Making Promises (36 page)

Shane gave him everything, hard and fast and deep and long, and Mikhail wrapped his legs around Shane’s hips, buried his face into Shane’s neck, and groaned, his asshole spasming around Shane’s erection as their bodies grew slick with his come. Shane’s vision went dark, and he groaned back, surged powerfully forward, and came.

His body kept going, shuddering endlessly, and he wrapped his arms around Mikhail’s shoulders and clutched him tighter while the other man stroked his neck and his chest and soothed him until the orgasm passed.

They lay there together for quite some time before Shane slid sideways—he didn’t want to crush Mikhail, and he knew he could.

Mickey came with him and spent some more time stroking his chest, which was now sweaty and matted, and Shane shook his head.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I wax?”

Mikhail wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know who told you that was a good idea, but whoever it was should be shot.”

“Actually, her exact words were that if I ever took my shirt off in the forest,
I
would be the one who’d be shot, but that’s okay. I’d rather listen to you anyway.”

Mikhail wrinkled his nose. “Have you had
any
lover who has not left you with scars?” he asked unhappily.

“You,” Shane replied promptly. “Do me a favor and don’t fuck this up!”

Mikhail didn’t laugh. He didn’t even crack a smile. “I shall do my best.”

They didn’t talk anymore about old lovers and promises. They played with each other’s skin and kissed random places on each other’s bodies and told terrible jokes about the dangers of spelunking without the right equipment. Mikhail touched his scars some more, and Shane told him about the pain honestly, and Shane stroked the ruin on the inside of Mikhail’s arms, and Mikhail returned the favor. They kissed a lot without urgency, and then they kissed some more with urgency, and then Mikhail finally got his wish, and Shane was behind him, pounding unmercifully while Mikhail braced himself against the wall and Shane wrapped his arm around Mikhail’s chest. They fell asleep a little after that, Shane spooned around his lover protectively, but he jerked awake at around eleven o’clock, aware that as lovely as this was, he couldn’t stay.

He got up quietly and used the shower, then came back and gathered his clothes from the various rooms and dressed. Mikhail was still sleeping, and Shane watched him for a moment before kissing his temple and shaking him gently. He looked so young—and so innocent. Shane was pretty sure that neither one of those was a lie.

“Mickey,” he muttered now reluctantly. “Mickey, baby, I’ve got to go.”

Mikhail opened his eyes enough to pout. “No,” he mumbled sulkily.

“Yes,” Shane told him with some gentleness. “I’ve got to let the dogs in and the cats out and then vice versa. I’ve got to trade Crick’s car in and get the GTO back. I’d love to spend some time with you here—you’ve got to know that. But I’ve got shit to take care of, and I can’t.” Mikhail sighed and reached a hand up to his cheek. “I have never spent the night with a man,” he muttered. “I was looking forward to it.” Shane smiled and kissed him again. He tasted sleepy and used and delicious. “Well, we’ll get our chance, I promise. I’ll be back tomorrow before they deliver the bed and shit, okay? Then we’ll go get your mom.” Mikhail’s eyes narrowed a little, and he woke up some more. “Thank you,” he muttered. “All the things you do for us—thank you.”

“I’d do anything for you, Mickey. Don’t ever forget that, okay?” He stood and Mikhail dropped his hand, and Shane bent down and kissed his cheek one more time and was gone.

One more mile is all we have. You got nothing to fear.

“One More Mile”—Tom McRae

MIKHAIL woke up surrounded by Shane’s smell and extremely disappointed that Shane was not there instead. Then he heard a firm knock on the door, and as he slid into a pair of sweats to answer it, he thought in panic that it must be the people with the bed and medical supplies and that he had severely overslept.

It turned out to be Shane, looking tired and freshly showered but carrying a box of doughnuts and Starbucks and a small plastic shopping bag and a large one, which he set down on the table. He looked so dear and earnest that Mikhail took the food and coffee from his hands and set them down on the table and then launched himself into the man’s arms without warning.

Shane hissed out a breath and then wrapped his arms around Mikhail and held him tight, dropping a kiss onto the top of his head and then hissing again as Mikhail tightened the hug. Mikhail backed up and frowned.

“You hurt yourself last night, yes?”

Shane shrugged. “It was lots of things—the long drive, what we were doing, and the run this morning….”

“Run? We didn’t get enough exercise last night?” Mikhail frowned at him some more and sat down, blowing on his coffee and sipping carefully because it was very hot.

“It’s my day to go running with Deacon.” Shane shrugged again.

“Since he was bringing the car by to swap out, I wasn’t going to tell him no. Besides. If I didn’t go running, he’d know I hurt, and if he knew I hurt, he’d be here and helping before you could run for the hills.” Mikhail sighed and looked unhappily at his coffee. “I will meet him someday—I promised. I will hold to that.”

Shane nodded and sat down beside him. “But not today. I know it.” Mikhail smiled gratefully and then felt like shit. Running away?

What a little coward he had proven to be. But Shane, sipping his coffee and blinking to try to wake himself up, did not look like he felt like that.

“You will nap while I shower, please?”

Shane looked down at himself. He was dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, and Mikhail could see him calculate how bad he could possibly look when the medical supply company arrived.

“No one will care what you look like but me,” Mikhail said briskly, taking Shane’s arm and setting his coffee down. “And all I care about is that you do not fall asleep between here and Roseville.” It was ludicrous, of course, because Roseville was fifteen minutes away in traffic, but Shane gave him a sleepy, sideways grin and let himself be led back to Mikhail’s bed.

He kicked off his tennis shoes and sprawled out there, taking the edge of the blue plaid coverlet under his arms like a child and smiled at Mikhail as he shucked his sweats and got ready to walk across the hall.

“You know I’m only lying here so I can smell us together, right?” Mikhail turned around and gave him a little kiss on the temple, much as Shane had given him the night before as he was leaving. “Of course you are,” he said, and even he knew that his sarcasm had leeched away and he sounded almost sweet.

Mikhail took his shower and dressed, and then brought his coffee and another doughnut into his room, along with a chair so he could sit at his dresser with his laptop while Shane was sleeping. Curiosity had gotten the better of him, and he had checked to see what was in the shopping bags.

The larger one held a hand-knit throw, which he knew had to be from Benny and was probably for his mother. The way their minds worked sometimes, he thought wryly. The other was an iPod—smaller Making Promises

than his but with much, much more memory and a larger screen. Mikhail sighed as he looked at the incriminating white box. Shane had one—it was older than this one, but it also had the biggest cache of memory. Mikhail knew the gift had to be for him.

“Dammit,” he muttered, and he saw Shane open one sleepy eye at him.

“Take it,” the big man sighed into the cradle of his arms. “This next month is gonna suck so bad. You need something to take you away from all that.”

He sighed then and rolled to his other side, hunching his shoulders protectively over his chest, and Mikhail shook his head. First he got out the throw that Shane had brought and used it to drape over his shoulders, since he was lying on top of the comforter and it was still chilly in the apartment. Then he pulled out the iPod and started playing with it, plugging it into the laptop and downloading his entire music list onto it, as well as some of his favorite movies and television shows. It took a while—the laptop was old and slow—but it gave him something to do besides worry before the expected knock came at the door.

When it did he shook Shane gently by the arm and then went out to answer it, and the day really began.

Shane was right. That first day alone was exhausting and painful, and the next few weeks only got worse.

They had to move the furniture around in the front room, setting the bed up along the back wall where the couch once had been and moving the couch to the side, which made the small living room feel like it was made for Barbie dolls and not grown men. When Shane carried Ylena in to put her on the bed, though, she had smiled tiredly and said that now she could watch as many movies as she wanted. They tried to do that for her—there was always one playing on the television for the next couple of weeks, although, after the nurse came and hooked up her pain medication, it seemed sometimes as though that was the best movie of all.

Later, Mikhail would not be sure how Shane managed to pull it off.

The man was still recovering himself, and yet he managed to be there when Mikhail could not. He did the grocery shopping, the laundry, and when the month was over, Mikhail realized Shane had paid the bills and nobody noticed. He helped the nurse change Ylena’s sheets, sat with her in the afternoons and evenings when there was nobody else, and then left in 222

the evenings to go attend his own household. And he usually gave Mikhail a ride to and from work as well.

Ylena’s church people would come and take up the slack, and for them Mikhail was both grateful and resentful. Yes—they were indispensable. But they had always treated Mikhail, with his open sexuality and his painful past, as either something to pity or something to shun. They often tried to proselytize, and Mikhail would simply turn and walk out of the room. He wearied—was already weary—of hearing Ylena defending him as he left. They were even ruder to Shane, and although Mikhail’s grounded, even-tempered lover would simply smile and go find something else to do rather than visit with the stiffly postured, exactly dressed women who sat on the couch and visited Ylena, Mikhail’s fury at them—at his people in general—grew into a molten lead weight in his stomach during those final weeks of his mother’s life.

One night, Shane did not appear to pick him up as promised, and Mikhail trotted home on his own. He was actually grateful for the walk—

it gave him a chance to listen to his music and to think about nothing at all—but when he arrived home, he saw the GTO in its usual spot in the parking lot, and was puzzled.

He opened the apartment door, a question on his lips, when his mother looked up from her bed and shushed him. Shane was sitting next to her bed, his head resting on his arm, fast asleep. Next to him was a photo album, wide open, showing Mikhail as a child on stage, where he had grown up.

“He is very tired,
lubime
,” Ylena said softly. “He adopted another dog from the shelter, and it has been sick. He’s been telling me about vet appointments and cleaning carpets and paperwork for his job and his sick leave. They are having an investigation into his injury. He says he might end up with a censure on his record—can you imagine?” A part of Mikhail wanted to say,
Yes, I hope they fire him for being
an asinine fool who would risk himself like that,
but most of him wanted to go find the people making Shane’s life difficult and kick them in the balls.

“I can imagine that he did not tell me because he did not want to worry me,” was what Mikhail said instead. He did not realize how hurt he was until the words came out.

Ylena sighed and held out her hand. “That is exactly why he did not tell you.”

Mikhail came to her and took her hand. It was the first time she had been lucid in nearly two days. There had been much moaning, when she lost control of her will and the pain took over, and some meandering in Russian. Mikhail heard her call for her father and her mother, both of whom had been dead for some time. It occurred to him that this could be one of the last times he had his mother—truly, his mother—to speak to.

“I think he has come to love you,” he told her, and even exhausted and dying, her smile was still alive.

“I think so too. And I him. And that is why I want you both to do something for me.”