Glass Tidings

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “I bet.”

  A feeling like being hypnotized by his own words had settled over Eddie now.

  “Bertie did this thing once where he sat behind me at a campfire and just . . . played with my hair.” Eddie’s face was hot. “Like, he was talking and singing and the whole time he had his hands in my hair, combing it with his fingers, and it felt really good. Like he wanted to touch me all the time, you know? Even when he wasn’t thinking about it.”

  He knew where he was sitting. When he’d slid away from the fire, he’d headed in Gray’s direction, mostly because every time he turned around these days, he was heading in Gray’s direction. Talking about Bertie, he’d leaned back and dropped his head to the side and the ends of his hair ought to be damn near resting on Gray’s knees by now.

  “I thought maybe that would be the kind of thing we’d do at home, when it was just the two of us. Bertie had told me how he had this fireplace he loved. That he’d made them install it when he bought his place. Of course, that was all bullshit. I mean, he had one, but I could see the first night that he’d never used it. It was dusty, but clean, you know? No ashes. No soot. And all Bertie wanted to do when he got high was talk about everything he was going to say to his parents when they finally came crawling back to him. He’s probably still making his friends listen to how he’s gonna tell them off. His parents, I mean.

  “They cut him off. Guess they were tired of waiting for him to grow up.” Eddie had always thought of himself as the least grown-up person ever. But he was a fucking rock star of maturity compared to Bertie. Mature, and stupid as hell. “I thought we were going to . . . I don’t know. Do stuff. Like, couple stuff, you know? Go out to dinner. Or . . . have Thanksgiving. I mean, I didn’t know any of his friends, but I thought maybe we’d make a turkey and have some people over.”

  Suddenly it was more than just a story, more than a debt he was paying by talking about this thing that hurt him. Because his chest was cracking open and pain cramped in his throat like that first night when he’d been screaming for help. For Lily Rose. For himself. Eddie wasn’t sure he knew the difference anymore.

  He was sitting at Gray’s feet and spilling words like blood on the floor, like begging. For a touch, for a word. And he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t wait for the next words to come out of Gray’s mouth, because they meant way too much, and Eddie didn’t let himself want words like that anymore.

  Scrambling to his feet, he knocked over his glass of wine and, while Gray jogged to the kitchen for a towel, Eddie escaped upstairs to his room.

  He sat on the bed with his duffel bag packed on the floor at his feet, the light from the street the only illumination as he ignored the soft knock on his door and Gray’s quiet words. He’d have to leave everything behind, which made him sick to consider. He couldn’t leave his torch. That beautiful glass. Gray in the lurch. And the garage door screeched like a murdered soul when he yanked it up and slid it back on its track. Between the noise and how much glass he’d ordered, running away was impossible. He told himself it was the glass and the equipment he’d miss the most, but he wasn’t fooled for a moment.

  Too many fucking emotions. He had more things than he could carry, and that was against the rules too. There were reasons for rules like that, reasons that protected him from sitting in the dark, chest aching at the idea of a loss he shouldn’t even be able to worry about.

  Pipes rattled at the flush of a toilet, water running in a sink. Quiet settled over the house like a quilt, and Eddie counted his breaths.

  One hundred exhales. Then one hundred more. And I’ll leave.

  He breathed so slowly he got light-headed.

  After counting to two hundred just in case, he stood up.

  Stepped over his bag, opened his door, and walked all the way down the hall until he stood outside the closed door to Gray’s room.

  He hadn’t been inside since that first day of wandering the house while Gray had been at the shop. He’d run his hands over the thick comforter, had poked at the pillows to see if they were firm or soft. Peeked in the closet and glanced in the medicine cabinet in the attached bathroom.

  Standing now on the other side of the door, he could picture all of those details, could smell the spiciness of the soap Gray had kept in his old-fashioned tub and shower. Eddie laid his palm flat against the door, the wood grain cool and smooth under his hand.

  He curled his hand into a fist, knuckles against the wood.

  Knocking was impossible.

  Entering without asking, less so.

  If Gray was asleep . . .

  Better not to imagine that. Waking him would’ve been even more impossible than knocking.

  But Gray wasn’t sleeping. The light from the hall reflected off his open eyes as he lay on his side, arm curled under his head, staring at the open doorway where Eddie stood, committed now.

  First though . . .

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He was done talking.

  Gray lifted himself onto his elbow, the comforter falling off his shoulder, revealing a bare arm and chest. “Okay.”

  “You know why I’m here.” Because he was too weak to leave. Because he needed.

  But more than anything, Eddie needed to be needed right back.

  “I don’t want you—” Gray paused, and Eddie’s face flamed in the dark.

  Fucking humiliating, this way. Coming to someone. He knew better. Make them come to him—make it be their idea—was practically his life’s motto.

  Gray had started speaking again. “I don’t want you to think you have to—”

  Not this again. Eddie was cutting that fucking thought off at the pass. “And I don’t want to be here with somebody I want to fuck who doesn’t want me at all. Because that’s just gonna make me feel like an asshole.”

  “You’re not an asshole.” Which could be read more than one way.

  “Because . . .” He was going to make Gray say it.

  “Because I do.”

  Eddie waited.

  “Want you.”

  At last. Fuck.

  He pushed the door shut behind himself, closing out the dim glow from the light in the hall that stayed on all night. Grayson flipped on a bedside light.

  “Scoot over,” Eddie commanded at the edge of the bed. “I have to be on the side closest to the door.”

  Gray slid back, pushing the covers down farther until he was bare from his naked hip up.

  Eddie locked gazes with him. “This isn’t anything. I’m not your perfect sexual match or love or anything.” He’d forced himself to skim those pages in the Delany book. No such thing.

  Gray’s sharp inhale sent a shiver up Eddie’s spine that made him bite his lip until it hurt. “Pretty sure you’re wrong.”

  He stripped off his T-shirt and sleep pants, letting them drop to the floor until he stood naked in the puddle of light from the nightstand lamp. He knew what Grayson would see. Too-thin arms and legs, a sparse spray of dark hairs around his nipples and in a skinny trail below his belly button.

  “You can pretend in the morning that you don’t want me, but in the dark . . .”

  “I won’t,” Gray said, interrupting him.

  “In the dark,” Eddie repeated, because if Gray wouldn’t, Eddie would, “we’ll both know what we really want.”

  One last look at Gray in the bed, memorizing the spill of sheets around his hips, the black and silver hair curling across his broad chest, the tilt of his shoulders and hips toward Eddie, as if he couldn’t stop himself from leaning closer.

  Eddie turned the bedside lamp off with the flick of a switch. It would be easier if he couldn’t see Gray’s face. Eddie was too good at reading what was written there, and he wanted to fool himself a little longer.

  To believe Gray wanted him there, in his shop, in his house, in his bed, for real. Not as a sympathy guest or a pity fuck, but because Gray saw something in Eddie that made him want. That made him need. That made Gray dig his blunt nails into his palms to ke
ep himself from reaching for Eddie whenever he was near.

  It was foolishness—foolishness that would burn like fire in Eddie’s cheeks if he admitted to it—but he needed to believe it.

  So, the darkness.

  He slid a knee onto the bed and let his weight dip the mattress. Even in the near-dark, Eddie could see Gray’s shift toward him as he rolled into their bodies’ collision with a sigh and questing hands.

  Before Gray could say a word, Eddie straddled him, legs spread wide over his hips because Gray wasn’t a small man. The stiff head of Gray’s dick poked at Eddie’s ass through the thin cotton of Gray’s shorts, and Eddie pushed back enough to feel it press between his cheeks.

  Without a word, he slid down Gray’s body, mouth open, breathing over the planes of Gray’s chest, the bumps of his ribs, the softness of his stomach. Eddie liked men whose bodies were lived in. Strong where they needed to be, but sometimes soft too, because who had time for gyms when there were lives to be lived? Men with big arms and a little cushion on their bellies made Eddie feel safe. Those men had enough to eat and plenty of work and both of those things had been un-fucking-certain in Eddie’s life for a very long time.

  Not these days. Not unless he got in one of his moods and blew off a job at a faire, leaving himself short on cash and nowhere to stay for a month or two, which admittedly, he’d done at least once a year when he’d first hit the road at sixteen.

  But most of the time, these days, Eddie was safe. And maybe that was why he’d fallen so easily for Bertie, who was skinny and polished, but with indolence instead of work. He’d chased something exotic and shiny only to find himself with a handful of tinsel and trash.

  Coming back to a man like Gray felt like coming home. The wide, heavy palm cradling his head as he mouthed his way to the base of Gray’s dick was a familiar warmth that pressed the tension out of his bones. He closed his eyes and sank into the meditation of taste and smell and the slip of skin, the hardness of Gray’s dick in his mouth. Musk and salt and heat making his mouth water.

  “Wait.” The big palm stopped cradling his skull, pushed at his shoulder instead. “Stop.”

  Eddie ignored the words. That was a Stop, I’m going to come warning if he’d ever heard one, and that was exactly what he was going for here.

  “Unh. Wait.” Another push at his shoulder, this one strong enough to lift him off Gray’s dick, the head popping out of his mouth with a sucking sound that made Gray shudder. “Gonna come.”

  “I know. That’s the goal.”

  “Jesus. You’re a pushy little shit.”

  He could hear the laughter in Gray’s voice as he hauled Eddie up with hands under his armpits until Eddie growled about pinching fingers and sat down on Gray’s stomach, rubbing under his arms and scowling. “That hurt.”

  “Tough.” But Gray’s hands rose up Eddie’s sides until they nudged his armpits, thumbs circling his skin soothingly.

  Gray’s belly was warm under Eddie’s butt, and he was tempted to lean forward and drag his dick across the rough hair and heat of Gray’s chest.

  He gave in to temptation.

  Gray wouldn’t stop talking. “I’m not looking for a blowjob while I lie here.”

  Eddie could feel the vibrations of Gray’s voice in his balls as it rumbled through the broad chest beneath him.

  “If this is happening, we’re both gonna go,” Gray’s voice insisted as his hands dropped to Eddie’s hips, fingertips dipping low in back to brush his crack.

  Jesus. The last thing Eddie wanted was a long conversation about who was gonna do what to who. He wanted to fuck, not have a negotiation about it.

  “Shut up,” he muttered and felt up Gray’s face to close his mouth with a hot palm. The time for talking was over. And Gray’s mouth could be doing other things. Speaking of . . .

  He pushed his fingers into Gray’s mouth, balls growing tight as Gray clamped down on them and sucked.

  Heat surged through his body. His skin should have been glowing with it, red like glass melting in the roar of a fire.

  He pulled his fingers from Gray’s mouth and pressed them into himself. Fast and hard and just barely slick enough, because gentle would break him.

  Gray’s cock was right there. He steadied it behind him, pushed down.

  “Jesus. You don’t have to—” Gray seemed to have lost the power of speech, but his hands in Eddie’s armpits again spoke volumes as he dragged Eddie off his dick, one hand reaching for a nightstand drawer. “I’ve got—”

  Gray couldn’t be nice to him. Not now.

  “Not a virgin.”

  “Not into pain, yours or mine.”

  So Eddie held himself still, on all fours, crouching over Gray’s chest as the man gloved up, then smeared lube on Eddie’s ass and his own dick, until time was fucking. Over. Up. Done.

  As soon as Gray’s fingers started pushing inside him, Eddie batted Gray’s hand away, grabbed that dick, and forced himself down on it, gritting his teeth and hissing out a slow breath.

  And it hurt. Of course it did. But it hurt in a way that made him feel real. And grounded. That anchored him to this man and this house, that pulled his soul from the road he’d been headed down and locked it back in his chest again.

  It hurt. Then it didn’t hurt much. And then it didn’t hurt at all.

  But somehow, when it stopped hurting was when he started to cry. In this oh-so-solid house, with this solid man, and the cold wind outside blowing from the north all the way down south to where the closest thing he had to a home waited for him.

  Only Eddie was entirely fucked, because this house was starting to feel like home now too, and that was just fucking stupid.

  With a wet face and a lock on his throat, he moved and Gray moved with him, driving every dark and twisting worry back into the dark. Gray beneath him and gripping him, hard hands on his hips, his thighs, his ass. Pulling him close with the slap of skin on skin, harsh breathing, until Eddie had to hold himself tight in his own hand to keep from shattering into a million pieces.

  And then he did. Blood roaring in his ears, in his toes, his pulse rocketing in his fingertips as he came in a rolling burst of heat. A surge of pleasure that rang him like a bell as Gray stiffened and groaned between his thighs, hips shoved hard against Eddie’s ass.

  Eddie lurched to one side, the one closer to the door, and caught himself with a hand at Gray’s shoulder. Heat radiated off Gray’s body like a torch, and Eddie wanted to let himself melt to fit every inch of this man.

  He rolled off Gray and reached for the edge of the bed to pull himself up.

  Gray wrapped an arm around his stomach and tugged him close until Eddie’s back was pressed against his chest.

  “Wait.” Sleepy words muffled against the sweaty skin at Eddie’s nape. A hand at his hip. “Stay.”

  He shook his head. No. Staying wasn’t part of the deal.

  But he could wait.

  He could let his breathing drift in sync with Gray’s. Imagine he felt the slowing of Gray’s heartbeat thumping behind him. Crook his legs until Gray’s knees were tucked behind his own.

  He could wait until Gray’s hand against his belly fell slack, letting him slide away before the sun rising turned black edges gray on the horizon.

  And he would be back.

  Slipping into Gray’s bedroom at night melted as seamlessly into Eddie’s new routine as torch time in the morning, followed by shop time in the afternoon, dinner at home with Gray, and reading in front of the fireplace.

  It was kind of fucked up what they were doing. What he was making them do. The not talking about it during the day.

  Everything got fucked up in the long run. That was a given. But Eddie’s stupid, stupid hopes were already up that maybe, just maybe, this thing would hold together for a whole, entire season. Just through the holidays. That was all he gave a damn about.

  He’d never really wanted to spend Christmas with anyone in particular before Bertie, and look how that had turned out. T
hough Eddie was starting to think part of that whole mess had been his own fault, because he was pretty sure he hadn’t actually wanted Bertie himself so much as the idea of him. Bertie had just been a convenient place to land, and Eddie’s fantasies about what holidays with Bertie would be like had never included anything except the sort of generic images of domestic bliss he’d seen in the movies or some shit. None of his imaginings had factored in that Bertie couldn’t cook and wasn’t the kind of guy to buy anyone presents, mostly because Eddie hadn’t actually known any of that.

  When he thought about sticking around for Christmas with Gray, though, Eddie got ideas. He started to wonder about things. About whether or not he could talk Gray into getting a tree, even a little one. About what kinds of things he could cook that Gray would like to eat—mashed potatoes, yes, green beans, no—and whether or not Christine the Cop and her wife might drop by if Eddie hinted that would be sort of okay.

  He’d wanted Bertie to give him presents. He’d never thought about giving Bertie anything. Not once.

  But now he found himself messing around with his torchwork, giving random ideas flight in glass with his flame, his pliers, and his shears. Nothing had come together in his hands yet that shouted Gray, but for the first time in his life, he wanted to do something more than churn out cutesy crap for the travelers. He’d even broken out the glass orbs he’d bought on a whim, trying to create something new and beautiful.

  Trying and failing, so far, but even the trying felt like stretching muscles he’d rarely worked before.

  He had just about two weeks. He’d come up with something. Gray deserved something beautiful.

  That Friday afternoon, the slouching teen was back again, strolling among the trees Gray used to display ornaments and shooting Eddie cautious looks from the corner of his eye every few seconds.