Page 47 of Blindsided

Trevor’s voice sounded from near the back of the house. “Should I grab another beer?”

Brax gave me a searching look then called back to his boyfriend. “Yeah.” To me, he just shook his head. “You look like you didn’t sleep all night.”

The statement was closer to the truth than I cared to admit. Lincoln had spent the night, and in a small overnight bag, he’d brought his quilt. When we’d slipped into bed, he’d bashfully removed it from the bag while watching me closely. The smile on my face at seeing that he hadn’t packed it away completely had been genuine and Lincoln had relaxed quickly. He’d crawled into bed holding his quilt and had let me spoon around him. A few minutes later, his mouth wrapped around my thumb, he’d drifted off to sleep.

He’d slept like the dead, and I’d spent the night questioning what was going on and why this felt so natural to me. When he’d left this afternoon to get some things done at his place, I had decided I needed to talk with someone who might understand. The only person I could think of was Brax.

“I’m so confused,” I said to him as we walked toward the kitchen. Trevor was already back at the table with a sandwich and a beer in front of him. At first glance, the meal looked like anything I’d see at any friend’s house. On closer inspection, his security blanket was on his lap, his bear was on the seat next to him, and his plate was a bright plastic one I’d expect to see a toddler’s meal on.

Brax was so focused on me he hadn’t noticed Trevor breaking pieces of his sandwich off and feeding them to Gretzky. He was so stealthy about it, I’d only noticed because I was trying to figure out why the dog wasn’t underfoot while doing his level best to kill me as I walked into the house. I shot Trevor a knowing look and he gave me a sweet grin in return. I refused to get involved with that one, but I knew if Brax found out, he wouldn’t be happy with his boy.

“You don’t say.” Brax’s statement was dry and I knew he was inwardly rolling his eyes at me. We stopped at the counter, and he grabbed a sandwich from a platter of them, dropped it onto a regular dinner plate, added some chips from the bag on the counter, and pushed the plate and a beer toward me. “Tell us about it over lunch.”

With an overly dramatic sigh, I sat down at the table. “I can’t figure out what the hell is going on with Lincoln.”

Brax and Trevor wore matching shocked expressions. “Wait,” Trevor said, putting his beer down. “I thought things were going well? What happened?”

“Nothing happened. Things are actually easy. We’ve had some difficult discussions about the past. I’m sure more will come up in the future, but we’re working on separating early twenties us and early thirties us.”

“Good. That sounds healthy,” Brax said. ”You’re right, though. There are going to be some seriously uncomfortable conversations that will come up over the years thanks to your past. Glad you’re talking about those years already and not sweeping them under the rug and pretending they didn’t happen.”

He sounded so much like a parent I almost found myself calling him Dad. I only resisted the urge because I knew he cared about me and my happiness. He also never turned his Daddy-brain off. It was so natural to him, he didn’t realize he did it.

“So, what’s going on?” Trevor asked.

“It’s different this time. I don’t know how to explain it.” I dragged a hand through my hair and decided to get everything in the open. Trevor had trusted me to see him little when we’d just met, so I knew I could trust him and Brax with Lincoln’s confidences. “Earlier this month, he hit subspace pretty hard. As I was holding him, I’d been absently rubbing his face with my hand. One second I was tracing his jaw and lips, the next my thumb was in his mouth. As soon as it was in his mouth, he clamped his lips around it and stayed like that for over an hour, sleeping, recovering, and sucking my thumb the entire time.”

Trevor took a sip of his beer but gave me his full attention, to the point he’d stopped eating his sandwich and Gretzky reached up and grabbed it without him or Brax noticing.

Brax hummed and motioned for me to continue.

“About a week ago, it happened again, but that time he had his quilt with him. It’s this thing that he’s had forever. I remember it always being at the foot of his bed in college. He mentioned something about packing it away because it was silly to still have it. I told him that if he hadn’t packed it away yet, there was clearly something telling him not to.”

Trevor lifted his blanket from his lap with a smile on his face. “Very wise words.”

I tossed a potato chip at him. “You and your blanket might have been who I was thinking about when I told him that.”

Trevor grabbed the chip off the table and beamed up at me. “Because blankets are special and perfect and everyone should have them!”

He was intentionally being over the top with his statement, though I knew well enough that he truly believed everyone should have a blanket or a stuffed animal. He was the reason the Grizzlies all had team teddy bears. He was also the reason a giant plush owl had shown up in Tom’s office three days earlier. The owl had been rehomed to my office and took up an entire cushion on the couch across from my desk.

Brax ruffled his hair. “I have a feeling there is more to this story. Let Easton finish. So what happened a week ago with his quilt?”

Trevor rolled his eyes but gave a dramatic hand gesture for me to continue.

As I gathered my thoughts, I knew I’d come to the right place. Neither of them had been shocked or taken aback by what I’d said so far and it made it easier to talk about the things that had happened in the last week. “Sort of the same thing. Though I don’t think he was in subspace, just fuzzy and sleepy after a long day and a powerful orgasm. When I curled around him, he immediately found my thumb and a few minutes later he pulled his blanket to his chest and was out.”

“That’s actually really sweet,” Brax said when I finished.

Trevor nodded his head eagerly. “And totally adorable.”

Brax smirked. “I tend to agree with Trev. But you’re here, telling us about it. Does that mean there’s a problem with it?”

I sighed. “No. I don’t care about it, honestly. Which is weird enough on its own. He brought his quilt to my place last night. When we were getting into bed, he brought it over and used his hand to get my thumb to his mouth. He slept like that the entire night.”

“I don’t know anyone else who sucks his thumb all night.” Brax shot Trevor a playful grin and wink.

Trevor giggled at the reaction. “Sure, but at least it’s not your thumb. Can you imagine being stuck in the same position for hours on end?”

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