After the first major article picking apart their relationship, there've been a half-dozen more vultures circling in the past week. Every now and then, some little celebrity news asshole with nothing better to do than make crap up about his and Cin's love life will write a hundred-word article or post a tweet that Tom would honestly punch them in the face for if they said it in front of him. He wouldn't even regret being all over the papers the next day for it, or the series of lectures he'd get from Poppy. Up until now, he'd thought Cin was just rising above it like the amazing person he was, but maybe Tom missed the signs.
"Well, one particular blogger thinks you could do better than me, which we both know isn't true." Cin chuckles with a strong hint of hysteria. Tom can feel him throwing walls up again and he needs to get to the bottom of this before Cin decides not to tell him, because Cin is not the kind of person who cries over nothing.
"You could do way better than me," Tom agrees. "But that's not what's wrong."
"Right." Cin's breath hitches. The tears aren't completely gone yet. "I got an email from my dad."
"Oh."
"
Oh
." Cin pulls back a little, tear tracks shining on his cheeks. He laughs again and it's no less hysterical than last time. "If I'm not home by the end of the week, I'm disowned, apparently. They want to get me
help
. I assume that'll involve a blindfold, a white van, and a camp in the middle of the desert."
Tom hesitates. "Are you going home?"
"God, no." Cin wets his lips. "I am home. Here, with you. I just… There's a lot of mutual hate between me and my parents, but I wasn't ready to lose them, either. And now I am."
"I'm no expert here, but speaking from experience, the sooner you let go, the easier it'll be." He still thinks about his own parents from time to time, but less often lately. He's got his own loving family to think about now.
"I know. Am I allowed to be sad, though?"
"Duh. It is a sad thing. Just remember that other people love you so much and they'd never hurt you or want you to be different. Not just me. Poppy and Rachel as well. And there's gonna be so many more. You don't need anyone who doesn't love you like that."
Cin snuggles close to Tom again. "I just need to be sad for a while. You can go back to sleep."
"Nah." Tom suppresses the urge to yawn. "I'm not tired, anyway."
*~*~*
"Cin says hi." Tom grins up at Rachel when she meets him in the coffee shop they agreed to do their interview in. "He also says you have to keep me out of the house for at least a couple of hours because I'm driving him nuts hovering."
"I'm not even a little surprised by that." Rachel smiles wryly. "You seem like the kind of guy who hovers."
"Yeah, well." Tom chuckles self-deprecatingly. "You got me there. Anyway, you look great. Having fun?"
"I feel like I work thirty hours a day. It's genuinely exactly as I imagined, and I love it, and I owe you big time for setting up that interview for me."
"Nah. You got the job yourself on merit. All I did was get you through the door, which you probably coulda done on your own."
"You know what? I'm going to choose to believe that." She pulls out a tablet and sets it up on the table between them. "So. What do you want to say about Cin? And is it okay if I record this, so I don't have to call you, like, ten times to check?"
"Record away. And, uh. He wants me to tell you first that he's okay with being out as transgender because people kinda already know and he might as well take the opportunity to demystify it. I want to tell you that I love him even more for it, because he trusts me and I'm honored by that."
"Okay, cool. So how did you guys meet?"
Tom smiles into his coffee as he remembers. "He more or less called me a capitalist pig after I gave him a cup of coffee. Huge turn-on."
"Cin never told me that part. The capitalist pig part, anyway. He was too busy waxing lyrical about how hot you were."
"Really?"
"Really. I agree, for the record."
A dark blush creeps up Tom's neck and he squirms in his seat, embarrassed. He's always sort of thought of himself as unthreateningly average, not hideous or anything, but nothing to write home about, either. Apparently Cin's always thought differently, not just after he started to fall for him. That's a nice little ego boost.
"Yeah, well, it took us a little while to really get together. Cin's hard to impress, but I'm into challenges."
"So you're a genius software engineer and Cin freaks out when his laptop goes to sleep unexpectedly. Do you end up doing a lot of his computer repairs? Is it weird for you to be dating a millennial who can’t figure out social media?"
"I'm thinking of writing him his own Cin-proof operating system, to be honest… It is a little weird, but it’s better than
me
not understanding social media. I built a lot of that infrastructure myself, you know."
"I know. We have a whole primer file on you. Also, I wouldn’t let my best friend date someone I hadn’t fully researched and approved."
Tom chuckles. "I’m glad you approved me. I do love him, you know. Really. More than anything."
"I know you do. He loves you, too, for the record."
"Yeah. I know he loves me. I don't think I've ever been this comfortable. I know I sound like a sap, but I just. I want him for keeps."
Rachel's eyes widen. "So are there wedding bells in the future? Do I have to steer him toward the least hideous bridesmaid's dress I can find?"
"I haven't got any plans?" Tom rubs the back of his neck. He's thought about it more than once, just a flash of asking Cin to marry him. He doesn't even know how Cin feels about the general concept of marriage, so maybe it's not something they'll ever do, but he has thought about it. "If I
was
gonna do anything, I'd wait until after he's really settled after his surgery. I don't want to tie him to me and have him feel later like I tricked him into it while he was weak. If I asked him, I'd wanna be sure he was saying yes 'cause he wanted it, not just to make me happy."
"Wow." Rachel blinked. "You've put a lot of thought into this, huh?"
"Kinda. I want him to be happy. That's all."
"God, you're good to him." Rachel sits back in her chair and stares. "Congratulations. I actually think you deserve Cin."
Tom smiles sheepishly. "That is serious approval. Thanks. It honestly means a lot."
"You’re welcome. But no immediate plans for a wedding." She nods, glancing at her tablet. "Can I ask you about your sex life or should I just extrapolate from what I heard while you were over?"
"Uh." Tom's face heats up. Cin had said it was okay to talk about that kind of thing, and Rachel wouldn't ask if she didn't think he'd be all right with it, but it was still a helluva question. "Satisfying?" he squeaks.
Rachel raises a perfectly-shaped eyebrow. "Satisfying. Okay. And you paid for Cin's hormone treatment and surgery. What convinced you to do that? For the readers."
"He needed it and I could give it to him." Tom doesn't need to think about his reply. Cin probably still thinks he'd have done the same for anyone, but it's always been because Cin means everything to him. "I love him. I loved him since he invited me to stay the night in his dorm room. I want him to be totally, perfectly happy with everything about himself."
"Aww. Sweet." Rachel smiles again. "Is it cool with you if I put Cin's side of the story next to yours?"
"Sure. I'm actually really interested to read what he says."
"Do you think I've kept you away long enough?" Rachel chuckles and sips her herbal tea, which Tom assumes is cold by now, but then, maybe that's how you're supposed to drink it. Both Rachel and tea confuse him at the best of times.
"Not nearly, but I'm going back anyway. You should come over for dinner or something. Give Cin a little company that isn't me for a change."
"I might just do that." Rachel offers her hand. "Pleasure doing business with you."
Tom's happy to see Rachel doing well and he can't think of anyone he'd trust more to tell his and Cin's story. He can't wait to hear what Cin has to tell her.
*~*~*
"'I didn't know until I saw him in person that he was the perfect sexy older man,'" Tom quotes from Rachel's magazine article. "That's sweet, Cin."
"I knew I shouldn't have let you read it." Cin makes another half-hearted grab for the proof, but Tom holds it just out of reach. He's gotten most of his freedom of movement back, scars still raised and angry-red, but the doctors say that's normal and they'll fade to almost invisible in the next few months. In the meantime, they're really sensitive, which gives Tom the opportunity to play with Cin in all kinds of new ways.
Now that Cin's
almost
healed, they're having a lot more fun being together all the time.
"It says here that you love me. No take-backs now." Tom grins, waving the article again. "It's in black and white."
"Yeah, well. I'm still mostly here for your body." Cin chews on his toast, apparently resigned to letting Tom read and re-read to his heart's content. "Rachel wants us to do a photo shoot for it to get a couple of good pictures. I told her I'd ask you."
"Doesn't her magazine have a no-alterations policy on photos?" Tom's not sure he wants totally unedited, high-quality pictures of himself out there in the world. Especially next to someone as young and gorgeous as Cin. Fourteen months into his hormone treatment, his second run through puberty has left him completely stunning. Not that he wasn't beautiful before, as far as Tom was concerned, but he's seen the way people look at Cin now.
"If you're not comfortable with that, we don't have to. But the only pictures I have of us together aren't really fit to print in anything but a porn mag." Cin grins. "Not that I'd share them without your permission."
"I'm almost certain Rachel wouldn't wanna see them, anyway." Tom smiles wryly. Cin's right: in all their time together, he's never gotten a half-decent photo of them both. This would be an opportunity to do that, and Tom
does
want to show Cin off physically, as well as in terms of how happy he makes him.
"If it makes any difference at all, I realized I was in love with you while I was staring at your crow's feet. I don't really think you need alteration. I see you without it every day and I haven't exactly turned away in disgust yet, have I?" Cin looks at Tom contemplatively for a few long moments.
"Get undressed," Cin orders decisively. "I'll be right back."
Tom watches Cin disappear before he can say anything. He hesitates at first, but then starts stripping down as asked, because Cin telling him to get undressed almost always ends well. He's just pulling his second sock off when Cin reappears with his arms full of artist's supplies.
"You're gonna paint me?" Tom raises an eyebrow. He's seen the sketchbook full of drawings of himself that Cin keeps by their bed. Cin had threatened more than once to paint and display a huge, nude study of him, but no such painting had ever turned up. As far as Tom knows, anyway. He's pretty sure he'd have heard about it if it existed.
"Exactly." Cin grabs yesterday's newspaper and covers the kitchen table efficiently. "Do you need help to get up?"
It takes Tom a few seconds to figure out what Cin wants. "On the table?"
Cin pulls out a chair for him. "Obviously. We could do it on the floor, but it'd get cold quickly."
"You're gonna paint
on
me." Tom licks his lips. "I'm not sure…"
"The paint is non-toxic. And it feels great, believe me.
And
I'll help you wash it off when I'm done."
Tom considers for a second longer, but then climbs up onto the table without further protest. The idea makes him inexplicably nervous. He's had Cin's hands all over him a hundred times, but this seems different. Cin expects him to be
art
, this time, and Tom isn't sure he can do that.
He watches Cin set up on the kitchen bench, filling an old, paint-stained jar with water and tucking a rag into his pocket, opening up a tin full of children's watercolors. Tom remembers Cin coming home with them, insisting they were exactly what he needed for certain projects and then showing Tom the results later to prove it. He can do some pretty impressive things with cheap watercolors, as it turns out.
"This is going to tickle, but tell me if it starts getting uncomfortable anywhere." Cin makes a long stroke down Tom's side. He tries to watch what he's doing, but holding his head up is hurting his neck. "No peeking," Cin reprimands, tapping him lightly just under his belly button with the brush.
Tom resigns himself to looking up at the ceiling, which is probably ready for a new paint job. Maybe Cin could do a mural up there. Maybe when he's ridiculously famous and successful, they'll turn the place into a museum to him. Keep a part of him around for generations to come, so more people than he can touch in a lifetime can come appreciate him, as they should.
"It does tickle." Tom squirms away from the brush automatically, even though he's been trying to force himself not to move. Cin just chuckles and keeps going, applying more paint in cooling, ticklish strokes.
Occasionally, when he's been especially still for a while, Cin leans over and kisses him, dabbing paint on his cheeks, nose, and jaw while he's there. Tom moans softly when Cin takes to painting his neck, conditioned by now to respond to Cin's borderline obsession with it.
It seems like hours before Cin pauses, steps back, and silently declares Tom done with a nod of his head. "I'll be back in a second. Don't move."
Cin's taking pictures of him before Tom realizes what's happening. "I hope you're not instant-uploading these or anything."
"Nope. This is just for you and me," Cin says, without stopping. "Once you're dry, we can go look in the mirror."
Tom waits patiently while the paint dries on his skin, feeling it tighten all over him like the world's most colorful all-over mud pack. Not that he… well. He owns more face products than Rachel had when Cin was living with her. He's only just convinced Cin that moisturizer isn't out to get him, so he can't even pretend they're there for Cin's benefit.