Anterograde

by Kallysten

  Shifting his hips closer to Eli’s, Calden presses a hand to his arm, tracing the long scar with his fingertips. He doesn’t stay there but slides down Eli’s arm, over his hip to the edge of his boxers and then against the waistband to the front, cupping Eli’s cock.

  With a gasp, Eli breaks the kiss. For a second, Calden is sure he’s gone too fast and Eli will ask once more to slow down, but then Eli’s mouth is on his again, possessive, and his hips are pressing forward, pushing his prick harder against Calden’s hand.

  As he rubs the heel of his hand along the hard length still hiding beneath fabric, Calden can feel a growing wet patch against the tip. Tasting Eli suddenly becomes paramount. His hand is unsteady when he guides Eli’s cock out of his underwear. He gives it a few slow, teasing strokes that cause Eli to groan into his mouth, then swipes his thumb to the tip, gathering precome. This time, it’s a sound of protest that rises from Eli’s throat when Calden lets go of him then breaks the kiss, but he soon watches Calden suck on his own thumb and the gleaming bead of fluid there.

  “Fuck,” Eli breathes, his voice shaky.

  Calden grins at him. “I thought you wanted to go slow?”

  Eli is still chuckling when he covers Calden’s mouth with his own. As Calden returns his hand to Eli’s prick, Eli’s hand follows, and tentatively wraps around Calden’s cock. The first few strokes are hesitant, but quickly he finds a rhythm, matching Calden’s slide for slide. Every so often, their cocks press against each other, and every time the sensations ratchet up a little more. They both start to lose their pace, but the answer to that is easy.

  Pressing their cocks together and joining their hands over them feels as natural as though they’ve done this dozens of times before. They’re both panting too hard to keep kissing, and their mouths fall apart even as they press their pricks more tightly together still.

  It ends with a word, Eli’s name passing Calden’s lips in a shaky whisper. Eli’s eyes clench tightly shut, and his hips thrust forward as he comes, his cock pulsing alongside Calden’s and triggering his orgasm.

  With pleasure crashing through him like relentless waves over the beach, Calden closes his eyes—and opens them again at once. He can’t fall asleep now. He mustn’t.

  In a minute, he’ll get out of Eli’s embrace and out of bed. He’ll get a washcloth from the bathroom and clean himself and Eli. He’ll get a snack in the kitchen and they’ll eat in bed. Maybe they won’t finish the food before starting over. At some point, Eli will fall asleep, and Calden will stay awake. Maybe he’ll watch him, or maybe he’ll get the diary and write what happened. But one thing absolutely needs to happen. Eli said earlier, quite rightly, that this is the only ‘first time’ he’s going to get. Calden will make sure that his first morning after doesn’t happen with someone who has no idea how they ended up in bed; there’ll be enough of that in the future.

  But all that will only start in a minute, when Calden manages to catch his breath.

  Or maybe after he kisses Eli some more.

  (next chronological chapter)

  September 7th

  As he stepped out of the bathroom, wrapped in a terrycloth robe and still rubbing a towel over his wet hair, Eli peeked into the darkened bedroom. He could see little more of Calden than a few brown curls on the pillow, sticking out from under the blankets. Part of him wanted to return to bed, mold his body against Calden’s back, and wake him the same way Calden had done to him a few hours earlier. He had a hard time reminding himself that it might not be such a good idea.

  Calden had said his feelings predated his illness, and Eli believed him, but it would doubtlessly still be a shock for him to wake and find Eli in his bed, let alone if Eli was trying to instigate anything intimate.

  There was also the stark fact that before finally falling asleep a little before nine in the evening Calden had been awake for three days, two of them spent at the hospital, and the last one even more tiring.

  But what a pleasant way to get tired…

  Smiling to himself, Eli closed the door very quietly and walked down to the kitchen, resolved to let Calden sleep as long as possible. He was about to fill the coffee pot when he realized it was already full, already brewed, just waiting to be poured. Looking out toward the living room, he found the intruder seated at the piano.

  It wasn’t unexpected. Actually, Calden had warned him this was likely to happen. Still, Eli had hoped he’d get a few days’ respite, enough for him and Calden to figure out their new routine first.

  “Lana,” he said dryly in guise of greeting. “I take it you’d like some coffee?”

  She didn’t look up from the sheet music she was reading, her hands hovering over the keys without pressing down on any of them. “If it’s not too much trouble, Doctor Wright.”

  She usually called Eli by his first name. The emphasis on his title made it clear which way things were about to go.

  “Well, you started the pot. I’m sure you’ll find the mugs.”

  With that, Eli resolutely went up to his room. He wasn’t about to have this conversation wearing nothing more than a robe, while Lana was as always clad in her crisp uniform, every strand of her silver hair perfectly in place.

  He returned less than five minutes later, dressed and ready for that discussion. Lana was in Calden’s favorite armchair, a mug in one hand and holding Calden’s diary open on her knee with the other. Eli gritted his teeth, annoyed twice over at this intrusion into Calden’s private space. Striding over, he thrust a hand forward, palm open, demanding the return of the diary.

  Lana raised an eyebrow in reply, and for a few seconds they were at a standstill. Eli’s lips started to curl into a hard smile. He’d watched Lana and Calden play this kind of power game before; Calden always folded first, mostly because he had no patience. Eli had no doubt who would win now.

  “Have you read it?” Lana asked. “Some parts are… enlightening.”

  “I haven’t and I won’t. And neither should you.”

  “Very little about you,” Lana continued. “Or at least, very little in here. The sheet music is more explicit.”

  Eli glanced at the piano. For the past two weeks, Calden had been working on and off on a new composition. Its title was written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Eli had no idea what Lana meant, but he had no intention of asking. That, too, was Calden’s. Like the armchair. And like the diary.

  “Don’t make me take it,” Eli said very low, hyperaware that he was all but threatening the person in charge of the city and not caring one bit.

  With a put-upon sigh, Lana closed the notebook and handed it over. Eli ran his fingers over the cover as he returned it to the sofa, where Calden was bound to find it later.

  Sitting across from Lana, Eli picked up the mug of coffee that had been set on the end table on his left. He took a sip before asking, “And what brings you here today?”

  Lana considered him for a moment. “Your inability to answer your phone,” she finally replied. “About thirty hours ago you called to inform me you’d misplaced my son. Three hours after that, you called to say he was back, with no explanation. You also said you’d call me yesterday, which you failed to do. How long was I supposed to wait?”

  Eli grimaced. He’d completely forgotten he’d said he’d call Lana. He generally kept her informed of what went on in Calden’s life but with as few details as he could get away with, and even if he’d remembered to call, he wouldn’t have explained these particular developments.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It slipped my mind. But you can be assured he’s perfectly fine. He just needed a moment to himself, and I might have overreacted.”

  “I find that hard to believe, Doctor. You’ve both acclimated to your living conditions rather well. You’d only overreact, as you say, if the situation was new and unexpected.”

  Eli didn’t like the hint of reproach creeping into Lana’s words.

  “Why are you calling me ‘Doctor’?” he asked mildly.

  Lana took
one last sip of coffee before setting the mug aside. “Maybe to remind you what role you play in my son’s life.”

  Eli shook his head. “I’m his friend. Not his doctor.”

  “You’ve been both for three months,” Lana countered. “If not much longer than that. But I think you want to be something more now, don’t you?”

  It wasn’t mere reproach anymore. It was downright accusation. Eli set the mug down and crossed both arms over his chest.

  “I really don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  “Don’t you?” Lana’s cold smile could have frozen an ocean. “You’ve known since our first encounter that Calden is all I have.”

  He knew quite well, yes. They’d met on the night of Calden’s overdose. Three months after losing her daughter, seven months after losing her husband, and now so close to losing the only family she had left… Calden had always talked of his mother as General Hayes, the cold, unfeeling officer that made tough choices to keep the city safe, but that day Eli had seen a very different side of her. He’d seen it again back in June.

  “I’ve known since that day how annoying he finds your interference in his life, too,” Eli shot back.

  A wry chuckle came to Lana’s lips. “But of course. This is all about what Calden wants, isn’t it?”

  “It’s about what he and I want. Your interference isn’t part of it.”

  “It isn’t now,” Lana agreed. “But what happens when it is needed? When you give up and decide—”

  Eli’s blood was starting to boil. He raised his voice to interrupt Lana. “I don’t know why you think I’m going to wash my hands of him one day. I wasn’t going to do it before. I’m certainly not going to do it now.”

  “Now that you’re intimate, you mean.” It sounded like a curse word on her lips. “And how is that going to work? Are you going to woo my son every time he—”

  Eli tried to contain his laugh, he really did. But sometimes it was just too nice to be reminded that Lana, for all her power and influence, wasn’t all-knowing. And it was nice to remind her of that fact, too.

  “Not that it’s any of your business either, but the ‘wooing’ went the other way around, so you can stop worrying about me taking advantage of him.”

  Lana’s surprise was a study in subtlety: two quick blinks, the barest widening of her eyes, a light pinch of her lips. She recovered quickly, but Eli still had time to wonder why she thought Calden wouldn’t be the one to make the first step in a relationship. Whatever her reasoning might be, she was wrong.

  “Not taking advantage, then,” she said. “But what about taking your due? You’ve been helping Calden quite selflessly for a long time—”

  “And if you finish that sentence by implying I’m taking repayment for that help, you and I are going to have a serious problem, Lana.”

  Eli wasn’t amused anymore. He understood that Lana worried about Calden and wanted the best for him, but there were limits to what he would tolerate. They observed each other for a long time, the silence only broken by faint noises coming from upstairs. Eli would have liked to show Lana the door before Calden came down, but he realized that wasn’t going to happen. Lana wanted to see her son and make sure he was all right. Eli wished he could have had this first morning without witnesses, but he wasn’t worried. Or at least, not much.

  After a few more seconds, Calden’s voice rose as his steps came down the staircase.

  “Eli? Eli, are you…”

  Eli turned to watch him enter the living room. He wore nothing more than pajama pants, and Eli felt a flash of warmth at the sight of the words inked over his chest, the handwriting so familiar even backwards. With his tousled hair and the brightly red love bites Eli had left on his neck and shoulder, he looked just this side of debauched.

  The tentative but hopeful smile he cast toward Eli turned into something far less pleasant when he realized they weren’t alone.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded, frowning at Lana.

  “Can’t I come visit, darling?”

  It was all Eli could do not to throw Lana out—very literally if that was what it took. He and Calden had come up with a smooth routine for whenever he woke up, and it needed to be adjusted now, but Lana’s presence was complicating everything.

  Getting to his feet, Eli went to the sofa to get the diary, though he changed his mind and picked up the shirt Calden had abandoned there two nights ago. He handed it to Calden with a small smile, and after a beat Calden took it and slipped it on, doing up enough buttons to hide the tattoos, if a bit late. Eli had no doubt that Lana had deciphered them.

  “This explains what happened,” he said, now giving Calden the notebook. “Why don’t you read it? I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Calden looked about to say something, but a quick glance at Lana seemed to change his mind. He nodded once and accepted the notebook, his fingers brushing against Eli’s. He sat on the sofa while Eli retreated from the room, and for the next few minutes the house was silent again. When Eli returned with a mug, Calden accepted it without a word, barely lifting his eyes from the diary. Eli sat back in his armchair with a new mug of coffee. Across from him, Lana was observing Calden thoughtfully, though in silence.

  When Calden finally closed the diary, he was frowning, absentmindedly touching his chest. He finally lifted his eyes toward Eli.

  “What’s the date?” he asked.

  “September seventh.”

  He nodded, but his frown remained in place. “The tattoo is recent,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  Eli answered anyway. “Day before last. There’s lotion for it in the bathroom. You’ll need to apply some again soon.”

  After another nod, Calden started to say something, but he glanced at Lana again and cut himself short.

  “Lana,” Eli said without taking his eyes off Calden, “if you have anything else to say, say it now. Otherwise, kindly get the hell out of our home.”

  If Lana took exception to Eli’s language, she didn’t show it. Instead, she inclined her head once. “I’d like a moment with my son if you wouldn’t mind, Eli.”

  As a matter of fact, Eli did mind, but Calden offered a quiet, “Just a few minutes, please,” and how could Eli say no?

  He retreated to his bedroom upstairs, sitting at the foot of his bed and staring out the open door. He could hear their voices coming up the staircase, but they weren’t loud enough for him to make out words. He tried to distract himself by wondering if his dresser would fit in Calden’s bedroom or if it was better to keep his things in here. He supposed it might be a bit early to decide. In a few days, after they saw how Calden reacted whenever he woke up, it’d be easier to figure out.

  After close to ten minutes, Lana’s voice came up, louder now.

  “Good day, Eli.”

  She was gone before Eli could reply. Going back down to the living room, Eli felt more than a little jittery. What had they talked about? What if Lana had passed on her doubts to Calden?

  Just as he entered the room, the first notes rose from the piano. Eli stopped briefly, watching Calden as he sat at the instrument, his attention on the sheets in front of him. The melody was slower as Calden deciphered his own notes than Eli usually heard it; it was always slow the first time Calden played it from the start—the first time he relearned it, before adding more to it.

  As he stepped over to his chair, Eli was quiet, trying not to disrupt Calden’s playing, but Calden stopped anyway, keeping his fingers on the keyboard but turning his eyes to Eli.

  “There’s nothing about this—” He touched his chest. “—in the diary.”

  “Nothing about us, you mean,” Eli said, and was unable to hide a grin. “I think you were a little too busy to think about writing anything in.”

  The blush that crept up Calden’s face was as lovely as it was unexpected. Calden was many things, but Eli had never known him to be bashful.

  “And to tell the truth,” Eli continued after a few seconds, “I
’d prefer it if you didn’t write about it in there. I don’t know what it already says about me, but I think I’d like it better if you didn’t learn about us from words on a page.”

  Calden looked back at the sheet music, but soon faced Eli again without drawing a note from the piano.

  “So you’re going to tell me about… about this every time?”

  “I’ll tell you about us, yes. Anything you’d like to know?”

  Rather than words, Calden offered him music, a few short phrases before he said, “You slept in my bed last night.”

  Eli propped his elbow on the armrest of his chair and leaned his cheek against his closed fist.

  “I did. Although if you want to be accurate, we pretty much spent the last thirty hours in your bed. And a large part of it had little to do with sleep.”

  And there was that blush again, coloring Calden’s cheeks. He cleared his throat before asking, looking at Eli from under his eyelashes, “And it was… satisfying?”

  A quiet chuckle escaped Eli.

  “From my end, certainly. I don’t think you had complaints either.”

  Calden turned back to the piano, but not before Eli could see his smile. Again, he played a few phrases from his composition before interrupting himself.

  “How long has this been true?” he asked, touching his chest again. “The first part, I mean.”

  Eli shook his head. “Honestly? I don’t know. A while. I didn’t realize that’s what it was until a few weeks ago.” After a couple seconds, he added more quietly now, “Or maybe I didn’t want to see it.”

  A raised eyebrow asked him to explain.

  “We worked together. And you never seemed interested, in me or anyone else, so there was no point in making anything out of it. Being your friend was enough. And then I met Bryce.”

  He trailed off rather than finish that train of thought. How soon had Bryce realized that, as much as Eli loved him, there was someone else in his heart? Eli would never have acted on it, he’d never have cheated. It was Bryce who had demanded their separation, and soon after that their divorce. Still, Eli hadn’t exactly fought to save their marriage.