Page 44 of Binding Their Hearts

“We’re not thinking something that private, are we?” The stressed edge slipped back into Alice’s voice. She squinched her eyes shut and blinked them open a couple of times. “I thought this was about a formal declaration in the community. Pledging to each other in front of witnesses.”

“If none of us has our hearts set on holding a ceremony here, it might behoove us to wait to determine the details until after we settle the issue of where we’re going to live.” Henry added breakfast to Alice’s empty plate, and she flashed a grateful smile. “Perhaps we should revisit the matter in December. These next few weeks are crucial for our house-hunting endeavor.”

“That sounds good.” Alice touched her mouth to her teacup, then blew across the top and set it back without sipping. “I’ll have a much better handle on the job by then. Or be back in my usual one. No more of these crazy hours, I swear.”

“But—” His heart and lungs had tumbled into his stomach and lodged like boulders. Too heavy for him to shift aside. “I thought—” Not a few weeks of waiting, but whole months. He’d misunderstood, the way he always did. “So you both—you weren’t thinking the new house is where we start our married life? Like ‘bye-bye, relationship nest’”—he swung his arms wide, gesturing to the space game-show model style—“‘hello, marriage manor’?”

Alice froze in mid-reach for her fork. Henry turned his head aside; his throat moved as he swallowed, even though he hadn’t eaten a bite yet. He cleared with a light cough. “I confess, I had not drawn the connection so directly in my mind.” Henry bathed Jay in a soft green gaze. “Is that what you envision, Jay?”

So not brilliance. He’d solved a problem that only existed in his head. “I thought I had this great idea to help. But I guess I’m making things worse.”

“Not worse.” Stern, commanding Henry used his gaze to pierce, not coddle. He couldn’t be argued with; what he said was true, full stop. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Jay. I simply want to understand your sense of urgency.”

A mulish refusal to answer wouldn’t dig him out of this wallow. He would have to pedal on and hope they didn’t all end up covered in muck. “I thought it was a package deal. We’ll be in a new home, starting a new stage of our lives. I want us to be married when we do. That’s the urgency. Fresh start, clean slate, whatever you want to call it.”

And no takebacks.

Henry dipped his head, and something—a wince?—crossed his face. Whatever it was, Henry didn’t make that face often. Jay had hurt him somehow. He shouldn’t have started the conversation.

“I’m sorry, dear boy. I do appreciate the symmetry.” Henry’s cheek twitched. “However, I am uncertain of my ability to take on those arrangements—”

Oh! Henry had misunderstood, that was all. A better explanation would fix that right up.

“—and execute them well given my current client load and the importance of finding us a new place to live.” Strain showed in the tight tendons of Henry’s folded hands. “Perhaps I erred in accepting the bargain for this place. Forty-five days is not much time to uproot our lives in so many dimensions.”

“We might—” Alice sighed without sound, just the slow exhale of air. “We’re trying to do too much at once. I’m guilty of it, I know. My promotion is stealing more from our time together than house hunting is.”

“I’m not asking either of you to load up on more work. Or apologize for the stuff you’re doing.” His dominants had overextended themselves. He’d been seeing the little lapses for a couple of weeks, noticing because that’s what Danny was teaching him: how to pay attention. How to hear his own voice inside and listen when it said things were out of whack. Like when it had told him last spring he needed to step in and disobey Henry or they would lose Alice. “Danny says it’s important to know when to ask for help and to trust that you have people who love you that you can depend on.”

“We each have that to the Nth power, because love math is exponential. None of that times two multiplicative crap.” Alice finally sipped her tea. Her eyes perked up, fully open for maybe the first time this morning. “Is that what you talked about in your session this week? I’m sorry I missed hearing about it at dinner.”

“You didn’t miss anything.” He’d held back from sharing, even though Henry had given him the option. They’d kept the talk light, and when he’d finished eating, he’d sat on the floor beside Henry’s chair, getting his head and face stroked like a favorite pet until Henry finished his own meal. “And yeah, partly. Yesterday at therapy I talked about feeling like a burden. When I was a kid, I was in the way constantly. People kept having to fix my mistakes.”

Danny had given him questions to think on—such a Henry homework move. Like what if his mistakes weren’t mistakes, just people exercising control over him about differences of opinion. Their way to load the dishwasher, their way to vacuum the rugs, their order for how to do his chores. What if those things were about them and not Jay at all?

“You are not a burden.” Alice blazed righteous fury, same as she had right before she’d slapped Peggy. Which, he had to admit now, his sister had kinda deserved. “Not even a tiny bit.”

“No, I know. Or I’m starting to know.” He hadn’t magically cured the paths his head took him down, and pretending to be farther along wouldn’t do him any good. Might do him some bad. Recognizing those paths, though, that was a big leap. “I’m a different Jay than I was a month ago. I feel different. Change is hard, and it’s slow, but I’m working on it.”

He could thank Henry for that—for not giving up on him after so many years of him avoiding therapy.

“Part of working on it, it’s about asking for what I want and not feeling like a nuisance or that I don’t deserve to want things or ask for them. And I know, I know—” He stared straight across the table at the green eyes watching him so intently, the man who loved him at his best and his worst. “Henry, you’ve been trying to get me to see that for five years, and I just couldn’t. But now I’m flexing those muscles. They don’t work so good yet.”

“You’re making an excellent showing, my boy.” The warm approval in Henry’s voice, fuck, a man could live on that alone. “Share your vision with us. Let us see how you see.”

He shook out his shoulders to settle himself and give jumbled thoughts a chance to find some order. Sounded goofy, but he felt calmer afterward. Danny said no way, no how was Jay the only person on the planet who found inner stillness in outer movement. Not a freak, not too fidgety—just the way his brain worked. Henry had understood that about him from the start. He would understand this, too.

“When you proposed, I got over-the-moon excited. I thought you did, too, that you had the same urgency about holding a real ceremony and making us official. Saying in front of God and everybody that we belong to each other.” Fun, healthy, frequent sex was spectacular, but belonging? That was a whole other level of happy. The kind without a fading afterglow, because when you belonged, you belonged. Forever. Part of you lived in someone else’s chest, in the thumping of their heartbeat. “That’s why you asked, isn’t it? Instead of taking months to create some elaborate proposal? Because you wanted us so much that even you couldn’t wait.”

Henry drew a slow breath. His hands trembled as he ran one thumb across the other. A low growl deepened his voice. “I have wanted both of you that much from the first time we spoke, and my heart has not wavered.”

Belonging washed over him, the rightness he’d only ever felt with the two people at this table. To his left, Alice sat with her hands curled between her breasts, hugging Henry’s love to her.

“If this is the timing you want, Jay”—Henry laid his hands flat beside his plate, his head high, chin lifted—“then we will meet the challenge.” His nod settled the matter, and he started filling his plate. “As it happens, I have something in mind for our tokens. Aside from being a wedding, this will be something of a collaring ceremony, and it is my privilege to provide the symbols of my claim.”

Henry’s serious tone had vanished, replaced by a conversational one. The decision had been made. Jay had won the first…argument? Not the one he’d been expecting to have, because that was still ahead. This whole thing had been a whatchacallit, a prelude in the fancy music language Henry used.

“But you’ll need a token too, won’t you?” In true problem-solver fashion, Alice didn’t waste time debating Henry’s decision on the timing. She jumped on the next issue full throttle. He could use that skill. “We’re claiming you as much as you’re claiming us.”

---