Page 50 of Walking Wounded

“Guys.” Hal slings his arm across Luke’s shoulders. “This is Luke. Luke, these idiots are Mitch, Diego, and Lee actually has some manners.”

Luke shakes their hands, murmurs hellos, is grateful for the warm, strong presence of Hal’s arm around him. Notices the way the guys all notice the gesture, wonders if they’re finding it weird, if they’re judging him, or Hal, or both of them. Or…

He has to stop analyzing.

“You lift?” Diego asks him, friendly enough, when the introductions are over.

“Uh…yeah. Not really.” Luke winces.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mitch assures. “You just gotta start slow.”

Hal goes to the bench along the wall and sets down his bag, his water bottle, tugs off his hoodie and starts to stretch. “You don’t have to lift,” he tells Luke over his shoulder. “You can jog, if you want.” He gestures to the treadmills, and then lowers his voice a notch, as the others return to their weights. “Or you can just sit, or…” A troubled look crosses his face. “The juice bar’s good, if you don’t feel like working out.” He flicks a look up at Luke that can only be called sweet. “Sorry, I’m not trying to–”

“Jogging’s fine,” Luke says, and is rewarded with a smile. “I’ll just–” He hooks a thumb toward the treadmills.

His heart thuds against his ribs, a steady doubtful rhythm as he selects a treadmill, fiddles with the controls, and pops in his earbuds. In his adult life, he’s worked out off and on, but he’s never been a paragon of fitness. He doubts he can go a full thirty minutes, and his palms are already clammy in anticipation of defeat.

Once he’s moving – and oh man, he’s so not up for this – and Jack White is filling his ears, he lets his eyes wander. A critical weakness for him when it comes to his best friend.

Hal has a dumbbell in each hand, doing bicep curls that highlight his arms in a way that should be illegal, the muscle swelling as it contracts, veins popping. His t-shirt clings to him, and beneath his track pants, his calves, and thighs, and ass tighten as he anchors himself against the reps. Reps that seem an extension of his hands, effortless, graceful in a way that something like weightlifting shouldn’t be.

Hal…Hal is beautiful. Always has been, and always will be. And the worst part is that Luke notices, because being beautiful isn’t at all the reason he loves Hal, and it feels cheap to notice the swells and planes of hard muscle, the gorgeous ocean green of his eyes, the strong column of his throat, when it’s something as important and all-encompassing asloveburning in Luke’s chest.

But Luke is sad, and weak, and he’ll look his fill whenever he gets the chance. Even though it hurts. Even though it stokes the fantasies he isn’t allowed to have.

Hal racks his weights and moves on to bench presses, his legs split over the bench, feet braced squarely on the floor. Lee spots him, but Hal does all the work, as he lifts the heavy barbell up from its rack and lowers it, raises it, lowers it, arms swollen and face flushed from the effort. His shirt clings to his pecs, his abs, his shoulders, patched now with sweat. He grits his teeth and pushes through another rep, and another; Lee’s mouth moves as he offers encouragement, but Luke can’t hear the words above his music.

Luke’s mind fills with old, painful memories: Hal’s warm weight against his side, the heavy satin of his skin under Luke’s hands, the way the kiss had tasted of tomato soup, and sweetness, and every good thing Luke had ever dared to want. The quiet, shattered sound of Hal’s breathing, the shock of discovery. And then the withdrawal. The “what are we doing.” And it hurts, it hurts so badly, like a fresh wound, stitches popped and hot blood seeping deep inside him, the knife-strike of rejection. Cutting him up.

Luke remembers the heat of his tears, the way the jagged sobs had scraped his throat raw, and he feels a suspicious prickling in his eyes now.

No. No, no,no.

The edge of his sneaker clips the treadmill’s side rail, and his feet go out from under him. He falls as if in slow motion, and no amount of scrabbling can grant him purchase. Tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, and then his back hits the treadmill and it slings him off the end, straight into the wall. He’s too shocked to register the impact; lays staring up at the ceiling, unable to catch his breath. “The wind knocked out of him” – that’s how his mother would describe it. It’s accurate.

Hal’s face appears above his own, sweaty, pink, cracked wide open with the kind of fear Luke thinks should be reserved for war zones. A bead of sweat lands on Luke’s nose, a soft warm plunk.

“Luke? Shit, Luke, talk to me. Are you okay?”

The panic in Hal’s voice breaks through the haze of shock and the situation finally registers.

He’s fallen off the treadmill.

Fallen off the treadmill. In front of everyone. Itthrewhim against the wall. He…

He can’t breathe.

Air rushes into his lungs in a painful gasp that leaves his head reeling. He thinks he might throw up. And he knows he has to get the hell out of here before he spontaneously combusts from embarrassment.

He lurches upright in a clumsy tangle of limbs, knocking into Hal and then ducking around him. The others all ask if he’s okay; they start to move toward him and he justcan’t. Earbuds dangling around his neck, chest heaving against the awful pain of breathlessness, he staggers out of the weight room. Finds a door markedMen’s Locker Roomand pushes his way in.

Three rows of lockers and benches, showers, toilet stalls: standard locker room fare, but clean and sparkling, and the rows allow a smidge of privacy. Luke finds an empty bench out of view of the three guys changing, and leans back against the cool locker faces, trying to catch his breath properly, no easy task as his eyes burn with unshed tears.

He’s no stranger to shame, and he knows it’ll pass, but right now, he wants the floor to swallow him. He wants to hitchhike to the airport and run back home, bury himself in his meaningless daily work and hide in his craptastic apartment.

He doesn’t want the outer door to swing open and for Hal to call “Luke?” But his life sucks, so that’s exactly what happens.

“Luke?” Sound of sneaker soles on the tile floor. Hal’s rapid, worried breathing. “You in here, man?”

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