Love in Tandem

by Natalie Arden

  Still, Eamon couldn’t keep himself from hoping. Scott was a talker, but he held his emotions close to his chest. Eamon could see him wanting to get it right if he was going to apologize, wanting to do things in the right way.

  “It’s about Kevin,” Scott said, sitting down on Eamon’s parents’ floral-patterned couch, and just like that, the hope in Eamon’s chest deflated, soaring away on a stream of its own foolishness.

  “Kevin?” Eamon said, unable to believe that he’d heard Scott right.

  “That’s your guy, right?” Scott said. He was sitting up perfectly straight, hands on his knees, but now he began to gesture in the air in front of him. “From CarreSys. Your second-in-command.”

  “Yeah, that’s Kevin,” Eamon replied. “How the hell do you know Kevin?”

  “I don’t really know Kevin,” Scott said. His gaze danced across the room, flicking from feature to feature, taking in the still-talking TV, the pile of dirty mugs on the coffee table, Eamon’s own unshaven self. “I know you’re angry with me, and you have every right to be. But I wanted to tell you before you left town for good: don’t trust Kevin.”

  There was no universe in which Eamon could have predicted this. He stared at Scott for a long awkward moment, silence stretching out between them.

  “He’s not on your side,” Scott said, sounding a little desperate. “He’s going to stab you in the back. I just... I just thought you needed to know. Someone had to tell you. It wasn’t fair for you not to know.”

  “You don’t even know him!” Eamon’s voice rose a little and he fought it back down. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was–” Scott looked away. There was a flush rising on his ears that Eamon couldn’t explain. “I was looking something up. And I was drunk. It’s– It’s not important. The important thing is: have you seen what Kevin is saying about you?”

  “No?” Eamon said uncertainly. “Saying? About me? How do you know what he’s saying about me?”

  “There was this article,” Scott said, digging in his pocket. He pulled out his phone, tapped away on it furiously for a moment. “It was really shitty. He was saying all this stuff– Aha! Here it is!”

  He pushed the phone into Eamon’s reflexive grasp.

  On the screen, an article in Informational and Medical Database Quarterly looked back at him passively.

  “Why were you even looking at this?” Eamon said, confused.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Scott’s whole expression begged Eamon to listen. “Just read it”

  So Eamon read it. It was an interview with Kevin for the journal’s business highlight feature – had he even known that Kevin was going to be interviewed? – and it began with very much the usual sort of thing: some puffery about CarreSys, about Kevin’s job, about Kevin’s interest in the journal. Eamon started to skim down, his eyes catching on his own name as he read, and pulling him back up to read the rest of the paragraph.

  He stopped, looking up at Scott in confusion. “And it’s all like that?”

  “He just seems like a shithead,” Scott said earnestly. “I know you trust him, but the guy sounds like he hates you. Can’t you see?”

  “I don’t–” The words caught in Eamon’s throat. He read on. There wasn’t anything direct in the article. It wasn’t like Kevin came out and said that he despised Eamon, that he didn’t care about the work that CarreSys did. But nothing in the article sounded like Kevin either. There was none of his solicitousness over Eamon’s case, none of his interest in making a good product, a product to be proud of. There was only disdain, and, as Eamon came to the end of the interview, what sounded, frankly, like a strong suggestion that CarreSys was ripe for a corporate takeover.

  Eamon looked up from the screen, his chest tight. “Is there more?”

  “Some?” Scott offered. “I don’t know. I can try to find them. I was pretty drunk, you know, before.”

  He reached for the phone in Eamon’s hand, but Eamon held it tightly, still processing everything he’d just read.

  “That’s really him, isn’t it?” he said at last. “But he’s never like that... I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “He said someone’s in bed with your competitors, right?” Scott said with a sigh. “Based on that, I’d guess it’s him.”

  The phone fell from Eamon’s nerveless hand to the carpeted floor, bouncing gently in its protective case.

  “But why?” Eamon asked around the lump in his throat.

  “Who knows?” Scott said with a shrug. “Money, probably? It’s enough for most–”

  Eamon interrupted. “Not why Kevin. Why are you here? Why did you come to tell me this?”

  “You needed to know,” Scott said, half-smiling at Eamon. “It wasn’t fair that you didn’t know.”

  “Why do you even care what’s fair for me?” Eamon asked, hope once again blossoming in his chest. “I know–” He swallowed. “I didn’t understand what I was asking of you. And I was an asshole.”

  “But you still deserve to know what you’re up against,” Scott said. “You’re heading back into the city, right? You needed to know what you were up against.”

  “I’m not sure I deserved that,” Eamon said with a dry laugh.

  “Of course you did.” Scott was staring him straight in the eye now, sincerity in every line of his face. “You needed to know what was going on.”

  Eamon snorted, leaning back in his chair. “But why though? Why from you?”

  “Who else was going to tell you?” Scott leaned forward. “And of course you deserve to know what’s going on. You’ve been blinded by this guy for months, and you deserve better.” He stopped, face moving as though he was turning the words over in his mouth before saying them aloud. “And I care about you.”

  Eamon had been avoiding Scott’s straightforward gaze, but hearing that snapped him out of it, the two of them locking eyes for the first time in a week. “What?”

  “I still care about you,” Scott said, fingers digging into his knees. “I know I pushed you away. I was angry, for a while. I’m still a little angry. But I never stopped caring. I knew when I saw you today: I still love you. So you had to know that someone out there was a danger to you. I know I’ve ruined everything between us, but you still deserve that, even if it had to come from me.”

  “You–” Eamon started. “But I– It was my fault.”

  Scott looked startled.

  “All of this was my fault. I wanted to do something for you, but I was being selfish. I was only thinking about what I wanted you to have, not what you needed.” Eamon’s hands twisted together in his lap. “And then I let myself get angry instead of hearing you tell me what you needed. It was my fault.”

  “I got angry too,” Scott said. “I heard something I didn’t want to hear and then I stopped listening. But I’ve realized, over the past week, that you were trying to do me a favor.” He smacked his head with his hand. “For fuck’s sake, you built me a whole new piece of software and all I could see was that you wanted me to change my life a little bit and I didn’t want anything to change.”

  “I was overconfident,” Eamon admitted, the corner of his mouth quirking upward.

  Scott grinned back. “But I like that about you. You know what you want and you go ahead and build something to take you there.”

  “I could learn to accept feedback from time to time,” Eamon said, biting at his lip.

  “Maybe a little. And maybe I could be a touch less stubborn.”

  “That’s possible,” Eamon allowed.

  Scott took a deep breath. “But the important thing is: if I don’t get to kiss you right now, I very well might die.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” Eamon joked. “Better come over here now.”

  Scott was across the room in two long strides, taking Eamon’s breath away. He held out his hand, drawing Eamon up from his chair, and then they were pressed together and kissing, knocking Eamon’s breath right out of his chest.

  They clung to
each other even as they pulled apart to draw long, gasping breaths. Scott ran his fingers down Eamon’s stubbly cheek, and Eamon found himself blushing, just as much for the evidence of how he’d let himself go as for Scott’s touch.

  “A beard could be cute,” Scott teased. “A little rough right now, maybe.”

  “Never mind that,” Eamon said roughly, and kissed Scott again. His lips were as soft as ever, and his body just as solid, his arms holding Eamon firmly, as though he had no plans to ever let Eamon go.

  Eamon couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be.

  42

  Scott

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” Eamon was saying as they paused in their scramble up the stairs to rip each other’s clothes off. “I wasn’t thinking– But it’s the middle of the–?”

  Scott stopped his mouth with a kiss, a lingering one. The kind where Scott licked into Eamon’s mouth, desperate to taste him, to be inside him, to feel him from the inside out.

  Eamon shook in his arms.

  “I took the afternoon off,” Scott panted as they separated.

  “I can see that,” Eamon said, breathless. He clung to Scott’s back, Scott’s shirt still clutched in one hand.

  “I didn’t even know you were in town until this afternoon,” Scott told him. “And then once I found that out, I had to tell you at once.”

  “How’d you even–?” Eamon started. “What–?”

  “I don’t really want to talk about the grapevine in this town when I could be getting you naked,” Scott said with a grin.

  “That’s fair.” Eamon dropped Scott’s shirt and slipped his hand over the bulge in Scott’s pants. Technically, his fingers were busy with Scott’s zipper, but he was going too slowly for that, fingers sliding slyly over the fly of his jeans.

  Scott had to reach down to help, kicking off his jeans and reaching for Eamon’s sweats with immense satisfaction. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Eamon this messy before: his hair all over the place, his beard growing out, wearing sweats instead of something that had either been custom made for him or looked it. A dark part of his heart thought that Eamon had clearly been just as upset this week as Scott had been, and basked in that knowledge.

  He wanted Eamon, wanted to be here with him now, but he’d been hurt, he’d felt that hurt, and even more than Eamon’s apology, he needed to know that Eamon felt the same.

  “I missed you,” he muttered impulsively into Eamon’s ear, and felt Eamon’s arms tighten around him.

  “I missed you too,” Eamon said against his neck. He kissed the sensitive skin there, and then nibbled, his teeth grazing over nerves until Scott felt like he was going to explode.

  “You’re going to knock me over,” he said as his knees began to buckle.

  Eamon laughed. “Good.” He pushed Scott lightly, his calves hitting the edge of the bed. “I want to feel you all over.”

  “C’mere,” Scott said, and pulled Eamon down with him.

  They rolled over a couple of times on the wide, spacious mattress, before settling down with Eamon lying on Scott’s chest, leaning down to kiss him, their erections rubbing together.

  “How can I miss you this much after only a week,” Scott murmured into Eamon’s mouth, one hand sliding down Eamon’s back to cup the ripe curve of his ass, the other slipping into his hair and pulling him in for a kiss that was all teeth and tongue.

  “I don’t know,” Eamon laughed. “I just want you to touch me and never let go.”

  “I won’t,” Scott promised, reckless with lust and love and in awe of the fact that he got to have this again, that Eamon wasn’t entirely lost to him.

  They kissed again, hands roaming over each other. Eamon shivered when Scott squeezed his ass, his whole body moving, or maybe that was just the way their hips ground into each other, desperate for friction. Eamon’s cock was thick and hard against Scott’s erection, pressing against him with demanding urgency, streaks of wetness sliding across their bellies.

  “I don’t want you to move an inch,” Eamon said after a long and blissful time, pushing himself up off the bed and away from an increasingly dizzied Scott.

  “I won’t,” Scott said, confused. He reached out as Eamon pushed back onto his knees and then off the bed, his dick swinging temptingly as he moved.

  “Back in a sec,” Eamon promised. He bent down to rummage in something on the floor and Scott admired the curve of his ass, hand creeping down to stroke his cock without any input from his brain.

  “Don’t get off too early,” Eamon said as he turned back around, lube triumphant in his hand. “I need to ride you until the brakes fall off.”

  His words were like a blissful punch to the gut, but Scott still had to ask: “Where’d you even get that? We never fuck here.”

  Eamon laughed. “Why are we even talking about this? I packed in in April, I guess. And it just kind of stuck around in my bag.”

  “I don’t know,” Scott reached grabby hands for Eamon again. “I’m just noticing all the things that are different now, I guess.”

  “Nothing’s different,” Eamon said, climbing back on the bed to straddle Scott.

  Scott reached for him, drew him down to kiss his face. “Some things probably are,” he said gently. “We’ve been through something new. But we’re here together. That’s what matters.”

  “All right,” Eamon said with a crooked smile. “I’ll give you that.” He slipped a slick hand around Scott’s cock. “But this isn’t different, I’m sure.”

  Scott was too busy groaning to make a smart reply. Eamon’s hand stroked along the length of his cock, his thumb tucked up against the head. His grip was firm, but not too firm, the smooth glide of his hand teasing and promising all at once. Scott’s hips rose off the bed involuntarily and Eamon laughed, dark and sexy.

  He stopped laughing once he was riding Scott, his body rising and falling as he pumped Scott’s cock in and out of himself. “Yeah,” he murmured and the sound of his voice felt like it could stop Scott’s heart. “Yeah, right there.”

  “Anything I can do?” Scott asked, his voice roughened by the pounding of his heart and the squeezing of his lungs.

  “You can fuck me,” Eamon said. “Just like this.”

  “No better?” Scott teased. He reached for Eamon’s hips as he thrust up, fucking into Eamon with all the strength that cycling had given his thigh muscles.

  Eamon let out a long, slow moan. “Good enough.” His voice hitched with every thrust, every slick stroke of his cock as he fisted himself, impaled on Scott’s length. His hips didn’t slow as he finished himself off, though the expression on his face as he spurted across Scott’s belly was one to remember on a long, lonely night.

  He squeezed around Scott as he came, and Scott bucked up into the delicious pressure, desperate and wanting more. He’d been on edge since Eamon had pushed him onto the bed, and he wanted to fill his lover with himself, to give him everything.

  His orgasm hit him like a bolt from the blue, shaking him to his core as his grip on Eamon tightened and his back arched up off the bed. Eamon stroked his chest through it before climbing off him, and Scott was still shaking when Eamon curled up beside him, his head on Scott’s chest.

  They lay like that for a while, silently breathing. Scott wanted to hold Eamon and never let him go, never repeat the loneliness of this week, but he held back, knowing they had all the time in the world now.

  “I hate to bring this up,” Eamon said lazily, still sprawled across Scott’s chest. “But do you have to go back to work or something?”

  Scott laughed. “I can probably take the afternoon off.” He stroked Eamon’s hair. “What about you? Going back to work and all that. Dealing with Kevin.”

  “I can probably take an afternoon off,” Eamon joked, twisting to grin up into Scott’s face. “But tomorrow...” His smile grew grim. “Tomorrow there will be a reckoning.”

  43

  Eamon

  After a long night of luxuriating in one anoth
er’s company, it was a lot harder than Eamon had thought to keep his promises. He’d missed Scott like a lost limb, and one night of clinging tightly couldn’t make up for all that time apart.

  “But I have to go to work anyway,” Scott teased as Eamon grumpily walked through his morning routine – this time shaving off the growth of beard he’d been ignoring for days. “And I’ll see you later.”

  “Unless I have to stick around and talk to the board,” Eamon said, cleaning out his razor for what seemed like the millionth time in the last two minutes.

  “That would be good, though, wouldn’t it?” Scott reminded him, leaning up against the bathroom door, still wrapped in a towel.

  Not as good, Eamon thought, as ripping that towel right off Scott’s narrow hips and going straight back to bed. He stared at his half-shaven face in the mirror. But it would have to do.

  His confidence began to return as he dressed carefully, his long-unworn suits still hung up neatly in his closet, ready to provide him armor for this coming fight. He’d spent some time last night rereading the interview with Kevin, but he still had no idea what was coming, what possible explanation Kevin might have for his two-faced behavior.

  A part of him still hoped that there was an explanation, that he hadn’t been lied to for months – been fooled for months – by the one person he’d trusted most. A greater part of him knew that there wasn’t much chance of that.

  He came downstairs and poked his head into the kitchen where Scott was using more pans in one meal that Eamon thought he’d used in months of occupancy.

  “Sit down,” Scott called. “I’m making eggs.”

  He whistled as Eamon came into the room, gesturing for him to turn around. Rolling his eyes, Eamon did as he was told.