The Door Between

A Bonus Chapter from The Straight Man’s Rulebook
by Chase Power

⚠️ Spoiler warning: This scene takes place after the epilogue of The Straight Man’s Rulebook. It contains explicit MM sexual content and is intended for readers 18+.

The contractor’s estimate was three days.

Ethan finished in one.

That was the thing about Ethan Cole — when the man decided something needed to exist, he built it with the focused, single-minded intensity of a person who had spent forty-two years channeling every emotion he couldn’t articulate into physical labor. Other men processed feelings through therapy, or alcohol, or ill-advised texts to their exes at two in the morning. Ethan processed feelings through framing hammers and structural adhesive and load calculations performed on the backs of envelopes.

The door between their houses was a masterpiece of unnecessary precision.

It connected Ethan’s kitchen to Nico’s living room through the shared wall of their adjacent row houses — a wall that had been solid brick for a hundred and thirty years and was now, as of four o’clock this afternoon, a passage. A solid-core six-panel, pre-hung in a new frame Ethan had built from scratch because the existing stud spacing didn’t match standard door widths and Ethan Cole did not use shims when he could rebuild the header. The hinges were silent — oiled, precision-mounted, the kind that cost forty dollars a pair and moved like something German-engineered. The threshold was level to within a sixteenth of an inch. The casing matched the original trim profile on both sides, mitered at the corners, because Ethan would rather spend three hours milling custom trim than let a visible joint announce that the door was an addition.

Nobody would ever see the casing except the two of them. It didn’t matter. Ethan built things right because building things wrong was a form of lying, and he’d spent twenty-five years lying and had run out of tolerance for it.

Nico stood in the new opening with his arms crossed and his hip cocked against the frame and watched Ethan sweep sawdust off the threshold with a brush that was itself unreasonably well-maintained, and felt something in his chest that he was going to need a significant amount of time to process.

“It’s a door,” Nico said.

Ethan looked up from his sweeping. Sawdust in his hair. Pencil behind his ear. Tool belt slung low on his hips in a way that should not have been as attractive as it was but categorically, objectively, undeniably was.

“It’s a door.”

“You built us a door.”

“I built us a door.”

“Through the wall.”

“Through the wall.”

“In one day.”

“The estimate was conservative.”

“The estimate was three days. You did it in nine hours. You skipped lunch. I brought you a sandwich at one o’clock and you ate it while operating a reciprocating saw, which I’m fairly certain violates multiple OSHA regulations.”

“I was hungry.”

“You were obsessed.”

Ethan set the brush down. He straightened up — all six-three of him, broad and dust-covered, his gray T-shirt damp with sweat and clinging to the planes of his chest in a way that Nico had been peripherally aware of all day while pretending to work on vendor contracts from his kitchen table, which was approximately twelve feet from where Ethan had been cutting a hole in a wall with power tools and a focus that bordered on erotic.

“I was going to put in a lock,” Ethan said.

“A lock?”

“On the door. For privacy. But then I thought — what am I locking? We already have front doors. This one shouldn’t need a lock. This one should just be open.”

Nico’s arms uncrossed. The amusement in his face softened into something rawer. His hand came up and pressed flat against Ethan’s chest, over his heart, feeling the steady hammer of it through the damp cotton.

“No lock,” Nico said.

“No lock.”

“Just a door that’s always open.”

“Just a door that’s always open.”

Nico looked at the door. Looked at Ethan. Thought about a man who had spent twenty-five years behind a locked wall and had just cut a passage through the last one.

He kissed him.

Not softly. Not the gentle, affectionate press of a couple in their domestic routine. Nico kissed Ethan the way you kissed someone who had just built you a metaphor and didn’t even know it — with his whole mouth, his hands fisting in the front of Ethan’s T-shirt, his body pressing flush against six feet and three inches of construction-hardened muscle. He kissed him until Ethan’s arms locked around his waist and Ethan’s breath went ragged against his lips and the sawdust transferred from Ethan’s clothes to Nico’s in a fine, cedar-scented cloud.

Ethan’s hands slid down to Nico’s ass. Gripped. Pulled him tighter. The contact was immediate and unmistakable — Ethan was hard against Nico’s hip, thick and insistent, because apparently building a door through a wall was foreplay for a man who expressed love through structural engineering.

“Which side?” Nico murmured against his mouth.

“Yours is closer.”

“Yours is bigger.”

“Mine has sawdust on the sheets.”

“You just installed a door and didn’t change your sheets?”

“I was focused.”

Nico pulled back. “You are a disaster.”

“I’m your disaster.”

“My disaster with sawdust sheets.” Nico took his hand. Pulled him through the door — the first official crossing. “My side. My sheets. My rules.”

“You love my rules.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too. Now take off the tool belt.”

Nico’s bedroom smelled like amber and cedar — the candle on the nightstand that had become their candle. He lit it while Ethan unclipped his tool belt and set it on the dresser with the care of a man putting down something sacred and picking up something better.

Nico pulled his own shirt over his head. Dropped it. Turned around.

Ethan was staring. He did that — stared openly, without pretense, with the full focused attention of a man who had spent twenty-five years not letting himself look at men and was now making up for it with an intensity that bordered on devotional.

“See something you like?”

“Everything. I see everything I like.”

Ethan pulled his T-shirt over his head. His chest was broad and hard, dusted with blond hair. The scar from the nail gun. The newer scar on his knuckle. Both healed now.

Nico crossed the room. Put his hands on Ethan’s chest. “I’ve been watching you all day. Through the kitchen window. You with a reciprocating saw. You measuring headers. You on your hands and knees cleaning up the threshold.”

“You were working on vendor contracts.”

“I was pretending to work on vendor contracts. I sent the same email three times because you took your shirt off at noon and my brain ceased functioning.”

Ethan’s hands found Nico’s waist. His thumbs pressed into the hollows above Nico’s hip bones — firm, possessive, certain.

“What did you think about?” Ethan’s voice had dropped. The low register, rough-edged, that he only used in this room.

“I thought about what I was going to do to you when the door was finished.”

Nico rose on his toes. Put his mouth against Ethan’s ear. “I thought about pushing you onto my bed and riding you until neither of us can remember which house we’re in.”

The sound Ethan made was barely human — a guttural, wrecked noise from somewhere past composure and control. His hands clamped on Nico’s hips and he walked him backward toward the bed.

Nico’s knees hit the mattress. He sat. Looked up at Ethan standing over him — backlit by the candle, chest heaving, jeans straining, face stripped of every defense.

“Jeans. Off. Now.”

Ethan stripped. Jeans, boxers, one motion. He stood naked in the candlelight and Nico looked at him — the broad shoulders, the thick arms, the powerful thighs, the cock standing hard and flushed against his stomach, already leaking at the tip.

“Come here.”

Ethan knelt on the bed. Nico pushed him flat — hands on his chest, guided descent — and Ethan went down against the pillows with a willingness that still made Nico’s breath catch. A man this size, this strong, letting himself be moved. Choosing to be moved.

Nico straddled him. The pressure of Ethan thick and rigid beneath him made both of them groan.

“You’re overdressed,” Ethan said.

“I know.” Nico rolled his hips. A slow, deliberate grind. Ethan’s head tipped back, his throat exposed, and Nico leaned down and bit the tendon — gently, then harder when Ethan’s hips bucked.

“Nico — fuck —”

“Patience. You built a door in one day. I can take my time.”

“You’re killing me.”

“I love you. That’s not the same thing.”

Nico stripped his jeans and boxers. The moment they were skin to skin, Ethan’s cock pressing against his own, the laughter died and heat consumed everything.

Ethan’s hand wrapped around both of them. His big, rough, scarred hand closed around both their cocks together and stroked, and the sensation — the friction, the pressure of his calloused palm, the wet slide of precome — made Nico’s spine arch and a sound come out of him that he would deny making if asked.

“God — your hands —”

“I know what my hands do to you.”

“Cocky.”

“Accurate.”

Nico reached behind himself. Found Ethan’s cock and wrapped his fingers around the base, positioning himself. “I want to ride you. I’ve been thinking about it since you started the saw this morning.”

“Nightstand.”

Lube, condom. The sounds that had become their sounds. Nico took the lube. Slicked his own fingers. Reached behind himself and began opening himself up while straddling Ethan’s hips, and the visual — Nico above him, dark skin flushed, head tipped back, one hand braced on Ethan’s chest while the other worked between his own legs — made Ethan’s cock jerk and a strangled sound escape his throat.

“Like watching?” Nico murmured.

“You have no idea.”

“You’re staring at me like I’m a structural miracle.”

“You are.”

Nico rolled the condom onto Ethan’s cock with steady hands. Slicked him generously — feeling the weight and heat. Ethan was thick. That had been an adjustment in the early weeks — the kind that turned discomfort into anticipation into a fullness so intense it rewired his understanding of pleasure.

He positioned himself. The head of Ethan’s cock pressed against him. They both held their breath.

Nico sank down.

Slow. Controlled. His body opening around the head and then the shaft, inch by inch, the stretch blooming through him in a wave. The sound he made was involuntary — a long, shuddering exhale that carried Ethan’s name in its center.

Ethan’s hands flew to Nico’s hips. “Fuck. You feel — God, Nico —”

“I know.” Nico settled fully. The fullness was devastating — tight and deep and right. “I know how I feel. I can feel you too.”

He braced his hands on Ethan’s chest and moved.

The first roll of his hips was experimental. The second was deliberate. The third hit the angle that sent white light through Nico’s vision and tore a sound from Ethan that was half groan, half prayer.

“There. Right — God, right there —”

He rode Ethan with increasing intensity. Ethan’s hands moved from his hips to his thighs to his ass — gripping, spreading, pulling him down harder onto each stroke. The sound of skin against skin filled the room, wet and rhythmic.

“Touch me,” Nico demanded. His cock was hard between them, bouncing with each thrust, leaking onto Ethan’s stomach. “I need your hand — Ethan, touch me —”

Ethan wrapped his hand around Nico’s cock and stroked — firm, tight, his thumb circling the head on each upstroke, syncing with the movement of Nico’s hips.

“I’m close. I’m — fuck, I’m close, don’t stop —”

Ethan planted his feet on the mattress and thrust up, driving into Nico from below — deeper, harder, hitting Nico’s prostate with devastating accuracy. Nico cried out, his painted nails digging into Ethan’s chest hard enough to leave marks.

“Come for me,” Ethan said. His voice was wrecked. “I want to feel you come around me.”

Nico came with a shout that echoed off the walls — his body clenching hard around Ethan’s cock, his release spilling hot over Ethan’s fist in long, pulsing waves. Ethan followed — a guttural, broken sound, his hips slamming up and holding, his whole body going rigid as he came inside Nico with a force that Nico felt in his bones.

They stayed locked together. Nico collapsed forward onto Ethan’s chest. Ethan’s arms came around him completely, holding him while the aftershocks rolled through them both.

“That’s one surface,” Nico mumbled into Ethan’s neck.

“We have a lot of surfaces.”

“The kitchen counter alone could take a week.”

“I’ll clear my schedule.”

“I love the door. For the record.”

“It’s just a door.”

“It’s not just a door and you know it. It’s you saying this wall doesn’t need to be here anymore. It’s you deciding that two separate houses can be one home without losing what makes each of them what they are.”

“That’s a lot of meaning for a six-panel pre-hung.”

“You put a lot of meaning into everything you build. That’s what makes you infuriating and irreplaceable.”

Ethan pulled him down and kissed him — slow, deep, unhurried, tasting like salt and sex and the particular tenderness of a man who had learned that the strongest thing he could build was not a wall but a door.

“No lock,” Nico whispered.

“No lock. Just open.”

They lay tangled in the wrecked sheets. Through the door between their houses — the open door, the always-open door — Nico could see into Ethan’s kitchen. The light over the sink. The coffee mug waiting for tomorrow morning. The sawdust still on the floor, because Ethan would sweep it in the morning, because Ethan always cleaned up after he built something, because Ethan Cole left things better than he found them.

Every single thing. Every house, every structure, every person. Including himself.

Ethan’s breathing evened out. The last thing Nico felt before sleep took him was the brush of Ethan’s lips against his temple and the murmured word home, spoken so quietly it might have been a dream.

It wasn’t a dream.

The door was open. It was going to stay that way.

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