“Um, okay . . .” Tierney took another of those heavy breaths. Like an inverse sigh. “I’ll do it.”
“Go.” Dalton released his hand. “Do it someplace private. I’ll be here when you’re done.”
Tierney stared at him, eyes big and bottomless, nearly pure green. “I kinda need you to be,” he whispered.
“I promise.” He couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward and hugging him, just a quick one. A friendly, supportive, encouraging embrace, before Tierney inhaled deeply one more time, took his phone off the coffee table, and walked down the hallway.
Tierney spent a half hour on the phone with Marty before coming back to the living room to find Dalton still there. Thank God. The dude had the television figured out, even though it took three remotes to get anything to stream with sound. But Dalton had it ready to watch, the menu for Star Trek: The Next Generation displayed on the screen.
He looked up from the magazine he was flipping through and smiled, tilting his head back to see Tierney, his bright hair falling away, brushing the back of a cushion. Tierney’d never felt so welcomed to his own couch. “What’re you reading?” Not that he cared, but he had to say something.
“Um . . .” Dalton bent the cover over his hand so they could both see it. “National Geographic.”
“I get that?”
“It’s addressed to you.”
Tierney came around the front of the sofa, and for a second he was pretty sure Dalton was checking him out. Then it hit him that the jeans he’d changed into while talking to Marty were the same ones he’d been wearing the first time Dalton came over. Shit. Would the dude notice? Of course not. But if he did, would he think it was on purpose? Was it on purpose, but, like subconsciously?
And if it was subconsciously on purpose, what did that mean?
“What are you thinking about?” Dalton asked. Tierney’d stopped right next to him, standing there like a dork. He spent a lot of time being a dork around this guy.
“Uh, what Marty said,” he blurted. Not.
“Mmm.” Dalton patted the cushion next to him. “Want to sit and watch some television? You don’t have to think about this anymore tonight, do you?”
Tierney collapsed onto the sofa. “I don’t,” he sighed.
Dalton nodded, then picked up the relevant remote. “You wanna pick an episode or you want me to?”
“You. I don’t watch this series.”
“Cool.” He grinned, pointing the thing at the screen as if it were a phaser. “I’ll make you watch all my favorites.”
He hoped Dalton had a lot of them and he’d want to stay for, like, a month, making Tierney view them all. That’s all they’d do, except order pizza. Well, he’d probably stare at Dalton a lot, and maybe figure out what he had to do to get the guy to hug him again. Or just hold his hand.
“You’ll like this one.” Dalton’s murmur brought Tierney’s attention back to the present from potential futures. “It’s sort of a remake of an episode from the original series.” As the title flashed on the screen—“The Naked Now,” which sounded promising—Dalton slouched into the couch, settling himself, smiling at Tierney when he did the same.
Tierney recognized the episode’s main issue as something that Kirk had dealt with in his day—a virus that caused the crew to go nuts and start offing themselves—but he couldn’t say whether he liked the show or not. He mostly thought about other shit, like Marty’s sigh when he’d said he hadn’t contacted the local counselor and Marty’s reaction when Tierney’d confessed to calling Dalton for support.
“Dalton,” Marty had repeated. Then Tierney heard the dude typing on a keyboard. After a few seconds of that, Marty said, “We discussed him in some of your sessions.”
Uh-oh. “Yeah . . .”
“Having a lover as your main support person isn’t usually a good idea.”
“He’s not my lover, really. I mean, yeah, I totally want him to be, but, you know . . .” He’d taken a deep breath. “You warned me about not entering into any new relationships. He’s fine with that. We’re just friends.”
“Okay,” Marty had said in that tone Tierney knew meant it really wasn’t okay. “I’d still urge you to find someone else as your primary backup.”
“You’re thinking so hard I can hear it.” Dalton’s hand landed on Tierney’s thigh and squeezed, reminding him he wasn’t on the phone anymore. The guy had paused the show, but Tierney hadn’t noticed.
He tried to smile in response.
“You need to give yourself a break,” Dalton continued.
“I’m pretty much all about the self-recrimination. Giving myself a break isn’t in my repertoire.”
Dalton didn’t laugh at the joke, which made sense because it was lame. “It isn’t, huh?” He tilted his head, then said, “As your official support network, I’m going to make you.”
“You are?”
“Yes,” Dalton said firmly, standing up. “Friend cuddling. Now. Lie down.”
Oh thank God.
Friend cuddling was very successful, from Tierney’s perspective. Other perspectives might not agree.
This time, Dalton lay behind him, arm wrapped around his waist while they continued watching whatever the hell—Tierney squinted at the screen, trying to remember, but a haze of non-friend hormones was swarming, fogging up the higher reasoning centers of his brain and gathering in his groin.
Oh yeah. Star Trek: TNG.
That was the last bit of attention Tierney paid to the television, preoccupied by the proximity of Dalton’s groin to his ass. Because Dalton was shorter than him, in order to see over Tierney’s shoulder he had to be propped up a little higher, which meant his thighs made the perfect haven for Tierney’s butt. They were just the right shape to cup the curve of his cheeks, aligned so that Dalton’s hard leg muscles pressed against the underside of Tierney’s ass, and every time the dude shifted even a centimeter, the sensation rolled through Tierney, resonating in the sensitive spot right behind his balls.
Was it his imagination, or had Dalton’s breathing gotten choppy?
“This might have been a bad idea,” Dalton whispered after a few minutes, providing the context Tierney needed: that he wasn’t the only one trying not to squirm or—fuck—rock his hips rhythmically.