Relationship Status (Ethan & Wyatt)

by K.A. Mitchell

  I knew what he was planning. “You really are a delinquent.”

  “Never said otherwise.”

  “Where?” I couldn’t think about it too much, or I wouldn’t be able to walk.

  “Don’t know.”

  I shook my head, but I was all in. Still, it was outside, daytime, and people got arrested for having sex in public parks. I heard people walk by us on the road above, calling to a dog—or maybe a child named Juniper—who had run ahead of them.

  Wyatt turned off this path, walking right into the trees.

  “Are you trying to get us lost?”

  He pointed deeper into the woods. “It’s a deer trail.”

  “When did you become an Eagle Scout?”

  He pointed again, this time at the edge of the path right by my feet. “Deer poop.”

  I hopped away from the pile of pellets. “How big was your hometown again?”

  He laughed softly and reached for my hand. “Trust me?”

  My pulse jumped in a way that wasn’t about sex at all. I felt it in my ears, in my fingertips. I might have been a deer, listening hard, eyes on wide alert for danger. I loved Wyatt. I trusted him. To not cheat on me and to not get me lost in the woods. So what was the big deal?

  I grabbed onto his hand, and we followed the deer trail. It wandered over rotten logs, around boulders and under the still dirt-crusted roots of a fallen tree. I hoped to hell Wyatt would be able to follow the path back.

  We came to a rocky slope that was studded with mossy boulders and tangled with trees. The boulder in front of us stood dick-high and almost flat on top. A sapling with exposed roots like grasping fingers clung to one corner. Without the noise of our steps, the woods fell silent. No people, no cars. Just our breath and the occasional whisper of leaves. As we stood there, a chipmunk ran across one of the rocks, chirped at us in surprise and disappeared.

  A choked laugh escaped me. It was one thing to get caught up in the moment, all urgent and desperate. But that wasn’t happening now. After a moment, an invisible car hummed by below us, a shout sounded above.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to. Just thinking about it made my breath come faster. Wyatt. His tight ass around me, sprawled back against that mossy chunk of limestone, looking hotter than any elf in Lord of the Rings, including Orlando Bloom. But I’m not gonna lie. I was nervous. Every place else we’d done it I knew there was no way we’d get arrested. Way back before I’d understood what two guys might want to do together in a park at night, my young gay ears had picked up on those news reports and my stomach had gone sick with dread and shame.

  Wyatt smiled at me. I wanted a lot more than just to fuck him. I wanted that smile every day, and I knew we could have it if he’d stop thinking we were too young, or he was too fucked up, or the world was just too hard. God, Wyatt’s smile made me dizzy.

  He brushed my cheek, then let his hand rest on my jaw.

  “What?” I said, because there was something in his eyes.

  “I’m just wondering if I looked like this that first time you kissed me.”

  “How?”

  “Turned on and terrified.”

  “You had a healthy dose of pissed off in there, but that sounds about right.” I put my arms around his waist.

  “I wasn’t mad at you.”

  “Yes, you were.”

  He tilted his head. “Okay. Yeah, I was.” His arms crossed mine to grip my ass. “Because you couldn’t see anything but Blake.”

  “No. I saw you. Blake was a bad habit I had to break. You—” I stopped myself because this was what I was afraid of. Wyatt bolting like a deer because I pushed too hard. Not that he’d run physically. But Wyatt could hide inside himself better than anyone I knew.

  He rested his forehead against mine. “I what?”

  I swallowed. My arms wanted to tighten around him, squeeze him enough to cut off even an internal retreat. I wished I’d waited to run my mouth until we were fucking, when I could blame my dick for being in charge of my mouth. Instead, I relaxed my hold so he wouldn’t feel trapped and said, “You’re the future. You, us.”

  He didn’t pull away. He put his palm on my cheek, then scraped his nails along the jaw edge where I was growing out the short fringe of scruff. It tingled my skin all over, the rasp, and the touch. I met his eyes and he kissed me. Not hard like we were going to go at it, but not gently either, deliberate.

  His mouth, the wide, sexy mouth I couldn’t stop thinking about since the first time I saw him, moved on mine. I felt the warmth and the slickness of his tongue against my lips. When I followed his lead to move my lips apart to feel it, really feel it, the sensation of his tongue in my mouth went right to my balls.

  He lifted his head. “Where’ve you been the last six weeks? How much more us can you get?” He wasn’t disgusted or sarcastic.

  “I love you.”

  He shook his head and laughed, but it wasn’t bitter. He was happy.

  I did that. I made him happy. I wanted to dance. I wanted to find that little fuzzy chipmunk and kiss him and tell him what I’d done. I wanted to tell the whole damned world about it.

  He wanted what I wanted. And he wasn’t freaked out or holding back. He was still shaking his head and smiling, though. “Yeah. Me too. Will you fuck me now?”

  I could totally do that. I wanted to do that every day for the rest of my life. I grabbed his head and kissed him hard, the way we’d done from that first time, hungry and needy and guaranteed to make me hard as the rock I wanted him sitting on.

  He laughed into the kiss and wriggled, hand between us and fishing in his pocket. He put one of the lube packs we didn’t leave home without now in my palm and dropped his board shorts, stepping out of them.

  “On your back?” My voice sounded like it was already pleading, the way it got when I was trying to hang on before I lost it and fucked till I came.

  “Okay.” He put his butt on the rock, lying back but sitting up quickly. With a quick smile he said, “Hang on.” Patting a hand behind him, he threw away some sticks and pebbles before settling back. He shifted his ass. “The moss feels...interesting. Not in a bad way.”

  I’d just thumbed lube into Wyatt’s ass when a rumble like distant thunder vibrated the air. The echo didn’t fade away, turning into a truck with muffler problems gasping its way up the hill. Although there was nothing but brown and green in every direction, it still sounded like the truck was about to drive right up the deer trail.

  Instead of a fresh attack of nerves, the knowledge that we weren’t really alone licked at my nuts with a secret, filthy thrill. We were going to fuck right here and go back to the big old family picnic and no one would know but us.

  Wyatt grunted. “Now might be good.”

  This height was damned near perfect for us. I barely had to spread my legs to get my dick right at his hole. I rubbed myself against him, savoring the pressure, the texture, the anticipation of all that tight heat waiting for me. He licked his lips, eyes drifting shut. He’d told me how much he loved the feel of me there, loved the satin-soft kiss from the head of my dick. After a minute, I pressed, and he opened for me, muscles pulsing.

  “So good.” The whisper escaped me, because it was true every time. Not just the sensation, although being inside him was pretty much my favorite thing ever. It was the sounds he made, the way his face tensed and relaxed along with his ass.

  I rocked a little deeper, then let him arch up to take me. His eyes were slits, mouth thin. I shifted side to side, and he took the last inch with a grunt. I always had to stop when my balls rested against his ass, because it was always just this side of too much. Too hot, slick, soft around my dick.

  “Hey.” Wyatt’s whisper made me open my eyes. “You gonna move or what?”

  “So romantic.”

  “Millennial slac
ker,” he whispered back.

  I held his hips and slammed in and out.

  “Yes.” The s hissed out and his head dropped back, exposing the tendons in his neck. I couldn’t reach them, but I wanted them under my tongue, wanted to bite at his jaw. Maybe he knew I was about to collapse on him because he locked his legs around my waist.

  “C’mon,” he said, like I was teasing him and not fighting the urge to hammer him until I came in thirty seconds or less.

  I held on tight—to him and my orgasm—and we fucked. Arching my hips, I drove into him with long, steady strokes. His ass grabbed at me, milking me. His eyes squeezed shut.

  I wanted to see his eyes. “Wyatt.”

  His lips parted, but his eyes stayed closed.

  I tipped his hips and started making shorter strokes.

  “Jesus.” He gasped. It was loud.

  “Put your legs up on me.”

  He rested his calves on my shoulders and I leaned forward until I could kiss him, bending him in half. I fucked him fast.

  “Oh fuck.” He tore his lips free, breathing hard. “You’re in my fucking throat. I—God, Ethan.” His voice was sharp.

  “Shhh.” I tried to swallow the whines that followed. I lifted my mouth to ask, “Want my hand or yours?”

  “Mine. But.” A tight quick breath, like I really was in his throat. “I don’t want to come yet.”

  I rested my forehead on his. “I’m trying to hold on, but this is really good. Think this rock will fit in our bedroom?”

  He gave a shaky laugh that echoed around my dick and slid a hand between us, his knuckles rubbing my belly as he started jerking himself off.

  I kissed him, tongue in his mouth as deep as I could get it to keep him quiet, and shifted my rhythm in time with his moans as they vibrated into me.

  His kiss became frantic when I rolled my hips along with the thrusts. I hoped he wasn’t going to bite my tongue off. His ass clenched on me, spasmed soft and hot, then went supertight right as the first splash of jizz hit my belly.

  I lifted my head.

  He was looking at me with something that made me more frantic than the sweet friction on my cock. His eyes saw all the way into me, knew me. It made me helpless with how much I loved him. I buried my face in his neck, because if I kept looking at him I would do something crazy like say marry me. I breathed in his skin and fucked until I felt it hit, the heat overflowing from my balls, flooding my dick.

  “Oh shit.” I shot in his ass, then pulled out and finished with my hand, painting the side of the boulder with the next few blasts. “Sorry.”

  When I opened my eyes he was still looking at me like that. Like it wasn’t just sex but how he felt about me all the time. I was lightheaded enough from the orgasm. If he kept looking at me like that, I’d end up on my knees.

  “Sorry,” I said again. “I meant to make cleanup a little easier.”

  Wyatt smiled. “Check my shorts pocket. Told you I planned ahead.”

  The walk back took a while because we kept stopping to kiss. When we got back to the path, I didn’t want to let go of Wyatt’s hand, so I braved the potentially harmful greenery to walk side by side. We were climbing the stairs back to the park road when Wyatt’s phone rang.

  He pulled it from his pocket. “It’s Christine. I guess we have been gone awhile.” He smiled at me, but his shoulders were tense as he answered and held it to his ear.

  “What? How?” The hardness in his voice made my insides cold. “We’ll be back as fast as we can.” After a pause he said, “On the road by the observatory.”

  He shoved the phone back into his pocket and started up the stairs two at a time.

  I followed. “Wyatt? What happened?”

  “Someone’s dog was running free and ran into Uncle Owen and knocked him down.”

  I would have joked that it was probably Juniper if it wasn’t for Wyatt’s reaction.

  He went on. “He couldn’t get up. Some guys helped him to the car but Christine wants to take him to emergency care. She’s going to meet us here.”

  On the last landing, I grabbed his arm to stop him for a second. “You’re not guilting out about not being there are you?”

  “Huh? No.” He looked at me like I was nuts. Then his eyes narrowed. “I’m just worried about him. And I’m not feeling post-coitally snuggly anymore, okay?”

  “Of course.” And it was okay. He should be focused on his uncle. But Wyatt had a way of seeing accidents as some kind of cosmic sign that he was destined to live a shitty life, and after today—well, I should be able to tell him what scared me. “I’m worried about him too.”

  He jerked free. “Then what?”

  “Don’t pull away, I mean on the inside. Don’t do your life-is-pain thing and cut me off while you wall yourself in behind your hair and your hoodie.”

  “I’ll try not to.” He gave me a twisted half smile. “But I think it might already be too late.”

  “For what?”

  “To keep you out.”

  Chapter Eight

  Wyatt

  We were only on the road a minute when Christine pulled up. Next to her, Uncle Owen grimaced, pale and sweaty. I didn’t know what to say so I started to climb in, but Ethan stood gaping by the front passenger door.

  “Get in,” I yelled at him.

  He opened Uncle Owen’s door. “He’s going into shock. Do you have a blanket or something? Wyatt, where’s your hoodie? We need to get him in the backseat so his leg is stretched out.”

  Christine’s voice was high and thin with anxiety. “Shouldn’t we just get him to a doctor as fast as possible?”

  “Yes, but shock is really dangerous. His organs can shut down.”

  Christine and I scrambled to follow Ethan’s orders. I found my hoodie on the backseat and Christine came back from the trunk with some towels. Uncle Owen’s skin was clammy, his pupils eerily big in the bright sunlight as Ethan and I pulled him out of the seat. His breath came in shallow, quick huffs.

  When we got him standing, he wrenched free of my grip and threw up. It landed on the pavement, but I knew Ethan had to have been splashed because some got on my legs. Ethan’s jaw tightened and he swallowed. I did too, feeling the bile hike up in my throat.

  “Okay. I’ll sit him here, and you and Christine pull him back.”

  As soon as we had him stretched out, Ethan put the towels around his grossly swelling knee. It looked like some of the parts under the skin were out of place. I had to work harder not to throw up.

  “Cover him with your hoodie,” Ethan told me as he draped another towel over Uncle Owen’s legs.

  Uncle Owen made a grunt, then “Thank you. Better.”

  I’d never heard him use his voice. I’d never asked if he took speech lessons.

  Ethan nodded and stepped back.

  Uncle Owen took a deeper breath and closed his eyes. He didn’t look as close to passing out.

  “Thank you,” Christine said to Ethan.

  I couldn’t believe it took me till now to realize that unless Ethan and I found a way to both cram into the passenger seat, one of us was going to get left at the park.

  Ethan had that handled already. “You go. I’ll get an Uber. Call or text when you know where you’re taking him and I’ll meet you.”

  Ethan’s bossiness and planning could be a serious pain in the ass. But right now, his tyrannical competence made me even more stupid in love with him. I gave him a quick hug and handed him the rest of the wipes from my pocket.

  “Thanks. I’ll text.”

  I hopped into the seat. Christine was rolling before I’d put on my seatbelt. I twisted to keep an eye on Uncle Owen. His color looked better.

  Less hurt, he signed, pointing at his knee where it was cushioned by the towels.<
br />
  “He said it doesn’t hurt as much,” I told Christine as her frantic gaze kept shifting from the road to the rearview mirror.

  I didn’t tell her that Uncle Owen winced at every bump or curve in the road.

  I got a text alert and wasn’t surprised to see Ethan had sent it.

  Go in and get a wheelchair so he doesn’t have to walk in.

  I told Christine Ethan’s idea.

  She nodded. “Tell him we’re headed to Allegheny Suburban. It’s off Sixty-five, the entrance is on West Ave.” After I’d texted and put my phone back into my pocket, she said, “How did Ethan know all that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Huh.” She shot another glance in the rearview mirror and shared a wince with Uncle Owen as she eased over the ruts to get us on the access ramp. “Well, I don’t know how things work between two guys, but...” Her voice trailed off as she merged into traffic.

  My shoulders hunched and my cheeks flushed. I probably reeked like sex. So much for a positive impression of her gay sort-of-nephew.

  “He seems like a keeper to me,” she finished, and smiled at me.

  Ethan and Christine came out of the kitchen with fried bologna and cheese sandwiches, napkins and sodas. He was telling her some story about one of his Monroe cousins as they set it up on the coffee table. Uncle Owen was in the recliner, knocked out on pain meds, his knee in a brace and crutches next to him.

  Ethan sat on the floor opposite me and Christine on the couch as we ate. He didn’t seem as out of place here as I’d felt at his parents, but then again, he maybe had saved my uncle’s life, so that might have given him an in. But I suspected it was actually just Ethan being Ethan.

  He looked down at his shirt, then back up at me. “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You’re looking at me kind of—” He blushed and took a long drink of soda.

  I concentrated on my sandwich.

  Christine saved me from further stupidity. “Thank you again for all your help, Ethan. Where did you learn that?”