It wasn’tuntil the torture sessions three times a week that Hudson understood the meaning of the phrase, ‘muscles were screaming in pain.’ He was half-convinced that he actuallycouldhear a faint, high-pitched shriek every time he forced his legs apart, stretching the band around his calves. His thighs were trembling, and his brow was sweating like he’d been running a marathon.
The irony just happened to be that he wasn’t running a marathon because he couldn’t. He never would, in fact. Not that it had ever been something he’d ever planned on doing. Hudson had done the bare minimum exercise weekly just to tell himself he was trying. Prior to everything falling to pieces three years before, he’d been one of the corporate engineer cogs for a multi-billion-dollar company with its own restaurant and gym.
He'd have a sandwich, then walk on a treadmill for fifteen minutes and call it a day.
When he noticed his feet starting to go a little numb and his muscles feeling weak, he blamed it on his desk chair. When he’d collapsed in his shower and had to call his husband to haul him out and take him to the ER, he blamed sleeping wrong.
Then the scan came back with a huge mass on the base of his spine.
Hudson tried to ignore the onslaught of memories as he continued to stretch the resistance band, the voice of his physical therapist kind of a low drone in the back of his head. But this was trauma—or so his therapist had told him. It wasn’t something he’d ever just get over, no matter what his life eventually looked like.
He could recall, with annoying clarity, the punch of relief when the biopsy came back benign. But his joy was quickly punctured by the doctor telling him that it was likely he wouldn’t walk away from the removal surgery without consequences.
It wasn’t likely he’dwalkaway from the surgery at all.
“The mass is, unfortunately, pressed against your spinal cord and there’s very little chance we can remove it all without causing some damage.” The rest had been a mumbling blur of medical jargon that amounted to, we’re basically going to have to paralyze you in order to get rid of this thing, but this thing is paralyzing you now so we might as well take the option that comes with some hope of being on your feet again.
Three years later and hecouldwalk—but very short distances, and with assistance. He had some feeling in his lower extremities, and he could control his bladder and bowels—mostly. His doctors considered it a triumph, but for a long while after, Hudson considered it a tragedy.
He didn’t regret the surgery, of course. He didn’t regret saying yes because saying no would have probably been worse. He lived—he survived—even when his marriage didn’t. His husband had taken the whole thing just too hard, and it wasn’t like Hudson blamed the man.
Well, that wasn’t true.
Hedid.
He blamed Austin for being so goddamn fixated on whether or not Hudson could get his dick hard, and whether or not Hudson would be able to pound his ass the way he used to. And when the answer wasn’t satisfactory enough, Austin cracked.
Austin was also six years younger than him, with lofty aspirations and a fixation on what a healthy marriage wassupposedto look like. And apparently, getting railed nightly by a human penis instead of an impressive dildo was high on that list.
To his credit, Austin did try, but Hudson was unsurprised the night he came home and found his ex sobbing into his hands, the room reeking of a stranger’s cologne. Hudson had started suspecting Austin was stepping out on him a few months after the surgery, so in that moment, all he felt was vindication that he wasn’t losing his mind to paranoia.
“He didn’t mean anything,” was how Austin, in the end, confessed to the cheating. “I just needed something you can’t give me anymore. I swear I won’t see him again. All you have to do is say the word.”
Hudson wasn’t sure he believed him, and he wasn’t willing to debase himself by trying to work things out with a man who found him lacking because of something entirely outside of his control. He remembered Austin balking at traditional wedding vows, and it almost made Hudson laugh when he thought back on it.
For Austin, it was all better, no worse. It was all health, no sickness. Hudson had just been too caught up in the fantasy to realize who he was marrying.
It also didn’t help that Austin’s cheating brought all of Hudson’s fears to life. That no matter how much he loved or how hard he tried, people always left him…in the end.
The divorce went through quietly, their assets split neatly, and Austin didn’t bother asking for alimony. The very last thing to sell was the house, and only because the judge granted Hudson time to find a place that was accessible for his new needs.
Hudson wanted to be bitter. There were nights he missed Austin because he was gorgeous and he was funny, even if his humor was a little but cruel at times. But he was one of the few people who’d been able to make Hudson smile even on the days he didn’t want to. Austin had been around and had supported Hudson through dealing with his narcissistic mother, and through the diagnosis, and all the fears that came with not knowing what was wrong with him.
And losing Austin made Hudson realize all the other things he missed about his former life—because he couldn’t go back to being single the way he was before.
If it had happened before the surgery, he would have chased his feelings down with a bottle of whiskey, then held a stranger against the wall and fucked him into oblivion. Hudson was a big man—tall, broad, strong, thick. He had a cock to match and a sex drive that didn’t ever let up. Austin had loved it—all of Hudson’s past lovers had adored him for it.
It was the one thing he didn’t like to think about losing.
It was also the one thing he was working on reclaiming.
Of course, it took therapy and mourning and anger and the desire to burn his life to the ground to figure out what he needed. His therapist had been the one to make the suggestion—a simple, flippant, “You’re an engineer. Why don’t you figure out a way to take the control over your body back? So your dick doesn’t work the way it used to, right? Why not invent something that gives you that same feeling of power? Think about it. How many men just like you are out there wondering if there’s a way to feel like they can regain a part of themselves they should have never lost?”
Hudson had been frustrated with himself for not coming up with it first. And a few nights after that session, he’d rolled up to his little design table and started thinking about what might work.
He knew a lot about the science of his own body now—more than he ever wanted to. He learned that orgasms and ejaculation came from the spine which was why he couldn’t connect to orgasms the way he used to. And sure, he’d tried all the shit his PT had suggested, and he could come with light touches and hard scratches right along his sensation line, but he wanted more.
He wanted to feel overwhelmed with pleasure and with power the way he used to. Maybe it was a tall order, but Hudson was goddamn determined to rewrite his reality so he could have that back.