by J. P. Oliver
11
Lance couldn’t sleep.
Travis was a dead weight behind him, but then, why wouldn’t he be? He’d been tipsy, probably even halfway to drunk, from the time he’d walked in the door.
He shouldn’t have let Travis kiss him. He shouldn’t have let Travis do any of the things that he’d done...but he had, and he did. He’d just…wanted it so badly. He’d wanted to be with Travis, and he’d been standing there putting the food away for the poker night and thinking about his date, the one he’d said yes to, and the fact that Travis was probably picking someone up right now—
He’d almost texted Adam about it. Adam would be at Joe’s, because Luke was there, and he’d be able to see anything that went down. He hadn’t wanted to seem jealous or prying though. If Travis was going to pick someone up, it technically wasn’t any of Lance’s business. Travis had been a bit inconsiderate his first morning at the apartment, but he wasn’t going to bring someone back to Lance’s. He wasn’t that stupid. Honestly, Lance really had no right to say anything about it.
He’d thought about it though. Oh, he’d definitely thought about it.
And he’d thought, why shouldn’t he go on a date with someone else? Why shouldn’t he try and have some fun if Travis was going to?
It would be fine, really. Maybe he’d finally figure out what all those people were talking about when it came to dating. Maybe he’d finally get some romance in his life, the kind he’d always hoped for, but had thought was impossible. Tom seemed nice, and he’d been appreciative of Lance without being creepy or a player about it.
And then—then Travis had come home.
Drunk, obviously, Lance could taste it on him when Travis had kissed him. That had to have been the reason for the look on his face when he’d seen Lance in the kitchen. It was this bewildered look, like he’d never seen Lance before. It was kind of like the look that boys had in their eyes in the teen romance film where the girl comes down the stairs all dressed up in a ball gown with her hair done up, and the boy looks all starry-eyed… except Travis’s look had a lot more confusion in it.
Lance didn’t understand what Travis meant when he said that he was ‘having a moment,’ but he had to assume that it meant that Travis finally realized that Lance was a fairly attractive person with red blood and a working dick.
It would have been nice to have Travis also realize that Lance could be a proper romantic partner for him and, well, Lance should have said no. He should have pulled away. Travis was drunk. He was acting impulsively, and the right thing to do would have been to pull away and shove Travis into the shower, and sober him up.
Travis drank fairly regularly, so although he got tipsy, it took a lot to get him full-on drunk. A shower would sober him up nicely, and then Lance could just drag him into bed and shut down any awkward attempts at an apology before they could start. Then in the morning, everything would be normal. It would be fine.
But now—now he’d gone and done it.
He’d given in. But damn it, how was he supposed to resist? Travis was a damn good kisser. He knew what he was doing. It had been such a long time since Lance had been kissed at all, and certainly not the way that Travis did it. He kissed Lance like Lance was something… something precious, something wondrous, like he was taking his time with Lance.
All of Lance’s previous kisses had been hot, sure, but they’d had this tinge of eagerness to them, like the kissing was a prequel to the main event and his partner wanted to get to that main event as quickly as possible. Then, when he’d actually been in a relationship, kissing had been a boring thing. A hello, how are you peck and a goodbye peck. Making out was just a precursor to sex.
Travis, on the other hand, had kissed him as though he had realized that there was nothing else he would rather be doing.
Could anyone really blame Lance for going limp at all of that? His walking wet dream of ten plus years had just walked up to him and kissed the living daylights out of him. And then Travis had said—he’d said that—
Well, honestly, he hadn’t declared his love or anything...but he had admitted that he’d tried to pick a guy up and Travis hadn’t wanted him because he wanted Lance. It was something straight out of Lance’s guiltiest fantasies.
Lance dared any other man to have resisted something like that.
God, he could really see why Travis was able to get with so many guys. There were men who hopped from person to person because they looked good, but were just mediocre in bed. They had to keep moving, because partners weren’t going to come back after the so-so round of sex they’d had. Theoretically, Travis could be mediocre at sex and just manage to get by on looking so damn good. Not that Lance had ever thought that, but it was a possibility.
Well, last night had definitely blown that all to pieces. Travis was good, damn good, and Lance was going to be dreaming about this—and quite possibly jerking himself off to it in the shower—for a long time to come.
Travis’s voice, the way he’d talked to him, coaxed him, the way that he’d manhandled him and all but hauled Lance into his lap and gotten him off not once, but twice, teasing him and working him over until Lance felt like he was literally going to melt into the bed. He hadn’t ever felt that out of control or come that hard, not even with his long-term boyfriend in college. Travis knew exactly what he was doing, and he’d pretty much wrecked Lance for anyone else.
He’d wanted to protest afterwards. Travis had all but collapsed and Lance knew there was no kicking him out of bed, but… he really should have just gone to the couch and slept on the pullout or something. He should have left.
But he hadn’t. He’d been tired, and Travis had been tired, and clutching him like a gigantic teddy bear or something, and Lance just hadn’t wanted to resist.
Now he was lying awake though, Travis’s arm heavy and anchoring around his waist, and he couldn’t sleep.
He could get up now and clean them up and everything. Although there was the slight possibility that he was physically incapable of walking away after two orgasms. His legs felt a little like jelly. How the hell did Travis do this multiple times a week?
Because it was amazing, obviously. Ugh.
Lance wasn’t sure who had taken advantage of whom here. Travis was kind of drunk, and Lance had been wanting him for ages, and so in a way it was Lance taking advantage of Travis’s lowered inhibitions. On the other hand, however, Travis wasn’t letting Lance talk about it and was, whether he realized it or not, sleeping with a guy who had a massive crush on him.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
How could they face one another in the morning? It was morning, now, technically. Lance was pretty sure he’d dozed off right afterwards, overcome with exhaustion, and judging by the light underneath the curtains it was probably around, what, five in the morning or some shit like that. By this time, he’d been lying there for a good hour or so wondering if he should just change his name and move to another town...perhaps out of state.
Anger seized him. What right did Travis have to do something like this, anyway? He’d been just drunk enough to, what, get his inhibitions lowered and decide to fuck Lance, but he wasn’t smashed or anything. He was pretty damn coherent while he was getting Lance to come twice and whisper all that delicious filth in Lance’s ear. Had it not occurred to him at any point along the way to think about the emotional ramifications of this?
No, no, it probably hadn’t. When had Travis ever considered the emotional ramifications of anything? He got angry, so he got into a fight. He didn’t want to talk about something, so he didn’t. He wanted sex, so he went to a bar and flirted with someone instead of actually trying out a relationship.
All of these years, Travis had basically put Lance in the position of the boyfriend without even thinking about it or acknowledging all that Lance had done for him. Travis came to him for all his goddamn emotional support, came to him for help with his dad, and took him out to breakfast, and spent every spare second with him. Yet wh
en did he finally realize that Lance was someone he could also sleep with? Did he make him dinner, or talk to him about it or, whatever, get him a dozen roses?
Nope. He just got drunk and slept with him.
Fantastic. Real romantic.
Why shouldn’t Lance go out on a date with someone who actually looked at Lance and immediately saw boyfriend material? Someone who asked him out to dinner instead of putting him in the friendzone or fucking him?
Right. He was going to… try and sleep, try being the operative word here, and in the morning he was going to talk with Travis. Actually talk, for once, instead of just jumping to conclusions based on Travis’s facial expressions and doing all the heavy lifting while Travis got away with just hedging around a subject. Maybe, if they were calm about this, they could still salvage their friendship.
He’d just been hung up on Travis for too long, was the problem. He’d been Travis’s boyfriend in all but sex for years now, being there for him, doing all the work for him, and it was time to actually find someone who was going to give him all of that in return.
Yes, he and Travis were apparently amazingly sexually compatible, so the idea of the reality not living up to the fantasy was out the window. He couldn’t let this one-sided emotional support go on though. If Travis had liked him, realized that he really liked him, wouldn’t he have said that? But Travis had made it clear last night that he just was attracted to Lance, and he’d been drunk—God knew if Travis was going to adhere to any of this in the morning.
Or, later in the morning, anyway.
He’d probably apologize and want to backtrack over the whole thing. He was Travis. He was being his, well, ‘bad boy’ self...just doing what he always did.
It was time for Lance to move on.
He was satisfied with his decision… now if only he wasn’t still being effectively cuddled by Travis, he’d feel a little more dignified about it.
12
Travis woke up to find Lance passed out in his arms, dead to the world.
He grinned. He’d never have pegged himself to be the early bird out of the two of them, but he found it pretty damn adorable.
It took some careful maneuvering, but he was able to extricate himself and let Lance sleep on while he tiptoed over to the bathroom.
Maybe he’d have to coax Lance into sharing a shower with him at some point, but right now he just wanted to focus on getting clean so that he could get breakfast going before Lance woke up.
He was feeling… buoyant, like someone had filled him with helium or something ridiculous like that.
How could he never have thought of this before? How had it taken his dad, of all people, and a random guy at a bar, and stupid Matthew to help him see that Lance was the perfect solution? They were already best friends. Add incredible sex into the mix, how could they fail?
Travis had never slept with the same person more than once or twice, so that part might take some getting used to, but at least he knew that he would never get tired of sleeping with Lance. To get tired of sleeping with him, he’d have to be tired of Lance in general, and he was never going to get tired of that. He’d spent almost every day with the guy for over a decade. If he was going to get sick of him, then it would have already happened at some point.
Thank God that Lance actually kept well-stocked cupboards. There were eggs and bacon and all the rest for a hearty breakfast. It wasn’t one of Matthew’s concoctions but hey, bacon was bacon.
Travis was starting to think that Lance might sleep the day away when he finally staggered in from the bedroom. There were still circles under his eyes.
“Geez, I know you said it’s been a while, but did the sex really throw you for that bad of a loop?” Travis asked. He put some food on a plate and pushed it towards Lance.
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Lance replied. He offered no further explanation.
Did that mean no cuddling in the future? Not that Travis had been cuddling but. You know.
Lance stared down at his plate as though it had magically appeared in front of him. “Did you make me breakfast?”
“I’m eating some of it too,” Travis pointed out, indicating his own plate.
Lance’s eyes narrowed as he took in Travis’s plate. “That’s not one of your hangover breakfasts, is it?”
“I wasn’t that drunk,” Travis replied. “Thanks, by the way, for my surprise poker night. I’ll pretend to be surprised this evening.”
Lance was still looking at him suspiciously. No, not suspiciously—expectantly. “Uh-huh.”
“And don’t worry, I’ll clean up the mess,” Travis added, indicating the pans and utensils he’d used to make breakfast. He suspected he was going to be doing a lot more chores than before. Lance was not the kind of guy who’d let someone off the hook just because he was his boyfriend.
Although, Travis might be able to persuade him to, say, exchange chores for blowjobs. He grinned to himself.
Lance picked at his food. “You know, the funniest thing happened at the grocery store last night, while I was picking up the food.”
“Oh?” Travis finished scarfing down his omelet and went to put some more bacon in the pan. All the bacon he ate was going to give him clogged arteries or so Lance kept telling him, but fuck it. Travis was celebrating. “Did Mrs. Hotchkins mistake you for her dead husband again?”
“No. I got asked out.”
It was a good thing that Travis didn’t have any food in his mouth or he would have probably choked on it. His throat constricted painfully and it felt like his heart had skipped a beat.
Lance kept on, like he hadn’t even noticed. “It was the fire chief from your house fire, the one that I thought was flirting with me? I was right, he was, and he saw the sign that Matthew put up.”
“I should’ve waited for Matthew at the bar and made him take it down,” Travis growled. He was going to give that smug Southern son of a bitch a piece of his mind when he next saw him.
“He was really sweet about it,” Lance went on. “Tom, I mean. The fire chief.”
“Oh, he’s got a name now.” Fan-fucking-tastic.
“So he asked me out to dinner tonight and I said yes.”
Travis nearly splattered bacon grease all over himself, which, ow, and looked up at Lance. “You—what?”
“I said yes,” Lance replied, as if he was telling Travis that two plus two equaled four. “We exchanged numbers and everything.”
“Why are you telling me this?” So that he would be aware if he and Lance ran into this fire chief and it was awkward? So that Travis knew to go and break Matthew’s nose?
“Because I thought you might find it interesting?” Lance replied, like Travis was being deliberately obtuse. “Because you’re my friend and I’m assuming that you’d like to take an interest in my life?”
Travis just… just stared at him.
Lance wasn’t going to text or call the guy and tell him the whole thing was off? He was still going to go out with him?
Travis was pretty sure his heart wasn’t supposed to be beating this fast. Lance just stared at him, placidly chewing his food. Like he was unaware—but how could he be—that Travis was wondering if he was having a heart attack right here in the kitchen.
It was more than Travis could handle. A lot more.
He’d have thought that… well, it was Lance, wasn’t it? Lance, who needed to take time to get to know someone before he agreed to a coffee date. Lance, who was shy and had dragged Travis to his Philosophy 101 seminar in college just so Travis could sit next to him and confirm that yes, the guy two desks over was flirting with him. Lance, who was Travis’s best friend.
How could he have said yes to someone he didn’t know and had met only once before, briefly? And how could… how could Lance, of all people, who’d made his last boyfriend wait three months for sex, sleep with his own goddamn best friend and then act like it was nothing?
“Right,” Travis said. “I’m just going to…”
He d
idn’t know what he was doing or where he was going or even where that sentence ended. He just slid his shoes on and walked out the door.
13
Lance had no idea what the hell that had been.
Travis had looked like a freight train had hit him when Lance had said that he was going on a date that night. Lance had thought that maybe, for a moment, hope bubbling up in his chest…
But then, Travis had just fled the apartment.
What the hell?
He hadn’t even grabbed his cell phone, so Lance had no way of knowing where Travis was or what he was up to. He considered texting Jake or Luke to check and see if Travis was with one of them, but decided against it. If he told one of them that he didn’t know where Travis was, then they’d tell all the others, and soon everyone would be on a manhunt to find Travis. Lance always knew where Travis was and what he was up to. If he didn’t know, the others often joked, it’d be the goddamn apocalypse.
Then, of course, they’d all want to know why Lance didn’t know where Travis was, and they’d poke and prod and pry, and eventually get the full story out of him, and he just couldn’t deal with that nonsense.
Instead he just… went about his day and hoped that Travis would come back.
He didn’t.
Travis managed to stay out of the house all day. He didn’t even have his wallet with him—Lance found it in the pocket of his pants from the night before. He supposed that meant that at some point, Travis was with Matthew, because Matthew was a sucker raised with the idea of Southern hospitality and if you showed up at the back door of the café he’d let you sit in dry storage and would feed you something.
So, at least Travis was okay. If he wasn’t, Lance would have heard about it by now from someone, or Travis would have shown back up at the apartment looking worse for wear. Neither happened, so he had to be fine.
Didn’t quite stop Lance from worrying but, as he reminded himself in a stern pep talk in the mirror, he was not Travis’s boyfriend. Travis was not his responsibility. Travis was a grown-ass man and it was about time that Lance stopped playing babysitter and taking care of everything for Travis. God, even their friends thought of them as a unit and would ask Lance things about Travis, like what Travis’s work hours were and what his favorite kind of soup was.