Fall through Spring

by Amy Lane

  They were twisted together like rose bushes, and Clay wouldn’t unwind the red from the white for fear of completely destroying either part.

  But Dane couldn’t see that. Couldn’t trust it. Not right now. Clay knew it. They’d just changed their relationship. Dane needed to see that the other parts of them—the snark, the banter, the balls-out honesty, the gentleness of friends—all of that would remain intact and fully functioning while they progressed to making that amazing and wonderful thing they’d done the night before into part of their repertoire.

  After some time in which “making love” became part of their comfort zone, Dane might be readier to hear that Clay wasn’t just “making love.” Clay had long since “fallen in love”—probably from their first meeting in the fall. Because God, if Clay hadn’t been in love with him through that dismal and bitter spring, he wasn’t sure they would have survived.

  “It would kill Mason,” Dane said unhappily. “Kill him to see that little prick on the same team with Jefferson, whether or not they break up.”

  Clay made a disbelieving noise. “I don’t know—your brother seems pretty grounded, Dane. I don’t think he’d get too upset over….”

  “You don’t get it,” Dane snapped. “When his ex split up with him to shack up with his boss—his boss, Clay, the guy who took potshots at Mason’s self-esteem for four years—they got all the friends. Mason got left out in the cold because he hates wine-and-cheese parties and is lucky he knows how to find a suit, much less one that fits him. He’s not smooth. But for some reason, he’s all fucking excited about your Holy Church of Soccer, and if he sees it… desecrated by another asshole who wants to get in his boyfriend’s pants….”

  Dane trailed off and settled into blistering funk on the other side of Carpenter’s SUV.

  “I’ll talk to Skip,” Clay said softly. “Skip loves your brother like a… well, a brother. So I think Mason gets a say. Anyway, we’ll see. There’s a two-week hiatus after the next game, so anything can happen.”

  “I think we’re having people over next week,” Dane said with a sigh. “Mason’s sort of excited about it—he’s inviting mostly soccer people. God, maybe that Rudy kid will have to come too.”

  Clay sighed. “Well, we can try to poison him, but if we get one of the guys we like, that’ll sort of suck. Maybe we could just say shitty things at his expense.”

  Dane actually smiled, and then he roused himself. “Wait! Why are we going this way! You need work clothes for tomorrow!”

  Clay grimaced. “I thought I was going home tonight.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Mason’s going to sleep at Terry’s tonight. We need to try out my bed to see if it’s more comfortable than yours.”

  Oh brother. “It is, Dane. Remember? I slept there most of March.”

  “Well, I don’t really remember that, so I think we’re going to have to repeat it.”

  “As you wish,” Clay muttered, spotting a mini-mart where he could turn in the parking lot. “If I ask you if you took your meds this afternoon, will you get upset?”

  “No,” Dane said, scaring him badly. “I mean no, I didn’t forget them—and no, I’m not upset. I know I’m sort of out there, and you’re probably wondering if I’ll even notice you, but….” He let out a frustrated sound, and for the first time since they’d gotten in the car, Clay felt like Dane really knew he was there.

  “I’m worried about my brother,” he said frankly. “And yes, I’m off balance because you and me did something big last night. But… but I’d really like you to stay, even if we don’t do the same big thing tonight. I just… I feel like if I let you go home right now, we’ll never have sex again.”

  Clay’s eyes got wide. “I think you do yourself a disservice,” he said. “And I’m wondering if you were even there last night, because my mind was seriously blown. If you think I’m going to pass up the chance to do that again, you have been sleeping with some seriously freaky assholes.”

  Dane chuckled, the sound easing some of the tension between them. “I wouldn’t know about their assholes. I don’t top.”

  Clay thought about that for a moment. “I am a little disappointed,” he said. “I won’t lie.”

  The silence next to him grew increasingly unnerving. From the corner of his eye, he could see Dane staring at him like he was a rare summer bird who had flown into an open fall window.

  “What?”

  “So… you’d be interested in bottoming?”

  Clay shrugged. “I won’t rule it out. You seem to enjoy it.”

  “Oh, I do. I enjoy it very much. But for some guys, it’s a control thing. ‘Yes, I’m gay, but it’s okay, I put the dick in the hole, so I’m still a man!’”

  Carpenter blinked and then widened his eyes, and the view was still the same dusty hot suburb with outrageously narrow streets and steep hills. Apparently, half the world was watering their lawn tonight—go figure.

  “That’s not very progressive,” he said, trying not to be horrified. “Tell me people don’t think that.”

  “Well, they did six years ago,” Dane muttered. “I have no idea what they think now.”

  “Well, does it really matter what they think? You’re not sleeping with them. You’re sleeping with me! Doesn’t it matter what I think, because I think you do what feels good and nobody shames you for it. I thought that’s what you thought, too!”

  Dane let out a frustrated sound next to him. “It is. It’s just… you know. We never actually talked about what we would be like when we started having sex with each other.”

  Carpenter half laughed. “You lost me. How else would we be?”

  For a moment, the silence on the other side of the car lightened up. “I have no idea.”

  “Well, how about we not be freaky and weird… more than usual I mean. Dane, don’t you know there’s not much I wouldn’t do for you?”

  “Would you come out to your parents for me?”

  “God, you suck.”

  “See?”

  “It’s not that I won’t—or haven’t been planning for it, honestly. But Jesus, do you have to go for the jugular in every skirmish?”

  He pulled into his apartment complex, finding his parking spot by braille because parts of his brain sure weren’t working, and pulled in. For a moment, they sat there, the blistering heat of late May already seeping past the coolness in the SUV.

  “Yes,” Dane said softly. “And I don’t know why. I… I have to keep myself from sniping at you until I drive you off. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”

  “Really?” Clay asked, wrinkling his nose.

  Dane sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Really what?”

  “You really don’t know what’s wrong?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He bristled.

  “It means I’m your first big relationship since you tried home decorating by sledgehammer and spray-bomb. It means I’ve seen you naked—not your body, but your person—and it scares you. If you think I don’t know I’m a big deal for you, you underestimate me. So you’re trying to bitch me away so you can control it. That’s how you’ve dealt with your other hookups, right?”

  “No,” Dane muttered. “I just… didn’t engage.”

  “Well, I’m honored. Lucky me that you’re trying not to run away.”

  Dane’s eyes went narrow. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not.”

  Carpenter just looked at him, eyes soft. “Really? Can you really not tell?”

  Dane swallowed. “Last night meant so much to me. I’m so afraid that if I hold on to it too tight, it will slip away.”

  “That makes me really happy. Now let’s pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “What?”

  “Until we’re in the bedroom, doing the thing, we’re going to pretend it didn’t happen. That way, you don’t have to be any different. We can just be us.”

  Dane swallowed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “Okay,” he rasped. “That’s a good i
dea.”

  “Excellent. Come inside with me. I need to pack, and it’s hot as balls out here.”

  Clay threw together some of his new clothes, making sure Dane saw, and some boxer shorts and a sleep tee. He wasn’t sure how excited Mason would be if he caught Carpenter stumbling around the coffeemaker in his boxer shorts, so he added sleep pants, and was not surprised at Dane’s pouty little grunt behind him.

  “It’s a billion degrees—”

  “I need something to make coffee in,” he said with dignity. “I think Mason and I will continue a relationship based on respect, kindness, and taking care of you and Skipper, as long as we don’t have to see each other in our boxers more than absolutely necessary.”

  Dane thought about it for a moment. “That’s fair,” he finally concluded. Then he took a deep breath. “Uh… you, uh… you know that…. Never mind.”

  Clay shoved everything into a duffel with his toothbrush, remembering when he lived out of this duffel when Dane was in his spiral. “Never mind what?” he asked, trying not to let that dredged-up memory fill him with shivers.

  “Nothing,” Dane said, too quickly.

  Clay didn’t let Dane see him sigh. It was going to be a long, long, long miserable night.

  It was a good thing Clay had already concluded that living without this asshole was really not an option at all.

  “Nothing sounds like something,” he said brightly. “Hit me with it in the car.” As he and Dane made their way out again, he paused at his door and looked around. He’d added more prints to the place—and liked them—and was looking into replacing his couch. Generally, the place looked better, homier, than it had back in December. Dane had helped him make those changes, and they were good ones.

  But the place still wasn’t really in his heart.

  His parents’ place still gave him hives, but next to Skipper’s place with the tile they were slated to replace sometime in the summer, the one house he’d ever felt at home in was the one they were going to now.

  Because Dane was there.

  God, he hoped Dane could adjust to their new relationship. Carpenter wasn’t sure he had anywhere else to be.

  THEY MADE dinner when they got back—whole-wheat pasta and marinara with a salad—and then gamed for a couple of hours. The gaming was a relief, actually. Sitting next to Dane on the couch, touching as they had been for the past few months, swearing at the screen, felt familiar. There was no “we just had sex” when they were annihilating small planets in cyberspace.

  Dane’s ten o’clock alarm came as a bit of a shock, but Clay shut down his control immediately. One of the things they’d determined during that miserable March and April was that putting a timer on the gaming system was a good thing. Besides snapping Dane back to reality, it helped him remember his night meds, and that was necessary.

  “Guess Mason’s staying with Terry,” Dane murmured as they made their way upstairs. Natural as breathing, Clay put his hand in the small of Dane’s back as they neared the door, so Dane would go inside.

  “That’s a good thing,” Clay assured him, although his heart was troubled about that too. Dane paused just inside his door and turned, looking at him with limpid eyes.

  “Can we be the guys who do the thing now?” he asked piteously.

  Clay let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and relaxed into his body. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah.”

  Dane met his mouth midway, and this kiss was… exploratory. Patient. A little tired, but growing more urgent by the second.

  Clay opened his mouth wider and pushed, backing Dane up toward the bed, enjoying Dane’s hands on his skin under his shirt.

  Dane made a greedy little whimper, and they both paused to strip to their underwear before burrowing under the covers. When they got there, Dane pulled his sheet over their heads and whispered to him, as if they were naughty children, still playing after their bedtime.

  “It’s warm enough to do this on top of the sheets!” Clay protested.

  “Yes, but I want you more to myself,” Dane told him. “I just want to kiss you.” Dane started by kissing his neck, which was always sort of tender, then his shoulder, then his nipple. Clay gasped, enjoying this more with Dane than he ever had with a girl, maybe because Dane got that it could be just as much a part of the playground for men as it could be for women.

  “Dane,” Clay gasped. “I am going to come in my shorts!”

  “Then take them off,” Dane ordered, and then went back to work.

  Carpenter put his thumbs under the waistband of his boxer briefs and started to push down, but Dane didn’t help him in the least. He continued his seduction of Clay’s nipple, and added forays with his hand to any flesh Clay exposed during his efforts with his underwear. The result was a heaving, thrashing mess that not only shoved off the underwear but also all the covers and left Clay exposed on the top sheet, naked, spread-eagled, and hard.

  And Dane took the lack of covers as an excuse to move to the next nipple.

  “Augh! You are not helping!”

  Dane turned his head, cheek still resting on Clay’s chest. “I’m not going to help you hide under the covers when I want to eat all of you!”

  “I thought we were going for the quiet pity hand job tonight!” Clay argued, not sure if he was ready for “extraordinary” and “amazing” after the night before.

  “Why do we need to be quiet? My brother’s two miles away?” And with that, Dane actually lunged down the bed to engulf Clay’s erection in his hot, busy mouth.

  Clay made a noise previously unheard in human history and spread his legs wide to give Dane access to any part of him Dane wanted to fondle, grope, or suck—including his soul, should his soul reside among any points south, especially, especially, his cock.

  “Augh! God! Dane! What are you—why? Oh my God!”

  It was like Dane had been taking it easy on him the night before, and this was what real blowjobs were like, and Clay needed to man up and enjoy!

  “This is good, right?” Dane panted, coming off Clay’s cock with a pop. “Like you love this and want more of it?”

  “God, yes! But can I recipro—wait, what are you—”

  Dane took him in, all the way to the back of his throat, while thrusting a gentle finger in through the back way.

  Clay came. Hard enough to see stars. Hard enough that the pressure on his cockhead was just a little too much. He cried out in pleasure, his fingers tightening in Dane’s hair, and then whimpered, rolling sideways, trying to remember he had fingers and lungs and eyes and things.

  Dane pulled up, draping himself over Clay’s back and peering down at him. “Good?”

  “Yes,” Clay moaned. “But over too fast. Can I do something? Why would you not let me do something?”

  “Because I was paying you back for being such a whiny asshole. Did it work?”

  Clay swallowed, then took a deep breath… and decided he was furious.

  With a heave, he rolled off the bed, grabbed his underwear, and said, “I’m going downstairs to sleep on the couch. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  “Clay?” Dane scrambled to sit up, but for once, Clay wasn’t about to make him feel better.

  “I love you, you stupid jerk. This thing we’re doing in the bedroom is part of that. If I’m in bed with you and naked, that means we’re square.” His cock hurt. His heart hurt. “God, Dane. I know shit gets squirrely up in your head, but you need to say that shit out loud before we get naked.”

  “But I’m a mess! My emotions are all over the place. Why would you even want to sleep with me when I’m a weird whiny baby!”

  “Because I love you!” He shouted it—for the first time in his life, he shouted it. “But I’m already afraid you’re touching me out of pity, so if you don’t love me back, spare me the power blowjob!”

  And with that, he managed to put on his underwear and stomp out.

  He grabbed a sheet from the linen closet and used the afghan from the couch to p
rotect him from Mason’s overzealous air-conditioning, and tried to make himself comfortable. God, what a mess.

  He got it. He got that sex would be different for Dane than it would be for him. He got that while he was fantasizing about tender lovemaking, Dane was remembering years of careless hookups because he was afraid of rejection.

  But Carpenter had waited too many years to kiss his dream boy—and not have him disappear—to deal with “Let me be your sex god because I’m too afraid to let you love me!” He didn’t need a sex god. He needed a friend and a confidant and a lover.

  Perhaps you should have told him that.

  But he didn’t think he could say the words without crying.

  Changewinds

  DANE POUTED for a good hour.

  Clay was walking out on him for delivering a world-class blowjob? Really? The actual hell?

  But as he sat up in bed, knees clasped to his chest in the still-darkened room, several things hit him in succession.

  The first was that Clay had been patient with him. He’d been floundering, and Clay had accepted him for what and who he was—even when he was a writhing bundle of contradictions.

  God, Dane hadn’t deserved that, but it seemed what Clay was willing to give.

  So maybe he had a point about talking things out before he went for the dick.

  The other thing was that Dane was still in his briefs.

  And Clay had been naked and vulnerable in front of him, and Dane had been in power-blowjob mode so Clay wouldn’t have to see him naked.

  Clay had very much enjoyed his body the night before. Apparently there was no have to about it. Dane hadn’t seduced a straight man. He’d fallen in love with—scratch that—slept with a bisexual man.

  It wasn’t fair, keeping himself all layered under armor, emotional or otherwise, while Clay, who was openly sensitive about his body image, exposed himself.

  Oh God.

  Dane really wanted him back.

  He made his way down his brother’s carpeted stairs and saw Clay stretched out on the couch with the blanket over his shoulders, eyes closed.