Page 82 of Thin Ice

"You'll take it standing up."

"That's the plan." He smiled. "It's the only version of me they'd recognize."

My phone buzzed on the island. It was from Brick. It was a photo of Maddie's cake down to crumbs and one candle.

I turned it around so Elias could see it. We sat there grinning at a cake like a couple of idiots.

The night after the accounting, the city still hadn't taken the blue down, and neither had I. The lights in the windows across Euclid burned on like the block was keeping a vigil it had forgotten how to end. We'd eaten at the table — the actual table, two settings at one corner of a slab built for eight — and Elias was drying a pan he'd insisted on using, and I stood watching him move around my kitchen like a man who knew where things went.

"Come with me," I said.

We went down the hall without hurrying. I undressed him and took my time about it. I had wrapped ribs, and he had a fresh new bandage on his forearm.

We lay on the bed, and Elias reached into the nightstand for the supplies he'd stocked there sometime in the last few days.

"I want all of you tonight," he said.

"Yes," I said against his mouth.

His patience took me apart. He got the pillow angled under me and slipped slick fingers inside me. First it was one, and then it was two. He watched my face the whole time, and I fought to keep my eyes open.

He planted kisses down the center of my chest while my cock lay hard and leaking against my belly.

I dug my fingers into the sheets while Elias set the pace. He added a third finger, and I rocked hard down onto his hand.

"Inside, Elias. Now."

He rolled a condom on and settled between my legs. He was careful with my hip as he lined his cock head up and slowly thrust into me. He leaned in to kiss me as he pushed further inside.

"Okay?"

"Don't stop," I said.

He moved with long and unhurried thrusts. I hooked my right leg over his hip and held onto his shoulders. The hip was quiet. I never winced.

As he rocked forward, I wrapped my right hand around my cock. I stroked in rhythm with his thrusts.

"That's it," Elias said. "Let me see it. Come for me."

I always loved being watched, and Elias's intent gaze sent me over the edge. He followed three thrusts later, driving deep and shuddering. I held him through it.

After we cleaned up, we lay tangled in the glow of the nightstand lamp. Elias's breathing slowed. I rolled onto my side, and he moved up against my back.

"I love you," he whispered into my ear. "You're the first time I've said it, Nolan. I don't know whether that's wonderful or terrible, but you're it, the one and only."

He had his arms wrapped around me, and I brought his knuckles up to my face to kiss them. We lay there while the cathedral bells rang eleven down the block.

"I love you, too," I said, "and I can't wait to go to the botanical garden."

Epilogue - Elias

The percussion gun woke me. It sounded like an outboard motor, exactly as Nolan had described it when he explained why he never used it before dawn. For three and a half years he'd worked his hip in silence so that nobody below him, beside him, or down the hall from him would learn what it cost him to walk. Now it was ten past seven on an August morning, and the thing was rattling away in the living room, loud enough for the floor below.

I got up, taking my time. Nolan was on the mat by the recliner with his knee pulled to his chest. He didn't stop when I appeared. He briefly waved a good morning and kept breathing into the joint.

His hip hadn't changed. The retirement announcement in July hadn't fixed it. What had changed was that he didn't hide the damage. He worked on the hip in the middle of his living room with the blinds up, grunting when it hurt.

I made coffee. We'd agreed that it was my job. He'd conceded the machine after I pulled a better shot than his five days in a row.