The Boyfriend Experiment Read online

  It was nice to take most of his weight off them, though.

  He’d only known Alice for a few weeks before he’d left for his trip, but she seemed nice. Enthusiastic, hard-working, and like him, too young to be so accomplished in her field. Gabriel liked her, and he was thankful he’d been asked to share his space with someone he could get along with.

  “Wow. I had no idea it was so brutal,” she said, pushing her chair away from her desk to stop beside Gabriel’s.

  “Until I went, neither did I. I mean, I was briefed on all the risks and what it would be like, but… if I’d really understood, I might not have gone.”

  “Yeah you would,” she said. “I’ve read your doctoral thesis, remember? Space was your dream. How does it feel to accomplish it?”

  “Right now?” Gabriel sighed. “Sore. But… peaceful. I definitely recommend following your dreams.”

  Alice didn’t need to hear that while Gabriel was glad he’d managed to see the Earth from above, like he’d always wanted to, it had left him with a hollowness he wasn’t even sure how to fill.

  Going to space had been his dream, and now he’d accomplished it. But he had no one to share that with. No one to join in his joy, nothing to look forward to from here on out.

  Considering how bad he was with women—people in general—he didn’t expect that to change, either.

  Loneliness had been fine when he’d had a single-minded focus on getting to go to space someday, but now that he’d done it, it was unbearable. The moment he’d gotten back to his apartment, he’d burst into tears.

  Alice didn’t need to know any of that. No one did.

  “I also recommend actually doing the exercises you’re supposed to, if you ever go,” he added. “It turns out muscles aren’t just for bodybuilders. You actually need them to walk and stand and sit up straight.”

  “You’ll get them back,” Alice said. “It was worth a little pain, right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Gabriel said.

  It was worth the pain. It was worth everything, all the work, all the late nights, maybe even the part where he’d put the entire rest of his life on hold while he’d worked on his goals, but…

  Connor had a family.

  Lucia had not just children, but grandchildren. She was so proud of them, she never stopped talking about them the whole time they’d been on the shuttle.

  They were both much older than he was, but he’d had no one to talk about. Gabriel had wanted his mom to be proud, and that was it. He didn’t even have siblings. It had always been just him and his mom, except that now it was just him, because she still lived back home.

  It just would have been nice to have someone to go back to.

  “So are you seeing someone about the muscle thing? A physical therapist, or…?”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw him yesterday and I have another appointment tomorrow afternoon so he can give me a personalized recovery plan. He seems good. I’m covered in tape, which I guess is holding all my muscles together. It helps a little.”

  “Good,” Alice said. “Because I want to trade you coffee and cake for your help in looking over some new data I have.”

  Gabriel laughed.

  “Your concern is appreciated. Show me what you’ve got, and I’ll let you buy me coffee later,” he said, happy to be of use to someone.

  Things would go back to normal once he got over the emotional rollercoaster that fulfilling his life’s dream had put him on. In the meantime, he had plenty of work to do.

  Chapter Four

  “So if you take a look at that chart I gave you, what I’ve highlighted are your anti-gravity muscles, which makes them sound extremely cool,” Reid explained, putting his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders so he could demonstrate.

  “Following so far,” Gabriel said, his tense muscles relaxing under Reid’s hands. That was good. Gabriel wasn’t fighting him, which meant he had a better chance of recovering quickly.

  “Okay, so, I’m gonna lightly touch them so you can feel where I’m talking about, because when we sit down and work out an exercise plan for you, you need to make sure that you actually use these muscles to do them. There’s no point in doing them otherwise.”

  “This is starting to sound like work,” Gabriel said, rolling his shoulders back into Reid’s hands, as though he wanted more contact. Reid kneaded the muscles lightly, just enough to loosen them up a little more.

  Ideally, Gabriel would have had someone to do that for him, but Reid couldn’t exactly volunteer to follow him home.

  As much as he would have enjoyed that.

  “It is, but I know you’re capable of it. No one gets to do what you’ve done sitting on their ass,” Reid said.

  Gabriel chuckled at that. “I got where I am almost entirely sitting on my ass, which I think is half the problem.”

  “Yeah, well… it’s never too late to change your habits. And I’m not supposed to say this, but if the normal amount of exercise you get keeps you comfortable once you’ve recovered, you don’t actually need to keep this up. You’re very unlikely to end up with chronic needs as long as you stick to the plan.”

  “That’s comforting, because if my life depended on it I’d probably die.”

  Reid laughed. “Well, I haven’t lost a patient yet, so you’re in good hands. Anyway. These muscles on the top of your shoulders are called your deltoids, and you kinda need them because they’re helping to hold your head up. There’s another important one here, in your lower back, and I bet that’s the one giving you the most pain right now.”

  Gabriel nodded tightly, shifting under Reid’s touch. He felt so small right now that Reid couldn’t help but want to do whatever he could to make him better.

  “The ones running over your hips are important too,” he added. “And your butt, which I won’t touch because you’re sitting on it.”

  Gabriel snorted. “I’m good at that. Although… less so at the moment.”

  “Yeah, because you still need those muscles to sit comfortably. Your arms are probably pretty weak as well, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel agreed.

  “Can you hold one out for me?” Reid asked.

  Gabriel sighed, rolling his shoulders back and then lifting one arm. Reid could see that he didn’t want to do this, but he could also see the pain and exhaustion in Gabriel’s face. No one wanted to be hurt, but at least Gabriel didn’t need to be convinced that he needed to get better.

  That put him ahead of a lot of Reid’s other patients, most of whom spent at least the first few sessions in denial.

  Of course, most of them had also been through something traumatic that they hadn’t been expecting, whereas Gabriel had gone into this knowingly.

  Reid was starting to see that it had still been traumatic, though. Gabriel had all the markers of someone who’d just been through something huge and life-changing.

  That made a kind of sense. Not many people went to space. Very few as young as Gabriel, who was only twenty-six.

  “Okay, so,” Reid began, supporting Gabriel’s arm by the wrist. “Pretty much all of these muscles suck right now, yeah?”

  Gabriel smiled wryly. “To be fair, they sucked before I left, too.”

  “You still need to be able to hold and carry stuff,” Reid said. “But I wanna work on your biggest concerns, because you know your body better than I do.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” Gabriel sighed again. “I just want to be able to walk back and forth to work without collapsing once I get there. It’s a three-minute walk.”

  “Well, good news is that the best way to improve your walking stamina is to walk,” Reid said. “Three minutes is probably enough to start with, but it wouldn’t hurt to do a little more. Where do you work?”

  “The downtown campus of UW,” Gabriel responded, holding his arm close to his body as Reid let go of it. Even with the support of Reid’s hand, it had obviously been tough for him to hold it up that long.

  Reid smiled to himself. He’d studied
there, and although Gabriel was a little over a year younger than him, it was cool to think that they might have been there at the same time.

  Although, Gabriel was the kind of person who would have started college at fifteen or sixteen. Reid had looked him up after he’d left, curiosity getting the better of him, and he’d been impressed by all the papers Gabriel had written that he couldn’t even decipher the titles of.

  He was clearly a smart guy, and while smart guys were often stupid about things that weren’t in their area of expertise, he seemed reasonably sensible.

  “I know it,” Reid said. “There are some nice walks around there, but I wanna start small. Five extra minutes per day this week, okay?”

  Gabriel groaned in protest.

  “I know, I know,” Reid said, stepping away from Gabriel. “But after the first couple of days, you’ll thank me.”

  “You sound very sure of that,” Gabriel said, one eyebrow raised.

  “I’m a great therapist.” Reid grinned. “Everyone says so.”

  “That is why I’m here,” Gabriel conceded. “I read about your work with trauma patients.”

  A blush crept up Reid’s neck. Of course Gabriel had looked him up, and he should have realized that, but it was still strange to hear.

  “Well, you know I’m not kidding, then,” Reid said, sitting down at his desk. “You can get off there and come sit over here, if you want.”

  Reid watched Gabriel climb off the examination table gingerly, lurching toward the desk at first, but managing to straighten himself up.

  Reid’s stomach clenched at every sign that he was in pain. He hated to see anyone suffer.

  Besides, Gabriel was cute.

  Not that he was allowed to think that. But as long as he never said or did anything about it, it didn’t make any difference what he thought. No one could read his mind.

  At least, he sincerely hoped no one could read his mind.

  “So do you teach?” Reid asked, pulling up Gabriel’s file and tapping away at his keyboard to start a personalized program for him.

  Gabriel burst into laughter. “Oh, no, no way,” Gabriel said. “I get impatient with people who don’t understand what I’m talking about, and that makes me a pretty awful teacher. I guest lecture at best.”

  “What do you do, then?” Reid asked.

  “Research and development, mostly. I make it so that the university’s name turns up beside mine on any papers I publish, and they give me lab space, my own desk, and almost enough money to cover my rent. Then I consult for Atmos, which pays a whole lot better and means I get to go to space, but they’re still technically a startup, so I’ve never been ready to put all my eggs in that basket. UW isn’t going anywhere.”

  Reid considered that, wondering if Gabriel could see the contradiction. He’d been willing to take the risk of leaving the planet in a shuttle with minimal testing, but not willing to work full-time for the company who’d built it.

  “But you know about all the cool secret projects, right?” Reid asked, unable to pretend that he wasn’t curious anymore.

  Gabriel had been to space. Only a few hundred people had done that. It was impossible not to be fascinated by him. And he worked for one of the coolest cutting-edge technology companies around.

  He was the kind of guy who was going to change the world. That was…

  Well, from Reid’s perspective, hot. Really hot. He’d always had a thing for smart guys.

  A lot of smart guys were also total assholes, but Gabriel seemed different. Kinder, and if not better with people, at least more aware that he wasn’t all that good with people. He was awkward, but it wasn’t the uncaring awkwardness other guys like him tended to have about him. He knew how awkward he was and he tried to make up for it by being funny.

  It worked. Reid was hanging off every word.

  It had been a long time since he’d dated anyone, so whatever attention he could get from someone he was attracted to felt great.

  “None of the projects are secret. Full disclosure has always been a core company philosophy, which I like. I don’t think there’s any point in hiding stuff from people. And if we found aliens on the moon, we’d tell everyone.”

  “Are there aliens on the moon?”

  “I doubt it,” Gabriel said. “We would have noticed by now. But the moon is next, I think. Even a moon base, maybe. And then long-distance generational ships.”

  “Generational?” Reid raised an eyebrow.

  “We’d take a bunch of necessary personnel and their partners—ideally also with useful skills—and put them all on a ship that was going to, say, the next closest solar system. And because that would take so long, they’d never make it. But their children, or their children’s children would. If we can build a ship that would be self-sustaining for that long.”

  “Oh,” Reid said, turning that thought over in his mind. A whole life in space. He could hardly imagine what that would be like, cool as it sounded.

  And if they didn’t solve the muscle loss problem, it’d be crippling.

  “An expert in muscle recovery after exposure to microgravity would be extremely useful on a ship like that,” Gabriel said, as if he’d read Reid’s mind. “If you’re looking for an excuse to study it. You’ve even got a first test subject.”

  “I don’t think they’d let me take my hypothetical partner,” Reid said.

  Gabriel opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it again, his brows knitting together as he considered that. Reid could almost hear the gears turning in his head.

  “You’re gay,” he said after a moment.

  “Got it in one,” Reid said.

  That probably meant Gabriel wasn’t, which was kind of a shame, but also a relief. It was absolutely fine to think his straight patient was cute—even to have a tiny intellectual crush on him—because nothing would come of it. He’d be oblivious.

  “That’s not actually a bad thing. Homosexuality has an important social role in mammalian communities. Especially ones that have more children than adults, which is exactly what would happen on a ship like this. Besides, you can still be a father, because at the moment we’d have to go with IVF in space. The traditional method doesn’t exactly work without Earth gravity.”

  “No sex in space?” Reid asked. He’d never thought about it before.

  “No sex in space,” Gabriel confirmed. “I mean, maybe one day? People are working on it. But right now, no.”

  “I’m out,” Reid said, laughing. “I’ll stay here, where there’s gravity.”

  He was joking, but it was good to know that Gabriel didn’t hate gays on principle or anything. Better still to know that he saw a future for gay people in space. The sci-fi he’d grown up with had left Reid feeling left out once he hit his teenage years and realized that he rarely saw himself in that world, as though there just wouldn’t be gay people by the time humanity had space travel figured out.

  It had hurt back when he realized, but hearing someone who actually worked in the field saying that he was good enough for the closest thing humanity had to Starfleet felt as though it had healed a small part of that.

  It also didn’t help Reid’s tiny crush.

  “Okay, well,” Reid said, turning away so Gabriel wouldn’t see him blushing again. “Do you need your exercise plan printed out, or is email okay?”

  “Save a tree,” Gabriel said. “I’m permanently attached to my phone, anyway.”

  Reid chuckled. He couldn’t fault Gabriel for that. He could barely remember what life before smartphones was like, despite being more than old enough to.

  “Okay, well, there’s a basic diet structure there as well. Essentially I want you to eat more than usual, and lean heavier on protein than you probably normally would. Good news is that studies show caffeine is actually good for recovery, so you don’t have to give up coffee.”

  “That’s a relief, because I would have ignored that part,” Gabriel said. “I owe most of my success to caffeine.”

 
; “Me too,” Reid laughed. “Do you want me to re-tape you?”

  “I think I’m allergic to the glue,” Gabriel said, looking down sheepishly.

  “Oh.” Reid felt immediately guilty, despite the fact that he couldn’t possibly have known. “So have you taken it all off, or…?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yeah. I feel like it was helping a little, but it was incredibly itchy after about twenty-four hours.”

  “Okay. Sorry about that. You could also try compression garments.”

  Gabriel wet his lips, clearly considering his options. “I think I’ll just tough it out. What is it they say? No pain, no gain?”

  Reid raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect that coming from you,” he said.

  Gabriel stood. “I’m not a stranger to sacrifice,” he responded, his tone changing just a little.

  “I guess not,” Reid said. He hadn’t quite thought of it that way, but Gabriel was probably tougher than he looked. He had to be.

  “Okay, we’ll do it your way. But if you need anything, if you hurt more than you think you should… anything like that, email me. And I wanna see you same time next week.”

  Gabriel stretched his arms high above his head as Reid stood, wincing as he let them fall again. Reid tried not to show his concern at that, since he was starting to see that Gabriel really didn’t want to think of himself as injured.

  And he wasn’t, exactly. He was just suffering the side-effects of something very few people ever did. That was kind of cool, even if it was uncomfortable for him. It made sense that he wouldn’t want to be treated as though there was something wrong.

  “Same time next week,” Gabriel repeated. “I’ll be here.”

  “Good,” Reid opened the door for him. “Follow your plan, rest if you’re in pain, don’t forget to eat.”

  “Thanks,” Gabriel said. “For helping. I know I’m a pain in the ass.”

  Reid smiled wryly. “Not even close to the worst. Take care.”

  He watched Gabriel walk down the hall, still holding himself awkwardly. Despite knowing that Gabriel would recover and be fine, it still wasn’t entirely comfortable to watch someone so accomplished, so obviously smart and bright and with a surprisingly fun personality suffer.