by a carefully concealed lie that he knew wasn’t going to stay hidden for long. He deserved every bit of ache that rushed through his body, he just was hoping there would have been a softer place to land.
Archer went through his routine, his motions automatic as he fed the chameleon, then showered and changed into jogging pants and a sweater with sleeves so long, they hung to his fingers. He left his hair uncombed, his glasses slipping down his nose from the humidity, and he didn’t bother with socks as he curled up against the corner of his sofa and closed his eyes.
He’d get over it. His first heartbreak was always going to be the worst. Everyone had warned him, and he had just convinced himself that he was the sort of person who would never let anyone get that close. His research had left him disappointed, bereft, enraged, broken—but it wasn’t the same as this. He lost evidence, lost his grip on hypotheses, but none of those were warm hands and soft lips. Nor were they impossibly hard cocks pressing into the deepest parts of him and refusing to let go.
He didn’t cry, but only barely. He swiped at his cheeks a few times expecting to find tears, but apart from his throat aching, there was nothing. How could just a few days ruin him so entirely, and completely, and thoroughly?
Archer was near something like sleep when he heard the knocking on his door, and then the buzzer, and then the turn of the key in his lock. He didn’t bother looking up, but he did let out a soft noise of surprise when his brother’s familiar cologne surrounded him before large, warm arms drew him tight.
He felt ridiculous, suddenly, and horribly young. His brother had done this before, when he was trying to make sense of his life—of his parents’ deaths, of why kids were mean on the playground, and why no one ever understood what it was like to both miss his parents and be grateful they were no longer around to look at him like the thing that had ruined their carefully cultivated plans for life after kids. He let Rex hold him tight, and murmur nonsense against the top of his head, and he shuddered a couple of times with unshed tears before Rex finally let him go.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Archer laughed quietly. “I figured you’d have a lecture for me all ready to go.”
Rex’s face fell, and he looked every single second of his age right then. “I shouldn’t have asked you to come home.”
That admission alone was enough to finally and properly gut him. His face fell and the tears broke free, and he turned his head away because crying like that at his age was utterly humiliating. Rex had spent a lot of years trying to teach him that it wasn’t shameful for men to cry—and Archer had always been on the softer side—but the years had hardened him. He had to approach his work and his social life with a stiff spine and a firm jaw, so letting go like this was utterly alien.
“I’m sorry,” Rex said in a rush. He tried to hold Archer by the arm, but he pulled away from his brother.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Rex waited until Archer managed a handful of calming breaths, then he shifted a bit closer along the cushion and cupped his hand around Archer’s elbow. “I always want you home, but I realized you’ve had to do all of this on my terms. You saw me on my schedule, you visited when I was free, and you always compromised for me.”
“I know your job isn’t as flexible,” Archer said, swiping his sleeve under his nose. He almost laughed at the way Rex scowled and handed him a tissue, but he took it with a grateful smile. “I’m not…I’m not asking you to give me what you’re not capable of giving.”
“I was a coward,” Rex told him quietly. “You loved your job, but only because it was thousands of miles away from home. I knew you were lonely, and you’d grown up with almost no friends, and I did a piss-poor job at making the one you did have feel welcome.”
Archer bit the inside of his cheek. “Did you and Shen…”
“That needs to be between me and him for a while,” Rex told him. “I have a lot to make up for, because he’s been a loyal