Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 7

of his coffee. "No, thanks. I think I'll keep my arteries non-clogged."
    "Oh no…should I now feel guilty for drinking milk and eating baby lambs too?"
    "No. But you should worry about what you're stuffing inside yourself 'cos that's not even food," Ty said and grimaced ever more when he heard a loud crunch while Chase made a mush out of what he had just devoured inside his mouth. He'd done that before, chewing too loud just because he knew Ty hated it and what he was eating now smelled like dead cockroaches soaked in grease that had been used way too many times. Ty turned to look at Chase and crumbled his face out of nausea when he heard the sound again. "That's disgusting."
    "Perhaps," Chase shook his head as soon as his mouth was empty. "But it tastes good and nothing this good can be bad for you."
    "I think it's the other way around… If it tastes good then it is bad for you."
    "My arteries are doing just fine, so don't you worry." Chase placed the bag between the seats and grinned while looking at Ty. "You sure you don't want any?"
    "You'd have to tie me first and force feed me to get me to swallow any of that crap." Ty cursed silently when he saw the calculating shimmer in Chase eyes. He turned to look out of the window instead of looking at the man but he felt eyes on him. "I could do that, you know."
    "I'd be grateful if you didn't."
    And then they said nothing, not either one of them. Ty finished his coffee and listened to the sounds filling the car while Chase destroyed his deadly snack. Those grease pork junks weren't the only thing Chase liked to infect his body with. Ty now knew the guy had his coffee with five teaspoons of sugar – yes that was disgusting too. He didn't give a damn about any nutrition guides or healthy living programs. And his comment about eating baby lambs was spot on, because he ate more meat in a week than Ty ate in a month. All that time spent on the floor had made Ty quite familiar with Chase's habits and though most of them were distant compared to Ty's, he knew he'd somehow miss all of them once they were done. And they were bound to be, soon. Only his other arm left and then it would be over. And they had agreed not to push any more limits until Ty's picture was done, because Chase didn't want to risk damaging healing skin in the middle of their…limit pushing.
    "We should wait for few weeks before we get on with the other one," Chase said after their mutual silence had lasted for good a ten minutes. Ty kept his eyes on the view outside; fields and houses and other cars. Small buildings and bigger ones, people walking on the side of the road. "No two week limit?"
    "More like four."
    Ty turned his head, eyes on Chase now and the cup was forgotten and so was the bag that was nearly empty. "Four?"
    "It should be fully healed by then so I know if there's something to fix," Chase said. His eyes were on the road, his side profile just as haunting as any other and Ty wanted him to stop the fucking car and look at him instead of the road. "You haven't been worried about fixing anything afterwards before."
    "Before I hadn't been distracted while working."
    Ty glanced at the road and smothered whatever wings of delusional wishes he had fluttering inside him. Sure the crowd was a distraction. Had to be. And still he was silently hoping it wasn't the crowd Chase was talking about.
    Ty had foolishly convinced himself that he could do this without investing anything in it. Well, he'd been wrong. And now he actually understood why Chase had made him spend hours on that fucking floor with nothing else to do. Pain was easy, everything else was not. And it was everything else that made the upcoming departure so hard. Ty had said 'no' to Chase's offer to do whatever had been done somewhere other than in the shop, but Ty had said that if he wasn't required to get butt-ass naked then the shop was fine. Now he regretted saying that, because he feared he'd never get to see Chase anywhere else and that the time that was slowly unraveling as the best he'd ever had was going to stay stained with outside sounds and echoes of footsteps from the next room, ones that were neither his nor Chaise's. Not a place he could call his own, not a place he could call theirs. Not a place he could think of as something only they had shared though he now wanted something like that.
    "I really do think I got lucky," Ty said, his mind drifted and partly gone. Eyes still on the view ahead and he held it there. Fought