Page 102 of Roleplay at Randy's
“Why didn’t you stay with Cal?” Because I had planned on sleeping on the couch, and while it’s wide and fluffy, it’s surely not made for two grown men.
His lips ghost my neck, followed by a sigh. “I missed you.”
“Lee.”
“I’m stupid.” He refuses to lift his head, burrowing in deeper, so the slew of words that follow are completely lost on me.
Before I can correct him, he straightens where I can see his face, but his shoulders are slumped. “I just wanted to protect you, but all I did was make us both miserable.”
“That’s what I love about you, though.”
“That I’m an idiot.”
“No,” I growl, and the pout on his face morphs into one of surprise. “That you care enough to do the hard things. Youlove so incredibly strongly, and maybe it’s a bit overwhelming at times, but—look at me.”
I clasp my hands onto the sides of his face and bring his forehead down to mine. “I can handle it. I’ve been the one who held their love back until their heart started to crack. Who held on so hard to the broken shards that it left me in tatters.You,Elias, you brought me back to life. Love me as hard as you want. I can give it right back.”
Elias’ hands come up to my half-undone braid and twists it around his fingers. The slightest tug and I’d fold for him, because I’m so deeply, helplessly in love with him.
“Can you tell me about him?” he asks so softly it nearly doesn’t register. “You don’t have to, but I’d like to get to know that part of you. The one who fought. Who wants to fight for me.”
I nod, pressing forward so our lips touch, but neither of us takes it deeper.
“Why don’t we get you out of these clothes, and then we can sit and talk.”
Our mouths come together again, a slow tangle of tongues as I slip my fingers through Elias’ open shirt and flick open the last of the buttons, my hands exploring his warm skin as the fabric slips down his shoulders.
They glide down the jut of his ribs, the ridges of his abs, slipping beneath the band of his dress pants, working them open and over the curve of his ass. Then, we’re both in the same state of undress: left in only our boxers and socks from leaving our shoes at the front door.
Elias breaks our kiss and guides me toward the couch, but instead of shoving me down, he gently nudges me to sit on one cushion while he takes up the other, draping the throw blanket from the back of the couch across our laps.
“I think we need to do a little more talking and a little less touching.”
It’s my turn to pout, but I can’t help but smile at how his toes brush my thigh under the blanket. We take our time settling so our legs are tangled together, Elias stroking his fingers over my knee while I do the same to his ankle. It feels nice to be connected like this. Just touching one another without an ulterior motive.
“So. Riley.” I blow out a huff of air and stare down at the blanket. “I met Riley when I was nineteen. I’d been living on the streets for a couple of months, and what little money I managed to gather went to food and hormones. Before you say it, yes, housing should have been a priority, but I was finally—finally—starting to feel good in my body, and I was afraid if that got taken away, I’d lose my will to work for anything at all.”
The tight, pitying smile he gives me makes my stomach queasy.
“Riley and I met when I was dancing on the street corner for extra change. He was new to the area, had just gotten traded to the Hornets—that’s Chattanooga’s ice hockey team—Well, he took one look at me and demanded—he did not ask or suggest—that I have lunch with him. When I refused, he stomped away and came back with the messiest barbecue sandwich I had ever eaten. This went on for nearly a week.
One day, it was raining, and I was hiding out under an overhang, and instead of dropping off the food, he scooped me into his truck and took me back to his apartment. After that … we just sort of fell in together. I took care of things while he went to practice, to pay my way for the room he let me take over, and one day … we kissed.”
Riley had been my first everything. My first kiss. First sexual partner. First love.
“I was pre-transition at the time, so we never got very physical because I couldn’t handle it. Tennessee had shit for gender affirming care, not that I could afford it anyway. Riley, he … he had money saved from when he played in the majors, and one day he sent me to his family home in Colorado, and we went through the process together. The therapists, the doctors, the top surgery, recovery, all of it. He was there every step of the way.
That’s the moment I fell in love with him. In pain, with drains on my chest, he never looked at me any different. Pre-transition. Post. Riley saw me exactly as I am from the beginning.”
Something flashes in Elias’ eyes, there and gone in the darkness, and guilt licks at the nerves in my gut. Despite how it sounds, Riley and I were no fairytale.
The weight of my sigh drags my shoulders down. “Riley had his own secrets, and him being gay was one of them. We were together, but nobody could know it. And I was okay with that to start. Riley was my world. What did I care if anyone else knew?
But little cracks started to form. Insecurities that I hid away so he didn’t feel pressured. It was a slow build, a suffocating sense of being something dirty and wrong. I was drowning in my own whirlpool of depression—until I was actually drowning.”
I bring a finger up to tap on the shell of my hearing aid. “I fell through a patch of ice. Hit my head really hard and passed out. I can’t remember how long I stopped breathing, but it was long enough to scare every doctor I saw for quite a while.
The head trauma fucked up my left ear, and during testing they found my right wasn’t one hundred percent either. Some of it gradually came back, and there was aperiod of time where I hated the hearing aids so much that I kind of adjusted to lip reading and inferring, but it gives me a headache if I do it for too long.”
