by Max Walker
“See?” Jordan seemed to puff his chest up a little, as if finding pride in discovering something. “Usually it’s Angela that get’s all ‘Miss Cleo’-like and shit. She’s the one that can read auras and tell what people are hiding. Remember when she cancelled her first wedding because of one of her dreams? The night we had to bunk in the same hotel room. The one with only the queen-sized bed.”
Crow took a deep breath. He was seeing what kind of game Jordan was playing, and he wanted it to end. “Yes, I remember,” Crow said, hoping it would end the conversation. He did remember that night. Angela had cancelled her wedding hours before because of an intense dream she had. To her credit, the guy ended up going to jail two months later for drug trafficking and attempted murder. She never had that great of taste in men but at least her dream didn’t seem to steer her wrong.
He could also see how Jordan was trying to imply that they spent that night fucking away because of cancelled plans and a tiny bed, which was the farthest thing from the truth. Crow had kept close to one edge of the bed, moving to the couch at some point during the night when he grew tired of throwing Jordan’s leg off of his own.
“Oh my god!”
The yell was loud and sudden and came from the booth behind Jordan. The voice belonged to a girl, her big hazel eyes growing even larger the second she spotted Crow sitting across from her. She looked around the rest stop, which had gone deathly quiet for a second, before people realized nothing terrible had happened and they were free to go on about their day. Except for the kids close by, they all realized the same thing as the girl, and they all jumped out of their seats and rushed to Crow’s booth.
That was normally what happened. He saw it all the time when he was out with Red. Once one person recognized Red, an entire group would follow, even if they weren’t exactly sure who he was. Suddenly, Crow’s table was surrounded by high schoolers, asking for selfies. The teachers and chaperones tried to calm the crowd and regain some sort of control over the star struck bunch. Crow, for his part, smiled in as many selfies as they could take.
Finally, the crowd dispersed, all of them happy with their souvenirs.
“Wow,” Ethan said, letting out a breath. “That was crazy.”
“Never happened before,” Crow said, also feeling a little overwhelmed. He had been approached by one or two fans before when he was out in public, but this felt like the entire place was suddenly asking for his attention. It was weird. He enjoyed it, but also couldn’t help but feel a dose of nerves during the moment. His normal level of anxiety was climbing higher and higher with each new fucked up letter that landed on his doorstep.
“We should head back to the bus,” Crow said, looking at his watch and noticing the time.
“You know what’s weird?” Ethan said as they started getting up with their trays of burger wrappers. “No one asks for autographs anymore. I remember when we were kids and didn’t have cameras in our pockets, an autograph would be the only thing we could take away from an encounter like that.”
“I never thought about that before,” Crow said. Jordan walked ahead of them, throwing out his trash and speed walking toward the bus. “I guess a selfie is going to get way more likes on their Instagram.”
“I can’t tell if that should make me sad or if that’s just me not understanding kids.”
“Probably both.”
“True.”
They walked past the sunglass stalls, past the racks and racks of brochures advertising a rainbow of different vacation stops. It was outside when Crow brought up what he thought was on both their minds. “Sorry about Jordan, he’s normally cool. He must be having an off day.”
“It’s fine.” Ethan said it in a way that made Crow feel like it wasn’t.
“I’m here for you whenever you want to talk.” Unlike Jordan, Crow was in no way going to force Ethan into digging up the skeletons in his closet. As they reached the bus, Crow couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and wrapping an arm around Ethan’s waist. He pulled him in for a side hug that lasted seconds, but left a warmth that lasted for days.
“Thank you,” Ethan said, smiling in a way that made Crow feel like everything was going to be ok.
No, no. Better than ok.
10 Ethan Winter
Two Weeks Later
Ethan looked out the window, watching the rain splatter on the glass and drip down, blurring the parking lot outside. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out and saw Crow’s name on the text bubble. He unlocked it and read the message:
‘Turn Around’
Ethan did, looking toward the bedrooms. There, Crow was standing, wearing a black t-shirt with the sides cut out wide so that his sexy obliques were on full display, gray gym shorts that stopped an inch above his knees, and… a long top hat that tilted to the left side. He put his pinky to his lips and donned a monocle with his free hand.
Ethan burst out with a snort. “You look like you’ve lost your mind.”
“What?!” Crow opened his arms and moved his head, modeling the hat. “Are you saying I can’t pull off this top hat?”
Ethan got up and started walking toward the exit. “You pull it off just fine,” he said, still laughing. “Come on, it’s leg day.”
“Ugh,” he heard Crow groan behind him, followed by the thud of a discarded top hat.
Over the past couple of weeks, Ethan had found that Crow was an endless fountain of practical jokes and charming little stunts. He woke the gang up one day while wearing a wolf mask he had painted up with Angela’s makeup (she was pissed about that for a few days). Another time, Crow had everyone thinking they had lost the tour bus, but he had just moved it around the corner (Angela was also pissed about that).
Ethan loved it. He loved the exuberant, youthful energy that radiated off Crow. It was the same energy that was amplified tenfold when Crow took to the stage, mic in hand and crowd in sight. Every single performance had been better than the last, if that were even possible. Ethan couldn’t help but be blown away night after night after night.
And every morning, he would wake up feeling a little better, a little less anxious. His decision didn’t feel as crazy, but more deliberate. Like this was all somehow planned. By who, Ethan had no idea, because he couldn’t have even pictured this in his wildest dreams. But there was no denying that Ethan was beginning to feel like he was meant to be on Crow’s tour. Maybe it was the couple of nights Ethan and Crow had spent awake, simply talking, way past the point everyone else had retreated to their bunk beds. There conversations were varied and always entertaining, sometimes getting deep but never to the core of what troubled Ethan. Or, maybe it was the cool little museums Crow kept asking to stop every time he’d spot one on the road. The rest of the crew seemed to have been getting annoyed by the fifth one, but Ethan was in heaven. They could never take too much time at the museums since they were on a schedule, but the experiences were still memorable in more ways than one.
On multiple occasions, Ethan had been struck by a deep desire to push in and close the troublesome gap between them. He wanted to feel the kiss that had rocked his core all those weeks ago, before all this was even a possibility in his mind.
But, he would always pull back at the last minute. He still wasn’t sure about where this was all headed, and he knew that another kiss would only bind him tighter to Crow’s fate. He wasn’t sure if he was ready for that. Could he give himself to someone again? Was he even capable of it? Weeks ago, Ethan would have quickly answered with a simple ‘no’.
Now, he wasn’t so sure.
“Should I wear the hat to the gym?” Crow asked from behind Ethan as they climbed down the steps of the tour bus. They hurried toward the hotel with their heads bowed against the rain.
“If it’ll help you squat more than me,” Ethan called.
“Ohhhh, ok, I see how it is.” Crow bumped his shoulder into Ethan as they walked into the hotel lobby. A blast of beige greeted them as they walked through, waving at the two ladies behind the
front desk. They were helping two dudes that looked like they had just gotten out of prison, with dirty white tanks and baggy khaki pants. Clearly, Angela was stretching the budget with these hotel stays.
Ethan pulled out his room key and pressed it to the gym door. It buzzed open. No one else was inside the tiny gym, which only fit two treadmills and three weight machines. There were a few free weights missing and the bike machine was out of order, but, for the most part, they had everything they needed.
Ethan started them off with some stretching on the treadmill. He worked in a whole-body stretch, even if they were only working on legs. He started from the head down, having Crow mimic his every move. He admired Crow’s ability to learn and his commitment to fitness. For some reason, he thought working out would be a solo endeavor on the trip, but Crow was quick to ask for personal training sessions, even though Crow already had everything down. Ethan didn’t mind, he preferred working out with someone and Crow was the perfect spotter.
He also looked so damn good in workout shorts and those shirts with the sides missing. It gave Ethan an incredible view of Crow’s toned oblique’s and rippling abs. Ethan wasn’t someone obsessed with appearances, but there was no denying that Crow was someone your eyes just didn’t want to leave. Ethan had an especially hard time looking away when they started stretching their lower backs, reaching down to their toes with their legs spread apart.
Yeah. It was impossible to look away.
“It’s so quiet in here,” Crow commented as the stretches finished. “They don’t have a sound system. Want to put on the TV?”
“Sure,” Ethan said. “I don’t mind either way.”
“Ok, I’m turning it on. Working out in complete silence gives me serial killer vibes.”
Ethan chuckled. “You could regale me with one of your stories,” Ethan said, flourishing his sentence with a hand wave. He went to grab the forty pound weights and brought them over to Crow, who was trying to work the dusty television connected to the corner of the wall.
“Are you saying you don’t like my stories?”
“Not at all, I love them” Ethan said, actually meaning it. “You’re one of the few people I could actually sit down and listen to for hours without any input and be completely fine about it.”
“That’s actually really sweet,” Crow said, turning from his channel hunting and looking at Ethan with a smile. “But please add input because, again, too much silence is too serial-killery.”
“Especially if I’m just sitting there, staring at you with a vacant expression on my face the entire time.”
“Yeah, don’t do that,” Crow said, laughing as he went back to surfing the TV guide. He landed on a show about first time house flippers just as a wooden cabinet dislodged from the wall with a loud crack and fell on one of the flippers. No one was hurt and the editing made it pretty funny, so they left it on while they went back to working out.
He turned around to find Ethan staring at him with a blank, vacant expression.
It lasted moments before they both broke into laughs.
“You’re crazy,” Crow said. Their gazes locked for a moment, their smiles wide and the air between them sparking. Ethan had to look away. If he looked any longer, he would fall down the rabbit hole without a doubt.
They started with the squats, which went fine. Crow and Ethan both pushed themselves, Ethan beginning to feel that pleasant burn in his thighs, both of them starting to get sweaty. It was during the lunges when things started to veer off the expected route. They were doing their lunges in place, but facing each other since that was how they could get the most room. This meant Ethan was forced to take in Crow’s flushed face and perfect eyes and that lip bite he did whenever he was pushing himself to keep going past the burn.
Holy fuck, he’s really hot.
The last times they had worked out together, they were always joined by Angela or Troy, who were also deep into fitness, so Ethan had other people around to keep his attention from honing in on Crow. Now, Ethan had no one to strike up a conversation with or to pretend to help with their form. Instead, he was lunging while feeling his cock growing between his thighs, held down only by the compression shorts he had on. Although if he kept getting any bigger, he wasn’t sure whether the compression shorts would even be enough.
“Alright,” he said, “let’s do the step-ups.” Those involved simply stepping up onto the bench while holding weights in both hands. It couldn’t be that sexy, could it?
Of course it was. Anything Crow did was sexy. So duh, his muscular thighs flexing every time he stepped up onto the bench was a mouth-watering sight. Plus, it didn’t help that he wasn’t wearing long shorts either. No, these were short shorts.
Ethan had never had so many involuntarily boners before. Part of him wondered if it was because it had been so long since he was intimate with anyone, but a much larger part of him knew it was because the chemistry between him and Crow was off the charts.
His cock gave a rogue throb in his shorts. He glanced down, double-checking to make sure he wasn’t sporting any visible bulges. There was definitely a lump in his shorts, but they were dark and it couldn’t be discerned from a quick glance. Since there was only one bench, Ethan waited for Crow to finish before he started. They swapped back and forth for the remaining sets, Ethan making sure to keep his mind from wandering down between his legs again. He had to keep it together. He wasn’t here to hook up and fall for Crow, as great as that sounded in his dreams. He still needed to work out his own shit before he could even consider going all the way with Crow.
Hell, he had never talked about what he was running from—about Adam—since he had lost him, and he could feel that weight pressing on him every day since. But, as the days on the tour went by, he could feel the story start coming unchained from his heart. He was scared to share it, but he knew it was something that had to be brought up. He knew Crow thought about it too, ever since Jordan almost dragged it out of him. He wasn’t sure what came over him, but he had been really close to opening up right there in the rest stop, with the scent of onion rings and French fries filling the air. Crow hadn’t brought it up since then, but Jordan wasn’t the same toward him. He was never ‘cool’, as Crow called him, toward Ethan. There was always a cold look or a comment that felt more like a stab than a joke.
They finished up their sets and went on to the next few exercises. The burning sensation in his thighs only increased, which was making him more and more turned on. He had forgotten how much his penis seemed to like leg day. That, mixed with Crow’s sweaty body feet away, and Ethan found that he had to cut the session short. He was either going to tear a hole in his shorts or spontaneously come during one of the exercises.
“Can’t handle the burn?” Crow teased as he turned the TV off and checked to make sure they weren’t leaving anything behind.
“I can. I just saw you looking like you were about to pass out, so I cut it short for your sake.”
“Oh, please. I was intimidating you, just admit it. Too much man in one tiny room.”
No such thing.
“Mhmm,” Ethan said, not paying attention to the ache between his thighs as they walked back through the lobby and toward the elevators. He was going to have to go straight to the bathroom and take care of things.
11 Crow Kensworth
Fuckkkk, I need to jerk off.
Crow couldn’t stop thinking about it. More specifically, he couldn’t stop thinking about Ethan’s ‘it’. He wasn’t sure if Ethan was aware, but the man’s shorts were in no way equipped to hide the package he was smuggling between his thighs. Either Doctor Winter carried around extra stethoscopes in his crotch or, more preferably, the guy was blessed.
Crow couldn’t make out any details —mainly because he was a decent human being and wasn’t going to spend his workout session staring at Ethan’s cock outline—but the quick glances he was able to steal had his mouth watering and his own cock twitching. The man was the epitome of everything Crow found
attractive and more.
The elevator dinged up to the fifth floor. They got out, about to walk down separate directions when Crow realized he didn’t want to stop hanging out with Ethan just yet. He thought quick and said “Oh! Come over and check out that weird foam roller Angela ordered for me.”
Ethan smiled, his forehead glistening with beads of sweat, his cheeks a sexy light pink under the five o’clock shadow. He nodded and started walking toward Crow’s room. They headed to the end of the hallway, following the fading floral river set in the beige carpet. Crow grabbed his room key and unlocked the door, holding it open for Ethan. His scent filled Crow’s senses as he walked past him and entered the room. It made Crow’s dick twitch again. Maybe this massage thing wasn’t the greatest idea?
What am I even thinking?
Crow couldn’t deny that there was a fiery current of chemistry flowing between them, but he also felt like there was something else that was blocking Ethan from being able to explore it fully. Crow was ready from the very first night they met. He would have taken Ethan home in a heart beat that night at the bar. Even then, he could tell that Ethan Winter was a special man, so unlike the other duds he had dated since he had come out about a year ago. And over the past two weeks, that feeling was only further cemented into Crow’s very core. Ethan was interesting on multiple levels, had a sense of humor that Crow couldn’t get enough of, and was intelligent and driven. Never once had Crow thought it was possible to stay up all night talking with someone and still have as much—if not, more—fun than if they were having sex. They talked about all kinds of things; from wanting to be Jane Goodall as kids (both of them were huge animal lovers) to Crow’s conservative parents finding out he and his twin were gay. They never talked much about Ethan though, and Crow was ok with that. He felt like the man would peel away the layers in time.
