Sam nodded.
Nik pushed his way in.“It’s worse than I thought.What did that dumbassed bastard do?”He headed straight for Sam’s kitchen and the corkscrew.
“He ...he said he needed some time to himself to th-think,” Sam choked out.
Nik stopped opening the first bottle and looked at Sam in horror, one hand over his mouth.“Oh no,” he whispered.
Sam nodded and wiped at the tear that had snuck out onto his cheek.Nik reapplied himself to the wine with vigor.“I’m opening as fast as I can.”
Sam nodded dully.“He also said that—” he paused to swallow “—it’s not me, it’sh-him.”He swallowed the rest of the sob that had nearly escaped.
Nik stopped rooting through Sam’s cupboard for glasses, grabbed the wine, and came for him.He wrapped Sam in his arms, squeezed him tight, then handed him the bottle.“You start on this.I’ll open another one for me.”
Sam looked at the bottle blankly.“I haven’t eaten since lunch.”
“I have ice cream in the grocery bag,” Nik said.“Drink; it’s medicinal.”
“I don’t remember wine curing me of heartbreak before.”
“It doesn’t, it just helps you get it all out.”
What did he have to lose?He tipped the bottle up and poured some wine down his throat.
That night, he did get it all out.The way the sex with Ian had turned into lovemaking, and how Ian had said he wanted to try having a relationship.As if it were some new and foreign food he thought he might like if he only tasted it.
“Maybe sea urchin roe.What’s that stuff called again?”Sam asked Nik, lying next to him on the futon, staring up at the ceiling.
“Uni,” Nik answered, shuddering.Sam shuddered too.That stuff was repulsive.“I doubt he sees you as being remotely like the slimy, undifferentiated gonads of a sea creature.”
Sam covered his face with his hands and admitted his biggest fear.“But what if I’m just, like, relationship training wheels?”he whispered.“I thought I was the big boy bike.”
Nik rolled toward him and hugged Sam hard.“Youarea big boy bike.If not Ian’s, then someone else’s.”
Sam sighed and patted Nik’s forearm.“I guess, but right now Ian’s the only one I want riding me.”
Nik squeezed him again, then sat up.“Do you think I should open more wine?You’re out, and I’m close.”He swished around the inch or so of wine left in his bottle, peering at it as if it would answer him.
What did he have to lose?“Yeah,” Sam sighed.
“Okay, one bottle or two?”
When Nik came back with fortifications—and ice cream, this time—he said, “Ian thinks you’re cute.He even told Jurgen that.”
Sam shrugged, trying to tip wine into his mouth without sitting up.
“Jurgen doesn’t think I’m cute,” Nik said around a mouthful of ice cream.
“What?”
Nik shrugged.“I asked after he told me about Ian and you.Jurgen says I get cute when I’m so mad I’m smiling and using my ‘pleasant’ voice right before I knife someone in the back.Figuratively speaking.”
“Oh.”
Nik sighed and said contemplatively, “I thinktruecuteness is an unattainable ideal with Jurgen.I’m okay with that.”
“He has many other wonderful qualities,” Sam rushed to point out.
Nik sighed again, but in a dreamy way.“Doesn’t he?”Then he sort of shook himself.“But we’re talking about you, so tell me more.”
