by Amy Lane
“What?”
“Taking care of me when I’m trying to take care of you.”
Jackson smiled faintly, allowing his eyes to close all the way. “I do my best,” he said. “You’re just difficult.”
Ellery chuckled, and as he drifted into a truly necessary nap, he realized that it had been a while since he’d laughed.
Appreciating the Scenery
JACKSON REGARDED the giant cephalopod with wonder. “Look,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb the guy—he was, after all, just sort of chilling. “The sign says he’s super smart. He changes colors when his favorite people are nearby.” He could swear the thing was regarding him with a friendly eye.
“Is that favorite as in friends or favorite as in foods?” Ellery asked, and while he tried to sound persnickety, Jackson had the feeling he was charmed too.
“As in friends.” Jackson scowled at him, but mischief was in his eyes. “They’re really gentle creatures, you know. A little shy, and they don’t like light or loud noise. Hey!”
That last part was aimed at a kid—maybe eleven—who had elbowed his way in between Jackson and Ellery to take a picture with his phone. Without compunction, Jackson stuck his hand over the flash.
“Hey!” the kid yelled, and Jackson shushed him.
“Buddy, as I was saying, this thing is sensitive. When you flash him like that, it hurts his eyes. And yelling is just as bad. It’s like throwing a rock concert with a baby in the house. It’s rude.”
The kid sneered, a blond, blue-eyed master of the universe in the making. “You’re rude!” and he set up to take another picture.
Jackson reached over his shoulder and took the phone from him.
“Hey!”
“You want it back?” Jackson asked, eyes flat.
“Yeah, man, gimme my fuckin’ phone!”
“Go get your parents and bring them to this spot, but do it quietly or I might lose the phone before you get here.”
“My dad’s a cop. He’ll kick your ass if you don’t give me my damned phone.”
Jackson’s turn to sneer. “And I look forward to that,” he said with sincerity. “Now scoot. We’ll be here when you get back.”
The kid took off through the aquarium, screaming “Dad!” at the top of his lungs, and one of the docents, a young man with ebony skin and gentle eyes, stepped forward in relief.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “I hate it when kids do that. The giant octopus is really shy. If someone flashes him, he disappears for days. And he cries.”
Jackson raised an eyebrow. “No, seriously?”
“Okay, we can’t tell if he’s shedding tears from his two big eyes, but he turns… just gray. And sad. And it’s so nice to see someone speaking up for him.” The young man turned toward a group of seven- or eight-year-olds getting ready to tap on the glass. “Please don’t do that,” he said. “It really hurts their ears.”
The kids backed up and nodded, eyes big. “Sorry,” one of them whispered.
“I know you want to get its attention,” the docent told them. “And it’s great that you want to know more, but these creatures are out of their element here. We try to make them comfortable, but when they have to people too much, it stresses them out.”
“My little brother is like that,” a little girl said. “We’ll be nice. We promise.”
They gathered closer, talking in low voices, and Jackson grinned at the docent, who smiled back. It was good they got a reminder that not all kids were little assholes, because as soon as they had that moment, that kid came back with his father in tow.
Dad was ginormous—six-five, three hundred pounds of ball-playing muscle with bristly black hair from pale skin, and he did not look happy.
“Did you take my kid’s phone?”
Jackson gave his best party smile and hoped he didn’t look like he wanted this guy to eat a sea urchin in the shell. “Did you ask your son what he was doing with it before I did?”
Dad’s eyebrows went up, and he turned toward his son, who suddenly looked sullen. “I was just taking a picture.”
Jackson pointed at the sign in the cephalopod area that read No Flash Photography.
The docent took a deep breath and addressed the situation. “We are actually authorized to ask anybody hurting our animals to leave,” he said with a swallow. “Please, the flash hurts them, and that’s no fun for anybody.”
“Trevor, we paid a fortune for these goddamned tickets. If you get us kicked out because you can’t keep your phone in your pocket, I’m making you pay that back with your allowance!”
“But Dad—”
“I’ll take the phone, sir,” his father said, extending his hand.
Jackson met his eyes solidly, and Dad looked at his kid again.
“Don’t worry. He won’t get it back.”
“But you said it was so I didn’t get lost.”
“Well, you’re not leaving my side now, are you? Mom’s got the little kids, and you and me, buddy, we’re like glue. It looks like you need to learn how to read again, doesn’t it?”
The kid’s eyes got huge, and his face got red, and Jackson turned the phone over, feeling reassured.
“Thanks,” he said soberly. “I don’t like it when people hurt the defenseless.”
The guy nodded. “I’m a cop. It’s my job to protect, so I get what you mean.”
Jackson stared at him as he retreated, his kid complaining bitterly with every step. It looked like Dad was holding firm, though, and Jackson let out a deep breath.
“A cop,” Ellery said, his first words in some time.
“Yeah, I know. Surprised me too.”
Ellery was looking at him like he did sometimes, his eyes wide and a little glossy, his face open and full of wonder. Jackson didn’t understand that expression; he didn’t know what he’d done to warrant it.
“Surprised the hell out of me,” the docent muttered, and Jackson grinned at him.
“Well, may we all meet more cops like that,” he said, thinking that his own attitude may be a teeny bit biased against law enforcement.
“May there be more cops like that,” the docent said. “I’ve got to go, but thanks so much for the assist.” He smiled fondly at his friend the giant octopus. “Buddy here is grateful too. He just doesn’t talk that much.”
Jackson chuckled and was surprised by Ellery’s grip on his hand.
“What?” he asked, turning to him again.
“Nothing,” Ellery said, eyes bright. “You… you do things like that. It will never cease to amaze me.”
Jackson was about to shrug him off, make light of the way he was looking, pretend he hadn’t done anything.
But the thing he’d just done—trying to fix something small, teaching someone something valuable about the world—it was apparently one of the reasons Ellery stuck with him through fifty-dozen trips to the hospital and the unpacking of copious stacks of emotional baggage.
He swallowed, and disregarding any curious onlookers, he linked his fingers with Ellery’s as the two of them wandered through the darkened environs of the rest of the cephalopods.
“What?” Ellery said softly, and Jackson squeezed his hand. Maybe a younger, friskier, Jackson would have pulled him into a corner and kissed him, and maybe an older, healthier Jackson would do that too. But this Jackson, in this moment, was just so happy to know he’d done something real, something that made Ellery look at him like that.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “That’s kind.”
Ellery paused in a dark corner and tugged on his hand before kissing Jackson softly. Jackson regarded him in the black light of the aquarium and smiled slightly.
“What was that for?”
“I am so in love with you.”
And Jackson didn’t flinch or shrug or get embarrassed. “I love you back, Counselor. I’m so glad I’m good enough for you to love.”
Another kiss, and then they separated, mindful of the bustling families and excitable children around them. They kept
their hands linked, though, as they wandered the aquarium, open to the experience of wonder.
That night they ate practically downstairs from the hotel, consuming big bread bowls of the best clam chowder in the world. They took their bowls to a concrete wall that overlooked the beach below, watching children as they ran in and out of the waves. The ocean was too cold to go swimming. Even Jackson knew that now. He’d been hurt too badly plunging his feverish body into brutally cold water to ever take his heart for granted again.
For the moment, he would welcome the man beside him, the light sparkling off the sea, and this moment in the sun.
THAT NIGHT as they walked into the hotel room, he tugged on Ellery’s hand and took him to the window.
“What?” Ellery asked, his voice as wondering as a child.
“The view’s nice. I… you know. Wanted to share it with you.”
“Jackson?”
“Yeah?”
“Can we make love tonight?”
Jackson kissed him gently, like it was their first time. As Ellery opened his mouth and gave underneath his hands, Jackson’s heart beat loudly in his ears, and he was grateful for how strong it sounded. How alive.
Their clothes disappeared, and they lay on the bed, skin to skin. Their hands were reverent, and every touch sang. Ellery thick and hard in his hand was as important to the moment as Ellery’s touch on his own cock. Jackson’s stroke grew harder, faster, and Ellery sighed. Jackson kept it up, bending to catch Ellery’s spend in his mouth.
Ellery arched and came, and the joy of it was enough to send Jackson over into Ellery’s fist.
Jackson rested, his head on Ellery’s stomach, and Ellery stroked his hair.
“Jackson?”
“You love me,” Jackson said, confident of it as he never had been.
“For quite some time,” Ellery said, his voice thin. “And you love me.”
“But I think I finally believe it. Believe there’s a reason you’d love me.”
Ellery let out a strained and broken laugh. “There’s several. God, you’re dumb.”
“Yeah. I am. I’ll try not to be so dumb in the future. I don’t want to miss any moments like this.”
Ellery’s breath quickened, and Jackson looked up in time to see him wipe under his eyes.
“What?”
“You could have. You could have. So many times.” His voice shattered, and Jackson moved to pull Ellery’s face against his neck.
“I can’t do that anymore,” he said. Oh, Ellery. You deserve so much better. The least Jackson could do was give this man the healthiest, most real person he could be.
“No,” Ellery whispered. “Please, baby. We have so many more moments like this. Don’t end them before you have to, okay?”
“Not if I can help it.” Jackson kissed his temple, and the darkness protected them like it had protected the giant octopus. Sometimes the dark was needed, because the light hurt too much, and sometimes it was needed to see the light in a lover’s heart.
And sometimes it was both.
That One Shirt
A Jackson and Ellery Story
THE IRONY of being on medical leave forced vacation was that the bedroom was set up so that Jackson’s side of the bed was right next to the phone chargers.
Ellery’s phone went off, and Jackson woke up and handed it to him; he wasn’t allowed to get up.
He’d tried a couple of times. Couldn’t they at least go running together? And when the weather was milder, it worked. But not in mid-August, after their trip to Monterey. Yeah, sure, Jackson was doing better. He had everything, including his meeting with the rabbi, down on the planner.
But Ellery wasn’t about playing fast and loose with the rules, and the rules seemed unhealthily obsessed with the temperature on the steamy Sacramento streets.
Like this morning, about two weeks before Jackson was due to go back, when Ellery’s phone went off to—oh dear God—the Shins playing “New Slang.”
Jackson rolled out of bed hopefully, reaching into one of the two drawers he had in Ellery’s dresser for running clothes.
“No. It’s already ninety outside. You can go to the cooled gym and use the treadmill or wait until I get home and swim.”
“My dick’s getting pruny. It might never inflate again.”
Even with his hair rumpled and pillow creases in his face, Ellery could still manage a deadpan look that would freeze solid rock.
“You. Would find. A way.”
And with that, he got out of bed and quite literally glared Jackson back in.
“I have to get back in bed?” Jackson threw the covers back and slid his hand down his boxers. “If I have to get back in bed, I might as well do something useful.” He’d been soft when he’d rolled out of bed—morning wood had come and gone—but his own hand, squeezing, defining, sorting things that had been all crumpled, into a place where they could air out… well, it did make a helmeted warrior stand to attention, as it were.
Ellery’s eyes widened in surprise, and he stood, wearing his tank and boxers, scratching his head like he’d never seen Jackson stroke himself before.
“That’s… that’s your alternative? I tell you to go back to bed and you’re going to masturbate?”
The fact that it made Ellery uncomfortable was an even bigger turn-on. “Sure,” Jackson said happily, spreading his knees and arching his hips, getting really comfortable. “Just me, here on the bed, my good right hand.”
Oh wow. He was getting hard. He closed his eyes and enjoyed knowing Ellery was watching with his mouth open. With his other hand he reached up to pinch a nipple, enjoying that too.
“I’m… uh….”
Jackson slitted his eyes to see that Ellery’s boxers had tented, and his eyes had gone from wide to half-lidded and heavy. Jackson allowed his to close again, pretty sure he could get what he wanted without needing to see.
Jackson shoved his boxers down his hips and stroked hard enough to bring a pearl of precome to the tip. He let out a breath and smoothed it around his cockhead and then sucked it off his thumb.
He registered Ellery’s mouth on his cock before he even heard the two footsteps to his side of the bed.
“Oh. Oh wow. Counselor, you’re going to be… oh… late….”
Ellery didn’t even bother to reply, just pulled him in deeper, kneeling by the side of the bed where, dammit, Jackson couldn’t stroke him off in return. Jackson settled for massaging Ellery’s scalp through his hair while Ellery sucked him hard and slow and then wrapped a fist around his cock and plied the end with this tongue while looking Jackson dead in the eyes.
“Hello.” Jackson breathed. “You were doing something?”
“I would like nothing more than to finish this,” Ellery said, his eyes lighting up in that particularly wicked way he had when he was about to do something Jackson might not like but would do only for Ellery.
“Feel free,” Jackson told him, not wanting to beg. “If it’s not you, it’ll be me.”
Ellery gave him a half smile. “But I won’t have time to get off myself,” he said. “You’ll just have to deal with that. I—” He deep-throated Jackson’s cock, hard and fast, and came up with his mouth swollen and glazed with spit. “—won’t ‘get mine,’ Jackson. You’ll have to trust that I’ll come home anyway. Can you live with that?”
Jackson tried to pull his feet underneath him to sit up, because no, that was not something he did. Instead, he drove his cock all the way into Ellery’s throat, and Ellery took advantage, tapping on his entrance just enough that Jackson quivered, shaking, needing to come.
Ellery kept his grip on Jackson’s cock and pulled back, eyes watering, looking as debauched as Jackson had ever seen him. “Do you trust me?” he taunted.
“You think I’m letting you out of this house without coming, you’re sadly mista—augh! God! Ellery! Dammit!” He was too far gone. Between his own self-pleasure and Ellery’s masterful power play, Jackson was done for. He arched his back and came, l
oudly, without inhibition or shame.
When he fell back onto the bed, Ellery was standing by the bedside, stroking his face with a messy hand. “Now go back to sleep,” he ordered gently.
Jackson lay there, panting, eyes half-closed, and nodded.
He waited until Ellery was in the shower before he stood up, dropped his boxers where they fell, and stalked into the bathroom with lube in hand. He was already mostly hard again when he stepped into the shower and started to kiss Ellery’s neck.
“Jackson,” Ellery breathed, “this wasn’t in the agree—oh my!”
Jackson thrust two fingers into him. Not roughly, but firmly, because he knew Ellery would still be slack from the night before. Ellery cried out and bent, hands against the wall, as Jackson parted his cheeks and pushed inside.
“Jackson—”
“Don’t start what you can’t finish,” Jackson growled, hips rocking as the water pounded on them both.
“Oh God,” Ellery moaned. “Okay, fine. Fine. Uncle. Oh God. Jackson—faster. Faster, please. Oh my…. Yes!”
He was primed—he must have been—from blowing Jackson, from taunting him, from the power reversal, all of it, because in a few strokes he was quivering, hand working his own cock, which made Jackson even hotter. Jackson rocked harder, faster, even as the water ran cold. Biting Ellery’s neck when he gave a choked groan of climax and shuddered against the tile wall weakly before Jackson rutted once, twice, and a slow aftershock rolled through him, half residual from the first climax, and half inspired by Ellery’s tight body, his responsiveness, and his surrender.
Jackson caught him around the waist when it looked like he was going to slide down the wall. “Nah-nah,” he rasped. “You have work today, remember? I have to stay home ’cause I’m fragile, and you have to go to—”
Ellery straightened with alacrity. “Shit!” he swore. “Shit! I do have work. I’ve got two cases, and I have to meet Henry at the office.” He turned in the spray, using the washcloth to get his private places before stepping out. Jackson grunted and grabbed the washcloth from him, resigning himself to tepid water for the rest of the shower.