by Kilby Blades
“The house around the corner?” Adam wanted to know.
Levi nodded. “It’s on a side street, perpendicular to my block. The two Davids say it’s going up for sale. It’s kind of my dream house.”
“So why mess around with looking? Why don’t you just hold out?”
Levi shrugged. “A lot of people talk about putting their house up for sale. Not everybody does.” Levi thought about his own father’s house, which he’d been “getting ready” for three months. “Besides,” he said, half turning to Adam, who didn’t have to worry about such trivial things, “my dream house will cost a lot of money.”
“Ahhh.” Adam trailed off, nodding in understanding. “Still don’t want any of mine?” Adam threw him a cheeky smile.
Levi rolled his eyes.
“You could consider it a housewarming present,” Adam went on when Levi didn’t answer.
“Thanks. But the housewarming present can’t be the house. Besides….” Levi’s lungs seized a bit as he prepared to push out his words. “I’ll be able to afford it all better once I sell the house in Queens.”
Silence. More silence. Then, “You know how proud he was to own that house.”
Levi did know. And he didn’t need Adam beating him up over something he’d agonized over plenty himself. “He did what he set out to do. He built a life in America and supported our family in Argentina. The house is just a house.”
Levi didn’t list out the other reasons: that he hadn’t lived there since he was seventeen and would never live there again; that normal people had to sell one house before they could afford to buy another; that being there dredged up the least welcome of memories, of vicious fights with his father and the sickbed of his dying mother.
They fell into tense silence. Their descent was steep and they were high on the hill—still with a great view of the Financial District and the bay. With the gallery space about to go through and Adam’s departure days away, everything felt different, and real.
“He’s right, you know,” Adam chimed in a few minutes after they’d last spoken. His voice was softer now. “If I’ve learned anything from buying real estate, it’s that.”
As they’d toured houses, Levi was surprised that Adam had managed to keep his opinions to himself. When he’d hiccupped earlier on the idea of Adam coming, Adam having some strong view on how Levi should pick his house had been his fear.
Though the way the air had changed between them told Levi that both of them were trying—he had to believe at least that. Adam seemed to finally take seriously the notion that Levi needed space. But buying real estate was actually an area of Adam’s expertise.
“What was Timothy right about?”
Adam smiled a little sadly. “Don’t buy something you don’t love. And don’t pass up on anything you do, no matter the cost.”
Levi gave him a look.
Adam chuckled softly. “Listen, I know how that sounds. But I’m serious. I still think about some properties I gave up.”
Levi gave him a look. “Like where?”
“A place in South Africa… a place in Mexico.”
“Bullshit,” Levi said at the same time Adam said, “I’m not kidding!”
Both of them laughed a little as they reached the corner. Levi looked to see whether cars were coming. When he saw they weren’t, he stepped out onto the curb.
“Let me help you,” Adam said quietly.
“Help me with what? Look at more houses?”
“Let me be a coinvestor in the studio space. Buying a house? Starting a new business at the same time? It’s a lot of risk.”
Oh. Financial help again.
Levi shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
Adam’s face fell, and he sighed. “Aren’t we past this fight?”
“We could be….” Levi raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “If you’d stop offering me money every time I talk about something with a big price tag.”
Adam gave Levi the look. “When are you gonna stop thinking that me offering you money has to make things weird? I offer a lot of people money for worthy causes and good investments, and guess what? They take it.”
“I’m not everyone.” Levi’s voice was even—rational—exactly as it had to be when sparring with Adam.
“Lev… you’re opening an art space to tell stories for the queer community. Do you know how much money I gave to queer arts causes last year?”
Levi smirked. “Do you even know how much money you gave to queer arts causes last year?”
Adam narrowed his eyes. “I think it’s safe to guess I gave a lot. But you know I’d offer anyone who’s doing what you’re doing the money. Why won’t you just… let me help?”
Levi felt a stab of pity for Adam in that moment. Levi’s reasons were ones he’d never fully said out loud. Ones he never would say out loud and that Adam scarcely understood.
“I can afford it,” Levi replied finally—simply—after he’d collected his thoughts. “I won’t pretend it’s not a lot of money or that I won’t be taking a huge risk, but… I’ve done well. And I’ve got money in the bank.”
Adam sighed heavily.
“Look. All I’m saying is… don’t spend your money on me. There are plenty of worthy causes around here that need your help. You’ve seen my exhibit. You know what happens to kids out here. Not everybody gets a happy ending. If you want to give your money to any cause, give to one of them.”
LEVI tried not to dwell on the surge of happiness that came over him when he heard the lock turn in the door. Nearly a week of him and Adam playing house, and the sound of someone coming home to him still felt new. Adam had only been gone for an hour, had taken Bax on one of the morning runs she’d come to love. Levi had come to love sweaty, breathless Adam walking through his door.
To be fair, he’d always loved that version of Adam, but he’d never had license to look. Now he had license to touch. Sweaty Adam who had just got done running looked a lot like sweaty Adam who had just got done fucking. And that line of thinking was stirring Levi up.
“Get any work done?” Adam wanted to know as he ambled into the living room a few steps behind Bax, who trotted ahead. Bax was first to greet Levi, nuzzling, then licking his hands. Adam followed suit, tipping Levi’s chin up and looking into his eyes before pressing a solid kiss to his lips.
Not waiting for an answer to his question, Adam made his way to the open kitchen in search of a drink, just as he had after every run he’d come in from that week. If Levi wasn’t mistaken, Adam took much longer than strictly necessary to reach for a glass, stretching to a shelf so high, it caused his shirt to ride up. Even without that glimpse, Levi’s view of Adam’s powerful thighs and chiseled calves made him ache to relieve Adam of his compression shorts.
Knowing that his chances for getting work done now were shot, Levi set his laptop aside. Just as well. It had begun to weigh heavy on his dick. More like, his dick had begun its inevitable campaign for attention. Adam had upped the ante as usual and taken flirtation too far.
Break the tension, my ass, Levi thought. If anything, consummating what was between them had only multiplied the attraction. Levi licked his bottom lip as he watched Adam walk around to the outside of the kitchen island, full glass in hand, and turn his body in profile. Leaning his hip against the back of a barstool, Adam stretched his torso and threw his head back as he swallowed a whole glass of water in a series of languid gulps.
“What’d you say?” Adam asked with a sniff once he’d finished, casting the briefest glance at Levi before setting the glass down and reaching backward to grab a fistful of his own shirt. In a single motion, the garment was off. He used it—slowly—to towel off his shoulders and his washboard abs. Levi didn’t answer because Adam wasn’t really asking. He was calling out what he knew Levi must be thinking.
When Adam threw his balled-up shirt to the floor, Levi swallowed in anticipation, waiting for him to leave a trail of his other clothes en route to the shower as he had the day before. This time Levi
would wait a respectable minute or two before following hot on his heels. But Adam didn’t move toward the shower. He launched into a postworkout stretch.
And not regular stretches like runner’s lunges or calf drops. That fucker turned his back to Levi and bent over. With his hands splayed on the counter, he proceeded to perform the most put-on excuse for a hip flexor stretch Levi had ever seen. It basically involved him shifting his weight on his feet with his ass in the air. Taking it even farther, he lowered his chest to the counter to deepen the stretch.
Shaking his head and biting his lip to keep himself from smiling, Levi rose from his seat, crossed the distance to his kitchen, and, on his way, plucked a bottle of lube off the bookshelf. Lube on the bookshelf was what happened when you tried to make up for fifteen years of unconsummated attraction over a series of two weeks.
“All right, show’s over,” Levi said, smacking Adam’s ass punitively as he reached him, coming up right behind him and boxing him in.
“Took you long enough.” Adam’s words were light, but a crack of desperation in his voice proved otherwise. “I thought I was gonna have to send an engraved invitation.”
Adam reared back into Levi, seeking friction, not in a playful way but a desperate one. Adam talked a good game, but he was barely holding on. This was where all joking ended.
“You are in so much trouble,” Levi growled.
With a sharp pull, Levi used his free hand to yank down one side of Adam’s shorts, then reached across his body to Adam’s opposite waistband to pull down the other. But compression shorts didn’t come down easily. Adam was effectively bound at the knees.
Good.
With his other hand, Levi thumbed open the lube and poured a generous amount into the empty one before setting the bottle heavily on the counter in front of Adam. Reaching around to Adam’s front, Levi wrapped his slick hand firmly around Adam’s engorged shaft, but didn’t move from there. It was Levi’s plan to make Adam earn whatever Levi did.
Adam’s cock throbbed once under Levi’s hand. Twice. Levi’s hand remained still, and Adam held his breath.
“Fuck, you know what I want,” Adam finally ground out, attempting to move his hips to piston his way to the friction he so desired. But Adam could barely move for how thoroughly he’d been pressed into the counter. Levi had made sure of that.
No. The only way for Adam to get off was for Levi to jerk him, and for that, Adam was going to have to beg.
“Please, Lev…,” Adam implored. Levi wasn’t a sadist. But he’d become addicted to the desperation—the sheer need—in Adam’s voice.
“Please what?” Levi punctuated his question with another squeeze to Adam’s cock, which earned him a strangled gasp. But Adam didn’t answer. He only pushed his ass back against Levi. In the short days they’d been doing this, Levi had figured one thing out: Adam had a hard time asking for what he wanted.
Levi began to stroke him then. Coming close to Adam’s tip, he felt wetness that wasn’t lube. Adam was already leaking.
“Tell me what you want,” Levi commanded gently, whispering the words into Adam’s ear as he stroked firmly but languidly.
Adam reached backward and turned his head at the same time, holding the side of Levi’s neck as he pulled him into a breathless kiss that was every bit as deep as their first. Kissing Adam always bent Levi’s composure.
“Jerk both of us,” Adam finally begged.
Levi had discovered this kink of Adam’s by the end of the second day. Adam had wanted it every day since. Both of their cocks pressed together, Levi’s hand, and a lot of lube had led to ecstasy for them both. It got Adam so good, he practically howled in pleasure each time.
And Levi obliged, releasing Adam long enough to turn him around, free his own cock, and pour more lube before grabbing them both in hand. As many things had turned out to be that week, it felt more intense every time. It wasn’t until he was as sweaty as Adam and his fist was covered in their juices and they stood, forehead to forehead, catching their breath, that Levi realized the howls that time had come from him.
Chapter Twenty-One: Sanctum
“THIS place seems completely overrated,” Adam admitted as the waiter retreated with their order. “Am I missing something here?”
Adam stared out from the middle seat on the sofa—prime seating to the extent that it faced the stage.
In honor of Adam’s last night in San Francisco, the boys had insisted on sending him off. The small crew who had asked after him almost daily all came out that Thursday: the two Davids, Perry, Darius, and Javi had all gathered for dinner at Cy’s.
Levi felt more than a little guilty for not bringing Adam to Cy for a visit until Adam’s last night in the city. Ever since they’d had their fights and struck their agreement, they’d followed through on all of their press and kept every last free moment to themselves.
And Levi took that “last” in the “every last” part literally. When Levi thought in those terms, he didn’t feel as guilty about Cy. Adam visiting with Cy in San Francisco would be the same this time as it would be next time around. What Adam wouldn’t be doing in his future visits was what he and Levi had done until sunrise nearly every night: fucked like passion was going out of style.
“When you barely get out of the house because you spend all day with an infant, nothing is overrated,” said Dan. They’d gotten a sitter for Erykah, and Dan looked positively giddy to be out of the house with Cy.
“It gets better,” David and David comforted Dan in unison at the same time Javi mumbled under his breath, “You couldn’t pay me to have a kid.”
Adam, for his part, still seemed utterly confused by the general vibe and by Sanctum’s interior. “I mean, don’t you think it’s kind of… bright?” he turned to Levi to ask.
In his line of business, Adam had designed, or at least approved the designs, for many night life spaces. The decor at Sanctum seemed to be confused. It had been opened as a literary salon but had always been welcoming to up-and-coming artists of all kinds. Visual artists could put their work on display, and literary and musical artists could perform their work. The magic to Sanctum was in its curation.
It wasn’t just an open exhibit art space. Paul screened every artist who got to participate in the salon, which made it so that everyone who exhibited or performed was very good. But it seated ninety people at most. And since the goal was for young, queer talent to be discovered, agents and scouts got priority. Levi was a VIP not so much because Paul liked him, as his friends had so shamelessly speculated, but because Paul and Levi had discovered early on a shared passion for telling queer stories and promoting queer artists.
“They want people to be able to see the art,” Darius hollered from across the table. “If the lights were low, it would only accommodate stage performers.”
Adam just blinked. “Where’s this Paul guy?” he asked next. “He’s the owner, right?”
“Co-owner,” Levi corrected.
“Does he own other bars and clubs?”
Darius shook his head. “This was his first.”
If Levi wasn’t wrong, Adam looked mildly offended. “Tell him to give me a call if he ever wants some advice,” Adam finally said.
“A lot of places around here could use your touch….” The entire dinner table had heard a detailed account of the utter luxury they’d encountered at the Tannin. Levi had to admit, it was an impeccably-executed hotel. He wouldn’t have minded going there now with Adam for another getaway.
But their days were running short, and Adam had to be in New York on Monday. They’d arranged a trip to the Kerr Group’s other property due south, the Inn at Carmel Bay.
“When will you come back to visit?” one of the Davids wanted to know. “We’ll throw you a welcome-back party… have a few people over to the house.”
“He can come back whenever he wants,” pointed out the other David. Among friends, Adam had leaked the big announcement at dinner. They all knew now that Elle would be Adam’s co-CE
O. “How much better would life be if everybody with a demanding job got to share?”
“Either that,” volleyed back the other David, “or just split up the work?”
“Have you ever thought of job sharing?” asked Dan, who had already polished off his second drink and currently had his eye on Cy’s.
“They already are job sharing,” Levi said.
“He didn’t mean splitting up the work,” Cy clarified. “He meant splitting up the world.”
Cy stole his drink back from his husband and attempted a long sip only to find the rocks in his glass dry. He threw Dan an eyebrow arch before turning back to Adam.
“That’s a great idea!” Javi exclaimed.
“What are the names of that other brother and sister who run their own hotel empire?” Perry interjected for the first time since they’d left Cy’s. “The ones from Hong Kong? One takes east, and the other takes west.”
“You should move to San Francisco, man,” Cy said.
The suggestion was met with cheers and encouragement, laughter from Adam, and absolute silence from Levi.
“What do you think, Lev?” Adam asked jokingly. But Levi couldn’t muster a smile. He thought of the first condition of their agreement: that this had to end. The only thing keeping Levi sane was the certainty of that—not because he wanted to let go, but because Adam would never really belong to him and he wouldn’t survive drawing out the process of giving him back.
“You hate San Francisco,” Levi said quietly.
Adam winked and nudged Levi. “I dunno. It’s kind of grown on me.”
“You hate the weather and the pizza and the people…. New York is where you belong.”
Adam looked a little hurt—looked as if he had half a mind to respond. Paul chose that moment to come over and greet his guests.
“Levi. I thought you’d been kidnapped,” Paul chided lightly on his approach. Levi rose and they shared a brief hug. Paul remained standing and waved or back-patted the others at the table. Then he zeroed in on Adam but continued to address Levi. “Introduce me to your friend.”
