"Responsibility should be scary." He went on, "I'm terrified of having kids. And so's Lisa. We're both sure we'd end up dropping the thing on its head, and neither of us likes them very much."
I whistled low. Brave words—braver than mine. "So don't have them."
"We're talking about it. It seems kind of stupid. We got married mostly to please our parents, because we're supposed to have babies. Now we're together, we're kind of united against them all."
Yeah, looked like it was working out just fine. "Wow. Hardcore awesome."
"Jeez, I never said that to anyone else."
"I know, right? Feels good."
"Really good. Anyhow, who says you have to be a goddamn superhero? And who says I have to pass on this power to some poor kid who never asked for a crappy dad? Hell, talking about it makes me realize how I'd actually be an awful human being to go along with it."
"In your case, yeah, why screw up some kid? But mine's completely selfish. I just don't want to hate who I am."
He raised his full glass again. "I think we're all working on that, man."
*~*~*
Lisa gave us hell about being drunk when she came to get Billy. Then she sat down and drank enough vodka and tonic to sink a small ship, and the three of us talked shit until it was time for them to stagger down the street and me to hop into a cab, seeing as we were responsible adults with real jobs.
I knew very few things when I came into the office Monday morning, but I knew them for sure. The first was that Kellan was still pissed, because he had yet to reply to any of my texts, let alone call me back. The second was that though the success of our relationship depended on factors partly out of my control, I wasn't letting him go without a fight. The third was that my mother was getting antsy, as she sent me a text on Sunday night to which I replied, will call this week. Love you.
One problem at a time, but I intended to line them up and knock them over.
I don't know how he did it, but Kellan managed to avoid me until almost lunchtime. When I finally ran into him, it was on the stairs between our floor and the one above, where the big conference room was. Lance and Sarah and a bunch of other implementation consultants came flooding down. Having noticed and commented on my state of distress earlier in the day, Sarah stopped, grabbed my hand, and nodded upward. Sure enough, Kellan trailed behind the rest, his face buried in a tiny notebook and a pen hanging out of his mouth.
Since I hadn't seen him for a few days, which was just enough time to forget the effect he had on me, I stalled out. Fuck, he was…so…just…
She squeezed my hand and left, closing the stairwell door behind her. He kept coming down, oblivious, and when he got within four steps of me, I finally found my voice. "Kellan."
He froze, back foot still on the step above him, and blinked as if I might be a mirage. Or a nightmare. He chewed his pen cap and tucked the notebook under his arm. He made as if to push his glasses up, but he was wearing contacts, so he ended up poking his nose and then staring all wide-eyed.
Electricity surged in my belly. I wrestled it down but had enough presence of mind to enjoy the thrill of it. Enjoy the moment. Live in hope and all that. "I've been trying to call."
"I know." He took the pen out of his mouth and stuffed it into his shirt pocket. He chewed on his lip instead.
"Please, let me explain."
He opened his mouth, the bottom lip almost red from abuse. Nothing came out.
I took one step up so I was nearer to looking him in the eye. "I mean, there's no excuse, but there is an explanation." What little of it I could give him.
Not now, maybe. But some day. He'll forgive you when he understands.
He has to.
Just like that, he deflated, leaning against the railing and chewing on his nails. "This weekend sucked."
"Apart from Friday night."
He looked down at his fingers. I took one more step and grabbed his free hand. He started but allowed it.
"Let's take a long lunch?" I suggested, increased hope propelling me forward. I stepped up again, this time on the level with him.
He ran his thumb along the edge of mine, down to the knuckle and back again.
Another surge of hope, and I moved nearer until I could smell that mint gum and shampoo and Kellan scent. "Please. Just to talk."
He pulled his fingers out of his mouth. "I didn't pick up the phone, because I wanted to be angry. It's easier."
At first, this was baffling. But then I considered, well, him. "I…think I actually understand."
"I don't know how to apologize." He swallowed visibly. His fingers weaved between mine. "But I need to. If there's any fucking thing I should understand, it's feeling like you can't tell your family anything that matters. So…"
The world was full of happiness and light; there were fucking angels singing in that stairwell. I wanted to run and scream and shoot lightning like a coked-up Greek god.
"Don't. You were right." But more than any of that, what I really wanted was to kiss him.
So I did. Just a little one, right there in the stairs, where anyone opening the fire door above or below would've had a first-rate view.
I hadn't felt that kind of relief, the leg-weakening, earth-shattering kind, in years. There was something unspoken—neither of us wanted to get carried away right then, and if we opened our mouths into it, we'd never stop. But all I needed were his lips against mine, that perfect demand-and-yield balance between us, to know that this was going to be okay.
Seemed a little melodramatic that I'd ever thought it might not be.
So I pulled back just enough to separate us and said, "Come on. I gotta buy someone a sandwich. Then let's go get a beer."
Chapter Seven
He slid into the same side of the booth as me once we got to the dark little Irish pub down the block, which I took to be a very good sign. I explained as much as I could without touching on superpowers, over a meal neither of us seemed interested in eating.
He already knew that it had just been me and my mom for as long as I could recall and that I had dropped out of med school after one year. He didn't know that the two were intertwined in my mind, so I started there. My great failure, my mother's attempts to spare my feelings and hide her disappointment. But when you've lived alone with someone as uncommunicative as her for so long, you know how they feel even when they pretend they don't, right?
Then I told him about our circle of family friends. He knew about the community spirit in which I and my "rich kid friends" had been raised, but he hadn't quite grasped the link between the two. I explained about the archaic practice of intermarriage—felt good to discuss it as disparagingly as I really wanted to, for once—and about Billy and Lisa. And then, finally, about Mae.
He'd maintained a look of disbelief almost the whole way through, but that finally pushed it over the edge. "Are you, like, the duke of Cleveland or something?"
"Heh. No." Though, now he mentioned it, it was a decent comparison. Noblesse oblige and all. "But the thing is that everyone in my mother's life knows about this. Including Mae's family. And they're all pretty much just expecting us to go along with it. So if I don't, my mom… It's not that these people won't be her friends anymore, but it's kind of a fuck-you to them."
"What kind of fucked-up country club is this?"
"Good description. Thing is, she's always juggling a million things, but she doesn't really have another person in her life. And I—" I faltered, hampered by my inability to open it up and put it on the table like I really wanted. The closest I could come was, "It sounds so pathetic, but I hate letting her down."
"No, I get it. I'd do anything for my mother." He paused, chewed at his lip, an inscrutable, stony look in place. "But let me just make sure I have this straight. You're twenty-eight years old and living a double life as an out gay man with your friends and a closeted mama's boy with her friends."
"Well, when you put it like that…"
"And she never figured this out befo
re?"
"I have no idea. We're kind of close. But—"
"But you have a monthly dinner appointment and a lot of crowded social events and otherwise behave like little Lord Jamie and the duchess of Monday?"
I shifted in my seat. "I guess it is kind of weird."
"That alone would be weird. On top of the double-life thing, it's straight fucked-up."
I flinched.
He grabbed my hand. "We're all fucked-up. You meet my family, you'll feel one hundred percent better about yours, believe me. That's why I should've been less shitty about it."
"No, it was stupid of me to lie about it. I didn't even expect her to believe it. I was just saying random things to make her go away so I could talk to her later." My face was still hot, but that was all right. It ought to be. "But that was the worst thing I could've said. The…I don't know, the commitment thing—that's important to you."
His hand tensed over mine. He looked away, took a long drink of his Guinness.
I squeezed him. "Don't be like that. I just mean that I figured you were feeling guilty about us at first because we weren't, you know, officially together."
He took his hand back and picked at his fries. "So you just wanted to be my boyfriend because you thought it'd save me a couple of Hail Mary's?"
"Shit, Kellan." I pulled at my hair and leaned back. Knowing why he did it sure as hell didn't make it sting any less. "Can we have a conversation without the boxing gloves?"
He stuffed a fry into his mouth.
I watched him chew, helpless. Bereft of all strategy, except the certain knowledge that anything but the truth would lose him, I said, "I guess when I say things while you have my dick in your hand, they hold less weight, but I meant it: if you were seeing someone else, I'd be scary jealous. That usually means it's time to make it official."
His jaw twitched. "That's what I thought, yeah."
"I know. And I'm sorry. I just panicked, and it won't happen again." That was all I had. I moved closer, willing him to look me in the eye.
He flicked me a sideways glance. "You talk to your mom?"
"No. I wanted to talk to you first. But I will."
"Not because of me."
"This never would've happened if I'd been honest with her from the start. But I'm going to talk to her now because of you, yes."
"Don't." He looked up. "I'm sorry for being a dick about it. Don't try and have that talk until you're ready. I'll never—"
"Kellan, she saw you naked in my apartment on a Saturday morning. I'm not telling her anything she doesn't know. I just need to lay it all out. I owe her that much. But you said something, like, whether she loves it or hates it, it doesn't change facts, right?"
He nodded.
"I want to be with you. I'll grow up if that's what it—"
He rolled his eyes, but one corner of his mouth was pulling up. "Knock it off, Shakespeare."
I grinned and leaned a little closer.
The other corner of his mouth pulled up, and he tilted his head like he'd kiss me. But then he stopped and said, "You sure you don't…?"
Okay, this talking thing was just going to get me into more trouble. I shifted to make up for the half-assed angle of his head and swept in. He kissed back with zero hesitation, mouth going soft. I slipped my fingers into the silky hair at the nape of his neck and held him close for a long second. A faint kissing sound as we parted, and I breathed into his lips, "Please forgive me."
"You know I forgive you, you dick." He kissed me again, this time opening my mouth under his, running his slick tongue over the connection between our lips, drawing me into him and resting his hot, strong hand against my thigh. He pulled back before I was ready, saying, "Shit, it's sort of a relief to know you're screwed up. For a while there, it was like trying to fuck an angel. Freaky."
I laughed and pressed in on him, pinning him against the tall wooden booth. He licked at the roof of my mouth and slipped his arm around my waist, holding me tight against him. I threw a leg over his lap and drank it up, my blood racing, my electricity singing. By the time the server dropped the check off—he disappeared fast enough after that—I was so hot, I couldn't imagine not getting him off right that very moment.
Not just because I wanted it, though. Also because I wanted to know he was mine. I wanted him to look at me like that, break down that awful, angry wall and feel him. Know for sure that it was okay.
I slipped my hand down his chest, down his stomach, and went right for his crotch. And goddamn—
He sat up straight, gasping into my mouth. "Ah, Jesus."
I scrambled for my wallet, yanked out some cash to throw at the check, and shoved Kellan out of the booth.
His lashes fluttered, heavy over glazed eyes. "The hell, Jamie?"
"Bathroom."
"What?"
I finally got him to his feet, where he adjusted to try to hide the press behind his fly without a lot of success. I stood, doing the same, and said, "You and me, in the bathroom, right now."
His mouth hung open.
Yeah. Exactly.
I dragged him through the lunch crowd and locked the bathroom door behind us, then put him against the wall, right next to the baby-changing station with the freaky cartoon koala. Even that couldn't slow me down. I started unbuttoning his shirt, trying not to tear it in the process.
He was already on mine too. He sighed out, "Jesus."
I leaned in and kissed him, barely leaving room for busy hands between us. "Did you miss me?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"Think of me?"
"Yeah." He finished with my shirt and tugged at it. I finished with his, and we both tore them off, tucking them into the metal railing behind his ass for safekeeping, ignoring under-tanks and starting on pants. He went on, "Three or four times, in particular."
My cock swelled again, a rush of blood and a jolt to the brain. "Was it good?"
He said, his face buried in my neck, "Only fun I had all weekend." Then he licked, sucked at the soft spot just beneath my jaw, sending goosebumps down my right side.
I thought of him sitting on his couch, jerking off and imagining, wishing for me on top of him, like the other night. The electricity wound low and tight in me, sparking and fizzling, building. I got his pants open, then hit my knees on the cold tile floor and yanked them down around his ankles. Oh God, his perfect package in those demure little briefs. Mouth watering, I kissed it, breathing hot and heavy on him through the soft, straining cotton.
He gripped the metal bar behind him and smothered a groan.
I opened my mouth, sucked carefully so as not to wet the fabric too much, then moved my mouth up, up, until I couldn't anymore, pushing up his undershirt to show a strip of flat belly. His dick moved, begging to be let out. I looked up again, caught his eyes, and said, "Show me."
Again, his eyelashes fluttered, sex and confusion in his expression.
I pulled his underwear down. His erection stood, the weight of it causing it to angle downward slightly, flushed and smooth and hard. Mine gave a twitch, still trapped in my shorts, and I leaned forward so bare inches remained between him and my mouth. I looked up again. "Come on. Show me, baby."
He almost took hold of his dick but stopped, this funny little half grin on his lips. "Um, are you seriously telling me to jerk off in your face?"
I don't know why—is there ever a real reason? I was so taken with the idea of him jerking off over me that I wanted, more than anything else in the world right then, to see it. "I'll help," I said. And to demonstrate, I licked my lips.
His whispers had gone rough now. "Goddamn, you are fucking—"
I licked the head of his cock, just the slightest application of my tongue against the slit of it, then up over the tip for a taste. Then I rolled it back into my mouth and looked up.
He blinked so slowly, it was more like shutting his eyes for a few seconds. His hand found his cock, wrapped tight around it, and stroked it a few times, like he wasn't sure how to operate the equipment.
/>
While I had no qualms about helping to service myself, I had yet to see him do more than the occasional self-grab or readjustment-fondle. The perpetual repression of Kellan coming out of the box—fuck, I was going to come in my shorts, and I had to wear them all goddamn day after this.
I licked him again, this time burying my face in the crook of his thigh to get at his balls. I sucked one into my mouth and felt him sigh, then fall into a more natural rhythm, still slow but tight and regular. I put my hands at his waist, drank in the feeling of his soft, warm skin, his hard muscles through my fingertips, my palms. Breathed the scent of his sweat and soap, tasted his skin, swallowed it down and went for more in another spot. Now his belly, now his inner thigh. Then, sitting back slightly, I situated myself to taste his cock again.
His hand slowed; his gaze fixed on me, on my lips an inch from the head. My mouth watered. I opened it, turned my head, and licked at him, this time tasting the salt of his precum and leaving him even wetter. His left hand went white-knuckled on the bar; his right sped up, readjusting so as not to interrupt the workings of my open mouth. He swallowed a groan.
All of it fed the electrical fire inside me, increased it to a fever pitch, made me almost as desperate to let go with a static charge as I went to grab my own cock and go at it. I reached for it, pushing frantically at my open pants and then the elastic of my shorts until I had it out.
"Oh fuck yeah," he whispered.
I looked up to find he'd readjusted his stance to see all the way down to my hand on my dick.
I held myself there, knowing that if I started too hard, I'd make a mess of his work pants before I could help it. So I contented myself with just touching it, toying with the wave of pleasure from the contact, the way it tried to swell further, until my vision swam.
He went tense, dribbling again, and I licked it off. Not long now. Part of me wanted to be perverse, for him to keep pumping that gorgeous cock in my face and not let me have it.
But part of me just wanted to feel him in me. So I opened my mouth for him and let out a deep breath.
Nobody's Hero Page 10