“It is,” Lincoln answered quietly.
Carter crested the stairs and through a sheen of tears glimpsed Lincoln in his desk chair, rolled over next to the fire, guitar resting on his crossed legs. He was beautiful, gold-and-silver hair glowing in the firelight, dressed down in jeans, a dark T-shirt, and red-and-gold argyle socks. Socks that matched ASU’s colors, the place where Carter had been born, where his parents had worked. “You found them.”
Lincoln nodded and moved the guitar off his lap to the floor. “I did.”
Carter slowly crossed the room, still half dazed at the revelations, and lowered himself onto the floor on Lincoln’s opposite side. His eyes had drifted back to the birth certificate, unable to tear his gaze away from it for long, but he wanted to be close to the heat and to Lincoln. He laid a hand on Lincoln’s thigh, needing the connection after going without it for too long.
Lincoln tangled their fingers together. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too.”
“I played, sang, and built you a fire.”
Facing his fears again, for him. Carter tugged their linked hands toward him and kissed the backs of Lincoln’s knuckles. “Thank you.”
“What do you want to know?” Lincoln asked.
Everything, came to mind first, but there was really only one question that mattered. Only one answer Carter feared. “Just tell me, did they leave me? Did their families not want me?”
Lincoln loosened his hand and tangled his fingers in Carter’s hair. Carter’s stomach fell, anticipating the worst. “No, baby. They didn’t abandon you. They died in that accident, like we suspected. They were older when they had you, same as their parents when they’d had them. When your parents died, they had no family left to look for you.”
It wasn’t the worst, as Carter had feared, but it still left him feeling hollowed out, a grief he hadn’t expected. He was an orphan, not by anyone’s choice but by circumstance. He was alone.
The fingers in his hair tensed, then smoothed, reminding him that no, he wasn’t alone. “I’m not abandoning you either,” Lincoln said, as if reading his mind. Or maybe that was just the logical conclusion of the tears on Carter’s face. They came faster as Lincoln continued to speak softly. “You are a good man, a good agent, even a good pretend husband, most of the time.”
Carter chuckled, waterlogged, but the huff of air expelled some of the grief, making room for relief, for the warmth that started to creep back in, from the fingers still tangled in his curls down to the center of his chest. He set aside the birth certificate and turned his attention to Lincoln. Rising up onto his knees, he angled Lincoln’s chair and lifted Lincoln’s one leg off the other, spreading them so he could scoot between them, bringing them face-to-face. “Thank you.”
“I still like you.” Red streaked across his cheek, but he didn’t look away. “I might even love you.”
Carter rubbed a hand over his chest. “Is that what this achy thing is?”
Lincoln laughed. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Hmm,” Carter said, hands gliding up Lincoln’s thighs. “I think I might love you too, then.”
Lincoln slid to the end of the chair and cradled Carter’s face, sweeping away the leftover tear tracks. “You’re a good man, Carter Warren. Or Jacob Farb? Either way, I would like the chance to get to know you better, to love you, to make you part of my family, if you’d like that.”
“I’d like that very much.” Carter laid his hands over Lincoln’s, fingers brushing Lincoln’s ring finger, missing the cool metal there. “And I think I might like Carter Polk best of all.”
“Good, because these things are heavy as fuck on this chain.” Lincoln’s eyes flickered down to the V-neck of his shirt.
Noticing the bullet chain there, Carter lowered a hand and notched a finger under it, dragging up the two braided rings.
“They need to go back on our fingers where they belong.” Lincoln’s words, his lips, were warm against Carter’s temple. “Where we belong. I want you in my life, Carter Polk. Still. Always.”
Carter lifted his eyes to the honey-colored ones he wanted to wake up to every morning, had missed every day they’d been apart the past three months. “I want you in mine too, Professor Polk.” He closed his palm around the rings, warm from Lincoln’s body, and hauled Lincoln forward, out of the chair and onto his lap, needing to feel Lincoln’s body against his again.
Lincoln came without protest and looped his arms around Carter’s neck. “One condition.”
“Always the conditions.”
“Just one.” Lincoln rested his forehead against Carter’s. “Clean up after yourself.”
“I can do that, if you’ll play for me.”
“Whenever you want, baby,” he replied with a rock of his hips.
Carter gasped out a “Sing too.” And rocked back. “Your voice is amazing.”
