by Brynn Stein
Elliot shivers with the feelings that friction awakens. “So, how about you? You and Patrick, outside, huh? Tell me.”
Ben smiles that sweet, shy smile he gets when he remembers his time with Patrick. Elliot knows from having seen his memories that he has only ever been with Patrick, and now Elliot.
“Well, there’s not nearly as much to tell as you’ve already done, apparently.” Ben turns his head again to look out over the yard, and Elliot is sure he’s torturing his groin on purpose.
Elliot ruffles Ben’s hair. “Not a contest. Tell me.”
“In the tree fort.” He positively blushes, which, since this is a dream, Elliot isn’t sure if he’s doing that on purpose or if it’s such an ingrained response that it would have unconsciously happened if he was alive, so it’s happening now. “During the war we’d fool around when we could. That was almost always outside somewhere. Wasn’t usually all the way, though.”
Elliot already knows about at least some of those times from when Ben gave Elliot his memories. But then Ben surprises him.
“But there was that one time on the beach.” Ben’s voice gets quiet and his expression takes on a look of awe that Elliot would do anything to keep on that beautiful face.
“You and Patrick on the beach, huh?” Elliot goes back to playing with Ben’s hair. He loves Ben’s hair. The sensation of the silky threads slipping sensually through Elliot’s fingers was damned near a sexual experience in itself.
“Yeah.” Ben stares out at the scenery, but Elliot can tell his mind is reaching back to those long-ago days. “Patrick’s family tried to go to the beach once a year. His uncle lived in Cape May, in New Jersey, and they always stayed with him for a week. Sometimes they’d take me.” Ben snuggles into Elliot, shifting so that his legs are fitted up in the swing as well now. Elliot doesn’t spare more than a passing thought to how impossible Ben’s position would be outside a dream. He just listens to Ben’s melodic voice. “One year, after our first kiss but before we had really done much else, Patrick had just turned eighteen, and I would be eighteen in three weeks. We were on the beach and his family wanted to go back to his uncle’s. It was within walking distance, so we asked if we could just stay at the beach for a while. They said we could.”
Ben stops his recitation. Elliot waits him out, wanting to hear more.
Ben smiles with the memory. “The part of the beach we were on hadn’t been crowded at any point the whole day, but as the sun got closer to setting, more and more people left until we had the whole thing to ourselves.” Ben rubs Elliot’s calf in time to Elliot rubbing Ben’s hair.
“Patrick found this little cove and told me no one would see us there.” Ben’s cheeks pink up again at the reminiscence. “I was so nervous. We hadn’t seen each other completely naked before, but there he was, stripping off his bathing costume. He already had his arms out of it and was pulling it down around his ankles. He stepped out of it and let it lie on the ground. He turned to me, completely unashamed, and he was glorious.”
Elliot doesn’t know why he isn’t jealous. Shouldn’t he be jealous of his—what was Ben? His boyfriend?—melting over the memory of another man? But he isn’t. Elliot is actually getting kind of hard. Ben must feel it because he moves his hand higher on Elliot’s leg, still rubbing. Elliot strokes his hand down Ben’s neck, across his chest, and to the nipple closest to the swing.
“I’d only ever see my brothers before, and they didn’t look anything like that.” Ben undulates his body again. Elliot thinks he’s trying to start the swing into motion again, so Elliot uses his legs to swing them back and forth as Ben indulges himself in his memory. “He was erect and proud, and when I tore my eyes away from… that area and looked at his eyes, he looked predatory. Like he was ready to eat me alive. I’m not sure I didn’t look the same way.”
Elliot creeps his hand farther down Ben’s body and finds that Ben, too, is erect. Elliot palms him through the shorts he’s wearing, and Ben groans. Elliot loves the sound. He leans down and whispers into Ben’s ear, “Then what did he do?”
Ben can hardly find his voice for a while, but finally he continues. “He glided over to me and took hold of my bathing costume. He pushed it off my shoulders and down my arms, then followed it down my legs as he took it to my ankles. Before I could step out, though, he had his lips on my….”
Ben’s gone in the memory. Elliot’s modern ghost, who uses emojis and can swallow him whole without any blush whatsoever, is so embarrassed by the memory he can’t even say the word penis.
Both Ben and Elliot are incredibly turned on.
Elliot eases out from under Ben and helps him lie back on the swing. Willing their clothes away, Elliot kneels beside Ben and puts his lips on the very end of Ben’s cock. Elliot casts himself as Patrick in Ben’s reenactment and tries to channel that shy, but eager, eighteen-year-old from more than a century before. “What next?” Elliot all but whispers.
Ben’s eyes are glazed. “I was so shocked. I hadn’t even thought that someone would ever put their mouths there on someone else. I don’t know where Patrick got the idea. It’s certainly not something you’d normally talk to other people about.”
Elliot knows Ben meant in the 1860s because nowadays everyone talks about that kind of thing.
“He circled his tongue around the top. I mean, what the Sam Hill? I didn’t know I could get that hard so fast.”
Ben lies on the swing while Elliot does what he describes. Inwardly Elliot marvels at how much even Ben’s vocabulary is reverting back to that time.
“He stuck his tongue down in….” Ben draws in a breath as Elliot does the same thing. “I barely realized there was a hole there. I certainly didn’t know you could get your tongue into it.” Elliot probes in earnest and Ben is completely lost. “God that feels so good, Patrick.”
Elliot smiles, thinking, He’s so gone in the memory he’s even calling me Patrick, and not understanding why he isn’t offended by that.
“What now, Ben?” Elliot murmurs around Ben’s cock.
Ben groans and whimpers, and Elliot thinks Ben’s actually trying to make words, but they don’t sound like any language Elliot knows. Realizing he’s on his own here, Elliot tries to think like a nineteenth-century teen giving head for the first time.
He uses just the tip of his tongue to circle the edge of the urethra, then around the glans. Elliot kisses the very top of the head, thinking of asking Ben if Patrick had touched him too, but not wanting to break Ben out of his time travel.
He tentatively touches Ben’s balls, deciding that if they’d never seen each other naked, this would be new too. Elliot’s trying so hard to get into character he can almost see that long-ago scene in his head. He spares a thought that maybe he is sharing Ben’s memory, because for some reason, he suddenly knows just what to do.
I drag the tips of my fingers up his calves and thighs and ever so gently, reverently, skim across his balls. I glide my fingertips up the sides of his cock until I can hold him steady. Then I suck just a little, just the head, into my mouth and twirl my tongue around the ridge I find there.
It’s so good. I’ve wanted to have Ben like this for so long. Now he’s mine. As much as I’m his.
I look up and see him standing over me, looking down, shock and awe and fear in equal parts on his face. That’s my Ben. I love him so much.
I stand up, dragging my fingertips all the way up his side, about half expecting him to giggle like he does when I tickle him in our fort, but he doesn’t. He’s looking at me like I’m his whole world.
“I’m pretty sure you still have to breathe, Ben.”
He chuckles and buries his head into my neck. I take both of us in my hand, but I’m afraid to close it. I don’t want to hurt him, but I want to feel him so much that I can’t help it either. I fumble some kind of motion, up and down. Squeeze a little, loosen. It doesn’t take long before we’re both finished and collapsing into each other as much as possible while still standing up.
&
nbsp; “It was over too soon,” I whisper the words into the corner of his mouth.
“It was perfect,” he coos back, and we just hold each other for what seems like forever.
Elliot slowly comes back to himself to find that they are, indeed, standing up. He doesn’t remember moving. But then it’s a dream, so that kind of stuff can happen. But Elliot can’t help wondering what happened with the memory? It was almost like it was his own. It didn’t quite feel the same as when Ben shared his memories with him when Elliot first moved in, and Ben hadn’t done it that directly since they had started talking in the dreams. But what else could it have been, Elliot asks himself, not expecting an answer. “What was that, Ben?”
“Perfect,” he purrs back, “It was perfect.”
Chapter 11
A COUPLE of weeks later, Elliot had painted his last stroke, replaced the last light switch cover, screwed in the last screw, and even patched that damned crack in the living room. He still wanted to go to Pennsylvania, but his fan club had convinced him to take a few day trips around the area first, as a trial run. He had found a few more houses he wanted and needed to check on some of the houses of those original side trips to see how soon renovations would be finished on them. There were a couple he thought he could flip fairly easily, and he could use the cash flow.
“So, what if I went with you on the first trip? Add one more step to the easing-in process,” Daniel asked one day. “You go work on whichever house you want—and by that I mean basically supervise the jobs the contractors are doing—and I’d be there if anything happened. I could call the ambulance, give you CPR if needed… whatever.”
Elliot had the fleeting thought that Daniel was overreacting. The pacemaker would keep Elliot’s heart going, and it wasn’t like he was going far. But it was a good way to get everyone off his back about returning to work. Sheri was good with anything that didn’t have Elliot by himself hundreds of miles away. And Ben didn’t like it, but he understood that Elliot wanted to get back into the activities he’d always loved, so he grudgingly agreed.
So several days later, Elliot threw his overnight bag on the bed and started gathering items. The tapping of computer keys interrupted him.
I thought u weren’t staying overnight.
Elliot tossed the last item in the bag. “It’s mostly just my meds and stuff. A change of underwear and socks. Just in case we get snowed in or something.”
It’s not calling for snow. It’s not even winter.
“Or something, Ben.” Elliot frowned. “I thought you’d be glad I was taking precautions. You know. Just in case.”
I just don’t want u 2 leave. I have a bad feeling.
“I’m coming back home, Ben. I promise. I’m just going for the day.” Elliot stroked the laptop. “It’s just for the day. I love you. You know that, right?”
The laptop was still for a while. Then Yes, I know. I love u, 2.
Then after another long silence, Have fun.
Elliot patted the keys. “Thanks, Ben. I will. And I’ll be back early.”
OK :-)
Elliot shouldered the bag, grabbed the laptop, and started downstairs. “That’s my Ben.”
Daniel apparently chose that moment to knock cursorily on the door and come in, shouting, “You ready, Ellie?”
Elliot set the computer on the table in the foyer. “Am I ready, Ben?”
Yes. If I can’t talk u out of it.
Elliot gave the computer a stern look but couldn’t hold it and started laughing.
Just be careful.
“Will do, love.” Elliot kissed his fingertips and touched them to the screen, and then he and Daniel trotted out to Daniel’s car.
“SO WHY are we going to your house again?” Elliot asked for the millionth time as Daniel pulled in to his own driveway.
“I told you.” Daniel got out of the car and headed for the house at a fast walk. “A friend is having an art showing for quirky pieces and he wanted to include my Alien Song Stars series.”
“Yeah. I know you said that. But like I’ve asked before, why are you delivering it today if it starts today?”
Elliot could see Daniel turn red as he fished out his keys and opened the door. Embarrassment? Is this why he hadn’t answered the other times Elliot had asked? “Well, I’m only delivering one today. Redelivering, actually.” By now both Daniel and Elliot were in Daniel’s living room and Elliot still didn’t see anything Daniel should be embarrassed by. “I dropped off all the rest last week, but Barrett took one look at my Purple People Eater and told me I had to change it.” Daniel fished out his phone and keyed up a particular picture. “This is the original.”
Elliot looked at the picture and knew immediately what was wrong. “You have a purple creature eating normal-colored people. It clearly says in the song that the creature eats purple people.” So that’s why the embarrassment. Even Elliot knew that detail of pop culture.
“You’re as much of a nerd as Barrett. Yes, O knowledgeable one. According to the song, we don’t actually know what color the creature was, but he says in the lyrics that he eats purple people. I originally didn’t think people would know that, so I made him purple. Sort of a ‘give the audience what they want—or at least what they understand’ sort of thing.” Daniel turned toward the hallway. “Go sit. Take a load off. I’ll only be a second.” Then he disappeared into the guest room–cum–art studio to retrieve the reworked painting.
“Then why would I need to sit?” Elliot moved to the sofa in the living room—not that many steps away in the small apartment—and sank into the cushions. Elliot glanced at Daniel’s phone, which Elliot still had in his hand, and wondered what the hell to do with it. “So, what other paintings do you have in the series?”
“Scroll through the pics on the phone. I take pictures of all my work.” Daniel’s disembodied voice wafted through the hallway.
“Why?”
“Because I’m a vain son of a bitch?” Daniel emerged from the art room. “I don’t know. I just do. Always have.”
Elliot did as instructed and had no idea what he was seeing. “Okay. I don’t know most of these.”
Daniel smiled and sat next to him on the couch, moving Elliot’s hand toward him so he could explain them. “Most people don’t. I think that’s why I like to paint pictures of them.”
“That makes no sense, you know.” Elliot peered at the phone as Daniel scrolled back to the one of the purple people eater.
Daniel then scrolled back once more. “Okay. That’s ‘Two Little Men in a Flying Saucer’ sung by Ella Fitzgerald. It says in the song that they have green antennae and purple hair, and they left the planet because they didn’t like it.” Daniel scrolled again. “That one’s ‘Hey Mr. Spaceman’ by the Byrds. Well, made popular by the Byrds. There were other groups that sang it. They didn’t write it.”
“There’s no spaceman. Just smeared toothpaste and a carved message that says good-bye and they’ll see them again.”
“That’s what it says in the song.” Daniel looked up at Elliot disapprovingly. “You’ve got to expand your musical horizons.” He moved along to the next picture in the phone.
“You’ve got to get out more.” Elliot was still looking at Daniel. “I worry about you.”
“Says the man who talks to ghosts.” Daniel thrust the phone toward Elliot so that he’d look at the next picture.
Elliot looked at it and straightened up a little when he saw a little blue alien falling off the side of a building with a woman peeking down from the roof. “Hey, I know that one. ‘Little Blue Man.’”
“By Betty Johnson.”
“Was he technically an alien?” Elliot was kind of getting into this. Daniel was right, the pieces were quirky, but they were fun and well done, and Elliot was having a good time trying to guess which song each picture might represent. Not that he was doing that well at it. “The song doesn’t say he is.”
“He’s blue! What else could he be?” Daniel dropped the phone to the sof
a cushion and gawked at Elliot incredulously.
“Google ‘the Fugates of Kentucky.’” Elliot slumped against the back of the couch.
“Let’s say for sake of argument that this particular little blue man—whom only the singer can see, by the way—is not from Kentucky.”
Elliot laughed. He always enjoyed messing with Daniel. “What about ‘Blue’ by Eiffel 65?”
“Nah.” Daniel shook his head. “There’s a video of that. I stick to the older songs. No videos. Leaves room for interpretation.”
Elliot just shook his head. “You’re weird.”
“Thank you.” Daniel smiled and elbowed Elliot. “So are you.”
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Daniel asked, “Are you really feeling okay now?” He shifted away from Elliot so he could see him better. At least Elliot assumed that was why. He was glad he did, though. Sitting that close was too intimate now that they weren’t looking at pictures.
“Yeah. I really am.” Elliot turned to face Daniel more squarely, which put them even farther apart. “I still get tired easily, but the doctor said I could start doing what I normally would have done.” Elliot smoothed a wrinkle on his pants where they bunched up at the knee. “Within reason.”
“It’s that ‘within reason’ part everyone is afraid of, you know.” Daniel kicked Elliot’s foot lightly with the toe of his shoe. “You’re not the best at gauging what’s reasonable exertion, sometimes.”
Elliot shrugged a shoulder and slouched into the corner of the sofa. “I wish everyone would stop worrying so much. I’ll be okay.”
Daniel nodded and sat in silence for moment. “Have you considered giving Sheri medical proxy before you leave for Pennsylvania?”
Elliot just looked at him, dumbfounded. “Why?”
“Think about it.” Daniel tapped Elliot’s knee. “You’ll be up there where no one knows you. They don’t know your case. Your doctor won’t be immediately available.” Daniel suddenly seemed not to know what to do with his hands. He reached toward Elliot several times, but each time he dropped his hand. Elliot was grateful that Daniel was trying so hard to stay in the realm of platonic friend, but it was almost comical to watch.