Poster Boy

by Anne Tenino

  Jock shrugged. “I don’t hafta spend a lot of time there.” He met Toby’s eyes, and Toby had the sense that things weren’t exactly what he thought they were.

  Gomer interrupted his train of thought. “Where are you guys going? Do we all get to go? Is it cool? Is there a castle?”

  “No, dude,” Danny answered him. “We have beer terrorist business to get done today. We have to talk about fortifications they can work into the design as they rebuild the frat house. You know, we should have those things like they put along the tops of castles. Those walls with, like, skinny little openings that medieval knight dudes used to shoot arrows from? Yo! Tobes!”

  Toby sighed. “Crenellations.”

  “How are you going to talk Kyle into that?” Noah asked.

  “Yup,” Danny half crowed. “Crenellations, that’s what TAG House needs. Who’s going to talk to Kyle? Jock, he takes you more seriously than the rest of us—”

  “Nope,” Jock said, focused on buttering a croissant. “He takes me seriously because I don’t ask him about shit like putting crenellations on the frat house. You guys are on your own with that one.”

  “C’mon, Jock, you’re part of this—”

  “We could make a sort of spud gun,” Ricky interrupted excitedly. “Except we’d shoot beer cans.”

  All the guys gasped and stared at him in shock. Ricky held up his palms. “No, after we drink the beer out of them. Then we fill them with, like, plaster and rocks. It’s cool because it’s not only self-defense, it’s recycling.”

  Soft murmurs of awe followed.

  “Absolutely not,” Toby said quickly. “Talk fortifications all you want, but no weaponry.”

  “Cool!” Gomer pumped his fist in the air.

  Shaking his head, Jock pushed back from the table. “I’ll meet you out front in five?”

  “Yeah, we’re taking the car since it’s just the two of us.” Like a real date and everything. A study date.

  It wasn’t until he and Jock were sitting in the car, and Toby’d just turned it on, that he asked Jock, “So you know the site? Did you say you’ve been there before?”

  “When I was a kid. My mom bought me one of those wooden swords and a shield they sell in the gift shop, and then we went and watched the siege engine demonstrations. After that, I climbed everywhere and fought off imaginary invaders.” He was grinning by then. “There were a bunch of other kids doing the same thing, and I’d already been in hockey for years, so I started trying to organize the troops.”

  Toby laughed. “I bet you were good at it.”

  Jock threw up a hand. “I’ll never know—none of those other kids knew what a defensive line was, and I couldn’t get anyone to stay in formation. Maybe it was the language barrier.”

  “You’re cute,” Toby said unthinkingly. “Sorry,” he blurted once he realized, then he turned to the steering column, trying to fumble the shifter out of park.

  “You’re cute too,” Jock said, suddenly right in his ear, breathing on the side of his face. Toby turned to find him only a couple inches away, his Tom of Finland lips front and center.

  “So,” Toby asked softly. “Have you made a decision about what you want?”

  “I want to kiss you. Is that enough?”

  “Works for me,” Toby said, fingers uncramping from where he’d white-knuckled the steering wheel, sliding up to Jock’s face to trace the shape of his lips.

  “I’ve never noticed this before,” Jock murmured, breath falling on Toby’s chin.

  “What’s that?”

  “That there’s a moment right before you kiss someone when you know it’s coming and you can feel it everywhere. Like an electrical bond is forming between us, pulling us together. Polarizing the air or something.”

  “Maybe it’s never happened before,” Toby whispered.

  “Maybe I never wanted to kiss anyone this much before.”

  Enough talk. Toby lunged those last centimeters and fit his mouth against Jock’s, lips sliding and bumping until they hit that magical spot where it all fit. Locked together like two pieces of a puzzle. When Jock’s tongue pushed into his mouth, wandering around and taking over, making itself at home, Toby welcomed it with his own, petting and cosseting and sucking. Doing everything so Jock would feel how much he wanted him there. He could move in permanently if he wanted; at that moment Toby wouldn’t have objected.

  But it was a short visit. Or at least not long enough for Toby’s liking, although they were both breathing heavily when Jock pulled away, pressing one more kiss on his lips. His thumb stroked along the edge of Toby’s jaw, and his fingers were tangled in the back of Toby’s hair, and Toby had no idea when Jock had gripped him like that. “Yeah, just like lightning,” he said softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  Jock smiled at him, but then looked over Toby’s shoulder and jerked away, face muscles tightening up. “Someone’s coming.”

  Toby sighed. “Which one is it?” Fucking fratbros couldn’t survive ten minutes on their own, could they?

  “Danny,” Jock said, then pulled away further, back into his seat. Nothing for Toby to do but settle back into his.

  Their intruder came walking down the driveway toward them with a picnic basket—a quaint wicker one with red and white checked fabric peeking out from under the hinged wooden lid. The quality of stillness next to Toby told him that Jock was coming to the same conclusions about why exactly Danny was bringing a picnic basket their way. He caught Jock’s eye when Danny came around to the rear passenger side of the car, and yes, it was true.

  Danny opened the back door and set the basket down on the seat. “Uh, just some, you know, nibbles or whatever you guys wanna call ’em. Case you get hungry. Oh, and Madame Bovinary put in a bottle of wine, case you get thirsty. Havefunbye!” He slammed the car shut and ran back to the house.

  Toby eyed the basket. Were there croissants inside? Did he trust them?

  “You get the feeling this is some kind of setup?” Jock asked, brows halfway up his forehead.

  “Planned by a bunch of straight yet sensitive frat boys in dubious possession of subpar intelligence?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Jock nodded exaggeratedly. “So, like, they told you you needed to take me to Les Baux?”

  “You don’t have to write an extra credit paper to avoid failing history?”

  Jock snorted. “I don’t fail. And you aren’t doing research at the Les Baux library for your thesis?”

  “I’m fairly certain Les Baux doesn’t have a library.”

  “So, like, we don’t actually have to go there and do anything.” Jock studied him a minute, while Toby held his breath. Staying here could be fun, too, if he wanted to continue the kissing and see what it led to, but Toby had wanted to hang with him. Socialize with clothes on. So when Jock continued with, “We could just go and have fun,” Toby found that idea very appealing.

  “Play invaders.” Toby nodded. “Walk to the top of the fortress walls and look for Saracens.”

  “Did the Saracens make it into France?”

  “Not this far, but we can pretend.”

  Jock grinned and nodded. “Sweet.”

  And Les Baux was sweet. Awesome. Toby’s perfect fantasy ruin—a stark castle perched on a rocky promontory. The walls were built of native stone, and they seemed to rise out of the cliff face. Irregular, jagged geological shapes working into smoother, straight forms stretching into the sky. But the first clue that it was man-made was the windows up high, and as they got closer, a couple of arches appeared in the wall.

  “That’s exactly how I remembered it,” Jock murmured, leaning forward to look out the windshield as Toby forced the car up the steep switchback road. Even early as they were, they had to park almost a quarter mile down from the main gate into the village. “I don’t wanna pay to park in the lot.” Toby grimaced. “It’s a freaking fortune. Oh, you brought your historical site pass, right?” Paying to get into the fortress would suck worse than paying for parking.

 
“Got it,” Jock said, already getting out of the car. Walking through the little village first, past all the tourist shops tucked into the medieval buildings, the heart of Saint-Rémy look positively modern in contrast. Jock didn’t want to stop anywhere though, he just wanted to get to the castle. They had to enter through the gift shop (of course) and Toby saw him eying the wooden weapons.

  He’d always liked Les Baux—it was a tourist’s wet dream, as evidenced by the number of them around—but Toby’d never experienced it quite like this. Following along behind Jock, listening to him recognize something he’d seen ten years before, then finding something new. When they went out onto the small plateau to look at the siege engines, Jock knew all about them, and could explain in detail how they worked.

  “The brochure says the demonstrations of them start in a couple hours. We could hang out for them.”

  Jock shrugged. “If we’re still around.” He turned back toward the fortress itself, looking over Toby’s head. “Let’s go check out the rest.” And they checked it all out. The paths that clung to the cliff face which the on-duty guards had had to walk, and all the weird half-ruined rooms that were partly carved into the mountain and partly built of the stone that had been hewn out, and the “private” areas where the actual Baux family had lived. When no one was around for two minutes, Jock climbed a stone wall that someone had built to block out half of a huge archway. When he got to the top, Toby took a picture of him standing there, one hand braced on the surface of the barrel vault and the other shoved in his pocket, grinning down at him, light hair messy and eyes shining.

  He was fucking darling.

  The high point of the visit for Toby was also the high point of the fortress itself. The stairway up was in bad shape, and the majority of visitors didn’t chance it. There was a spot about fifty feet off the ground, a single iron pipe guarding the open side, where three steps in a row were worn down to nothing but a rock slide with a few jagged spots on the sides. Jock could step right over that section, of course. Toby had to find a toehold.

  They reached the top, completely devoid of other tourists, and stood on the watchtower where who knew how many guards had stood over time, looking out over the olive orchards and the Alpilles to the north. The wind gusted, and suddenly Jock was standing behind Toby, sharing his heat. As if he were sheltering from the breeze in Toby’s body. Toby held his breath, scared to move, then let go of it when Jock’s arms came around him, circling his waist and pulling him against Jock’s chest, Jock’s heart thumping against his back. Jock’s cheek brushed along his hair, sliding through it until his lips were rubbing against Toby’s jaw. “This scruff is so hot on you. Did I tell you that?”

  “No.” Toby swallowed. “I don’t think you have.” But of course, that was why he maintained it just like this, wasn’t it? For how it looked, and for how much his partners liked to feel it. He was turning around, wondering about Jock’s reaction if Toby were to scrape his neck with it, when Jock let go of him, stepping back so fast Toby swayed.

  Voices. Other people coming up the stairs. Over Jock’s shoulder, Toby saw heads appearing above the top of the roofline. Jock stepped back another foot or two. “I’m hungry,” he said in a totally normal voice.

  “Oh.” He could understand not wanting to be caught mid-PDA, but it seemed annoyingly easy for Jock to just drop him like a hot potato. Or a girl. Jock shoved his hands in his pockets, and Toby couldn’t help but check for evidence of how invested he’d been in that moment of affection.

  “We could go, like, find someplace secluded and see what’s in that basket,” Jock suggested before Toby could decide. He kept flicking glances to the small group that had made it to the overlook, four Asians around their own age, then back at Toby, giving him puppy dog eyes. “Spend some time alone.”

  Yes, please. “Alone’s good. Let’s go.” He didn’t grab Jock’s hand and pull him down the stairs at a run, but he wanted to.

  Starting something with Toby when they could be interrupted by any of the guys anytime was more than Jock could stomach.

  After waking up the last three mornings wondering why he wasn’t with Toby now that he’d gotten the whole thing with the picture off his chest, that’s what it kept coming back to. So, when Danny suggested they go to Les Baux, he’d jumped all over it.

  And yeah, he totally knew that eventually they’d be around the guys, but baby steps or whatever. That was his plan—get Toby away from the gîte and seduce him in private. He just hadn’t had all the details worked out.

  Turned out Toby had a more fully developed plan. Which wasn’t going his way.

  “This sucks,” Toby said, pouting for the first time Jock had seen. He kicked a small rock in annoyance, staring out over a field of something some farmer had planted.

  “What sucks?” It looked fine to him, as long as they weren’t going to sit on this dirt road.

  “This is supposed to be a field of red poppies. I mean, it is a field of poppies, but they aren’t blooming yet. It looks so cool when they—”

  “It’s cool now.” Jock grabbed Toby’s hand, getting his attention. “What, you were all thinking you were gonna take me someplace romantic and seduce me?”

  Toby turned as red as a poppy, choking on something a second before saying, “Well, ‘seduce’ might be a bit over-the-top, but um, maybe . . . put you in the mood?”

  You put me in the mood. But he couldn’t say that. He tugged on Toby’s hand, leading him toward some trees. “You don’t need to do anything at all.” Hopefully Toby would understand what he really meant.

  “Hang on, I forgot something.” Toby pulled away as soon as Jock set the picnic basket on the ground, in a sort of grassy area with a few other scrubby plants. He went back to the car in that same confident gait that Jock couldn’t stop noticing. He’d never even thought about anyone’s walk before, but he was pretty sure he’d memorized Toby’s—maybe could mimic it if he tried.

  He dropped onto the ground next to basket and watched Toby dig through the trunk, smiling, and pull something out. A blanket.

  “What are you laughing about?” Toby called over. Smiling even wider, he started back to Jock.

  Jock waited until he got close enough to grab, then he yanked Toby down next to him by his wrist. “I’m laughing because you totally planned to seduce me.” Which was awesome, because Jock had planned the same thing. Not like this, out in the middle of nowhere on the ground, more like when they got back, but right now seemed like a perfect time. He didn’t let Toby answer, just started kissing him. Wrapping his hand in Toby’s hair and leveraging Toby’s mouth open with his lips, plunging in with his tongue to find Toby’s and get it to twine itself around his and stroke.

  Toby dug his fingers into Jock’s back and drew back until they were lying on the ground, hand searching under Jock’s shirt, feeling up his spine. Pushing and pulling to line up their bodies.

  Jock thought he’d be crazy nervous, because this wasn’t just sex and they both knew that, but he hadn’t had time to get that way. There was none of the talking he expected would have to happen beforehand, or the fumbling to figure out who was going to touch whom first and where. The butterflies didn’t flutter up in his stomach when Toby pulled away from him, saying something about the blanket, then trying to spread it out with one hand while using the other to slide into the back of Jock’s waistband and grip his ass through his briefs. Jock kissed down Toby’s throat, swirling his tongue around the Adam’s apple that had been driving him nuts every time he looked at it, Toby’s stubble poking him. Even then he wasn’t nervous, just fucking eager. Dick throbbing against the buttons of his fly, digging into it, which made him wonder about Toby’s dick, and how hard he was. Jock reached down and felt him through his jeans, squeezing the rod he found to test its ripeness.

  “Fuck the blanket,” Toby panted. “Take off your shirt.” He started yanking on the hem. Jock pushed up long enough to whip it over his head, then he straddled Toby’s thighs, sliding his legs alongsid
e, bunching up Toby’s T so he could rub their bellies together. His hard and ridged and Toby’s furry and firm. He didn’t get to, though, because Toby’s cock was like a speed bump, slowing him down, distracting him. Making him groan when Toby lifted his hips and shoved his hardness against Jock’s. His fingers were all over Jock’s chest while he stretched up to bite his neck, then lick it. “You have the most perfect chest I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Thanks,” he gasped. Toby pinched his nipple and Jock did it again, louder.

  “Christ, your pecs are beautiful. Like all those childhood prayers were answered and my GI Joe action figure finally came to life.”

  That surprised a laugh out of him, but then Toby traced the underside of the muscle with his tongue, breathing all over everything he’d wetted, and Jock choked on it. At some point he’d started rocking his hips, pushing and prodding Toby’s dick with his own aching cock, and it felt so fucking good, he didn’t know if he could stop long enough to get their jeans out of the way, let alone hold Toby in his hand. But Toby was on it, working his fingers between them enough to flick open Jock’s buttons.

  “Fucking love a button fly,” he murmured, lips back at Jock’s throat, but when he dug under Jock’s briefs and found his head, that wasn’t good enough anymore. Jock dropped to his elbow, smashing Toby’s arm between them, and grabbed Toby’s chin, holding his mouth still for Jock’s tongue to fuck again. Shoving his hips harder against Toby’s hand, grinding him into the ground.

  “You too,” he panted, pulling away from the kiss for a second. Toby gripped him tighter, working his palm against the underside of Jock’s dick, making him groan before he forced himself to stop long enough to get Toby’s jeans open and his briefs out of the way.

  Toby’s cock was just the way he remembered. Darker than he expected on a white guy, with one of those mushroom heads made up of graceful curves and so perfectly smooth it looked like it had been animated by Disney. Jock ran his thumb down the big pulsing vein that stood out from the shaft, making Toby catch his breath and tighten his own fingers around Jock’s dick.