It might have actually concussed him.
Fallon tossed the dildo across the room and dropped to his knees, grasping at Gage’s front. He pulled him close as Gage’s eyes began to focus, and they blinked at each other.
Then Fallon burst into laughter. And a breath after that, he burst into tears.
Gage only took a second to react, grasping Fallon and tugging him into a hug. The chaos of what happened—the fear, the adrenaline, the realization—was crashing around in his chest. For a moment, he thought he might start screaming, but if he did that, he’d never stop.
So he let himself cry instead.
“I kind of feel like you should be comfortingmeafter trying to kill me with a dick, but…”
Fallon cried harder.
“I’m sorry. Shit, I’m so sorry.” Gage squeezed until Fallon felt like he could breathe, and then he wriggled back to look up at Gage’s face. He hadn’t seen him for three months. “I was just making a joke. It’s okay. I’m okay. Hey,” Gage said. He reached up and thumbed a few tears off Fallon’s cheeks.
“I don’t normally cry like this. It happens when I get overwhelmed,” he explained.
Gage smiled. His eyes also looked normal, which meant he probably wasn’t concussed, but there was a bruise over his eyebrow that was spreading downward, which might mean a black eye. Oh, fuck. His dildo had given Gage a black eye?
“Can I ask you a question?”
Fallon blinked. “Um. Yes.”
“What are you doing in my neighbor’s apartment?”
For a second, the world swam. What did he mean his neighbor’s apartment? Did that…oh God, could that mean…
His chin shook, and he forced himself to stay calm, though he was going to pay for that later. “You live next door?” Oh my God, Gage was his neighbor? He couldn’t process that.
“Yes. And I just need to know if you were robbing this place. I can’t let you steal, but I can help you if you need it.”
God, he was such a good guy.
Fallon took a deep breath and shook his head. “I live here.”
“Bullshit.”
Fallon’s brows dipped, and he sat back away from Gage. “That’s mean. I wouldn’t lie.”
“I…I know. I’m sorry. But bullshit,” Gage said again. He rubbed at his eye, winced, then carefully stood up as Fallon followed. “Lucas would have told me you were my neighbor.”
“Lucas doesn’t know where I live,” he said, his voice thready.
“I mean, okay, but Frankie knows where I live, andhewould have said something,” Gage pointed out.
Fallon felt something like guilt and shame ripping through him. He bit his lip, then swallowed thickly. “Frankie doesn’t know either. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
Gage blinked, his expression full of shock. “What? Why?”
“I have stuff,” Fallon said, waving his hand. “A lot of, uh,stuffgoing on. I needed some space, and Frankie is too much.”
He could tell Gage wasn’t buying it, but it wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. He did have stuff, and he did need to keep Frankie away from him for a while. Just until he figured out what the fuck he was going to do because he was in trouble. The big, emotional, scary kind of trouble that his brothers would only make worse.
So he asked them to respect his boundaries, and they were trying, but he knew it was killing them too. And he didn’t love himself very much in that moment for knowing the pain he was causing his family, but he didn’t have a choice.
It was all too much. He was barely dealing with what happened. It was a reality that hadn’t quite set in yet.
But in that moment, he had never been more grateful to see Gage. Even if he’d nearly brained him to death with a dildo.
