Inertia: Impulse, Book One Read online

He didn’t need to think about the possibility that he might die.

  Derrick swallowed, and his arms tightened around Gavin. “I… You need to understand, it wasn’t about you. Not really. I wasn’t worried for my safety or anything. That’s just stupid and I know better than that.”

  “I know.” He felt Gavin’s hand moving up and down between his ribs and his waist in a light caress. “I just wondered. If you didn’t want someone who was sick. If you didn’t want to have to deal with that, um, hassle.”

  He was so close to the truth, but for all the wrong reasons. Derrick kissed Gavin’s forehead, his reply little more than a murmur.

  “If you mean using condoms and taking the meds you’d have to take and all that? No. That wasn’t it. It was just….”

  I was afraid of losing you. I was afraid of going through it all over again.

  He stopped himself from blurting it out. Even if it hadn’t implied feelings he had no business implying this early on, it would still be the wrong thing to say.

  For the first time, he felt capable of confiding in someone how those last years with his grandparents had been. How they had left him exhausted and drained and despairing. How many nights he’d awoken hours before dawn wondering if he was even still alive anymore, wondering if he could make it through another week without breaking. How he’d kept it all to himself, because he had few people he could tell, and because he didn’t want to burden those he did have. Miss Ingrid had intuited it, but she’d never pressed him to talk about it, and he wouldn’t have been capable of doing so if she had. Gram had tried to ask, but he could tell her least of all how heavy a burden caring for her and Gramps by himself had become. He couldn’t tell her how it was destroying him to see Gramps so lost and to see her in such pain. He couldn’t tell her how empty he knew his life would be, once they were gone.

  Finally, he could share all he’d kept to himself back then. But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what Gavin should hear. He had his own fears and burdens, and Derrick wouldn’t add to them.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It was a stupid, selfish thing I had no business worrying about when you’re dealing with all this. I’m sorry.”

  Gavin’s voice was soft. “I just worried. A lot. It ate at me.”

  “Worried?” Derrick huffed an incredulous laugh. “You’d be within your rights to be pissed off.”

  Gavin shrugged. “Maybe I was, for like, half a minute. But I have at least part of the blame there. I should have told you about it that night at the bar, before I ever let things get to the point they got to. I held back and I shouldn’t have. That wasn’t fair to you.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I guess I was just enjoying it too much. I wanted to let myself have a little fun before I had to dump an ice-cold bucket of reality all over things.” Gavin’s mouth tightened. “But I wouldn’t have pegged you for a guy who walks out.”

  “Yeah, well, if you’d asked me before that moment, I would have said I wasn’t either. I’m sorry,” Derrick whispered, drawing away a little as a tight, anxious feeling began to squeeze his chest. He stared up at the ceiling, seeking air and space without meaning to distance himself. “I’m sorry.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked.” Gavin’s sigh sounded dissatisfied with the answer, and Derrick couldn’t blame him.

  He rolled back toward Gavin and tightened his arm around him again. “Yeah, you should have. You deserve at least that much.”

  A small shiver rippled through Gavin. “It’s just that I’m scared. I’m really scared. I’m fucking terrified, if I’m going to be honest. And then the first time I try to be with someone else, and—and I was honest with you, and….”

  Derrick winced at the hurt in Gavin’s voice, and brought his other arm around him, embracing him fully. “I know. I—Jesus, I’m not sure how many times I can say I’m sorry before you get sick of it, but I’m willing to hit that limit. If you tell me what I can do to make this—not better, I know, but at least more bearable for you—I’ll do it.”

  Gavin shifted, tucking himself against Derrick. “Talking helps. I think. I feel a little better, at least, than I did before you got here. Though I doubt this talk is what did it.”

  Derrick chuckled, grateful Gavin wasn’t in a position to see his blush. “I’m willing to do more of that, too, if it’ll help.”

  Gavin grinned back. “I’ll take you up on that in the morning.”

  Drawing a deep breath, his tone muted, Derrick asked, “If I promise not to be an asshole this time, would you tell me what happened? I’d like to understand.”

  “You mean with Lukas. My ex.” Gavin gnawed on his bottom lip, and in the dim light of the bedroom, Derrick could tell his fair skin had gone a bit paler, because his freckles seemed darker.

  “Yeah.” Derrick nodded, though second thoughts about asking began to assail him. “You don’t have to talk about it. If you don’t want to. Or can’t. But if you can, I’d like to know.”

  Gavin took a shaky breath, and Derrick’s stomach felt tense as he waited for Gavin to answer.

  “It started off great,” Gavin answered, his voice a murmur against Derrick’s chest. “He made me feel wanted. And I liked that. And then he made up some bullshit excuse, said he was going to be out on his ass with nowhere to live, like three weeks after we started dating. I can see now he was after a meal ticket, but at the time… I couldn’t let that happen, you know? It just wouldn’t be right. So I had him move in.

  “And then it all went bad. He’d argue against everything I said, and he would twist everything that came out of my mouth to make it wrong, or a slight against him. He never heard what I actually said. He just made things up and accused me of saying them.” Gavin’s voice got louder, his tone one of confused protest, his words coming faster, spilling out in a rush despite his initial reluctance, as though he’d been dying to say them. He was tense in Derrick’s arms. “He would pout and give me the cold shoulder and play the martyr if I didn’t give him what he wanted. And he would tell me the things I liked or things I did were bad and I should be ashamed of them.”

  Derrick swallowed, nodding. He quelled the urge to ask what sort of things Lukas had disapproved of. Perhaps it might give him a better idea of what had happened, but it might also seem like a prompt for salacious details.

  Gavin provided them anyway.

  “It wasn’t just sex—though there were a lot of things there he didn’t want me to do, things I liked, things I was good at—but just, like, video games. You know, it’s not like I even do it that often. An hour here and there once or twice a week when I’ve got nothing better to do. But he hated it. Told me I should be doing ‘more important’ things without ever specifying what sort of ‘more important’ things I should be doing in the ten fucking minutes I was waiting for the pasta to boil.”

  Gavin raked a hand through his tousled hair. “I had to stop bringing my work home. He would never let me pay attention to it. He just didn’t like my attention being on anything but him. Even when he ignored me to do his own thing, I couldn’t let myself be distracted by anything but him. I think that’s why he didn’t like me spending time with Andi. At all. I don’t think he was jealous of her. He didn’t think I’d cheat on him with her. He just wanted me at his beck and call.”

  “Or he wanted to isolate you,” Derrick murmured before he could stop himself. He hadn’t meant to put his two cents in, but Gavin’s words had struck a chord. Gavin looked at him and then he had no choice but to continue. He shrugged uncomfortably. “My friend’s wife. She works for an organization that helps battered women. It’s an abusive husband trick. Isolate his wife, or girlfriend, or whoever. Cut her off from the other people who care about her. Then there’s no one to intervene. No one she can run to. No one to see her bruises.”

  Gavin stared at him wide-eyed, and Derrick grimaced, regretting his impulsive interruption. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have… I mean, I’m not trying to imply you’re like a battered wife. Ignore me. I really sho
uld keep my mouth shut.”

  Gavin shook his head, looking stunned. “No, I just didn’t expect anyone to see it that way. Only Andi has ever called it,” he swallowed. “Abuse. You’re right. There was never any physical abuse, of course, but—”

  Gavin fell silent, letting his head rest on Derrick’s chest again.

  “At first, he helped keep the apartment clean, but then somehow I was coming home in the evening and everything was a mess. And when I asked him what he’d done all day, he got defensive and said he’d been very busy working and I couldn’t expect him to interrupt himself. So I was paying all the bills and cleaning his mess and my own. And it’s not like I couldn’t afford it, but I don’t think I’m unreasonable for feeling used. But when I complained, he suggested I hire someone to clean the apartment if I didn’t like it, since I could afford it. Like it was no big deal.”

  Gavin sighed, pausing for a moment. When he spoke next, his voice was scarcely a murmur, low and—to Derrick’s ears—ashamed.

  “You know how I said I didn’t want to not be using protection with him? The first time we didn’t, he’d gotten me drunk. Really drunk. And, well, after that it was all the guilt trips, the ‘don’t you trust me?’ And then it was ‘but you did it before’ and ‘don’t be such a fucking pussy’ and the worst times when he just… went into a rage when I brought it up and yelled that I should just shut up and do it anyway and stop nagging him about it.”

  “Shit,” Derrick whispered, swallowing hard. He fought to keep from blurting out the thought, the word, which came to mind. He felt adrenaline surging through him, making his heart race and his chest tight as anger took hold. His eyes narrowed, hard and flinty.

  The heavy note of shame in Gavin’s voice persisted as he continued. “I told him to get out when, um… You know, he doesn’t think HIV is dangerous? That’s what it all came down to. Have you heard of that? I looked into it after I threw him out. It’s a whole fucking movement of people who think that HIV is harmless, and that antiretrovirals are what kill you. Apparently it’s all a big conspiracy,” Gavin sneered, his voice becoming more animated. “Researchers don’t want to admit to it, because their funding would dry up, and Big Pharma doesn’t want to admit to it because they make too much money off the ‘AIDS myth’ and the government doesn’t want to admit to it because they engineered the whole thing to exterminate minorities and gays. Can you fucking believe that?”

  Derrick blinked, disbelief pushing aside the surge of seething anger. “You’re serious?”

  Gavin nodded. “Once he told me, that’s when I ended it.”

  Derrick rubbed his head, troubled and filled with sorrow for what had been done to Gavin, and deeply concerned. “Jesus. Person like that would be a ticking bomb. And he never told you he hadn’t been tested?”

  “No, he didn’t.” Gavin sighed with a resigned shake of his head. “The only time it really came up was the night I was drunk. And he assured me it’d be fine, and I was so fucking plastered that….”

  Gavin shrugged helplessly, his words tapering off. Derrick stared at the dimly lit ceiling, grimacing as he struggled with whether or not to ask the question echoing inside his mind.

  “What is it?” Gavin asked, sounding far too cautious for Derrick’s comfort.

  “I don’t—” Derrick rubbed his forehead, starting over. “I’m trying to figure out how to not make this sound judgmental. I’m not judging. I’m not criticizing, and I’m sure as hell not trying to make you feel like you’re to blame for what happened. I just want to understand, you know?” He didn’t know if it was possible, really, to understand. The situation was as incomprehensible to him as it was tragic for Gavin. But he asked anyway. “Why did you let him do that? Treat you that way, I mean? Why didn’t you tell him to get the fuck out sooner?”

  Gavin’s lips tightened, and he drew a deep breath before answering. “It was a gradual thing. Before I knew it, I could hardly do a thing without him throwing a fit. When I tried to negotiate and settle things, he kept escalating them. I was always walking on eggshells when he’d lock himself in the room.”

  “The room? You mean the office?” Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  Gavin nodded. “It was his studio. If I made a noise, even while I was trying to clean up his mess, I was disturbing him.”

  “Disturbing him doing what?”

  “His art,” Gavin sneered again, a soft snort punctuating his words. “His art that he claimed everyone loves, and yet nobody ever buys it.”

  Derrick gave a wry smile, kissing the top of Gavin’s head, and murmured, “Ah, well. That explains that.”

  “Explains what?” Gavin asked, tilting his head back.

  “That painting, or whatever it is, hanging on the wall in your living room. It doesn’t—” Look like anything resembling art? “—suit you. He painted it, didn’t he?”

  Gavin groaned. “Oh, God. I forgot about that.”

  Derrick shrugged. “Sorry, that’s beside the point. It just suddenly made sense to me why you have it. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Gavin shook his head. “No, no. I just—ugh. I forgot I still had that up there. Yeah, he painted it. It was supposed to be a statement about his cause.”

  Derrick lifted an eyebrow as Gavin snorted. “His cause is the stomach flu?”

  Gavin’s shoulders jerked and his lips clamped down, his eyes crinkling as he restrained a smile. “No. It’s his fucked-up version of ‘AIDS awareness.’”

  “Oh. Riiight.” Derrick fought a smile of his own, shaking his head.

  Gavin fell silent for a long moment, the fleeting amusement fading from his face. “When he left, when I confronted him about what he might have done to me, he told me that nobody else would want me now, except him.”

  Derrick’s chest ached. He cupped Gavin’s jaw, turning his face up.

  “It’s not true.”

  “I know that, deep down inside. I know that. But when you walked out the door, it felt true.”

  Derrick’s throat tightened, and he swallowed against the knot, stroking his thumb across Gavin’s lips.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” Gavin murmured with a shake of his head, pressing a soft kiss to Derrick’s thumb.

  “I swear, it was never about you. At least not in that way.” Now, more than ever, it seemed ridiculous that he’d been so worried about his own emotional well-being after what Gavin had struggled with. “It was selfish. Completely selfish. And not even a bit rational. I panicked, okay? I got scared, and I panicked. Not, you know, not about my safety. It was—” He shrugged, unable to find any better way of describing it. “—Other stuff. History. Baggage. Stuff that shouldn’t matter.”

  Gavin fell silent a long moment. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry. You deserve an answer, and I wish I had a better one to give you.”

  “I understand.”

  Derrick laid his cheek against Gavin’s hair. “Thank you.”

  Gavin lifted his head to give him a quizzical look. “You’re welcome?”

  “Not just for understanding. But for, well, letting me in the door’s a good place to start.”

  Gavin smiled, and Derrick felt his chest tighten. “If I remember correctly, I only had the door open. You stepped inside.”

  “Well, you didn’t throw me out on my ass. That helped.”

  “I don’t know if I could, even if I’d wanted to. And you did a pretty good job of making sure I didn’t want to.” Gavin’s voice dropped to a low, sexy note.

  Derrick pressed an obliging kiss to his lips, blushing. Not so much at Gavin’s tone as at his own all-too-eager response. He hadn’t popped wood this often in someone’s presence since he was a teenager. But Gavin’s eyes were taking on a heavy-lidded look that made him constrain the impulse. “I would’ve gone if you’d told me to. I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “Do you know how many times I pulled you
r name up in my phone over the last week?” No longer flirting, Gavin pulled back to meet Derrick’s eyes, his face open and honest, something raw and vulnerable about the edges. Derrick felt the tightness in his chest redouble. A sudden surge of fear welled up inside him.

  “Probably—” He drew a deep breath, admitting, “Probably about as many times as I had to talk myself out of calling, or coming over.” He closed his eyes, hoping Gavin wouldn’t see his fear, and kissed him again.

  It took a while, for Gavin to settle back down against his chest.

  “What are your plans for the weekend?”

  “I’ll have to leave in the morning, to go feed Chelsea and for a change of clothes. Usually Saturday is our day to go to the park. Wanna come? I could make us breakfast, you could meet Chelsea, hang out at the park with us. If you don’t have plans.”

  “Nah, usually Saturday morning, it’s me and the Xbox. Or me and my work, if I have any.” Derrick yawned reflexively as he saw Gavin cover a yawn with his hand. Maybe sleep had been hard to come by for both of them, the past week. Or, he thought with a wry smile, it was just post-orgasmic endorphins dragging them under. “I do have plans with Andi tomorrow evening, though.”

  Derrick smiled. “Okay. Devon and I tentatively rescheduled our usual Friday night plans, so I might be busy too. I wasn’t sure about Saturdays because I don’t know much about your family. Wasn’t sure if you had dinner with your mom or went to synagogue or anything.”

  Gavin’s eyes widened a little, and he smiled, looking amused. “Oh, wow. You really don’t miss a detail, do you?”

  “My friend’s wife is Jewish, so I recognized your mezuzah.”

  “I generally go on Friday night, so that’s not really something to worry about this weekend.”

  “Okay, that’s good to know. It’ll save me asking you out on any Friday dates. I guess the only other question is, do you have a spare toothbrush I can borrow?”

  Why was that so hard to ask? he wondered, forcing the question out. Maybe because it made the fact that he would be staying more real?

  “I’m pretty sure I have an extra, sure.” He could hear Gavin’s voice becoming drowsy. “Want me to go look now?”