The One That Got Away (2 page)

Trace’s hands paused in their rubbing. “What do you mean ‘still’?”

he asked, brow furrowing. “Is the migraine going to get worse?” he asked in concern, restarting the massage gently. It bothered him to see his best friend hurting so much.

“Yeah, if I can head them off in the first hour, sometimes one dose will make them go away, but when they get a good foothold like it did today, it is usually twenty-four hours. The problem is that I can only take a dose every six hours and the pain relief lasts four at best.” David told himself he should move, but Trace’s fingers felt so good that he couldn’t bring himself to tell him to stop. 

“What for-shit meds are those?” Trace asked, exasperated. “All right. Get a shower. Sure I can’t fix you something to eat?” He slowly pulled his hands out of his friend’s hair, not wanting to pull it and cause David any more pain. He brushed the fluffed bangs out of David’s eyes.

“Yeah, I should try to eat. Check the pantry and see if I have any soup. Needs to be broth, not cream.” David grimaced as he moved off the bed. “I’m gonna leave the door open. Between the headache and the meds, I might be a little unstable.”

“Just be careful, David. You don’t need a broken arm or something,”

Trace said, standing up and watching David cautiously to make sure he at least made it to the bathroom.

Stripping out of his clothes, David sat on the edge of the tub to keep from leaning over while he started the shower. Stepping into the warm spray, he braced his hands on the cool tile wall and let the water sluice over his body. Between the medicine, Trace’s hands, and the shower, he was actually feeling pretty good. When he started to feel a little shaky, he got out and reached for a towel, blotting the skin of his upper body. It was amazing how sensitive a migraine made everything. Bending down to dry his legs, the room started to spin. “Fuck,” was all he got out as the world tilted and went black.

Trace was in the kitchen stirring the soup when he heard a loud thump. His eyes widened and he dropped the spoon and ran, yanking himself around the corner and barreling down the hall into the bedroom and to the bathroom door. “Shit!” he swore, seeing David sprawled on the floor awkwardly. He knelt down and pulled him into more of a sitting position, feeling around the back of his head, relieved to find no blood.

Heart still pounding from the scare, he cursed under his breath and held David against his lap. “David. David?” He lightly patted the other man’s cheek, unsure what to do.

Pinpoints of light like the sparklers kids use on the Fourth of July played on the dark backdrop of David’s eyelids. His head was throbbing again and so was his shoulder. He could hear Trace’s voice, but it sounded far away. “Trace?”

“David? Come on, open your eyes. Please? You’re scaring the hell outta me.”

The voice was closer—clearer—and worried. Without opening his eyes, David spoke. “I’m okay. Head just hurts like hell. The last thing I remember was being in the shower.”

“Yeah, well, now you’re on the floor. Did you hurt anything? Did you hit your head?”

“I don’t know.” David opened his eyes and winced, immediately closing them again. “My shoulder hurts too.”

The quick flutter of David’s eyes wasn’t enough for Trace to judge his condition one way or another. “Which shoulder? The one you were laying on?” He slid his arm up to it, squeezing the joint gently.

“Ow! Fuck, yeah, that’d be the one. Flip the lights off, will ya, so I can hobble my way back to bed.”

“I’m helping you this time. Shit, David. You could have broken something or worse.” Trace’s voice was ragged with concern as he half-lifted David from the floor and helped him stay on his feet. It wasn’t until he slid his arm around David’s waist and his fingers touched a bare hip that he realized David was still nude.
Well,
he thought,
it won’t matter
once he’s between the sheets.

Grateful for the support, David leaned into Trace’s strength, the friction of his friend’s clothes highlighting his own lack of covering. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, whispering a silent prayer that their friendship would survive this day.

“What?” Trace asked, voice sharp with worry as they limped to the bed. “You okay? Something hurting?”

“No, I just realized I was naked as a jaybird. You should be getting hazard pay for this visit.” Sitting on the side of the bed, David nodded gingerly toward the dresser. “You want to get me some boxers so I don’t offend your delicate sensibilities?”

Trace snorted. “David, I’ve got a set of the same gear myself. I think I’ll survive the embarrassment.” He reached up and pulled down the sheets, waiting for David to shift so he could get under the covers. Then he grabbed three of the four pillows and propped him up on them. “I’ll get the soup, if it’s not scorched by now. I sort of dropped the spoon and ran,” 
he said as he left the bedroom.

David swallowed the lump in his throat, unsure if it was the thought of food or Trace’s tender concern that had put it there. Florence Nightingale was not a role he’d have ever cast Trace in, but the hard-nosed reporter made a damn fine nurse.

The soup was, indeed, ruined, so Trace dumped it into the sink and started a new pot. It only took about ten minutes, and he headed back to the bedroom with two mugs and a sleeve of crackers. “Here you go. First-class service,” he said drolly, setting the mug on the nightstand nearest David. He walked around the bed and sat on the other side, carefully opened the crackers and set them on the sheets between them.

“I can’t believe your lovers let you get away with eating crackers in bed,” David exclaimed, blowing the steam off the top of his soup.

Trace shrugged, munching on a crisp wafer. “Usually my bed, so I do what I want, right?” He sipped at the soup carefully before picking up a cracker and handing it to David. “Besides. You’re not my lover.”

David had a flash of sitting naked in bed with Trace for a reason other than illness, the easy camaraderie they shared spilling over into a more intimate relationship. He felt a momentary pang, but dismissed it as side effects from the migraine. His initial flippant retort died on his tongue and he said, “No…. No, I’m not.”

Glancing sideways at David, Trace helped himself to another cracker. “So. Four hours until you can take another pill. You ought to try to sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s time,” he suggested, thinking about the progress he could make on his performance arts center impact report in the meantime.

Setting the mug aside, still more than half-full, David slid down in the bed, the cool sheets soft against his skin. “Yeah. I think I’ll try to do that. Don’t get crumbs in my bed, Jackson.”

Trace watched him get comfortable, and then went back to his soup without comment. It wasn’t long before David’s breaths evened out, and once Trace set aside his empty mug, he watched the other man for a bit before pulling his laptop within reach and getting back to work.

A SOFT beeping woke Trace up slowly. First he frowned, trying to figure out what it was, then he tried to figure out why he was so uncomfortable.

He pried open his eyes. His focus was off because his glasses were skewed half off his face. He straightened them and looked around. 

“Oh. Yeah,” he murmured. He was at David’s—in David’s bed actually—slumped against the headboard still fully dressed and now totally wrinkled. The lamp on the table next to him threw soft light into the room, and the beeping came from his laptop’s low battery. It was tilted onto its side, having slid off Trace’s legs. Then he looked down.

David was curled up next to him, and his blond head was pillowed on Trace’s thigh. Trace’s arm was curled behind him, practically holding him in place. Bemused, he drew a breath, trying to wake up, and he yawned largely. A glance at the laptop’s clock showed it was mid-evening. He must have dropped off while working on the report. Slightly annoyed by the beeping, he shut the laptop down and carefully lifted it to set it on the nightstand. Then he looked back down at David.

He looked more relaxed, some of the warm color back in his face, most of the pained lines relieved. His usually sharp, defined features were softened in sleep, and without thinking about it, Trace slid his fingers into the roughed-up hair, petting gently. The reporter yawned again and thought about going back to sleep.

David woke into that warm, fuzzy half-asleep place and contemplated letting the meds pull him back down. He remembered waking several hours earlier when the pain returned. Trace had brought him another pill and supported him while he drank enough water to get it down. Thankfully, the second dose had knocked him back out quickly.

Taking a brief inventory of his body, he discovered that his shoulder hurt more than his head. He’d shifted into a comfortable position to get the pressure off of it and…. Suddenly alert, David rubbed his cheek over. He opened his eyes cautiously. Shit. Trace’s leg. He was trying to figure out how to gracefully extricate himself from his best friend’s lap when he saw Trace staring down at him.

“Hey,” Trace greeted softly, pulling his hand back from David’s hair. “How are you feeling?” He was somewhat surprised by how David’s 
head moving in his lap made his body take interest, but he dismissed it.

He’d always been a really tactile person, and he carried on an active sex life. It was a great outlet for stress, and he enjoyed it. He’d made peace with his touchy-feely tendencies a long time ago.

“Ah, hey,” David answered, his voice dry and raspy, one of the side effects of the medicine. “Seems like on top of everything else, I’ve used you as a pillow.” He pushed himself up slowly.

Trace smiled. “It’s okay,” he said, not moving out of place. “You look like you feel better.”

“I do. I think I might even be hungry,” David admitted with a smile.

“I’m sure as hell sick of being in this bed. If I can make it to the kitchen table, think you could heat up some more soup?”

“Sure,” Trace agreed good-naturedly. He needed to plug his laptop in anyway. He could duck out to the car and get the power cord. “Any other requests, your majesty?” he poked as he slid off the bed to stand, reaching above his head to stretch.

David turned with a cocky retort that evaporated as he watched Trace. The tall brunet’s lanky frame seemed to go on forever extended like that, wide shoulders tapering down to narrow hips. His shirt had come untucked, the bottom two buttons pulled loose, revealing a triangle of tan skin bisected by a strip of dark hair. David swallowed, his mouth all of a sudden dry for a completely different reason.

Trace yawned as he stretched and tilted his head side to side, groaning when his neck popped. He dropped his arms and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Sleeping sitting up sucks,” he muttered before stepping on a sock’s toe with one foot to pull his foot free, then working off the other sock before padding out of the bedroom barefoot.

Mute, David watched him leave. He needed to get Trace out of here.

He couldn’t imagine getting through the past eight hours without him, but the closeness was obviously messing with his head. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he let his legs stabilize before donning a pair of boxers and following Trace to the kitchen.

Trace washed out the pot first and set it back on the stove before stooping over and spinning the lazy Susan, looking for another can of soup or two. More chicken noodle. Tomato. Cheddar broccoli. Chunky vegetable beef. Yum. He pulled out the can and leaned over a little more to see the selection on the bottom shelf.

David stepped into the kitchen, feeling accomplished that he’d made it that far. “Trace.” His words stuttered to a halt. Trace had an absolutely amazing ass. Bent over, one foot slightly raised for balance, his shirt sliding up the broad, muscular back—David would have to be a heterosexual saint to resist that image, and he was neither. His groin tightened, and he felt his cock twitch and swell.
Fuck!

“Hmmm?” Trace answered before standing back up with another can of soup, reaching to tuck his hair behind one ear. “You want vegetable beef or golden mushroom?” he asked, spinning the lazy Susan closed.

Sliding into a chair, David let the table hide everything from his chest down. “Eww…. Yuck. I don’t do mushrooms. That can has been in there since my mother came to visit three years ago. She uses it to make gravy. Vegetable beef, please.” Trace’s hand drew David’s attention to the long dark hair that he enjoyed ribbing his friend about. For the first time, he wondered how it would feel. Was it soft or coarse? Apparently there were things he didn’t know about the man he thought he knew quite well.

“What do you like on your pizza?” he blurted.

“Not too fond of pizza, actually. Unless I can get something without tomato sauce. Angelo’s does a spinach alfredo pizza and a barbecue 
chicken pizza,” Trace said as he opened the can and poured it into the pot, not at all thrown by the non sequitur.

“Really? I don’t like tomato sauce either—on pizza at least. There is a little Italian place up the north coast road that does a seafood pizza with a Parmesan cream sauce that is awesome. I don’t like barbecue. Too sweet.” David couldn’t believe with all the ballgames they’d watched that they’d never discussed pizza. Beer, yes. Hot dogs and toppings, yes.

Popcorn versus cotton candy, even. What else didn’t he know?

“So. What happened with Annemarie a couple weekends ago. Is she still around?” he asked.

Trace turned to look at David. “It wasn’t serious,” he said. “She didn’t… I mean, I didn’t stick around. I don’t do sticky.”

David chuckled. “A different girl every week. playboy,” he teased.

Trace shrugged as he smiled. “Nothing wrong with that.”

David tried to think of the last time he’d had sex and was having trouble remembering. “I think I’m getting old. The whole meeting and getting to know someone thing is just too much effort, and I’m not much of a casual-sex person.”

Trace tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot and set it aside before turning around, giving David an incredulous look. “Old? David, you’re what? Forty-two? Forty-three? That’s nowhere near even approaching old.