Ryan refused the pain meds that Nathan held out—they made him sleepy, and he didn’t want sleepy and disoriented. He wanted real. He wanted to try and kiss Nathan, hug Nathan, sleep next to Nathan, and he needed to feel tonight, really feel.
Somehow Nathan had managed to help him shower, covering his neck, washing his hair. He’d left Ryan sitting on the edge of the bed wrapped in a towel, promising he would be back soon.
When he returned, he was laden down with spicy smelling hot pizza and Walmart bags that revealed new jeans, clean T-shirts, sweatshirts, and heavens, new boxers. It was like Christmas. Nathan grabbed the quickest shower in history, foregoing a shave, then they both dressed in the new Ts and boxers. Ryan felt almost human and they sat cross-legged opposite each other on the bed, eating pizza, Ryan struggling a bit but managing to eat some of it nonetheless.
When he finished, Nathan placed the box on the floor next to the bed and returned to what appeared to now be his favorite pastime, staring at Ryan. Ryan, for his part, decided he needed to touch, needed to feel, and he ran hands over broad shoulders and against hot skin, relearning Nathan’s body, cupping his face and leaning in to touch lips. They couldn’t do much more. Nathan still struggled to breathe with his broken ribs, but Ryan was content to touch, to be touched. Soft breaths were exchanged with eyes closed and fingers seeking anchors in soft T-shirt material.
“Love you,” Ryan whispered against Nathan’s lips. Nathan caught the words close to him, savored the feel of them, and craved their warmth.
“I love you too.”
Ryan traced Nathan’s lips with the tip of his tongue, darting in for a quick taste before retreating to lie back on the bed on his front, encouraging Nathan to lie as close as was comfortable. Nathan switched off the light and pulled the covers over them. Sleep claimed them both before they even had time for conscious thought.
Ryan woke in the night, unable to move from the pain, and must have made a noise because Nathan was instantly awake and right there with water and medicine. He helped Ryan to lie on his stomach, when before he had been lying on his side, and Ryan sighed in thanks. Some of the tension knotting in him started to dissipate. He turned his head to face Nathan, knowing this was a conversation he needed to have, but Nathan beating him to it.
“Some of these marks on your back may scar,” Nathan started softly. “I am so sorry.”
“No…’pology,” Ryan muttered.
“I should never have run. If I’d stayed in New York then none of this would have happened,” Nathan pointed out, sorrow filling his voice, his hands twisted in his short hair, a kind of raw despair on his face. Ryan pushed through the pain, lifting a hand to capture one of Nathan’s, easing it down to hold it as tight as he could.
“Made…you…run.” He pushed the words out, pronouncing each as clearly as he could. Tears formed in his eyes from a combination of pain and distress at what he was saying; Nathan could have died on that mountain, the same way that David Jackson had, trapped in the burning and twisted metal. It didn’t bear thinking about. The thought of losing Nathan, of losing him to the fire, his body… It was too much to even think about, let alone articulate.
“Ryan, you need to sleep. Shut your eyes.”
Ryan closed his eyes, his hand still loose in Nathan’s, and he let Nathan’s voice wash over him as the painkillers started their work on his tortured muscles and stretched tight, hot skin.
* * * * *
Nathan carried on a one-sided conversation, willing Ryan to relax and let sleep take him to a place where he could begin to heal. “Do you remember when we first met, when I had that first callback, and it was just us, you and your camera and I was alternating between being pissed I had lost the last job and overwhelmed that I had gotten to work with you?”
He waited for Ryan to nod, a sleepy smile loosening his tight, pain-thinned lips, before continuing.
“You walked in; I had Googled you, checked out your portfolio, and you were nothing like what I was expecting. I mean, the gossip columns said you were tall, but when I stood up and you were still like towering over me, I felt so small. Then to add insult to injury, your hands, dude, so big and warm. When we shook hands, you won’t believe what went through my head. Do you know there and then I knew I was screwed, I mean, I had to do the whole model thing, and I was crushing so hard on you. So yeah, screwed.”
Nathan looked down at Ryan’s face, his features relaxed in sleep, his breathing even and shallow. “Worst of all though, Ryan, it wasn’t lust. It wasn’t really crushing. It was like I knew you were the other half of me, and I just had to wait for you to see that I was the other half of you.”
He shifted and winced in pain. His damn hip was giving him grief and he hoped to hell he’d get full movement back in it soon. His chest hurt, every part of him seemed bruised, but contented, he lay down as close to Ryan as he could get and let sleep take him as quickly as he could.
In the morning Nathan had to help Ryan dress entirely as Ryan’s muscles kept spasming, and pain was etched on his face. Nathan handed him water and meds, which Ryan downed immediately with a grateful smile.
They had decided they were going back to New York and had arranged for both sets of parents to meet them there with the extended families. He was desperate to meet his new niece, and so thankful he was alive to do so. Nathan was utterly convinced with quiet certainty that for the foreseeable future, where Ryan was, Nathan would be. No, not even just for the near future, but on a much more permanent basis. Splitting their time between New York and wherever Nathan ended up with his acting was something that they agreed on.
Finally they could get the happy-ever-after they had nearly thrown away.
* * * * *
Day twelve after the earthquake was a milestone. They were still in the hotel but the heavy bandages and stitches that had been applied to Ryan’s back in the field needed removing, and Nathan knew Ryan was apprehensive. In fact, on the way to the closest hospital he admitted he scared to death wondering what the doctor would find on his back. He hadn’t let anyone touch his back or his throat, and Nathan was struggling to understand why.
“Because you might hate it,” Ryan blurted out suddenly, his throat infinitely better. At least he was talking, not quite at full Ryan level, but slowly getting there. This odd response was a result of Nathan’s insistence on wanting to be in the room when they assessed the injuries. It wasn’t the first time Nathan had pushed, and if he didn’t get his way, it wouldn’t be the last, but those words were so at odds with what he thought Ryan might say it stunned Nathan into premature silence.
“Okay, I’m shallow,” Ryan continued. “I know it’s stupid, but people say I have a nice back, soft, smooth, strong, and I was kinda proud of it.” His breathing hitched, and Nathan knew the signs of an oncoming Ortiz breakdown.
“Proud of your back?” Nathan tried not to sound incredulous, but he must have sounded just that way because the response he got from Ryan was instant and messy. Ryan slumped down onto the bed.
“I don’t really mean that; I don’t know what I mean. I just don’t know.”
Nathan fell to his knees in front of Ryan, peering up at his him through his hair. “It’s not shallow to worry about what you look like, Ryan. Jeez, my whole career kinda depends on it at the moment.”
“I’m not…” Ryan swallowed, his eyes still leaking, his hands twisted in the covers on either side of him. “Jesus, fuck, Nathan, I don’t give a shit about…what I look like…I don’t know what I mean.”
“Ryan, you’re not making any sense.”
“Like I don’t know that. This is all screwed to hell. Ignore me, I’m just…will you stay with me?” Ryan stared straight into Nathan’s eyes, his brown eyes sparkling with unshed tears.
“Of course I will, Ryan, you know I’ll go in with you, hold your hand,” Nathan reassured gently.
“I-I didn’t mean that, not really, I meant, even if I am scarred and shit, will you stay with me?”
Nathan sat back on his heels, feeling as if a huge weight had just knocked him sideways. This was what was upsetting Ryan? The thought that Nathan couldn’t love a less than physically perfect body? Nathan’s first reaction was anger. Did Ryan really think he was that shallow? His next reaction was that Ryan’s head wasn’t right. They had literally been to hell and back. No wonder he was screwed up.
Then it kind of hit him all at once. Ryan had hinted several times that Nathan didn’t have to stay with him, that it was okay if was too badly hurt and scarred and Nathan felt it was all too much. This latest outburst was just another way of giving Nathan an out, and it was the last time that this was being brought up if Nathan had anything to do with it.
“When you found me in the apartment, Ryan, when I was pinned down by my legs under that steel, what if I’d been paralyzed when you pulled me out?”
“Fuck, Nathan.”
“Seriously. Imagine there was no fire and someone came to help and I got out, but what if I could never walk again? What would you do?”
“Do?”
“Would you leave me?”
“No!”
“And what if I’d had some kind of scarring from the fire? On my face? I wouldn’t have a career as an actor anymore. Would you try and understand why it all happened or would you have run screaming for the hills?”
Ryan looked shocked. “Shit, I wouldn’t do that, you know I wouldn’t,” he said. Clearly realization hit him as to what Nathan was saying. He looked down at his lap.
“So, time to get you to the hospital and get you sorted, pretty boy, yeah?”
* * * * *
The doctor took some details, simple stuff, nothing too heavy. Questions that even Nathan could answer. He strayed into some heavier questions, made some brief suggestions about therapy, both physical and psychological, and Nathan sensed Ryan tensing next to him. He filed the reaction away for further thought.
Then it was time. Time for the doctor to start peeling away the dressings. He called in a nurse, donned gloves, pulled a tray closer and gently reassured Ryan. Nathan pulled a chair over to sit next to Ryan’s head, and the doctor began, keeping up a running dialogue of what he was doing. “…difficult to see through some of the swelling… If we cut this away… Can I have some local here? Looking good… What we have here are some very healthy-looking wounds, Mr Ortiz. …did a good job. You may have a scar there, nothing plastic surgery won’t fix…”
“I won’t be doing that. If it scars, it scars,” Ryan said, wincing at the pain and smiling at the same time.
“What about your pretty back?” Nathan smirked, reaching over and touching Ryan’s hand softly.
“Are you ever gonna forget I said that?”
“Never.”
“Bastard.”
“Yep, but you know you love me.”
“Yeah, I do.”