by Riley Sierra
“I was terrified you’d think I was controlling. Or that being only mine wasn’t enough for you. That I was asking you to give up something without having the right to do it.”
Blake buried his face in both hands, breathing hard. Cal gripped his knees, fingertips steely, holding on, grounding him. He had to get it through to Blake that he wasn’t still upset. That no matter how much it hurt back then, the tentative thing they were building between them now was so much better, so much more intimate, different in so many ways...
“It’s so hard to talk about this stuff,” Cal muttered. “I don’t want you to think that I thought you ran off here to cheat on me or something. I know you didn’t. It just. It hurt like hell to feel like I wasn’t what you needed when you were upset.”
He just kept talking. And every word he said, he felt like he was digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. A hole that would go on forever if he didn’t shut himself up.
Fortunately for him, Blake did it before Cal had the chance to.
He reached out, putting a finger to Cal’s stammering lips. He held it there, firmly.
“Cal,” he said. “This is. This is a lot to take in. Can we just... be quiet?”
Cal nodded mutely against Blake’s hand, locking eyes with him, peering upwards. Blake managed the faintest of smiles, slightly askew with his buzz. Cal wanted to kiss it.
“Are we okay?” Blake asked, caution narrowing his eyes.
Cal just nodded against his hand. Yes. They were okay. As long as Blake said they were. Calmed by the purgative effect of just getting the words out of him, Cal puckered his lips and pressed a brief, tender kiss to the pad of Blake’s finger.
33
Blake
All these unexpected revelations made Blake’s head spin. It made sense in hindsight. Of course it did. He and Cal had discussed monogamy all those years ago, laughed it off as a silly and outdated concept. Blake slept around because it was all part of the rock-star persona. Just another way to feed off the adoration of the crowd.
But now that he looked back on that time, it was true: he didn’t remember Cal fooling around with anyone else. How the hell had he not noticed?
And Cal, why the hell had he been so stupid?
Everything made a lot more sense when you just assumed that the root of most human conflict was people making dumbass bad decisions. Blake gnawed the inside of his lip, trying to figure out what to say. Telling Cal I forgive you seemed wrong, because Cal hadn’t done anything wrong per se. And neither had Blake.
Not wrong. Just stupid.
“Well, hey,” Blake said, his words a little fuzzy around the edges from the mezcal. “If you want me to lean on you when things get bad, take me somewhere better than this place.” He cast a dour look around the empty patio. “It’s kind of harshing my buzz.”
“All right,” Cal murmured, kissing the pad of Blake’s finger again. “I couldn’t agree more.”
* * *
Somewhere else turned out to be their hotel. Cal called them a car, which dropped them off dutifully just outside the Mandalay Bay.
Nighttime Las Vegas was in full effect outside. Every building’s facade was lit up in glowing gold–orange, neon signs and glittery fountains all fighting to draw the eye. Beautiful people wearing next to nothing staggered past in great flocks. A convertible rolled out of the valet lot, its sound system blaring Skynyrd.
“Come on,” Cal said. “Follow me into the lobby, then wait there.”
That last mezcal was only just now hitting Blake, blurring the world at its corners and imbuing him with an all-over warmth and relaxation. Blake was a happy drunk. And though he wasn’t drunk-drunk yet, he was feeling better than he had a right to, given the dire straits his band was in.
Speaking of the band, I really should check my phone, he thought. There were a bunch of texts about the after-party, which he scrolled past without reading. He saw one from Palmer, though. And Palmer typically didn’t text.
Legal team working round the clock. Tour postponed for now. They need you in Nashville tomorrow. Lucy’s booking the flights.
Blake read the words like a series of disconnected sentences that didn’t quite add up to a coherent whole. He understood their meaning. Just dimly, and from a long ways off.
So it really was over, then.
He wandered into the hotel’s lobby, all gleaming white marble and molded ceiling fixtures. An impressive paneled glass lamp caught his tipsy attention. He stood directly beneath it, admiring the craftsmanship, wondering how much such a thing might cost. Which led to him wondering just how poor he’d be in a matter of months.
Staring upward at the light like a hapless moth, he stayed put until Cal returned, nudging him with a shoulder.
“I’ve uh, I’ve just done something I probably shouldn’t have,” Cal murmured into his ear. “But if you grease the right palms in this town, they’ll open a lot of doors. Follow me.”
Cal grabbed Blake by the arm again and led him down a hallway, off the main lobby entrance. A man in a dark purple polo shirt waited for them at the mouth of the hall, then bid them to accompany him. What followed was a labyrinthine walk through the hotel’s side corridors, on floors too low to be either casino or hotel.
“The aquarium normally closes at eight,” the man in the polo said. “But we do after-hours VIP tours. If anyone asks, you had one booked but you missed your reservation and I took pity on you.”
They took an elevator down one floor, then arrived at an underground lobby, its ticket kiosk dark and shuttered. Polo shirt guy swiped a security tag through the lock on a pair of heavy metal doors, then pulled one open.
“You have twenty minutes,” he said.
He shut the door behind Cal and Blake once they were inside.
* * *
“Where are you taking me?” Blake asked. Cal led him past a couple of interpretive displays, something about the life cycle of fish. Cal always had been weirdly obsessed with fish. Didn’t they have season passes to the Denver Aquarium once when they were younger? Blake was sure he’d remember if he was completely sober.
They turned one last corner and arrived at their destination.
A long tunnel stretched out before them, lit from above with glimmering blue-green light. Overhead arched a plexiglass half-moon that held a massive tank of water at bay. Just beyond the glass, fingers of coral and little spirals of bubbles stretched up toward the ceiling, which looked impossibly high. Fish swam placidly over their heads, none the wiser to being observed from below.
Blake had to catch his breath. The scale and beauty of it was dizzying.
Cal took Blake’s hand this time, weaving their fingers together. He led Blake down a walkway, then stopped right in the center of the tunnel, fish all around them, the gentle burble of the tank all they could hear.
Giving Blake’s arm a tug, Cal eased down onto the floor and just sat, cross-legged.
“Come here,” he said. “Just... sit with me.”
Blake sank down, leaning in against Cal’s side. He held tight onto Cal’s hand, admiring the wiry strength he felt there. The aquarium’s chlorine-scented air was chilly. He scooted closer to Cal for warmth.
“Just how much did you bribe that guy?” Blake whispered, his voice soft with wonderment.
Cal inched closer to him, warmth bleeding through his shirt. He looped an arm around Blake’s shoulders and pulled him close.
“You probably don’t want to know,” he said.
So Blake fell quiet and they just sat. A shark floated overhead like an angular ghost, its white underbelly bathed blue by the lights. The far-off burbling of the tank’s filters made for calming white noise. The fish themselves were calming too, glittering bodies gliding through the water with ease.
Before long, Blake understood why Cal liked aquariums so much.
He’d never been upset in one before. The calming effect was almost instantaneous.
Blake curled his body against Cal’s, uncaring of who m
ight walk in on them. He needed to feel Cal against him, needed to be reminded that Cal was there. He turned his head, pressing a small kiss to the underside of Cal’s jaw. And Cal curled his arms tighter around Blake’s chest, cradling him close.
“I promise I’m all yours now,” Blake whispered into Cal’s skin. “All that stuff, years ago... I was just figuring out who I was. What I wanted. I got swept up in the lifestyle.” A pause, a breath. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Cal trailed one thumb along the inside of Blake’s wrist, eliciting a twitch and a shiver that curled his toes inside his boots.
“I should have said something. I should have told you what I wanted.”
Another shark passed overhead, momentarily bathing them in shadow, its smooth gray body blocking out the light.
“There’s a lot of things we should have done.” Blake let himself go slack, utterly boneless against Cal’s body. He relinquished the last parts of him that cared about appearance or control.
“What matters is we’ve got a chance to do it right this time.”
Blake couldn’t have agreed more.
34
Cal
Cal wished that those twenty minutes could have gone on forever. He sat there on the aquarium floor, Blake in his arms, watching the fish go by. Fish were so calming. From watching Finding Nemo multiple times at an embarrassingly teenage age to his parents’ old saltwater tank, Cal found their presence soothing. Plus they were just so cool to watch.
After a while, Blake stirred, shifting so that his side was more flush against Cal’s.
“Palmer says the tour’s postponed,” he said. “Forgot to tell you.”
“I kinda figured.”
Cal wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On one hand he was sad for Blake, sad to be missing out on more shows, on the exhilarating experience of touring with a top-forty band. But part of him wondered if Blake might be better off with some time to decompress. As much as the Sinsationals appeared to be enjoying their tour, it also appeared to be grinding them down.
“That’s all right,” Cal said. “Come with me to Denver. Get back to your roots.”
Blake didn’t immediately accept. Which told Cal there was something else in the pipeline.
“They need me in Nashville,” he said at length. “Label meetings. Contract stuff.”
Cal let out a low, pained groan. He dealt with some of that when running The Garage: booking the occasional local band, labor disputes, accounting shit, safety inspections. Blake didn’t deserve that. No good person did.
“So come to Denver afterward,” Cal said lightheartedly. “It’ll still be there.”
They both lapsed back into silence. Cal watched a school of tiny fish flit through the branches of a pale green coral. They left little swirls and eddies in their wake.
“I feel like this is the end,” Blake said at last. “Like I’m watching the death throes of my band.”
Bands were funny things, though. They could survive a lot. And some ended up being replaced piecemeal. Who was even touring with the Smashing Pumpkins these days?
“It might be the death throes of this version of it,” Cal conceded. “But you survived losing me just fine. In fact, you thrived.”
Blake let out a short, flat laugh.
“Except losing you was up until that point the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
The words dug into Cal like hooks. He wanted to pin Blake down and kiss him everywhere and promise over and over that he was never leaving again. He’d learned his lesson. They’d both grown up. The time for that shit was over.
Instead, he just drew Blake close and sought out his mouth. He cupped Blake’s chin in his palm, leaning down and capturing his lips in a slow, soft kiss. There was no pressure, no insistence, no hurry this time. He just kissed Blake long and languorously, slowly gliding his tongue along Blake’s bottom lip.
“Whatever happens,” he murmured into Blake’s mouth. “You’ve got me. You can always come home.”
Their twenty minutes were almost up.
Cal let Blake go with extreme reluctance, the air of the aquarium unbearably cold once Blake’s body was no longer pressed up against his.
* * *
Back at the hotel, Cal was eager to recapture that heat. Spring was edging out winter, but the combination of nerves and sitting in the cold aquarium had set a chill in his bones.
So naturally, he tore around his suite until he found the little packets of instant coffee and hot cocoa that came standard-issue in every American hotel room. The minibars had milk, so the cocoa ended up more luxurious than hotel cocoa had any right to be.
Mixing up two hot mugs, Cal invited Blake back to his room. They made no pretenses about utilizing other furniture and went straight to the bed. For the blankets, of course.
Cuddled up in a pile of hotel pillows, sipping their hot chocolates, they sat in silence. Blake still had that faraway look in his eye, the expression that Cal swore somehow made his eyes lighter. Greener. Cal studied him in profile, licking hot chocolate off his lips.
“This is uh, kind of a weird thing to say,” Cal started. “But I just wanted you to know. I’m proud of you. Regardless of what happens. You made all this. That’s something to be proud of.”
Blake hiked his shoulders up, big eyes peering at Cal over the rim of his hot chocolate. He took a long sip, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hands. He crawled closer over to Cal so that their thighs were touching beneath the bedcovers. Even though they were completely clothed, that sent a ripple of heat through Cal, a promise of further contact to come.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Blake said, smiling almost timidly.
Cal stretched his arms out, finishing his drink and setting it aside on the nightstand. He flopped back onto the pile of pillows, folding his arms behind his head.
“Well of course not,” he said smugly, hoping to get a laugh out of Blake.
He didn’t quite get a laugh, but he got a smirk.
When Blake finished his mug, he set it aside with a clunk, then rolled over onto his side so that he was facing Cal. Mere inches apart, they lay like that in silence, just breathing together. Cal could see the worry in Blake’s eyes, the way his mouth clenched tighter than usual.
He hated that.
So he leaned forward and tried to kiss that tension away.
The kiss began as an easygoing brush of lips, but it didn’t take long for heat to rise under Cal’s skin. Accordingly, he deepened the kiss, pulling Blake closer against him. Blake obliged, eager, and twisted his tongue around Cal’s for a moment. Then he gave a gentle sucking motion, just a tug, his cheeks hollowing, and every nerve in Cal’s body awoke.
35
Blake
Delirious with the taste of Cal’s chocolatey kissing up and down his mouth, Blake had to struggle to breathe. Nestled up in bed, chasing the cold away, they took it nice and slow this time. On one hand, Blake loved it, the way their languid kissing reminded him of earlier years, that slow caution with which they first explored one another’s body.
On the other hand, his cock was straining in his pants already, and if Cal didn’t touch him soon, he was going to lose his mind.
Catching Cal’s bottom lip in his teeth, Blake tugged gently. At the same time, he leaned back into the pillows, rolling to one side and pulling Cal down atop him. Cal went along with it, though he could have easily stopped Blake if he wanted to. And then all of Cal’s weight was bearing down on him, claiming him, and Blake rocked his body up to meet him. That knot of upset in his stomach still hadn’t dissolved. Their kissing grew more heated, more intense, a crescendo with a base note of anxious desperation to it.
I don’t want you to leave, Blake thought. And I don’t want to leave you.
He knew it was only temporary. He knew he and Cal had fixed things. But the idea of jetting off to Nashville rather than clinging to Cal for comfort and solidarity felt like a rejection of everything important to him.
“Fuck all this,” Blake whimpered into Cal’s mouth. “Fuck the band, fuck Nashville. I just want to stay with you.”
Cal, fingers tracing the lines of Blake’s throat, laughed lowly. He dragged a hand down Blake’s torso, fingertips splaying over his stomach.
“You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re horny. Give me a few minutes and I’ll get you thinking clearer.”
At the implications behind those words, Blake’s dick went fully hard in his pants. He let out a soft, wordless gulp as Cal reached for his fly, his hands quick and nimble. They had a lot of experience stripping one another down, slowly and quickly, seductive and messy, awkward and delicious and everything in between. Their hands worked as one, synchronized, as if they could read one another’s thoughts. And in no time at all, both men had wriggled free from everything they wore.
“I thought we were trying to stay warm,” Cal murmured with a rough laugh. Then he eased his fully nude body down atop Blake’s, skin searing where it met naked skin. Blake gasped, clinging to Cal, fingers digging into his shoulders, lips parted to aid in his frantic breath. He needed to feel Cal against him more than he’d ever needed anything. Right now it wasn’t even about getting off. It wasn’t even about rekindling their relationship. He needed to feel Cal against him because as long as he could feel that, everything would be all right.
So slow, too slow, slow enough that Blake whined in protest, Cal began to grind his heavy body against Blake’s. Pressing into the mattress with his feet, Blake thrust up against Cal’s leg, the hardness of his cock nestled against Cal’s thigh. Cal let out a soft, aroused grunt and bent down, raking his teeth over one of Blake’s hard nipples.
Yes. This was what he needed.
Without warning, Cal curled his strong fingers around the length of Blake’s cock. Blake let out a soft, muffled sound into the blankets, stilling as Cal began to work his fingers. Cal paid special attention to the leaking head, his tongue sliding into Blake’s mouth while his hand milked him. Blake shuddered, pleasure prickling all along his skin.
