by Roan Parrish
Simon writhed against him as frissons of pain and pleasure skittered through his nerves.
“Until all you cared about was the feel of me inside you.”
“Oh god,” Simon heard himself gasp.
Jack released his nipple and slid his hand slowly down Simon’s stomach toward Simon’s aching cock. Then he rested his hand there and began to touch him so softly, so gently that Simon was left chasing his touch.
“Sometimes I’d thrust myself so deep you’d feel like I was a part of you. And I’d stay like that, feeling you clench around me.”
Simon’s breath was erratic, his chest and face hot.
Jack adjusted himself so he could rub himself in the crack of Simon’s ass. It made his heart pound and he squirmed backward to increase the contact.
“Mmm.” Jack released a rumbling moan and flicked open Simon’s pants, sliding a hot hand inside. With the other hand he stroked the inside of Simon’s thigh.
“Jack,” he breathed.
“What, baby?”
“Jack.” He shuddered.
Jack’s lips touched his neck and he let his head fall to the side.
“I’d stroke you while I was deep inside.”
At the first touch of Jack’s fingers on his aching cock, Simon cried out.
“Oh, yeah,” Jack rumbled. “I’d stroke your cock and feel you clamp that sweet ass down on my dick like you wanna eat me alive. Like you want me to stay in you forever.”
Jack humped against him and worked him and Simon felt his awareness begin to slide.
“Then sometimes I’d stop,” Jack rumbled in his ear.
And he stopped.
Stopped thrusting against him, stopped stroking him, stopped kissing his neck.
“No!” Simon cried out. “No, please!”
Jack groaned and dropped his forehead to Simon’s hair.
“You fucking kill me, Simon.”
Simon was panting and writhing, anything to regain that gorgeous contact.
“I’d stop and I’d wait until you couldn’t take it anymore. Until you had to have me.”
Simon whimpered and tried to pull Jack’s hand back where he wanted it, but Jack was immovable.
“Until you couldn’t bear for me not to be touching you.”
His voice was cruel and hot, like he too was suffering.
“Jack!” Simon tugged at Jack’s rough hand, his dick throbbing with frustrated desire. “Jack, please!”
“Ohhh god, yes. Just like that.”
Then that rough hand was back, stroking him so perfectly, that hot mouth back on his mouth, making him shiver. He groaned, feeling like he would spill any moment. He thrust into Jack’s hand and back against his hard cock, losing himself.
“That’s so beautiful, darlin’.”
Then he stopped again.
“No, no, no! Please, no!”
Tears streamed down Simon’s face as he chased the stolen orgasm. Pleasure had been flooding through him and now it had been wrenched away.
Jack locked his arm around Simon’s waist and slowly thrust against him.
“Yeah, I’d bring you right to the edge, over and over. Watch the way your face gets so pink. Watch you thrash around, trying to get more of my cock.”
Simon’s hole clenched at Jack’s words and the feel of that cock hot and hard against him.
“Jack,” Simon begged. “Jack.”
“God, the way you say my name.”
Simon squeezed his eyes tight shut, unable to stand a single stimulus that wasn’t Jack.
“Jack,” he whispered. “I n-n-need you.”
Jack’s shudder shook him.
“Fuck! Fuck, I need you too,” Jack groaned, and Simon felt him come, felt the heat and the pulsing heft of him. It sent a bolt of lust through him that made him lightheaded.
Jack gasped one more time and shuddered out a low moan. Then the hand that had been on Simon’s thigh slid into his pants as well, and Simon spread his legs wider. One rough finger rubbed against his hole, sending shivers through him. He threw his head back and let Jack do as he wished with him, all energy concentrated on the hum of pressure that was building inside him.
“Mmm, finally,” Jack drawled, “when you couldn’t take it anymore, I’d wrap my hand around you—” He wrapped his hand around Simon’s aching flesh. “And I’d stroke you, and stroke you, and fuck you, and fuck you, until you lost it.”
His questing finger pressed inside Simon and the pulls on his cock were long and slick and his voice in Simon’s ear was low and hot. He curled his finger inside Simon, and the sparks caught fire. Every sensation raging through him coalesced into an explosion that snapped his hips and gushed from him in screaming pulses.
Jack held him and worked him until he was just shuddering pleasure, until his body was twitching with every touch, but couldn’t feel a drop more pleasure or he might die.
A minute or two later, Simon’s eyes fluttered open. Jack was stroking his stomach and kissing his hair. He felt liquid with ease and relished the steady thump of Jack’s heartbeat against his shoulder.
Still a little shaky, he looked at the sketchbook again. The drawing was slightly smeared where he must’ve clutched it.
“Is there more?” he asked, voice raw.
Jack buried his face in Simon’s hair.
“Not yet.”
Simon turned the page anyway. Branches laden with snow, acorns hanging in clusters, tattered leaves, pine boughs.
“I wasn’t lying about the trees,” Jack said, arms hugging him close.
Chapter Twelve
Jack
“Haven’t seen you in here in a while.”
Jack jumped in his seat at Charlie’s voice.
“Sorry. Thought you heard me come in.”
Jack shook his head.
He’d wandered into his studio under the guise of dusting. He hadn’t let himself examine why he’d need his drawing table dust-free because...well, that’s why it was a guise. He’d dusted the bookshelves, pulling out a volume here and there and flipping through. When his armpits began to ache from standing with his crutches too long, he’d settled gingerly at the table. He’d flipped through Two Moons Over, as he often had before he started drawing in the past, and his hand had reached for a piece of paper automatically.
“Is that us?”
Charlie peered over his shoulder at the scattered pages.
“Um, yeah.”
Jack started to gather the pages so Charlie wouldn’t look, but his brother was already studying them.
“That’s the time you hid in the woodpile and got swarmed by fire ants,” Charlie said, chuckling at the memory. “God, your face. You really thought you’d found the best hiding spot.”
Jack smiled and grabbed another drawing and shoved it at Charlie.
“Yeah, well, you weren’t such a paragon of sense yourself.”
Charlie groaned at the drawing. He’d been twelve and Jack had been eight and they’d gone fishing in the stream south of the cabin. Charlie had tried to show off and make up a new way of casting. He’d flicked his rod back like he was fly-fishing, and through some combination of coordination, wind, and bad luck, Charlie’s hook lodged in the back of his shoulder.
“I really thought I’d invented fly-fishing with a spinning rod,” Charlie said, soberly.
“And I really thought you were gonna fall in the stream the way you jumped around like you’d been shot.”
“It hurt!”
“It was a fishhook,” Jack scoffed.
Charlie smiled, then looked at him assessingly.
“You seem...strangely happy.”
“Asshole,” Jack muttered. But he felt strangely happy. Not just happy in comparison to how awful he’d felt the last eight months. But a deep, rooted happine
ss that had a lot to do with Simon. Simon who could cook casseroles and knew how to tat lace. Who liked to be held down and spread open and tormented with pleasure until he couldn’t talk for moaning, rather than for shyness. Simon, who kissed him like he worried that each kiss might be the last and smiled at him like he wanted this to never end.
“I am. Happy.”
“It’s that guy, right? The dog walker? The shy guy?”
“Simon.”
“I want to meet him. Properly.”
Jack snorted.
“Okay, Dad.”
If he hadn’t been looking at Charlie he would’ve missed the expression of pure hurt that flickered there for a moment before his brother shrugged, turned away, and walked out of the room.
Why did I do that? Why do I always do that?
Grabbing his crutches, he followed Charlie. He found him in the kitchen, removing groceries from the thin plastic Albertsons bags that Jack used to pick up dog poop on walks.
“Charlie. I... Sorry.”
Charlie shrugged again, but his movements were stiff and jerky as he began to put things away.
“Dammit, I’ve told you a hundred times I can do that myself. I have a broken leg, I’m not helpless!”
Charlie spun around, cheeks flushed and mouth tight with anger.
“You’ve never been helpless in your goddamn life, Jack! I know that. I’m putting away your fucking groceries, not trying to give you a sponge bath. Why won’t you just let me do this for you?”
He was yelling now, looming over Jack.
“I don’t get why you even want to! You care about where my popcorn goes all of a sudden?!”
Charlie slammed a meaty fist into the cabinet and the wood cracked. Mayonnaise, who’d been slinking in through the cat door, bolted.
“I fucking care that for the last year you’ve been a zombie! I care that you’ve been miserable and hurt and depressed and you wouldn’t even talk to me! You’ve shut out every single person who cares about you, including me.”
Charlie’s clenched fist dripped blood on the floor.
“Charlie...”
“I’ve always been there for you. Always. And you...” Charlie’s voice went rough, his shoulders slumped.
Jack’s chest was hollow and his throat dry. He’d seen Charlie cry twice since childhood. Once when they’d buried their parents and once in the middle of the night, when Charlie didn’t know he was watching. He’d gotten up to use the bathroom, seen the light on in their parents’ room, and crept down the hallway to see Charlie sitting at their mother’s dressing table staring into space, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“You have. I know that.” Guilt at his ingratitude swallowed him.
“I don’t have anyone else.” Charlie’s voice was so low, so choked, that Jack thought he must have misheard him.
“What?”
Charlie made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.
“You’ve always had friends. People like you, even though you’re such a moody bastard. I...” Charlie shrugged, but it wasn’t a casual gesture, it was an awkward clench of his huge shoulders. “People don’t like me,” he said, turning to the sink to wash off his bloody hand.
“What? That’s stupid. Of course they do.”
Charlie had been on the football team, he’d dated cheerleaders, he was the head counselor at camp. He was strong and handsome and confident; he always had been.
Charlie shook his head.
“No.”
“What about everyone at the store? They worship you.”
Charlie snorted. “They’re my employees. And they worship my ability to cite aisle and bin on every size of nail, not my sparkling personality.”
“What about the whole football team?”
“The football team...in high school? Bro, I’m thirty-five. I haven’t talked to those guys in almost twenty years.”
“But not because they didn’t like you. Because—”
Jack had been about to say, Because you didn’t keep up with them. Then he realized when the chance to keep up would’ve come. In the year after their parents’ death. The year Charlie was keeping their house together, and paying the bills from insurance money, and cooking and...taking care of him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “Never mind.” He made a move to put away a jar of peanut butter then snatched his hand back like he’d been burned.
“You can put them away. It’s fine.”
“You sure know how to make a guy feel loved,” Charlie said wryly.
But he put the peanut butter in the cabinet.
“Charlie.”
His brother’s movements weren’t awkward anymore. They were the fluid, coordinated ballet of someone who was used to working with his body. The movements of someone who used the world outside of him to escape the one within.
“Charlie. I do love you. You know that. Right?”
Charlie paused for too long.
“Sure. Me too.”
Charlie stacked cans of beans in the cabinet, turning each one label out.
“You can meet him. Simon. We’ll come to dinner? Okay?”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I want you to meet him. Properly,” Jack added, with a wink.
Charlie ducked his chin and nodded.
“Okay. Thanks.”
And though he’d said it to drive the hurt from his brother’s face, Jack found that he really did want Simon to meet Charlie.
* * *
Simon, however, proved far less enthusiastic when Jack invited him.
First he froze. Then he nodded manically. Then he got very pale and very quiet.
“We don’t have to,” Jack said into the charged silence. But given the way he’d clearly hurt Charlie, Jack knew he didn’t sound sincere.
Simon shook his head just as manically as he’d nodded it before, clearly frustrated.
Jack handed him his phone in case he needed it to text, but Simon pushed it away with a huff. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
“I want to b-be able to,” he said. “I just know I’ll be so shy and I’ll get all anxious and he’ll ask me qu-questions and I won’t be able to answer and th-then he’ll wonder why his baby brother is dating this f-f-freak who c-can’t even talk, and he’ll hate me because I’m not g-goo-good enough for you.”
Simon was glaring at his own hands as if they were the instrument of his betrayal. Jack took them in his own.
“He won’t think that. And it’s not true.”
“You don’t get it. You think because you like me he’ll like me, but—but people don’t like people who don’t act the way they expect. It makes them uncomfortable. And being uncomfortable makes them m-mad or makes them want to g-get away.”
Simon let out a miserable, shuddery breath and Jack felt an unfamiliar space open up inside him. A space that bloomed like a flower and belonged only to Simon. It hurt for him, it ached for him, it longed for him.
“Well, then, we’ll just have to keep hanging out with him until you get comfortable and he can realize how great you are.”
Hot hazel eyes snapped to his and Simon blinked uncertainly.
“You’d want that?”
“Hell yeah, I want that,” Jack said, pulling him closer.
Simon rested his forehead on Jack’s shoulder. He said something that Jack couldn’t hear and Jack tipped his chin up.
“Hmm?”
“My grandma wants to meet you too.”
Jack’s grin was instant.
“You talking about me to your grandma?” he teased.
“No,” Simon grumbled.
“I think you are.” He kissed the spot behind Simon’s ear that always made him shiver. “You totally have a thing for me.”
“Shut up,” Simon s
aid mildly, and wrapped his arms around Jack’s neck.
* * *
Which is how Jack came to be struggling out of a Lyft outside of Simon’s house a few days later with two crutches, a bottle of wine, and a bouquet of flowers. Simon had offered to come pick him up, but Jack felt strongly that meeting the family meant arriving under his own steam and ringing the doorbell. Even if said steam was facilitated by a stranger he’d paid to stop at the grocery store so he could buy the wine and flowers.
Simon answered the door looking a little flushed.
“Hi. Wow, are those for my grandma? You really are trying to make a good first impression.”
Jack kissed him hello.
“This is for your grandmother.” He held up the wine. “These are for you.”
Simon accepted the bouquet with wide, soft eyes.
“No one’s ever gotten me flowers before.”
“I’m honored to be the first,” Jack said quietly and watched Simon swallow hard. Jack was honored to be Simon’s first in every way he could.
“Let the poor man in, dear.”
“Oops.”
Simon shuffled aside, revealing a small woman with a white bob, glasses the same bright blue as her eyes, and an apron that said THE ONLY THING I WANT YOU TO DO IS CHOP THE ONIONS.
“I’m Jean,” she said. “Welcome.”
“Great to meet you, Miss Jean.” He held out the wine to her. “I’m not sure if this goes with what you made, but if not I hope you’ll enjoy it another time.”
“Oh I didn’t make dinner,” she said. “Simon did. But you get full marks for textbook politeness. Did you google that?”
“Grandma!” Simon hissed.
Jack felt his cheeks heat. He actually had googled “meeting the parents” that morning, as well as “give wine to a host.” He’d never met a boyfriend’s family before. And since his own parents had died long before one would have met them, he’d felt at loose ends about the protocol. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass Simon.
“Um. Well.”
Jean burst out laughing, a warm, tinkling laugh that made Simon cough to hide a laugh too.
Jack smiled.
“Busted.”
Simon had made lasagna and salad and they ate in a dining room wallpapered with roses. Not the delicate, tracery roses of antique stores and flannel nightgowns, but bold, lush roses with thorns that could draw blood. It put Jack in mind of fairy tales and hidden castles.
