Page 114 of Caden & Theo
I wrap both palms around the socket just below the lip and ease it down. His hands hover, ready to catch the weight if I need him to. When the socket clears the liner, gravity does the rest. He takes the prosthesis as I lower it and sets it carefully on the rug without me asking, aligning it so the foot points neatly toward the chair. He places it the way he placed my tie, with intention, as if it’s not just a tool but part of me that deserves respect even when it’s not attached.
“Next?” he asks.
The word steadies me more than he could know. He’s not in a rush to get past this to the part that looks more like the movies. He’s here for this, the unglamorous mechanics of my body.
“Next is the sleeve,” I say, touching the edge of the black neoprene that seals the top of the socket when I wear that setup. Tonight, there’s only the liner because of the pin lock. “But the liner first. It’s snug. Roll, don’t tug.”
He nods and slides his palms to the top of the liner, fingers warm against the silicone. He looks up again, waiting. I lift my knee a little and brace a hand behind me on the bed. He feels the shift and adjusts without me asking, one hand stabilizing, the other catching the roll as it moves. The gel gives slowly under his hands, not wanting to let go. That’s the way it always is, only tonight, it feels like shedding a layer of armor.
He carefully works the liner down an inch, then another, evenly each time so he doesn’t pull the skin. He keeps watching my face. When I wince at a spot that always gets tender, he eases his pressure and uses his thumbs to soften the edge. He couldn’t have known to do that. He does it anyway, instinctively gentle.
“You okay?” he asks, the question shaped by breath I can feel against my thigh.
“Yeah.” My throat is tight. “You’re good.”
He smiles at that. It’s a quick, bright thing that vanishes as he concentrates again. When the roll reaches the end of my stump, he slides the liner free. He doesn’t stare. He looks and then looks at me, at my mouth, at my eyes, like that’s where the truth is. He sets the liner down, careful again, placing it parallel alongside the socket.
The room feels enormous and very small at the same time. I had thought this would feel clinical, the way it sometimes does when a tech is measuring a fit or a trainer is asking if the alignment is still good. It doesn’t. It feels like the first time Theo and I ever fumbled our way into each other’s bodies as teenagers, nervous and clumsy, neither of us having a clue what we were doing. Back then, it wasn’t about knowing how—it wasabout wanting to knowhim. Wanting to understand, to explore, to learn every inch because it mattered that it wasus.
Tonight feels like that again, only heavier, sharper, threaded through with all the years we lost and everything we’re finally daring to reclaim.
Theo rests his palm just above my knee. He doesn’t press. He spreads his fingers a little, as if to say,I see all of it. His eyes are wet at the corners. He blinks them clear before a tear can fall. He leans in and presses his mouth to the inside of my knee, to skin that’s sensitive for reasons that have nothing to do with sex. It undoes me.
I put both hands on his shoulders, not to push him away and not to drag him closer, but just to anchor myself to the moment. My breathing is fast again. I tip forward until our foreheads almost touch.
“Thank you,” I say. The words feel inadequate.
“For what?” he asks, and his voice breaks on the last word.
“For making this feel like… not less.”
He swallows. “It could never be less to me.”
I close my eyes against the sudden heat behind them. When I open them, he’s watching me the way he’s always watched the things he cares about, with a focus that is a kind of safety. He reaches my waistband, then pauses.
“Tell me where you want me,” he says. “Tell me what feels good.”
He’s asked versions of that before—back when we were young and inseparable, before the accident, before fifteen years of silence.“Do you need me to help with your assignment?” “Do you want me to run the last drill again with you after everyone else is gone?”Back then, I still had both legs, and he didn’t have to think about what my body could or couldn’t do. Now it’s different. Now he asks because he knows I’ve changed, because he wants to learn me as I am. Hearing him say it—out loud,steady, deliberate—feels like proof that he isn’t just chasing the boy I was. He’s choosing the man I am. And I’ve never loved him more than I do in this moment.
“Up here,” I say, and I draw him against me by the front of his shirt. He stands, and I stand with him. He slides his hands down my spine, careful not to rush. He kisses me and keeps kissing me until my body uncoils from its guarded stance.
When he goes for the waistband of my briefs, I let him. He takes his time. When the fabric sloughs from me, I don’t think about how I look, only about how he looks at me. He steps back for half a breath, not to assess but to honor. He drags his gaze up my body as if reacquainting himself with a skyline he’s loved since he was a teenager and noticing every new building with delight rather than resentment. I can almost hear the way his mind narrates it:“Here’s the shoulder I leaned on when I convinced him to climb the water tower; here’s the scar he got the summer we thought we were invincible; here’s the place where his body ends and his stubbornness keeps going.”
“Can I touch?” he asks, because tonight, consent is not a formality; it’s the language we’re choosing to speak.
“Yes,” I say. “Everywhere.”
He steps back into me, and the undressing turns tender again rather than ceremonial. He peels off his own shirt under my palms. He lets me unbutton his cuffs, slide the fabric from his shoulders, skate my hands down the inside of his forearms like I’m reading braille.
He laughs once, shakily, when my fingers find the old scar on his wrist from that time with the broken backboard. He says, “You always remember,” and I say, “Always,” and it’s as much a vow as anything we’ll ever say.
He kisses me between every small task like he’s stitching the moments together with his mouth. When he lowers his head to my chest and breathes there, I hold the back of his neck anddon’t pretend I’m not trembling. I let him feel it. Iwanthim to feel it.
We climb onto the bed with care. He moves first, and I follow, easing myself onto the mattress with a practiced shift that leaves me balanced and comfortable. He watches, not anxious, just present. He slides in beside me and props himself up on one elbow, his other hand skimming along my waist. He hasn’t asked for the facts of my body—measurements, scars, what’s missing—because he knows those answers don’t matter here. He’s asked for guidance instead, and that’s what I give him.
“Here,” I say, guiding his hand to the place above my knee where the skin is always tender when the day has been long. “Gentle.” He is. “Here,” I say, drawing his fingers to the edge of my hip where sensation hums brighter than it used to. “More pressure.” He listens. He learns me the way he learns poetry—by repetition for the joy of it, not by rote.
At some point, we stop speaking in full sentences. It’s not a retreat into silence but a shared language of breath and small sounds. When he shifts lower to kiss the curve of my thigh, he does it slowly, never making my body a spectacle or a problem to solve. He lifts his head to check my face, and I smile to tell him I’m not leaving this moment, not drifting away. He smiles back, big and unguarded, the way he used to right after he hit a shot he had no business taking. It undoes me again, softer this time.
