Page 27 of The Barn: Frost and Q
“I can imagine. It was strange to see you without hair on one side for sure, and short hair everywhere else. It was odd, but good, because it means you lived. So, I’ll take it.” It had been shocking, but not as much as the bandages and everything else there had been. Not even in the top ten of the shocks.
“Do you ever wish that I’d died?”
His fingers tightened in shock, tugging on Q’s braid. “What? No, never. Not even once.”
The thought made him a little queasy, and then he closed his eyes against the nausea, the panic, forcing his hands to keep braiding. Over, under, over, under.
He had to keep it together. This was a test, whether or not Quenton knew it—and he thought, maybe, Q did. His boy wasn’t stupid.Are you strong enough to go through this with me? Are you strong enough to be my Dom?
“Are you sure?” Q sounded curious and a little bit desperate, but not angry. Not even really sad. Just needy.
But needy was perfectly okay when they were in the middle of a scene. In fact, it was amazing, because it meant that Q was present with him right there, feeling everything and talking about it.
“I am one hundred percent sure. I admit, when you woke up—well even before you woke up when I first came to see you in the hospital, and you were hooked up to all the tubes, and the bandages were all over you, and they were telling me it was going to take another surgery, maybe two, and then they were telling me there was no way they could do the surgery, that it might kill you—I freaked out, but I promised myself right then and there that we were going to get through this together.”
“And then I came here and locked myself away. Is that what you’re saying?” Quentin’s voice shook.
“No. I’m saying that healing takes pathways that you don’t expect sometimes. Things take a turn, and you have to follow the road where it goes.” Corny, but true.
Quentin chuckled a little bit. “Are you sure that’s not a song?”
“Well, if it is, I’ve got the words all out of order.” He finished off the braid and tied it with the little elastic that he had taken out of one of the many that Q had had his hair in before. “All I know is that before I came in here tonight, I decided that no matter what, we were going to experience this together, and I was going to be your Dom again.”
“Okay. Fair. I just don’t want you to wonder what it would be like if I was gone.”
“I never wonder that.” Frost went for brutal honesty. “I wonder sometimes if you’d be better off without me. If maybe I should let you go. But I never wonder what this world would be like without you in it because I can’t imagine it.”
Whatever it was that Q heard in his voice, it worked, because he sighed, and his shoulders relaxed, his head lolling back on his neck. “I can live with that.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.” He ran his hand down the braid over and over, stroking, soothing. “Do you want me to rub your shoulders?”
Q thought about that for a moment, head tilting. “I don’t know. Sometimes, it feels good when they do it in therapy, and sometimes, it feels awful. It all depends on the nerves.”
“All right.” That was what he was looking for. Openness. Honesty. “Why don’t I try for just a minute? Just to touch you.” Frost put his hands lightly on Q’s shoulders, feeling the muscles underneath the skin, feeling the warmth of Q under his hands. “I miss touching you. I’ve missed it so much. I love playing chess with you, and I love sitting and watching a movie, but sometimes, I just want to hold you. I want to hold your hand or touch your cheek, but I’ve let myself get all caught up in the worry and the stress of what happened to us before, and I forgot how to do it. That’s why we needed this.”
Quentin pondered it for a second. “Yeah. Yeah, it feels really good.”
“Now I’m going to rub a little bit. If it feels good, just let me do it. If it feels weird, give me the yellow. If it hurts, though, immediately give me your red. Understood, boy?”
“Yes, Sir.” Q’s agreement was immediate.
“Good boy.” He squeezed more gently than he really wanted to, less gently than he thought he should. He wanted to massage, and he knew what kind of pressure that needed, but he also knew that Q was going to have to tell him what his body could take on any given day.
Q stayed silent, and he didn’t tense up, so Frost thought that the pressure he was using was good. He dug his thumbs in a tiny bit, but not at the neck. Only just below the shoulder line.He wanted to keep it where it wasn’t immediately on the spinal column.
Quentin moaned some this time, his head dropping forward. “Oooh.”
“Is that a good oh, baby?”
“God, yes. When the physical therapist does it, it’s always to loosen me up after swimming or something like that. This is not the same at all.” Q shivered, rippling, and he could see the goosebumps rising up on the back of Q’s shoulder where the T-shirt pulled away just enough for him to notice.
“I’m glad.” Frost rubbed deeper, letting the pressure stay right where it was, giving them both the sensation that they needed, skin on skin on cloth, them breathing each other’s air, being in the same space. The collar was no impediment to what he was doing; he stayed under it, and in fact, Frost was grateful for it because that way he couldn’t go too high and hurt the back of Q’s neck.
Frost let his hands slide over the front of Q’s shoulders and down his chest. He wanted to feel those tight little nipples through the T-shirt. He wanted to let Q remember what a sexual touch felt like too. Hell, he wanted Q right there with him as his cock hardened in his jeans.
“Your hands are warm,” Q whispered. “I love that. How warm you are. I was never cold when I was sleeping with you.”
This inclination to ask him why he was sleeping in a little closet in a twin-size bed when Frost had a king-size bed waiting for him was huge. But that question was not for this space.
