by Amy Lane
“What?” Richie asked, parked, as usual, right next to him.
“Can you smell that? It’s gonna be Halloween on Sunday,” he said happily.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” For the first time since he’d walked into the bowling alley, Skipper could look at him and not think about kissing or rough, bony hands wrapped around his cock.
“Maybe we go buy some candy and decorations tomorrow, yeah?” Richie asked, sounding enthusiastic.
Skipper beamed at him. After his parents had split, his mom had sort of let holidays slide off the map. Skipper remembered a lot of Christmases where his present was money to run and buy takeout, and a lot of Halloweens where he had to turn off the lights and hide under the bed so nobody knew he was home without any candy. Since he’d gotten out of tech school, he’d been assembling, little by little, his own boxes of holiday trappings. Maybe tomorrow he could get something for the front porch of his little house.
And Richie would come with him.
“Absolutely.” Suddenly the evening ahead didn’t have quite the tang of dread in it—there was going to be a tomorrow in which they lost a soccer tournament game first, and then visited the Spirit store for decorations and the Sam’s Club for the two giant ten-pound bags of the really good candy. Whatever tonight brought, there was going to be a tomorrow with Richie. “Here, let’s get to my house—you can crash there tonight and we can go shopping after the game.”
A slow, gorgeous smile bloomed across Richie’s bony, plain face. “Good idea, Skip. I brought a few changes of clothes just in case….”
They both stopped and looked at each other. Just in case what? Just in case he crashed over? Just in case they spent the night together?
Just in case they repeated what they’d done the night before?
They stared at each other over Richie’s car, the silence between them breathless.
“See you at the house,” Skip croaked at last, and Richie nodded.
As Skip slid behind the wheel, he found himself wondering if Richie was going to take this opportunity to bail.
HE NEEDN’T have worried.
Richie actually beat him to the house and was waiting on the porch with a gym bag over his shoulder. He looked around the neat little yard as Skip walked up.
“Nice fence—is that new?”
Skip smiled, pleased. “Yeah—got a kit from Lowe’s.”
Skip’s neighborhood had been mostly For Sale signs three years ago when he’d first bought his house. He’d felt bad—the street was lower-middle-class, and a lot of folks had needed to foreclose, but he couldn’t have waited. He and his mom had lived in an apartment, right up until she’d died, and he’d hated it. Hated not being able to paint the walls or determine what the outside would look like, or not even being able to buy his own overhead lights. When he’d been in high school, when he hadn’t been working, he’d been dreaming about what his “grown-up” home would look like.
His mom had died when he’d been in tech school, leaving a tiny bit of savings he hadn’t known about (and she probably hadn’t either, or it would have been used on scotch by then), and he’d been able to get a first-time buyer’s loan at a time when interest rates were at rock bottom.
He’d had his job for maybe three months before he’d started looking for a house he could afford.
What he’d ended up with was a tiny one-bedroom home in Carmichael, with a shitty heat and air system and a really vast backyard with a wooden patio actually built around an oak tree. It had taken him three years to get the backyard to a place where he was pretty sure it could keep a dog.
“Yeah,” he said, not able to keep the smile from his face. “I sort of thought… you know, getting myself a dog for Christmas this year.”
Richie stopped bouncing on his toes and frowned. “You give yourself Christmas presents?” he asked, like the thought had just occurred to him. Richie’s parents usually gave him gift certificates for Christmas—often to places like Lowe’s, because they wanted his help working on their house, since he rented the apartment over the garage.
“Who else is going to?” Skipper asked, genuinely puzzled. Men didn’t give presents. His office had a gift exchange every year—and he’d been scrupulous about participating too. Last year Carpenter had been his designated giver, and his gift had been a really big gift certificate to Carpenter’s favorite donut shop. Skipper had consoled himself with the knowledge that Carpenter really loved that donut shop, and the gift had been a true act of friendship.
Richie looked stricken. “Well, you know. This year… this year, I’ll get you something.”
That was sweet. “I’ll get you something too,” Skipper said, delighted, and turned to fumble with the key. “Careful—don’t want to let Hazel out.”
He pushed the door open and automatically stopped the entrance with his foot. Hazel, the fuzzy black cat that had sort of moved in when he started feeding her, snarled low in her throat and retreated. At first he’d wanted to let her be inside/outside, but the day after he let her out, he found her under the porch, meowing piteously, so very confused. He’d discovered that if he could keep her from escaping in the first place, she was usually content to lie low inside the house and sit on his lap during television time.
The front door opened straight into the living room, and he turned and plugged his phone into the charger that he kept there and put his keys in the bowl, making sure he left enough room for Richie to come in so he could set his stuff by the couch like he usually did.
The door shut behind him and he paused, hand over the bowl as he set his keys down. He heard the thump of Richie’s duffel bag in the corner, by the bookshelf, and was going to turn to see why when Richie plastered himself to Skipper’s back, his body throwing off heat like an overheating computer tower.
Skip froze.
He heard a rustle, and Richie moved restlessly before hanging his Scorpions team windbreaker up on the hook. Then Richie’s hands moved insistently at Skipper’s cuffs.
“Rich—”
“Skip?” Richie sounded winded, like he was having trouble talking.
“Yeah?” Skipper couldn’t do anything but whisper.
“You thought about last night any?”
Richie got the windbreaker off and then reached around Skipper, rucking up his shirt and sliding his palms up and down around Skipper’s taut abdomen.
“Mmmm….” It wasn’t an answer, but it most obviously wasn’t a no.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Richie whispered. Skip hadn’t flipped on the light, and Richie’s growly voice, his breath between Skip’s shoulder blades, his tight little body so hot and hard against Skip’s back—how was he supposed to say no?
He groaned instead.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” Richie’s hands on Skip’s hips turned aggressive, whirling him around and shoving him against the doorframe. Richie stared at him in the dark, those eyes—damn. Big limpid pools of fucking want.
“Richie, I….”
“You what?” Richie demanded, but he punctuated the words by grinding his crotch up against Skip’s thigh, and oh! Oh God! He was hard!
“I wanted….” Feebly, Skip rubbed at Richie’s chest through his shirt. He wanted to take his time, dammit. This wasn’t the car, this was his house, and it was private in here, and nobody was going to pound on the ceiling of the house and yell at them for kissing like faggots in Skipper’s living room.
“Wanted what?” Richie asked, his lips parted just a little.
Oh… oh hell.
Skipper framed Richie’s face with both hands, holding him, tilting him just so, and slanting his mouth over those full lips so he could—oh God, he just wanted to taste again.
Richie let out a charged groan of hunger, and Skipper thrust his tongue inside without thought. There was no This is my buddy! and no Oh God, I’m kissing a man!
There was only Richie—he tasted bitter, like tobacco, and hoppy like beer, but that wasn’t what Skippe
r was really registering. All Skipper really registered was that he tasted like he smelled: salty and a little sweaty and a lot like soap and deodorant, because he’d obviously tried, just like Skipper had, to spiff up so they could kiss each other in Skipper’s darkened house.
Richie had apparently spent his aggression on pinning Skipper to the door, because Skipper had the upper hand now, backing Richie into the living room proper, steering him around the coffee table, getting him to the couch. Richie sat down slowly, never breaking the kiss, his hands roaming under Skipper’s shirt in a way that made Skipper absolutely crazy. Just touches, right? Midriff, back, chest—and touches had never really been Skip’s thing. Usually the only thing that got Skip off was a hand directly on his cock, but Richie’s hands could apparently make him hard by touching anywhere.
Oh my God! Especially his nipples.
Skip moaned and broke off from the kiss abruptly, burying his face against Richie’s throat. “That’s… oh my fuckin’ God!”
Richie’s laughter, low and helpless, made him feel a little better. Richie was captured too, lost as a butterfly in a hurricane. It wasn’t just Skipper who couldn’t stop but didn’t know where they were going either.
“I’ll do that again,” Richie decided. “I like it when you groan like that.”
Clever, pinching fingers found his nipple again and tugged. Skip arched and bucked and thrust—and bit the side of Richie’s neck because he had nothing else to do.
Richie moaned just like Skip had, and for a moment, they were locked in a tug-of-war, Skip sucking a hickey on Richie’s neck, Richie pulling on his nipple until he almost cried.
“I’m gonna come,” Skip confessed. “Stop, I’m gonna—”
Richie wriggled out from under him and suddenly Skip found himself pinned to the couch. “You—your last girlfriend, that was Amber, right?”
Skip blinked several times, his body on such high alert that his brain had closed down words entirely. “Yeah.”
“No girls between?”
“No….”
“You get health screenings?”
Screech! There went Skip’s brain, doing a one-eighty on the wrong damned train track.
“What?” He pushed himself up on his elbows.
Richie rolled his eyes and started unbuckling the belt of Skip’s slacks.
“I’m gonna suck your dick, okay? You don’t got HIV or any shit like that?”
Skip’s cock had a moment of gridlock. Hurray! Richie’s gonna put his mouth on me! met HIV or any shit like that? head-on and vied for space. But Skip managed to get one thought out, and that let all the good stuff surge back in. “Negative. Last health screen, negative—oh God!”
Richie succeeded with his belt and slacks and Skip was exposed, cock slapping lightly on his lower abdomen, air cooling the dripping head.
“Oooh….” Richie paused for a moment just to look, and the breath from his gasp brushed the cap like a touch.
“Nungh!” Skip arched his hips off the couch and tried to spread his knees, but they were trapped.
“Kick off your shoes, Skip,” Richie instructed, and when Skip was done with that, Richie shucked his pants, leaving him lying on his own couch, half-naked, still in his regulation maroon polo shirt.
“You too!” Skipper pushed himself up on his elbows again, wanting to see Richie naked. He liked Richie’s body—even before he’d thought of Richie’s lips, or his eyes in the moonlight, or the feel of his hands, Skip had liked Richie’s body. Tight and stringy, muscular but not bulky. Not even a little—Richie had the body of a racing Chihuahua. Not big, no—but nobody would underestimate him, not in a fight, not on the soccer field, not—
Oh, oh yeah, right there, stripped naked, skin shining faintly in the light from the porch, slicked-back ginger hair wild about his head, boney-jawed face looking hungrily at Skip for approval.
“You like?” he asked, smiling nervously.
Skip reached out his hand. “Yeah. C’mere. Let me touch.”
Richie leaned over the side of the couch, eyes still searching Skip’s, and Skip made a realization. This… this was for real. Six years of playing soccer together, playing video games and watching movies, going out to beer and pizza with the guys—that had meant something to him and Richie.
This moment right here, skin-to-skin, this was scary.
Skip slid his hand along the back of Richie’s neck, knotted his fingers in the ginger curls at his nape, and pulled him a little closer, close enough that Richie’s breath fanned his face. “I like,” he said simply, and if Richie’s smile was a little wobbly, Skip couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t on solid ground either. The whole world trembled under the two of them, and the only time it felt right and solid was when they were close like this, close enough to touch.
Skip pushed up and took his mouth again, gentler this time, a sort of promise that he wasn’t going to make fun of Richie’s small stature or his red hair. Kids did that—guys did that. Skip caught hell for not having a beard, even after a week, for putting on five pounds if he wasn’t careful, for having a slightly roman nose. He could take it. He was a big boy. But here, naked, new, Richie couldn’t take it. Skip wouldn’t dish it out. That wasn’t fair.
Richie’s body felt solid on top of Skip’s, and their skin, oh Lord, all of the skin was touching. Oh, this was good—Skipper could do this all night. Keeping his fingers knotted in Richie’s hair, he ravaged Richie’s mouth again and again and again. Richie whimpered and clutched his shoulders, bucking his hips against Skipper’s, their cocks rubbing together, catching haphazardly, arousing, building, climbing to a pitch but not getting off—nope, not close. Just hanging there, suspended, in an agony of arousal.
Richie groaned and broke off the kiss.
“I promised,” he graveled and then slid down Skipper’s body, every ridge of muscle, every hair, every moist patch of skin catching on Skip’s cock and his swollen testicles until Skip was ready to scream.
By the time Richie got to where he could grip Skip’s cock and squeeze, Skip was incoherent, breathless, batting restlessly at Richie’s head and shoulders while he tried to lock his mind around what he wanted.
“Sh….” Richie reached up and grasped one of his hands, lacing their fingers together, and Skip’s frantic movements stilled. Richie’s hand, practical and earthy, grounded him, and Skip squeezed tight and took a deep breath.
“Richie?” he whispered, not sure what he needed.
“Right here.” Richie’s breath brushed his cockhead, and Skip gasped.
“I’m….” A guy didn’t say he was afraid. He didn’t say that sex just got huge and unfathomable just because another man was touching him. But that’s what was happening, and Skip knew that Richie’s mouth on him would send him spiraling into a place he’d never imagined. “I’m….”
“Me too,” Richie mumbled, and Skip relaxed. He didn’t even know what Richie thought he’d been planning to say, but “me too” implied that they were in this together. Richie’s evil little tongue darted out and licked the bell of Skip’s cock, and Skip moaned. Together. They were in this togeth—
In one smooth movement, like he’d been practicing in his mind, Richie squeezed Skip’s cock while stroking up and engulfed the head so he could suck.
The sound Skip made next came from some vital place inside him, the sensation so exquisite he felt tears start, and then forgot them.
Richie did it again and again and again, and Skipper arched his hips off the couch, thrusting into Richie’s mouth, one hand gripping the cushion on the back of the couch and the other so tightly laced with Richie’s fingers that his fingers grew cold.
For a moment Skipper tried to keep his eyes open, tried to keep his cool, tried to assimilate every feeling: the safety of Richie’s hands, the sound of his own harsh breathing, even the slurping sounds of Richie’s mouth enveloping Skipper’s flesh.
That last one destroyed him. Richie was sucking his cock, and Skipper closed his eyes against the expl
osion of white lights behind them, against the convulsions of his body, the searing joy of his come….
The stupid tears seeping from under his eyelids and down his temples.
Finally Richie’s mouth was too hard and Skip’s cockhead too tender. He let out a pain sound and pushed Richie’s head. “Done,” he croaked, and Richie nodded and moaned, dropping his head to Skipper’s thigh.
Fap fap fap fap fap…. Skip heard the sound, but for a moment he couldn’t place it… and then Richie sucked in a mouthful of Skip’s thigh and bit, his moan of orgasm loud enough to echo in the room.
Skip heard liquid hitting fabric and thought muzzily of the upholstery cleaner he had under the sink, and then Richie released his skin with a pop and moaned again, face buried against Skip’s flank.
Skip let go of his hand and stroked his head comfortingly. That was the best part of sex, wasn’t it? Someone there? Another person when the high of climax sent you spinning? Why else the laced fingers? Why else the kisses and the tenderness? Skip stroked those bronze curls with a shaking hand and then wanted more. He tangled his fingers in Richie’s hair and tugged.
“C’mere,” he rasped.
Richie pushed up and looked at Skip uncertainly. A shiny ring glazed the skin around Richie’s lips, and his green eyes were lost and out to sea. “Uh—”
“Just lay on me,” Skip said, trying for a smile. It was a plea. He wasn’t sure if Richie knew it, but that’s what he was doing.
Richie didn’t ask, though. He sprawled on top of Skip, both of them naked and shivering. Richie buried his head in Skip’s shoulder, his breaths sounding suspiciously close to sobs. Skip didn’t hold it against him because the corners of his eyes still stung.
Skip reached up to the back of the couch and hauled the afghan he kept there down on top of Richie, to maybe warm them both.
Richie’s shivers subsided, and it was just the two of them heating their little blanket fort against the chill.