Release(33)

“No,” Adam said, immediately. But then he wondered. Because underneath everything else, today was the day Enzo left forever.

“I don’t mind,” Linus said, sounding like he minded.

“You should mind. I mind.”

Linus lowered his head until his chin rested on Adam’s chest. “I wish I knew how he got a hook so deep in your heart. He’s not even very nice.”

“No,” Adam said. “Well, he could be, but no. Not on the whole.”

Linus tapped his middle finger over Adam’s actual heart. “And yet he’s still in there.”

“It’s not him, Linus, that’s not why I’m crying.”

“Maybe a little.”

“Maybe a little. But if so, then only a little.” He wondered if that were true. He hoped it was. And maybe it was.

“Then what is it?”

“Linus–”

“Is it me?”

“No–”

“I know he told you lies. Or things he believed were true when he said them but he let be untrue later. I haven’t done that, Adam. And I’m not an angel here or anything, but I haven’t lied to you. Not about us. Not about how I feel.”

“I know–”

“Is it the height difference?”

“Jesus, no–”

“Is it because I’m more obviously gay than you, because sometimes there’s internal homophobia–”

“It’s definitely not that.”

“So it is something?”

Adam suddenly felt like he was falling, like the centre of the bed beneath him had opened up and he had tumbled through, leaving Linus on the lip, looking down on him, too far to reach. All the time. He felt like this all the time. That everyone up there was out of reach. Linus, even Angela sometimes, definitely his family– “Don’t leave me unloved.” Linus repeated his words. “What did you mean? It can’t be that Enzo was the only one who loved you because–”

“That’s not it. It isn’t.”

“Then what?”

Adam breathed now. There it sat. There it always sat, waiting to be said. “Oh, hell. I know what it is.”

“What is it?”

“Why I haven’t been letting myself love you back. Not properly.”

Linus’s forehead crimped at this, like he’d just taken a small blow.

“No,” Adam said, “I don’t mean it like that.”

“Then how do you mean it?”

“Linus, I…”

“I can’t love you any more than I do,” Linus said, sadly. “I don’t know how. I keep hoping it’s enough. If it’s not–”

“It is. It’s me who’s got the issue.”

Linus started to pull away. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew you couldn’t let him go–”

“It’s really not Enzo, Linus, I swear.”

Linus was sitting up now, looking down at him, wounded. He waited, though.

“Today,” Adam said, “this morning, Marty stopped me on my run to tell me about the girl he got pregnant and how they were going to get married and how her name meant happiness or something.”

“This is the Russian girl?”

“Belarusian, and no, someone new.”

“Go Marty.”

“But he said… We were talking and he said…” Adam’s throat tightened and he grimaced. “He said what I feel isn’t real love. That I think it is, but it isn’t. That I’m fooling myself because…”

Linus finished for him. “Because how could this ever be as real as the girl he got pregnant after meeting her five minutes ago.”

Adam looked at Linus, almost desperately, his eyes widening. “Oh, my God. Linus, I believed him. I believed him. I still believe him. There’s still a voice in my head saying this isn’t real, that it can’t be.”

“Because I’m not a girl?”

“That, and because…” He couldn’t finish, his throat was too tight, his face screwed up, the tears coming painfully now, like a choke. Linus gently pulled himself closer again, onto Adam’s chest, touching Adam’s face lightly.

“Because,” Linus said, finishing Adam’s sentence again, “Adam Thorn doesn’t deserve it. And never will.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said.

“You are so not the one who should be sorry.” Linus kissed Adam’s nose, chin, lips. Adam just cried for a little while more, but then he began to kiss Linus back. And some more. He could taste himself in Linus’s mouth, smell his own body on Linus’s lips, knew Linus could do the same. The kisses grew deeper, hungrier. Adam could feel himself responding, could feel Linus responding.

But it was different from before. That was great fun, the usual smiles, the togetherness, but this was… This was intimacy.

He put his hands down Linus’s body, pressed it into his own, smelled it, touched it, put his ear against Linus’s chest to hear his heart, but always returning to the kiss, always, always. They didn’t speak this time, but Linus was here, right now, in this space, with Adam, nosing his way into Adam’s crevices, hands pulling him closer and closer, as if trying to merge them into one person, and with a gentle push, guiding himself back inside Adam, an act that didn’t feel like penetration, but like combination.