by Amy Lane
Now, watching Casey laugh at his boyfriend, Joe identified that itchiness, that restless squirm. He wanted to touch.
The thought was alien, alien and almost forbidden, and Joe shivered in the world that had been frozen with the thought. It was a betrayal, wasn’t it? Of all he’d tried to do for Casey, of all he’d tried to be?
But you never said he was like a son to you, because he never was. You never said he was like blood and meant it, because he wasn’t, and you knew that. You only promised to protect him, not to look at him like a wax mannequin, perfect and beautiful but not warm to the touch.
The moment started moving, thick and painful, sweet like honey, and Casey closed the door to his car and walked around it, spotting Joe in the window.
For a moment he waved and smiled, as natural as the two of them had been over the past six years, and then he stopped. He looked directly at Joe, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what was different, what was wrong, and Joe was simply caught in the moment, a fly caught in honey, and Casey sighted him and looked him in the eyes…
And knew him.
Joe flushed, feeling young and vulnerable, and the smile that played at the corners of Casey’s mouth was… was not saintly in the least. His eyes were narrow, and one corner of his mouth was higher than the other; his easy slouch straightened up, and he moved sinuously, arrogantly, like one of the cats who knew that rat in the chicken feed was his for the taking.
Joe just sat there, still caught, not sure what to do with this sight of Casey as adult, and beautiful, making his blood sing under his skin, making him shiver, making him ache, just by smiling in the sun.
“Joe?” Lynnie’s voice washed over him, chill and tinkling, and Joe turned and looked at her, trying to find his footing, catch his breath, live in the moment like it was now and not something solid in time.
“Yeah?”
“Are they here? I thought I heard Casey’s car?”
God, Lynnie was sweet. She had a little elfin face, with a pointed chin and an upturned nose and long, toffee-brown hair like the girls in the movies. She was kind, and she tried so very hard to mother them both. Joe summoned a smile for her, thinking that, as wonderful as she was, as sweet as their time in bed had become, nothing about her made time stop or made his breath come in gasps just from looking.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. They’re here. In fact—”
And at that moment, Casey opened the door, and dinner and company began.
That night Joe and Casey washed dishes, and Casey asked casually if Lynnie was staying the night.
“She didn’t bring clothes,” he said, not sure why she hadn’t. “I’m not sure. I should ask her. Robbie?”
“Mm… no,” Casey said meditatively, as though he had just made up his mind. “I don’t think so. We’re almost there, but not yet.”
Joe smiled, pretty sure it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re very wise,” he said quietly, moving to dry his hands.
“You’re not,” Casey said boldly, and Joe was too overwhelmed to answer cagily or to lie. He was leveled, destroyed, made new—not only by that moment of looking at Casey through the window but by standing shoulder to shoulder with him and noting the way he smelled faintly of sweat and deodorant and dog. And of adult male, something Joe hadn’t buried his nose in for nearly three years and now missed with all his heart.
“I know it,” he said quietly. “I am sometimes tremendously foolish. A big scary guy on a motorcycle with way too much hair. I’m well aware of my shortcomings, Casey. You don’t need to remind me.”
Suddenly Casey was right behind him, his hands on Joe’s hips, just like he’d been that first night when he was no more than a kid, starving and filthy and reeking. But that wasn’t the Casey who was standing on his tiptoes to whisper in Joe’s ear. This Casey was the strong, confident adult that Joe had been so proud of, and was now just giving himself to Joe—if only Joe would reach out and take him.
“You’re only foolish if you don’t see why I would want you,” Casey said softly, and then, as though they would both forget that moment of bravery, he lowered himself to his flat feet and turned toward the living room, while Joe went to the bathroom and tried to control his instant, painful erection.
LYNNIE drove back to Roseville that night—she actually lived in Auburn but had promised a girlfriend a late-night sleepover and a shopping trip in the morning. Robbie had a little duplex near the railroad tracks, and Casey asked Lynn to drop him off there. Robbie had been funny all night. Casey’s new friend with the longish dark hair and limpid brown eyes had apparently won the vote for class clown in high school, and he lived up to it at dinner. He’d cracked jokes constantly—punny ones, and he was mostly antic, motor-mouthed, and entertaining—but he looked decidedly disappointed when Casey asked. Casey had excused himself then, and gone and talked to the boy, and when the two of them left, Robbie seemed mollified, like a kid who wasn’t going to get cookies with lunch but who had been promised ice cream after dinner.
“He could have stayed,” Joe said, yawning. He was legitimately tired: today was his first day off after three twelves and an eight, and his whole body felt creaky and thin. “I’m not going to be much fun tonight.”
Casey shook his head. “He asked me to move in with him,” he said softly, and Joe’s eyes shot open. He was suddenly, shockingly awake. “I wanted to know what you thought of that.”
Breathe. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember that all kids moved out. He had moved out of his parents’ house; Casey would want to move out of—You’re not his parent. You don’t want to be. You never wanted to be.
“Can you afford rent?” he asked, buying time before he was pulled underwater with the sudden fear.
“Barely,” Casey admitted, quirking his mouth. “But I start Sac State in September, and Roseville is a helluvalot closer.”
Joe nodded. “I hear they’re opening classes in Auburn,” he admitted, “but not right now.”
Casey nodded and pursed his lips, his face shadowed in the hallway. Joe was standing by the stairs with the light on, and he was painfully aware that his every expression, every terrible realization, was on parade for Casey to make of what he would.
“Besides that, what do you think?” Casey prodded, and Joe had to remember that he was always honest, had always been honest, and had built his life on his heart being exactly what he wore on his face.
“I think I’d miss you,” he said rawly. “But I think I should have been expecting this, and it shouldn’t be quite such a surprise.”
Casey nodded and then smiled that sharp-edged, slightly carnivorous smile. “Can you think of a reason for me to stay?”
I want you. I want to hold you. I’m suddenly, terrifyingly, overwhelmingly possessed with the idea of what your mouth would taste like under mine, and I don’t know how to say it or even to think it.
Joe closed his eyes tightly and breathed very, very carefully. “Nothing I can put words to,” he said. “Let me know what you decide.”
He must have opened his eyes then, because he hadn’t walked up the stairs to his bedroom—thoughtfully stenciled in black Celtic knotting by Casey that Christmas—without opening his eyes. He must have. But his vision had been so blurred, he couldn’t remember how.
SO ALL things considered, he should have been expecting Casey to try it one more time that night, but somehow he wasn’t.
He was curled into a miserable, self-protective ball of sleep and denial under the covers when warm hands started to massage his bare back. It was so late it was early. The air coming in through the screen over his open window was chilly, but there was the hint of heat, because the next day was June, and Foresthill got hot in the summer, just like the valley sometimes. So those hands, warm and hard—man’s hands—felt good, and he straightened a little and stretched underneath their kindness.
“Mm….” He wasn’t up to words yet. He didn’t ask, “Who’s that?” because the touch was so familiar, so intimate, he would have
felt foolish for asking. He should know who this was—this was his person, and he knew it. He just didn’t have the name straight in his head.
The hands on his shoulders stopped, and a strong arm went around his middle, rubbing his stomach, the furry trail down his lower abdomen, the embarrassing amount of hair on his chest. He insinuated his body into that touch, savoring it, because there was something in it that he’d missed for a while, and when an adventurous forefinger and thumb pinched his nipple, he shook them off. “Don’t like that,” he mumbled. “You know I don’t.”
“How am I supposed to know that?” Casey whispered sardonically in his ear. “We’ve never done this before.”
Joe rolled over so quickly he almost nailed Casey in the head with his elbow. Oh God. He so hadn’t been expecting this—not tonight. Not when everything he’d ever felt for Casey was suddenly shifted in its tracks, askew like the cracked foundation of a house schismed in an earthquake. Suddenly he was face to face with Casey, the moonlight coming through the window outlining every edge of the features he’d hungered for that afternoon, and Casey was looking at him with a plump, open mouth and eyes that knew exactly what they were doing.
For a moment, Joe caved.
For a moment, his lips touched Casey’s, and he tasted. Casey’s mouth opened under his eagerly, and Casey groaned, pulling Joe close and closer, and Joe plundered him. Oh God… the taste of his mouth, the feel of his jaw under Joe’s hands, the feeling of his hard, tight body, lithe and pliant against Joe’s heavier mass… it was heaven. It was perfect. Joe’s aching erection was suddenly grinding up against Casey’s groin, and Casey was hard and thrusting back.
And that was when Joe grew truly awake.
He didn’t kick Casey out of bed this time; this time, he scrambled back himself, panting for breath. “No!” he said, feeling like the skin had peeled from his lips when he’d torn their mouths apart.
“Why no?” Casey demanded, sitting up in bed. He was wearing soft cotton shorts with boxers underneath, oh thank heavens, because the thought of him rubbing against Joe naked…
Might make Joe come without touching himself, for one.
“Because… oh God. Because—”
“You wanted it!” Casey accused, not giving an inch, and Joe had to concede.
“Of course I wanted it!” Oh God, so badly. “You’re beautiful, Casey—your body is tight and perfect. Do you think I wouldn’t want you?”
“Then why not? Dammit, for years, I was too young, but I’m not too young now, am I? You wanted me, and you wanted me bad. Tell me you want Lynnie that way! Tell me you groan and beg and tell her what you want and what you don’t. I live in this house, Joe, and I’ve heard your noises at night. God! I’ve jacked off to them for the last three years, and nothing I’ve heard, nothing, sounds like what you just begged from me right now!”
Joe wrapped his arms around himself, feeling suddenly, unaccountably violated. He’d been living with Casey-the-kid, but Casey-the-adult had apparently been pursuing him with a subtle possession that Joe had completely overlooked.
“Adults don’t sneak into someone else’s bed, Casey.” His voice was not even. It was barely steady enough to hear. “Grown-ups ask. Grown-ups go on dates. Grown-ups are up front about it. They don’t… don’t take advantage of someone when they’re vulnerable. Oh God….” And for a minute, his voice really did crack. “Don’t you see? That’s what I’ve been trying not to do to you for the last three years?”
Casey’s face crumpled for a moment as he was filled with self-doubt, filled with the possibility that he’d humiliated himself and that he’d hurt Joe and that he’d gone about this all wrong. In that moment, Joe thought maybe they could fix this, they could salvage this moment, Casey could apologize and back off and maybe give Joe some time to get used to the new levels on the floor and the odd shape of the roof, now that his entire world had tilted and the house he’d made a home had become something else entirely.
Joe saw the exact moment when Casey’s youth and arrogance overcame him. His face twisted, and he dashed his hand across his cheeks, and he scrambled out of bed.
“That’s an excuse!” he snarled. “You just want an excuse not to want me! You think that going out with Lynnie is going to make you straight, so you don’t even have to think about wanting me, don’t you?”
“No!” Joe denied, stung. “I care about Lynnie, just not—”
“Not like you care for me!” Casey cried, and he wiped his face again. “I know you love me, Joe, I feel it right here!” He pounded his chest then, and Joe closed his eyes, because it was true. Joe’s whole body was shaking, most of it from the wanting and the denying—but that didn’t mean he was going to just change his entire locomotive in its tracks after one curve.
“Of course I love you!” Joe shouted. “I’ve cared for you for six years—”
“But I’m not that kid! You love me this way!” Casey grabbed his crotch, and Joe grimaced.
“What if I do? Yeah? What if I do want you like that? What if it just crashed on my head like a waterfall, and suddenly I do? You think crawling in my bed is going to make me change my shit just right now? Give me a goddamned minute, Casey—”
“You’ve had three years,” Casey muttered. He ran for the stairs and put his hand on the rail. “If you haven’t figured it out in three years, it’s because you’re so busy looking for a breeder, you don’t see the man who loves you right here.”
“Casey—”
But he knew it was useless. Casey had run down the stairs and was thrashing around in his room. By the time Joe got on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, Casey had thrown most of his clothes in his car.
“I’ll be at Robbie’s,” he snarled, and Joe gave thanks that he had Robbie’s phone number and address, just because Casey had been considerate like that.
“’Til when?” Joe asked, alarmed at the giant pile of clothes in the backseat of the Taurus.
“’Til forever!” Casey ran back inside for another pile and his boom box and cassettes from the kitchen counter, and he threw them in the backseat too.
“Casey,” Joe begged, wishing he’d be reasonable, give Joe a day or, fuckitall, a fucking hour, but apparently the three years Joe had been watching him grow up all counted against him now. “God, Casey, don’t do this.”
Casey opened the driver’s side door and glared at Joe, his face a misery of tears and anger and embarrassment. “Why not?” he asked, so angry Joe could hear his voice shake. “You said it yourself, Joe. You should have expected this. Well, here it is. It’s my decision, just like you said. Aren’t you proud of me?”
“Always,” Joe whispered, willing him to hear.
But Casey slammed the door and peeled out of the driveway, leaving Joe alone under a graying sky, emptied of a full moon that had already set.
With or Without You
~Casey
CASEY woke up with Alvin pounding on his door. Oh fuck… was he late for class? Was Robbie’s dad there to collect the rent? God knew since Robbie had moved out of the little duplex and back home that Daddy dear hadn’t cut Casey a fucking break! Like it was Casey’s fault Dad hadn’t known his son was gay and moving in with his boyfriend and not his roommate until he’d stopped by unannounced?
But Casey had signed the lease, and it was all very legal, and he was pretty sure he had one more month before he was out on his ass, looking for an apartment—probably with Alvin, the world’s horniest straight nerd boy, at his heels. God. Fuck. Whatever.
“What the fuck, Alvin!” he called out, looking at the neat piles of dirty laundry in the corner and wondering if he could find change in the bottom of the Taurus to go to the Laundromat. They’d had a working washer and drier until Robbie had chosen the straight life and a paid education over Casey and moved out, taking his appliances with him. Fortunately, Casey had had a friend at school getting rid of a refrigerator, or he’d be drinking sour milk out of an ice chest. “It’s my fucking day off!”
“Lo
ok, Casey, I know you worked late, man, but there’s that guy at the door. You know….” Alvin’s voice dropped. “The scary dude who keeps bringing you eggs and vegetables?”
Casey shot up in bed. “Joe?” he asked, and his voice cracked a little, and he had to say it again. “Joe is here?”
“Yeah—and he’s waiting outside in the fucking rain, man, and he looks sad as hell.”
Oh no. One of the dogs! A cat! Joe was here to tell him something had happened to Hi, or Rufus—God knew Rufus was getting old. Oh shit! Casey scrambled up out of bed, threw on a pair of scrub bottoms and skipped finding the top, and rushed out the door so fast he almost hit Alvin with it when he shoved it open.
“Jesus, Casey—”
“You just let him stand there? In the rain?” Oh God. Casey had thought a hundred times that he should go back home. A thousand times. A day. A fucking minute. He’d heard Joe as he’d pulled out. Aren’t you proud of me? Always. God, the fucking things Casey had said, and Joe could still say that? But Casey had made a stand, and he had to stick to it. What kind of grown-up was he if he couldn’t make it out on his own for a day, a week, a month? Six months. Six lonely, aching months where he missed the red dirt and blue sky of his home with everything in him?
But… Joe.
Casey slowed down before he got to the door, remembering the groceries that had ended up in the refrigerator when he knew neither he nor Alvin had money with which to buy them. Besides, he knew what farm-fresh brown eggs looked like, and homegrown squash from their little garden next to the chicken coop, and thick bacon that Joe bartered their eggs for at the little store in town. He knew how that food ended up in his shitty little duplex and how carefully Joe must have worked at not being seen. Robbie had been contemptuous of the old biker dude and his shit for food, but Casey had made him squash, tomatoes, and cheese one night, and he’d pretty much shut up about it. Alvin was kinder, always answering Casey’s unanswered questions courteously. Yeah, Casey. He looked good. No, the girlfriend wasn’t with him. It was just him. You know, it’s just up the hill. It’s not like you don’t know the number.
