The other nights

Author’s Note: Based on narrative outlined by @Cuchuilain.

You hold him there, feeling a little anxious about how profoundly upset he is, until Dex finally cries himself out and sits there shaking, and then you stay, until that subsides too and he swallows hard. “Thanks,” he mumbles. “You can stop now. It’s all right. I’m all right. Really.” When you let go and let him have, well, himself, back, he sits up again and wipes at his eyes. “I feel like shit about it because I can’t ask you for any of that if I’m not able to promise you the same in return.”

This time you’re not sure whether it’s bad to say anything that makes it too obvious you still don’t quite understand, and you’re a little worried that you might get him going again and make him feel even worse. You’re not very proud of it but, progressive as you want to consider yourself, it’s still a little bit frightening when a man cries. Most of them work so hard never to shed tears, that if they do succumb, it can’t help but make everything feel some flavor of unsalvageably hopeless and ruined.

Well! Fuck this and fuck your cowardice about his big scary feelings. You decide it with a sudden exhilarating rush of the perseverant loyalty that served you so faithfully for too many years not to make it your go-to answer to his feelings. You’re allowed to bawl snot-faced sometimes, if you need to. So should he be.

And you don’t have to understand his feelings, to support his right to have and express them.

You change your mind and re-intrude upon his personal space bubble. It surprises him at first, but he lets you slide your arms around him and plant a reassuring kiss on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay. We’ll figure it out,” you promise. “You only just realized this shit today. And you haven’t slept in ages. And this stupid situation I have us in is stressful to begin with. There are answers. We just have to look for them together.”

“I don’t think there are answers, Birdie,” he manages finally, tearful again. “I think I’m just torturing myself with an unhealthy fantasy that can’t come true.”

You think about that for a second. “But just—why can’t it? Because, okay, I’m not agreeing to anything, I might never, but just for sake of argument, I mean—I still don’t get why you think this is so impossible.”

“The other nights,” he says, sounding so defeated about it that your heart wrenches miserably for him.

“What do you mean, Teddy?” you ask, trying to project the kind of patience and reassurance you’re not fully in command of yet but that he seems desperately to need.

“The nights when only a man can satisfy me.” He shakes his head. “Like, there is no relationship format that makes any sense for me. What does that even look like—I’m a husband, maybe even a father, five out of seven nights? And, what, the rest of the week I blow off my family to cruise gay hot spots looking for the perfect piece of ass?”

You can’t help but roll your eyes a little at this. Inwardly. You do it inwardly at least. That’s less insensitive.

“Or,” you point out, “you have a unique relationship that accommodates your different situation, because you and your partner are open with each other about your needs and desires, and you have another long-term partner to get those other needs met. Unless you were kidding yourself about the commitment thing.”

He shakes his head a vigorous no. You can’t tell if he means, no he’s not kidding about his capacity for commitment, or no he thinks your ideas about alternative relationship structures are stupid.

You both sit there in silence while you try to figure out what to say next, when he says, right into your breasts which he’s been crying on and as far as you can tell, generally just snotting them up, “I can’t just try it out and hope for the best like I would something else. Not with you. If I fuck up with you, that’s it. I only get one shot with you. I—” His voice breaks again and you can tell he’s about to get started again.

Your boobs are starting to itch a little, where Dex wet your tank top with tears and then hugged you so hard the material plastered itself to your tits, so you gently detach him. “C’mere,” you whisper, so he’ll know you’re not shoving him off, and pull his head unresisting onto your shoulder. “Shh,” you murmur, stroking his hair. It’s probably a little much, but it feels good, to comfort him like this.

“I’m such a fucking mess,” he says after a minute. “How am I supposed to be with anybody? My whole thing precludes anything remotely normal. What kind of relationship can survive like that long-term, with one partner fucking somebody else on a regular basis? It’s laughable.”

“Maybe if that hall pass is as one-sided as you just made it sound,” you say. “But I still give it better odds than the one where you just called my idea laughable.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he says, and starts to pull away, probably so he can elaborate unnecessarily on that, but you stop him with a hand on his chest.

“Forget it. I was just making a point that you shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand just because you didn't think of it first.”

“Oh. Well, did you have more you wanted to add to your point?” he asks.

“That’s better,” you say. “And no. Don’t be so self-absorbed. For me the headline for this conversation is, there’s still some chance yet that I’m not the unfuckable hag I thought.”

The gamble pays off. He laughs, sounding a little surprised that he still can.

Your whole chest cavity is full to bursting in that moment, with how profoundly you love Dex’s wonderful laugh. His real laugh, not the self-aware laugh he uses for other people. That one's fine. But you love the laugh he uses with you.

He lifts his head then and meets your eyes. The two of you fall silent.

And shit… you can’t help it. It’s stupid. It’s so stupid, and irresponsible, and—ugh. You know you shouldn’t. But.

Just like you’ve known for a few minutes now you were probably going to, you tilt your head and touch your lips to his. There’s a second in there where he returns the kiss with almost aggressive, eager intensity, and then he comes back to himself enough that his better sense gets hold of him again. Dex recoils instinctively from you, pulling back, eyes wide and shocked. “You—I—you don’t have to do this,” he falters, looking down at his chair like he needs to get it the hell away from you and out of your dangerous kissing range, but isn’t sure how.

“You need to stop overthinking literally every single fucking thing,” you order him, leaning in again, ignoring his wet, tear-streaked face and runny nose to cup his face in one hand. “Nobody gets a lifetime guarantee for basically anything,” you tell him. “People die, or change, or outgrow each other. So if a girl you like kisses you, don't do stupid shit like try to talk her out of it. Dumbass,” you add, more flippantly than you feel.

But it works. He stares at you a second, nods, and this time he’s the one pulling you in.

First thing: So, neither of you is a very good kisser. You scrape teeth, both laugh nervously, then try again, only this time Dex gets an itch on his nose that he can’t scratch without pulling out of the kiss, which makes you both laugh again. It’s fine that you’re terrible kissers, though. Because it feels good anyway, and you’re doing it together, and most of that good feeling isn’t anything to do with the kiss itself anyway. It’s about wanting, and being wanted back, and reassuring each other, and, all right, fine—it’s also about the steady throb between your thighs. He talked a lot about sex, all right?

Besides, you’re not alone. You’re pretty sure he’s pitching a tent right now.

You reach up and tweak his nose, to show that you’re a good sport who doesn’t care about the incredible awkwardness, and lean back in to renew your efforts. You’re breathing through your nose, so you don’t have to pause for air, as your heart picks up and immediately starts scrambling your brains because everything you’re interested in right now is dictated by the excited yearning currently unfurling in your center and between your legs.

You’re a little curious, in the back of your mind, how far you’ll both let this go, when Dex momentarily raises his hands and then drops them again as if he isn’t sure what to do with them. It makes you grin into the kiss, then catch his hand in yours. “It’s okay,” you whisper, setting his hand on your breast and enjoying it immensely when his reaction to that is to stop breathing for a second. “You can touch.”

Dex still seems uncertain, and it almost makes you giggle how he leaves his hand sitting where you put it, as he needs your permission either to remove it or actually do anything with his vantage point. He's too nervous to actually move it or do anything more than be blown away about your nipple standing up under his fingers. But it’s fine. Because he does lean back into the kiss and you part your lips to let his tongue in. You’re already getting better at this.

Your reflexes are still slowed enough by your hangover that when Dex suddenly jerks his hand off your tit and shoves his chair abruptly away from you, you’re a little caught off guard because you never actually heard the footsteps outside. So you wind up simply staring in open-mouthed surprise at the sorry sight of Scott standing in the door, soaking wet and miserable.

“Hi!” you offer. Um. Yeah. That’s all you’ve got right now. Hi.