by A. F. Henley
"Hold up," Randy called, stepping out on to the porch.
The person turned back to face the house and held up a gloved hand, traffic cop style. "Don't come out!"
Vaughn's voice surprised Randy so much he felt like he got hit in the guts with it. He stopped walking and stared. "Vaughn?"
"Go back in," Vaughn shouted. "You shouldn't be out here. Never mind me."
There was no question over the fact that Vaughn was right about being out in the weather. The storm was worse than it had been when Randy had fallen asleep, though how that was possible was beyond Randy's understanding. He'd never seen a storm rage for so many hours in a row, but Washington didn't get the kind of weather that Wolf did, that was for damn sure. Still... it was Vaughn. And Vaughn was there. And that was more than weird, it was amazing. Randy didn't want to let him walk away again. Especially not in this mess. A whispered reminder trailed through Randy's mind—the earlier jinx he'd spoken in the garage—and suddenly he couldn't shake the idea that if he let Vaughn walk away, Vaughn would never make it home.
"No," Randy called back. "You come in." Curiosity got the better of him. "Why are you here? Why were you skulking in my window?"
Vaughn waved off his questions and began to move away again.
"Hey!" Randy stepped forward and gnashed his teeth against the onslaught of stinging snow. "Don't you dare! Don't you dare walk away! Get back—" He stepped again and there was nothing but give underneath his foot. He tried to grab for the pillar, but he was too far out and all his arm did was flail. Before he could do anything to right himself, he was falling.
"Fuck!"
Randy heard Vaughn curse but he was already down. It wasn't the pain of his already abused knee meeting the frozen gravel pathway underneath the snow that forced the grunt out of him. It was the cold. Bare hands, bare face, bare neck—they all seemed to scream as the snow dug its icy fingers into him and squeezed. He was too shocked to do anything but freeze.
Then wide woolly hands were scooping him up by the back of his sweater. A thick arm was wrapped around his waist and he was tugged the rest of the way up. "You damn fool," Vaughn growled. "What in the Sam Hell are you trying to do?"
"Chase you," Randy wheezed. He pushed Vaughn away. "I'm fine—"
His knee buckled underneath him. Fireworks went off behind his eyelids, and he dropped like a stone. He had to take two sharp breaths before he could open his eyes.
Once again Vaughn snaked an arm around Randy's waist, and this time Randy clung to him. They shuffled and hopped up the stairs and across Randy's porch.
"Stay there," Vaughn said, propping Randy against the wall of the hallway and fastening the door behind them.
While Vaughn peeled off gloves, boots, and coat, Randy began to shiver so hard he thought his teeth were going to crack. "D-d-don't—" Something warm tumbled over Randy's frozen lip and he swiped at his mouth. "T-tell me what t-to..." His words trailed off and he stared at his fingers. Blood. Great.
"Bit your tongue, hmm?" Vaughn directed Randy toward the couch, frowning around the room. "Well, maybe that'll keep you quiet."
"Doubtful," Randy huffed. He let go of Vaughn's arm to grasp the arm of the couch, and tried to bend to sit. He just about lost his mind with pain. "Ow-ow-ow!"
Vaughn motioned for one hand and when Randy could finally sort thought enough to give it to him, he helped Randy lay down. He nodded and narrowed his lips. "So. First things first—"
"Yes," Randy agreed. His knee throbbed, his heart beat like a drum as his brain tried to deal with the pain, and his skin burned from the cold. That could wait, though. First he needed to understand why the hell Vaughn had been watching him through the window. "Why are you here?"
Vaughn walked over to the woodstove, opened the door, and poked at the coals. When they flared from cheerful to angry, he tossed a couple of new logs on top of them. "Your lights went out. I was worried."
"My lights?" Randy cast a glance out the front window and it dawned on him that yes, in fact, the porch light was now out. "Shit. What in the..." He looked up at Vaughn and tightened his jaw, "I had the generator on, I swear I did. I don't know what happened."
Vaughn nodded. "You check the gas levels before you started it up?"
"I..." A flush of heat began to crawl up Randy's neck. "I think so? Yeah, I'm sure I did."
The look Vaughn gave him told him that Vaughn knew it was a bald-faced lie and Randy didn't dare to argue the point. It hadn't even crossed his mind to check.
"You stay," Vaughn said. "I'll get it." He stopped at the front door, his boots already in hand. "You do have gas out there, right?"
"Yes!" There was more wounded pride in Randy's reply than he meant there to be. But seriously, just because he walked off his front porch and face-planted on his own walkway in a few feet of snow, just because he forgot to check the gas in the generator before turning it on and assumed it would run forever, well, that didn't make him stupid, did it?
He flopped back on the couch and threw an arm over his face. Yeah, it really, really did.
It took several minutes, but he finally heard Vaughn knock snow off his boots and come back through the front door. By that time, the logs Vaughn had tossed on the fire were starting to catch and a perfectly blissful heat was rolling off of the woodstove. So Randy just listened while Vaughn kicked off his boots and walked down the hall. Doors opened, closed, and then opened again. He heard Vaughn take a piss and run water to wash, and then frowned when he heard the medicine cabinet open.
"What are you up to?" Randy hollered.
"Never mind, I found it," Vaughn called back. "But I don't see any pain killers?"
"Kitchen."
Vaughn walked past Randy into the kitchen with a roll of elastic sports bandages in one hand and a towel in the other. Cupboard doors were banged, a drawer was pulled out, a couple of glasses clinked together, and then Vaughn was walking back into the living room.
He set the bottle of brandy that Randy kept on hand for visitors on the coffee table, followed it with two glasses, a bottle of pain medication, and a pair of scissors. The bandage and the towel were dropped on the carpet and, after shoving the coffee table back a few feet, Vaughn sat beside them.
"Planning on some surgery?" Randy asked, only half-joking.
Vaughn grabbed Randy's right ankle and tugged off Randy's boot, then did the same with the left. "The scissors are for your jeans," Vaughn said. "Just in case they don't want to come past that knee."
Randy lifted his head off the couch and glared. "You're going to cut my pants?" He looked down at his jeans, back up at Vaughn, then down and up again. "I don't think so!"
"Well..." Vaughn let the word hang for a second and then shook his head. "I guess that might depend on which way you let me get into them."
Randy tilted his head. "I have no idea what you mean."
Color began to rise in Vaughn's cheeks—color that Randy was pretty sure had nothing to do with the heat from the woodstove.
"I mean they're jeans," Vaughn said. "I'm not going to be able to pull them up from your ankles. Especially if your knee is swelling up, which I can tell just from looking that it's already doing. Now I get it if you don't want me..." He waved a hand at Randy's crotch. "You know, trying to get you out of them completely. But then I'm going to need to cut up the seam."
Randy lifted an eyebrow. "Excuse me, Mr. O'Connell, but are you trying to get me out of my pants?"
"Apparently I am." Vaughn smiled. It was a nervous, cautious smile, but it was still a smile.
"And plying me with my own alcohol." Randy clucked his tongue against his lips. "You cad."
Vaughn snorted. "The fact that I am a cad has never been in question, I'm sure." He pointed at the scissors. "So?"
"All right, all right." Randy widened his eyes and reached for the fastening of his pants. "Would a little foreplay kill you?"
He didn't manage to pull a smile that time. He didn't even succeed in drawing Vaughn's eyes. Instead, Vaughn pic
ked up the bandage and began to unwind it, making an elaborate show of concentrating. Randy worked his button free, unzipped, and did his best to wiggle the denim down without moving his leg. It worked for all of two seconds, and then Randy's reflexes jumped in to remind him that all he had to do was brace with both feet and lift his hips. He felt the grind in his knee more than he heard it, and nausea threatened to knock him senseless.
"Okay, okay. Lie back. Leave it."
It took several words for Randy to realize Vaughn was talking to him. It took him several more to release the grip he had on his jeans when he understood that Vaughn's patting hands were actually Vaughn trying to unwind his fingers.
"What?" Randy spit out. Except that wasn't what he had meant to say, was it? Maybe "who?" Or "why?"
"Take a breath," Vaughn said. "You blacked out on me a bit."
Randy stared at Vaughn, trying desperately to put emotion into what he knew had to be a blank expression. "No. No, I didn't. It's not even that bad."
"It's just shock. It does funny things to a mind." Vaughn tapped his temple. "But I have to see how serious this is, all right?" He secured both of Randy's hands and held them against the couch. "And as much as it may suck to get them off, trust me when I tell you that it's definitely going to feel a hell of a lot better without those pants on."
Vaughn took a breath, slipped each hand into the sides of Randy's jeans, and focused on a spot somewhere to the right of Randy's head. "Don't lift," Vaughn said. "Let me."
In the time it took for one word to become four, Vaughn's tone deepened. It wasn't just his voice, though. It was his expression, his body language, and the pressure of his hands. He pulled Randy's jeans back and down with the kind of caution most people saved for unwrapping crystal. His cheeks flushed, and while a skeptical man might have suggested that was from effort, Randy was granted the added bonus of feeling Vaughn's fingertips lingering on his skin, and seeing the way Vaughn's chest started to work for extra breath.
Hunger began to rise in Randy's guts, and as Vaughn cautiously maneuvered stiff, wet fabric off of Randy's legs, Randy's cock was already making sure that they both knew what it was thinking about. Vaughn didn't even look surprised when he sat back up and saw Randy's growing erection. On the contrary, it was the first thing he stared at, and then he didn't stop looking. Vaughn traced the inside of Randy's leg from ankle to thigh with his palm. With a feather's touch, Vaughn's other hand traced the seam between Randy's leg and his briefs.
Either bravery or hope convinced Randy to lift his hand and grab Vaughn's. As he dragged it up and over the cotton, the muscles in Vaughn's shoulders and jaws became rocks of tension. When he wrapped his palm over Vaughn's knuckles and encouraged Vaughn to squeeze his thickening cock, Vaughn's breath hitched so hard that he thought Vaughn might pass out.
"Jesus Christ, Randy," Vaughn whispered. He squeezed again, this time of his own accord. "How do you keep doing this to me?"
Randy shook his head. "I don't know. But when you figure it out, let me know, will you?" When Vaughn looked up, Randy held Vaughn's gaze with a smile. "You know, so I can keep doing it when you suddenly lose your mind on me and insist that you hate my guts."
Vaughn pulled himself up so quickly that Randy flinched. "I never said I hated you. Never. Not one time."
Randy shrugged, trying to appear cool even though his heart was beating a tune akin to the Flight of the Bumblebee. "Sometimes you don't have to say things to mean them. And sometimes you say them even if you don't use those exact words."
"I don't hate you." Vaughn shook his head. "Sometimes I wish I did."
"Why?" The question came out quiet and rushed. Desperate. "What have I done?"
Vaughn's eyebrow rose and he tried to eke out a smile. "Well, obviously you made me like you. Aren't you just the rotten bastard, hmm?"
Randy reached out and laid his palm against Vaughn's cheek and jaw. "Are you really that afraid of being found out?"
His body seemed to melt into the couch when Vaughn closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.
"If I told you that the answer to that was yes, you'd mistake what it is I'm telling you," Vaughn murmured.
"Then explain it."
Vaughn shook his head. "I can't."
"Because?"
"Because..." Vaughn opened his eyes, leaned forward and brushed Randy's lips. "Life sucks."
"I could help you—"
Randy never got the chance to finish. Vaughn swallowed Randy's comment with a kiss that was so deep that it threatened to steal the breath from Randy's lungs. Then Vaughn's hand was moving over his cock again—stroking, squeezing, tracing, and insisting that was as good a place as any to leave the conversation. Randy chased Vaughn's lips when they left his mouth, but left off when Vaughn began to trace a thin, wet path down Randy's chin with his tongue. As if to mark a place in the journey, Vaughn planted a kiss first on Randy's chin, and then just underneath it. They were followed by a line of nips down Randy's neck that straddled the line between sharp and sensual beautifully.
"Don't move." Vaughn spoke the demand against the hollow of Randy's throat. "If I see you tense that leg even one time, I'm stop—"
"Don't stop!" Randy huffed his plea around a rush of breath. He had no idea what Vaughn's intention was, but he already knew what that look in Vaughn's eyes meant. And suddenly none of the rest of the Vaughn experience mattered. So what if the man was crazy. He couldn't care less about Vaughn's family dynamics or any long-term plans. Wolf was too cold, too lonely, too far away from normal life to turn down a chance to feel somebody else's touch. People made sex dates all the time. The term 'friends with benefits' had been coined for a reason.
Vaughn slipped his left hand up Randy's side, causing gooseflesh to rise. While Vaughn's mouth continued the path he'd started down Randy's neck—using tongue, teeth, and lips on Randy's sternum in a pattern that was impossible for Randy to figure out—his rising hand sought out and caught Randy's nipple.
Such amazing hands... Randy's eyelids dropped, and he rocked his hips into Vaughn's moving right hand. In a heartbeat, Randy's voice rose from a groan to a gasp: Vaughn had clamped his teeth into the skin over Randy's ribcage in a sharp, startling bite. Randy sought out Vaughn's gaze, and when their eyes met, Vaughn released his skin with a kiss and a smile.
"I told you not to move, Shield Wolf."
There was a low snarl in Vaughn's voice that was belied not only by the playful glint in his eyes, but also by the increased intensity of his stroke.
"T-take them off," Randy stammered. "You tell me not to move and then you drive me crazy. That hardly seems fair."
"What? These?" Vaughn lifted his eyebrows and dipped his hand past the waistband of Randy's underwear. He dragged rough fingertips over the slippery fluid that coated the head of Randy's cock.
A stream of raging, reason-stealing need washed through Randy's blood and he slammed the back of his head into the cushions of the couch. "You... fuck..."
As if Vaughn felt the sensation at the same time, Vaughn growled, leaned forward, and rested his forehead on Randy's stomach. He lay there and panted hot butterflies of breath on Randy's abdomen, while his fingertips continued to twist, swipe, and tease the head of Randy's cock. A little voice flared in Randy's head: Not just touching. Not just tasting. He's breathing me in.
It was a thought that made the mad desperation in his body that much stronger. "Vaughn..."
Vaughn turned his head, but not in the direction of Randy's voice. Instead, with his cheek on Randy's stomach and his breath racing down Randy's groin, Vaughn seemed to be watching the game his hand was playing with Randy's dick. He flicked his thumb and granted freedom to the tip of Randy's cock. He pushed his hand down, underneath the cloth and around Randy's cock at the same time, and then angled his fist to draw Randy's cock upright. Randy's briefs slid down his shaft.
Randy told himself that the sound that fell out of his mouth was a groan and not a whine. Then he reminded himself that he'd supposedly left
his lying days behind him when he'd abandoned his career. He chuckled out loud, not even sure where his head had found a thought like that a moment like this.
"Funny?" Vaughn asked. He sounded tense and tight.
Randy shook his head. His heart beat in time to the pulse he felt from Vaughn's palm, and it made him far too gleeful to realize that Vaughn was just as affected by him as he was by Vaughn. You can run, Vaughn... but you can't hide from something like this. It's not going to let you.
He felt Vaughn move lower, but his brain refused to give that move an explanation. Even when he felt Vaughn's tongue slide up the side of his shaft, Randy denied the idea that Vaughn's mouth could possibly be on him. But when Vaughn's lips settled over the end of him and crowned Randy's cock with wet heat, Randy just about let go right then and there.
"Oh! Holy fucking—" Randy swallowed hard and stared at the ceiling, silently berating himself. Don't look down. Don't you fucking look down. It will be too much to stand.
Vaughn didn't respond verbally, but he did let Randy's cock slide out from between his lips, and then fall back down on it. As if easing into the practice, Vaughn didn't stop at just the tip. He took another inch, and an experimental suck that felt to Randy like it was going to draw the come right out of him.
"Oh, fuck, Vaughn..." Both of Randy's hands dropped to Vaughn's head and dug into Vaughn's hair. "Just like that," he whispered. "That's perfect just like that."
It wasn't. It didn't matter. Vaughn was doing it, and that made it perfect enough. Better still, the praise seemed to encourage greater effort. The catch and hitch of Vaughn's unpracticed throat as Vaughn sought to give him depth was ridiculously hot, even though Randy managed to curb the impulse to pull Vaughn's head closer and start gasping lines best saved for porn. Besides, enthusiasm helped offset inexperience, and if the sounds rumbling up Vaughn's throat were any indication, Vaughn was definitely eager.
