by Kilby Blades
And, fuck, was Adam giving him pleasure, drawing Levi deep into his throat. As both of them got closer, Adam began to falter. More hand, less mouth. Less breathing, more talk. More curses and Levis and pleas. But Levi was greedy and wanted his mouth. On his next pass down, Levi held Adam’s neck in place, flexing forward to coax himself deeper down Adam’s throat.
“Take it,” he whispered roughly.
That was all it took for Adam’s ass to trap Levi’s thumb in a viselike grip. Even with his mouth full of Levi, Adam let out something akin to a scream as he came all over his hands and Levi’s sheets. And fuck if it wasn’t the hottest thing that had ever happened to Levi. And fuck if he didn’t come right on Adam’s heels. Levi rasped from the effort, whimpering between gulps of desperate breath as he emptied ten years’ worth of exactly this fantasy into Adam’s mouth.
“STOP thinking,” Adam commanded gently in between featherlight kisses. He’d been pressing them to Levi’s temple, languidly, for the better part of half an hour. The windows were cracked and late-morning breeze wafted in and the street down below wasn’t too noisy. Baxter slept soundly just below the foot of the bed. They, too, had drifted back off to sleep after catching their breath and settling into one another’s half-shocked and totally sated embrace. What else did one do when one sexed the hell out of one’s best friend? It was the most they’d ever done together before.
They’d both been so exhausted, from the fighting and the running and the drama from the day before, that they’d fulfilled Adam’s prediction: gone back to Levi’s house, showered off the day, and fallen asleep, silently, in one another’s arms. It was new but not strange. Levi drifted off to sleep convinced that the rightest place he’d ever been was enveloped in Adam’s protective arms. Waking up to Adam’s mouth on his cock had been another story.
“You know that’s not how I work,” Levi retorted just as softly, inching just a bit closer even as he did. They were both on their backs. Levi’s head was languid on Adam’s shoulder. Adam held him, rather unnecessarily, in place, his arm thrown across Levi’s chest.
“I know it’s not.” Adam’s voice was quiet and his embrace was warm. His heartbeat was right at Levi’s ear. “That’s not how I really work either.”
And there that soft honesty was, again. Levi was just beginning to comprehend it: how badly Adam had wanted to confess—how many things he’d been holding back for God only knew how long. The promise of knowing this new side of Adam was a thrill. What other raw tenderness had he hidden behind golden eyes? Too close to all of that was the specter of betrayal—the sadness of knowing that the one person he relied on for everything had held on to so much after all.
Stop thinking.
Great. Now Levi’s inner voice was scolding him and his scolding was starting to sound like Adam. Inner Levi did have a point. Speculation was useless. And if he was going to overthink things, he could at least admit to himself that Adam’s sudden opening up was positive.
“We’ll have time to think… after,” Adam coaxed, still stroking Levi’s hair as warm breath fanned over his face. “What we won’t have time to do later is more of this. We should make the most of it. Don’t you think?”
It was a very Adam question, delivered in a not very Adam way. Levi got the sense that Adam was really asking. They had photo shoots today—time to make up for after the day before—but what about tonight?
“So how do we make it count?” Levi wanted to know.
“The truth?” Adam asked.
Levi nodded.
“By not holding anything back. Not here”—Adam moved his finger to gently tap Levi’s temples—“or here”—Adam moved his warm fist to rub over Levi’s heart—“or here,” he finished, taking his hand even lower.
Levi felt himself getting hard again. “Easy, tiger….” He trailed off, not knowing whether he was scolding Adam or his own penis.
Adam moved his hand back up to hold Levi firmly into his chest.
“I think that’s what got us in trouble in the first place,” Adam continued. “The pretending. And the lies. Not hearing about you, from you, is what hurt the most.”
“What do you want to know?” Levi asked, unsure as to what Adam still didn’t know versus what he’d put together.
“This gallery of yours… what is it? I don’t think I understand.”
“I started to tell you,” Levi pointed out.
“When?” Adam sounded surprised.
“That day on the hike. I couldn’t get a word in.”
In the spirit of not getting into a fight at the very moment they were negotiating a truce, Levi didn’t mention how pushy Adam could be.
Adam kissed the top of his head. “Tell me about it now.”
“Remember who I used to shoot before I shot celebrities? All those people we would meet wandering around the city?” Levi let his thumbs brush the tops of Adam’s forearms.
“Following you and your camera around was, like, the story of my youth. I remember the summer you got that camera,” Adam returned.
“You do?”
Adam shifted them around so that Levi was on his back and Adam was up on his elbow. His hair was wild, but a long piece fell forward, framing his cheek.
“Adorama on West Eighteenth. You thought you were gonna be a newspaper reporter. I was with you when you bought it. After that, we walked down Fifth.”
Levi’s shock must have shown on his face.
“You interviewed some chess players in Washington Square Park. Told them you were with the New York Times. Even though that would have made you the youngest reporter in history.”
Levi had remembered buying the camera, but he hadn’t remembered what he shot with his first roll, and he’d sure as hell forgotten that he’d ever wanted to be a reporter.
“Holy shit….” He trailed off.
“What’s it have to do with the gallery?” Adam wanted to know.
“Freelancing money’s nice. The traveling’s glamorous. I meet extraordinary people, good or bad, but… there are extraordinary people right here, on these streets.”
Adam nodded. “So you want to shoot regular people again. But why do you need an investor? You’re a legend. Your photos would pull down a sweet price.”
“Making money isn’t the goal. If I opened a gallery, rich people would come and pay a fortune for my pictures. Not-rich people wouldn’t think my work was for them. I want an art space that showcases promising work, that feels accessible and tells the stories of our community.”
Levi watched for the moment when Adam fully comprehended the idea.
“Which is why you need an investor,” Adam concluded.
“It’s meant to be an affordable gallery with a theme. The real estate will be expensive, but it has to function as half gallery, half store.”
Levi didn’t know what reaction he expected. It wasn’t like Adam would suddenly approve of Levi’s move to San Francisco and jump for joy.
“It makes sense,” Adam concluded, still peering down at Levi. “You’ve gone from reporter, to photo biographer, to photojournalist. It’s the common thread among all your work: you’re a storyteller, Lev. That’s always been what you do.”
There was something sweet in Adam’s reaction, something he hadn’t felt in a long time—the value of being with someone who remembered him when.
“What else do you remember about when we were that age?” Levi wondered.
“That I wanted to be an architect. And I dragged you all over the city making you shoot buildings I liked.”
Levi forgot to breathe for a second. “Do you know, I’ve never heard you say that out loud?”
Adam’s eyes washed over Levi’s face. “Yeah, well… there wasn’t much of a point in even thinking it.”
“Past tense,” Levi said simply. “Have you ever thought about going back?”
“Hell no,” Adam responded without hesitation. “I love what I do.”
“Because, you know, Adam,” Levi began in his most sarcastic p
atronizing voice, “most billionaires do whatever the fuck they want.”
Adam reached his hand down to pull the covers up over them, and pinched Levi’s hip on the way up. “Don’t mock me,” he warned.
“How many zeroes do you have in your bank account now?” Levi continued. “Was it ten or was it eleven? You know, in my bank account, I lose track after five.”
“Don’t. Mock. Me.” Adam punctuated every word with its own pinch.
“Or what?”
In two seconds, Levi had rolled on top of Adam and pinned his arms.
“Really?” Adam asked, feigning disinterest as he lay beneath, doing his best to look bored even as he began to get hard. “We’re gonna do this again?”
“Uh-huh.” Levi nodded. “This is exactly what we’re gonna do.”
Chapter Twenty: House Hunting
“FUCK,” Levi said under his breath when he read the text from Timothy. “I completely forgot.”
“Forgot about what?” Adam wanted to know, walking into the bedroom, stark naked.
It had never been put to the test before then, but Levi might have guessed that Adam was a Naked Nellie—one of those people you never saw with clothes on in the house as soon as you were in a relationship.
Relationship.
Levi’s mind swallowed hard around the word. Because however domestic and right this felt, that’s not what this was. And for his own well-being, he had to stop thinking about it that way.
“I was supposed to go see a house.”
They’d made it through the last of the week’s interviews around noon the day before. But it was Saturday—a day of open houses. Adam frowned for just a second before his eyes lit in understanding. “I didn’t realize you’d gotten so far.”
“San Francisco real estate is—” Levi rushed forth, wanting to soften it for Adam somehow.
“Lev,” Adam interrupted. “You don’t have to explain. You’re gonna stay here, you’re gonna need a house.”
It still made Levi uneasy.
“What’s on the schedule?” When Adam jutted his chin toward Levi’s phone, Levi looked back at the screen. The preview image of a link that Timothy had sent him was on display. Levi felt protective of it somehow. Showing it to anyone made it feel real. His other friends knew that he was looking for a place, but the process of actually looking had been solitary. Still, he handed the phone to Adam, letting him see for himself.
Adam took more time than Levi expected, scrolling through each room of every house on the list.
“These places look really great,” Adam said softly. “Really… homey, you know?” His voice was thoughtful. “I can picture you in a place like this.”
Levi raised his eyebrows. “You can?”
Adam scrolled back through the photos. “You grew up in a real house.” Adam finally pulled his gaze away from Levi’s phone. “In a real neighborhood with other houses and other kids. I’m not surprised you want something like this.”
“Uh… this is a lot nicer than the neighborhood I grew up in,” Levi pointed out, mentally comparing the gorgeous Victorians and Queen Anne houses in San Francisco and his old brick semidetached house in Queens. It had been clean and well-kept but ordinary and small. For years his family had rented to a basement tenant to afford the mortgage. He could still see it in his mind’s eye—its curved yellow awnings that shaded the sun in spring and creaked in bad winters with heavy snow… the air-conditioning units that jutted out of the windows in the summer… and its white-painted steel security windows and doors.
“Still, it’s a real neighborhood, you know?” Adam smiled sadly as he handed Levi back his phone. “A lot better than growing up in a hotel.”
And just like that, it happened again: more pieces of Adam clicking into place. As a boy, Levi had envied Adam’s hotel apartments so hard, no one could have convinced him there was a better place in the world to grow up. With the wisdom of age and the clarity of hindsight, it dawned on Levi that there was more to Adam’s messed-up childhood than just the money and his father.
“San Francisco’s good like that.” Levi looked down at his screen and began to thumb through the listing Adam was on. When he hit a map view, he zoomed in at the same time as he leaned in to show Adam what he was looking at. “This one would be great for Baxter. See? It’s only two blocks from Dolores Park.”
Adam leaned in to kiss Levi’s temple before getting off the bed, maybe to get dressed, because… yeah.
“So you want a family, huh?” Adam asked casually, digging into one of Levi’s drawers for underwear Adam had placed there the day before. In addition to the naked-all-the-time thing, Adam was the kind of partner who moved right in.
Stop saying that, Levi chided himself.
“’Cause that’s a lot of bedrooms,” Adam said when Levi didn’t answer. “And parks are good for kids.”
“One day,” Levi admitted.
Levi didn’t know what scared him more—admitting these things to Adam, or admitting them to anyone out loud. Figuring out what he wanted from his life had been lonely so far. He wanted to tell Adam he was scared and excited all at once. He wanted to admit to someone that whatever magic he knew how to work with light and a camera, he’d never bought anything this big before, and the prospect of signing contracts and having inspections done and handling the business of it all totally freaked him out. He wanted a partner in all of this. And if they wanted to fix things between them, it couldn’t hurt to ask. If Adam didn’t want to, he could always say no.
“So, hey…,” Levi asked. “Wanna come?”
REAL estate in the Castro’s vicinity was so limited, detached single family homes rarely went up for sale. When they did, showings were more like the killer whale documentaries they showed on Netflix, and less like the jovial affair one saw at the end of each Property Brothers episode on HGTV.
For one, there was no such thing as a public showing—if you wanted to see a place, you needed an appointment. If you wanted an appointment, you had to have an agent. And not just any agent—your chances improved if your agent was well-connected. Some of the best properties were never even listed publicly. And even if you had the in for being shown something, competition remained fierce. It wasn’t uncommon for buyers to make cash offers on the spot.
Timothy was one of those buyer’s agents whose ear stayed pressed firmly to the lips of the movers and shakers on the seller’s side. Levi had met him and his husband, Kevin, at the dog run the week Levi had adopted Baxter. Ever since then, they’d been friends. It was Timothy who’d taught Levi much of what he knew about the Castro and the neighborhoods around—not even from a house hunter’s perspective, but from that of a city historian. The man had encyclopedic knowledge of hidden San Francisco.
“Levi!” Timothy exclaimed as he opened the door of the first house—one on Noe at Hancock, a blue Victorian with fair curb appeal but a stunning remodel inside. It had been built in 1900, had an attached garage, and was 2,600 square feet, which was basically a mansion for San Francisco. Its views were typical for the neighborhood, which wasn’t saying much, but it had a small backyard and decks off two of the bedrooms upstairs. Its finishes were modern grays and brown woods with geometric themes, both in architectural accents as well as in decor. As Timothy swung the wide door open and revealed the space to Levi, it looked exactly as it had in the online photos. But Levi knew better than anybody: photos sometimes lied.
It was nicer than any house that Levi had ever lived in, and nicer than any one he’d ever dreamed of owning. Maybe that was why it was so hard for Levi to build a case for why it wasn’t right. If it had been a friend’s house, Levi would have spent minutes oohing and aahing over the place. It was at a price he’d said he could afford, in exactly the neighborhood he’d said he wanted. But it didn’t feel like his house. He wanted a place that felt like home.
It turned out that he didn’t have to say anything at all. Adam read the look on his face.
“Is there anything else on the list fo
r today?” Adam asked when he located Timothy.
Levi didn’t say much as Adam and Timothy chatted it up on the way to the next place. He didn’t know which was stranger: spending his entire life’s fortune on a house or Adam being on the adventure with him.
The next one was easier—a definite no. The square footage and the location were perfect, but the price was high given the amount of work the place would need. Once Timothy saw that it wasn’t going to work, he hustled all of them through and got them moving toward number three.
For this one, unless they wanted a twenty-minute uphill walk, they had to hop in an Uber, which wasn’t ideal. This house was twelve blocks outside of the Castro, in Twin Peaks. To its credit, it had a view—not to mention every other feature on Levi’s list. It even had a two-car garage. It was updated with colors that Levi actually liked, but the neighborhood seemed sterile, which would only make him miss his friends.
“Sorry,” Levi apologized to Timothy, wishing he had liked them more. Timothy really had listened to Levi’s requirements and delivered most of what he’d said he wanted.
Timothy waved his hands to dismiss Levi’s words. “It’s a long road and we’re at the beginning. And trust me, honey: don’t settle. If you do, you’re gonna be calling me again in a couple of years, and who knows what the market will be then? I’ll keep my eye on the place around the corner, but I still haven’t seen it go up.”
With that, Timothy took his leave, calling another Uber after Levi and Adam said they were going to walk. It was still a nice day—not too cool, and Levi had been spending way too much time inside. He was thirsty to take in more open air.
