It didn’t matter what Jude looked like. It mattered that it was Jude, his friend, the man who’d given him the last tug out of the dark and back into living his life the way he was supposed to.
He could imagine Jude crawling on top of him, smiling at him, laughing, kissing his raised knee while he whispered assurances that this was okay, that it was going to feel great, that Owen just had to lie back, relax, and enjoy.
His fingers trailed along the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, inching closer to their goal. That touch alone was enough to get Owen close, tension building up in his gut, his hips rocking of their own accord, faster, harder than before. He already felt as though he was about to burst.
This would either send him over the edge or ruin the whole thing, but he had to try. His curiosity demanded to be satisfied.
“It’s not weird,” the Jude in his mind assured Owen as he trailed his hand lower, pushing his balls out of the way and brushing the sensitive spot behind them. He knew all about that, but he’d never tried further back.
He’d had contact with his own ass before, but not while he was jerking off. Not while he was fantasizing about sex with his best friend.
Owen took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and then sliding his fingers back, biting his lip in anticipation as he got close to his goal. He gasped as he brushed over the sensitive skin of his hole, a shock of pleasure hitting him deep inside, making his cock twitch in his hand.
Maybe he could do this.
He moved his hand away again to spit on his fingers, his heart pounding at the thought of what he was going to do next.
His balls twitched as he moved his hand back down past them, already tight and heavy. He was still stroking his cock, keeping up a rhythm that was working for him, but it wasn’t his focus anymore.
If he’d already tried one new thing in kissing Jude today, he might as well try a few more.
This time, Owen moved his finger more confidently over the sensitive skin of his hole, rubbing at first, biting his lip as the sensation made his cock twitch in his hand, speeding up his strokes to stave off frustration. He wanted to come, but he wanted to try one more thing before he did.
The thought of it was overwhelming, but not in a bad way. It was just so new, something he’d never really thought of trying before, but if he wanted Jude…
And he was pretty sure he did want Jude. He hadn’t been this turned on in a long, long time. If Jude was what did it for him now, he wasn’t in the mood to argue with his body. Actually telling Jude that was another story, but it could wait.
Taking another deep breath, Owen screwed his eyes shut, bit down on his lip, and pressed just the tip of his finger inside. It took a little more effort than he’d expected, his muscles tense.
He gasped as the feeling hit him, the intense, new feeling of having something inside him making him buck his hips, grip his cock harder, speed up his strokes. The pressure was so strange, so incredibly new, but the stretch was so satisfying that Owen could barely process what he was feeling.
It was like flipping a switch, going from never having thought of it to wanting so much more in the space of a heartbeat. He tugged on his cock harder and faster, an intense wave of arousal washing over him as he clenches his muscles, pushed his finger just a little further on.
The angle was awkward, so getting as far as the second knuckle would have to be enough for now. If he wanted to do this again, he needed to look up exactly how to position himself.
Or convince Jude to do it for him.
Owen moaned at the thought of Jude doing it for him, batting his hand away and replacing it with his own, practiced and confident and not inconveniently attached to Owen’s body in a way that made it difficult. He let his finger slip out and satisfied himself with stroking over the outside, hissing at the little shocks that bounced over his skin, made his cock leak.
He let himself imagine Jude, covering his body, filling him in a way he’d never felt before, then leaning down to whisper about how good Owen felt, how happy he was to be there, how much he’d wanted to do this.
Owen cried out as he came, stifling the sound at the last moment by biting down on his lip again. His whole chest clenched with the force of his orgasm, his back arching high as he spilled all over his stomach. Jude’s bedroom was only a little way down the hall, and the walls in this house weren’t all that thick, but staying quiet through one of the most intense orgasms of his life proved to be a challenge.
He panted, his hips jerking up into his hand, his vision whiting out briefly as he rode out wave after wave of his orgasm for what seemed like an eternity. He hadn’t come like this in a long, long time, and he’d forgotten how good it felt. What a relief it was to have all that tension just flow out of him, leave him boneless and heavy and ready to sleep.
Once he was completely spent, Owen flopped out on the bed, spreading his arms and legs wide and letting his tired body sink into the mattress.
He needed to talk to Jude.
Chapter Sixteen
Jude hadn’t been outside for longer than necessary in a few weeks, but he needed to get out of the house today. He didn’t want to be awkward around Owen, but he wasn’t sure where either of them stood with each other right now.
It felt like the beginning of a new relationship, but he’d known Owen practically all his life. He might have fantasized about it changing, but now that it was actually happening, it was strange.
Not bad, just strange. Something he needed a little time to come to terms with.
He could feel the last of the summer fading in the air. The nights were already getting longer and cooler, and it wouldn’t be long before all the leaves started changing. Fall was something to look forward to.
Owen was something to look forward to, though Jude was less sure that was going to happen the way he hoped it was. In comparison, seasons were fairly reliable.
Not that Owen was unreliable, just that he wasn’t a sure thing. Neither of them knew what was really going on right now.
Which was fine. Jude only needed a few things to be sure of in his life.
When his feet took him to the cemetery, he knew why. He had to talk to someone, and this seemed as good a place as any to do it.
Jude wandered down the well-travelled main path, gravel crunching under his feet, until he came to the right row. He patted his father’s headstone on the way past, a quiet hello, and then went to sit on top of his mother’s.
People looked at him strangely for it sometimes, but to him, it was comforting.
“Hey, mom. Sorry I haven’t been around in a while,” he said, ninety-percent sure he was talking to himself. Even if there was an afterlife, his mom probably had better things to do than watch her own grave all day.
It still helped, so he kept going back. He hadn’t been since he’d started getting too sick to walk this far, but he needed to be here now.
“Things worked out,” he started. “Owen came back into town, and we’re married now. It’s not… like that, but I’m starting to think that maybe it will be.”
A dog barked in the distance, and Jude paused to look up. He felt a little self-conscious about talking to a slab of granite he was sitting on, but on the other hand, he was hardly the only person who came here to talk to people who weren’t around anymore.
“He has a little girl. She’s just a baby, but she’s wonderful. I know you were worried I’d never get to have kids, but I kind of do, now. I’m only her step-dad, but I think I’m starting to understand what you meant about how important I was to you. Her name’s Kayla. If you’re up there, you should maybe look in on her some time. I think you’d like her.”
Jude took a deep breath. He thought he was done crying over his parents, but he could feel a lump at the base of his throat, the first sign that he was about to burst into tears.
He swallowed it down and took a few deep breaths to compose himself. He didn’t want to walk back into the house with red eyes and a dripping nose.
The pain would eventually fade, but it had been less than a year. It was normal not to be over it yet.
“I’ve got some great projects at the moment, too. I feel like I’m finally building a career instead of barely surviving. That’s thanks to Owen, too. He helped me through a really rough patch. I… well, I can never repay him for that.”
Owen had never asked for repayment. There’d never been a hint that there was anything more he wanted. Not until now.
It wasn’t like that, though. Owen wanted someone safe to experiment with, not payment for what he’d done. It was in Jude’s best interests to be that person, for a hundred reasons.
“Anyway,” he said. “Thanks for listening, mom.”
Jude stood, stretching his arms high over his head. The day was starting to heat up, and it was about time he got to work, anyway. He’d gotten everything off his chest that he needed to.
On balance, his life was going well. He didn’t need to let his insecurities or tendency toward over-analysis get in the way of things.
He just needed to live.
Chapter Seventeen
Owen wouldn’t normally have bothered Charlie at work, but it felt like an emergency today. He couldn’t think of anyone else who could help him.
Charlie stood up from behind his desk the moment he saw Owen enter the library, so at least he wasn’t busy. That was a little comforting.
“Hey.” Charlie grinned at him. “You don’t have a library card, do you?”
Owen blinked at him. “Uh. Not since I was a kid, no.”
“Then it wouldn’t work even if you still had it,” Charlie said.
Owen raised an eyebrow. He had no idea where this conversation was going.
“We’re trying to increase our patron numbers. You’d be doing me a favor if you let me give you one,” he explained.
“Oh, uh. Knock yourself out,” Owen said. If he was doing a favor for Charlie, then it was probably okay that he was about to ask for a favor from him in exchange.
“Sit.” Charlie nodded to the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Where’s Kayla? She needs a library card, too.”
“She’s with Lisa’s parents. And she can’t read,” Owen pointed out.
“It’s never too early to start.” Charlie tapped on his keyboard a few times. “But I guess she can’t actually pick out her own books. You should be reading to her, though.”
Owen blinked. Should he be reading to her? He hadn’t done that.
He had heard Jude doing it, though. He’d thought that was for Jude’s benefit rather than Kayla’s.
Maybe Jude knew more about babies than he let on.
“The more you talk to her, the faster she’ll develop strong verbal skills. It doesn’t have to be age-appropriate or anything, she’s too young to understand. But she’ll respond to the sound of your voice. Which is extra important for you, because she doesn’t see you all the time.”
Owen’s stomach twisted. He knew Charlie was trying to help, but he didn’t need the reminder that he wasn’t about to win any World’s Best Dad awards.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t come in here for parenting advice.”
Charlie paused, looked at Owen, and then looked back at the computer screen, his shoulders slumping. “Thank you for not actually saying especially from someone who doesn’t have children.”
“Hey, I trust you,” Owen said, realizing he’d hurt his little brother, regardless of his intentions. “I know you’re telling me stuff that scientists have done all kinds of research on, because it’s you. I just… already feel like a terrible father.”
“You’re a good father,” Charlie said with a lot more confidence than Owen had ever felt on the subject. “You’ve done a lot for Kayla’s sake so far.”
“I don’t read to her,” Owen said. “I didn’t even know I was supposed to.”
Charlie shrugged. “Lots of kids don’t get read to, and they turn out just fine. Besides, now that you know it’s good for her, you’re gonna start, right?”
“Obviously.”
“There you go. You’re not a bad father. You’re just new at this.” Charlie typed something in on his keyboard, then paused to push his glasses up. “Are you keeping your last name or changing to Jude’s?”
“Uh. I figured I was keeping it. We never discussed it.”
That was probably the kind of thing that they really should have discussed, but Owen was only just now taking a breather after everything that had happened over the last few weeks. One thing at a time seemed like more than enough to deal with, and last names hadn’t seemed critical.
“Well, if you need to update this later, we can do that,” Charlie said. “What did you come in for? Me, or the books?”
“You, actually.” Owen looked around, checking to see how many other people might hear him. The library was mostly empty aside from what looked like a play group in the children’s section, which was loud enough that they wouldn’t hear him talking quietly to Charlie, anyway.
“I’m listening.” Charlie sat back as the card printer beside him whirred to life.
“How do you know you’re gay?” Owen blurted out, immediately regretting everything from his phrasing to the volume of his voice.
Maybe it was a stupid question. Maybe Charlie wouldn’t have an answer. Maybe you just knew if you were and you didn’t have to ask.
He wished now that he’d asked Jude instead.
Charlie blinked at him for a moment, then leaned forward. “How do I personally know, or how would I hypothetically figure it out if I didn’t already know?”
“Uh.” Owen’s face burned with embarrassment. “The second?”
Charlie nodded. “Well, the answer’s kind of the same. If you’re a man who’s sexually attracted to men, you’re… well, you’re not straight, anyway. I can get you a thing on the Kinsey scale.”
“The what?” Owen asked. It had seemed like such a simple question, and now it was starting to sound less so.
“It’s not perfect, but it sets out sexuality as a spectrum. It goes from zero to six, with zero being absolutely not even a little gay and completely, absolutely gay all the way over at six. Or ‘X’ if you’re not into anyone.”
Owen blinked. That was a lot of information at once, and he felt like he was missing parts. When Charlie got excited, he tended to talk too fast and skip over a lot.
At least he was excited rather than offended.
“So the more gay you are the higher your score?”
Charlie snorted. “I don’t think you’re supposed to think of it as a score, although I do like to win.”
“So you’re a six?”
“A five,” Charlie said.
That was also new information. “So not… absolutely gay?” Owen asked.
Up until this moment he’d kind of assumed that there were three options—gay, straight, and bi—and now he was hearing… seven, at least. No, eight including the X option.
He’d definitely assumed that Charlie was a hundred percent gay.
“I don’t like to entirely exclude the possibility of being attracted to women or non-binary people,” Charlie said. “Sexuality is complicated, which was actually my original point.”
Owen had so many more questions than he’d come in with, but he was starting to think now wasn’t the time to get a crash course in human sexuality. He had a more immediate, concrete problem to worry about.
“Okay, well, I’m not gonna bother with hypotheticals here. If I was attracted to someone who happened to be a man, but that was… incredibly new to me and not something that’s happened before, is that… a thing? Can I do that?”
Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you’re already doing it, so you know the answer to that part. Also sounds like you’d be a one on the scale. I think the actual wording is incidentally homosexual. So in answer to your question: yes, it’s a thing. You’re not alone. It’s actually really common.”
Owen sat back, breathing a sigh of relief. �
�I’m not imagining it?”
“Just so we’re clear, we’re talking about Jude, aren’t we?” Charlie asked.
Owen blushed again, looking down at his knees. “Yeah.”
Charlie’s entire face lit up, and he sprang out of his chair. “I have books,” he said. “And no, trust me, you’re not imagining it. You’re the last to know.”
Owen had no idea what that meant, but Charlie had walked off before he had a chance to ask.
He needed to understand this. If he was going to do anything else without screwing Jude around, he needed to know where he was coming from. The last thing he wanted was to hurt Jude in the process of self-discovery.
The phrase incidentally homosexual bounced around in his mind. Like he was gay as a side effect of something else.
It was still a better explanation than anything he could have come up with by himself.
Charlie returned with a stack of books bigger than Owen’s entire per-year reading list and put them on the desk in front of him.
“Your card will still be warm,” he said, taking it from the printer bed. “Which is the perfect time to use it.”
Owen glanced over the titles, blushing when he saw that one of them was The Joy of Gay Sex.
At least someone thought it was fun.
Well. He assumed both Charlie and Jude thought it was fun.
“That’s the whole family, now,” Charlie said. “We’re all into dick.”
Owen blinked at him. “Riley…?”
“Does not pick sexual partners based on anything but willingness and proximity, I think.” Charlie smiled wryly. “He was the one who told me it was okay if I liked guys and gave me the gay sex talk, so I know he knows what he’s doing. Do you need the gay sex talk?”
“I, uh. I think I’ve got the general idea.”
Owen wasn’t an idiot, he’d just… never had sex with a man before.
He wasn’t even positive he wanted to, but he needed to be positive. Before he said anything else to Jude. The last thing he wanted to do was get halfway and realize he’d been wrong.
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