Love in Tandem

by Natalie Arden

  “But I’m so worn out.” Eamon raised his head just enough to smirk at Scott, and if that was the way he wanted to play it, Scott could roll with that.

  “I’ll look after you,” Scott said, thrilling inwardly at the idea that Eamon would let himself be taken care of. “I’ll do all the work. You just have to lie back and enjoy.” He ran a hand down Eamon’s back again, a touch so light it would be almost ticklish if they weren’t so turned on, and grinned when Eamon’s hips immediately stopped their tiny grind.

  “It’s hard to imagine a better offer,” Eamon drawled. “All I have to do is just lie here and you’ll fuck me into the mattress.”

  “Yeah.” Scott grinned back. He hadn’t even been imagining that. Eamon had seemed too tired for anything more than a blowjob or something, but if Eamon wanted to be fucked into the mattress while he lay there boneless... Well, Scott’s dick was already pressing hard against the crotch of his jeans.

  Eamon put his head back down on his arms. “Go ahead.”

  Leaning in to kiss Eamon’s neck again, Scott could smell his own soap, the scent of Eamon’s skin, and a lingering tickle in his throat that must be Eamon’s arousal. His lover was mostly still on the bed, but the way his whole body quivered when Scott carefully began to press kisses along his spine showed just how keyed up he really was, how much he wanted this too.

  Underneath him, Eamon was putting on a show of being the passive one, but Scott could read every reaction by now, every little shiver, every cut off sound. He stroked over Eamon’s ass and felt the muscles tense and release as Eamon tried to push into the touch and then held himself back.

  “A little stiff still?” Scott joked, digging his thumbs again into the thick muscle.

  “No, I’m good” Eamon mumbled into his arms. His whole body shook. “Shit, just fuck me already.”

  “I don’t want you to have to do a thing,” Scott said teasingly. “So I’m taking my time.”

  “You’ve been taking your time all afternoon,” Eamon complained, but he didn’t get up, so Scott kept going, rubbing small circles into Eamon’s hips as he positioned himself between Eamon’s spread thighs and reached for the lube.

  It felt like a natural extension of the movement to push Eamon’s thighs apart just that little bit more, drizzling lube over Eamon’s hole as his fingers made their circles closer and closer to where Eamon wanted him. Eamon was fully groaning now, still lying flat, but making noises at every touch. The sound he made when Scott’s thumb began to rub slick circles around his hole was a thing of beauty. If Scott could have preserved it forever, he would have, but it was gone in the air, and he had to focus again on pulling more sounds from Eamon’s throat.

  The one Eamon made when Scott finally dipped a finger inside, pressing into the tight heat of Eamon’s ass, was pretty good too. Scott’s thighs were shaking as he knelt on the bed, tense with desire, with the need to move faster and the effort he was putting into teasing this out as long as possible. Eamon was normally pretty vocal in bed, telling Scott exactly what he needed and just how hard it could be, but he was wordless now, his sounds nothing that could be interpreted as speech. Luckily, he was still pretty easy to read.

  Scott thrust his fingers in and out of his lover slowly, adding more lube as he went, until every movement made a slick noise, an inviting noise. Eamon’s hips were moving now: not as vigorously as they could have been, but enough that Scott guessed he was feeling pretty desperate too, his cock thick and dripping against the sheets.

  “Gonna fuck you now,” he said, when he couldn’t take it anymore. He pushed a little bit closer, pulling Eamon’s hips up off the bed, and was surprised by the faint sound of amusement coming from Eamon’s lips.

  “Not even going to get naked?” Eamon murmured. “Kinky.”

  “This isn’t about me,” Scott told him. “This is all about you.” It was maybe a little bit also about his own impatience, but Eamon didn’t seem to mind the feeling of Scott’s jeans on his thighs once Scott was unzipping, his dick practically leaping into his hand.

  He rubbed it, teasingly, along Eamon’s crack, the head nudging over his slick hole. Eamon hummed his appreciation and impatience, hips pressing back every time Scott’s cock seemed poised to thrust inside him, retreating when Scott began to tease him again.

  “I thought you were going to do the work here,” Eamon complained languidly after a few moments.

  “That’s true,” Scott agreed. He spread Eamon’s cheeks, pressing his thumb into the muscle. Between Eamon’s legs, his own cock bobbed, hard and wet as it had been in any of Scott’s imaginings. He palmed Eamon’s balls, dragged his fingers up behind them, circled Eamon’s hole again. “You want it?”

  He took his own cock in hand and pressed inside before Eamon could say anything: Eamon’s groan of pleasure far and away enough answer for him. After all of that teasing, the tight pressure of Eamon’s body took his breath away, and he had to stop for a moment, hands curled around Eamon’s hips, to adjust, his breath tight in his chest.

  Around him, Eamon began to squeeze, just a little. Scott wanted to tell him that this didn’t seem like letting Scott do all the work, but it felt too good to complain about. Eamon felt too good to want to do anything except fuck him in exactly the way he liked.

  Eamon stayed boneless as Scott began to fuck into him, letting Scott move his hips, drag him in closer, push him up onto his knees. His head rolled on the end of his neck, still nestled in his arms, his chest sinking into the mattress. Every groan said he wanted this, and every line of his body screamed that he trusted Scott to give it to him, trusted Scott to make it good.

  The least Scott could do was his absolute best. He rolled his hips, thrusting slowly and carefully, listening for every noise that escaped Eamon’s throat and reveling in it, in his ability to give Eamon this kind of pleasure. This was more of a tease than Eamon usually liked, he knew, but it felt so good to hold back, to give Eamon one taste, then another, to slow his thrusts until the head of his cock was toying with the rim of Eamon’s hole, and then push back in, hard and fast.

  Eamon took every thrust like a champ, his thick cock swinging between his legs as they moved together, hard as iron without touching much of anything except the bed. The knowledge that his massage alone could drive Eamon that crazy made Scott feel like he was glowing, urged him onwards, further, deeper, harder.

  He reached down with one hand, the other pulling Eamon tight to him, and wrapped it around Eamon’s cock, feeling the weight of it against his palm. When he slid his thumb over the head, it was wet, slick with precum. He thought he could feel Eamon’s heartbeat in his hand, or maybe that was the sound of his own pulse thumping in his ears. Eamon felt like he was aching as much as Scott was, wanting it just as hard, knowing he would get it.

  “You want this,” he murmured giddily into the small of Eamon’s back, stroking down the length of Eamon’s cock with a firm hand.

  Eamon’s groan turned into something like a laugh. “I always want this.” He whined deep in his throat as Scott pounded into him. “I always want you. Fuck.” His breath came in pants. “You feel so fucking good. You always make it so fucking good.”

  Compliments and the sweet feeling of Eamon’s ass around his cock? That was far more than Scott could be expected to take. He leaned forward, his forehead touching Eamon’s back, and let his hips speed up the way they were begging to, his balls slapping against Scott’s ass.

  “You feel so good,” he found himself mumbling. “You’re so fucking amazing.” His hips were out of rhythm, out of control, and yet he couldn’t quite reach the peak he searched for, his whole body straining towards it.

  Eamon only groaned, his cock twitching in Scott’s hand. The only warning Scott had was the way his back tensed for an instant and then he was coming, squeezing around Scott’s cock, his come pulsing in thick jets over Scott’s hand.

  It was too much for Scott. Another few thrusts, and he was coming too, jerky and overwhelmed.

&nbs
p; He collapsed on top of Eamon who collapsed down onto the bed, their legs entangled stickily, their bodies still connected.

  “You good?” Scott murmured as he pulled out. Eamon’s shoulders shook and he untangled his arms long enough to give Scott a brief and silent thumbs up. Scott laughed, climbing out from between Eamon’s thighs and off the bed.

  As he took a few steps away, Eamon’s head rose from it’s pillow, his cheeks pink and eyes bright as he stared at Scott. “Where are you going?”

  “Gonna clean you up a bit,” Scott said fondly. “Unless you want to join me, of course.”

  Eamon’s smile was radiant. “You said you’d do it all, right. I’m comfy right here.”

  “You got it.” Scott sketched a salute and headed for the bathroom, his limbs tingling with every step. There was something in Eamon’s expression he hadn’t seen before, and he thought he liked it. There was a vulnerability there that hadn’t been the same before – not the discomfort Eamon always had when he admitted to something going poorly at work, or the awkwardness that Scott always sensed whenever Eamon’s parents would come up, but something happier. As though Eamon was open to that vulnerability, not hiding the fact that he was letting Scott see another side of him.

  It made Scott’s heart sing as he washed up: the only thing stopping him from bursting into actual song the knowledge of, firstly, his own abilities, and secondly, the fact that Eamon would definitely hear him.

  Still, he thought to himself as he came back into the bedroom, washcloth in hand, Eamon could probably tell how happy he was regardless.

  On the bed, Eamon had rolled over slightly and was watching the door, his eyes half-lidded, his cock lying against his thigh.

  “Miss me?”

  “Always,” Eamon said, reaching one hand towards Scott. He rolled his head on his neck and groaned again. “You make me feel so fucking good, love.”

  “You deserve it,” Scott told him, fireworks going off in his chest. The sensible part of him knew better than to take post-coital affection so seriously; the rest of him knew only that Eamon had never used that word before.

  Eamon maybe knew it too, because he flushed red, the color spreading down his chest in a burst. That looked good on him as well, so maybe Scott was just too far gone on this wonderful man.

  It was hard not to be, of course. From coming out to his even this morning, to meeting his friends, to the kind of easy openness that shone through Eamon’s darkened eyes, today Eamon had lived up to every expectation, every hope, that Scott had had of him.

  “I love you,” he said, the words bursting from him unasked. He leaned in to kiss the taste of them away on Eamon’s lips. “You’re so fucking fantastic.”

  “You just got laid,” Eamon joked. “You don’t need to flatter me anymore.” But he watched Scott with those big, clear eyes and Scott thought he knew very well what Scott really meant, what lay between them now and just how good it was going to be.

  32

  Eamon

  It had to happen eventually. Eamon had let himself become relaxed enough to pick up his phone and say hello without looking at the caller ID, followed up by the disastrous mistake of saying “At the conservation area, why?” without registering that the person asking where he was was his mom.

  Ahead of him on the path, Scott was turning around to see where Eamon had disappeared to. Eamon waved, wincing as his mom practically shouted, “What?” into the phone.

  “Hi, Mom,” Eamon said, staring up at the sky.

  “I was just going to leave a message about Thanksgiving on your voicemail,” his mom said worriedly. “I was so surprised when you picked up. You said you were at the conservation area? What conservation area? Why aren’t you at work?”

  “The one back home,” Eamon said with a sigh.

  “Why are you home?” His mother’s voice was becoming increasingly agitated. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s nothing wrong.”

  “You’re keeping something from me, young man!”

  “I’m just taking some time off,” Eamon said. Scott, wheeling his bike back to where Eamon stood, was near enough now to hear the conversation and was looking at him curiously. Eamon shot him an apologetic look.

  “Time off? But you said there were problems at work! Is now really the time to have a holiday?”

  “It’s not a holiday,” Eamon protested before he could think better of it.

  His mom gasped. “Are you sick?”

  He scrambled to recover. “No, no, nothing like that. There were just...” He felt like he was picking his way through a field of broken glass to reach every word. “Some concerns...” More glass. “That I might be a little burnt out.”

  “Burnt out?” His mother made it sound like the least plausible thing in the world.

  “It’s silly, I know,” Eamon said soothingly. “But I have to keep the board happy. So I’m taking a little holiday. It’s August, anyway. They’re all off at the beach right now too.”

  “Then isn’t this your chance to really get into fixing things without their interference?” Her obvious distress was making Eamon’s heart ache.

  He looked over at Scott, looked back, stared up at the sky. No answers in any of those places, though he appreciated Scott’s look of confused sympathy. “I need the board to be united on this one,” he said at last. “So we’re working together, and I get a little break. Is that so bad?”

  “I just don’t want you to lose your momentum,” his mom said. “We know how much CarreSys means to you.”

  “There’s always time to get things back on track,” Eamon replied. If there was one thing this enforced leave had taught him, it was that things took time. That had never been his way before, when he’d always preferred to work through the night just to be able to say something was finished rather than leave the remainder for another day, but he’d learned patience in waiting for Kevin’s phone calls or the board’s decisions. Patience – he looked over at where Scott was leaning against his bike and looking at his phone – had won him some very worthwhile things. So it wasn’t all bad. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Then don’t give us anything to worry about,” his mother snapped. She sighed. “Sorry, dear. But you know that sometimes you need to be pushed. We don’t want you to fall behind.”

  “I won’t,” Eamon promised, his stomach sinking. Had he been letting himself get a bit lazy sitting around Sellis Creek? He probably had. Not physically maybe – all those bike rides had to be doing something – but mentally. Did he really need to sleep in so often or spend so much time hanging around Scott’s place watching TV?

  “Of course you won’t.” His mom’s voice became soothing. “You’re a good boy, Eamon.”

  He forced a laugh. “I’m not ten, Mom.”

  “You’re always ten to your mother.”

  Eamon attempted to change the subject. “So, what were you calling me about before we got distracted?”

  “Nothing that won’t keep,” his mom assured him. “We’ll talk later. You have more important things to do right now. Good-bye, dear!”

  She hung up, leaving Eamon more confused than ever. He’d just explained to her that he was on a semi-forcible holiday for the time being. What on earth did she think he needed to do right away?

  Slipping the phone back in his pocket, he walked over to where Scott was standing. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine.” Scott smiled at him, making Eamon’s knees weak for the thirtieth time today alone. Shouldn’t spending all this time with Scott have built up some kind of resistance in him by now? Whether it should or not: it hadn’t, and here he was making a fool of himself in the street again. “What was all that about?”

  “My mom surprise-called me,” Eamon said with a shrug.

  “You looked pretty upset for a call from your mom,” Scott said, reaching for Eamon’s hand. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Eamon said quickly. “It’s only... You’re going to laugh when I te
ll you this...”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I kind of never mentioned to her before that I was on sabbatical?”

  Scott looked startled – whatever he’d thought he was going to hear, it clearly wasn’t that. “How’d she miss that? It’s been...how many months now?”

  “I didn’t want her to worry!” Eamon protested. “And they were in Florida anyway, so I just never brought it up.”

  “Why’d they think you were back in Sellis Creek?” Scott asked.

  “I maybe didn’t tell them that either.” Eamon looked away.

  Scott blinked at him. “Well, I can see why she read you the riot act on that one, a bit. My parents would have killed me.”

  “I know, right?” Eamon said. “They’re so proud of the company and all, so I didn’t want to disappoint them by telling me the company’s trying to get rid of me. That they put me on a sabbatical for my supposed health. And now I guess she knows, and she’s not impressed.”

  “It’s not that.” Scott put a hand on Eamon’s shoulder. “They’d be mad that I didn’t tell them my problems: not that I had problems in the first place. You get that, right?”

  “They’re not mad that I have problems.” Eamon covered Scott’s hand with his own. “They just worry about me is all. But it’s good. They push me to do better.”

  “You seem to have enough motivation for any one guy,” Scott said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  “That’s not true,” Eamon said, amused. “You should have seen some of the lectures my parents had to give me.”

  “I can’t imagine that,” Scott replied, squeezing Eamon’s shoulder.

  “Then I won’t give you anymore details,” Eamon joked. “Keep your image of me pure.”

  “Oh, never that,” Scott said, with a lascivious raise of his eyebrows.