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“Is your bus late?”
Bren startles—first because of the voice snapping him out of his cold, soggy reverie, and then because of the sudden, too-comforting warmth saddling up beside him. It’s been storming all day, rain tap-tap-tapping against the windows of the Rising Stones diner, the dim light of afternoon eaten away by the dark of night hours ago. Bram lowers his umbrella and closes it for the time being so he can stand with him under the bus stop’s awning. His brow is knit with concern, because of course it is. Bren’s usually long gone by the time the kitchen finishes up.
“Apparently,” he says vaguely. He received a delay notification fifteen minutes ago. “I’m sure it will be here soon.”
There’s no proof that’s true—it’s often late, sometimes by as much as half an hour if he’s unlucky. Normally he’d just call Lyss to come pick him up, but she and Misha are probably still at a concert they’ve both been looking forward to for weeks and he doesn’t have it in him to cut things short for something so trivial. He can stomach being damp for an hour, even if his ears do ache from the cold. Frankly if he just sucked it up and walked, it would probably be faster at this rate, but—
“I can give you a ride, if you want,” Bram says, interrupting his brooding.
“What?” He’s surprised by the offer. Not because it isn’t something Bram would do—he’s almost interminably nice and always eager to help—but because he never even implied he needed it. “It’s alright. It won’t be that long. I’m pretty sure I live in the complete opposite direction.”
“You do,” Bram says with a slightly amused smile. “But I really don’t mind.” He peers around him and says, “Your tail’s all soggy.”
It is, and him noticing is exactly why Bren’s been trying to avoid him. He’s too selflessly nice, too observant, and too patient by far—there has to be a catch. Every so often they wind up going home together and falling into the same bed, but he’s been careful to never let it grow into more than that. He isn’t even sure Bram wants more than that.
“It’s fine, honestly,” he insists. Just to placate him, he shifts a little closer and presses the top of his head into his shoulder, the warmth of him feeling good against his icy ears. “Keep me company if you’re so worried.”
Bram sighs, but relents, and pulls him nearer. The world stills, the rain fading to a hush beneath soft, steady breathing. It feels good. The road glimmers with the colors of street lamps and stop lights and every so often an errant breeze mists his skin. This is the trap that comes hand in hand with Bram’s company: it’s too easy to fall into completely.
“It was busy tonight,” he says eventually.
Bren smirks, thinking of the wad of cash in his pocket—$325 in tips. The best he’s had waiting in a couple of weeks. “Great, wasn’t it?”
He feels Bram snort. “My feet hurt. And I probably stink from cooking fish all night. Sorry.”
Bren can’t smell anything past the cold and petrichor. A car drives by, tires cleaving through a puddle along the curb, and Bram quickly turns his shoulder inward to keep them both from getting splashed. It’s the kind of maneuver that makes Bren want to go home with him again—to stand on tiptoes and whisper an invitation in his ear and watch his face go red, like it always does.
It’s none of my business if you want to invite your boyfriend over.
Instead he inhales deeply and lies. “You do smell like salmon.”
Bram lets go. “Sorry.”
His phone chimes before he can insist it isn’t a problem and he sighs reflexively.
Bus 223’s 10:15 route from Downtown is canceled due to mechanical issues. A notification will be issued when service is restored.
As if on cue, the rain speeds up.
“Your bus is canceled, isn’t it?” Bram guesses.
Bren drops his head in annoyance, already knowing where this is going. “It is. If you loan me your umbrella I can just—”
He shoots him a look that stops him dead in his tracks, and Bren relents despite himself. Maybe he is being ridiculous. He watches him silently open his umbrella, then awkwardly walks with him across the empty parking lot to the passenger’s side of his old truck. Bram opens the door for him and waits for him to climb inside.
“Princess treatment and all,” he says, teasing so he doesn’t feel the weight. Bram smirks before shutting the door behind him.
Rain drums against the silent cab and as he watches him round the vehicle, he feels stupid for having denied him. This is already better. Even more so when he joins him, starts the engine, and, after a few moments, warm air begins to flood in through the vents. The windows immediately fog up, obscuring the darkened parking lot. Trapping them in a tiny space alone together for the first time in two weeks.
If Bram’s ever going to bring it up, he’s going to do it now where no one can hear, private as he is.
“We’ll have to wait a second,” is all he says. He reaches across the space between them and turns up the heater. Bren brushes a few stray drops of water from his cheek. “You’re bad at letting people take care of you.”
“I just didn’t want you to have to go out of your way for me,” he sighs, ignoring the accusation as much as he can. Bram isn’t incorrect, but that doesn’t mean he has to say it out loud. “That’s all.”
His voice is as warm as the afternoon sun when he asks, “What if I like going out of my way for you?”
Bren huffs and starts scrubbing at the fog on the passenger-side window with his finger.
“I like it when the theatre kids come in,” he says just to fill the silence. A whole troupe, fresh off their performance of The Boy and the Dragon Gay, had arrived with smudged stage makeup and weed-reddened eyes. “They’re loud, but they always tip well. It didn’t happen tonight, but one time they left me almost fifty dollars on a twenty dollar ticket.”
Bram smirks. “Half of them will be wait staff themselves one day; they’re just paying it forward.”
Bren snorts, shocked at the unusually rude joke but laughing anyway. “That isn’t very nice.”
“Three of them ordered the salmon,” he shrugs, as though in his world it’s an unforgivable sin. Now that they’re closer and insulated, Bren actually can smell the pungent fish. Maybe it is a sin.
Bren draws a little circle in the rapidly retreating fog, then gives it ears and a curly tail. “At least there was no singing tonight.”
“There is that,” Bram sighs.
He can feel his eyes burrowing into his back. He wants to talk about the thing they’re not talking about, but he’s not going to bring it up unless Bren does first. Which means Bren should just suck it up and get it over with. He can hear the slip of his palms absently rubbing the leather of the steering wheel.
“I’m not mad at you,” he eventually explains, having run out of ways to fill the silence. “If I made it seem that way, I’m sorry.” He glances sideways and finds Bram watching him in the darkness, the light coming off the console giving his skin a faint blue glow. “I don’t know why I’ve been avoiding you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You do this every time we sleep together,” Bram notes, not unkindly. His lips curl in that too-charming, slightly-crinkled smile. “At least for a little bit. This time’s just extra bad.”
He wants to deny the accusation, but he knows he isn’t wrong, so instead he merely shrugs. “Old habits die hard.”
Bram doesn’t seem angry, per se. He isn’t starting to drive, either—he’s keeping him here, where he has no choice but to talk. If anything, he’s hurt: which is admittedly far worse. His only options are to bow to the fact that something is brewing between them or stop sleeping with him altogether, and he isn’t sure he can bear either one.
“Was it Mina?” he asks, cleaving to the heart with perfect precision.
Two weeks ago, after the tension between them had once again built to an impossible crescendo, Bren had pulled him aside on his way out the door and whispered something filthy in his ear. Bram turned precisely the color he’d hoped, sighed like he regretted every choice he’d ever made, and immediately took him back to his place, where they’d gotten it all out of their systems over the course of many hours of fervent sex and desperately-needed cuddling. It was exactly the sort of night he could’ve filed away and been satisfied with—Bram was tender and attentive and, best of all, willing to let him go whenever he wanted—until the next morning he wandered out into the kitchen wearing one of Bram’s old t-shirts and bumped directly into his sister, coming in early from one of her shifts at the hospital.
“Oh!” she said, shifting from exhausted to bright-eyed and bushy tailed in an instant. “Bren.”
They’d met before once, when she came into the diner to grab a meal with her friends and spent the night casually harassing her brother by hurling comments through the kitchen window. He’d thought it was funny at the time, joining in, but now it had backfired—he was recognizable.
“Mina,” he said uneasily. “Good morning.”
“That’s my brother’s shirt.”
Bren looked down and wrapped his hands a little more tightly around the cup of water in his hands. “It is.”
Mina only smiled at him knowingly, then dropped her bags on the kitchen table and headed for the hall. Bren hoped she’d vanish and grant him a moment to flee—forever, preferably—but Bram barred her path and leveled his gaze directly at her. “Behave.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she protested, annoyed. She glanced back at Bren and though Bram’s shirt was big enough to keep him perfectly decent, he felt naked as the day he was born. “It’s none of my business if you want to invite your boyfriend over.”
Bram rubbed his forehead and let her pass to vanish into her room. He apologized quietly on her behalf and Bren assured him it was okay, but quickly thereafter, he conjured an excuse to leave before Bram had even cooked the breakfast he’d promised. He ignored the disappointed expression he left in his wake.
In the grand scheme of things, though it was a bit nosy of her, it wasn’t exactly the end of the world. God knew Mina was too busy with her own schedule to interfere with her brother’s life in any meaningful way. He didn’t expect anything to come of her knowing, he simply disliked it. That was the risk of sharing a house, wasn’t it? Any time they’d gone to Bren’s, it was just as likely Lyss or Misha might come home early and discover them together, and even though they never had, he can’t fault Bram for not being able to foresee something like that.
He’s still been avoiding him for two weeks, though. And now he knows why.
“Maybe,” he admits quietly.
“I know she can be a little nosy, but she isn’t going to start telling people we’re—” He hesitates, as if suddenly realizing he isn’t sure how to classify what they’re doing. He forgoes the matter entirely with a vague flap of his hand and simply reassures him, “I promise.” Bram thinking being caught is his main concern is both entirely expected and also makes him feel like the scum of the earth. He isn’t something he’s trying to hide—quite the opposite, in fact. He wants to protect whatever this is and keep it for himself. “I can talk to her about it if you want. I’m sorry if she embarrassed you.”
Bren drops his head against the glass beside him with a soft thunk and closes his eyes. “It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?” Bram asks, a little more stubborn than usual. For him, it might as well be open desperation. “If I’m being too clingy or moving too fast, I can back off. It doesn’t bother me.”
Bren’s going to lose it. He doesn’t know how to tell him it isn’t his fault and never has been. Bram’s biggest flaw—seemingly his only flaw, to Bren’s continued amazement—is that he’s always willing to assume personal responsibility for everything, whether or not it’s actually his burden to bear. It’s infuriating. Like he isn’t able to accept the idea that Bren could be to blame for all this. It has to be him.
He wants to tell him as much, except his throat has gone tight and any coherent thought on the matter has become a senseless muddle in his mind. He can’t do nothing, though, so he’ll just have to resort to familiar tactics.
He slides along the bench seat and drags Bram into a kiss, drinking deep while the rain pours over the windows and hides them from the world. He’s tense at first, his hands simply floating near but never coming to rest on his waist, until eventually he realizes Bren isn’t going to stop and he cradles his face instead. Bren runs a hand up his chest and slips his fingers along his throat to rest against his thundering pulse.
It turns feverish quickly, like it always does. After a minute or two, he scoots even closer and straddles his thighs, careful not to bump the horn as he drapes his arms around Bram’s shoulders and pushes him back into the seat. A handful of minutes spent kissing and touching and panting into each other’s mouths has the windows fogging up again. Bren tries to push things further and start in on his neck. Instead Bram pushes him away, just slightly, to look into his eyes.
“I’m confused,” he says simply.
His expression is as pathetically sopping wet as Bren was while waiting under the bus stop. He thumbs at his cheeks and a swell of tenderness moves through him with all the same instinctual distaste as nausea.
Bren presses his forehead to Bram’s shoulder and sighs, dramatically. “I know.” He feels Bram’s hand slip down the curve of his back and he very delicately touches his tail, still damp. A shiver of realization runs up his spine. He never lets anyone touch his tail. “I just need you to be patient a little longer.” He huffs a bitter, frustrated laugh and, almost to himself, adds, “Don’t give up on me yet.”
It’s a little too honest—but it’s what he’s got. It’s what he’s decided to ask of him, reckless and on the fly.
As he should’ve expected, Bram only silently pulls him into an embrace, burying his nose in the crook of his neck. “It’ll take a lot more than this to get rid of me,” he teases, light-hearted despite what feels like a very heavy moment. “I’m resilient.”
Bren doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move. He stays there, buried against his shoulder, breathing in the salmon-y scent of his clothes and the comforting smell of the man underneath, and tempers himself against whatever the hell is going on inside his chest. Just how deeply he wants, more than anything. Just how deeply he knows Bram wants in turn.
The weight of it feels enormous. Bram holds him and he feels like he’s come home—like he could sink into him like a hot bath. He’s never had this before. He’s never wanted it.
He only pulls away when it feels safe.
As he does, Bram brushes a stray lock of hair out of his eyes and asks, “Okay?”
Bren rolls his eyes and does his best to laugh disaffectedly, even as he is very, very affected. He climbs off of Bram’s lap and back onto the bench, then scoots over to his side of the cab and hastily buckles up. “I’ll happily make you work for it.”
Bram buckles his own seatbelt and snorts softly. “If that’s what it takes.”
He finally backs out of his parking space and drives him home. It’s direct—just ten minutes away. They get there quietly and easily and it’s a hundred times better than the godforsaken bus and a million times better than walking. The porch light glows, but Lyss and Misha aren’t home yet. Bren pulls in a deep breath and fights the urge to invite him in.
He’s confused him enough for one night.
“Thanks for the ride,” he says softly. It’s too hard to look at him, so he doesn’t. He can feel Bram’s eyes on him even so.
“Any time,” Bram promises. He watches Bren unbuckle his seatbelt and put his hand on the door handle, ready to make the quick jog to the door. “And Bren?” He’s halted by his voice alone. He looks back over his shoulder, heart pounding, and Bram’s eyes are far too soft. “I mean it.”
He does.
Bren spares him a faint, grateful smile and hurries out.
When he gets inside, he’s completely dry.