by Joey W. Hill
He was shuddering, fucking shuddering. Something in him broke. He needed to push up, he knew he did. He needed to stop Geoff, but Geoff anticipated him. He set the belt aside and dropped to his knees behind Chris. Parting Chris’s buttocks, he put his mouth on Chris’s rim.
Holy Christ. The sensation was incredible, Geoff’s tongue provoking sensitive nerves as it stabbed inward. His hands were locked on Chris’s hips, reminding Chris how strong and stubborn Geoff could be. Chris pushed his forehead into his palms, his elbows digging into the workbench when Geoff reached between his legs and took hold of his cock.
“Let go,” Geoff demanded, and Chris couldn’t do anything other than obey. His hips jerked, humping against the bench as Geoff kept tongue-fucking him and playing around his rim, working his cock in a sure, firm grip. When the climax grabbed him, Chris was sure he shot come halfway across the garage, but that didn’t mean anything, not with his mind breaking to pieces like this.
Geoff was still teasing him with his mouth when he came down. “Stop,” Chris groaned. “It’s too much. Fuck . . . quit.”
“Say please.”
Really? Was he kidding? Apparently not, because he was going to keep doing that crazy thing with his tongue, and Chris’s legs were shaking too much to stop him. “Please. Asshole.”
“Yours is a pleasure.” Geoff drew back, his thumbs passing over Chris’s buttocks, making him feel the soreness of those stripes. He bit the meat of one cheek, hard enough Chris jumped and knew he’d left another mark. He’d never seen Geoff get this intimate at those clubs, using his mouth and his hands how he used them on Chris, on Sam.
Geoff straightened to his feet, leaning over Chris’s body, wrapping his arm around Chris’s broad chest. “Breathe, big man. Be easy.”
He should be embarrassed he was this shaky, because it was only an orgasm, no big deal, but Chris knew it was far more than that. So it helped, having Geoff hold him like this after something like that. When Geoff put his lips on his shoulder, Chris dropped his head down lower. “You need to get off.”
“I surely do.” Geoff’s position had his pelvis pressed firmly against Chris’s ass, so he could feel how hard his friend was. A chuckle rose in him, strangled in other emotions.
“Yeah, but not what I meant.”
“It’s all right.” Geoff kissed his sweaty neck, nipped at him again. “Don’t think. Just relax. Because now that I’m done beating your ass, I’m going to fuck it. And you’re going to take every inch of me.”
He drew back, and Chris heard the sound of him opening his jeans, the pause as he lubed up, because he was probably carrying some in his pocket. Just in case.
“You like biting.”
“Yeah, I do. I’d leave teeth marks all over you if I could.”
Chris dropped his head back into his hands. What had he just done, and why? He thought of when they were kids, daring one another to do Indian burns. A game, the sole point of which had been to see who could take more pain. It had usually been a draw between them.
Now, though, Chris remembered one time when Geoff was rubbing the eraser on Chris’s arm. The pain had grown excruciating, but Geoff had been watching him the whole time, so closely. Somewhere along the line, it wasn’t about an adolescent need to prove who had the bigger balls. The discomfort had mixed with other things and Chris became so involved in watching Geoff register his reaction that he forgot the pain. It was Geoff who called it to a stop, who realized he needed to stop before he took all the skin off Chris’s arm.
“You’re trying to hold on to control to prove to yourself you’re in charge of both of us,” Chris muttered.
“If that’s true, you’re trying to stop yourself from relinquishing control because you’re worried about the consequences of doing so.” Geoff bit his shoulder again. “Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between.”
He set his hands back on Chris’s hips, pushing the head of his cock against his rim, still tingling from having had Geoff’s tongue there. Chris groaned, and Geoff answered with a growl in the same octave, a deep-throated sound of possession and sex. Geoff pushed all the way in, Chris’s muscles giving way as if they knew who was calling the shots here. Then they clamped down on Geoff’s dick like they’d never let it go. Wrapping an arm around Chris’s chest, Geoff worked his hips against him in a smooth rhythm, though his breath rasped harshly against Chris’s back, his other hand flat between his shoulder blades.
“I can’t remember the first time . . . I knew . . . I wanted your ass. Seems like all of a sudden, it’s always been . . . that way.”
Chris understood what he meant. Last night, they’d talked about how Sam had become the bridge they’d needed to cross from friends to lovers. But if it had been that simple, they would have made the leap long ago. Chris wondered if they’d had to reach the point where this element could be part of it, the one that had Chris’s ass cheeks smarting, that had him thinking about whether or not Geoff would do it again. And even crazier, would Chris eventually ask for it? Punishment, desire, pain. Surrender, a loss of control.
That give-and-take that Geoff kept pushing was a raw nerve that alternated between retreat and wanting to be stroked. Maybe Sam’s deeper embrace of submission had helped open up something similar but different in Chris, allowing him to step across that line now. Was it part of what had drawn him to Geoff for so long? Or was it a bunch of things, and that was just one vital component?
Chris closed his eyes, shuddering hard as Geoff reached climax, his body shoving Chris against the bench, breath hot on his neck, his fingers digging into Chris’s chest through the T-shirt he was wearing. They hadn’t even taken off their clothes, just pushed what was necessary out of the way.
It was possible to call this simple lust. Animal reaction, no thought involved, the result of the sexual floodgate they’d opened last night. But that idea only left him hollow. Chris’s back rounded as he dropped his head even lower, his fingers clinging to the bench as Geoff’s release flooded him, as his pelvis smacked Chris’s ass and Geoff’s thighs worked against him. As he slowed, his breath deep, erratic, Chris had to keep his hands clamped on the bench so he didn’t betray his need or confusion by grabbing on to Geoff’s forearm across his chest, refusing to let him draw back.
Another part of him wanted to turn and put him on the ground, pin him there with his weight until he could make sense of this, why things that had felt right a breath ago suddenly felt wrong. But he didn’t. For one thing, they had sawdust all of the floor. Since Geoff’s cock was slick with lube, he’d end up having that stuff stuck all over him and be eminently pissed about it.
The thought twisted his lips, making Chris want to chuckle in a way that wasn’t humorous. It was more like tearing paper away and finding an empty box instead of the gift he’d always wanted.
“Chris.” Geoff had withdrawn, put his clothes back together. Now he slipped his hands under Chris’s shirt, fingers threading through the coarse hair. “Hey, man, talk to me. Where did you go? Did I hurt you?”
In ways he couldn’t describe. Or maybe he’d hurt himself and Geoff had just opened the door. But Chris shook his head and reached down awkwardly to get his jeans back up. Geoff was so close behind him his ass bumped him, and Geoff closed his hands on his hips to steady him.
“I’m good.” Chris sidled away and managed to hop clear of the bench to finish the job, zip and button his jeans. “I’ve got it.”
“Okay.” Geoff’s voice was neutral. Chris could feel him watching him closely.
“Uh, I’m going to go in and grab a beer. You want one?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Escaping into the house, Chris took a deep breath once he was in the kitchen. He held the refrigerator door open, the cool air wafting over him, and stared mindlessly at what was there. The door to the garage opened, closed, Geoff’s footsteps stopping at the kitchen door.
“I get that you’re the still-waters-run-deep kind of guy,” Geoff said slowly. “Most things about you I ca
n figure out. But you have me stumped here, Chris. You’re going to have to tell me, because you’re making me feel like a dick, and I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me where I’m going wrong.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong.”
“Oh. So you jerking up your pants and walking away from me with all this shit vibrating off you, as if I treated you like a whore, meant I was stellar?”
Geoff’s tone was the jagged edge of a rusty blade. Chris couldn’t turn around, but when Geoff laid a hand on his arm, Chris yanked away. “Don’t fucking touch me again unless I say it’s okay first.”
He didn’t know where the venom came from, the rage, but it was definitely there, filling his chest and making it hard to breathe. He slammed the fridge door hard enough to rock the kitchen walls, and then he left the house, going out into the backyard.
He wasn’t sure of his destination until he arrived in front of the fairy garden. He stared at it. The raccoons had visited in the night, knocking tiny figurines askew and leaving muddy footprints tracked all over everything. Some of the plants had been uprooted.
Normally he would have laughed. The creatures were adept at causing mayhem, and he’d anticipated a certain level of mischief from them. But right now, he couldn’t find that lightheartedness. He dropped to his knees in front of the berm and clenched his fists, suppressing the incomprehensible desire to tear all of it apart, before what was inside him tore him apart first.
He didn’t. He stayed there for a while, just breathing, not thinking. Eventually, he started to move, albeit stiffly. He dug out the fairies that had been squashed in the raccoon tracks or tumbled into the channel. He turned the water on so he could wash them off with gentle fingers. Harry was singing in the aviary, calling Hermione to him. Ron squawked. Circumstances had brought the three birds together, two of them permanently handicapped by their injuries and one who’d healed but who refused to leave the other two. Their survival stories had bound them to one another. Just like their individual paths had brought him, Geoff and Sam together. Chris rubbed a thumb over a fairy’s delicate face. It was the one that reminded him of Sam.
“I’m not like you, you know,” he said. “I feel things in straight lines. I live each day as it is. I’m not a big thinker.”
“Yeah, I know. You feel things way deeper than most people do.”
Chris turned. Geoff sat on the nearby bench. Chris had placed it there yesterday so when Sam got back, she could sit on it and look at her fairy garden while reading. “The raccoons messed it up.”
“You’ll put it back together.”
Geoff looked older, serious. There was a haze over his eyes, a dimness to their light that Chris didn’t like. “Maybe it’s too fucked up.”
Geoff made a poor attempt at a smile. “You’ve told me nothing is ever too fucked up to fix. Unless . . .”
“Unless God knows it works better broken.”
“Yeah. That’s what you always say.”
Chris set the fairy down. There was something in Geoff’s voice that made him want to draw closer, though he stayed still. Geoff looked down at his hands, spread them out.
“You know, I . . . ah . . . I never thought too much about what I am. Just always felt this way, knew I was built this way. It didn’t worry me what other people thought because, you know, you’ve been my best friend. You went with me to those play parties or clubs, but we never really talked about how you felt about any of it, because it didn’t feel like the right time. But you were there on the sidelines; you knew what I was. So what I am never felt bad or twisted. Until a few moments ago.”
Chris’s eyes sharpened, but Geoff was still staring at his hands. “In the kitchen, how you pulled away, it seemed like you found me repulsive. I’ve never wished to be different, never thought I was wired that way. But if you can’t handle this part of me . . . I don’t mean handle it—you don’t have to be a part of that to be my best friend, but what I mean is, if this part of me is something that turns your stomach . . .”
Chris blinked at the break in his voice. The last time Geoff had been moved to tears had been when his mother rejected him. He’d had that same flat tone, the rug pulled out from under his world while he tried to act like it hadn’t been, to prove he was strong enough to deal with it. He had been, but without understanding and support, that strength might have warped into something so different.
Just like that, the anger and isolation that had gripped Chris so hard, putting him in a vacuum, gave way to much stronger feelings. They reconnected him. This was Geoff. The person who knew him better than anyone. Chris had never thought anyone would get him as Geoff did, until he’d met Sam.
Geoff lifted his head, and his expression was wooden. Braced. “Is that what it is, Chris? Is this something you can’t handle about me? About yourself?”
“No, shit. Stop.” Chris moved to the bench and sat down next to Geoff, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “I got lost in my head, Geoff. When you took over, it’s like I became an object, or because I don’t totally get what this is, and why I react the way I do, the connection was lost. I felt by myself.”
The hurt in Geoff’s face was replaced by a cautious understanding, followed by chagrin. “I’d never want you to feel that way, Chris. I hope you know that.” His lip curled, a wry, sad little smile, and he nudged him. “I love you, man.”
Chris chuckled at that. Things weren’t right, but there was less constriction around his chest, less of a cold knot in his stomach. “‘Yeah, you know you always be getting emotional after gunfights,’” he said, imitating Will Smith’s Bad Boys line.
Geoff’s lips curved, more genuine. He took a breath. “You’re not much of a talker, Chris, and that’s cool, but I hope you know you can talk to me about any of this, even if what you say doesn’t feel like it makes sense. You don’t have to make sense to me. It’s the same for Sam. In a weird-ass way, that’s what a lot of it’s about. Having feelings that you can’t express with words. So when you’re ready, you can just throw what’s on your mind out there, and I won’t say anything until or unless you want me to.”
It was tempting to take that when you’re ready as an excuse to leave it alone right now, but with emotions raw between them, Chris knew it needed to be now. And he was ready, as long as Geoff wasn’t needing it to make sense. That was kind of a relief.
“Okay.” He laid his hand on Geoff’s leg, closed his fingers over the taut column, feeling the shift of muscle as Geoff reacted to the touch. Chris slid his thumb in a windshield-wiper motion over it. The folding of the jeans around Geoff’s groin, outlining what was there, was an intriguing terrain that Chris studied absently, aware of Geoff watching him, motionless as a hawk.
“I always thought I trusted you more than anyone, that I didn’t hold anything back from you. But I guess I realized . . . hell, you know it connects to my dad leaving Mom and me. In some weird, shitty way I realized focusing so much on caring for you, it also sort of became a shield. I didn’t really know how to let you take care of me, because that would let you all the way in. Shit, I am so screwing this up . . .”
“No,” Geoff said. “You’re not. Keep going.”
Chris pressed his lips together and met his eyes. “That belt thing, you broke something open, man. The whole universe turned on its axis in less than a week. The stuff that’s there, that you do or want to do, it’s stuff that a part of me wants. It’s been in this closed room I knew about but kind of bypassed, if that makes sense. So now the rest of me is trying to catch up.” He sighed, removing his hand. “Maybe because you have always gotten things about me so I didn’t have to explain them, I was hoping you could explain to me what the hell is happening. Because honest to God, man, I’m not sure.”
As he stared moodily at the ground, Geoff looped his arm over Chris’s shoulders, his elbow pressing between Chris’s shoulder blades as he lifted his hand to tousle Chris’s hair. The affectionate gesture became a light grip on Chris’s nape that reminded him of the heated sex
they’d just had but also told him he had Geoff’s total attention, his support.
“Is this okay?” Geoff asked in a low voice. At Chris’s look, he lifted a shoulder. “You said you wanted me to ask.”
Chris closed his eyes. “Yeah, it’s okay. And you don’t always have to ask.”
It was when he thought about things too hard he would think himself into silence, the layers too complicated to parse and fit into sentences that other people would understand. But Geoff had said it didn’t have to make sense. He tried not to think when he opened his mouth this time.
“I didn’t think about it directly until we got to this point, with Sam. When I watched the two of you together, all this need and desire came up so hard and strong in my chest, for both of you, and I don’t know where to go with it, what to do with it. I sure as hell don’t know what to do about how you are. Because I’m not like her. I know I keep saying that like you have a hearing problem, but do you know it?”
“Did it feel like I was treating you like her just now? At the workbench?”
“Yeah, somewhat. But no. I don’t know. I can’t tell what’s you, and what’s me being messed up about it. I want to hit you and I want you inside me, like you just were.” Chris blew out a breath. “Now I’m having trouble saying it. I wanted you to fuck me, but I also wanted to take your head off your shoulders.”
“If you let me fuck you, then hit me, it will go better for me, because you won’t hit as hard.”
Chris snorted but Geoff touched his leg. “Look at me, Chris. I want to say something, to make sure you really hear this, so you know you don’t have to keep saying it. Though if you need to keep saying it to help you, I have no problem with that. Let me know when you’re ready to hear it.”
He went quiet and waited on Chris. Chris watched Ron fly to the top of the aviary and swoop down, ruffling Hermione’s feathers as he went by. It made Harry hop up and down on his perch and fuss. When at last Chris nodded, he didn’t have to look at Geoff to know he was watching Chris, waiting for that cue.
