by Amy Lane
“She’s dying, Mom!” Dylan snapped. “She’s dying, and her brother wants me to come say good-bye.” When he spoke next, it was into the phone. “I’ll be there at twelve thirty,” he said. “Right at lunch.”
“I’m over eighteen—I can sign you out,” Jonah said.
Dylan grunted in thanks. “I appreciate it. Come into the office. I’ll be there.”
“You’ll know me,” Jonah said quietly. “I look just like her.”
“Wonderful.” The sarcasm let him know that the kid was at his limit for the morning, and he rang off.
Without thinking about it, Jonah hit Ethan’s number almost immediately. “Wharaghopll?” And guess who just woke up.
“Ethan?”
“Jonah?”
Jonah’s voice crumbled and he couldn’t seem to contain it. “Can you maybe come over when you get a chance? We’re picking my sister’s boyfriend up at twelve thirty to take him to visit Melly, you know, in case….” She’s dying, Mom! Yeah. Dylan was brave enough to say it, but then, he hadn’t known Amelia for the past seventeen years. It hurt more with every extra minute you knew someone. Just did. “Anyway—”
“Yeah. Lemme shower. Pit stink—not sexy. Be there soon.”
Jonah laughed a little as he hit End Call. Leave it to Ethan to mention pit stink—he was the most practical person about body functions that Jonah had ever met, morning private time included. Just knowing he was coming over to sit—that made the rest of what Jonah was going to do this day so much easier to handle.
His mom and dad were gone and he’d showered by the time Ethan got there, freshly showered too, with coffee and croissants in his hands. He handed the food to Jonah, grabbed his coffee, and plopped on the couch, rooting for the remote control. He turned on Supernatural, probably because it was on like seven thousand times every morning and the boys were hot, and then swung one leg along the back of the couch.
Then he patted the space between his thighs. “C’mere,” he said casually.
Jonah took his coffee and went obediently. Ethan pulled him back against that mountainous granite chest and he stayed right there, sipping coffee and staring mindlessly at the television screen. Ethan ran his big capable hands all over his chest, his neck, his ribs, his abs, his hips, and all points in between not mentioned by muscle group.
Jonah melted into him, and just… just let him.
It was amazing. He put his coffee down on the floor by the couch and opened his chest up, tucking his head next to Ethan’s chin. Ethan made yummy-nom-nom sounds, rucked up his sweatshirt, and thrust one hand underneath to keep up that gentle, undemanding stroking. Jonah wanted to purr like a big boneless domestic cat when Ethan brushed his nipple.
He moaned softly instead.
And Ethan just kept petting him, long sweeps of his smooth palms against the soft skin of Jonah’s ribs, stomach, and pecs.
“Working out is paying off,” Ethan murmured in his ear, and then he nibbled on Jonah’s ear, soft little insults to his skin, perpetrated by teeth and tongue. Jonah moaned and thrust his hips up helplessly as his cock woke up, plumped with blood, and took a leisurely, throbbing stretch under the placket of his jeans.
Suddenly slow, easy sweeps of skin on skin weren’t enough, and he made a helpless begging sound, lost in the languorous exploration of Ethan’s hands on his body.
Ethan’s next foray down to the tender skin of his abdomen darted under the waistband of Jonah’s jeans, tickling his sand-colored happy trail and promising a solid touch before it retreated.
Jonah expelled his hopeful breath on his tormenter’s name. “Ethan!”
“Sh… what do you want?”
Jonah shuddered at Ethan’s breath in his ear again, and the way he let his lips and tongue tease in there. “I want your hands on me,” he said, feeling brave, but Ethan pinched his nipple playfully, proving he’d really chickened out.
“That’s not me feeling you up?” Ethan chuckled.
In reply, Jonah reached down and unbuttoned his jeans and shoved them down past his hips along with his boxers.
His cock lay on his stomach, plain, pale, and straight, and right now it was the center of his existence. No sisters, no parents, no Ethan’s job in porn, just touch me, touch me, touch me. “Touch that, dammit!” he demanded, and Ethan delivered a triple threat: he laughed in Jonah’s sensitive ear, pulled on his tender nipple, and—thankyouGod!—reached down and grasped Jonah’s cock firmly at the base and started to stroke the bottom half with uncompromising pumps.
Jonah needed.
“Oh God… Ethan… you’re… oh please… more….”
“What I really want to do,” Ethan murmured, switching ears and letting the other ear lobe chill in the air, “is suck it. You taste amazing, do you know that? And your size is—”
“Small,” Jonah confessed, but Ethan rode right over him.
“Perfect. I can swallow, and your crown is right there in the back of my throat, and it’s full, and I’ve dreamed of you coming, so I can taste it, feel how hot it is, have it inside me….”
“Gungh… touch my cockhead, please, Ethan!”
“’Kay, but what about your nipples?” Ethan teased, plucking at the one he’d ignored.
Jonah squirmed, because they weren’t lying about how the nipple played the groin like a guitar string, and how the brain turned you on too. Ethan’s breath in his ear was another layer to the tingling across his skin, and for a minute, he lost track of what Ethan was saying.
“Mmm… nung… cock!” he pleaded.
Ethan laughed softly. “Play with your nipples, baby,” he urged.
Jonah tucked his hands under Ethan’s arms and pinched his own nipples, harder than Ethan had, every roll between his fingers and thumbs bordering on pain. “How’s that feel?” Ethan asked. In answer, Jonah moaned and thrust his hips, sliding his cock in Ethan’s fist.
Ethan stopped for a second and adjusted them so Jonah sat up higher, which put Ethan’s hands lower and left his lips free to roam the back of Jonah’s neck and shoulders. Then he reached down with both hands and resumed the hard, slow stroke of Jonah’s cock, but this time, when he got to the tip, he rubbed his thumb across the head. Jonah moaned again. Ethan used his other hand to cup Jonah’s balls and roll them gently, and moaning was too gentle for the sound that Jonah made.
“God, Ethan, harder… harder… oh God, faster, please, please, please… oh fuck!”
Ethan wasn’t being subtle anymore. His fist blurred on Jonah’s cock, and Jonah had to close his eyes, because just looking at it made his brain short-circuit, made stars dot his vision, made…. “Oh God, Ethan, gonna fuckin’ come!”
He closed his eyes but he felt it spattering his stomach, his bared pecs, and he even heard the patter of it on his sweatshirt where it was rucked above his ribs. He moaned from his toes, and it cleansed him, stripping him of worry and pain all the way inside, from his groin, and his stomach, and his aching, worried chest. He shuddered hard, whimpering a little, and accepted Ethan’s massive arms and shoulders covering his smaller body, protecting him, keeping him safe.
Their breath was the loudest thing in the apartment, harsh and raspy, it covered the sound of the television as impossibly pretty people did battle with big scary things that could kill you and the more frightening demons in their own hearts.
Jonah knew how they felt.
“Here,” Ethan murmured into his hair. “I’ll go get you a cloth. We’ll clean you up a little, okay?”
“But what about you?” Jonah muttered, so replete he wasn’t sure he could focus on anything but the stupor that wanted to take him over and nail him limp to the couch.
“This one was all about you,” Ethan told him with a soft kiss on the cheek. “I wanted to give you something good. It’s sort of my only trick.”
Jonah pulled his arms back behind his head and regarded Ethan steadily when he came back from the bathroom. It was weirdly erotic just lying there, letting the come dry on his skin, and by
the time Ethan got back with the warm washcloth and started rubbing at his chest and his stomach and the little spots on his sweatshirt, he was more than half-mast. Ethan ran the nubbly cloth over his nipple and Jonah arched and sighed, waking up a little. Ethan was kneeling next to him, and he looked at Jonah’s face, grinning shyly.
“Time for that blow job,” he said, and Jonah watched as Ethan opened his mouth, turned his head, and engulfed his cock in one wet, hot swallow.
He wanted to keep his eyes open; it was beautiful to see. Ethan closed his eyes and lowered his head, then held his lips at Jonah’s base while his throat worked.
“Ohhh….” Jonah stroked Ethan’s straight black hair back from his face, and Ethan darted a glance at him from chocolate-brown eyes. “You’re so pretty,” Jonah breathed. “I….” He lost the thread of his thought as Ethan pulled back and swirled his tongue around Jonah’s crown while still stroking his base with a tight fist.
No words then, and no sights either. Jonah had no choice but to close his eyes, tilt his head back, and let the stroking, the licking, the swirling slide over his body. He clenched his hand in Ethan’s hair, and it grounded him, gave him the illusion of control when he’d felt so out of control almost his entire life, like things were happening to him rather than he made them happen. He urged Ethan to grip him harder, to make his O-ring of a mouth tighter, and for a moment, he felt mighty, powerful, the king of the light-flared darkness behind his eyes, and then, oh God—“Ethan, what are you…!”
Ethan’s other hand crept between his cheeks, and Jonah lifted his knees, still bound by his jeans, to let him in. Plenty of spit pooled at his groin, dripping down his cleft, and Ethan dragged his fingertips through that and then rubbed them right there, at his entrance, right….
“God!”
He arched off the couch, and Ethan didn’t miss a stroke or a small thrust or a lick as Jonah spilled come, fast, urgent, scalding, into his lover’s mouth.
He stayed splayed on the couch, eyes closed, for a minute, enjoying the darkness. When he opened his eyes, Ethan was wiping his hands off on the washcloth, and Jonah remembered their discussion about how sex was human.
Funny he should think that when Ethan’s face, lips pouted in concentration, eyes heavy-lidded, straight hair productless and falling over his eyes, was the closest thing to an angel’s Jonah had ever seen. Jonah lifted a hand to Ethan’s cheek and stroked with his thumb.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Ethan raised an ironic brow. “Like I said, it’s the one thing I bring to the table.”
Jonah’s chest gave a sudden, vicious throb. “No,” he said quietly. “Don’t make it common. I know you’ve got experience and I’ve got nothing, but even I know when someone’s being tender.”
Ethan closed his eyes and turned his head, taking Jonah’s hand in his own and kissing the palm. “You hurt inside,” he said against Jonah’s fingers. “It’s the one thing that makes me feel better when I hurt inside.”
“C’mere,” Jonah said, and Ethan didn’t fight him as Jonah pulled him into a gentle, all-encompassing kiss.
Ethan leaned back and kissed his forehead, then pushed himself up. “Get dressed,” he said, giving Jonah’s hair a gentle tousle. “If we’re going to get your sister’s boyfriend, I want to get lunch before we go.”
Jonah sat up and got dressed—not because they were running out of time, but because he knew what Ethan was doing. Emotions burgeoned, intense and painful, between their hearts when their bodies touched. God, who wouldn’t want some space from that?
DYLAN was waiting for him in the office, a perfectly average-looking boy with hazel eyes and sandy hair and what were probably dimples when he smiled. He didn’t smile when he saw Jonah walk up, but he did shake hands like he was trying to be a man. The registrar didn’t even bat an eyelash when Jonah lied about being his cousin, and Jonah was glad he’d had Ethan wait in the car, because he figured nothing would scream “checking a kid out for nefarious purposes” like a gorilla in designer jeans.
“My boyfriend is out in the car,” Jonah told him quietly. “I hope that doesn’t bother you.”
Dylan looked blank for a second as they walked across the cracked pavement of the parking lot. “Why would it…? Oh, yeah.” He rolled his eyes. “Ignore my mom. She’s all militant antigay and shit, but I don’t buy that crap. You know. Old people.”
Jonah thought about how his dad would never eat chocolate Easter bunnies again. “Amelia and I are lucky,” he said, feeling it. “But Ethan wasn’t, so, you know. It’s a crapshoot.”
Dylan sighed. “Yeah. It is.” They neared Ethan’s car, and Ethan popped the locks and turned down the radio. He was listening to Usher at top volume, and Jonah wasn’t sure if it was for comfort or to warn everyone that he was badass and to leave him alone.
He smiled at Dylan, though, and shook his hand, and they drove tensely to the hospital.
When they got there, Ethan waited in the hallway, since three people in Amelia’s room was too many. Jonah clasped his hand before he went into the clean room to put on his paper shields, and Ethan winked, then sat down on one of the chairs in the hallway, propping one foot up on his knee and pulling out his phone.
“I’ll be here when you need me,” he said pleasantly, but Jonah saw his eyes, warm and brown, following Jonah as he walked into the room. That look carried him through the next few minutes as he took Dylan on a tour of what he was going to see.
“She’s lost a lot of weight,” he said seriously, “because she’s got too much crap in her digestive system to actually absorb her food. She’s been fed through the IV for the last week. Her fingers have started to swell and club—it’s sort of creepy, but don’t let it freak you out, okay? I think she really likes it when we hold her hand, just really gentle because everything hurts. I can’t guarantee she’ll be able to talk—she’ll probably close her eyes at some point when you’re talking, but that doesn’t mean she can’t hear you—”
“Jonah?” The boy’s voice wobbled, and Jonah stopped his litany and looked at him. Jesus, he was young. As young as Amelia, only a few years younger than Ethan, and just as vulnerable.
“Yeah?”
“Am I going to see your sister again?”
Jonah closed his eyes. “I… she’s not responding to treatment,” he echoed, because that was what the doctor kept telling them. “They’re going to keep trying stuff, but—”
“Do you think she’s going to get better?”
Jonah closed his eyes. “No,” he said quietly. “No. I think… they say people are fighters, right?”
“You’re sister’s not,” Dylan said with a complete lack of judgment. “I mean, she’s stubborn when she wants her way, but really, she wasn’t made to have to fight anything. That’s why she’s so wonderful. She just… accepts things for what they are.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said. His own eyes were watering, and he wasn’t sure how Dylan was holding it together. “She’s not a fighter. She’s not fighting—and if she was fighting, it would probably be too late.”
Dylan nodded. “I want to be mad at her for that,” he said, his voice thick with snot and grief. “But I can’t be. It would be like being mad at her for being born in the first place.”
God. This kid knew a lot of real important shit about life, didn’t he? Jonah should take some fucking notes.
“Exactly,” he rasped.
“Okay, then.” Dylan secured the cap and the mask. “Can I talk to her alone when you’re done, then? I want her to know I love her for who she is.”
“Yeah,” Jonah said, securing his own mask. “Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll… I mean, it’s not going to happen today or even tomorrow.”
Dylan met his eyes over their masks. “Is she in pain?”
And Jonah couldn’t lie. “Yeah. She can’t breathe. It’s like when you’re under water and everything’s on fire.”
“God, that sucks.” Dylan mastered the catch in his voice and then firmed up his s
houlders, turned toward the entrance to her room, and gestured for Jonah to proceed.
Amelia woke up when she saw Dylan, and she smiled.
That was enough for Jonah, really. “I brought you a friend, Melly. I’m going to let you spend some time alone with him—I’ll be right outside.”
“Is… Ethan… here?” she asked plaintively, and he smiled.
“Yeah. He’s been a rock.”
“Give… him… love, ’kay?”
Jonah nodded and smiled and stroked the back of the hand. “That’s the idea,” he said quietly. “Love you, Melly. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Love… you.”
And he kept that smile plastered on and turned, gesturing for Dylan to sit in the chair by the bed. “Not too long,” he said quietly. “She can’t stay awake more than fifteen minutes.”
Then he went back out the door and took off the paper stuff in the clean room, and walked back to the chair next to Ethan to sit down. He leaned his head on Ethan’s shoulder and sighed.
Ethan moved him just enough to wrap that gigantic, rock-hard arm around his shoulders, and then repositioned his head. “On a scale of one to ten, would you rate this a fifteen in suck?” Ethan asked.
Jonah’s startled laugh carried the sputter of tears with it. “I’d rate it a thirty,” he said with feeling, and Ethan nodded, then tucked his chin into Jonah’s hair.
“Do me a favor, okay?”
“Anything,” Jonah told him, thinking about Ethan holding him, making love to him, not asking for anything but to make Jonah happy.
“Call me when you need me. Or when you want me. Or when you think you might need me. Or when you’re lonely. Or when you’re sad. Or when you want someone to make you laugh, or bring you coffee, or to watch a movie, or—”
Jonah turned in the chair and put his hand over Ethan’s mouth. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah. Please be a part of this. Please help me through this. I need you, Ethan. If you can do this for me—”
Ethan kissed him, which was good, because he was about to promise marriage and his soul and his future to a guy who rented his ass out by the twenty-minute video. But the kiss melted, took him over, and he allowed it to cocoon him in Ethan’s massive shoulders and his giant heart and all the things he could be outside of the life he lived now.
