by Riley Knight
“You like the X-Men?” he asked, somewhat randomly and wildly. Hell, he had no idea how to talk to kids, much less kids who wouldn’t stop staring at him as though not even sure he existed at all.
“Please,” Sammy scoffed. “No way. The X-Men suck. Mom got this for me, but she doesn’t have any idea what I actually like.”
Oh, he remembered that. His mother’s brief flashes of guilty conscience, when she would desperately flail around for some cheap little present that she could give Ben to make up for the years of neglect.
The thing was, it had always worked, at least when he was younger. He’d been so eager for any hint of maternal caring that, when she’d shown it, he’d been more than happy to forgive her for everything.
“The X-Men do not suck,” Ben said, honestly a little offended. But that was a good thing, maybe, because it made his seat feel a little bit less uncomfortable, made him a little bit less aware of the way his own body was perched on the edge of it. His attention on something fairly trivial helped.
Across the table, he could see the same thing happen in Sammy. His shoulders, which had been drawn up defensively high, relaxed, and his hands unclenched from his lap as he met Ben’s eyes more evenly, less like a terrified animal.
Terrified. They were both scared, but poor Sammy must have it so much worse because he was so much younger. Ben was somewhat more used to new situations, though he had never been in anything like this.
“Yeah they do,” Sammy said, pushing his lower lip stubbornly out, his eyes intense as he gazed right back at Ben without any hint of hesitation.
It was good to see, actually.
“Oh yeah? If the X-Men suck, then who are you all about?” Ben challenged, and Sammy rose to that challenge admirably, and Ben saw that he was doing the right thing in not holding back, in actually just, strangely enough, speaking to Sammy like he was a human being.
He could remember that, actually, everyone either speaking to him like he was some sort of mentally challenged gerbil, something to be pitied, or like he was nothing but a juvenile delinquent, like he should be locked up. No wonder the kid was so ready to get into a fight about superheroes. It had to seem like a wonderfully normal thing to do.
“Spider-Man,” Sammy said, his chin tilted defiantly up, more than ready to go to bat to defend his hero. Ben considered just letting him have it, not challenging him, but he didn’t think that was what Sammy actually wanted. He wanted to have a normal conversation. Ben could remember that sort of thing far too well.
“Spider-Man? Please. He’s whiny,” Ben scoffed but not with a lot of venom. He could see that he’d made the right call by the slow grin which broke over his brother’s face, and the kid was a little bit goofy looking, but he looked lovely at that moment. “Oh, no, I have super powers, life sucks! Feel sorry for me!”
He could feel that Isaac and the social worker were staring at him, surprised by his tactic, but Sammy burst out laughing, a sound so bright and clean and cheerful that it seemed to fill the whole cafe.
“No way, Spider-Man is the best,” he argued, and he and Ben fell into a completely normal, albeit intense, conversation about whether or not Spider-Man was, in fact, completely awesome.
Once that was happening, it was amazing how quickly the time seemed to fly.
TWELVE
If you walk out of that door, don’t bother coming back.
The words echoed in Isaac’s head over and over again. His father had hurled them at him as Isaac had opened the door to leave, to meet Ben so that Ben could go meet his little brother. And his mother had just stood there, pale and small, her hands clutched together as if that was all that was holding her together.
Don’t bother coming back. Isaac hadn’t mentioned that conversation, if it could be called that, to Ben. After all, hadn’t his father told him, so many times, that family was the most important thing? He would never actually kick Isaac out, right?
But he hadn’t seemed like he was joking. What was going to happen? Would his father ask for him to apologize for leaving? If he did, Isaac knew that he couldn’t do it, not honestly, and he wouldn’t lie.
He couldn’t apologize for witnessing what he was seeing now, the first meeting of two brothers who were, it had to be said, getting along like a house on fire.
All he and the social worker could do was just sit back and watch as the two brothers got into an incredibly detailed conversation which meant very little to Isaac. He’d heard about Spider-Man and the X-Men, but he certainly didn’t know names and stats like these two did.
The time seemed to fly, and soon enough, it was over.
“The foster home is expecting him back,” the social worker told them. “But may I call you later today, Ben? In a couple of hours?”
Ben looked a little bit dazed, Isaac thought, but his nod was firm enough. And the smile which crossed his face when Sammy casually said “See ya, Ben,” was perhaps the most beautiful expression that Isaac had ever seen on anyone’s face before.
Anyone could see that Ben was smitten with the kid, his little brother, and that Sammy felt the same thing. This was two people who had really never had anyone, and now, maybe, they could have each other.
Even with his worry about his own family situation, Isaac couldn’t help but smile at that. They watched as the boy and the social worker walked off together, Sammy craning his head back over his skinny shoulder to look at Ben as he went.
Slowly, Ben turned to look at Isaac, and there was a smile which lingered in the corners of his sinfully full lips, a softness in his eyes that Isaac couldn’t remember seeing there before. On some level, it had been very good for Ben to meet this kid, to know that there was someone out there that shared his experiences.
“You wanna head home?” Ben asked, and Isaac winced, glad that Ben was too distracted to catch it. He didn’t want to think about home just yet, but he also wasn’t about to try to keep Ben from doing what he wanted to do. And he had to face his own family sometime, he supposed.
“Okay,” Isaac murmured, and they headed to the car once more, both of them quiet as they thought their own respective thoughts about family, and obligation, and love, and duty.
* * *
Halfway back home, Isaac would estimate, Ben, who had been completely silent, suddenly slammed the heel of one hand down onto the steering wheel. After that extraordinary outburst, he turned the wheel sharply and, with a lurch, they were on a small country street, where it seemed like they were the only people around for miles, maybe even the only people in the whole county, or state.
“I don’t know if I can take him,” Ben said abruptly, as he pulled over to the side of the small road. There was a fence less than an inch from Isaac’s door, and on the other side of it, nothing but fields and fields. Far in the distance, he thought he could see the shapes of some cows, grazing lazily in the golden springtime sunshine.
Isaac didn’t say anything. He just looked at Ben, and remembering how good it had felt when the other man did it to him, he reached out and took Ben’s hand in his, squeezing it gently. It seemed to him that he’d made the right call when he felt the desperate clutch of Ben’s fingers in return.
“Did you hear how she said that he’s in foster care already?” Ben asked, and Isaac nodded. He had heard that and found it interesting. They had Sammy in foster care, and the mother wasn’t even in jail yet. Or was she? He really knew very little about how the whole criminal justice system worked.
“I mean, the trial hasn’t even happened, and it seems like everyone is just assuming that she’s going to jail,” Ben mused, more to himself than to Isaac, he thought. “I guess everyone’s luck runs out sometime.”
Isaac wanted to know what Ben was going to do, of course, he did, but right at the moment, he sensed that Ben needed just to talk, to get things out. Ben didn’t do that nearly often enough, he didn’t let himself, and Isaac thought he should probably just let him go as long as he wanted.
For a long time, Ben didn’t s
peak at all, though, and there were thunderclouds in his eyes. The thoughts going on behind those eyes, Isaac could only guess at. Ben was figuring things out for himself, and Isaac’s heart ached for him, but he couldn’t really do anything other than let him do it.
“I can’t take him.” Ben finally spoke, and though there was a tone of decisiveness in his voice, there was something about his eyes which Isaac didn’t think exactly matched. “I don’t have the space. There’s just the one bedroom in my place. And I work as a bartender, for fuck’s sake. I can’t have a kid around cramping my style.”
Isaac tilted his head at him and just let Ben speak, just let the words come pouring out of him. He had a question, and he thought it was a very important one for Ben to hear, but he was going to have to judge the moment. Wait until Ben was ready to hear it.
Sure enough, Ben’s rapid-fire words came to a pause again, and Isaac squeezed his hand as he judged that the time was right. Gently, he squeezed Ben’s fingers and leaned in to look him more closely in the eyes.
“Ben,” Isaac asked, his eyes fixed unerringly on the older man. “I think what you need to ask yourself is, do you want to take him? Because if you don’t, then none of this matters. But if you do, well, I don’t think any of it matters, either, because I think that where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want him, then you can figure out how to make it happen, but if you don’t, then you don’t need to.”
Isaac looked at Ben, trying to judge his emotions, trying to see if he’d gone too far. He really didn’t know this man very well yet, and he still found Ben a little bit hard to predict.
Ben looked briefly startled like he wasn’t expecting to be spoken to like that, and then he opened his mouth, and Isaac waited, anxious to see what he would say. Then those luscious lips closed again, and before Isaac knew what was happening, Ben had his hands on his shoulders and was pulling him forward, off balance, their lips meeting in a slightly confused, though definitely passionate, embrace.
There was nothing like kissing Ben. Nothing that he had ever experienced, anyway. Every time Ben touched him, Isaac felt shivers, and when he kissed him, Isaac tasted heaven. Sure, that was probably blasphemous, and his parents would not approve, but for once, he didn’t care.
The kiss evened out, and became more natural, less an act of desperation on Ben’s part. With a sudden movement, Ben grabbed the lever which tilted the seat backward, and at the same time, his strong arm came around Isaac’s waist, and he pulled Isaac on top of him so that they both fell down, Isaac on top of Ben, as the seat fell back level.
This was the closest he had been to a human being in years, maybe since he was a baby. Isaac found himself resting on a reclining Ben, straddling his hips, indecently close. He could feel everything about Ben’s tall, muscular, huge, hot body.
Including a hardness between his legs, which was throbbing even through his jeans. A pulsing ache started deep inside of Isaac, and it was only a matter of seconds before his body was reacting the same way as Ben’s so obviously was.
They kissed again, their bodies moving together as easily as anything, and Isaac wasn’t even worried about the fact that the thin shell of the car was all that kept them from being right out in the open air. No one was around, but it felt deliciously daring, making him feel reckless.
Then Isaac felt it, for the very first time. Ben’s hand slid down into the heated space between their bodies, and his fingers slid over the front of Isaac’s pants. From time to time, Isaac had touched himself there, though he always felt horribly guilty after, but even those secret, stolen touches had never been anything like this was with Ben.
“Too far?” Ben asked, and to Isaac’s surprise, he didn’t even need to think about that. He just shook his head, because honestly, he felt like he might stop breathing if Ben stopped touching him there.
“No. Don’t stop,” Isaac whispered, his own voice sounding husky to his ears. He rocked his hips closer, wanting a more firm, direct touch, hating his clothes for being in the way.
Their lips met once more, their tongues tangling sweetly, intimately together as Isaac got bolder. He slid his hands up under the hem of Ben’s shirt, and the really shocking thing to him was just how natural this all felt. How little it felt like the sin which he’d always been told that it was.
Ben’s skin under his shirt was hot and smooth, silken under his fingertips, and Isaac touched it with wonder. He was so big, so strong, and those muscles bunched under his touch. He felt like he could spend forever just exploring the intricacies of Ben’s body, every curve, every plane and angle, every inch of skin and muscle, but there was a sort of pressure growing in his balls which made that seem sort of impossible.
“Isaac,” Ben whispered, his lips and breath hot against Isaac’s cheek and chin and lips, dragging sparks over his skin. “You have to tell me if I go too far, I’ve never been with someone like you before.”
Groaning softly, Isaac nodded. He wasn’t sure about everything, of course, but he did know that nothing that they’d done came even close to going too far. His fingers had found the highly intriguing, satiny skin flesh of Ben’s nipples, and as he toyed with them, they hardened into little nubs.
“I hate my pants,” Isaac tried to explain. Ben’s hand was still cupping the aching flesh between his legs, his thumb rubbing over the swollen head trapped in a cloth prison, and he squirmed, desperate for more friction.
Which he got. As he moved, his dick moved not only over Ben’s hand but over Ben’s thick cock, their bodies slotting together as if they belonged that way. Their breath mingled between each other as they gazed into each other’s eyes, panting and throbbing with heat and electricity lingering and building between them.
“Shit, no, hold on,” Ben whispered, and Isaac might have worried that he’d gone too far only Ben’s face was flushed delicately with pink, and his eyes shone with urgency. So Isaac let himself be pushed away, and awkwardly, in the cramped space, Ben reached down and opened the button of his own jeans, easing down the zipper and tugging his jeans and boxers down just enough.
For the first time, Isaac found himself looking at a man and seeing him, seeing all of him. Or, more accurately, seeing his dick, since Ben was mostly clothed still. Somehow, that made it seem even more forbidden, his swollen, thick, beautiful cock hanging out of his jeans.
“You too,” Ben demanded, and he reached for Isaac, tugging his pants open and then there were fingers on his aching erection, fingers that weren’t even his. He was pulled free, too, and then Ben gripped Isaac’s bare, vulnerable ass and pulled him back down on top of him.
His body, his throbbing, leaking cock, was pressed right up against Ben’s, bare skin against bare skin, and Isaac was trembling a little as little shocks of pure pleasure went through him. Maybe that was okay, though, because Ben also seemed to be shaking just a little.
“Kiss me,” Ben ordered, and Isaac moaned as he hastened to obey, heated lips finding each other, meeting, parting, meeting again, tongues slipping together. Isaac moved his hips, just a little, and the pure, exquisite sensation which moved through him took him by surprise.
Ben’s hands were so hot on him, cupping his asscheeks, and as they moved together, as Isaac started to thrust his hips so that his cock was gliding smoothly and flawlessly over Ben’s, Ben actually pushed his fingers between the cheeks of his ass and into truly forbidden territory.
This should feel so wrong. He should feel so guilty about this, but he couldn’t feel anything but pure desire, longing, lust. An urge for more. He even found himself, purely on instinct, parting his legs to give Ben’s questing fingers access to as much of his body as he wanted.
Maybe it should have been humiliating, but the moment that Ben’s fingertip brushed over Isaac’s tight, previously untouched hole, Isaac’s whole body tightened, and he convulsed with the most intense, electric, burst of pleasure that he’d ever felt. No stolen moment by himself in the bed could have prepared him for this.
His dick
twitched as he shot his fluids onto Ben, and then it all made sense, why Ben had wanted to get their pants out of the way. It was to try to make less of a mess. Because Isaac definitely made a mess as he shot all over Ben’s cock.
By some miracle, Ben didn’t end up making fun of him for it. There was a good reason for that, though, since Ben was crying out, his face going red as he shuddered under Isaac and he felt the hot wash of his fluids against his own sensitive, aching cock.
“Goddamn,” Ben whispered, and there was a tone of almost reverence in his voice that made Isaac’s heart pulse in his chest just as much as his whole body had pulsed and flexed with pleasure just a few seconds ago.
For a few moments, they just lay there, sweaty and covered in each other’s fluids, and it was the best few moments of Isaac’s entire life.
* * *
What with one thing and another, they didn’t end up going home right away. They didn’t talk much, either, they just drove, and Ben was clearly lost in thought. But Ben’s hand was warm in his, and that was more than good enough.
To be honest, after what they’d shared, Isaac was more than happy just to be silent. Funny how something which had felt so good, he’d been so scared of for so much of his life. Funny how he’d refused even to allow himself to think about doing anything with another man, and now he was finding it was the best thing he’d ever done.
Still, as he looked at Ben’s classic, gorgeous profile, he couldn’t help but be glad that he had waited, even if he had no idea what he was doing now. Ben did, and that was good enough. All of his firsts would be with Ben, and that seemed completely ideal to him.
Finally, when Ben dropped him off, it was dark and surprisingly chilly. Isaac could count the number of times he’d been outside during the night on the fingers of one hand. He’d always been told that the worst things, the sins, the bad stuff, all happened at night, and it was better to be inside.
