“She’s a bitch,” Ezra said grumpily, and growled when Jesse ruffled his hair. “Are you seeing Amanda on Monday?”
Amanda was Jesse’s counsellor. He had been reluctant, but if seeing a counsellor was the price to pay to keep Ezra, he’d go every week until the day he died. And she wasn’t that bad. Nosy, but he supposed that was in the job description. And far too keen on exploring his acceptance of being gay, even though Jesse had pretty much bypassed the entire gay crisis and had enthusiastically explored every facet of his sexuality during his teenage years.
“Ten o’clock,” he grumbled, and Ezra laughed, reaching up to squeeze his hand.
“She’s doing you good,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Mm,” Ezra toyed with his fingertips, and smiled. “You don’t look at me like I’m a mirage anymore.”
“A what?”
“A vision.”
“But you are.”
“An imaginary vision, Jesse. Like I’m going to pop and disappear,” Ezra rolled his eyes. “God, you’re thick.”
The remark didn’t sting. It didn’t even so much as twinge. Perhaps Amanda really was helping. Jesse smiled and bent to kiss him quickly while Mo was preoccupied, and had stepped back by the time the spotty youth reappeared with their order.
Jesse swung the bag by the handle and offered his elbow as they returned to the street. Ezra tucked his fingers into the crook, lightly brushing the hairs on Jesse’s inner arm, and made some caustic remark about being an old lady with her walking stick. Jesse simply watched the play of dying sunlight in his hair and considered the beauty of him. And yet, he didn’t feel lucky anymore. Not so specifically. Oh, he felt lucky about how his life had turned out, but not—not so specifically about having Ezra.
He needed Ezra—but Ezra needed him too, to offer an elbow and laugh at his remarks and love him, and Jesse did all of it and more.
“I don’t want to go back to the flat tonight,” Jesse said as they crossed the main road, the bottom of Ezra’s crutch making a wet schluck every time he prised it off the sticky road surfacing. “Can I stay over?”
“You’ve stayed over every night for two weeks.”
“Yeah, but it’s nicer at your house.”
“Why?”
“You’re here. And when you’re grumpy, I can cuddle Kitsa. There’s nobody to hug at my flat.”
It wasn’t even home anymore. Ezra’s house was home. The flat was just a flat.
“I should bloody well hope not,” Ezra grumbled, wincing as they paused at the gate for Jesse to unlatch it. Kitsa was still sitting on the fence and eyed the bag hopefully.
“Hold that,” Jesse said, passing the bag while he unlocked the front door. Ezra made a questioning noise, and Jesse stooped to slide both arms around Ezra’s hips and lift him bodily into the air.
“Fucking hell, Jess!” Ezra yelped, dropping the crutch with a loud clatter and clinging to Jesse’s shoulders, caught off guard. “What the hell are you playing at?!”
“Weightlifting.” Jesse grinned up at him, and Ezra raised his eyebrows imperiously.
“You saying I’m fat?”
“Nooooo,” Jesse said, carrying him into the living room. Ezra huffed. “Fine. I can’t keep my hands off you, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am,” Jesse said and let Ezra slide down his body until his mouth was within kissing range. Ezra arched his back, keeping his face just a little too high, until Jesse persuaded him down with plucking kisses to his neck and jaw. Then Ezra finally gave in, dropping the chippie bag on the sofa and wrapping both arms around Jesse’s neck and shoulders. Jesse kept a firm hold even as Ezra determinedly attempted to destroy his remaining brain cells. Or suck them out via his mouth. Whichever.
“Missed you today,” Ezra murmured into his mouth. Jesse smiled and squeezed his hands until Ezra’s breath hiccupped. “Bastard.”
“Love you too, sweetheart,” Jesse scoffed, and shifted his hold into a bridal carry before lowering Ezra gingerly to the sofa. Ezra winced and settled himself, rubbing at his shin and grumbling. Jesse fetched the painkillers, poured the fish and chips onto plates and came back with the peace offering held aloft like a treasure.
“Marry me,” Ezra said, and knocked both pills back like an addict.
“Maybe when you won’t need a properly accessorised crutch to go with your tux,” Jesse quipped, and Ezra poked him in the ribs. “You never said I could stay the night.”
“What do I get if you do?”
“Cuddles.”
Ezra pointedly eyed the hand Jesse had dropped onto his knee. “I have cats to cuddle,” he said flatly when Jesse simply blinked at him.
“Um, better cuddles?”
“Debatable. You don’t purr.”
“Oh, please.”
“You don’t.”
“Fine.” Jesse walked the hand a little higher. “A massage to get all the kinks out.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Even the ones that turn up during the massage?”
“Especially those ones.”
“Fine,” Ezra said, tucking himself into Jesse’s shoulder and blinking wide, innocent dark eyes up at Jesse. He pouted deliberately and Jesse kissed it away. “Deal, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Depends how good this massage is.”
Jesse laughed, transferred his hand from Ezra’s thigh to his waist, hugging him tightly. Both cats had come investigating in the hope of scamming—Flopsy some fish and Kitsa a chip, because Kitsa was the most ludicrous excuse for a cat Jesse had ever seen. It was comfortable and easy, sitting together on Ezra’s sofa and throwing chips for Kitsa. The dying sun streaked shadows across the little room, and Ezra’s hair made the slow slide from white-hot liquid iron to a gentle, burnished gold. Jesse wanted to be startled by how simply happy he felt, and yet he wasn’t. It was the happiness that had been waiting while he’d tried to get over himself.
It was a happiness that couldn’t be contained, and the moment that Ezra leaned forward to put his empty plate on the coffee table, Jesse caught at him, leaning over him to press a kiss into the opposite side of his neck, and work his way steadily down until he found, at the corner of Ezra’s T-shirt, the scar from the crash that had killed his father. He kissed it reverently, then abandoned it in favour of mouthing at Ezra’s throat until the strong pulse in the jugular began to pick up and Ezra’s fingers were combing through his hair in time to breathy sighs.
“Skipping the massage, are we?” he murmured softly, and Jesse tugged on his earlobe with his teeth.
“Come upstairs,” he breathed.
Ezra simply slid his arms around Jesse’s shoulders in invitation, and Jesse wriggled off the sofa and hefted Ezra back into his arms with minimal effort. He had lost weight in the hospital that he hadn’t yet regained, but the fire was still burning beneath his skin. Jesse thumbed the jut of hip as he carried his prize towards the stairs, and Ezra’s tongue lapped at his ear in a flickering, evil tease.
Dropping him to the bed, Jesse snapped open his shorts and peeled them off effortlessly, sliding his hands down one exposed leg and bending to kiss the scars as they passed under the crumpled fabric. Two on the thigh, four or five around the knee, countless tiny puckers and hollows in the skin of the shin, and a savage white slash above the knee, testimony to where Ezra’s car keys had gone in the midst of the chaos. Once the shorts were gone, Jesse dropped his own and kissed his way back up, sucking wet bruises into skin until he returned to Ezra’s chest and pushed up his T-shirt to find his two favourite spots on that lean chest.
“Oh, shove off,” Ezra whispered breathlessly, and pushed him off long enough to shed the shirt, drawing Jesse back down with a kiss that was more pornographic than sweet, and made Jesse’s hands briefly forget what they were doing. “Too far away.”
Jesse obediently shucked his own shirt before settling
bodily over Ezra and paying homage to his chest. Ezra’s leg was shifting restlessly, the foot sliding up Jesse’s thigh and down again in sporadic bursts, but Jesse ignored it. And when Ezra tried to tug him up for another kiss, Jesse pinned his wrists to the mattress under his own hands and carried on. He might leave bruises, but Ezra’s breathless squirm and vague blasphemy said he didn’t mind too much.
“Jess—”
“What do you want?” Jesse coaxed, sucking on the jutting hip and letting go of those wrists to slide his hands down to the waistband of Ezra’s boxers.
“Everything,” Ezra murmured, tangling his fingers in Jesse’s hair, but not pulling. Yet. “Come on, Jess.”
Jess mouthed briefly at the front of Ezra’s underwear before sliding it off. Ezra kicked it free, grimacing at the sharp motion, but when Jesse paused in sudden concern, made a strange hissing noise and dragged him up by the hair for another kiss.
“Ez, if you’re—”
“Jess,” Ezra breathed wetly into his mouth. “I have been more than patient. I am happy to let you fucking wait on me hand and foot and carry me round on a pillow tomorrow, but for God’s sake, right now, I want you. You asked what I want, and I want you to fuck me. So bloody well do it.”
Jesse laughed, reaching for the bedside table, and fumbled blindly in the drawer while Ezra held his head trapped and bit down on his earlobe until his blood didn’t know where to go or what to do. “I fucking love you, you know,” he said breathlessly, finally shedding his own underwear and rolling his hips up into Ezra’s until the litany of quiet swearing and passive-aggressive threats was broken by a shuddery breath.
“Prove it,” Ezra breathed, and Jesse pushed at his hip.
“Turn over,” he whispered.
He offered the promised massage, one hand kneading at Ezra’s thigh in deep, rhythmic circles, the other working him open, slick with lubricant and shaky with the urge to just go for it already. Ezra had a long, lithe back with a valley for a spine, and Jesse occupied that valley with his tongue, mapping August-induced freckles and nipping at the rolling shapes of his shoulder blades as Ezra squirmed and swore at him, inhaled in bursts and exhaled in shivers. When he reached back and seized the hand at his thigh, Jesse knew he’d gone far enough, and he pressed in and forward until they were chest to back and he could feel Ezra’s shallow, rapid breaths pushing against his ribs.
“Okay?” he asked, tangling their fingers together.
“Oh my God, move,” Ezra gasped, eyes closed and hair askew on the pillow. “Move, Jess!”
Jesse moved, and those first sparks of an electrical storm overrode any concern he felt, any hesitation, any caution. He groaned into the nape of Ezra’s neck and picked up a rhythm, losing himself in the tight grip and the salt on Ezra’s damp skin, the weight of him in Jesse’s hand when he wormed it between Ezra’s hips and the mattress and wrapped his fingers around him firmly, the searing heat and the muted groans of pleasure and want. Pure, unadulterated, unseemly want.
It had been too long, and Jesse’s emotions were too close to the surface, for it to last long. All too soon, the tsunami hit the shore and, for a brief moment, Jesse felt nothing but white-hot, mindless pleasure, crashing out of him like a storm, and leaving everything in a perfect, peaceful glow once he came back to himself.
“I love you,” he whispered into one exposed ear, stroking clumsy fingers through the damp hair surrounding it, and pulled free gingerly, kissing Ezra’s shoulder at the groan it elicited. “I’ll be right back, baby.”
When he returned with a flannel, Ezra barely let him clean them up before tossing the cloth aside and trapping Jesse’s arm around him, dragging him down into the crumpled sheets and obstinately ignoring the wet spot.
“Just stay here,” he mumbled, and burrowed back into Jesse’s body when Jesse reached down to massage the too-tight thigh again. “Leave it.”
Jesse ignored him, kissing his shoulder and feeling completely at peace with his world right at that moment. What could be more perfect than this? Than lying tangled up with Ezra, pleasantly exhausted and too warm, fingers twisted together at Ezra’s chest and the muscle of his thigh slowly giving way under Jesse’s questing palm.
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
Ezra squeezed his fingers tightly.
Jesse squeezed back. “I know,” he murmured, and kissed his neck.
* * * *
Jesse woke when the sun bled through the weak cotton masquerading as curtains. It poked idly around his head for a while before slithering across the cheap sheets and burning Ezra’s fair hair into a brilliant straw-yellow, leaving Jesse blinking sleepily at the fluffy nest and carding his fingers through the clumps above a hidden ear, teasing the knots out as gently as possible. He could feel Ezra’s heat in the idle pulse behind his ear, feel the murmur of blood beneath the thin skin at his temple, and feel his breathing pushing lazily at Jesse’s arm where he had it locked around strong ribs.
The sheets were tangled around their legs in a messy cluster, and were probably why Ezra hadn’t woken up complaining of feeling trapped yet from Jesse’s smothering hug. There were bruises in the shapes of Jesse’s fingers blooming darkly against the narrow bones of Ezra’s hips. A black and purple imprint of Jesse’s dental work was stark against his collarbone, drowning out the tiny freckles that had been the result of sitting in the garden for nearly a month. His mouth still looked blood-full and swollen, and Jesse couldn’t quite tell if his own brain was just tired and pleased, or whether some of the afterglow had carried over through the night.
Jesse tightened his arm and kissed a bare shoulder, pulling Ezra into him more fully, and absorbing the shift and the murmur. When the murmur turned into a groan, he kissed the bruised neck, then Ezra was twisting in his grip, his yoga meaning that his chest met Jesse’s before his hips even began to turn, and he was moulding himself into Jesse’s front, a slender arm curling around his waist, his nose pressing into Jesse’s jugular in a way that let Jesse feel his voice rather than simply hear it.
“It’s too bright.”
His hair, soft and wavy from the lack of mousse or spray, brushed against Jesse’s chin. Jesse dragged a hand up to play with it, bending his head to kiss the hot scalp beneath when Ezra let out a contented hum. “If you were a cat, you’d be purring right now.”
“Mm. Damn right.”
Jesse stroked the palm of his hand down Ezra’s arm. He’d left fingerprints there, too, just above the wrist. It was tough pinning down a yoga fanatic. But not all that much of a hardship. He untangled them enough to lean down and kiss the bruises, half in apology and half in a smug sense of ‘mine’, and Ezra’s hand was in his hair and he was being reeled back in for another kiss. It was stale, tainted by the night, but he didn’t care, and sank into it with a warm, idle sort of affection that had to be drugging Ezra too, by the way he simply let Jesse pour himself all over him and didn’t so much as twitch.
“I love you,” Ezra whispered into his mouth, and Jesse untangled the sheets without breaking the lazy, open kisses, peeling them away until nothing separated them at all and he could coast his hands over miles of freckled, flawless skin. “God, Jess, I love you. I love you, I love you—”
The night before had been quick and sudden, the want hitting Jesse like a tonne of bricks and leaving him mindless in the face of it. This was slow, languid and relaxed, lost in a multitude of kisses and stroking touches that were at once fleeting and lingering. Jesse didn’t so much burn with need as swell with want. He wanted, so intensely that it was everything, and yet so idly that it was like the incoming tide, inevitable and natural, expected like sunrise in the east. He buried his face in Ezra’s neck when he felt the roll and whispering, shuttered gasp that told all, and the rush of heat between them, and he mouthed his own love when he came with scattered thoughts and the brief white-out of nothing that brought the tide crashing down.
“You’re everything,” he whispered to Ezra’s jaw, brushing his mouth up hi
s sweat-damp skin and wild hair to kiss his temple. “Everything,” he repeated, even as he pulled them slowly apart, wanting to stay but needing to go.
Ezra reached and caught his hair, dragging him back into a soul-destroying kiss. “Later,” he commanded, tugging the sheets up. “Let’s take the morning.”
“Shower.”
“Later,” Ezra whispered, and his word was Jesse’s quiet command.
This was enough. This had always, always been enough.
Want to see more from this author? Here’s a taster for you to enjoy!
Best Behaviour
Matthew J. Metzger
Excerpt
By the time Jim swallowed his pride, he was standing on the pavement with three bin bags and an overgrown spider plant.
“Can you come over?” he asked. “I need your help.” Then he hung up.
Sarah rang back, of course, but Jim didn’t answer. He just sat down on one of the bags, put the plant down next to his boot and leaned back against the railings.
Fuck.
That was the only thing that came to mind. Fuck. How the fuck had he ended up—well, no, he knew exactly how he’d ended up like this. Stupidity and pride and a whole host of other things that weren’t all that flattering. And yet, even as he combed through them all in his head, he’d not change any of them. So, what did that make him?
At least it wasn’t raining.
Stretching out his legs in front of him, Jim examined his tatty boots and absently wondered if he ought to try building sites. But even they needed certificates and shit these days. Only thing Jim knew how to do was put boxes on shelves and say, “Would you like fries with that?”
And even the places that sold fries didn’t want him.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried. They’d known for months that the warehouse was going to fold eventually, and he’d been looking for other work. But everywhere asked for qualifications. And the places that didn’t took one look at his history—specifically that weird little gap after that night with the car—and told him to get packing.
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