by Misha Horne
Still, for some reason, he liked those things, liked the strawberry wallpaper, liked tracing his fingers down the vines on the wall while he sat on the counter and watched Juno cook food he always complained about, but ate anyway, because as much as he hated to admit it, vegetables tasted better than microwave mac and cheese and delivery every night.
He didn’t get excited about vegetables, nothing that extreme, but he liked hanging out in the kitchen while Juno chopped them up and threw them in a pan, and stirred them around with the heavy wooden spoon he kept threatening him with, but hadn’t actually used on him yet. Definitely liked how Juno always knew exactly when the vegetables would be not too crunchy and not too soft, like he had it down to a science, and how he always said Five minutes, grab some forks, like that was Kyle’s job, like he belonged there.
He pulled open the refrigerator, stared at the apples, and carrots, and green stuff he didn’t even have names for, shaking his head. Hell, even the tea was green, and that was just disgusting. If he was still at his own place, he’d order a pizza. Except, he was at his own place. Maybe.
Shit.
He grabbed a bottle of water and guzzled it down, still almost frighteningly thirsty, wondering how this would work. If he stayed.
He wanted to stay. He’d said he was staying. But his brain really still liked that if word. If he did stay, would all the stuff in the refrigerator start to look familiar? Would the Tuesday towels and the rice cooker and all of Juno’s things start feeling like his things? Would he cook in here? Would they fuck it here? Would Juno pull out one of those wobbly kitchen chairs and tug him down over his lap if he left his dishes in the sink? Scold him and spank him if he didn’t do his chores?
Shit.
That last thought woke his cock up, which had been tossing and turning for a while now. The imagine was so bright and clear it hurt his head, a spark of certainty flaring up, agreeing that yeah, whatever that meant, that kind of weird domestic fantasy, or whatever it was, he wanted that like he’d never wanted another thing in his life. Wanted spanking to be as commonplace as kissing, and for that not to be weird.
He reached down and rubbed himself through the front of his shorts for a second before he made himself stop. He couldn’t exactly stand there and jerk off in the middle of the kitchen like some kind of pervert. Even if it was supposed to be his kitchen.
He put the water down and shook out his arm. It ached all the way up to the elbow when it rained, heavy and annoying, even though he knew that stuff was all in his head, that rain couldn’t make your bones hurt. He stuffed that in the later box too, and sat down at the table.
So, he lived here, he guessed. He had a key, which after a lifetime of getting any expensive toy he wanted, was by far his favorite thing he’d ever owned. He’d seen Juno make room for him in his dresser and his closest. He hadn’t made a big deal out of it, hadn’t technically even mentioned it, he’d just done it. But, knowing the space was there didn’t actually make it any easier to put things in the empty spots. It would be a lot easier if Juno would just make him do it.
Maybe, if he just left the boxes where they were and didn’t touch them, and let them drive the neat freak part of Juno crazy, he could turn it into one of those things he didn’t really want to mention yet. The kind of You need to clean your room fantasy he wasn’t exactly sure he needed to admit to anybody. Even himself.
They played around it. They teased. Juno called him a brat and a bad boy and a dozen other things that made him shiver and swallow, and actually curl his toes. And now, he’d even given him a real spanking for misbehaving— and while that had been hot as fuck and had him hovering on the edge of orgasm, he’d tried to take it the way it was intended, as well as he could. He’d done something stupid, he’d gotten punished, and afterwards, he’d been actually sorry, maybe even a little smarter. That had worked. The unpack your boxes fantasy… well, that was something else. That didn’t actually have much to do with unpacking. Which he really didn’t want to do.
The lights flickered, the dim one over the sink, and the nightlight by the door, and he wondered what rain meant for the whole groundskeeping scam. If Mackey was really going to expect them to drag sandbags around in this mess. Then, he imagined Juno, all straining muscles and wet clothes, and kind of hoped nothing got canceled after all. That maybe he’d get paired up with him instead of Hogie, and they’d end up alone in the equipment shed, and… fuck. He really could turn anything into a porno. So why the hell was he wandering around alone in the dark?
* * *
“Hey.”
Juno’s low voice drifted over him as he stood in the bedroom doorway adjusting his eyes to the shadows, wrapping him in his gravelly, middle-of-the-night growl. The bed creaked and he could see the outline of Juno’s body ease into focus as he propped himself up on his elbow. Even if he couldn’t see his face in the dark, Kyle could feel him watching closely, like he could see through him and check out his insides. Giving him that deep, serious stare that was scary sometimes and annoying sometimes, but mostly just everything he loved about being watched. And there was no one’s attention he liked more.
“Hey.”
“You alright?” Juno asked him.
“Yeah.” His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Fine. Just… yeah.”
Juno stretched an arm out toward him, yawning as he called him back into bed.
Kyle slid over and melted into the warm space next to his body, groaning as Juno pulled him closer still, wrapping a heavy arm around him and teasing his fingers roughly through his hair. The air in the room seemed thick, got thicker the longer no one said anything, and he just lay there listening to heavy breathing and heavier thunder, and to the tiny metal pings he finally realized were raindrops bouncing against the old aluminum awnings that arched over the windows.
“It’s raining,” Kyle whispered, his voice sounding like a shout in the momentary lack of thunder. “Hard. Field’s probably flooded.” His stomach recoiled at his own words as he thought about center field getting spongy and soggy, his ground, his spot getting beat up under someone else’s cleats on Friday.
“Mmmhmm.” Juno slid a huge hand across his back, his fingertips pleasure and torture against his bare skin. “Remember when it would storm like this in Little League? You’d wake up and it would look like that outside, and it would be like the end of the world.”
Kyle groaned, the memory of canceled games still so vivid, the tease of being so amped, and then having it taken away. He’d never been good at that. “God, yeah. That always made me crazy. Like, there’d be no way we were playing, but I’d still get dressed and lay on the couch all morning and watch the weather channel. Like someone on there was gonna tell me the game was back on.”
Juno laughed. “I did that too. I used to think as long as I didn’t take my cleats off, we’d still have a game. Never worked. I just got yelled at for wearing cleats in the house.”
Kyle curled closer, finally reaching over to run his hand down Juno’s stomach, stroke the polished rock of smooth skin and hard muscle and listen to his breathing stutter. “Mud games were the best, though. When it started early and no one would want to call it, and it just turned into a pit? That was awesome. You could slide like a bitch and nobody could see to throw you out. It was like winning the lottery. I’d run on every pitch.”
Juno snorted, his abs clenching under Kyle’s hand. “Man, I fucking hated dicks like you.”
Christ, he didn’t know why that kind of teasing made him hard, but it did.
“Yeah, whatever. You wish you were me. You probably never stole a base in your life.”
“Fuck you.” Juno scraped his nails gently along the waistband of his shorts, sending chills up his back. “I’ve got six, thanks very much.”
Kyle hummed quietly, contented by the soft, sharp touch. “Attempts don’t count, you know.”
“Smart ass.” Juno closed a hand around his hip and yanked him closer, biting his neck and pinching his side un
til Kyle was laughing and breathless, the brush of lips against his skin making him lightheaded.
“Neither does Little League,” he still managed to gasp.
“What? No. That totally counts,” Juno argued. “Otherwise, I only have four.”
“Wow. You’re seriously the slowest person I know.”
Juno sank his teeth into him again, leaving a soft trail of bites down to his shoulder, his body vibrating against him with laughter. “God, you’re such an asshole.”
“Yeah, you love it.”
“Yeah. I do.” He squeezed Kyle tighter, harder, until he thought his bones would crack. “Fuck, you feel so good to hold onto.”
The gears switching so quickly caught in his head for a second, grinding his emotions together, hurting and then wiping out pain he didn’t even know he had, making him feel dizzy and blank and oversensitive.
“You’re good at holding onto me.”
It was so nice just to be touched, to be held. He’d feel like a total sap virgin geek if Juno didn’t seem to crave the closeness just as much as he did. If lying together with their limbs intertwined, breathing each other in, whispering and tickling and tracing each other’s names on bare skin wasn’t enough to kill an entire afternoon without it ever actually being enough.
“I smother you at night, I bet,” Juno murmured, his mouth like a hundred kisses at once as his lips brushed against Kyle’s skin.
“Only the best kind of smothering.”
“Maybe I should get a bigger bed. Now that you’re here.” Kyle listened to him take a sharp breath, then felt him exhale, hard enough to caress his neck instead of tickle. “I’m so glad you’re here, rook.”
He twisted in Juno’s hold so he could tuck up against his shoulder, needing to see him, but not be seen, not share exactly how much it overwhelmed him to be wanted the way Juno seemed to want him. Just to stay. Just to be there.
“You are?”
Juno raised his hand to cup his cheek and trace his mouth with his thumb. “Yeah. I love waking up with you next to me. Always have. I never wanted you to go home, you know. That first night you stayed, having you here the next morning, all rumpled up, sexy as fuck, laying next to me… hogging the whole bed…”
Kyle laughed. “No, I don’t.”
“You bet you do. Kick in your sleep, too. I don’t care. Kick me till I’m black and blue, still wouldn’t trade it for another night without you.”
Kyle squirmed inside and out, too embarrassed to stay still. It was like when Juno called him a good boy, and he melted under the praise and the ridiculousness of it simultaneously. It was funny all the things that could make you feel so much at once. Like when he won all those MVP trophies and loved it and didn’t give a fuck at the same time.
“Don’t change the bed,” he finally said, needing to shake out from under the huge stack of feelings. “I love this bed.”
Juno smiled. “Do you?”
“Are you kidding? You know how many dirty things you’ve done to me in this bed? It’s practically a national landmark. Anyway, I want you closer, not farther away.”
“This is about as close as it gets.”
“I know how you can get closer.” He pressed his body harder against Juno’s, swallowing a moan as hard cock met hard cock, so fulfilling, even when it wasn’t.
Juno reached around him to slip his hands down the back of his shorts, curve his long fingers around his ass, cupping him tightly and replacing Kyle’s even breathing with breathless pulls for air.
“You check out the damage?” Juno asked him.
“Yeah. No marks. Just pink.”
Juno groaned, a low, warm sound that surprised him. “Fucking love when you’re pink like that. So hot.” He dug his fingers in harder, the soft squeeze intensifying the pain that lingered deep in his muscles, and Kyle rocked into the tight grasp, hungry for the echoing ache it brought to the surface.
“That feels good.”
“Yeah. It does.” Juno paused, the silence louder than the storm that filled it. It grew long enough to border on awkward, and Kyle wondered if he was supposed to be the one talking, what exactly he was supposed to say, if they were even supposed to talk about what had happened earlier the same way they talked about other things. How he was going to know if everything was okay if they didn’t
“How you feeling about everything else? About before.”
He relaxed a little, remembered, yeah, this was Juno. Juno talked everything to death. He wasn’t quiet, not that way. He didn’t ignore things or move forward in any direction without double checking a thousand times. He wasn’t sure how he always forgot that.
“I don’t know. Pretty stupid I guess.”
“Why stupid?”
“I just… You know. I don’t think. I never think.”
“Sure you do. You just think so fast you don’t know you do it. You run on instinct. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not so good. You just need a little help figuring that out.”
“You gonna help me?”
“Is that still what you want?”
“It’s all I want. Just make me understand when I fuck up. Help me see it. Sometimes I do dumb shit on purpose, just to be a dick. I know that. But, sometimes I really don’t see it until somebody tells me. I know that sounds stupid, like nobody could actually get through life without knowing the difference between being a fuck up and not, but… The worst part is, sometimes you tell me and I still don’t see it. And that’s scary. If you could help me fix that… I think I’d feel better.”
“That doesn’t sound stupid.”
“It does to me. I feel like I’m missing something. Like you’re the only person who knows what it is.”
“I think you just need to be somewhere you can relax, rook. If you can calm down, think a little bit, a little slower before you do things, you can figure this stuff out yourself.”
“I don’t want to to do it myself, though.”
“You don’t have to.” Juno shook his head, letting his fingertips play gently over Kyle’s backside, pulling his body apart with the soft touch. “I just really want to get this right. Make sure you feel safe. That none of it makes you feel...” His hands paused as he seemed to look for his next thought.
“Feel what?”
“I don’t know. Uncomfortable, I guess.”
“Uncomfortable?” The word was so bizarre in his mouth that he almost forgot to be embarrassed. But, not quite. He felt his pores opening up, humiliation oozing out as his voice grew hoarse and he tried to explain. “Of course it made me uncomfortable. You spanked me. Not like before. Not like anything else before. Like I was a kid. It was embarrassing. It made me cry and it made my stomach hurt. And it made me… not want to do that stuff again. Isn’t that the point?”
Juno was quiet another long minute, long enough to fill the room with crackling thunder and electric air. “Yeah. But, we should still talk about it more, I think.”
Kyle sighed. “You have a talking fetish, you know. It’s sick.”
“Kyle.”
“Are you uncomfortable?” His throat burned as he choked the words out, the possibility hitting him suddenly, making his skin feel too tight. “Do you want this to be just… something normal? I mean, I can… we can just… not do that part again.” The idea made him ache. All of this going away, losing that feeling he’d just had, of being watched, being taken care of, even when he didn’t feel like taking care of himself. Everything he’d just tried to explain being useless.
“No. Hey, no. That’s not what I want. That’s not what I’m saying.”
He sighed, relief so heavy he could taste it in his mouth. “Good. Because I really need it.”
“I know you do. So do I. I like taking care of you, rook. I really like that you trust me to do that. That’s a big deal. I liked that you learned from it. That you’ll do better.”
He nodded. “I will. The water thing… I won’t do that again. I promise. That was stupid. I know that. I just wasn’t thinking,
but I can think that much. The rest of it… I’ll do better. I’ll try.”
“That’s all you need to do. It’s not like I think you’re going to turn into a different person overnight. I don’t even want that. I just want you to treat people better. Mostly yourself. But, you’re still allowed to screw up. And you’re still allowed to say stop any time. The most important thing is that you feel safe.”
“I always feel safe with you.”
“I’ll never hurt you, rook. I promise. Not any way you don’t want me to.”
The surge of heat he felt rise up in his chest then didn’t have anything to do with being turned on. Not really. It felt more like every word he knew trying to spill out of his mouth at once. Like trying to explain every need, and fear, and most of all, the alarming sense of calm that had found its way inside him for a while last night. Just renting space right now, but maybe looking for something more permanent.
“It made me feel better,” he finally said, the simplest sentence feeling the most honest, the easiest to turn into words, even if they were embarrassing ones. “I did something stupid and you spanked me, and it made me feel… less like a mess. It made me happy. You think that’s weird?”
Juno shrugged. “Why would it be weird? You like consequences, rook. You just convince yourself you don’t.”
“I like it so much. You doing it for real, when I deserve it. I like it more than I thought I would, even.”
Juno pulled his hand away from his ass, and ran his fingers up along Kyle’s arm. He whined, but the truth was, he didn’t care all that much where Juno was touching him, as long as he was touching him. Juno’s fingers curved around his shoulder and slid back down, a soft stroke like he was petting an animal, and he talked just as softly.