Paul was all too familiar with the running joke. His ex-wife had been the Hanson fan—hell, she had been the whole reason they knew him and offered to bring him out on tour. It had been Nikki who made tongues wage and rumors fly, and Paul wasn’t oblivious to that. Neither was he oblivious when he overheard fans joke that he had gotten Hanson in the divorce, as though they were some sort of consolation prize.
They weren’t a consolation prize, but Paul had yet to find a word for what they were.
Okay, so it wasn’t the whole band that left him vexed, not really. Isaac was like the archetype of a big brother; D and Zac were fun to chill and smoke up with. Andrew was a good guy, but a bit too straight-laced for his tastes. And Taylor… he was the real enigma, the puzzle Paul was never sober enough to even begin to solve.
He knew he was drinking too much, but it was like an out of body experience. The whole past year and a half had been like something that was happening to someone else. He had thrown himself into half a dozen or so different beds after the divorce was final, but none of it made him feel human again. None of it made him feel anything again.
When Taylor gave him a certain look, though—well, feel wasn’t the right word. It went deeper than that, straight down to the bone and beyond. It was physical and emotional, and Paul wanted to run from it and embrace it all at once.
The two of them hadn’t really kept in touch after that first tour. The band, as a unit, had sent him Christmas presents and various little messages encouraging his efforts to get an album released. It was a sort of wholesome, honest-to-God goodness that Paul had never encountered from anyone in the business. It was southern hospitality, even if Oklahoma didn’t really seem like the south to someone from Alabama.
In person, though, Taylor was something else entirely. Oh, he would hold doors open for people and call the cashier ma’am, just like his mama taught him. But he could drink Paul under the table—and that was saying something—and once he was good and soused, he’d flirt with anything on legs.
Paul would never admit it to anyone, but it made a small, hard lump form in the back of his throat when Taylor turned his lascivious attentions toward men. Half the time the men seemed oblivious, and Paul wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than when they were very much aware of it.
No one else seemed to see what Paul saw, but maybe they were all just used to it. Maybe they had known Taylor long enough not to bat an eye when he’d disappear for a while with some guy or let his hand linger a little too low on a pretty girl’s waist. Maybe none of them thought it meant anything, and maybe it didn’t.
It was hard to find meaning in anything, but Paul kept looking. There had to be a reason why he was still there, still alive on autopilot. It couldn’t all be for nothing. He needed someone, something, to believe in.
Deep down, he knew that shouldn’t have been Taylor Hanson, of all people, but somehow, it was.
When they went shot for shot, Taylor was the only one who could keep it up as long as Paul and still be there to, literally and metaphorically, be his shoulder to lean on. He was the only other one left at the end of the night, talking about everything and nothing and filling the void in Paul’s mind with enough noise that he could ignore the emptiness.
Paul could lose himself completely in Taylor, and he knew how dangerous that was. It was just the type of guy he was; he’d cling to anybody who made him feel, pin all of his hopes on that one person until they eventually fell from grace, like they always did. But when he was lost in Taylor’s eyes, blue like his own but with storm clouds he didn’t understand, he forgot all the warning signs.
“Did you find a hotel for tonight?”
Paul blinked. Taylor had spoken, but he was lost again. He shook his head, which only served to remind him just how damn drunk he was, the morning’s hangover blending seamlessly into that night’s drunk.
Taylor stood up from the barstool, a decisive look on his face. “You’re coming back with me.”
It was a statement, maybe even a command, but definitely not a question. Any other questions Paul might have had died on his lips as he watched Taylor close out his tab.
The walk back to Taylor’s hotel was quiet, although the street around them was still busy even at that hour. Taylor practically strutted down the sidewalk, and Paul did everything he could not to watch each detail of how Taylor’s body moved, how the muscles in his legs tensed and relaxed, each one practically visible through his skin tight jeans. All he needed was a pair of cowboy boots and he’d look like he ought to be singing Guitars, Cadillacs, Paul thought.
Paul was suddenly conspicuous of his own boots, their heels making his footsteps echoed like gunshots through the lobby of the hotel. It was fancy, the sort of place his ex-wife would have picked. For guys who seemed so down to earth, Hanson weren’t shy about throwing their money around, and Paul wasn’t sure how that made him feel.
Still, he was following Taylor. He would follow him—probably anywhere. That realization should have scared him, and maybe it did, just a little. But not as much as the smirk Taylor threw him as he slid his keycard into the door.
“Jesus,” Paul muttered, in spite of himself, at the state of Taylor’s room. It was like his suitcase had exploded all over it. Sometimes it was hard to believe Taylor was a father of five when he was still so much a teenage boy—but neither of those were things Paul really wanted to think about right then.
What were they even doing? Paul wanted to believe it was just an innocent invitation to crash in his room, but he knew nothing with Taylor was innocent.
“Umm,” Taylor said, scratching his head so that a piece of hair was left sticking straight out. He frowned at the beds—one of which was entirely covered in clothes, cameras and a laptop—and shrugged. “Guess we’re sharing.”
Paul returned his shrug as casually as he could manage. “S’fine. I doubled up with Austin last time we got a hotel. I was the big spoon.”
“I’m more of a little spoon myself,” Taylor replied, flopping down on the one available bed without even taking off his shoes. Of course he was, Paul thought to himself. It wasn’t like anything about Taylor Hanson needed to be logical.
Paul toed his own boots off and shrugged out of his denim jacket before climbing into the bed. Somehow, in the time it had taken him to do that, Taylor had stripped down to nothing but a t-shirt and the world’s tightest boxer briefs ever. Paul figured what the hell, and shimmied out of his jeans on the edge of the bed, then gingerly accepted the covers Taylor so graciously held out for him.
Taylor stretched to turn off the light above the bed, and Paul was grateful for the dark. It made it easier to not to stare. He had never been attracted to a man before, and he wasn’t even sure attraction was the right word to describe what was happening to him now. But Taylor wasn’t like anyone else, male or female, and that made all the difference.
“You alright?” Taylor asked, his voice piercing the darkness and his question loaded with a weight that Paul couldn’t lift.
“Fair to middlin’,” Paul replied.
Suddenly, Taylor’s hand was on his cheek, soft and calloused at the same time, a musician’s hand through and through. Paul found himself leaning into the touch, not caring how it appeared. He could blame it on the tequila in the morning.
“You don’t have to be okay,” Taylor said, and Paul was definitely too drunk for any sort of deep, emotional conversation.
“Well, I’m not,” he said plainly, hoping that was the end of the conversation.
Taylor’s response didn’t come in the form of words. Instead, he pulled Paul closer, and Paul knew what was coming next, but he didn’t make a single move to stop it. He hadn’t kissed a guy since that one party right after he decided he was doing music instead of grad school, and it hadn’t been like this. It hadn’t been warm and sweet with the bitter bite of vodka behind it. That guy hadn’t put his hand on Paul’s hip and pulled him in, and Paul hadn’t let his lips part to allow that guy’s tongue access.
He kissed like he was looking for something, but Paul didn’t know what could possibly be missing from Taylor’s life. What could he be trying to find so desperately, and why did he think it was located at the back of Paul’s throat? Paul didn’t know, but he was suddenly desperate to help Taylor find it. He put his hand on Taylor’s cheek and guided Taylor’s body on top of his, until he could feel every inch of them touching, every bit of them connected.
Taylor was larger than him, and it should have felt like a weight, but it was more like an anchor. What should have crushed him, suffocated him… anchored him. Protected him rather than drowned him. Kissing Taylor was like coming up for air again for the first time in a year.
And then it was over. The kiss, anyway. But Taylor was still there, his smooth shaven face rubbing against the bristles Paul kept meaning to tame on his own cheek. His hands were on Paul’s shoulders, like he was afraid if he let go, Paul would vanish. The connection between their lips was broken, but they were still joined, pieces of a puzzle Paul didn’t understand.
Paul’s hands roamed up and down Taylor’s back, though he didn’t know what he was searching for. Whatever it was, he knew he was close to finding it.
At some point in their exploration, their positions changed. Paul found himself cocooned in Taylor’s grasp, his back to Taylor’s front. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but it was the first time in weeks that he didn’t lay awake for hours. He drifted off easily, warm and surrounded.
****
Paul didn’t know why he immediately assumed Taylor had abandoned him. He was the one who sneaked out of rooms and houses, the one who couldn’t bear to even think of strings, let along stick around long enough to form any.
But Taylor was there.
Paul pulled himself from the bed and shuffled to the bathroom. He didn’t look at himself in the mirror. On his way back through the room, he pulled on the same jeans he’d worn the day before, but didn’t bother with his shirt. He stepped out onto the balcony, needing to see Taylor for himself to be sure he was really there and not a mirage.
He was there, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a coffee cup cradled in his hands.
“Morning,” Taylor mumbled around the cigarette, and Paul was surprised that it didn’t fall. It was odd to see; he always forgot that Taylor was a smoker until he saw him do it again. “There’s another cup on top of the mini fridge, if you need a fix.”
He did. He really did. Paul padded back into the room, grabbing the cup and the room’s desk chair, which made an awful scraping sound along the balcony’s floor as he pulled it beside Taylor’s.
Taylor raised his cup in a salute of sorts, and continued his bitter breakfast in silence. When he finished his cigarette and dove back into the pack for another, Paul wanted to comment, make some joke about ruining his voice and his teeth, but the words didn’t come.
Instead, Taylor held the cancer stick out to Paul, and Paul watched, another out of body experience, as it slipped easily between his fingers. Taylor leaned in to light it for him, and Paul was somehow surprised that he used a cheap Bic and not some fancy, expensive lighter. It wasn’t even a special design; boring, dull blue, in fact. There was some sort of psychological assessment a smarter man could make out of that, but Paul wasn’t a psychologist, and anyway, it took most of his brain power to figure out how not to cough his lungs up as he took his first drag.
“I forgot you don’t smoke,” Taylor said, a hint of amusement in his voice.
“I guess I forgot, too,” Paul replied.
Both laughed, although Paul couldn’t find the punch line or even the joke. Still, it felt good, that foreign sound that he wasn’t sure he’d ever make again—without her. He wondered when, if ever, he would stop thinking of his life as Before Nikki and After Nikki. Maybe never.
He wanted to say all of this, or at least some of it, to Taylor, but words failed him again. Instead, he focused on his breathing. With effort, he could avoid coughing, and with a little more effort, blow out the sort of smoke rings he liked to make when he smoked weed. For a while, he and Taylor went back and forth, neither one of them especially talented, but amusing themselves none the less.
As though sensing that he was still avoiding the issue, keeping his emotions tucked deep within, Taylor reached over and put a hand on Paul’s thigh. It stayed low, nothing overtly sexual about it. It was strangely comforting. Paul wished they could spend the entire day right there, like that.
****
He wasn’t entirely sure, if he was honest with himself, whether he was disappointed or not.
Paul wasn’t bisexual or anything, and he couldn’t really say he had ever been attracted to a man before. He could appreciate when a guy was good looking, but that wasn’t really the same, was it? Maybe it was. That was something he could work on puzzling out after the tour was over and he was home alone again, with nothing else to occupy his time or mind.
So it wasn’t like he was attracted to Taylor. He could just see it—the innate beauty and magnetism that Taylor possessed. The casualness with which Taylor could make everyone in a room want to be him and fuck him at the same time.
Not that Paul wanted to fuck him. But he probably wouldn’t kick him out of bed, either.
So maybe it was the same.
In any case, Taylor seemed oblivious. Maybe he had been too drunk, more than Paul had realized, and he didn’t even remember that kiss. Maybe Taylor just went around kissing dudes all the time like it was nothing. That seemed like the sort of thing he would do, and just leave a trail of confused men behind him, grappling with their newfound sexuality crises.
Yeah, that definitely sounded like a Taylor Hanson thing to do.
It was almost a week later, in New York, before Taylor even seemed to remember that Paul existed. While Paul did his sound check, Taylor was there, a solitary figure on the floor, just watching. Paul didn’t exactly stay put on stage, even during a rehearsal, but no matter where he wandered, he could feel Taylor’s eyes on him. He wasn’t so sure that he liked it, but he wasn’t so sure that he didn’t, either.
There was something almost imploring in the way Taylor looked at him, but Paul couldn’t even begin to understand it. He finished his set and tried to put it out of his mind.
Backstage at this particular venue was like a maze, and Paul hadn’t played there before; it took all of his concentration not to get lost in the labyrinth of it. He heard footsteps behind him, but didn’t think anything of it until a hand landed heavily on his shoulder and yanked him into a room he hadn’t even noticed was there.
“What—Taylor.” He gasped as he was spun around to face his captor. The door shut behind him and the sound of it made him jump.
“I just wanted—I mean,” Taylor replied, his eyes drifting away from Paul’s and down his face. He didn’t have to finish his sentence for Paul to understand his meaning.
Surprising himself, Paul pulled himself to his tiptoes, glad he’d decided to wear a pair of boots that day. He closed the distance between them easily, eyes open until the last second. The last thing he saw before their lips touched was Taylor’s impossibly long eyelashes, fluttering like a girl’s.
The kiss started innocently, but didn’t remain that way. In seconds, Taylor’s teeth were scraping at Paul’s bottom lip, his hands tugging on Paul’s beltloops. Paul placed his hands on Taylor’s shoulders and spun him around, pinning him against the wall. He needed some sense of control, even though it was fleeting and probably artificial. This was all by Taylor’s design, all Taylor’s plan. Deep down, Paul knew that, though Taylor wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want, Taylor was the one setting their pace.
Still, if Paul wanted to take control for the moment, it seemed Taylor would let him. He could feel Taylor relaxing, ever so slightly, and he pounced on that. He let one hand land in Taylor’s hair, fingers gripping handfuls of it, pulling. Taylor let out a soft whimper, and though he knew he’d heard the same sound in any number of his songs, Paul felt a sense of strange pride that the sound was made just for him.
The second Paul could take no more and pulled back to suck in a deep, ragged breath, Taylor made his move. He fell to his knees with a crack that made Paul wince, but Taylor hardly seemed to notice. He had done this before—Paul hadn’t known for certain, but this was all too practiced to be new. No, Taylor definitely wasn’t as green as he was, but he seemed not to mind Paul’s relative innocence.
Paul knew what was coming next, but he still gasped when Taylor went for his belt buckle, yanking it loose with practiced ease. In seconds, his pants had been pushed down and his half-hard dick was out—a fact that should probably make him blush, but he wasn’t going to give Taylor that much of an advantage.
Instead, he just put his hand back in Taylor’s hair and held on for what felt like dear life as Taylor leaned in. His breath was hot against Paul’s flesh, and that was all it took; he reached his full length in a matter of seconds. Taylor’s mouth encircled him, hot and wet. Paul couldn’t breathe, and he could barely think.
Only one thought remained—Taylor Hanson might actually be the death of him and his savior all rolled into one.
****
What would happen after the tour, Paul didn’t know. But for the moment, he didn’t care. For the first time in God knew how long, he felt he could live in the moment without regrets.
Days off were Paul’s favorite, which was a surprising change. For once, his mind was quiet and he didn’t need to keep himself constantly occupied so that his thoughts didn’t drift in a direction he didn’t like. He could just exist and waste away the day with Taylor. He could breathe.
Waking up in New Orleans, Paul decided it was truly the city that didn’t sleep. Bright light streamed in the hotel windows, but he didn’t mind. It cast a glow on Taylor that made him look otherworldly, even innocent and angelic, although Paul knew he was anything but.
He didn’t really even realize he was staring until Taylor awoke, blinking his eyes open slowly. His lips curled into a smirk when he realized Paul was staring, but Paul didn’t even bother to look away. What was the point?
“Good morning,” Taylor said, his voice soft and low, with a raspy tone that Paul felt all the way down to his toes.
“Mornin’,” Paul replied, his own voice sounding nasal and bland in comparison.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need a beignet really, really soon.”
Paul laughed softly. “That doesn’t sound half bad.”
“It’s seriously one of the only things on my to do list for today,” Taylor said, rolling closer to Paul. “Like, it’s a list of two things. That’s it.”
“And what’s the other thing?” Paul replied, raising an eyebrow.
“You,” Taylor said, leaning in and pressing his lips to Paul’s. It was the sort of cheesy line that only someone like Taylor Hanson could get away with saying. Anyone else, and Paul’s eyes would have rolled all the way out of his head and across the room. Instead, he just leaned into the kiss, parting his lips to allow Taylor’s tongue access.
It was still sweltering this far south, even in October, and they had both stripped down to nothing but their boxers the night before. The feel of Taylor’s legs against his, their chests pressing together… they weren’t as close as possible, but they were pretty damn close, and Paul was loving every inch of it. It was so different from being with a woman—the way Taylor’s chest hair felt against his relatively smooth chest was a constant reminder of that—but that was part of what made it feel so good, he decided. There was something new to discover with every touch, some unfamiliar and unexpected sensation lurking around every corner.
He wrapped a leg around Taylor’s waist, needing to be even closer to him. The gasp he let out when he felt Taylor’s erection straining against his boxers was lost against Taylor’s tongue. It was enough to bring him to his full length, and that feeling—no way to deny their arousal—was almost more than Paul could take.
Taylor pulled back from the kiss, and Paul braced himself for whatever Taylor might have to say. Instead, he pressed his lips to Paul’s jaw, trailing kisses and bites down it until he reached Paul’s neck, his bangs tickling Paul just above the collarbone. He buried a hand in Taylor’s hair, knowing he needed something, anything to anchor him.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Taylor breathed out against Paul’s shoulder.
Paul realized, belatedly, that his hips had begun to move of their own accord. Taylor was meeting him, thrust for thrust, and that gave him a much-needed confidence boost. He didn’t hold back, and even with layers of thin cotton between them, the feeling of their dicks rubbing together was—well, Paul was pretty sure the English language didn’t have a word for it.
“Fuck,” Paul said, deciding that word would have to do.
Taylor let out a moan that Paul supposed must have been agreement. His head was buried so far into Paul’s neck that he had no clue what Taylor was thinking or feeling. A part of him wanted to crawl right inside Taylor’s mind, but another part told him that he probably didn’t really want to understand Taylor at all.
If he could have crawled inside his skin, though…
He settled for rolling his hips harder, absent-mindedly wondering if he was leaving bruises against Taylor’s. Then again, he wasn’t so sure that he cared. Maybe he wanted to mark Taylor in some way, leave some outward, tangible sign of the impact Taylor had had on him. He wondered if that affect was visible on his body, if everyone around him could see how he had been changed.
At least they couldn’t seen him right then, dangling on the ragged edge of the most forceful orgasm of his life. Paul buried his face in Taylor’s hair just to keep from screaming as it tore through his body like a wildfire. Taylor held perfectly still against him, the only movement the pulsing of his dick; a low moan that reverberated through Paul’s body let him know that Taylor had come, too.
He didn’t know how long they lay like that, not even caring about the mess between them, bodies slick with sweat and—everything else. Paul wouldn’t have cared if they had stayed in bed the whole day.
Then again, that beignet did sound good…
***
Anyway, he didn’t have any, and he wasn’t about to ask some random passerby on the street for a smoke. He settled for pulling out his phone and mindlessly scrolling through his social media.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone began to vibrate right there in his hand. Both the name on the screen and the photo attached surprised him.
Paul had almost forgotten that morning in California, when he and Taylor had gotten up early and walked down to the beach. He’d taken a couple dozen photos of Taylor stretched out across the towel they’d stolen from the hotel, and he had deleted all of them.
Except for one.
That one was now staring back at him, alerting him to an incoming call from the man himself.
“Hello?” Paul said, once he’d composed himself enough to remember how to answer a phone call.
“Hey,” Taylor said, sounding far too casual, like they’d spoken as recently as the day before. “I think we’re in the same neck of the woods tonight.”
“Oh, yeah?” Paul asked, like he hadn’t kept up with Hanson’s tour schedule.
“Yeah, we’re playing Wolf Trap. The String Theory thing, you know?”
“I think I did see something about that,” Paul replied. He had no doubt Taylor had seen all of his Instagram likes and comments, and he cursed himself for being such a fan.
But the truth was—he was a fan. What had happened between him and Taylor had been one thing, and it was still a thing he couldn’t explain or define. But how he felt about Hanson as a band, as a group of guys who were genuinely in it for the music and nothing else, was something else entirely.
He hadn’t found the right balance between those two feelings, even three years later.
“Well, anyway, I was thinking—I can put you on the guest list, if you want. VIP.”
Paul coughed like he had found a cigarette to smoke. “Oh, well—thing is, my show is tonight, too. I’d have to leave before intermission.”
“Damn,” Taylor muttered, the word so low that Paul almost didn’t catch it.
“Maybe next time?” He offered, unsure why he felt the need to apologize.
“Yeah, sure. Of course.” The shift in his tone of voice was almost imperceptible, but Paul noticed. “I’ll take a look at your schedule and see if we overlap anywhere else.”
“That would be great,” Paul replied, and he meant it.
“Great… yeah. Bye, Paul.”
“Later.” The word faded into nothing at the end, his voice failing him suddenly.
The line went silent, but somehow he instinctively knew Taylor would not be the first to hang up. Sure enough, a glance at his phone’s screen revealed that the call had not ended. His finger hovered over the glaring red button, but he couldn’t bring himself to press it.
A blonde head poked out the door of the coffee shop. “Hey, there you are. Are you ready to get dinner? I was thinking burgers.”
“Yeah,” Paul replied, his voice still strangely weak. He cleared his throat, pressed end and shoved his phone into his pocket before looking up at Emily. “Yeah. I’m ready.”
Emily held her hand out to his, and he took it, trying not to think about how small and gentle it was.