Chapter 13: Sexy times
The parallel bars were cold under his palms, a polished steel that seemed to suck the warmth right out of his body. Dan’s knuckles were white, tendons standing in sharp relief. He took a shaking breath, the sterile air of the physical therapy room burning his lungs.
“Again,” the therapist, Mara, said. Her voice was calm, implacable. “Weight on your left leg. Shift. Then the right. It’s a walk, Dan, not a siege.”
A walk. A simple, impossible thing. Four months ago he’d been sprinting across Sixth Avenue. Now, ten feet of rubberized mat stretched before him like a marathon. He’d traded the full-body brace for a more discreet lumbar support, a hard plastic shell under his shirt. Progress, they called it. It felt like a cruel joke.
He pushed. His left leg, the stronger one, held. The right trembled violently, a puppet with cut strings. He willed it forward. It slid an inch, the sole of the non-slip sock whispering against the floor. A bead of sweat dripped from his temple, landing silently on the mat.
“Good,” Mara said. “That’s two.”
Two steps. His arms shook with the strain of holding himself up. The mirrored walls showed him a pale, gaunt stranger drenched in institutional light. He hated the reflection. Hated the careful, broken way the man in the glass moved. He’d spent a lifetime in his head, observing, critiquing, writing. Now his body was a traitor, a loud, disobedient thing that demanded all his attention.
He made it to the end of the bars. Seven steps. The world swam, a grey wave of exhaustion and pain. He let his forehead rest against the cool steel.
“Okay, that’s enough for today,” Mara said, her hand appearing on his shoulder. “You’re pushing too hard. You’ll set yourself back.”
He didn’t have the breath to argue. He let her and an aide guide him into the wheelchair, the familiar, humiliating surrender. The transfer was clumsy. He bit down on a grunt. They positioned him, strapped his feet in. He was a parcel. A problem to be solved.
Back in his room, the silence was a presence. He’d asked them to turn the TV off. The chatter was a drain. He stared at the ceiling, at the water stain he’d memorized the shape of. A dragon, or maybe a crumbling continent.
The itch started in his mind first. A restless, crawling need for a different kind of feeling. Something sharp, or bright, or dirty. Something that wasn’t pain or fear or the numb fog of therapy. Something that proved he was still twenty-two and alive beneath the plastic and the trauma.
His phone was on the bedside table. He wheeled himself closer, his movements stiff. He glanced at the door—closed, but the window was a thin rectangle of wired glass. No one would come. Not for another hour.
His fingers felt thick, clumsy on the screen. He opened a private browser, his heart beating a dull, shameful rhythm against his ribs. He typed in the first site that came to mind, something blunt and anonymous. The page loaded. Stark. A grid of thumbnails. A universe of friction and release.
He clicked one. The sound was off. He watched the silent, frantic ballet. It felt clinical. Disconnected. His body, the traitor, didn't respond. He felt nothing but a hollow ache, a vague nausea. This wasn't it. This wasn't the feeling.
He tried another. Then another. He scrolled, a desperate tourist. He landed on one. Simpler. Two men in a sunlit loft, all sweat and slow intention. No frantic cuts. Just touch. A hand on a jaw. A mouth on a shoulder. The casual, possessive slide of a palm down a back.
Something clenched low in his belly.
It was a hot, sharp pulse, shocking in its intensity. After months of nerve pain and numbness and clinical handling, it was a pure, clear signal. Alive. He shifted in the wheelchair, a groan escaping him. The plastic shell dug into his skin. He didn't care.
He was hard. Fully, achingly hard. A stupid, simple bodily function that felt like a miracle. A fucking resurrection. He fumbled with the sweatpants, his hands trembling with a different kind of weakness now.
The door opened.
Chuck stood there, one hand on the handle, frozen. He was in another flawless suit, charcoal today, but his tie was loose, the top button undone. He held a brown paper bag from the French patisserie Dan had mentioned once, weeks ago. His eyes went from Dan’s face, flushed and guilty, to the phone screen, still playing its silent, luminous scene, to the obvious, urgent shape straining against the thin grey cotton.
Dan didn’t move. Couldn’t. The shock was a physical lock. He just stared, caught, the heat in his face blazing into mortification.
Chuck’s expression shifted. The initial surprise melted, replaced by something darker, more focused. He didn't smirk. He didn't make a joke. He just stepped inside and closed the door softly behind him. The click of the lock was deafening.
He set the pastry bag on the table. His movements were deliberate, unhurried. He walked over, his eyes never leaving Dan’s. He took the phone from Dan’s slack hand, thumbed the screen off, and placed it face-down on the bedside table.
“Recovering, are we?” Chuck’s voice was low, rough.
Dan’s throat was too dry to speak. He could only nod, a sharp, jerky motion. His body was screaming, a riot of conflicting signals—pain, shame, a desperate, clawing need.
Chuck knelt. The position was so incongruous—the thousand-dollar suit trousers wrinkling on the sterile linoleum. He was at eye-level with Dan’s lap. He looked up, his gaze holding Dan’s prisoner. “Does it hurt?”
Dan swallowed. “A little.”
“Good.”
Chuck’s hand came up, hovering over Dan’s thigh. Not touching. A question in the air. Dan could smell him then, the familiar scent of his cologne cutting through the room's antiseptic fog. Sandalwood and ice. It unraveled something in Dan’s chest.
He gave another tiny, frantic nod.
Chuck’s palm settled on his thigh. The heat was searing through the sweatpants. His thumb began a slow, circular motion on the inside of Dan’s leg. Dan’s head fell back against the wheelchair headrest with a soft thud. A shaky breath escaped him.
“Look at you,” Chuck murmured, his voice almost wondering. “After everything.” His other hand came up, fingertips tracing the hard line of the plastic brace under Dan’s shirt. “Trapped in all this… and you’re here. For this.”
His hand slid higher, palming Dan through the fabric, applying a firm, knowing pressure. Dan cried out, a ragged, broken sound. It was too much. It was everything.
“Chuck—”
“Shut up.” It wasn’t harsh. It was final. A decree. Chuck’s eyes were black, hungry pools. “Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Just feel it.”
He leaned forward then, nuzzling against Dan, his nose and mouth pressing against the straining cotton. Dan gasped, his hands flying to grip the arms of the wheelchair, the metal biting into his palms. Chuck mouthed him, slow and filthy through the fabric, the damp heat blooming. Dan could feel the groan vibrate through Chuck’s body.
With a quick, impatient move, Chuck hooked his fingers in the waistband of the sweatpants and pulled them down, just enough. Dan sprung free, flushed and desperate in the cold air.
Chuck didn't pause. He took him in his mouth, all at once, deep and wet and shocking.
Dan shouted, his back arching violently against the brace. The pain was a bright, irrelevant spark next to the detonation of sensation. It was nothing like the silent, detached images on the screen. This was heat, and pressure, and the sound of Chuck’s breathing, and the faint scrape of his stubble. This was real. This was now. This was a claiming.
Chuck worked him with a single-minded intensity that left no room for thought. He used his tongue, his throat, his hands gripping Dan’s hips, holding him steady against the wheelchair. Dan’s fingers twisted in Chuck’s perfectly styled hair, ruining it, pulling. He was babbling, a stream of incoherent curses and pleas.
He came faster than he’d ever thought possible, with a force that tore a raw, ragged scream from his lungs. The world whited out, reduced to the pulse of his own blood and the wet, sucking sounds Chuck made as he took every last shuddering drop.
When it was over, Dan went completely boneless, sagging in the chair, spent. The aftershocks were tiny twitches in his thighs.
Chuck pulled back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked wrecked, his lips swollen, his hair a mess. He looked more human than Dan had ever seen him. He rested his forehead against Dan’s trembling stomach, his breaths coming heavy and warm on Dan’s skin.
The silence that followed was different. Thick. Charged. Not with shame, but with something more dangerous.
Dan looked down at the top of Chuck’s head, at the vulnerable nape of his neck. The words from weeks ago echoed in the hollows of his bones. I was already in love with you.
This was part of that love. Ugly. Possessive. Consuming. A lifeline thrown into the dark water of his recovery.
Chuck lifted his head. His eyes were unreadable. “Still think you can’t process it?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Dan, breathless, wrecked, more alive than he’d felt in months, could only manage one truth.
“Shut up,” he whispered.