side was his foolish, breaking heart. It reared and bucked and wept, wanting nothing but to be held in Jack’s arms forever. On the other side was his seasoned, resigned brain. It packed its bags carefully and walked away the second Jack made it clear that now that his leg was healed he expected them to have a normal relationship—one where they went out and did things and hung out with people. Because it knew that Simon couldn’t be what Jack wanted.
The battleground was Simon’s stomach, which roiled, his palms, which sweat, and his throat, which had clamped up tighter than a furled peony fist.
Jack was holding him so gently, hands sweetly stroking his back and his hair. The battle left Simon bloody in all the places no one could ever see, and his pain leaked tracks down his cheeks. It wasn’t the same as crying, but it was close.
“What can’t you do?” Jack asked. “Fuck on every surface of the house? I think you can, but we don’t have to. The bed’s nice too.”
Jack was being kind, trying to lighten the moment, and it made Simon loathe himself with a deep, painful uppercut that he’d worked years to stop throwing.
“I can’t j-just g-g-go out.”
It was soft, but Jack heard. Jack steered him back to the couch and he let himself be led because god how he wanted Jack to magically have a solution. Wouldn’t that be something? If all along the solution to his problem had been held by a stranger.
But of course Jack didn’t have a solution.
“I didn’t mean like go to bars every night or anything,” Jack backpedaled. “But we can go to the movies and out to dinner and to ball games and...and...hiking?”
Simon imagined going to a football or basketball game. Imagined the yells of thousands of strangers, the way they’d stare at him when he didn’t shout for the team, the gutting exposure if the camera should land on him, projecting his face for the whole stadium to see.
And even if it was just going out to dinner, sooner or later Jack’s friends would invite him to a dinner party or a birthday celebration. Jack would want him to go. And Simon would let him down the way he’d let him down at Charlie’s. Or he’d try and the whole event would become about Simon and how he was doing and was he coping all right and could he handle it, not about the event at all. And little by little he’d resent it and he’d stop saying yes. And Jack would resent that he stopped trying. And then...well, once there was resentment on both sides, how could they go on?
Simon was trying to find a way to say these things that didn’t sound fatalistic, like he wasn’t even willing to try, but Jack was looking at him so warmly. He was so beautiful. Warm. Strong.
Simon reached out a hand and pressed it to Jack’s chest, trying to soak up his warmth.
“You don’t understand,” he said as gently as he could. “You want to d-do boyfriend things and I just c-can’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
Shame boiled into anger. It was so fucking unfair that this gorgeous, kind, perfect man couldn’t grasp Simon’s utter imperfection.
“I do!” Simon yelled. “You couldn’t walk when you had a b-broken leg. No matter how hard you t-t-tried, you couldn’t because it was fucking b-broken. Now it’s healed but I’m n-not. I won’t. I can’t do these things! You won’t w-w-want me outside this d-d-d-damn house!”
A look of almost cartoon puzzlement slid onto Jack’s face.
“No, I... I do.”
“Do you?” Simon demanded. “Do you want to take me to parties and-and-and restaurants? Do you want to know that I’ll say no nine times out of t-ten? Or that halfway through I might lose my sh-shit like at Ch-Charlie’s and have to leave?”