“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Fallon asked. Now he was panicking. “If I was too forward?—”
“With you, that was the first time I wanted it so much I couldn’t see straight,” Gage told him. He slotted his fingers between Fallon’s, then began to stroke his in the gaps between. Back and forth, back and forth.
It was soothing and erotic all at the same time, and Fallon didn’t know what to do with himself.
“For a moment, I was afraid it would be too much. Or like the other times I tried. But then I kissed you, and it felt so good, and I was able to forget for a little while. And after, I didn’t feel…” Gage didn’t finish his sentence, and Fallon wasn’t going to ask him to.
Whatever he was thinking, it seemed private.
And he’d heard enough.
“I don’t want you to regret me. I…I don’t deal with stuff very well all the time, but I was hoping once I was able to get my head on straight, we could be friends.”
“Friends,” Gage echoed. “That’s what we agreed on, wasn’t it?”
Fallon nodded. “I don’t have any.”
With a scoff, Gage nudged him with the edge of his foot. “Any?”
“Yeah.” Fallon shrugged, and he saw the moment Gage realized he was being serious. His eyes widened, and he paled a bit. “I’m not saying that so you’ll feel sorry for me. I promise.”
“I didn’t think that. But…how? Why?”
Fallon snorted. “You’ve seen me at my best. And panicked. And scared. But you haven’t seen me at my worst. When my sensory overload is consuming me, and everything hurts, even dim lights and someone breathing in the same room as me. You haven’t seen me rocking and hyperventilating until I throw up. Or when you cook a big meal and everything about it looks wrong, so you have to throw it all away and make me a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich?—”
Gage’s lips twitched, and he was clearly holding back a grin. “Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff?”
“I know it sounds childish?—”
“Lucas loves those. Well, he likes them mostly with jam, but he has them on his food truck menu.”
Fallon didn’t know how to digest that information. He’d just dumped all that on Gage, and he came away with the sandwich?
Gage sighed and dropped his legs, then shuffled closer. “This okay?”
“Mm.”
He moved until they were pressed against one another, and then he stretched his legs to the other side and cuddled into Fallon. His weight was heavy, dense, and perfect. “I knowfull well that no two autistic people are the same. But I have some idea about what it’s like. I’ve been best friends with Lucas during his best moments and his worst ones. And he’s been present for mine. Like when I’m freaking out and my meds are wearing off and my brain is going ten thousand miles a second. Or when I get so hyperfixated on something I forget to eat and pass out. Or when the way my brain starts rapid firing makes me so anxious that everything—and I mean everything—pisses me off. I have said stuff to him he shouldn’t have forgiven me for, but he did. Because he loves me.”
“Okay,” Fallon said softly. He didn’t quite get where this was going.
Gage snorted. “I’m saying this because you might be all those things too, and you still deserve friends. And the fact that anyone would have walked away from you because of it?—”
“No,” Fallon said. He was misunderstanding. “They don’t leave me.Igo.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hard. It’s hard teaching someone to be okay with all my…my stuff,” he said. “The autistic stuff, the trans stuff, the childhood trauma stuff. It’s a lot. And dealing with all that while also trying to fight some person to see me as whole and not expect me to change?”
Gage slipped an arm around him and squeezed tight. “I get it. I’m sorry I assumed people left you.”
Fallon snorted. “I mean. They probably would have if I let them hang around for too long.”
“Does that mean this has an expiration date?”
“No,” Fallon said. “You don’t make me feel that way. You make me feel safe.”
Gage made a soft, startled noise. “I—oh. Safe?”
