“Of course,” Charley said sourly. “Biology, right?”
“Charley.”
“What?” she demanded, scowling at him as he closed his locker. Despite her tone, she fell into step beside him. “It feels like ever since Darren showed up, I’ve not seen you.”
“I only see him three times a week, it’s not my fault you’re busy every afternoon with your clubs and stuff,” Jayden pointed out.
“Three times a week? Every time I suggest doing something at the weekend, Darren’s coming over, or you’re going to Darren’s, or you have plans with him.”
“Well…he’s my boyfriend, Charley.”
“He hasn’t even put that on Facebook!”
“Neither have I,” Jayden defended weakly.
“Look, I just,” Charley threw up her hands. “I don’t like him, all right?” she admitted. “He’s distant and he’s rude and he doesn’t look at you the way you look at him.”
Jayden bristled. “You don’t know him, Charles.”
“I don’t need to know him to know that…”
“Yeah, you do,” Jayden interrupted. They were arguing heatedly enough now that he glimpsed the smokers at the bins, but paid no attention. Their argument was involved enough that they were allowed past unaccosted. “You have no idea what he’s like with me. Yes, he’s more distant in public. He’s standoffish and he’s sarcastic and he’s a bit of an arse, I get it. But he’s totally different with me, and you don’t know anything about it, so just shut it.”
She puffed up furiously. “No, you shut it, Jayden!” she shouted, tearing away from him and marching ahead, still yelling over her shoulder. “You go ahead and forget your friends and when he figures out he’s not gay or he finds someone else or you get sick of dealing with a hands-off, touch-phobic boyfriend, you do not get to come crying to me!”
Jayden let her go, staring with his mouth agape. Touch-phobic? Hardly. But…had he been neglecting her? He supposed so, but she’d hardly talked to him either since they all went bowling together. He’d talked to Heather more than he’d talked to Charley lately, so what the hell was going on?
He took the long way around instead of cutting through the alley and risking bumping back into Charley at her house, and so arrived in time to see Darren hoist himself up to sit on the garden wall and drop his backpack at his feet. He waved, jogged the last fifteen metres, and met him carelessly with a kiss, for once ignoring the risk of anyone seeing them or his neighbours noticing. And Darren kissed back, instantly.
See? Not touch-phobic in the slightest, the voice in his head sneered, and he squashed it ruthlessly. Now was not the time to be dwelling on Charley and her issues with his boyfriend. It was time for his issues with his boyfriend.
“My parents are out all evening,” he said lowly, hooking his fingers into the black regulation belt at Darren’s hips. “I know I said revision, but…”
“Biology?” Darren suggested in a slightly creepy coincidence, and Jayden laughed.
“Yeah?”
“I’m down with that,” Darren said agreeably, jumping down off the wall and following him inside. “But you need to water me first. Paul decided it would be so cool if he stole my iPod so I’ve spent like an hour with Ethan kicking the shit out of him.”
Jayden shooed him off upstairs, fetching a Coke from the fridge and hanging his blazer up on the coat hooks before following. He found Darren sprawling out on his bed, texting furiously, and rolled his eyes.
“Do you ever leave your phone behind?”
“Nope.”
Jayden set the Coke down and boldly straddled Darren’s lap. “Hey. Put it down.”
Darren grinned wickedly at him. “Nope.”
“Then give it here.” Jayden made a snatch, and Darren caught the wrist and effortlessly turned them with a twist of his hips, smacking Jayden down into the mattress.
“I said nope,” Darren retorted, so Jayden seized him by the hair and kissed him.
All the fight went out of them, and Darren settled over him like a blanket, abandoning the phone to the floor and mumbling something pleased and incoherent when Jayden slid his hands down that long back and settled them over his backside. He’d touched Darren like that before, but not really…sustained it, so he experimentally squeezed and noted the hitch and sigh that was the result.
But the anxiety was already creeping in. Darren wasn’t touch-phobic, but maybe Jayden was? He felt twitchy just being this bold—was it pushy?—and when Darren slid a leg between his thighs and that now-familiar hardness was pushing against his hip, it felt a little too much, a little too immense.
Jayden suddenly felt frustrated.
He wanted to. He wanted to. He wanted to know if that breathy little noise Darren made would turn into a full groan if he put his hands inside his boxers instead of touching him through them. He wanted to know how Darren’s skin felt all over, not just his outlines and his weight. He wanted to know if that little shiver he did whenever Jayden pressed his thumb to that jut of hipbone was a proper sweet spot, or it was only ever going to be a little shiver. He wanted to know. He did.
And yet…the moment Darren’s fingers hooked into the top of his trousers, thumb rubbing over the top of the zip, every muscle tensed. Even as he hated himself for it, Jayden couldn’t help it: he tensed. And Darren, fuck him, was just so sharp, and the minute Jayden tensed, his fingers unhooked again and the flat of his palm was sliding up Jayden’s chest, walking over the outside of his shirt, and settling back into the mattress at his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Jayden breathed, breaking off the kissing and feeling like he was about to cry. Which would be ridiculous and over the top and probably just weird Darren out, all that emotion leaking everywhere, and then…he bit his lip, hard, but it didn’t stop the shaky burning in his face. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
In the low light of Jayden’s room, Darren’s eyes were oddly dark, glittering like shards of a smashed bottle. They disappeared under those heavy eyelashes when he brushed his mouth along Jayden’s cheek, and for a wild moment, Jayden hated his patience.
“For being so stupid about this.” Jayden huffed, and Darren groaned heavily, sitting back on Jayden’s hips and eyeing him sceptically. “Don’t give me that look. You can’t tell me you’re not frustrated.”
“I kind of can, actually.”
Jayden wrapped his hands around Darren’s knees and rubbed his fingers over the warm cloth. “You must be,” he said weakly. “I want to. I really want to, but every time you try…”
“You’re not ready,” Darren shrugged. “It’s fine with me.”
“How?”
“I masturbate. You know that,” Darren said dryly, and it was so calm and so Darren that Jayden choked out a little laugh, and then it was like he set something off, and a sob found its way out on the heels of it. “Jesus. C’mere.”
Darren folded him into a hug, pulling them sideways on the crumpled sheets to wrap his arms around Jayden and pull them in tight together. He was still flushed warm with arousal; at his hip, Jayden could see feel the last traces of the tell-tale swelling, and he clung back and mumbled another apology for being so fucked up.
“It’s not fucked up, shut your gob,” Darren said brusquely, and Jayden laughed again, a little steadier. “So you’re not ready yet, big deal. You’ll get there. The way you won’t leave me alone if I wear that beanie says you’ll get there.”
Jayden’s laugh was more genuine that time, and he tucked his head against Darren’s collarbone, trailing his fingers up and down a bare arm and listening to the slight hiccups in his pulse. “We’re sixteen,” he said weakly. “We should be all over each other.”
“This doesn’t count?”
“Not when I can’t even let you take my jeans off!”
Darren slipped a hand under the edge of Jayden’s shirt, rubbing that rough palm against the small of his back. “First time I pushed you down, you freaked out too.”
“
Yeah, but…”
“Just relax,” Darren coaxed, skittering his fingers across Jayden’s backbone in a way that was almost ticklish.
“You’re relaxed,” Jayden pointed out.
“Yeah, but this is new for you.”
Jayden twisted to stare at him, before deciding that this was a confession he wanted to hear, and twisted away to turn on the bedside lamp. Darren flinched in the sudden burst of light, and Jayden took the opportunity to drop down on his chest, pinning his biceps with his own weight.
“You mean it’s not for you?”
“Er. No.”
“So you’ve…had sex before?”
“Erm…define ‘sex’.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?” Jayden pushed, and Darren gave him an outright offended look. “So…you’ve had a boyfriend before?”
“No,” Darren shook his head. “Okay. Some people always know, like you. Other people, like me, go along in a happy little bubble of ignorance until life drops an attractive boy in their lap and says, ‘Go right ahead, sunshine, I’ll be over here’.”
Jayden laughed breathlessly, startled by the frankness of the confession, and startled by the very idea of Darren not knowing what he wanted. Startled by the idea of him being blindsided by being gay.
“You thought you were straight?”
“I didn’t think anything, if I’m honest. It wasn’t really something I ever considered at all. Then along came Aaron. I go to a private boys’ school, Jayden, they’re not exactly big on sex education there. We’ve had where babies come from. We haven’t even had the natural progression into that’s why you use condoms.”
“You and Aaron…?”
Darren shrugged .”We fooled around. It was this summer music school. We were both fourteen. We got our hands down each other’s trousers now and then, but…mutual hand jobs only, really. Not full-on sex.”
“Did you…like him?”
“I liked him, yeah.”
“I mean…”
“Did I love him?”
Jayden felt himself blushing; Darren trailed a finger over his jaw, those brilliant eyes tracking its path. “Yeah.”
“No,” he said simply, twisting them lightly until Jayden’s knee hit the mattress on the other side of Darren’s hip. “It was just a bit of fun. Not even close to this.”
The new vantage point was…well, new. Jayden shifted, not missing the hitch in Darren’s breathing when he did, and reached out to run both hands through that irresistibly wild hair, pushing it back onto the sheets. Darren simply watched him with those big gorgeous eyes, hands cupping Jayden’s knees and rubbing patterns.
“I think I might love you,” Jayden confessed quietly, and when Darren’s face twisted in that wry, embarrassed way he took emotional outpourings, the sheer shaky beauty of him was like a punch in the chest, and Jayden leaned back down to kiss him again.
Being…on top, for lack of a better term, was new, and it took Jayden a moment to work out how to find a comfortable position. He ended up tucking a leg between Darren’s, wrapping a hand into his curly hair and bracing the forearm along the mattress to support his own weight, and letting his other hand wander. Darren was down to a thin T-shirt and jeans, and Jayden slid his hand under the hem of the shirt and back up, mapping out a chest that puberty was definitely done with: tense with bracing their combined weight, outlining lean muscle and, near the breastbone, a cluster of light hairs. Darren complained into Jayden’s mouth when he tugged on them, and the feel of that grumble rising in his ribs was heady.
It wasn’t until Jayden’s hand rubbed over a nipple, the one place on Darren’s chest he’d never touched before, that Darren really reacted, and when he did, it was to hastily break the kiss and pull Jayden’s hand away.
“Sorry, sorry—shit, did that…?”
“No,” Darren said breathlessly, and Jayden shifted to peer at his face. His eyes were almost black, and as he watched, the pupils began to slowly shrink again. “If you don’t want this to go all the way, you don’t touch me there.”
Slowly, Jayden inched his hand back up, watching Darren’s face warily—for a no, for an angry response, for anything—but most of all to see what his eyes would do. And even though Darren shook his head, Jayden rubbed his palm back over that same nipple, hard and deliberate, and Darren physically arched up into him with a groan behind gritted teeth, pupils exploding in the light of the bedside lamp.
“Oh, my God,” Jayden said, grinning and catching at Darren’s shoulder as it lifted off the bed, trying to keep his own balance. “You’re really sensitive.”
“No shit,” Darren mumbled, resettling and plucking Jayden’s hand away for the second time. “I’m serious. Leave it alone.”
But the sight of him, flushed and dark-eyed and shifting restlessly under Jayden’s thighs…it was too tempting. Too alluring, and Jayden pressed in for another kiss, pushing his hip down into Darren’s and sighing at the pressure in his jeans.
“Show me what you and Aaron did,” he breathed into Darren’s mouth, and his lip was bitten lightly for his troubles. “Really. Show me.”
“…Let me sit up, then.”
Jayden barely let him, resettling into Darren’s lap the moment his back hit the headboard. His flushed, ruffled appearance was even more attractive when it was caused by him, in a way Jayden hadn’t really imagined, and he paused the proceedings to kiss him again, pushing up into him until Darren was craning his neck to maintain it.
“Take this off,” Jayden whispered, tugging on the shirt, and Darren wriggled out of it, exposing those broad shoulders to Jayden’s eyes as well as his hands, and let Jayden trail his fingers over the neat curves of his biceps and the valleys of his collarbones, interfering only when he tried to touch that sensitive nipple again.
“If you want this to be any good, you need to stop with that,” Darren said, winding both arms around him to pull him in tight and kiss his neck. “I’ll let you play with it some other time.”
Jayden laughed, toying with his hair instead as Darren planted both hands firmly on his hips and began to rub his thumbs into the covered bone. His nerves were rising again, but Darren seemed so much more intent on leaving a bruise on his neck than getting a hand into his jeans. He was using teeth and everything this time, and by the time he let go and kissed his way around to the other side, Jayden felt dizzy from his blood trying to occupy two spaces at the same time.
So dizzy—so preoccupied—that it took a moment to realise his jeans were open, and one of Darren’s hands was cupping the back of his thigh, urging him up on his knees. So turned on that the first touch of Darren’s hands on the insides of his briefs was nothing but exciting. So breathless that he couldn’t form Darren’s name, or a coherent thought, from the first touch, the second, the third…
“Anytime you’re done, just tell me,” Darren murmured into his neck, and it was the stupidest thing that Jayden had ever, ever heard.
* * * *
“Wow,” Jayden said, the moment that Darren came back from the bathroom.
He had been stunned by the intensity of it. It was, really, just masturbation. It was just like that, but Darren’s hand being responsible and not his own. And yet it was so much more than that. It was intense, it was amazing, it was the best thing Jayden had ever experienced, and to come down from the high to Darren’s blown gaze and languid smile and know, just know¸ that he was responsible for that even if he hadn’t technically reciprocated…
“Wow,” he repeated, and Darren laughed, collapsing onto the bed beside him and wriggling in for a hug. Jayden pulled him close. He felt shaky. He felt bone-tired and shaky, like he’d been rattled right out of his skin. He felt hypersensitive, where Darren’s hand was resting in the small of his back and stroking little circles. He felt too hot, and yet too cold, wanting to wind himself around Darren and soak up his body heat like a sponge. He felt done, wrung-out and sated and done, in a way he’d never managed by himself. “Fuck,” he said finally. It seemed like the o
nly thing to say, and Darren smiled, nudging his nose against Jayden’s neck and kissing one of the bruises lightly.
“You’ll need a turtleneck tomorrow.”
“Don’t think I own any,” Jayden mumbled. “God. I mean…do you want me to…?”
“I won’t be bouncing back from that one soon,” Darren replied cryptically. He had, Jayden suspected, gone to the bathroom to remove his boxers. Jayden half-wanted to verify that, but was too sated, too satisfied, to move.
“I didn’t even do anything.”
“You sat on my lap looking like that.” Darren shrugged. “I can’t be held responsible for what my dick decides to do in those circumstances.”
Jayden smiled and kissed him lightly, the barest spark lighting up between their mouths. “That was amazing.”
Darren nudged their foreheads together. “You going to stop wigging out about not jumping into bed by the third date now?”
Jayden flushed. “Maybe.”
“For the record, we couldn’t have had sex anyway,” Darren said, and grinned crookedly at him. “I didn’t bring any condoms.”
Jayden sniggered, almost giddily, and squeezed him tightly. “We lost your phone.”
“It’s on the floor.”
Jayden blinked, struck by the thought. “Can you get Facebook on it?”
“Yeah. Hey, no, c’mere,” Darren whined, clinging as Jayden twisted over and fumbled for it. He found it tucked beside the bedside table and pushed it into Darren’s hands. “Change it.”
“Huh?”
“Your relationship status. Change it. I mean…it’s just…”
Darren was already functioning—or at least his hands were. Judging by the fuzzy expression on his face, his brain was only awake enough to comprehend simple sentences, and once Jayden stopped talking, he’d be gone.
“Here,” he turned it around. He’d logged out; Jayden logged in, and found the notification.
“Oh, my God,” he said, grinning shakily, and confirmed it. He threw the phone down the bed and kissed Darren soundly until a hand was in his hair and the first signs of life were coming back into those amazing eyes.
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