One Year, Same Shark Boxers

An Exclusive Bonus Chapter from Bad Luck, Good Lay
by Jace Wilder

⚠️ This bonus chapter takes place after the events of Bad Luck, Good Lay and contains explicit MM content. Spoilers ahead.

One Year, Same Shark Boxers

Owen woke to the sound of water.

Not the catastrophic kind—not the pressurized spray of a burst pipe or the steady drip of a compromised ceiling. This was the gentle, domestic sound of a faucet running in the kitchen, accompanied by the clatter of a pan and the particular tuneless humming that meant Nate Calloway was attempting to cook something without setting off the smoke detector.

Owen checked the date on his phone. January fourteenth. He smiled.

One year ago today, a pipe had burst under a kitchen sink, and a man in shark-print boxers had called Pinnacle Insurance, and an adjuster named Owen Park had driven to a third-floor walkup and stepped into two inches of water and a life he hadn’t known he was missing.

He got out of bed. Their bed—the one they’d bought together. He pulled on boxers and nothing else, because it was Saturday and pants were, as Nate would say, aspirational.

The kitchen smelled like bacon and coffee. Nate was at the stove, shirtless, wearing the shark boxers. The original pair—faded now, the elastic questionable, one of the printed sharks missing most of its dorsal fin from an unfortunate encounter with bleach.

On the counter next to the stove, propped against the sugar bowl, was Owen’s old clipboard. Owen stepped closer and read the form. Hand-written, in Nate’s messy scrawl:

Policyholder: Owen Park. Claim Type: Heart Damage (catastrophic, ongoing). Cause: One Nate Calloway, operating without containment since January 14 of last year. Damage Description: Total structural failure of all defensive systems. Walls compromised. Fortress breached. Coffee table no longer empty. Prognosis: Permanent. No repairs requested.

Owen read it twice. Walked to the stove, wrapped his arms around Nate from behind, and pressed his mouth to the back of Nate’s neck.

“Happy disaster-versary,” Nate said.

“That’s not a word.”

“It is now. I’m claiming it. Like you claimed me. Against this counter, if I recall correctly.”

Owen’s arms tightened. His mouth moved from Nate’s neck to his shoulder, then to the spot below his ear that made Nate’s hand falter on the spatula. “I remember the counter.”

“Assess me,” Nate said. And it was a joke. It was also not a joke. It was the invitation it had always been—see me, touch me, take the measurement of who I am and find me worth the calculation.

Owen assessed him. He started at Nate’s jaw—the scar from the shelf, which Owen kissed every morning. Then his throat. His collarbone. His chest, where Owen’s palm pressed flat and felt the heartbeat—fast, eager, the heart of a man who had spent a year being loved and still got excited about it every single time.

“Preliminary findings,” Owen murmured against Nate’s sternum. “Subject is warm. Responsive. Structurally sound.”

“I haven’t finished the assessment.”

Owen’s mouth moved lower. Down Nate’s stomach, following the trail of hair below his navel. His hands hooked into the waistband of the shark boxers and pulled them down. Slowly. With the same deliberate precision he brought to everything, except that his hands were trembling, because wanting Nate had never become routine.

Nate’s breath caught as the boxers hit the floor. Owen was on his knees in their kitchen—the one with the replaced pipe and the fixed cabinet and the corkboard with the framed receipts.

“Further assessment required,” Owen said, and took Nate in his mouth.

Nate’s hand slammed against the counter behind him. His head dropped back. The sound he made was loud and uncontained and filled the kitchen with exactly the kind of noise that their neighbors had long since stopped complaining about.

Owen was thorough. He used his tongue. He used his hand. He used the specific combination of pressure and rhythm that made Nate’s knees unreliable, and when Nate’s fingers gripped his hair and his hips moved and his voice broke on Owen’s name, Owen felt it in his own body like a resonance—the devastating feedback loop of making someone you love feel good.

“Owen—god—I’m—”

Owen pulled back. Stood up. Nate made a sound of outraged protest that was cut short when Owen lifted him onto the counter—the same counter, the same motion, the anniversary callback so precise it felt choreographed.

“The counter,” Nate breathed, grinning. “You planned this.”

“I brought a clipboard. The plan is implied.”

Nate laughed—the full, sudden, room-filling laugh that had started everything—and pulled Owen between his legs and kissed him with the fierce, joyful hunger of a man who had been loved well and knew it.

Owen’s boxers joined Nate’s sharks on the floor. They were skin to skin on the kitchen counter, Nate’s legs wrapped around Owen’s waist, and Owen took them both in hand and set a rhythm that was fast and unrestrained. This was the rhythm of familiarity. Of knowledge. Of two bodies that had spent a year learning each other and could now communicate in a language made entirely of pressure and heat and the specific, escalating sounds that meant more, there, don’t stop, I love you.

Nate was vocal. He said Owen’s name like a prayer. He said harder like a dare. He said right there like a damage report—precise, specific, leaving no room for misinterpretation.

Owen was vocal too. The sounds were louder now, more confident—the vocal expression of a man who had learned that being heard was not the same as being exposed.

They came together. On the counter, in the kitchen, on their anniversary, with bacon cooling on the stove and coffee going cold and the clipboard propped against the sugar bowl. Owen’s forehead against Nate’s, their breath shared, their bodies shuddering, and the sound they made was each other’s names, overlapping, simultaneous.

They stayed on the counter. Breathing. Then Nate grinned.

“Assessment complete?”

“Preliminary assessment complete. Full assessment requires the shower.”

“Your shower or mine?”

“Ours.”

They showered. The water pressure was terrible—Nate’s shower, the original, two settings and a curtain that kept coming unhooked. Owen pressed Nate against the tile and dropped to his knees under the lukewarm spray and finished what he’d started at the stove, and the sound Nate made echoed off every surface in the bathroom.

Then Nate returned the favor. On his knees on the tub floor, water streaming down his face, looking up at Owen with an expression that was open, unperforming, radiantly happy. Owen braced himself against the tile and said Nate’s name like it was the only word that mattered, because it was.

They dried off with towels that didn’t match. Ate reheated bacon on the couch. Nate’s legs across Owen’s lap.

“One year,” Nate said.

“One year. Fourteen claims. Three floods. Two ceiling collapses. One shopping cart.”

“You’re counting.”

“I always count. And I’d sign up for every one again.”

Nate kissed him with bacon-flavored tenderness and the quiet, certain pressure of a man who had stopped bracing for the next disaster because the man next to him had made bracing unnecessary.

“Happy disaster-versary, Owen.”

“Happy disaster-versary, Nate.”

The apartment creaked.

They didn’t flinch.

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