“I like to make food people want to eat,” Lucas said, setting his hand on the wall. He dragged a touch along the path until he got to the kitchen and began to pull out bread and the jar of peanut butter. “Please sit. I’ll bring everything to you. I know how you take everything.”
Fallon didn’t entirely believe him. But he wasn’t used to people paying attention the way Lucas did. He supposed it was fair to assume his blindness made memorizing stuff more natural for him than for most people.
Fallon was good at it, but only the stuff he was interested in. He could repeat facts about photography that dated back all the way to the first recorded images, but if you asked him who the third president of the United States was, he couldn’t tell you.
He didn’t give a shit and never would.
Dropping onto the couch, he appreciated that not much about the apartment had changed except the location. He hated when people rearranged. He knew it wasn’t his place to get bothered by what people did to their own homes, but he always found it unsettling.
But luckily for him, Elodie needed that kind of structure. She could see, but her brain didn’t process visual information very well, and in spite of all the foam coverings, she still knocked into things.
A lot.
His stomach twisted, and he wondered what his little sister was going to think of the new baby. God…a new baby.
He didn’t think people really turned green when they got nauseous, but he was tempted to look in the mirror because his skin felt weird.
“Food,” Lucas said, startling Fallon out of his thoughts. He set the plate down on the table, and Fallon was impressed by the way he’d cut almost all the crusts off, except for the bottoms, which he liked to use as food handles.
And he brought water, the glass filled to the top with ice first.
“Thank you.” He didn’t touch it, and Lucas seemed to notice after a moment because his brows dipped.
“Did I do it wrong?”
“No. I’m just having a panic attack,” Fallon said. His ears were starting to ring, and his face was getting hot. Yep, it was a panic attack.
“Literally?”
“Mm.”
“Can I—how can I help?” Lucas asked. He began to wring his hands together and rock back and forth. Fallon had never been much of a rocker. The motion made him dizzy. He preferred really, really tight squeezes.
But he also wasn’t going to ask his brother’s boyfriend to hold him like that. He wasn’t sure he could handle Lucas touching him that way. At least until he got to know him better.
“I,” Fallon said, then swallowed. “It’ll pass in a minute. Sorry. I have big news to tell everyone, and I think I’m freaking out about it.”
He’d always struggled with emotions. Not because he didn’t have them, but because his brain tended to compartmentalize them to make it easier to cope. The problem with that was he didn’t always consciously feel those emotions, but his body reacted as though he did. Which meant he had panic attacks that seemed to come from nowhere.
He didn’t feel actively nervous about telling Frankie, but deep in his subconscious, he was freaking the fuck out.
“Do you want to tell me first?” Lucas’s rocking slowed down, and his hands were quietly stimming at his sides. “Maybe if you tell someone who isn’t one of your brothers, it’ll be easier when you talk to them.”
That was an option. And not a bad one. He knew Lucas wouldn’t care.
“Okay.” He bit his lip and stared down at his feet. He pressed his toes into the floor and felt the pressure relieve some of his stress. “I’m pregnant.”
Lucas went dead silent. Then he cleared his throat. “Ah. Uh…” He swore under his breath. “I’m sorry, I’m fucking this up. I don’t know if I’m supposed to say congratulations or I’m sorry.”
Fallon couldn’t help the smallest smile. Telling Lucas was a good idea because Lucas was like him in so many ways. “The situation’s complicated. I’m going to have the baby. I’m going to be a dad. But the father is Charlie, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.”
“Ohhhh fuck,” Lucas said. “Does he know?”
“No,” Fallon said quickly.
Then Lucas went pale, and he sat back. Hard. “Are you two still?—”
“God, no.” For the first time in a long time, Fallon knew what someone was going to say before they finished their sentence. It was mostly the fear on Lucas’s face that clued him in. “It was a onetime mistake several months ago, right before he left. I regret it.”
