The Third Date (Starting Over) Read online

“Nope. When he got together with me, it was part of the deal. If I couldn’t accept that he’d have other boyfriends, then I could take a hike.”

  “He never really said that to me, but he brought you up within minutes, so I knew there was someone. And I’m okay with it. I feel like some of the sex pressure is off, you know?”

  Aled hummed.

  “No?”

  “It’s probably different for you,” Aled said. “He has different sex with me and Kevin—and the rest—so there’s stuff he only comes to me for. Or only Kevin. Or whoever. But I guess if you’re not into any sex at all, it’ll be different. Though—” He shrugged. “I guess there’s no pressure for me to choke him, given Kevin does it.”

  “Guess so.” Chris sipped his beer and eyed Aled curiously. “Why do you like it?”

  “Sex?”

  “No, Gabriel being poly.”

  “I don’t feel anything about it,” Aled said. “It is what it is. He likes options. Long as I know he loves me, I’m not bothered.”

  “You never get jealous?”

  “Nah. He’s my world, and other people visit that world sometimes. No big deal. It’s not for me—emotionally speaking, anyway—but it’s how he is. Who am I to change that?”

  Chris nodded. “I guess we have that in common, then.”

  “You a one-at-a-time type guy?”

  “I think so.”

  Aled raised his can. Chris clanked them together.

  “To keeping it simple,” Aled said.

  “To simple.”

  “Or as simple as Gabriel ever gets, anyway.”

  Chris snorted with laughter, but as he turned his attention back to his food, he started sifting through the conversation in his head.

  Maybe Aled was right. Maybe it was time to stop worrying so much and start going with the flow.

  And where better than here, in their home, where he had no other option?

  Chapter Twelve

  Gabriel’s first hospital appointment was on Thursday, not a full week after he’d been released in the first place.

  He stewed over breakfast and was silent as they set him up in the back seat with Chris’ lap and pillow combination for his head again. The wheelchair was folded up and put in the boot. Aled drove with the radio off for the first time in maybe forever. And Gabriel knew his foul mood was infecting the others, but—

  Fuck it, he damn well didn’t care.

  Gabriel hated doctors. Nurses. Hospitals. GPs. Pretty much any and all medical establishments were the devil as far as he was concerned. From the family doctor when he was thirteen—who had told him that he was confused then snitched on him to his mother so he’d spent the next few years being beaten for ‘pretending’ to be a boy—to the nurses on the wards who’d called him Gabby even after Aled had written his name and pronouns in large red letters on his whiteboard. Gabriel had never had a good or even neutral experience with doctors and had a special form of contempt for people who insisted they were caring souls or that ignorant medical staff were a thing of the past. Ignorant, overprivileged cunts. He’d blocked more than a few interested parties on Grindr who had turned out to be medical staff, and had never looked at their neighbour at the old house the same way again after seeing her in her paramedic uniform.

  So being wheeled back through the main entrance wasn’t exactly putting him in the best of moods.

  Thankfully, Aled knew from experience to keep his mouth shut, and Chris had either been forewarned or could sense the danger. Neither tried to offer empty promises or weak condolences. In fact, they didn’t speak. Chris pushed the chair, Aled carried the folder of drugs and paperwork they’d been given on discharge and the three of them arrived in grim silence outside the consultant’s office. The sunny receptionist did nothing to improve Gabriel’s mood. He sat and continued to stew for a full forty-five minutes until his name was called.

  “You’re coming with me,” he said when Aled hesitated. “Both of you. I want witnesses.”

  “To what?” Chris asked.

  “To my complaint when the cunt is out of line again.”

  Chris’ teeth clicked as he shut his mouth.

  The nurse that showed him into the office delayed the inevitable by taking another blood sample for infection screening and checking his vital signs. She chattered to Aled, who put in the effort to be friendly back, but Gabriel completely ignored her.

  “Okay, honey, Dr Thompson won’t be a moment!”

  He clenched his jaw. Honey. She was only about twenty. There was no way she was going around calling the likes of Aled or Chris honey.

  “Hey,” Aled murmured, squeezing his shoulders. “Take it easy. You’re not staying.”

  Gabriel nodded jerkily and tried to cling to the idea. He wasn’t being re-admitted. He wasn’t staying. He just had to suffer through this hour with the idiot, then he could go home again and it would be at least another week.

  Shoes squeaked. The door swung open. Dr Thompson breezed in like a flagship returning to port without a scratch, but claiming to have won the war. He washed his hands in silence before turning to Gabriel and offering a thin smile…to Aled.

  “We don’t usually allow more than one chaperone into the exam room.”

  “Tough,” Gabriel said.

  “I’m afraid—”

  “There’s plenty of room. They’re staying.”

  “It is hardly necess—”

  “I don’t trust the lot of you. It’s very necessary. So we can carry on with both of them here, or I can leave.”

  He wanted Dr Thompson to tell them to leave. He wanted to go home. But of course, he only earned another curled lip before the doctor backed down.

  “Very well. And how are we doing…Mr Lazarri?”

  Gabriel heard the distinct pause before his title.

  “Great,” he ground out.

  “How’s the vertigo?”

  “Better.”

  Finely plucked eyebrows rose a fraction. “Better?”

  “Yeah. I can walk short distances and I haven’t thrown up once.”

  He wasn’t going to mention the panic attacks if anyone rolled over in bed. Or that the stairs were forbidden. Or the car was like a rollercoaster no matter how carefully Aled drove. Or the fact that he had to be held and washed in the shower like a little kid.

  “Hmm.” Dr Thompson snapped some gloves on and took Gabriel’s head in his hands, tilting his face down and parting his hair to see the scar. Although they’d shaved most of his head, the scar itself was very thin and mostly obscured when he spiked his hair up. In another couple of weeks, it would vanish under the new growth entirely and Gabriel could forget about it. “The external wound is healing well. Are you taking the painkillers?”

  “No.”

  “The anti-nausea aids?”

  “One a day.”

  Dr Thompson stepped back, snapping off the gloves. “If you could just walk around the room a little for me.”

  Gabriel squeezed the arms of the chair before pushing himself up. Immediately, his stomach rolled. He locked his knees and straightened, willing himself not to sway or wobble. He wasn’t about to give Dr Thompson the satisfaction of seeing him off his game.

  One foot in the front of the other, Gabriel crossed the room. And felt as though he were climbing a mountain.

  But he did it in a straight line. Sweat pooled in the small of his back as he returned to the chair, and he sat down a little too hard in it, but it had been a straight line to the window and back. Black spots danced at the edges of his vision, and the dipping pull of vertigo dragged on his senses, but he didn’t wobble.

  Aled’s hands returned to his shoulders with a gentle squeeze, and Gabriel tried to relax his jaw.

  “Hmm,” said the doctor. “I see.”

  “You see?” Aled echoed.

  “It’s obviously very difficult for him.”

  “He is right here,” Gabriel replied waspishly.

  “Is that because of vertigo, muscle weakness or nausea
?”

  “Vertigo,” Gabriel said. “But it’s getting better.”

  “You must be prepared for the prospect that it will never completely go away.”

  Gabriel swallowed thickly. It wasn’t so much the idea of having vertigo for the rest of his life as the flat, careless delivery.

  “Fuck me, you don’t even care,” he muttered.

  He was used to doctors viewing him as more of a curiosity than a patient. Most of them had never knowingly met a trans patient and were either absurdly fascinated, or low-key appalled. But the one thing he couldn’t quite get used to was the way they divorced him from his own humanity. He wasn’t a patient to them—to Dr Thompson. He was a thing.

  “I’m done,” he said. “You can discharge me. When I need more anti-nausea drugs, I’ll go to my GP. At least she doesn’t talk over my head to my boyfriend.”

  “Discharging you would be against medical advice.”

  “That’s your problem,” Gabriel said. “I’m out.”

  Chris didn’t move with the chair, so Gabriel stood up. Thankfully, his shoulder was caught and he was put back by one of Chris’ firm hands before the brakes were released.

  “Mr Lazarri—”

  Gabriel shook his head. Chris pushed. Aled stayed behind—presumably to argue with the doctor a little—but when Chris paused in the mouth of the office, Gabriel said, “Cafe,” and the chair started forward once more.

  He felt—

  Strange.

  Usually when confronted with a prick that obnoxious, Gabriel exploded. It had been a while—the last time he’d really blown up at someone, it had been a hookup leaving him money like he was some kind of prostitute, and that had been years ago—but he’d expected to end the appointment by shouting and maybe getting thrown out.

  He didn’t know what he felt about just walking—sort of—away.

  “Do you think I did the right thing?” he asked as Chris pushed him into the lifts.

  “No.”

  “I couldn’t just— He’s such a fucking— I—”

  Chris rubbed his arm. “I get it.”

  “You don’t.”

  “I get it. I don’t really understand why he gets to you that much, but I get needing to walk out on someone who does.”

  “Ever done it to a doctor?”

  “Haven’t seen a doctor in years, so…”

  Gabriel coughed a laugh. “I wish.”

  “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s necessarily critical,” Chris said. “You’re home. You are getting better. If your GP can prescribe your medication then…”

  He trailed off as the lift spat them out on the ground floor. Gabriel watched the volunteers directing visitors as Chris parked him up by the coffee shop in the front of the lobby and went to get something. When he came back, Aled was at his heels, carrying a cardboard bucket of sweet tea.

  “You all right?” he asked, drawing up a chair to sit at Gabriel’s left.

  “I guess. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. He was being a knob.”

  Gabriel pushed the tea away, an unpleasant heat rising in his face.

  “M’gonna cry,” he whispered.

  “C’mere, then.”

  It made it better and worse all at the same time. He wasn’t angry. He was tired. Tired and depressed and so fed up, so done, that Aled’s calm words and gentle embrace broke the dam. Gabriel burst into tears, and the shame was worse than the cold anger upstairs. He didn’t want to do this anymore. He didn’t want to be in hospitals, talking to doctors, taking drugs.

  “I can’t do this,” he whispered.

  Sharp, jagged edges of pain crowded around his skin and needled him. He’d take a lifetime of vertigo. He’d take the daft measures to ride in the car. He could live with those. He could manage.

  But he couldn’t manage this anymore.

  “I want to go home. And I’m not coming back. Not unless I collapse and I need an ambulance. I’m not doing this anymore.”

  No more scans, no more sneering doctors, no more Miss and Gabby and false smiles over the top of his head at his partner like he’d had his brains scooped out while they pulled the depression fracture back out and drained the bleed. No more memories of his mother screaming in his face, of the family doctor who’d scoffed at his coming out, of hookups in nightclub toilets because it was safer than going home with strangers who hadn’t figured it out yet.

  No more any of it.

  He wanted to be him again. With Aled and Chris and Kevin. His family. Who saw him for him, and not for anything else.

  “Take me home.”

  Aled squeezed. Chris kissed the back of his head.

  “Okay.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Go for a run,” Aled advised once he’d stacked the lunch plates by the sink. “I’m going to get the kit out and make Gabriel feel a little better.”

  Chris raised his hands. “And you can stop right there. I’ll do the dishes then go down to the shop for more fruit.”

  Aled gave him a thumbs up, and headed back up the stairs. He wasn’t actually going to have sex with Gabriel, but let Chris believe what he liked. It would still involve Gabriel getting naked, and that was probably borderline for Chris already.

  E4 was playing on the telly when Aled walked into the bedroom, some sitcom with canned laughter trying to lighten the mood, but Gabriel was staring out of the window. It was starting to rain. The view was nothing but a grey murk.

  “Hey.” Aled squeezed a foot under the covers. “You okay?”

  “Mm.”

  “Want me to call Kevin?”

  Gabriel shook his head, sliding down into the pillows.

  “Just feel—” He waved a hand. “I don’t know. Flat. Empty. Adrift.”

  Aled rubbed his shin. “Want me to anchor you?”

  Gabriel shrugged a little, so Aled shifted up the bed and leaned in to kiss his cheek.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s get you in a tight wrap and lock in all the pieces, hm?”

  It wasn’t a game, as such. It wasn’t even really all that kinky. Aled had come up with the idea after reading an article in the news about vests for some anxious or even autistic children that mimicked a tight embrace and helped calm them down or keep them level. Given how Gabriel could be a little wobbly if he safeworded a scene gone wrong, they’d decided to try out the wrap to see if it could help.

  And so far, it had worked like a charm to bring him down out of the panic or the misplaced fear.

  But those had only been for scary safewords. The odd time they’d experimented with a brand-new thing or pushed a boundary and it hadn’t gone well. The knife. The branding iron. The one and only time Gabriel had permitted him to try bloodplay. Aled had never tried it for…well, depression. Gabriel wasn’t a particularly morose person. Until this spell in hospital, Aled had seen him sad or miserable or upset, but never in a prolonged, emotionless, almost apathetic manner.

  He’d never seen him depressed before the accident.

  “Okay.”

  Aled kissed his forehead, then got up and headed for the wardrobe. The master bedroom had built-in wardrobes, and a small suitcase sat in the bottom of one, half-hidden by Aled’s suits hung up ready for the working week. It was so unassuming that any visitor would have assumed it was just somewhere to put a cabin bag for holidays.

  But Aled opened it to find their toys.

  They had a lot of toys, between his collection and Gabriel’s. Neither had much interest in dressing up, but Aled had an extensive collection of bondage gear, and Gabriel had both dildos to be fucked with, and strap-ons to fuck somebody else, although Aled was never on the receiving end of one of those. Their gear was split into two halves in the case—one for external use, the other for internal—and Aled ignored the plastic bag of internal toys in favour of the neatly rolled length of silk and the heavy bag of leather straps.

  “You okay with naked?”

  “Yeah. But imagine the boxers.”

/>   Gabriel’s boxers were a silent red card to any funny business, and Aled cracked a smile.

  “Sex isn’t on the cards right now, beautiful,” he said as he closed the case. He shut the wardrobe and placed his equipment on the side table, jerking open one of the drawers to retrieve a bottle of massage oil. “Come on, then. Let’s get you stripped down.”

  Gabriel was only wearing his underwear and pyjama bottoms, and Aled slid his long limbs out of the cotton with practised ease. Gabriel simply relaxed and let him, placid as a doll. The silk was a dressmaker’s roll, long and wide, and Aled laid a length down like a bedsheet before laying Gabriel out on top of it, face down and naked. A few drops of massage oil were placed along the nubs of his spine, then Aled rested his full weight between Gabriel’s shoulders and raked his palms down.

  The groan could have rattled the rafters.

  Aled worked in silence. The knots of weeks without proper exercise or decent posture were savage. The stress was even worse. Gabriel moaned like a porn star under his hands for almost half an hour before his back resembled something like a spine again, and he lay quietly and simply breathed as Aled massaged the back of his neck and put paid to the tense lines around his eyes. He didn’t bother with anything below the waist. Not only was it too likely to give Gabriel the wrong idea in his current messy state, but Aled didn’t need the temptation. So he worked from the waist up, dissolving every last flicker of resistance, until Gabriel had melted into the sheets and silk and resembled a human being again, instead of a miserable patient.

  He was almost asleep before the warmed towel came into play.

  “Ssh,” Aled murmured when he jumped at the first pass of cotton. “Just relax.”

  The towel blotted away the remains of the oil, and Aled ducked out to rinse and dry his hands before returning and unrolling silk strips from his pile. The bottom sheet was to get Gabriel’s skin used to the soft sensation, but the strips were the real McCoy.

  Aled worked from the feet up, encasing both feet individually in silk before wrapping his legs so they were bound together. Firm, but not tight enough to leave marks on the skin. The first leather strap was locked just above the ankles, and two more either side of his knees. By the time Aled reached Gabriel’s waist, he could not have moved his lower half if he’d been paid to do it.