by Amy Lane
Too late, he thought in the middle of the kiss. Too late, I’m promised, I’m his. The rest of the world can have his ass in the videos, but I get this part of him right here.
YEARS later, he still wouldn’t be able to account for what happened in the following week. He knew he didn’t work. Both his parents were back in the house, and money wasn’t quite as dire, so he took Tommy at his word, took the time off, did the shopping, made dinner and spent the time with Amelia during the day that his parents couldn’t. So maybe that was it. He spent the time with Amelia, or doing domestic stuff he wasn’t ashamed of in the least. He spent the evenings with his parents, watching television, reading, all of them pretending they hadn’t gone to visit her and seen her get a little worse every day.
Part of every day, though, no matter how lost in a fog he was, he managed to be with Ethan. It would be such a small thing—Ethan greeting him at the door with coffee before he ran errands. Ethan taking him to lunch before he visited Amelia. Once, it was Ethan cleaning the betta hexes while Jonah cleaned the rest of the house, vacuuming and dusting included.
They didn’t make love again, and Jonah missed it, started yearning for the full skin-on-skin feeling of Ethan’ body around and inside his.
That feeling of connection, of being a part of another human being’s heart—he was starting to see how Ethan could treasure that above his dignity, above his self-worth, above everything he’d ever been taught about a moral code.
Jonah thought he’d do anything for that feeling right now. Anything. Anything at all.
But even that went away when he was alone in the hospital room with Amelia. His entire world became the rasp of the ventilator and the beeping of her vital signs and his aimless, fruitless conversation to her.
Two days before Christmas, Ethan came to his parents’ house with a bag full of Christmas decorations and some store-bought cookies and a tiny tree.
Jonah looked at it all and realized that he had to accept that gift and decorate. It was imperative. Because his parents still had one kid, and that kid still needed Mom and Dad, and Christmas was the time when you were with your mom and dad.
Of all people, Ethan knew that.
So before Jonah went to visit Amelia, he and Ethan put the stuff up, making it look as cute as they could for a bag of cheap ornaments and a three-foot tree. He thought it would make him feel better, especially when Ethan framed his face with those big hands and kissed him under the mistletoe, and right up until he drove to the hospital alone, he believed that.
But Ethan had to get back to his house-sitting job and all of the critters Jonah hadn’t had a chance to see, as well as the workmen in the place—fucking shit up, according to Ethan—so Jonah told him he’d see him tomorrow, which was Christmas Eve.
“I can come with—” Ethan’s pocket buzzed in the middle of the sentence, which meant Chase or Tommy or Kelsey (whom Jonah hadn’t met yet but he’d heard a lot about) was on the phone, trying not to totally spazz out about whatever renovations were going on at Dex’s house and about the big cases of reptiles they all treated as more precious and valuable than baby bunnies who crapped platinum.
“No,” Jonah said, smiling a little. “You go take care of the critters and the house, and I’ll go visit Amelia. I’ll call you this evening—maybe we can get dinner or something.”
Ethan nodded, his big Italian eyebrows attempting to join at the little wrinkle between them. “Anything, okay? Anything you need.”
You. You’re all I need. Any part of you I can get.
“I’ll let you know.”
But later that evening, as Sacramento waited for a warm winter rain to wash away the sorrow, Jonah sat in his sister’s hospital room and listened to the familiar sounds and looked at her pale, emaciated face through the oxygen tent and the mask as she fought for breath, and something broke inside him.
“Melly, we get it,” he said into the respirator-punctuated silence. “We get it. You don’t want to fight. We understand now, okay? You’re done. It’s okay. We won’t be mad at you for giving up. It hurts, baby. We all know it hurts. But we love you, and we wanted to keep you here, and we’re sorry. We’re sorry we kept you here with the pain and the fighting. You were never meant to be a fighter. Even when you were a baby, you were a snuggler. No yelling, no screaming, no fits. Just tucked right into us and let us love you. I mean, can you blame us for wanting you to stay? But you can go now. You can go. It’s all right. We’ll still love you, even if you don’t fight. Nothing will keep us from loving you, and you can be out of pain.”
There was no change in the room—the respirator, the vital signs—but suddenly Jonah couldn’t be in that room anymore. He stood up abruptly, opened the side of the tent, and kissed her clammy, salty cheek.
“I love you, Melly. I’ve got to go, sweetheart. It’s okay if you leave when I’m gone. I won’t hold it against you.”
And then he left, shaking off the paper shields numbly and leaving them in the clean room. By some luck of the transportation gods that involved his father giving his mother a ride, he had the car today, and he slammed the door and sat there for a moment, staring blindly through the windshield, before pulling out his phone.
Need you. Where are you?
Dex’s.
Send me address.
It was, fortunately, one of those places that were easy to find on the grid of Sacramento. He pulled up in front of the little house with the brick façade and had a sudden, painful wish that he and Ethan had a house—a real house, not an apartment—that he could call home like this one.
The door swung open and Ethan ran out to the car in sweats and a T-shirt and bare feet.
“What’s wrong?” he said as Jonah opened his car door.
“You’re gonna get sick,” Jonah said hoarsely. “You need to go….” He couldn’t talk, and Ethan suddenly stood right there, looking levelly at him, checking his face to make sure he was okay.
“Is your sister…?”
Jonah shook his head. “No. Not yet. I’m just weak. Ethan, I couldn’t do it anymore. I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it anymore. And I need to feel human. God, I need to feel human, and touched, and—”
Ethan’s lips on his were heat and light and shelter from a numbing rain, warmth to frostbitten limbs, rich stew in a shriveled stomach. Jonah devoured him, opened his mouth, allowed Ethan to pour his soul inside. Ethan framed his face with both hands, and his skin was warm and welcoming. Jonah slid eagerly into his circle of gentleness, wishing he could live under Ethan’s skin, circled around the strong beating of his invincible heart.
Jonah pulled back and gulped breath, then choked out, “Inside. Inside. I need all of you, all of it, inside.”
Ethan didn’t question him, for which Jonah would always be supremely grateful. No “Are you sure?” No “Let me protect you from yourself.” He turned around and grabbed Jonah’s hand and pulled him into the house.
Later, Jonah would get a look around, see the critters and the cozy, homey space that obviously belonged to two people making a life. Right now he got dragged to the bedroom, which had a battered canvas suitcase on top of the nice oak dresser, a king-size bed with an oak frame, and white sheets with little blue boats on them.
Jonah stopped short and looked at the sheets. “Boats?” he asked, bemused.
Ethan stroked the fabric, moving his finger with such reverence that Jonah did the same thing, and he noticed how soft it was. Expensive sheets.
“It’s Kane,” Ethan admitted. “I think he’s been shopping with Dex, and Dex has all the taste and Kane has all the… what’s that word?”
Jonah swallowed, thinking about the stuffed animals and the bright poster and the special quilt they brought for his sister every time she went into the hospital.
“Whimsy,” he said, and his throat was so tight he almost couldn’t get the word out. “Whimsy.”
“Yeah,” Ethan said, and that restlessly stroking finger feathered down the back of Jonah’s hand. “Whimsy.
” Jonah heard his throat work and looked up. Ethan’s attention fixed on their hands, and Jonah turned his up so they twined. “Am I your fit of whimsy, Jonah?”
Jonah met his eyes then and saw that he’d do it anyway, let himself be used, let himself be Jonah’s plaything, if only it would make Jonah feel better.
“You’re my lifeline, Ethan. You’re the only thing that’s going to get me through. The light at the end of the tunnel. My reward for not hiding in a corner and crying like… like….” Like a five-year-old boy who just lost the baby sister they put in his arms and told him to love very, very carefully.
“C’mere,” Ethan said, tugging at his hand. Jonah could actually feel each hard bump of muscle when Ethan wrapped his arms around Jonah’s back. It wasn’t comfortable, necessarily, but it was safe. God, he was safe in Ethan’s arms.
“Ethan?”
“Yeah?”
“Nothing’s going to hurt me here.”
Ethan kissed his forehead, his temple, his cheek, his jaw. Jonah tilted his head, and Ethan exposed his upper teeth and ran them delicately down Jonah’s jaw, down the tender flesh of Jonah’s exposed jugular, following the gentle nibbles with the lave of an exquisite tongue.
Jonah shivered, melted, and allowed himself to need.
Ethan shoved his hands under Jonah’s T-shirt, cupping Jonah’s waist with his big, wide-palmed, square-fingered hands, and that need tripled, narrowed to a fist, and sucker-punched Jonah in the gut.
“Skin,” he gasped. “Yours too.”
To his horror, Ethan stepped away and cast him a look of absolute mortification. “You don’t want to see me naked… I mean, the whole world has seen me naked. It’s not a big—ah….”
Jonah stepped into that space of embarrassment and ran his hand under Ethan’s shirt. “Right now, Ethan, there’s only you and me. And you are brand-new to me. This is all brand-new.”
Ethan nodded and gave a game smile, then reached down to the hem of his worn gray T-shirt and lifted it over. Jonah couldn’t help but look—he had to see every muscle rippling over his ribcage, in his stomach, just from that one simple motion.
A wash of desire drenched him, from his kiss-swollen lips to his heavy, aching upper thighs, and even to his toes, curled in his shoes.
“You,” he said, trying hard to force his lungs to work past the weight of his arousal, “are so fucking beautiful.”
Ethan’s blush traveled in blotches across his gold-tinted skin, over his abdomen, his ribs, up across his pecs and his neck, and finally patching his face at his cheeks. Jonah had seen him do that on film, but seeing that in person….
He caught his breath and stepped closer. “You are unbelievably sexy,” he murmured into Ethan’s ear. “And you could have any guy on the planet. Do you really want me?”
Ethan leaned closer, and Jonah felt the heat from his bare chest and his lips feathering the whorls of his own ear. “More than I want to breathe. More than I want my heart to beat. More than I want to see tomorrow. That’s how bad I want you.”
Ethan’s hands were resting on his hips, and Jonah picked them up and guided them under his shirt, over his chest, his tiny cold nipples thrusting into Ethan’s palms.
“All yours. Only yours. Touch me.”
Ethan splayed his fingers, flexed them against Jonah’s skin, and Jonah sighed. God, human touch. His skin was shivering, begging for Ethan’s hands all over his body, and Jonah wasn’t going to fight that need, not now, not when Ethan needed him right back. Ethan grabbed the hem of Jonah’s shirts and pulled them up over his head, dropped them on the floor of this stranger’s house, and then cupped Jonah’s bare neck and lowered his head to nibble along Jonah’s collarbone and his jawline and right below his ears. Jonah skimmed his hands over Ethan’s smooth skin, gliding along the mountains of muscle and the valleys of definition, kneading his lats and triceps as he pulled Ethan closer. They kissed, chest to chest, for a long, glorious time, until Jonah couldn’t stand anymore, couldn’t contain the thrusting of his groin, the rampant want that turned his thighs to water and the ultrasensitive organ of his skin into one big thrumming nerve.
Ethan helped lower him onto the bed and, in one aggressive sweep, yanked off Jonah’s pants and boxers, pulling his tennis shoes off as he pulled everything else.
Jonah lay there, shocked, naked, his cock dribbling precome onto his abdomen from the caress of cool air alone.
“I’ll be right back,” Ethan said, ducking his head and blushing. “Stupid human things.” Suddenly he raised his head and the sexual dominator Jonah had seen on film came back. He grabbed Jonah’s hand and placed it on his bare cock, wrapping the fingers around purposefully. “Hold that thought,” he said seriously, and then—the bastard—he engulfed Jonah’s crown for a quick nip and suck before he disappeared.
“Oh God, Ethan?” Jonah’s cock throbbed, and he wrapped his hand around it tighter, squeezing and stroking upward because it felt good, dammit!
“Are you stroking?”
“Y… y… eah—”
“Don’t come!”
Jonah let go of his cock with an effort, spreading his legs and letting his cock flop onto his stomach. His body chilled in the outside air, and to a boy who had masturbated under the covers of his bedroom his entire life, the circulating air brushing his nipples, his cockhead, the cleft of his ass, was unbelievably erotic.
Everything wanted more attention, everything, and he was so tightly strung that almost any pressure—God! Very carefully, he ran a single finger from the valley between his furry balls up past his base to the little cord of frenulum and over his crown. His cock jerked and spat, and he took that slickness and rubbed his finger around, drawing out the shivery urgency tensing his body up like a coiled spring.
Ethan came back with a bright-green washcloth and paused at the doorway.
Jonah met his eyes almost by accident. “What?” he gasped.
Ethan shook his head, a sweet smile playing at his full lips. “You are really fucking sexy. I could watch you there until you came, but… God, I want to touch you.”
Jonah gripped his cock, possessed with the idea of showing off. Slowly, he stroked it, not invested in the feel so much as turned on by Ethan’s eyes on his fully displayed body. “Then touch me,” he said, letting the hitch in his breath and the need throbbing through his chest and his cock show in the words.
Ethan moved to the bed, stood between his spread thighs, and reached down, cloth in hand, and then proceeded to turn basic bathroom cleanup into erotic foreplay.
The cloth was warm and sensual, rough and wet; Jonah’s initial discomfort at being washed like a child faded as Ethan scrubbed gently at the inside of his thighs, at the tender strip of skin behind his testicles, and then dove into the cleft of his ass and spent time around his sphincter. Ethan probed with one finger through the cloth, and Jonah shoved his heels against the mattress and arched off the bed in reaction. He flailed for his cock, let go, and scrabbled in the sheets for purchase, for base, because he was flying—
Ethan’s hand, hard and insistent, against his abdomen pushed him back against the bed. “Sensitive,” he said, smiling. Jonah found anchor, haven, in his eyes. “Good. This is gonna be….” He took a deep breath like he was holding himself back, and then he dropped the cloth on the nightstand, shucked his pants, and threw himself down on the bed sideways. Jonah recovered enough to roll over to his side and walk his fingers and palms over all that exposed skin.
Ethan grabbed a hand as Jonah went to brush below his abdomen, closed his eyes, breathed, and finally spoke. “Okay, this is more stupid human shit, but it’s important, okay?”
Jonah stopped stroking and tried very hard to concentrate—but that didn’t stop him from lacing his fingers tightly with Ethan’s. “I’m all ears.”
Ethan laughed softly and kissed their twined fingers. “You’re all eyes—God, look at you. Anyway, here’s the thing. I know you haven’t done this before, and I know about your family and how if you eve
n had a cold, you’d have to be hypervigilant, so I know you don’t have HIV. But me—you don’t know shit. I’ll tell you this—I get tested before and after every fuckin’ scene, and the only guys I ever hooked up with not in a scene were from Johnnies, for pretty much just that reason, and we used condoms, ’cause we were being smart. I’ve got a zillion pieces of paper announcing I’m disease-free to the fucking world, and I’ve got no problem going bareback with you because I know that, but you? You don’t know shit, so I’m telling you right now. You do this with anyone but me, and you’d better use a rubber, Jonah, ’cause I want you to be safe.”
Stupid human things—he wasn’t shitting around. Jonah nodded and his hard-on softened a little, because he was engaging his big brain now—go him.
“Ethan?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to do this with anyone but you.”
Ethan nodded and kissed their twined hands again. “Me neither. I don’t want you touching anyone else ever again. But—”
Jonah shook his head and squeezed Ethan’s fingers. “No buts. Not now. Right now, we’re the only two people in this bed, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Ethan nodded, brown eyes enormous and shiny. “That’s the way I wish it could be. We’ll pretend.”
“We’ll try,” Jonah said, because he’d watched his parents pretend not to be in love for a year, and that hurt.
“We’ll try until we break,” Ethan promised, and suddenly Jonah had to kiss him, had to comfort him, because Jonah was still hopeful. His parents had bent, but they hadn’t broken, and his sister had, in the end, lived a life of her choices and made them without regret. Jonah kissed him with an open mouth and a full heart and tried to tell him with his bare body that sometimes you didn’t have to break. Sometimes being human was strong enough.