The Way Back: A Way Home Novella

by May Archer

  Not here for this, Logan reminded himself. Apologies, not hookups.

  He took a seat on the end of the bed, next to the coat Peter had thrown there.

  "My mom used this as a sewing room and guest room for the past few years," Peter told him, sliding back to sit on the desk and glancing at the empty walls. "Her taste runs more to seashells and macramé than political posters." He smirked and Logan laughed.

  "Well, my mom started collecting historical dolls after she moved to Charlotte. I stayed there over Christmas one year when I was a senior in college, and I had the worst bout of insomnia I've ever had. Every time I closed my eyes, I could feel them staring at me."

  Peter snickered. "I would have turned them all around to face the other way, and then denied all knowledge of how it happened."

  Logan nodded approvingly. "See, that might have been smart. I ended up lying and saying I needed to get back to campus ten days early. Slept in my car because my dorm was still closed. Still felt safer than all those dolls."

  "Slept in your car? Why didn't you come stay here?" Peter asked, then snapped his jaw shut like he'd suddenly remembered why.

  "Wasn't sure what my welcome would be like," he said. Not after the summer when he'd come home from college to help his parents move, and looked at his friend's little brother in a whole new light. Not after he and Peter had spent a summer laughing and hanging together, had become way more than friends - in this very room, no less - and Logan had shut the whole thing down.

  Peter shrugged, but his voice was tight. "You're not the first guy to mess around with another guy before deciding he's not really into it."

  Logan nodded. He leaned forward bracing his elbows on his knees. "That's what I told you, wasn't it?"

  "I believe the exact words were, 'I'm not queer, Peter.'"

  Logan grimaced. "It's like hearing my stepdad speak."

  "Ha. Yeah, you're right." Peter drew one ankle up to rest on his thigh. "Coach George once told me if I was able to climb to the top of the rope, the other guys wouldn't think I was a fag anymore."

  "Jesus. What'd you say?"

  Peter snorted. "The truth - that given how vocal I was about sucking dick, the guys would still definitely know I was gay."

  Logan laughed. "And then you climbed the fucking rope anyway, didn't you?"

  Peter shrugged and a slow smile spread on his face. "Well, yeah."

  Yep. Of course he had. That, right there, was Peter Kelley. Too good for Logan then, and definitely leagues above him now. Logan shook his head, grinning.

  "What's funny?"

  "Oh, just that you came out to my stepfather like it was the most casual thing in the world, a fact of life." He waved a hand through the air.

  "Well, it was," Peter told him. "Still is."

  "Yeah." Logan swallowed, rubbed at the back of his neck which was growing hot despite the chill of the room. "Some of us had a harder time coming to terms with that."

  Peter sat frozen for a moment; his face turned into the shadow so that Logan couldn't read his expression. "But you did? Come to terms with it, I mean?"

  "Yeah, I... Yeah. Not long after I left here, actually. The, uh... the dolls weren't the only things giving me nasty looks that Christmas."

  "Even then?" Peter whispered. "Why didn't you... I mean. You could have texted. Or called. If you needed to talk, or a friend, or..."

  Logan rubbed his hands over his face. "No, I couldn't. Not after the things I said."

  "Logan." Peter jumped down from the desk and came forward to grab Logan's wrists, prying his hands away from his eyes. "Of course you could have. Don't you remember what I told you that day?"

  "A little too well," Logan said, staring up at him. Peter's face was backlit, more shadow than substance, which was helpful. The perfect set-up for a hushed confession. "You said that I was letting fear ruin things."

  Peter knelt by the bed, still holding Logan's wrists and shook his head. "Before I spouted that bullshit. I told you it was okay to be confused, okay not to want to be out yet!"

  "Yeah. But the parts I remember most were the last bits. When you told me that you wouldn't miss me for long, that I'd regret letting a good thing go."

  "Jesus. Past-Peter talked a lot of shit, huh?" He laughed softly. "I had more in common with Coach George than I like to think."

  "Nah. Unlike him, you were right." Logan freed one of his hands with a gentle tug and brought his index finger up beneath Peter's chin. "You were right about all of it. And I knew it. And I'm sorry." He blew out a breath. "I've wanted to say that for a long while. I'm so sorry."

  "Logan, there's nothing to..."

  "There is, though. You were maybe my best friend then."

  Peter scoffed, but Logan pressed a thumb against his mouth, keeping him quiet. It was important for him to believe this, to understand. "No, Peter, really. I mean, we had that age difference, yeah. And I was this football playing idiot while you were witty and a leader, and a hundred times smarter than me. But still. Nobody got me like you did. Nobody in the universe would have sat and had an hours-long philosophical discussions about 80s movies with me while we floated on a raft at the lake."

  "God." Peter laughed. "You know, I still believe Animal House was a sad commentary on the dangers of fast living when you think about how many of those actors actually suffered from very real drug and alcohol addictions."

  Logan cupped his jaw. "I know. I wrote my senior thesis on that...And Animal House came out in the 70s."

  "What?"

  "It came out in..."

  "Not that!" Peter swatted at Logan's thigh with his free hand. "You wrote a thesis on movies?"

  "I graduated with a degree in Film Studies," Logan told him. "Our conversations, that whole summer... became a catalyst for my life, in a way. Now I get paid to review films, if you can believe it. And it wouldn't have happened if not for you."

  "I didn't know," Peter said like he was honestly baffled. "That you thought about me that way. Or in any way at all."

  "Well, it's important that you do," Logan whispered, rubbing his thumb over Peter's smooth skin. "You changed my life for the better. I've wanted to say that for a long time, too."

  Peter was staring up at him like he was magic, his grip tightening around the wrist he still held. The speakers downstairs had begun blaring Taylor Swift's Love Story, which Logan had always found just the tiniest bit romantic, though he'd deny it to his dying day, and even the sound of twenty incredibly drunk former football players belting out the chorus wasn't killing his buzz. Peter's breathing changed in some indefinable, expectant way, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for Logan to bend his head just slightly, lean forward, and press their mouths together for the first time in forever.

  "Oh, wow," Peter breathed against his lips a second later. "Oh, man."

  Logan pulled back just slightly, his eyes running over Peter's face in the dim light. "Bad?"

  Peter shook his head. "I kinda... I mean, over the years, I've told myself that kissing you wasn't as good as I remembered. That I was young and inexperienced, and I'd made it out to be better than it was, you know?"

  He extracted his wrist from Peter's grip, the better to thread both hands into the hair at the nape of Peter's neck. "And?"

  "It was even better than I recalled," Peter whimpered like he wasn't entirely happy about that realization. But before Logan could ponder that further, Peter was surging forward, kissing him again, pushing him back to lay flat on the mattress, and all of Logan's apologies and good intentions got lost in a tidal wave of want.

  If Peter had deliberately tried to downplay his memories of their time together, Logan had wondered if maybe he'd done the opposite. He'd remembered Peter being absolutely gorgeous; the way they'd fit together, perfect; the taste of him, sweet and addictive as candy. But in a moment of understanding that was as frightening as it was sudden, he realized he'd somehow underestimated also, or else, unbelievably, Peter had only gotten more perfect for him over the y
ears they'd been apart. The Peter he remembered hadn't made those soft, breathy noises that sent fire racing through Logan's blood, hadn't been bold enough to pull up Logan's shirt and run smooth palms over Logan's stomach.

  At the very least, he was fairly certain Peter hadn't always made him rock hard within seconds, the way he did now.

  He ran his own hands up under Peter's sweater, gliding over the dips of his spine and the curves of his ribcage. Up, and up, and up, until Peter's sweater was off and all that satiny skin and pliable flesh was his to roam.

  He dipped his hands into the waistband of Peter's jeans. Peter trembled and pushed himself into Logan more fully, and Logan couldn't help groaning - louder than Jared and a both his women at the same time - as Peter's length rubbed against his own.

  The unfortunate thought of Jared made him pull back just slightly. "I... I forgot to lock the door," he said quickly, before curling up to nip at Peter's chin again. Don't stop, don't stop, he begged silently.

  For a second, Peter lifted his head, blinking like Logan had been speaking a foreign language, but then he shrugged. "I don't care if you don't," he said breathlessly.

  Logan couldn't possibly have cared less. Let Jared come looking. Fuck, let the entire gang from downstairs troop up here. Let them see that Peter - the hottest person at this party - was currently kissing the shit out of him. He almost wanted it to happen, to claim Peter publicly, even though tomorrow Peter would be back to his real life and Logan would be sitting by himself on a plane back to his lonely existence in Raleigh.

  If he'd somehow gotten a second chance with Peter - even if it was only a second chance to end things on a positive note, to have one night and walk away friends - he was damn sure going to take it.

  Chapter Five

  Logan rolled over, pushing Peter to his back, and propped himself up on his forearms. "I want my mouth on you."

  For a second, Peter just looked up at Logan and blinked, because those words - those exact words - had featured heavily in some of his most-frequently-recurring fantasies, and he wasn't sure for a second whether he'd fallen asleep with his tub of ice cream and dreamed up this absolutely impossible reality.

  Once he realized he was very much awake - only because the bruise in his chest throbbed slightly the second Logan lowered himself down to kiss at his neck - he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that Logan had spoken the words like a question. He was waiting for Peter to grant permission before they moved on any further, not wanting to take advantage, which was so sweet that Peter's heart melted in his chest.

  It was probably stupid - the kind of shortsighted, immediate gratification that would come back to haunt him - but Peter couldn't say no. Not when he thought about the strange confluence of events that had gotten them here in the first place. It was fate, or cupid—the real one, not the one who went around assaulting innocent partygoers—who'd gotten them here tonight.

  "I want that too," he whispered, "I want that so much."

  With faltering breaths and fumbling fingers, Peter stripped Logan's shirt, running his hands over every inch of exposed skin, loving the latent power in Logan's abs and traps and biceps. The hair on Logan's chest was short like he'd shaved it before and no longer bothered. Peter found himself fascinated by the texture against his fingers and then - oh fuck - his nipples, as Logan bent his head so their tongues could tangle once again.

  And then like someone had lit a fuse beneath them or reminded them that the clock was ticking by on this night, they were in a race to get one another naked as quickly as possible. Peter ripped at Logan's fly, tearing his pants down, while Logan kicked off his socks and shoes to push the garments down the rest of the way. He gripped Logan's ass tight - bruisingly so - but the hiss Logan gave was of pleasure, not pain.

  Logan knelt up, nudging Peter to lift his hips so he could pull his jeans all the way off.

  But the second they were both free, Logan straddled Peter again, gazing down at him with such blatant arousal and appreciation that there was no room for doubt or insecurity. He ran the tips of his fingers down the center of Peter's chest to his belly button, and Peter's cock twitched in response.

  "So fucking hot," Logan growled.

  But just when Peter expected him to reach for his cock, or shimmy further down the bed, Logan shocked him by running those same fingers back up his chest and cupping his jaw once more.

  "I wanted you seven years ago," he said. "So much. But... Jesus, Peter. Never this much."

  Peter could only nod because he got it. Whatever feelings he'd had for Logan back then, whatever feelings had lain dormant inside him for the past few years, had all been awakened - resurrected - and coupled with the insane attraction he had for the man Logan had become. He couldn't remember wanting anyone like this. Not Arthur, not the guys before him. No one.

  Logan bit his lip and very slowly, very deliberately, lay down on top of Peter, cock-to-cock, belly-to-belly, chest-to-chest. He grabbed Peter's hands and lifted them to the bed above Peter's head and held them there, so they were arm-to-arm, too. And for a second, they lay there - not moving, not kissing, just staring at one another in the near-darkness while the weight and the warmth kindled anticipation in every cell of Peter's body.

  "Why did we never do this before?" Logan demanded, and Peter prayed it was a rhetorical question. He shook his head mutely. "I was such an idiot," Logan whispered. And then he bent his head to press a feather-light kiss against Peter's lips.

  Logan's mouth moved lower, then, trailing over Peter's jaw, and down his neck, nibbling at the place right at the juncture of his collarbone that drove Peter crazy. Lower, teeth grazing over his nipple making Peter's breath catch, and then lower still until he dipped his tongue into the groove down the center of Peter's stomach.

  And then, oh hell, oh Jesus, oh Cupid, or who-the-fuck-ever, his head moved even lower than that.

  Logan lifted his head and looked up at Peter for half a second, while his warm breath tickled the soft hair on Peter's groin, and Peter cursed the fact that there were no lamps in the room, that it wasn't broad daylight, that he wouldn't be able to remember every single detail of this night. Then Logan took Peter in his mouth, and Peter realized he was an idiot for worrying because he'd never forget a single second of this.

  Jesus, it felt good. Good, and hot, and wet. All the words in his brain had suddenly turned into one-syllable grunts, but that was fine because sometimes all you needed were the simple words, anyway. Words like, "More," and "Please," and "God!" and "Logan!" which Peter babbled at increasing decibels as Logan sucked and swallowed and lapped with his tongue.

  He could feel Logan's arm brushing against his leg as Logan rose to his knees and began to work himself. Peter tried to tell him to stop, to turn around so Peter could get his mouth on Logan, too, but Logan just shook his head and mumbled something that sounded like, "Next time," no matter how unlikely that was.

  Peter's hips stuttered uncontrollably, pushing up into the warmth of Logan's eager mouth. His hands searched for purchase on Logan's head, but there was nothing to grip. Finally, his hands flopped to the mattress and dug into fabric beneath him, holding on for dear life as Logan moved his head faster, sucking and swallowing like a fucking boss, drawing the very breath from Peter's lungs in little pants that sounded like ah-ah-ah.

  "I'm close." God, so close. But Logan didn't pull away; he gave an excited little whimper and redoubled his efforts.

  Peter arched his neck, feeling the orgasm racing to meet him, and dug his head back into the mattress; the very mattress where he'd once lain and jerked off at the very idea of Logan wanting him, of Logan kissing him, of Logan's mouth on him. And that thought was enough to send him over the edge.

  He came with a hoarse cry, and Logan swallowed around him, then a few seconds later, he felt the hot splatter of Logan spilling against his thigh. Jesus Christ, it was perfect.

  When Peter opened his eyes to look at the shadows on the ceiling a second later, Logan was pressing soft kisses
to the inside of his leg, and the dulcet strains of Miley Cyrus were floating up the stairs.

  Who says dreams don't come true, Past Peter? Who says?

  He laughed out loud, delighted with Logan and himself and fucking life, which was unpredictable and sometimes took a seven-year delay-of-game before giving you what you wanted most.

  "What?" Logan demanded, smiling in the dark.

  Peter pulled at his shoulders until Logan was more or less sprawled on top of him, then tangled his hands in Logan's hair. He gave an experimental yank at the longer part in the front.

  "Ow!" Logan protested.

  "I miss this."

  "My hair?"

  "The curls. They were so soft and..."

  "Messy," Logan said, wrinkling his nose before dipping his mouth to Peter's shoulder.

  "You mean adorable," Peter sighed. "Hot."

  Logan huffed in amusement. "Fortunately, it does grow back."

  "Yeah," Peter agreed before it occurred to him that Logan would be back in North Carolina for a long while before that happened, unless...

  Well.

  Unless he grabbed for his chance at happiness while he could. Unless he was willing to risk humiliation and heartbreak and put his cards on the table.

  He thought of Jared and swallowed. No regrets.

  "I don't suppose you've ever considered moving back North?" he asked, hoping he sounded at least a little casual.

  Logan laid his forearm across Peter's chest and propped his chin on it. "Nope. I hadn't," he said, breaking Peter's heart just a tiny bit. But that was okay. Better to know, better to try. That would be his new philosophy.

  "Until tonight," Logan finished, so softly that Peter wasn't sure he'd heard right.

  He swallowed hard. "Better football teams up here," he told Logan. "More walking. Good for your health."