Smoke and Mirrors

by Lillian T. MacGowan

  “I like you, Doc,” she repeated, smiling a surprisingly soft, beautiful smile. Then she grabbed Naim’s ass, gave it a good, thorough groping despite his jump, and nodded her head in the direction of the barbeque. “Help yourself.”

  He hoped she was referring to the cigarettes.

  “Naim? Love?” Deck found Naim still outside smoking and sucking down the third beer that Spellacy had left. Deck took the smoking as a bad sign. “You okay?” he asked, approaching him gently.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he answered, gazing at the street.

  Deck could see he had that look; the one he got when he went far away. “You’re not fine.” He put his hands on Naim’s shoulders and pressed against him before realizing what he was doing. He stepped back quickly. “Naim, what happened?” Deck clenched his jaw. He knew some idiot would say something stupid. He took another step back.

  That did it. “You happened.” Naim stared at the ground below.

  “What?” Deck remembered what Bosko had said to him at the firehouse and swallowed hard. He’d beat the crap out of Bosko if he said anything to Naim.

  “You happened. Everything. This. I don’t—” He finally turned and looked at Deck with that sad, cold look that made Deck’s heart wither. “You keep pulling away from me. Just now. Just like that,” he accused. “Ever since…since that night, you’re not… It’s not like it was.” He laughed to himself, even though nothing was funny. “You haven’t said or done anything inappropriate or lecherous once since that night.” He shook his head, still laughing at the sadness. He stopped and looked at his feet.

  “You don’t want me. I mean, you don’t. You don’t want to touch me. It… I’m having trouble dealing with that,” he mumbled, grief in his voice.

  Deck stared, flabbergasted.

  Fuck.

  He’d gotten it all wrong.

  “Fuck, Naim, I…” He had no idea how to handle this; he figured that Naim didn’t know how to feel comfortable wanting someone, but he’d gotten himself wrong. He didn’t know how to feel comfortable wanting Naim. He was just too terrified of fucking it up and making Naim feel like the very thing he struggled so hard against. Deck would cut his heart out with a rusty spoon before doing anything to make Naim feel like—meat.

  “Fuck,” he repeated.

  Naim closed his eyes and breathed, his slumped shoulders and the darkness in his eyes giving voice to a bleak hopelessness.

  “Naim. I…I’m scared. I’m scared to—” Deck stopped as he struggled for words. “I don’t see you the way they did, but I don’t know how to show you that. Fuck, Naim, I’m an asshole. And I don’t know how to—I want—” He stopped again, realizing he was saying absolutely nothing.

  Naim lit another cigarette. Fuck.

  “Naim.” He tried again. “I love you. You. Who you are. And if that means waiting till we’re a hundred or even never getting laid again, then I’ll fucking live.”

  Naim turned suddenly and stared up at him, but Deck plowed forward.

  “You were treated like meat for fucking years. Like you were nothing but a body.” Deck started to pace, the anger building to fury in an instant. “I’m not gonna do that to you, Naim. I’m not gonna paw at you and fucking rut like a fucking pig, and I’m not gonna give you any reason to think that I’m here for anything but you.”

  Naim blinked and opened his mouth to interrupt, but Deck kept going.

  “I know you don’t want me to think about what happened, what was done to you. And I don’t just mean in your foster house.” He would not say that thing’s name. “I mean the whole fucking thing. It was done to you and no one is ever gonna make you feel like that again. I’ll kill the motherfucker who even looks at you sideways.” He ran a hand through his hair, scrubbing at his scalp as he turned red.

  “Wait.” Naim tried to speak, still blinking, but Deck wasn’t having it.

  “That guy. That fucking shit stain the other night at the restaurant downtown. You never saw him, you didn’t notice, but the piece of shit looked at you like he wanted you to be on the fucking menu, and he’s only still got his fucking teeth in his face because you didn’t notice. But if you did? If you saw? Someone thinking about you like you were just some kind of piece of ass? Just a body? I’d have killed him, Naim. I swear the fuck to God I’d have fucking killed him.” He was coming unglued.

  “Deck—” Naim started, still in shock.

  “Naim.” Deck laughed at the ridiculousness of just how wrong Naim was. “I want you…fucking…fuck, you have no fucking idea. I look at you, I kiss you, I…I touch your hands, your arms, your shoulders, the most nonthreatening fucking places I can think of, and my dick still turns to fucking rock in a nanosecond. I fucking lie down next to you and pray to a god I don’t even believe in that I don’t hump you in my sleep. I want you so fucking bad I’ve cried over it, Naim. Fucking cried. Real tears! But I swear the fuck my hand—”

  “Jesus Christ, will you shut up!” Naim smacked his hand over Deck’s mouth. “Let me get a word in, would you please?”

  Deck’s eyes crinkled in confusion and distress over his smushed-in cheeks.

  “Can you keep your mouth shut for a minute, and let me talk?”

  Deck nodded, and Naim slowly removed his hand. Deck’s mouth immediately opened, but before Naim could get to him, he snapped it closed again, sucked his lips in, and bit down.

  “Fuck’s. Sake.” Naim breathed out. Collecting himself slowly and after a drink of beer, he started. “Deck, I know I have trouble with things. I know that. But my trouble was with you…you…knowing what I was. Have been and have done. But you know now. And that didn’t change anything for me. I don’t feel the way you said. Bad, I mean.”

  He looked at Deck, still swirling everything Deck had said around in his mind.

  Something caught his eye, and he leaned over to bang on the balcony doors. Mac and fucking Eli were now making blowfish faces on the glass. They trotted off, giggling, and Eli ran smack into Dixon. Naim laughed without thinking and blinked. This was a different world from any he’d known, and he realized it made him different.

  “Deck. I don’t feel like meat. I’ve worked through a lot of that, and it’s not as though—” He sighed and thought about when Deck had pressed him up against the door to his room the day before he got out of the hospital. “You never made me feel like a piece of ass, and the way it was, was good. Really good. I wanted it.” He turned and looked at the most beautiful man he’d ever known in every way: giant, strong, handsome, and adorable, lips still firmly clamped over his teeth, eyes wide and clear and loving, his hair sticking up everywhere from running his hands in it while ranting, and sexier than anyone had any business being.

  Naim let go.

  “Deck,” he sighed, “I want you. Now.”

  Deck didn’t move, and his expression didn’t change. He slowly unclamped his lips from his teeth, eyeing Naim, who stared at him, holding his breath. Deck tried speaking, not sure if he was allowed to yet or not.

  “C-can I talk now?” he asked, his voice rough. Naim nodded, still holding his breath, feeling a little dizzy and scared as hell.

  Deck opened his mouth again. He blinked slowly at Naim, his eyes wide and round. “Can we go? Home? Right now?”

  Naim let out his breath heavily. “Please.”

  “Okay.” Deck’s equilibrium threatened to fail him.

  “Okay.” Naim smiled shyly.

  Deck grabbed his hand and dragged him from the balcony, through the living room, and out the door, both of them forgetting their coats, forgetting to thank Peyton, and oblivious to the calls of various guests asking where they were going and complaining that they were leaving their own party.

  Chapter Eleven

  The door was barely closed when Naim yanked Deck’s shirt off and pounced in a frenzy, kissing and groping.

  “Naim, stop,” Deck breathed.

  Naim clung to him, clutching Deck’s ass, one hand tickling up and down the front of his jeans over
his pounding cock. He kissed, bit, and licked, and clung harder when Deck spoke.

  “Naim.” Deck panted. “Naim…stop.” Deck clasped his wrists and reluctantly lifted Naim’s hands from his body, holding them gently against his bare chest.

  “Wha…what?” Naim blinked up at him from a haze. “Why—” He suddenly turned pale and looked away, and Deck felt sick.

  “Naim. No.” Deck tried to be gentle, but panic hit him. The look on Naim’s face horrified him as Naim tried to pull away.

  “I knew it.” Naim tried snatching his hands away, wanting to run. Run and never fucking stop running. Run all the way to Marseille and burn the whole fucking town to the ground, himself with it. He didn’t care.

  He knew that in the end, Deck would find him disgusting.

  Deck held Naim as close as he could against the sick realization of how Naim felt. What he thought. “No, no. Shhh, love. It’s okay. It’s okay,” he mumbled into the top of Naim’s head, rubbing his face in Naim’s hair, letting his grief bleed into it, into the darkness. Naim still tried to pull away.

  “Please, Naim, please just listen to me.” He choked his plea into that thick, black mass, kissing and murmuring, holding him so close, holding the back of Naim’s head so firmly against his chest that Naim could only squirm against him. “Please, love. Shhh. You’re beautiful. You’re perfect. Listen to me.” Words were just coming out now. Anything to make the trembling stop. To make Naim listen. It was so wrong. Naim still had it all wrong.

  Naim finally stopped trying to fight, going limp in Deck’s arms, and Deck tugged gently at his hair, forcing him to look up. It was an awkward angle for them both, but Deck didn’t give a fuck. He wouldn’t let him go. There was already too much space between them simply by virtue of not being physically joined together.

  “Naim, I want this. I need this. I need you.” Naim wouldn’t look at him. His face was hard and his eyes cold, the way they had been the night he told Deck about Marseille. Deck saw a glimpse of the angry, abused child, forced to sell himself to survive, and his heart shattered. “I need you,” he said again, and his voice broke.

  Deck’s words filtered through the haze of anger and resentment and self-hatred that Naim had been battling all night, and Naim dared to look at Deck. He saw something in Deck’s face that he felt like he’d never seen before. Naim didn’t know what it was, but it calmed him. His shaking slowed to gentler tremors, and while he couldn’t maintain the eye contact, he felt himself relax—just a little.

  “I didn’t say stop because I wanted to stop what we were doing, love.” Deck pressed his forehead to Naim’s. “I swear to you. I want this. Nothing has changed in the last half hour.” He fisted his hands against Naim’s back. “I swear. Fuck. God, I want you.” Deck breathed a laugh and closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead against Naim’s and bumping their noses together. He loosened his grip on Naim’s body just enough to massage the back of Naim’s head and run a hand firmly up and down his back. “I need you,” Deck repeated, his voice cracking again slightly. “I need this. To touch you and feel you and everything. I need everything.”

  “You told me to stop.” Naim was still. He wasn’t shaking anymore, but he stood like a sculpture, hard and still, and his voice grated.

  “Because you weren’t with me.”

  Naim finally looked Deck in the eye. They stood so close, foreheads still touching, that it was hard to focus, but Deck’s eyes shone, dark and clear and full of feeling. “I’m right here.” Naim didn’t understand, and he looked away, cold again.

  “I know,” Deck said, trying to make sense. To be as careful as he could and explain what he felt in exactly the right way. “I know you. Your body is here. But you weren’t with me, Naim.” He pulled his head back slightly to look Naim full on, so Naim could see his face and know what he was saying.

  “Just what I said before, love. I. Want. You.” Deck’s intense gaze held Naim, and he gently brushed hair from Naim’s sweaty face, his fingers down Naim’s cheek, across his mouth, along his jaw, across his eyes. Everywhere. “I don’t want a mindless fuck, love. I don’t want to just bone, like some kind of animal, pounding you up against the wall and then—” Deck couldn’t help it. He closed his eyes and let out another small laugh. “Okay, I mean. I do want that. A lot, but I…” Naim blinked up at him, his eyes, his tremendous eyes, sad and scared. Deck didn’t know how his heart could possibly break anymore. “I want that with you.”

  “I thought that’s what we were doing.” Naim looked away again.

  Still brushing at Naim’s face, sweeping his fingers along his neck, around his ear, and through his hair, Deck stared at him and loved him. “Not together, we weren’t. Naim. Look at me.” Naim looked everywhere but at Deck. “Look at me.”

  It took a full minute, but Naim swallowed hard, his jaw twitched, and he looked Deck in the eye.

  Deck moved his hands from Naim’s head and back, dragged them slowly between them, and took Naim’s in his. “Look at me,” Deck whispered. Turning Naim’s hands over, he kissed his right palm, dancing his tongue along the middle, the way he knew made him shiver, then gently moved it to the fresh pink scar on his own chest. His gaze never left Naim’s. He did the same with Naim’s other hand, kissing, tickling with his tongue, and brought their hands low, pressing Naim’s into his hip.

  Deck lowered his hands to Naim’s waist and bunched them into the fabric of his shirt, pulling it from his trousers. He leaned forward and softly flicked his tongue across Naim’s lower lip, eyes wide open and whispering, between flicks, “Look at me, Naim. Watch me. Stay with me.”

  Naim hesitantly allowed his rigid body to loosen bit by bit with each kiss, each tender touch of Deck’s tongue and the whisper of his fingertips brushing against his sides as Deck pulled at his shirt.

  Deck pulled back and pressed their foreheads together again, his eyes warm and gentle and smiling, “Stay here. With me, okay?” He kissed Naim’s brow. “Stay with me.” He kissed each eyelid. “Keep your eyes open.” He kissed Naim’s temple. “Watch what we can do.” He kissed Naim’s lips, openmouthed and open-eyed, squinting a bit to stay focused but refusing to lose the eye contact. Deck moved his mouth slowly, back and forth over Naim’s, dragging the tip of his tongue across his lips as he placed his hands under Naim’s shirt onto the soft skin of his back.

  Deck breathed in hard, and nearly closed his eyes from the feel of it, warm and firm, strong lean muscle and Naim. He closed and opened his hands over that skin, scraping dull nails against it, raising goose bumps and heat.

  Naim breathed deeply from Deck’s mouth, eyes open wide, and he pressed his mouth, his chest, his whole body up into him. This felt different. The eye contact and the slowness of it. It felt different. It felt like Deck and burning and intimate. It had been too long. He’d been waiting too long for this, for Deck and his flesh.

  Deck smiled against Naim’s mouth, pulling his lower lip between his teeth, which he could never do enough, and sucked on it hard, and then let go, over and over, rocking his head forward and back, imitating and suggesting something far more carnal.

  Naim tried to press even closer, chest to chest, belly to belly, cock to cock. His hand slid from Deck’s hip around his back, and his fingers curled without thinking about it, then ran across the expanse of Deck’s lower back, fingers digging into the miles of skin as it grew warmer and dampened from the heat their bodies made together.

  Naim’s other hand stayed, playing his fingers across the smooth flesh of the new scar.

  Deck raised his arms, taking Naim’s shirt with them, sliding the button-down over his head; he couldn’t be bothered with buttons, and his hands trembled. It already took too much time, and their skin was separated for too long. Naim growled, angry that they weren’t touching for that long. He pressed his bare chest back up against Deck with a softer, sweeter sound of ache and relief that caused Deck to jam his hips forward into Naim’s and dragged another moan from the lips that Deck sucked on like a starving infan
t.

  Naim dropped his arms to Deck’s shoulders, and he instantly moved one hand back to the scar on his chest. With his other hand he grabbed and dug into the hot, soft skin and heavy muscle between Deck’s neck and collarbone, pulling Deck closer, their chests solid against each other. Deck held the back of Naim’s head gently, gathering and dropping handfuls of his hair just to gather and drop it again; letting it tickle and sweep and weigh in his hand because it was entirely alive in its own right. He swept his other hand up and down Naim’s back, across his shoulders, up the arm that held like iron onto his neck, down again along his sides, counting his ribs with his fingertips.

  They kissed deep and wet and slow, and Naim was glad for Deck’s hand at his head as his muscles and skin trembled. Deck watched Naim, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark. Naim’s eyes continued to fall, and when they did, a strong hand would abandon his body and fingertips would touch his lids in a whisper. “No, love. Watch.”

  Deck’s body enveloped Naim as Deck leaned farther, needing to taste more, and he buried his face in Naim’s neck, nuzzling, biting, breathing. His fine, strong arm slid down Naim’s solid back, winged with lean, dense muscles, over the firm sweet plum of his ass as he sought to lift and bring him closer.

  They kicked off shoes, and half dragging Naim, Deck started moving them toward the bedroom while trying to suckle at his neck and push them closer at the same time. Naim grunted a breath and pulled away from Deck’s mouth, which did unholy things to his insides. Deck stopped walking, confused, and looked at him. “Wha…what’s wrong?” he panted, trying to focus, but he was already too overstimulated.