Free When Tony Met Adam (Short Story) by Suzanne Brockmann

last month we were in a little bit of trouble, and … Well, T. wanted to make sure you knew how much he, you know, cared. Cares. About you. He didn’t want it to go unsaid. So he trusted me. I’m glad we’re meeting under much better conditions. He’s okay, by the way. The doctors are pretty sure it was food poisoning. Under normal circumstances, he would have been pretty damn sick, but since he wasn’t quite up to speed … He’s, um—”
    Dan probably would’ve just kept talking and talking if Adam hadn’t cut him off.
    “It makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t it?” he asked. “The idea of Tony and me. Together.”
    Dan laughed his surprise at Adam’s directness, and hit back with a truckload of directness of his own.“Yes, it does, but it doesn’t make me even half as uncomfortable as the idea of you taking advantage of him, or worse—coming here like this and outing him, inadvertently or not. I mean, it’s one thing if you, you know, love him, too. But from what he told me, it doesn’t particularly sound like you do. And if you’re going to fuck around with him—both literally and figuratively—and he gets discharged, only to have you ditch him a few weeks later …?
That’s
what makes me uncomfortable, because he’s a good man and a great teammate.”
    “He doesn’t love me,” Adam told this virtual stranger, confessing that which he hadn’t dared express to anyone. “He loves his idea of me. He loves the man he wants me to be. He doesn’t know me. What he feels has nothing to do with reality.”
    “His reality or yours?” Dan asked. “And why is yours more valid than his? Maybe he sees something that you can’t or won’t see because your mirror is warped. You know, I used to get into trouble—really stupid stuff—all the time when I first joined SEAL Team Sixteen. And we had an officer—he’s not with us anymore—who sat me down and told me that I had to let go of the past, because I wasn’t that kid anymore. He told me that I had to redefine myself by the people who were around me, by the company that I keep right now—today. I had to start seeing myself through the respect that I saw in their eyes.
    “Tony sees something in you. You might want to take another, more careful look at yourself through his eyes. Join him in his reality.”
    “The one that includes
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”
Adam felt compelled to ask, to argue. It was either that or give in to the tears.
    “Unfortunately, yeah,” Dan said. “It’s going to change. It has to. I hope it does soon, because T. doesn’t deserve that bullshit in his life. And as far as
DADT
goes, he told. Even though he had every reason to believe that I would report him. He chose to tell, because the idea of you going through your life unaware of how much you meant to him was worth more to him than a career that he’s worked hard for, that means everything to him.” He corrected himself. “Almost everything.”
    Dan stepped around Adam, heading for the door. “I’m going to go out in the ER waiting room. I’ll be able to intercept anyone else who might come in. I don’t know who else is in town. I’m here on a fluke—I was doing a program at an elementary school. Anyway, I’ll be out there, if you want to go in to see him. If you don’t, well, that’s fine with me, too. Just don’t do it half-assed and halfway.”
    And with that he was gone, leaving Adam staring at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
    Someone was touching his head, their hand warm and solid against him.
    It was probably the nurse, checking for fever, except the hand that was touching him wasn’t against his forehead, which was odd.
    Whoever it was exhaled just a little—the smallest of sighs.
    And Tony kept his eyes closed even though he’d woken up, because as long as his eyes were closed, he could pretend that that hand, that sigh, belonged to Adam.
    But it wasn’t Adam who’d been by his bedside the last time he’d woken up. It had