He Married the Farmer Who Taught Him to Live Again novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Fourteen Steps
Daniel adds impossible steps to the bath to drive Johnny off, and Johnny drops the cloth and washes him with his bare hands until Daniel comes apart in his fist; then he hands over the pill case with a carrot on it.
The bathroom in the east wing had a wide shower bench, a rail on every wall, and a drain the size of a dinner plate.
Johnny lifted Daniel out of the chair without effort, set him on the bench, and went to get the laminated card.
"Read me step one," he said.
"You read it. You have the card."
"I want to hear you say it. Then I'll know what you actually do, and not what the nurse wrote down."
Daniel looked at him.
He had planned to be impossible, and this was only Monday night.
"Step one," Daniel said. "The water is thirty-seven degrees. Not thirty-six. Not thirty-eight."
Johnny held his bare elbow under the tap and nodded.
"Step two. A new cloth, never a used one."
"Step three. The soap is unscented, and it's rinsed off the bar before it touches skin."
"Rinsed off the bar," Johnny said. "Why?"
"Because other people's hands touched the bar."
"Whose hands?"
"The soap factory's."
Johnny considered this for a moment and rinsed the bar.
Daniel recited the next three steps and added one.
"Step seven. You wash your hands to the elbow first. Thirty seconds."
It was not on the card. Johnny had read the card, and Daniel knew it.
Johnny washed to the elbow without a word and counted out loud to thirty.
"Step eight," Daniel said. "Again."
"Again?"
"I'm in charge of what's on the card."
Johnny washed to the elbow again, and his forearms came out pink and dripping.
"Now step nine," Daniel said. "You do not touch the cloth with that hand."
"Which hand?"
"Either one."
Johnny looked at his own two hands, then at the cloth, then at Daniel.
"Then how am I supposed to wash you?"
"That's the problem," Daniel said, and felt the first real satisfaction he'd had all day.
Johnny put the cloth back on the shelf.
"All right," he said. "Cloth's out."
"You can't just take out a step."
"You added three, and I never complained. You can lose one."
He knelt on the wet tile and pushed up his sleeves.
"My hands," he said. "They've been in worse than you, and I've scrubbed them twice."
"They have soil under the nails."
"That never washes out. It's from the carrots. Carrot soil is the cleanest dirt there is."
"That is not true."
"Sit still and I'll show you."
He soaped his palms, and his wide, warm, slick hands settled on Daniel's shoulders.
Daniel had been washed by nurses for fourteen months.
He knew how it felt to be handled: quick, careful and over with.
This was different.
Johnny's thumbs pressed into the hard muscle at the top of Daniel's spine and moved in slow circles.
A sound came out of Daniel before he could stop it.
"That isn't one of the steps," Daniel said.
"It's one of mine."
"You don't get steps."
"Step fifteen," Johnny said. "Shoulders."
His hands went down over Daniel's chest and ribs and stomach, and stopped at the edge of the towel.
Daniel's whole body went still and bright.
He felt everything below the waist.
Nobody had ever understood that part. The doctors had said he would not walk, and not one of them had said he would not feel.
He felt it now.
"Fourteen steps," Johnny said quietly. "Recite them for me again. Start at one."
"The water is thirty-seven degrees."
Johnny's hands slid under the towel and over his hips, and Daniel's breath caught.
"Keep going."
"Step two. A new cloth."
"I put the cloth away."
"Step three. The, the soap is..."
Johnny's soapy hand closed around his cock.
Daniel was hard already.
He had been hard since the thumbs, and he had pretended he wasn't.
The pretending ended in a long, startled groan that echoed off the tile.
"Step three," Johnny said, low and gentle. "The soap is..."
"Unscented."
"Good."
The word went through Daniel and settled low in his stomach.
Johnny stroked him slowly, from the base to the head and back, with his thumb circling the slick tip on every pass.
Daniel's hands found the rail, and then Johnny's shoulders.
He gripped the wet fabric of the too-small suit shirt Johnny had never taken off.
"Four," Daniel said. His voice broke. "Step four is..."
"I don't care what four is."
"Neither do I."
Johnny laughed, a soft breath against his temple, and sped up.
Daniel's hips rose off the bench.
They moved. They were his, and they were answering.
The heat built low in his stomach and in the backs of his thighs.
"Look at me," Johnny said.
Daniel looked.
The green eyes were very close, and very steady, and not laughing now.
"There you are," Johnny said. "Let go. I've got you."
Daniel came with his head thrown back against the tile and Johnny's name in his mouth.
He spilled hot over Johnny's fist and his own belly.
Then he shook for a long time and could not stop.
Johnny held on until it was over.
Then he rinsed them both with the shower hose, at thirty-seven degrees, because he had checked.
He dried Daniel with a towel from the warm rack.
He buttoned him into a clean pyjama shirt, and his hands did not hurry.
"That was not on the card," Daniel said at last. His voice was a ruin.
"No."
"Don't think it changes anything."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Johnny pushed his wet hair back, grinning.
Daniel's mouth opened and shut.
Johnny took a plastic case from his jacket on the hook.
It had seven little doors in a row, and he turned it so Daniel could see the first one.
Someone had stuck a tiny orange carrot on it.
"Monday's pills," Johnny said. "Open."
← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend