Love in Tandem

by Natalie Arden

  “Fucking amazing,” Eamon told him. He pressed his hips back towards Scott’s groin. “Please. Keep going.”

  Which was apparently all it took to get him the best fucking of his life. Scott was like a machine, if a machine could be taught to whisper endearments between every thrust, tell Eamon how good he looked and how sweet his ass was. Eamon felt like he was melting into the bed, struggling to keep his knees locked and his hips tilted back into the pounding Scott was giving him.

  “More,” he mumbled into the pillow. “Yes. Just like that.” His throat was hoarse, but either Scott could hear him or Scott could read minds because he kept going, exactly the way Eamon wanted him to.

  He almost screamed when Scott’s hand wrapped around his long-ignored dick, the pressure so good that it was almost too much. It only took a few short, sharp strokes before he was coming, his knees finally giving out as he shook through a truly glorious orgasm.

  “Keep going,” Eamon mumbled into the pillow as Scott’s hips began to still. Some guys didn’t like to be fucked when they’d just come, but he loved it, rocking on that edge of almost-too-much as the afterglow shot fireworks into his brain.

  He hardly noticed when Scott came, still trembling with the aftershocks of his own orgasm, realizing only as Scott’s rhythm began to falter and Scott’s forehead pressed against his shoulder blade.

  “You were great,” Eamon mumbled dizzily, reaching behind himself to pat Scott’s arm. “Fucking amazing.”

  Scott kissed Eamon’s back, his cock, softening now, sliding out of Eamon’s hole, catching against his tender rim. Eamon groaned again, and Scott murmured, “You okay?”

  “Fucking amazing,” Eamon replied, letting himself fall messily onto the bed.

  “Good,” Scott said into his ear. He palmed Eamon’s ass, the heat of his hand like a balm on much-abused flesh. “Me too.”

  24

  Scott

  Light streamed in through the window as Scott curled around the unfamiliar object in his bed. It was kind of taking up a lot of the bed, he thought dimly, but it was pleasantly warm. He patted the blanket wrapped mass, his eyes still shut and brain still offline, and almost jumped out of his skin when the lump said, “Is it morning already?” in a crumpled kind of voice.

  “It doesn’t have to be,” Scott said, patting Eamon’s shoulder again. Now that he was actually thinking instead of swimming through sleep in a kind of haze, it was very obvious that the lump in his bed was person-shaped and the person it was most likely to be was the same person it had been when they’d fallen asleep last night.

  “But now I’m awake,” Eamon complained, yawning vigorously. He turned to face Scott and became entangled in the sheets, pushing at them with weakly sleepy hands and a helpless expression that didn’t really fit his sleek features.

  It was impossibly cute.

  “Well, if you’re awake,” Scott said, and tugged just enough of the blankets away to allow him to press himself up against Eamon and plant a kiss on his cheek.

  Eamon laughed, looking fond, and curled in closer to Scott’s embrace. “Not really awake, but getting there.” He arched his back, stretching and shaking out the kinks. “Slept like an absolute log though.”

  “I would hope so, after last night,” Scott joked, burying his nose in the sweet scent of Eamon’s hair.

  “It was very thorough,” Eamon agreed. His hand slid slowly and delicately over Scott’s back, just on the knife’s edge of ticklish.

  Not so thorough, fortunately, that they couldn’t reprise their artistry of the night before, and it was a long and extremely mutually satisfying time later when they actually emerged from the bed and began taking turns with the shower.

  “I’ll be downstairs,” Scott called out as he drew a t-shirt over his damp head and headed out. The only reply was the noise of the shower turning on.

  Last night, when Scott had shopped for breakfast as well as dinner, it had seemed a touch presumptuous, even if Eamon hadn’t said a word at the time. Now, he merely congratulated himself on his foresight.

  He wasn’t the world’s best cook or anything, but no one needed to be the world’s best cook when real smoked bacon was doing all the heavy lifting flavor-wise. It just needed a little frying, as did the eggs, and presto! Breakfast where there had been none before.

  When Eamon came downstairs, Scott was just scooping fried eggs onto freshly crisp toast, and feeling very pleased with himself.

  “Breakfast!” he announced, delighted by Eamon’s slightly stunned look. “You want coffee? You seemed like a coffee guy, so I made a whole pot.”

  “I’m definitely a coffee guy,” Eamon admitted, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck. “I mean, wow. I was in the shower for what? Five minutes?”

  “A little longer than that,” Scott said teasingly. He gave Eamon a long and obvious look up and down. “Worth it, of course.”

  Eamon laughed, ducking his head and wrinkling his nose. “I do have some clean stuff in the car, probably,” he said, “But I smelled something amazing when I came downstairs and got distracted.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” Scott said. He put the plate in his hand down on the kitchen table and reached for Eamon. Even competing with the aroma of freshly made breakfast, their kiss was long and lingering, and ended with them pressed close together.

  “Good morning to you too,” Eamon said as they pulled apart reluctantly.

  “I think we passed good morning over an hour ago,” Scott replied. He tugged gently on Eamon’s wrist. “Sit! Eat! I’ll pour coffee. How do you take yours?”

  “Milk, no sugar.” Eamon sat where he was pushed, looking down in astonishment at the food in front of him. He really was amazing for Scott’s confidence in the kitchen. He might even have to learn a sixth recipe, just to keep Eamon looking at him like he’d just done a magic trick.

  “It’s just breakfast,” Scott said, pouring coffee for both of them.

  “It’s amazing breakfast,” Eamon answered, his voice muffled, and Scott swung around, coffee in hand, to the sight of Eamon sheepishly chewing.

  “You’re so good for my ego,” Scott said, setting the coffees on the table as he sat down. “Keep stroking it, please.”

  “I would hope it’s not the most important thing I’ve stroked so far today,” Eamon said, biting at his lip and grinning.

  “Definitely not.” Scott reached out with his foot under the table, pressing it against the side of Eamon’s leg.

  They ate in silence for a while, still touching under the table, still glancing at each other every few minutes. Scott was pretty sure the expression on Eamon’s face was the same as the one on his own, the one that meant he couldn’t believe his luck. The thought made him feel giddy or maybe that was just the second cup of coffee – well outside of his routine, though Eamon was starting a fourth and looked cool as a cucumber.

  “Any plans for today?” Scott asked as he mopped up the last of the egg with a toast corner.

  “Not a thing,” Eamon said easily.

  “Well, it’s my day off,” Scott said. “Well, you knew that. But I thought we could hang out if you didn’t have any other plans. I did promise you I’d take your mind off this past weekend, after all.”

  “Believe me,” Eamon said, “You managed that very effectively last night.” He grinned. “Do you have something else in mind for today?”

  “I really want to show you the conservation area,” Scott said. “It’s a nice bike ride. Good place for a date.”

  “I admit, it’s no longer tipping down,” Eamon said, looking out of the window at the clear blue sky, “But won’t the mud be hell?”

  “It stopped pretty early last night,” Scott said, shrugging the concern away. “It should be nice now, unless you really want to wade in the marsh or something.”

  “Biking sounds fine to me,” Eamon said with a grin. “You just have to remember to let me keep up, you know. I’m not the professional here.”

  “I won’t let you out of
my sight,” Scott promised, laughing.

  25

  Eamon

  There were a few puddles in the road as Eamon drove back home to pick up his bike, but it was drier than he’d expected it to be. He had, he supposed, been a little distracted from the weather by a certain point in the evening – a point he remembered with far more fondness than when he’d had to run through the rain. Overhead, the sky was the kind of clear blue that made other people want to take photographs. Eamon wasn’t much for documenting his life – he left that for his code – but he could kind of see why they might care if the world around them looked like this all the time.

  He was still inside changing when the doorbell rang, and he answered it pulling down a fresh shirt – one of the ones from a tech conference years ago. On the doorstep, Scott’s eyes widened and he answered Eamon’s hello with a grin that made it clear exactly where he’d been looking. He hadn’t changed out of his t-shirt and jeans, which was a relief. Eamon was sure he couldn’t keep up with the kind of cyclist who wore skintight neoprene in eye-catching colors – however appealing the thought of Scott’s thighs in that kind of outfit might have been.

  “Ready to go?” Scott asked.

  “I think so,” Eamon said. He went to get the rented bike from where it was locked up in the garage, gathering a certain amount of dust since the first few days of heavy use. “You’re still planning to go easy on me, right?” he called out as he walked the bike over to the front path. The grass of the lawn was spongy underfoot, but the bike didn’t sink into it too badly, and once they were on the path, things were smooth sailing again. This might not be a bad ride.

  “Just an easy loop around my favorite bike paths,” Scott promised. “You’ll be fine.”

  Eamon wasn’t sure how fine he’d be, but it was true that self-consciousness had a harder time taking hold when it was taking most of his mental energy to keep the bike straight. Scott, naturally, seemed to have not only the energy to glide along smoothly but also to talk, excitedly telling Eamon about the various points of interest he wanted to make sure they hit that day.

  “–so nice to have the conservation area this close to downtown,” he was saying as they waited at a light for some other cars to pass. “I don’t think I appreciated that as a kid: how close we were to a bit of real nature, not just farms and things.”

  “I don’t think anyone appreciated it back then,” Eamon agreed between deep breaths. “It wasn’t just you.”

  “I overlooked a lot of things as a kid,” Scott agreed, giving Eamon a look he couldn’t quite place. Did he mean that Eamon was one of the things he’d overlooked? Because Eamon could hardly pretend there had been much there to see when he was that young. He’d tried very hard to keep it that way, with his real life mostly in online forums and with a few like-minded individuals. As nice as it might have been to know another gay kid at his school, it probably would have been more awkward than anything else.

  Much better to have met Scott now. To show him the person Eamon had tried so hard to become. With a few hiccups, admittedly, stemming from the troubles at Columbus, but nothing that had, so far, seemed to dim Scott’s enthusiasm.

  “The light, Eamon!” Scott called out as he sailed away ahead, and Eamon put on a burst of speed to follow him, laughing internally at himself for getting caught up in his own thoughts.

  “The traffic’s worse on a Monday,” Scott was complaining as Eamon caught up to him. “But I think the park’s emptier, which is kind of nice.”

  “This isn’t real traffic,” Eamon said without thinking.

  Scott made a taunting noise at him. Eamon was too intent on the road to see Scott’s face, but he could just imagine the amused and mocking expression that went with it. “We haven’t all had the advantages of city living.”

  “It’s not an advantage,” Eamon protested. “It’s just...traffic. It gives you perspective. This seems nice.”

  “I’m glad you approve of our traffic,” Scott laughed. “Left at the next street, by the way. And straight on until you hit the trees.”

  “I did grow up here,” Eamon said, amused. “And I did some biking around on my own too.”

  “What did you see?” Scott asked, sounding genuinely interested. “I don’t want to bore you on my tour.”

  “Uh...” How to say that Eamon had hardly seen anything past the road ahead of himself? He’d been more out of touch with cycling than he’d told Scott about when he’d first made the rental, and just staying upright had been enough triumph for him for a while. “The pond?” he hazarded, carefully omitting the fact that he’d mostly seen the pond from a bench by its side, panting vigorously.

  Scott laughed. “Well, you tell me if I’m boring you, okay? We can always move on.”

  Their pace slowed as they entered the conservation area and, with no cars around to watch out for, Eamon found himself better able to look around at more interesting things. Admittedly, some of these were not the various features that Scott was so proud of in the park. For one, every time Eamon fell behind, he found his gaze drifting to where the seat of Scott’s jeans pulled tight around his ass, the muscles working under their layer of cloth. Not something he’d want to be on the official tour, though Eamon could hardly have blamed anyone else for looking, if there had happened to be anyone else around them. He was certainly captivated, barely dragging himself away when Scott reminded him that there was room for two on the path now.

  But if nothing else, the sheer pleasure in Scott’s voice was enough to lift Eamon’s spirits. Scott just seemed more himself outside, his embrace of the world more expansive, his regular jokes reaching a sort of fever pitch as though he couldn’t hold back his delight any longer.

  “How do you know this much about birds?” Eamon asked after a while, trying to find the fourth invisible bird that Scott seemed to point to with inerring accuracy.

  “I don’t know much,” Scott said simply. “But you spend enough time with the scientists who work here and you’re not going to pick up nothing, you know?”

  “Scientists?” Eamon had never really considered the conservation area in that light before.

  “Oh, definitely! It’s not just a park,” Scott replied. “There’s a little team running studies out here all the time. They’ve got a hideous little concrete building to do it in too, though I think it’s pretty well hidden in spring and summer.”

  “Hidden?”

  “The committee planted shrubs and things to hide it from the path. A little silly, maybe, but we thought it was important to keep the public engaged in the work being done here. Keep them thinking it’s nice to have a place like this, a little oasis away from the cars and stuff.”

  “It is nice,” Eamon said, and it really was. The marsh that they were peddling alongside didn’t smell stagnant or anything, just green and growing, the smell of rain evaporating from leaves everywhere around them. Little brown sparrow-y birds were hopping around on the lawns on either side of the path, ignoring the cyclists in their midst with royal disdain.

  “You know, my friends would tell you not to encourage me,” Scott warned him. “Or I’m going to end up dragging you out to our clean-up days. They’re coming up pretty soon.”

  “So far, encouraging you has been nothing but good for me,” Eamon said, as sultry as he could manage, and watched in delight as Scott’s bike made a distinct wobble.

  “I’m not sure you’re thinking about picking up litter while being careful not to disturb the natural whatsits,” Scott said, sounding a touch strangled.

  “I’m not sure you’re thinking about that anymore either,” Eamon informed him.

  A brief pause. “An excellent point.” Scott chuckled. “I’m never going to be able to go this way again after today, am I?”

  “I can stop if you like,” Eamon lied. He could try, of course, but he was feeling full to bursting with life: well-fed, well-fucked, and well-rested. He didn’t exactly want to go at round three together in the park, but he wasn’t going to pre
tend the idea hadn’t crossed his mind, in a vague, fantasy sort of way. He blamed Scott, that’s who he blamed. Going around with thighs like those in a public place.

  He laughed quietly to himself, and then swore as the bike under him swerved wildly.

  Scott looked mildly alarmed. “You doing all right?”

  “Just fine,” Eamon assured him, but Scott didn’t seem convinced.

  “There’s a bench just up ahead,” he told Eamon. “We can take a break there.”

  That seemed all right too, especially when the bench turned out to be surprisingly dry and with a lovely view over the marsh.

  “It’s a good place for bird-watching, I’m told,” Scott said as they sat down.

  “Oh, yeah?” Eamon leaned into him, feeling daring. “Tell me all about it.”

  “That’s all I really know,” Scott said with a self-deprecating laugh. “The herons nest around here somewhere, I think. But I only manage to see those because they really don’t give a damn about us.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a heron,” Eamon said as Scott’s arm slid around his back, holding him lightly, but close.

  “They’re even weirder up close,” Scott said. He was still talking about herons, but it was hard for Eamon to pay attention with Scott’s arm around him. He’d never done anything like this back home: first because he’d had no one to even try for a display of affection with, and then he’d never quite felt comfortable enough on the few times he’d brought ex-boyfriends back home to visit his parents. He’d barely felt comfortable enough in his own parents’ house, let alone out on the street on the rare occasions they’d needed to hit the shops for milk or something.

  But here Scott was, putting his arm around Eamon in the park like it was nothing. Maybe more had changed about Sellis Creek than he’d thought in his years away.