by Amy Lane
“You wanna, uh….” He rested his cheek gently against Skip’s knee and started to stroke Skip’s cock—not too fast. Skip knew he was trying not to make the ride too rough, and Richie definitely didn’t want Skip’s thing in his mouth, not now when his whole face was pretty tender.
But Skip got to run his hands down Richie’s ribs, over his thighs, and around his backside, which was replete in ginger fur.
Richie hugged Skipper’s knee tight like he was trying to hide. “I’m sort of a furry little bastard,” he apologized, as though maybe Skip hadn’t noticed the past few times they’d been naked.
“I like all of you,” Skip said throatily. He lubed up his fingers and teased Richie’s pucker.
Richie let out a little “Ah… ah… ah….”
“That part too,” Skip whispered.
“Definitely!”
“You like that part?”
“Definitely means ‘more now,’” Richie cracked gruffly. “Ah… oh man… that’s… that’s good….”
Skip stretched him gently, waiting until the rim around his fingers was slack and open. Richie continued his maddeningly uneven stroke on Skip’s cock. Skip had to keep himself from arching into that caress, turning it into the whole meal when it was supposed to be a snack.
“You ready?” He moved his fingers and slid both thumbs inside. Richie’s muscles clamped down on him and Richie groaned, turning his head and biting the inside of Skip’s knee.
“God…. Skip… oh Jesus….”
Skip pulled out quickly and wiped his fingers on the inside of the sweats sitting next to him on the couch. Richie moaned and his arms shook as he braced himself on Skip’s knee and swung his leg over. The face he turned toward Skipper glistened with sweat.
Skip gripped Richie’s thighs as Richie positioned himself with his knees on either side of Skip’s hips. He rose slightly and placed Skip’s cock right there, at his warm, loosened entrance. Part of the head slid in and then stopped, and Richie leaned his head back, mouth parted, eyes closed, and hissed softly as he slid down.
Halfway. He grunted and raised himself, the friction driving Skipper a little crazy. He had to force his hips to stay planted as Richie lowered himself again, a little lower.
And up.
And a little lower.
And up.
And…. “Ahh.” Skipper groaned, long and low, as Richie slid all the way down this time. He stopped, quivering, impaled on Skipper’s erection. His cock, red and fully erect, splatted lightly on Skip’s lower abdomen in time with Richie’s breathing.
“Damn, Richie,” Skip said, part in admiration and part in agony. “That’s… you’re so good….”
“I want to move,” Richie moaned. “But… I can’t….” He shifted his hips back and forth, Skipper rubbing inside him but not stroking, not the way they both wanted. Oh. Of course. He couldn’t rock himself that hard—not with every bounce jarring his sore head.
“Rise up,” Skip muttered. “About halfway. Prop yourself up on the couch and sit still.”
Richie complied, both of them breathing delicately as he moved. Then Richie grabbed the back of the couch with one hand and planted his other hand on Skip’s shoulder. Skip grabbed his slim hips, held firmly, and then started to thrust.
Slow, slow, slow, hard, slow, slow, slow, hard….
Not too hard. Not too fast. Slow, slow, slow, hard.
Richie started to whisper and beg, but Skipper couldn’t go any faster. No knocking about his head—that was the golden rule.
“C’mon… faster… c’mon, Skip, faster… harder… oh please… please… please…. Skipper….”
He was begging—begging, his voice cracking—and Skip couldn’t stand it anymore. “Grab yourself, Richie. As fast as you can. Fuck your own fist, dammit, jack yourself off—”
“Yes….”
Skip continued—slow, slow, slow, hard, slow, slow, slow, hard—as his body screamed with the need to go faster, harder, to come, dammit, come! And Richie’s hand flew on his own cock as he gibbered, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck…. Skipper!”
Slow, slow, hard, hard, hard, hard, hard….
“Oh my God, yes!”
Skipper had to close his eyes because Richie’s come splashed up—it hit Skip’s chest, his mouth, his cheeks, and his hair. It missed Skip’s eyes, but Skip kept them closed anyway. Richie’s ass clenched and convulsed around Skipper’s cock, and that was Skipper’s edge.
Skipper moaned, his entire body suffusing with light as a long, slow, shattering orgasm rolled through him and spurted out of his cock, into Richie.
“Oh God,” he breathed, and Richie leaned carefully into him, not jouncing. Skipper raised his hands to cup Richie’s upper arms, moving his palms in small circles.
“How’s your head?” he asked, concerned. Hand jobs. This was supposed to be a pity hand job.
“Hurts,” Richie muttered. “I’ll take some pain meds. In a thousand years.”
Skipper laughed and pushed Richie’s hair back from his face. He nuzzled Richie’s cheek, smelling their sex—and ass sex had a smell, there was no mistaking—and Richie’s definitive redhead sweat.
And over all of it, permeating their pores, the smell of wood smoke and rain, as night fell and the world stormed around them.
“Richie?”
“Yeah?”
He blinked hard against the darkness and the spots still flying about his vision. “That was magic. Don’t laugh.”
Oh God. He should have said “Don’t laugh” first.
But Richie cupped his cheeks and held him for a sloppy, come-tinted kiss. He came up for air and smiled faintly. “Not laughing,” he whispered. “Magic. It’s real. I never knew.”
He rested his head on Skipper’s shoulder for a moment then, and together they listened to the rain.
THEY TOOK showers after that, and Skip had just finished heating some soup and baking a cornbread mix when the power went out. They ate a quiet dinner in the dark and then slid into bed, their shorts still on, and began to talk.
It was funny—they’d known each other for six years. You would have thought they knew everything, right? But Richie’s weight, warm and comforting against Skip’s shoulder, seemed to free him to ask questions men didn’t usually ask. And the darkness—or maybe the comfort of Skip’s arm around his shoulders—seemed to do the same for Richie.
“So,” Richie said, voice comfortable and drowsy, “I don’t get it. Why’d your dad leave you with your mom if she was a mess?”
Skip grunted. “Well, he was probably the reason she was a mess. He… I mean he provided, and he wasn’t mean, but I remember—he’d play with me and watch television and basically be a dad with me after work, but he wouldn’t….” This had never been so clear to Skipper as it was now, when he couldn’t hardly stand to see Richie on the field when they couldn’t at least brush their hands together. “They never touched,” he said at last, his voice aching in the darkness. “All I want to do when I see you is touch you—any part of you—even if it’s just bumping your shoulder. But they—they never touched. And I think she got lonely, after so many years of that. They needed to touch.”
Richie hummed a little and turned on his side. Skipper matched him so they were looking at each other in the dark, the patter of rain loud against the black windows.
“My mom used to whore around,” he said, quiet, like a kid afraid of being caught telling a dirty word. “I mean, my dad used to accuse her of it, and there were guys all the time. Wasn’t supposed to tell nobody about Uncle Billy or Bobby or what-the-fuck-ever. Anyway, she finally took off with that last one, and dad hooked up with Kay and….” Richie’s mouth compressed.
“She whores around on him?”
He blew out a breath. “I wish. Mostly she’s just… just not warm, you know?”
Skip remembered that whip-thin person who didn’t seem to be concerned at all that Richie was bleeding. “Yeah, I know,” he said grimly.
“Was your mom warm?”
Skip swallowed against the lump suddenly in his throat. “Yeah,” he whispered. “She… I mean, even at the end, when she was coughing up blood and just wouldn’t quit drinking… she’d call me into her room at the end of the day and she’d be lying down, a cloth on her head. She’d say, ‘Tell me what you did today,’ and I’d….” This was embarrassing. “I made up stuff, mostly,” he said, grimacing. “She didn’t know the difference. I was this fat kid with zits from like, seventh grade on. Nobody gave a shit if I was there, really, until my complexion cleared and my growth spurt hit, about my junior year. But I told her I was on the track team or the football team, and all the time I would have been practicing, I was working at that burger shack—you know the one on Madison? It’s all boarded up now, but they hired me and fudged the whole work permit thing. Part of the reason I was so fat, really, because it’s all I ate for about three years, but it was food.”
“But she wanted to know?” Richie asked, like he was making sure.
Skip nodded. “Yeah. She did. You?”
“My dad,” Richie said, voice rough. “I mean, he wasn’t always nice about it, but he’d ask about grades, and he’d always give me quarters to go play video games at the pizza parlor if I got good ones.” He rolled his eyes. “Paul and Rob used to steal them, but still. He was trying. It was like, the whole reason he married Kay was because he thought we could be a family, like we couldn’t be with my real mom. Wasn’t his fault. Just the wrong damned person. For me, anyway.”
“So you had someone too,” Skip said, feeling good about that. “Good.”
Richie was quiet for a moment, his eyes searching Skip’s in the darkness. “Yeah, that’s great that we had someone when we were kids, Christopher, but I don’t think either one of us had somebody to tell us what to do about this—what we’re doing right here.”
“Lying in the dark telling secrets?” Skip asked, trailing his fingertips over Richie’s cheek.
Richie grabbed his hand. “Having sex because we can’t stand not to touch,” he said, voice raw, and Skip pulled their hands to his mouth, where he placed a chaste kiss on the end of Richie’s fingertips.
“I think we’re falling in—”
Richie pressed his fingers against Skip’s lips. “Don’t,” he ordered hoarsely. “You say it and it’ll have a name. I’m not ready for it to have a name yet, Skip. I’ve got to tell my father a name, and I’m not ready for that.”
Skip swallowed, that lump in his throat that had formed when he’d talked about his mom growing tighter. His eyes burned, and he made to roll away. Richie stilled him with a warm hand on his bicep. Skip turned to him and searched his face, wondering if his own eyes were as bright in the dark as Richie’s.
“Here,” Richie whispered, tilting his head. “In my ear. No one can hear it but me.”
Skip had never said these words to a girl. He’d never lain awake at night with a girl in his bed, talking about his awful childhood or the best parts that had sat like diamonds in mud, bright and shiny, to pull him through.
But the hollow of Richie’s ear was a secret cave, and the words came so easy in the absolute shelter of the unlit night.
“I’m falling in love with you, Richie,” he whispered, steeling himself for not hearing the words back.
“Me too, Skip,” Richie said, his lips brushing Skip’s ear. “I promise not to tell.”
“Me too.”
They lay there for a long time before they fell asleep, looking at each other’s faces in the shadows, breathing in the silence, listening to the rain fall.
Sorta Thankful
THEY STAYED inside the next day, hung out, watched television, and made slow, sweet love—Skip could call it that in his head, because he’d said the words. Maybe it was the slowness, because of Richie’s head, or maybe it was the melancholy of the rain, but somehow every touch became magnified, a mix of pleasure and pain.
They still laughed and still cracked jokes, but early, early Monday morning, right before they left for Skip to drop Richie off, Richie slid in front of the door really quick and blocked it.
He stood there, looking up at Skipper, bandage and nose brace still on and the black bruises underneath his eyes still swollen.
His full mouth—split lip and all—was curved faintly up, though, and his bright eyes were unusually sober. “You gotta kiss me now,” he said. “Make it your best one, because it’s gotta last until Friday since we don’t kiss on Thursdays, okay?”
Skip nodded and refrained from whining about how they’d started out by kissing on Thursday. They’d been lucky—so lucky—not to get caught. For a moment a frisson of fear passed through him as he wondered what would happen to soccer—not just winter ball but his entire team of people that he’d forged through six years of just not giving up—if someone saw him and Richie kissing.
I’d give them up for Richie, he thought. But if I lose him, they’re all I’ve got.
Just that suddenly, he realized what a precarious place they were in.
But Richie was still gazing up at him like he could make this kiss—this one kiss at the end of a weekend of playing like they were a family—last. Skipper could do that. He was the one with the magic, apparently, because he could make the next five days not ache without kisses.
He tried.
He cupped Richie’s neck gently and tilted his jaw up with firm thumbs, and then tasted. Richie’d eaten the same breakfast he had, so toast and eggs went away. That left Richie with the faint antiseptic of the bandages in his smell, but he was still warm and vibrant, tangy, alive. Skip tasted it slow and deep, just like fucking this weekend, but softer. He wasn’t trying to hit any spots, there was no fantastic come in the center of the goal box, there was just Richie and the animal noises he was making and the way his fingers scrabbled on Skip’s shoulders like he was clinging for dear life.
With a cry, Richie broke it off, his eyes wide and shocked and running over.
“That was a horrible thing to do to me,” he said, voice broken. “Kissing me like that. How am I going to live without that for another day? Or two? Much less five. Dammit, Skipper, you’re gonna fucking break me.” He turned and grabbed his duffel bag and dashed out into the rain.
Skipper barely managed to keep Hazel from escaping before he followed, but he was so wrecked he forgot his jacket and his lunch. The drive to Rancho was one long, miserable, cold and wet trip, timed by the thump of the wiper blades and harshened by Richie’s recriminating silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said after they’d gone over Highway 50. “I… I wanted to give you a kiss to last.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Richie said, his voice still thick. “I… I should have known… you can’t make kisses last, not like that. Maybe if you were going off to war or something and I knew I had to be without you. But you’re just down the fucking road, and I’m trying to remember why it makes any sense.”
Skipper had to be the one who said it. “You were right, you know. I’m the one who doesn’t have any family but the team. You’re the one with family. And you’ve got the team to lose. You’ve got to….”
“What?” Richie asked, sounding bitter. “What is it I’ve got to do?”
Now Skipper felt near tears too. “Nothing, Richie. Just… you know. See me when you can.”
They were driving out near Grant Line now, and Richie’s hand on his knee surprised him.
“I’ll do that,” he said throatily.
Skip risked a glance at Richie’s face. In a shift of mood like mercury, he’d suddenly brightened.
“What are you thinking?” Skip asked, peering ahead for the pick-n-pull.
“I’m thinking that I’ve got someone who wants to see me this weekend. I’m not gonna fuck it up by being a big old emo bitch.”
Skip smiled a little. “Just because we’re gay doesn’t mean you’re bitchy,” he said, and Richie’s gasp hit him like a slap.
“What?” he asked, but it was time to turn and he couldn’t look at Richie
because he was too busy watching for that stupid fucking car that didn’t turn on its lights in the rain.
And there, the car had passed and he could gun it onto the big mudslide that the junkyard had become. Skip hoped people had fun rooting through the dead cars in the rain, because he couldn’t think of anything he’d less like to do, unless it was root through them when it was 120 in the shade.
Skip was halfway up the track before he risked a look at Richie again. Richie was staring straight ahead, mouth slightly parted, face pale against his spectacular hair.
“What—Richie, are you okay? You’re not going to throw up, are you?”
Richie shook himself and then looked at Skipper with a sort of green smile. Skip had to pull his attention back to the road, which was more slippery than the eel wire above them, and when he finally pulled to a stop at the five-car parking lot, he looked at Richie again.
“Richie, do I need to take you to the doctor? Should I tell your dad you’re gonna hurl? What in the—”
Richie stopped him with a surprise kiss—hurried, and very mindful that they could get caught, but definitely a kiss on the corner of his mouth. Skip turned his head, stunned, and Richie thrust his tongue in once and tasted, and then withdrew, running a thumb over Skip’s lips before reaching behind them to the backseat for his duffel.
“Uh….”
Richie gave a slightly more natural smile. “You’re right, Skip. We’re gay. We said queer before, and I don’t know why saying gay is different, but it is to me. Nobody put that name on it before. See you Thursday.”
With that he was gone, trotting across the parking lot to the offices, which he opened with a key. Skip waited until he turned and waved at the doorway and then disappeared before heading out.
On his way, about halfway through the blue-green corridor of plastic and eel wire, he moved to the side and let a tow truck by, Richie’s dad at the helm. It was then that he realized the big chance Richie had taken with that kiss and all, and he felt slightly better as he got back to Grant Line and drove away.
They were gay. That had a name—and Skip didn’t know why, but if the word gay made it clearer to Richie, it made it clearer to Skip. Sometimes it was like hearing a person’s first name as opposed to his last name or his nickname. Scoggins was the guy Skip screamed at on the soccer field—but Richie was the guy who came apart in Skip’s arms. A kid named Christopher was a dime a dozen—but a kid named Skip, that kid could do something, right? So maybe to Richie, queer meant one thing and gay meant another; Skip didn’t care. If it helped make Richie okay inside, Skip would take any name Richie needed to hear.