Page 33 of A Quiet Man

Auden's smile was warm and proud. "It probably helps that you always believe in him."

Tomas turned back to the stove to check the saucepan. Auden followed him, moving to stand beside him and watch the cooking process.

"It's funny — I thought I'd be jealous if I ever dated a guy who had, like, a super-strong bromance going on, but I don't feel that way now. I'm glad you and Riley have each other and can keep each other safe."

Tomas warmed with the words and couldn't help grinning. "Thanks. I'm glad, too. It's not really that dangerous, what we do, most of the time. But, yeah." It was definitely nice to know there was a big strong wolf protecting his back, and that he could protect Riley, too, if in different ways.

It was also wonderful that his boyfriend wasn't jealous. Riley's other (definitely not better) half was still struggling with that. But not Auden.

"Yeah, but it might be dangerous if you didn't have Riley, right?"

"Maybe," Tomas conceded, stirring bubbling white sauce. Work had definitely been more challenging in a variety of ways before Riley, and some of that had been related to danger.

"IloveRiley," Auden said, and wrapped his arms around Tomas once again.

Tomas hugged him back and kept stirring, feeling as warm and cozy inside as the kitchen felt around him.

#

"Tomas?" Cody's voicewas hesitant, like he was scared something might be wrong. He touched Tomas's arm lightly. "Are you okay? You've been standing there staring at nothing for I don't know how long." He searched Tomas's gaze, his pale brown eyes concerned. Then he relaxed into a smile. "Oh. You're distracted, huh? By your boyfriend?" His smile was a little too knowing.

Tomas wanted to tell Cody that Cody didn't know anything about Tomas and Auden, the connection they shared, or Auden's sweet personality, or how good it felt to hold him and kiss him.

Instead, he decided to turn it into a joke. "Hey, I'm super-professional. I would never moon over my boyfriend at work."

"Whatever you say, hotshot." Cody patted his arm again. "But if I were you, I wouldn't just stand and stare into the supply closet." He walked past with a bounce in his step.

Somebody's full of beans today. Tomas shut the closet door quickly. It did seem a little too symbolic for his liking. Of course, he didn't expect there would be any problem telling his family — but maybe he shouldn't court bad luck.

It was so weird to be finally dating someone, and it was a man. Every once in a while, Tomas found himself brought up short by the very idea.Am I gay?Was I in denial all along?Or could I have felt this way about anybody, and it just happened to be Auden? He couldn't say he had enough experience to know for sure whether he could fall equally for anybody else. Sure, maybe he'd been lying to himself all along, a bundle of secret angst, but maybe he'd found the one person in the universe he truly connected with in just the right way, and it wasn't about gender at all.

He'd know if he'd been in the closet on purpose, wouldn't he? Or was that something you could hide even from yourself? All in all, it was pretty confusing. When he took things a day at a time, he was usually all right. When he started trying to figure everything out, that was trouble.

Mostly, no matter what he thought, he came back to the conclusion that Auden was pretty special, and Tomas had better not fuck this up.

Auden had been pretty open and said he was okay if they never had sex. "I like sex. But I likeyoua lot more. I'd rather have a happy relationship with a sweet boyfriend like you, and use my right hand a bit more, than keep trying to date frogs who refuse to turn into princes and break my heart. Sex isnottop priority for me in a relationship."

Tomas was relieved by that, but of course he still found things to worry about. He found himself trying to figure out exactly what Auden had liked about his personality and hoping he could continue to replicate it. Basically, the harder he thought about everything (and he thought very hard about it, even when he tried not to), the more studied and awkward he felt. Almost as though he'd forgotten how to be natural, to be himself.

But then Auden would say something that made him laugh, and all his doubts would be gone, and it was just the two of them living in the moment. Auden seemed so proud of Tomas sometimes; it was an uncomfortably wonderful feeling, a squirmy, delighted, terribly shy feeling, to have Auden like him so very much. He didn't feel worthy of it, but he enjoyed it. This was no crush he was trying to get away from; this was someone he felt the same way about, and he reveled in that.

Auden never seemed to have nerves the way Tomas did, or about the things Tomas did, but at unexpected moments he had self-doubt about the oddest things. At least, they seemed odd to Tomas: the idea that maybe he wasn't actually enough for Tomas, or that he wasn't handsome and strong enough — that he was too femme, too old, too poor — too this or that or anything, really. On one level, Tomas got it, could certainly see how Auden felt self-conscious about himself sometimes. Tomas didn't know everything he'd dealt with, and there were probably some scars underneath that self-doubt. But on another level, he couldn't see anything wrong with Auden at all.

Obviously, rose-colored glasses. And maybe that would dim in time, with a fuller understanding, a more nuanced approach to his current, smitten feelings. He hoped if it did, if they didn't see each other in quite the same way anymore, that it would be transcended by something deeper and richer, a steadiness and groundwater-deep love that could last for decades.

And of course, as he planned out the next thirty years in his head — or imagined scenarios where Auden left him tomorrow, angry over something he couldn't change about himself — they had been on only a handful of dates and hadn't had any sex at all.

And how would that work, long-term? Auden was probably going to want to have sex at some point, and if they couldn't find the right balance, it could end up the sore point in the relationship. Sure, he was fine with things the way they were right now, but Tomas would definitely not be fine if Auden went to other people for sex and stayed with Tomas only when he wasn't busy with them. He had a jealous streak he hadn't known about, which surfaced its green, scaly head at the very thought of sharing Auden.

Riley had no real advice to offer, but he was a sympathetic and encouraging listener, and they often spent a lot of their conversations circling back around to Auden and Tomas's relationship. He never seemed to grow annoyed with Tomas's obsessive thoughts on the subject, his flights of distractibility, his single-mindedness. Of course, it helped that he truly liked Auden.

So far, Auden had stayed the night three times — and it had been just that, staying the night. There had been no awkwardness about not having sex, at least for Tomas, and if Auden had felt any, he was a much better actor than Tomas had him pegged as. (No offense to the guy, but heblushed.) Tomas had a big, roomy bed that they shared without feeling crowded. Auden proclaimed it wonderfully comfortable, probably due to the feather topper that made it feel like a cloud as long as you fluffed it every other day.

Tomas liked to cook for his boyfriend and pick him up from work whenever possible, as well as drop him off when it worked out with their schedules. Auden said he was "spoiling" him and shouldn't, but he clearly appreciated it whenever Tomas did anything for him, even something as simple as letting him pick what to watch together on TV. Tomas got the feeling he hadn't had a lot of experience having people look after him or put him first. That was a shame. He didn't want to take advantage of that by being a mediocre boyfriend and letting Auden be grateful for the low-hanging fruit, either; he really did want to spoil Auden, somehow, someday.

Maybe the first step is getting him to move in with me.

Tomas had never considered himself a romantic sort, very far from it. But now he found himself fantasizing about ways he could spoil Auden, and sometimes, embarrassingly, even what it would feel like to walk down the aisle together. In his daydreams, it was the sort of traditional wedding his mother and grandmother would have planned for the sister Tomas had never had, except with two grooms. He didn't know where that had come from.