From the Inside Out

by Talya Andor

  "Hmm."

  "Oh, man…do you think she suspects something? What if she tells my parents?"

  "Don't worry," Lucas said. "You really think she'd say something?"

  "Well, no."

  "Then don't worry about it."

  Soren looked up at him, blue eyes darker with apprehension. "They're Catholic. I'm the oldest of five kids. It won't kill them…but, well, they sure won't be happy, either."

  "I hope your parents don't think this is something that can be cured with religion."

  "I don't know about that."

  When they were getting drinks together, Lucas suggested they do something that night.

  Soren turned to him with a bottled water in hand. "Then let's go clubbing."

  Lucas raised his brows. "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  Lucas nudged closer to him, standing side by side until their arms brushed. "So we'll go. You and me."

  Soren nodded and gave him that breathtaking grin.

  *~*~*

  Under the neon lights, night barely existed. A heavy club beat swept across the line awaiting entry. Outside the club, Lucas and Soren swayed close, just two more guys in a line of men that curved into the alley off Burnside. Lucas had chosen a place closer to campus that was mostly gay, though bodies crowded onto the floor regardless of gender.

  Lucas hadn't been able to coax Soren into some of his clubbing clothes, but tonight was a week night, a quick club fix, and there was time yet to ease him into that scene. Soren had shrunk back with a deprecating laugh at the offer of a transparent shirt.

  Soren didn't see it—how gorgeous he was, how pretty. Lucas considered it part of his allure.

  When they were waved through the door, hands stamped, Lucas drew an unresisting Soren through the dense crowd to the dance floor at the back. There were metal stairs placed to either side of the floor, winding up to a second level but most of what went on there was drinking and necking at tables and in the dark corners.

  "You're opening up new worlds to me," Soren said. Lucas wound his arms around Soren and they began to move together.

  "This is much better than dancing with Sloane, isn't it?" Lucas said, putting his mouth close to Soren's ear. "Go ahead, let the music move your body however you want."

  'However he wanted' seemed mostly to constitute swaying against him. Lucas had no complaints. They moved together, dancing breast to breast, kissing when the mood took them. It was the kind of place where no one looked twice. Though Soren made a noise of protest the first time Lucas did it, his eyes darting left and right, it wasn't long before he was bridging the short distance between them to initiate kisses himself. Soren kept an arm hooked around his neck the whole time, peering curiously from side to side and over his shoulder, gaze sweeping the crowd.

  Lucas loomed close to speak directly into Soren's ear again. "Not what you were expecting?"

  "It's different." There was a look of mingled confusion and lust on his face.

  "It's primal." The music surged and Lucas thrust his hips along with it, clasping Soren's waist loosely in both hands. In a club like this, dancing was the next closest thing to sex. It was a prelude; it was extended foreplay.

  Hands from the people nearby caught at them, smoothing over Lucas's flanks and Soren's hair until Soren clung to him with a low, discontented noise. Lucas steered them to the margin of the floor where the crowd was thinned out. If someone reached for them at the edge, he could guide them out of reach.

  They were surrounded by men of all types: half-naked or decked out in club gear, mesh shirts, sleeveless vests with nothing beneath, sheer shirts that laced up the sides or completely transparent tops with iridescent buttons. Lucas turned with Soren in his arms, keeping a hand on both his hips, and swayed behind him. He was aware of the stares they drew, and he was flush with pride over how good they looked together. This is mine. They could look, but not touch. The fact that he had something to flaunt might have been another reason he'd wanted to come.

  The music thumping from the club speakers shifted into something slower, and Soren's hands brushed back against him, holding onto his thighs as they moved along to the music. Forget foreplay, the only thing separating them from sex was clothes and the audience. He held onto Soren's waist a little tighter as Soren grinned over his shoulder. Perhaps not even that last, so much. All he wanted was for the music to go on and on.

  Soren turned his head. "God, I'm terrible."

  Lucas looked over his shoulder at the floor. There were a couple of dancers showing off moves as the crowd parted around them, giving them room to showboat. "Don't be stupid. They've been watching the Backstreet Boys too long." He snorted derisively, moving his hand over Soren's stomach, but back-tracked to his hip—safer territory. He was going to have to cool off soon.

  "Well, now I've proved I can't dance…" Soren began to wriggle in Lucas's half-embrace.

  "I told you," Lucas returned, tightening his arms and trapping him, "the only thing you need to do is grind against me." He demonstrated, and even through the rising peak of the music he could hear Soren's breath catch.

  When the song ended, they were both breathing hard, tangled up together. "You want a drink?" Lucas asked against Soren's neck.

  The hard beat shifted into something robotic, repetitive, and when Soren nodded, Lucas caught him by the hand to steer him through the dark interior of the club. It was filled to near capacity now, close and thick with body humidity. They had to fight to get to the bar; or rather, Lucas did, with Soren keeping tabs on him by tucking a hand in the back pocket of his jeans.

  "You can dance," Lucas told him, turning from the bar and putting a drink in his hand—a Bacardi that he'd watched the bartender open himself.

  Soren was still looking at the bar behind him. "They don't card here?"

  "What were you expecting, a Diet Coke?" Lucas grinned at him, clinked his bottle to Soren's, and guided him away from the bar. "Of course, there's no tables…" A couple of muscled men with crew cuts abandoned a table to their right, peeling their shirts off as they walked away, and Lucas seized the chance.

  "So long as we don't get picked up by cops?" Soren took a sip of the drink.

  "It's not so bad, huh? We won't get picked up. The owner gets tip-offs and they don't sell to us on the nights the cops come by."

  Soren was leaning forward, swaying slightly in his chair although he didn't seem to realize it. His hand sought Lucas's across the table's surface. His expression was intent as he gazed around. "People hook up here?"

  "Oh, yes," Lucas said fervently, grinning. He wiped his smile off when Soren's curious eyes turned in his direction. "Uh, not that I would know."

  Soren shook his head and pressed his leg against Lucas's under the table. "You don't have to lie for me."

  "I did hook up, a few times."

  "Isn't that supposed to be the major focus of the gay scene?"

  As Soren's gaze traveled across the crowd, Lucas realized that he was sizing up the room, taking a good look at the young men that milled around them. The men in the crowd looked back too. That was what they were here for. Their eyes slid over Soren and then Lucas, hungry, before they got to the joined hands.

  Lucas shifted off his stool to put his mouth close to Soren's ear. "You aren't missing anything," he assured him, kissing his neck. Soren's sweep of the room made him want to laugh, but he also wanted to draw Soren's attention back to him. There were back rooms…he hauled himself short. He'd never been there and he certainly wasn't going to take Soren there with him, not when Soren's first sexual experience had been yesterday.

  Soren finished off his Bacardi. He was starting to look flushed, his eyes glittering. "You want to dance again?"

  "Most definitely."

  Because it was so early in the week, and perhaps because the club owner knew most of his patrons were students, the last call went out shortly before midnight, drawing a disappointed shout from the collective throat of the crowd. Lucas led Soren back to his parke
d car. They fumbled together in the front seats, hot from the club.

  Lucas drew Soren's face close and kissed him, holding him where he wanted with a hand at the back of his neck, pulling Soren's tie from his hair with the other. Soren's lips parted for him again and again and he kissed Soren thoroughly. He reveled in the press of their tongues, stroking and caressing him, jazzed from the vibrations that had been coursing through their bodies and binding them together since the first steps onto the dance floor. He kissed all over Soren's face, from the sweet slightly upturned slope of his nose to the dent below his mouth, and returned to his lips.

  "That," Soren murmured against his mouth, "was some seriously extended foreplay." He pressed his mouth to Lucas's lips, the corner of his mouth, and nuzzled along his jawline toward his ear.

  "You noticed." Lucas practically climbed over the gap between seats, wanting more, unable to keep his hands off Soren as that mouth fixed on his throat, suckling kisses against his skin. His hands skimmed over Soren's stomach and settled on the hardness in his jeans, teasing at his zipper.

  "Wait—not here…" Soren caught one of Lucas's wrists with panic cutting through his passion-flushed expression. "Not in the car, too many people around, too many—"

  Lucas's mouth wandered up Soren's throat in turn and he was ready to ignore the night-clubbers streaming up the street and past his car, swimming past the fogged windows.

  "Cops," Soren expelled the word urgently. "You know they'd love an excuse to drag kids like us in…"

  Those words brought Lucas to a stop.

  "You know, college students, underage and buzzed," Soren continued, oblivious to the sobering turn Lucas's thoughts had taken.

  "You're right," Lucas agreed, placing one last kiss on Soren's tempting mouth before slumping over to his side of the car. It was true, if he wanted to fool around with Soren in the car there were better places than a busy Portland thoroughway. Kids like us. "Let's go home and grope there instead."

  "Just grope?"

  "Well, we do have work tomorrow."

  "Mmm, but not until eight or so."

  Lucas started the car, flashing Soren a quick grin. "Why, Soren, it sounds like you're propositioning me."

  Soren returned it with an inviting look. "If it only sounds like it, then I guess I'm not trying nearly hard enough."

  Ten

  It wasn't the earliest hours of the morning, but the sun that limned the blinds in fiery bars was brighter by the moment. Finger-length shadows crept across the floor. Soren's eyes were half-slitted against the brightening room as the light seeped into it by degrees. He would have to get up soon, extricate himself from Lucas's warm and consuming embrace, and…his eyes flew open.

  "The car," he said, beginning to twist and wriggle beneath the covers and Lucas's arm. It was like trying to struggle out of quicksand. "Lucas…Lucas, I have to go, I have to get home."

  "You are home," Lucas mumbled, sleepy.

  Soren planted a kiss on his brow, stroking pale mussed strands of hair back from Lucas's face, and bemusedly noticed a darkening mark on his neck. He must have done that the night before. "Lucas," he said, trying Lucas's trick from the night before and speaking directly into his ear, and then nibbling the lobe.

  "Mmmf…awake, I'm awake." Lucas's arm tightened.

  "I have to go," Soren said, pushing at his shoulder.

  One of Lucas's eyes opened, giving him a doleful look. "It's too cold under these blankets without you."

  "The kids will be late for school if I don't get the car back in time. Angie will drop me off at work, then take them to school, and I need to get home, shower, and change…"

  "Fine." Lucas's arm loosened enough for Soren to wriggle free, but not enough to make it easy.

  Soren bent over the bed, rubbing his naked arms against the chill. "I'll see you at work." He had to all but mount a search expedition to find Lucas's mouth as Lucas burrowed beneath comforter and pillow.

  Lucas's hand reached up as if to grasp his hair and reel him in for a longer kiss, but Soren evaded him, leaving with a laugh.

  The streets were already busy with morning traffic as Soren emerged, sought his frost-coated car on the street, and slid shivering into the driver's side. Once he reached his house, both his parents' cars were still in the driveway. Apprehension made his chest feel tight. It was before seven, so of course his parents would be home.

  Leaves crunched underfoot as he walked up the drive. The trees that flanked the house were beginning to shed their leaves under the weight of the early frost. The door handle was cold under his bare palm.

  The kitchen was through the side door, and Soren considered circling around to the front, but decided that he'd better face up to the inevitable confrontation and get it over with. Through the window, he could see Claire with her coffee mug in hand, moving from stove to fridge and back again. Alan was still at the table, the Oregonian spread out in front of him, brows gathered as he read the paper over a cup of coffee. Cassie sat beside him, her dark hair pinned back out of her face, expression animated as she perused the editorials.

  The door clicked shut behind Soren, and there was no chance to escape.

  Claire saw him and stopped stock-still, coffee in one hand and package of bacon in the other.

  "Well."

  Cassie and Alan looked up from the paper.

  Soren swallowed his fear. "Good morning," he said, and was surprised at how cheeky he sounded.

  Claire took a deep breath. "Where have you been? It's not like you—you've barely spent the past two days at home, and you barely left a phone call… Sloane called again, for goodness' sake, twice last night, and where have you been?"

  "I've been out."

  Claire's dark blue eyes flared with the kind of insane light that was surely the last thing a victim saw before a homicide.

  "Come on, I know I'm the oldest but this is ridiculous," Soren began impatiently, brushing hair out of his face—Lucas had broken his hair tie last night—and squaring himself on the balls of his feet. "I was out; I was with Lucas."

  "Just who is this Lucas? And why is it so important—"

  "He's my boyfriend." Soren sucked in a breath. Had he just said that? It was either an argument-finisher if he'd ever heard one, or he'd just tossed a loaded grenade onto the field.

  Claire blinked. Her mouth sagged open.

  Alan put his newspaper down and his chair scraped back from the table.

  "Well…Soren…" Claire stared at him. "Soren…boyfriend…a-are you sure? I mean, wait, Sloane is like your girlfriend so this Lucas…"

  "Is my friend who is also a boy?"

  The horror on Claire's face diluted as she nodded.

  "No, mom. We're together."

  "Soren…are you s-sure?"

  That made him think of the first time Lucas's hand had touched him, moved on him, and he fought the flush rising in his cheeks. That was when he'd realized he couldn't have turned out any other way. "I'm sure that I'm happy, Mom." There was anxiety tightening up the panicky tension in his chest, but somewhere behind it, he held onto the happiness that Lucas had kindled. He was happy, and wanted her to know it, but knowing wasn't likely to make it any easier for her.

  "Well, then." Claire looked at her hands, still holding the bacon and coffee, and set them down. Her eyes went bright and frightening and she disappeared in a whirl of dark tailored suit and perfume.

  Alan stood.

  Soren's attention was diverted from the empty kitchen doorway and the anticlimactic sizzle of eggs and he eyed his father warily.

  "Well, I wasn't that surprised," Alan announced, his craggy handsome features crinkling into a good-humored smile.

  "Dad…" Soren was the one who was surprised.

  Alan eyed him for a moment. "You think I don't suspect something like that about my son? Your mother may not have been ready for it, but trust me, I don't think she ever would have been." He put his hands into his pants pockets. "Maybe I was hoping, with Liz first and then with Sloane
, but I can't say I'm too surprised…and I can't say it matters too much."

  Soren took a few steps into the kitchen, overwhelmed. "Dad, I…"

  "Oh, just hug him, Dad." Cassie stood and went to tend the eggs that were still spitting and crackling on the stove-top.

  Alan cast a look at her, but he was rounding the table and heading toward Soren.

  His father's arms were still as strong and sheltering as they'd been when he was a child. Alan embraced him briefly, and mussed his hair as he released him. "As long as you're happy," he said, his dark eyes piercing.

  "I—I really care about him."

  It'll take some getting used to, there's no mistaking it," Alan said, but he smiled. "I'd better go make sure your mother doesn't have hysterics." Alan clapped Soren on the shoulder and took the same door Claire had left swinging behind her.

  The scrape of the spatula in the frying pan drew Soren's attention back to the last witness of his impromptu confession. "Well?" he said, surreptitiously wiping at his eyes with a corner of his sleeve.

  "What?" Cassie turned. She was the loveliest of the Wilkenson sisters. In spite of her looks, or perhaps because of the intelligence behind those wide blue eyes, she was studious and exacting. "Oh, I'm not surprised, Soren, don't look at me like that."

  "Why didn't you say something before?" Soren asked, seating himself at the kitchen table. He combed distracted fingers through his hair and wondered if everyone in his family knew.

  Cassie gave him a direct look. "Soren, it wasn't my place to say anything."

  She was right. "It was mine."

  "Bingo."

  The kitchen door swung open and Ricky and Morgan piled into the kitchen, elbowing one another and hurrying for the breakfast table. "Soren!" Morgan exclaimed, seizing him and giving him a hug that was more headlock than anything else. "You're back! Where've you been?"

  "Urgh…Morgan, get off me." Soren disentangled himself. "I was…I was with Lucas." He chickened out and stood.

  "You're gonna get it from Mom," Ricky told him with relish, sliding into a seat by the window, dropping his schoolbag to the floor with a thump. "She was so mad…"