The Torches We Carry

by L. A. Witt

  Even as the clothes started coming off and the touches became more frantic, we were subdued compared to what I was used to with him. Usually, he brought out the side of me that loved rough sex. Tonight, I wasn’t sure I could handle that. Even the softest touch of his lips or his fingers almost broke me. There was so much relief and pent-up need and so many years of distance to cross, and somehow it didn’t feel right to have the frantic, bruising sex we’d nearly always had.

  This was everything I’d hoped for in the hotel room last night and then some, and it was perfect. Unrestrained kissing. Unhesitant touching. We held each other tight and just felt each other all over as if neither of us could believe this was real. I sure couldn’t.

  “Want you to do something.” His voice sounded strained and shaky, like he was struggling to form words.

  “Yeah?” I kissed my way down his neck. “Tell me.”

  “I want—oh God…” He squirmed under me, dragging his nails up my back as I continued exploring his neck.

  I grinned against the hot skin of his throat. “Talk to me. What do you want me to do?”

  “Fuck—” He lifted his hips a little, pressing our hard dicks together and making me gasp, and whispered, “Fuck me like you did back then.”

  It was my turn to forget how to speak. Just the thought of burying myself in him and riding him hard was… oh Christ, how were we not doing that already?

  I lifted myself up on my arms and gazed down at his flushed face. “You have lube?”

  Marcus nodded. I moved out of the way, and he leaned toward the nightstand. He started to come back with a bottle of lube and a strip of condoms, but hesitated. “Guess we don’t need to bother with these.” He tossed the rubbers back in the drawer, then handed me the lube.

  I took the bottle, but instead of opening it, slung an arm around his waist and kissed him. He didn’t protest. For a long moment, we knelt in the middle of the bed, kissing lazily, and I probably could have done that all night long if he hadn’t murmured against my lips, “I want you. Now.”

  With a soft groan, I broke away and nodded toward the pillows. “Turn around.”

  He did, and I quickly slicked up my fingers and my cock. As fun as it was to drag this part out just to tease him, I needed him too much right now, so once I was sure he was relaxed enough to take me, I slid my fingers free and guided myself in.

  “Oh God, Reuben,” he whimpered, arching under me. “Oh God, yeah…”

  God yeah was right. Marcus was the only man I’d ever been inside bareback, and sliding into him made my eyes water with emotions I didn’t need to label. Somehow, despite everything, we’d made it back to this, and feeling him around my cock with nothing between us just made it all that much more real.

  How did I breathe without you for six years?

  It didn’t matter. I was breathing now, and every breath tasted like his familiar scent, and I couldn’t get into him fast enough. I still took my time, of course—I didn’t want to hurt him—but Jesus, I needed to be as deep as he could take me.

  Before long, I was moving easily inside him, taking smooth strokes all the way in and out while he rocked back against me.

  “Harder, baby,” he whispered. “C’mon. Please.”

  “Mmm.” I kissed his shoulder. “Harder? How much harder?”

  He rocked his hips like he wanted to egg me on. “You know how I like it.”

  I shivered. Because yes, I did know. Because I’d been with this man before, and it was the best sex I’d ever had, and oh, yeah, I knew how he liked it.

  I nipped the side of his neck. “Go all the way down. On your stomach.”

  Marcus groaned softly, shuddering beneath me, and did as he was told. I followed, and once he was on the mattress, I slid my hands under his chest and hooked them over his shoulders for leverage.

  And then I gave it to him hard. Exactly as hard as I knew he loved it.

  “Yeah!” he cried. “Fuck. Oh my God. Yeah!”

  I gritted my teeth and kept riding him, and every thrust knocked a moan out of him, and every sound he made drove me higher, until I was long past thinking I’d come and starting to wonder if I might just explode instead.

  “Fuck…” Marcus tensed under me, and arched, and his ass clenched hard around my cock as he came. “Oh God, Reuben…” He sounded close to tears, and I loved it, and I pounded him until I unloaded inside him with a groan that didn’t even sound like me.

  And then… we were both still. Panting, trembling, but otherwise still.

  Even after I’d pulled out, I didn’t pull away. I kissed the side of his neck, savoring the warmth of his skin, and murmured, “I missed this.”

  “Me too.” He turned his head toward me. “I missed you.”

  I smiled and brushed another kiss across his lips. “Want to grab a shower?”

  His playful grin almost turned me on all over again. “Like I’d say no to a shower with you.”

  We did manage to actually shower, though there was plenty of playful kissing and touching too. If we’d been a little less exhausted, we probably would’ve wound up fucking again, or at least jerking each other off. That would’ve been fun, but I wasn’t going to complain about what we ended up doing instead—cuddling up under the covers and just holding each other.

  “I really have missed you.” He smoothed my damp hair. “I swear nothing’s been right since we broke up.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s so good to be back to this.”

  He smiled, but it faltered. “So, do we tell people at work? Or keep this under the radar?”

  I considered it for a moment, and shrugged. “I don’t feel the need to hide it, but I don’t really want to put up a neon sign either.”

  “Fair enough. What about your dad, though? If we start seeing each other, he’s going to know you’re queer.”

  I laughed softly. “He, uh, already knows.”

  Marcus made a sound like he was almost choking. “Come again?”

  Absently running a hand up the middle of his chest, I said, “First Christmas I was married to Michelle, he made a comment about how he’d always expected me to be gay. So I looked at him and said he was half right.”

  “Whoa. How did that go over?”

  “Eh.” I shrugged. “Kind of anticlimactic compared to how it had always played out in my head. I’d always expected it to be a huge blowup or something, but then I was suddenly explaining bisexuality to my family over Christmas dinner, and it was just… a non-issue.”

  “Maybe because you were married?” Marcus suggested cautiously. “So they thought it was a non-issue?”

  “Maybe.” I smiled. “But at least if I bring a man home, they can’t say I didn’t tell them.”

  He smoothed my hair. “Good point. And we know we can do this. We made it work while we were dating and after we broke up. We know damn well we can handle our jobs and this at the same time.”

  “True.” I released a long breath. “Fair warning—it’s gonna take me some time to get through everything with my divorce. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to do this. Just… be patient with me.”

  “Patient.” He kissed me softly. “I’ve waited six years just to be able to touch you again. I’ve got all kinds of patience, baby.”

  I smiled back and caressed his cheek, but the smile didn’t last as his words sank in. “You didn’t wait all this time for me, did you?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t think I’d ever have you back, if that’s what you’re wondering, but I mean it when I say nothing has felt quite right since we split.” Covering my hand with his, he pressed a kiss to my palm. “And now it does.”

  A million emotions crowded in, everything from being moved by his confession to feeling guilty as hell for leaving back then, and I did the only thing I could think to do—I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. How had I ever wanted to be away from him? Thank fucking God I’d broken past that mental block that kept me from talking about things as easily as he could.

>   This time.

  “You know today might be a fluke, right?” I avoided his eyes as my face burned. “I’m never going to be that guy who can…”

  “Reuben.” He tipped up my chin, and the warmth of his smile made my toes curl. “I’ve known that about you since we met, and I fell in love with you knowing damn well it was probably who you’d always be. That hasn’t changed.”

  A lump rose in my throat. “It’s got to be frustrating, though.”

  He half shrugged, the smile staying firmly in place. “If the last six years have taught me anything, it’s that helping you figure out what you’re feeling isn’t nearly as frustrating as not having you at all. Trust me—I can work with it.”

  I laughed, more out of relief than anything, and leaned in for a kiss. When I broke away, I whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” Then he pulled me back in and let me rest my head on his chest, and we just lay there for a while. We’d probably wind up fooling around again before too long, but for right now, this was perfect.

  I still couldn’t believe we were even here. I hadn’t thought it was possible. I hadn’t even realized I’d wanted it to be.

  But it was. After a long time and a rough road, Marcus and I had found our way back to each other. I had no illusions that the future would be smooth and uneventful, or that every moment together would be the same bliss as this one right now, but this was right. This was where I’d needed to be for all this time, and it was where I wanted to be until the end of time.

  And lying here in Marcus’s arms, with I love you still tingling on my lips, I had no doubt we’d make it.

  Epilogue

  Marcus

  Two Years Later

  The bleating alarm jarred me awake. Fuck. Was it six o’clock already? In any time zone, never mind the one I was in?

  I reached for my phone, then remembered the nightstand was on the other side of the hard hotel bed. Carefully, I leaned across Reuben, felt around for my phone, and shut off the alarm.

  “Mmf.” He grumbled, burrowing into the pillow.

  I chuckled and kissed the back of his shoulder. As stealthily as I could, and with only the bathroom light on so I wouldn’t wake him up, I got dressed. I grabbed my trade show badge and held it up in the light to make sure I hadn’t picked up his by mistake. Then I put it over my neck, and collected my wallet, phone, and room key.

  Before I left, I paused by the bed and leaned down to kiss Reuben’s scruffy cheek. “I love you. I’ll see you downstairs.”

  “Mmf.”

  I laughed, gave his shoulder a little squeeze, and headed out, making sure I turned off the bathroom light. In the elevator, I took a few deep breaths and rolled my shoulders. Okay. Time to be on. I’d get some coffee, get to the booth, and the day would start.

  Downstairs in the exhibition hall, Karen, the field representative director, joined me a few minutes later, steaming cup of coffee in her hand. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “Morning.”

  She looked around. “Where’s Reuben?”

  “Still asleep.” I sipped my coffee. “He’ll be down around nine, remember?”

  She frowned, but didn’t press. As much as she liked having him come to trade shows with us now, she was still less than impressed with the arrangement I had with Reuben. Probably because she’d never tried to make Reuben function like a normal human being before the sun came up.

  Not long after our trip to Boise, Reuben had agreed to start coming to trade shows on two conditions, and one of those conditions was that he didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn like I did. I’d never argued; the man simply did not function before at least eight, so I’d readily agreed.

  The other stipulation was that we had one night to ourselves at each show. It could be after the con was over. It could be before it started (though that wasn’t likely since I needed my social hibernation before things kicked off). Most of the time, it was somewhere in the middle.

  As it happened, tonight was date night, and I had no problem with Reuben stealing another hour or two this morning if it meant he was not only functional today but raring to go tonight.

  In the meantime, Karen and I had work to do, and we’d just finished refilling literature holders and straightening displays before the exhibition hall doors opened.

  “And we’re off,” she muttered into her coffee cup.

  Indeed we were. The minute the doors opened, the room was flooded with people. Karen and I were ready with our game faces, and in moments, were deep in conversation with potential clients. As soon as those potential clients moved on, others moved in.

  I was in mid-conversation with a brass supplier when my neck prickled, and I turned just in time to see Reuben strolling through the crowd in that charcoal gray suit I loved so much. He had coffee in his hand and flashed me a quick smile, one that made my whole body tingle, and joined us in the booth.

  I only missed a beat in my conversation, fortunately, and recovered enough to continue with the supplier. When I’d finished talking to her and she’d left me with some flyers, I had a momentary lull, which I used to zero in on Reuben.

  He was, unsurprisingly, having an animated conversation with Karen and a couple of guys about our newest laser cutting apparatus.

  I smiled as I watched him. It still amazed me how much he’d become a fixture at these events. Especially now that he had another manager handling most of the crises in the engineering department, Reuben had started coming to more and more trade shows with me. They still overwhelmed him sometimes, but as long as he could decompress and I didn’t drag him to the bar in the evenings, he did all right. In fact, he’d really found his groove with this, and occasionally even joined me at early-for-him hours if it was just the two of us or someone else had had a late night.

  Reuben was finding his groove with a lot of things, actually. Not long after we’d gotten back together, he had surprised the hell out of me one day by declaring that he was going to start seeing a therapist.

  “It’s not fair for you to do all the work,” he’d told me. “I need to learn how to sort out my own feelings and all that shit, so I’m going to go to someone who gets paid to help me do that.”

  And wow, what a difference. He still struggled sometimes, and if we had a fight, it wasn’t unusual for him to get on the horn with his therapist before we sat down to work things out. In the beginning, she’d have us both come in so she could mediate. As time went on and he’d gotten a better handle on things, it hadn’t been so bad. He was actually getting pretty good at it, and sometimes blew me away by how self-aware he’d become. Plus, she’d helped him sort out some lingering feelings about his divorce. They’d even had a few appointments with his ex-wife, which had helped Reuben and Michelle put everything to bed and move forward as friends. Michelle and I were still overcoming some awkwardness, but we were getting there.

  At work, most people knew we were a couple, but we weren’t out to anyone outside the company. People had probably caught on, and rumors were probably circulating, but it wasn’t openly talked about. That was fine with me. I didn’t feel the need to broadcast it, particularly when we had some outspoken homophobes floating around in our industry, and at the same time, was relieved I didn’t have to try to keep it a secret. If people found out, they found out. Our coworkers mostly knew, Reuben’s family knew, and while Bob had been iffy about us dating at work, he’d ultimately decided it was better than us struggling to be in the same room.

  “Mr. Peterson?” A voice jarred me out of my thoughts, and I turned to see Jim Grainger and Connie Yates from Sparks Magazine—one of the industry’s biggest trade magazines—approaching.

  “Jim! Connie!” I shook hands with each of them in turn. “Great to see you both. How are the families?”

  “They’re well, thank you.” Connie smiled brightly. I’d always liked her. “We wanted to talk to you about that article about your company’s new line. Do you have time for a chat this week?”

 
“Of course,” I said. “I’ve been looking forward to talking to both of you since you emailed. We’re very excited about this.”

  “As are we,” Jim said. “In fact, why don’t you join us for dinner tonight? We can talk more details then.”

  Oh, it was tempting because this article would be huge, but I restrained myself and apologetically shook my head. “I’m so sorry. As much as I’d love to, I’ve already got a commitment this evening.”

  They both looked a little disappointed. Still, Jim clapped my shoulder and smiled. “Well, the week is still young. We’ll figure something out.”

  “Sounds good. You know where to find me.”

  We shook hands again, and he left.

  As they walked away, I glanced at Reuben. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves like he often did, and he was excitedly gesturing and talking to three people who looked absolutely riveted.

  The article in Sparks would be huge for the company, and a dinner meeting with Jim and Connie was incredibly difficult to nail down, but… no. There would be time. We’d figure something out.

  Tonight, though, I was having dinner with Reuben and no one else.

  ***

  Dinner was oddly quiet.

  We were both tired from the trade show, both of our throats a little raw from constantly talking, but I didn’t get the impression the silence had come from protecting our voices. Reuben had struggled to make or keep eye contact a few times, and seemed… elsewhere. Not hostile, but not there either.

  Rather than bring it up in a public place, I’d decided to wait until we were back in the privacy of our room. I tried, anyway. As we rode the elevator up to our floor, I couldn’t take it anymore and touched the small of his back. “Hey. You okay? You were kind of quiet during dinner.”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I’m sorry. I was…” He swallowed. “Preoccupied, I guess.”