Page 14 of Binding Their Hearts

A random Wednesday near the end of September didn’t flash don’t-forget warnings, no meaningful anniversaries, months since his birthday and two months yet until Alice’s. But he hadn’t gotten the idea to haul out the book in a vacuum—a phrase he understood now that Alice had explained the science stuff about vacuums being empty space. As a kid he’d figured getting an idea in a vacuum meant sucking it up through the long hose tube he used to clean cobwebs from upper corners when Peggy wanted the houses extra clean.

“You ’member I said how last week Danny talked about anxiety and anxious energy.” He piled the corners carefully like the picture showed, so now the paper was a kind of bouncy smaller diamond.

“And I saw the book Sunday when I did my room cleanup for Alice’s check.” She’d been so enthusiastic in rewarding him this week that she’d slid right off the bed, giggles and moans mingling as the two of them toppled onto the rug before she came on his tongue.

“I thought it would work for the ‘calming redirection’ and still be small enough to do every day and meet the motion requirement.” True, he didn’t have to move a lot, but his brain was doing squats and lunges to make his folds match the pictures in the book. That meant it didn’t have time to chase after intrusive thoughts. The folding papers connected him to both of his lovers: origami was art, like Henry, patient and precise, and a gift from Alice to help him move while sitting still.

“I told Danny today, and he said the creativity was a great outlet, and he asked me what I would do with the things I made.” The next two steps had to be repeated four times on different corners. He flattened the flaps with care. No extra mistake creases.

“And you thought of Alice?” The whisk had fallen silent; Henry was lowering strips of meat into the liquid. “That’s lovely, Jay.”

She’d given him the gift. Showing her his appreciation only made sense, but the origami offerings would be something more than that. “I talked about service for the rest of the hour. Why I do it, how it makes me feel, that kinda thing.”

Henry paused his work, his eyes the deep green of the pines after a rain. He exhaled in a low hum. “I am exceptionally pleased with you, my boy.”

The warmth hit Jay’s chest first and spread out, sweeping along like fallen leaves racing the wind. Danny had said to notice things more. How love and praise and approval felt in his body. Energy was energy, but the anxious energy of did I get it right and the soothing energy of I am loved didn’t feel anything alike, even when both made his heart speed up.

“Because I haven’t quit this time?” He folded again, another four of the same, and the paper turned into layered triangles just like the book showed. “I’m sorry about before. You tried to help me, and I was a complete brat.”

Before being the half-dozen therapists Henry had encouraged him to see in their first year together. He’d been a pouty Goldilocks about it, the first one too this, another too that—none of them just right for him. He’d put on the class clown face or given the therapists stony silence.

“Not a brat.” Henry cast about on the counter and finally nudged open a drawer and dug out a kitchen towel before wiping his hands clean. “You were a traumatized young man who wasn’t ready to talk to strangers about your experiences.” He rounded the counter and joined Jay at the table, standing behind him and digging his thumbs into the big sloping muscles where neck became shoulder. “You owe no apologies for that, dearest.”

His internal check turned up twinges of guilt and failure, but they faded quickly, lost under the steady pressure of Henry’s hands on him.

“I am so pleased with you”—Henry bent with his mouth at Jay’s ear, his breath teasing the fine hairs there—“because I see your newfound openness, your willingness to engage in self-reflection and dedicate yourself to listening to your needs and giving them voice. You make me incredibly proud, Jay.”

The folds of the flower bloomed in his fingers, from flat layers to a full round blossom with upturned petals. The real thing looked just like the model, only in three dimensions. “I did it.”

“So you did.” Henry turned Jay’s chin in a firm grip and kissed him with rough hunger. “You’ve done Alice a beautiful bit of service.” Gathering the short hairs at the back of Jay’s neck, Henry tipped his head back and nibbled under his jaw. “Will you do a service for me now, my boy?”

“Anything.” A pleading whine slipped loose. Surrender, he named the feeling. But not losing. Not bad, like the resentment and shame when he gave in to Peggy’s demands knowing he’d fall short of her standards no matter how he carried out the task. Surrender to Henry was—trust. Letting go of questions and second-guessing.

“I am…” Henry delivered kiss after kiss, rough and nose-bumping and hair-tugging and perfect. Drawing back, Henry widened his eyes to cartoon extremes. “Entirely out of clean dish towels.”

“Out of—” He’d fallen behind on laundry. He should’ve—no. Henry hadn’t said that. Recognize, review, reframe, and the old panic would learn he didn’t need it anymore. He waggled his hips suggestively. “I could start a load now.”

Henry snorted and pressed Jay’s lips with a final kiss before returning to his food prep. “I’m certain such diligence would be rewarded after dinner.”

Jay set the flower at the edge of Alice’s plate and set off to consolidate the baskets. Three loads, probably—lights, darks, and household. He grabbed the swipe card for the machines off the side table by the door and jogged down the stairs with one heaping basket. Nobody in the laundry room, but the automatic lights came on when he entered. He dumped the clothes on the broad counter and sorted. Alice’s delicates went into bags. Henry’s dress shirts went out to the dry cleaner, and Alice mostly wore just one outfit a day, so Jay’s riding gear and the towels made up the bulk of the laundry. He split the piles and claimed three empty washers. The drum spun and water whooshed into the whites, then the darks. As he slung the bath towels into the third, the laundry room door swung open.

Henry stepped under the bright lights and held up a kitchen towel by its corner. “We might as well wash this one, too, if I’m not too late.”

Shit. He’d forgotten to grab the one from the counter, the last one Henry had pulled from the drawer. “I should’ve thought of that, sorry.”

“It’s not a criticism, dear boy.” Henry drew closer in long strides, past the counter, all the way to the last washer in the line. With a fancy magician flourish, he offered the towel to Jay. “I wasn’t finished with it before, and when I was, I thought I might do you a service for once.”

For once?

“But you do services for me all the time.” Jay tossed the last towel into the wash and shut the door. Two hours ago, he’d been telling Danny about all the ways Henry and Alice praised and rewarded and just fucking recognized his existence, like his whole right to be in the world, to be Jay in the world.

They didn’t call it formal service, not the same way his was—but they all had duties or responsibilities or obligations. Not in the bad way of chores a person wanted to escape but in the best way, in the pieces that connected them to each other and told them they belonged. In the way that said I promise I will care for you, even when you don’t care for yourself. Fuck. He dragged his arm across his face. The laundry room, unlike Danny’s office, didn’t have boxes of tissues just waiting to get used.

“Sorry. Sorry.” His arm was doing nothing, worse than nothing. Yanking up the bottom of his tee, he scrubbed out his eyes. “I didn’t—we talked about”—no, he’d said that already, upstairs, that he’d talked about service today, and Henry hadn’t asked for details—“but maybe you don’t want to know, I should just keep that stuff separate, sorry.”

“Jay.” A hand landed on his arm, Henry squeezing his bicep from a whole arm’s length away, public distance, the distance Jay had forced them to keep all these years. “My Jay. My sweet, brave boy.”

He flung himself blindly forward. That fucking distance had to go. He wrapped his arms tight against Henry’s back and breathed in the citrus-and-leather scent at his neck, the warmth and comfort Alice could claim anywhere they went but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t. Peggy’s voice in his head snapped at him to stop making such a spectacle, to put his arms down and stand up straight and act like a man for heaven’s sake. He clung tighter.

---