by Bauer, Tal
They ricocheted down the walls, Jack pushing Ethan back to strip his sweater, his undershirt, and then Ethan doing the same. Jack peeling Ethan’s jeans down his hips, and Ethan dropping to his knees, taking Jack into his mouth as Jack cursed and grabbed Ethan’s hair, thrust his hips and his cock into Ethan’s mouth as Ethan stripped his trousers.
When Jack had degenerated to groans and bitten-off curses, mumbled half words and pleas and Ethan’s name, Ethan stood and lifted Jack, carrying him into Jack’s bedroom. His parents had quietly replaced Jack’s old high school bed with a queen frame, large enough for both Ethan and Jack to comfortably sleep in. It was a tiny thing, but it meant the world to Ethan the first time they’d visited after summer. Mary and Andrew had done that on purpose, had wanted them to feel welcome. Had wanted them to come, and to stay, and to feel at home with them.
He carried Jack to their bed and dropped him in the middle, crawling over him without breaking their kiss. Jack was an octopus when they made love, his hands everywhere, his thighs cradling Ethan’s hips, his sides, Jack’s hips rising and rocking into Ethan’s. Jack was a deluge on his senses, and he couldn’t get enough.
Jack flipped him, pushing Ethan to his back. He stripped Ethan’s jeans and socks off, kissing down his chest, his hips, his thighs, his calves, and then worked his way back up. Ethan groaned as Jack swallowed him whole, panting open-mouthed as he watched Jack’s head bob. As their eyes met.
Ethan grabbed Jack’s hips and urged him to spin, to kneel over Ethan. As Jack sucked his cock, Ethan licked his way down Jack’s cock, down to his balls, and then to his ass. Jack groaned around him when Ethan spread Jack’s ass and pressed his face between his tight cheeks. His tongue snaked out, diving into Jack’s hole.
He feasted, probing Jack’s hole, nibbling on the edges and suckling his ring, licking him up until he was slick with Ethan’s spit. His fingers slid in alongside his tongue, circling Jack’s opening. Jack panted, his cheek on Ethan’s thigh, whimpering while he fisted his own cock.
Finally, Jack pulled away. He reached for the lube on their nightstand and pumped some into his palm, slicking Ethan’s cock as he kneeled above him face to face. Ethan grabbed Jack’s hips and stroked his abs, his thumbs diving into the divots of his rock-hard stomach. Jack lined them up, pressing Ethan’s cock against his hole.
He held Ethan’s gaze as he sank down, sighing, his head tipping back. His cock jerked.
Jack fell forward, laying over Ethan and rocking gently. Ethan cradled him close and kissed him everywhere. His lips, his neck, his jaw, his eyelids. His throat. Jack moaned as his eyes rolled back, his body adjusting to Ethan’s cock again.
Ethan loved this part, loved watching Jack writhe and push back against him, take every last centimeter of Ethan within Jack’s ass. Jack seemed hungry for it, seemed to love it. Crave it.
Their kisses turned hot, fast. Jack nipped at his lips, captured his lower one in his teeth. He sat back, tugging on Ethan as he went, and grinned as he sat back.
Ethan’s cock twitched inside Jack’s ass, buried to the hilt. He spread his legs. Planted his feet on the mattress.
Jack grabbed his bent knees. “Ready?” He winked.
Ethan grasped Jack’s hips. His thoughts blurred, only images, sensations processing in his mind. Jack, impaled on him, his hard cock jutting straight up. Jack, smiling down at him. His own cock squeezed inside Jack’s ass, throbbing as he desperately tried to hold back from thrusting, from flipping Jack and spreading his legs and making Jack scream his name loud enough the next town could hear his pleas to God and country. No, Jack wanted it his way tonight. And Ethan would hang on for the ride.
“Ready,” he panted.
His back arched as Jack rode him, as Jack possessed him, bucking on his cock, shimmying and driving Ethan in and out of his hole. Ethan was powerless, helpless, Jack in complete control as he owned Ethan, as he owned his cock and his pleasure. Jack’s eyes rolled back, and his hands slid up his own chest, up his neck, his fingers stroking over his collarbones, down to his pecs and his nipples. Ethan gasped, and his hands clasped down on Jack’s hips. He was going to leave bruises. Jack never cared.
Harder, faster. Jack rode him like a cowboy, like he was riding a bull on a West Texas rodeo circuit. Like he was taming Ethan. And, oh, Ethan would let himself be tamed. He craved it, welcomed it. He thrust as fast as he could, matching Jack’s wild bucks. But this was Jack’s show, and he was only along for the ride, as long as he could keep up. His brains, what little there was left, melted, threatened to dribble out his ears… or shoot out his cock.
Ethan stroked Jack’s cock. Jack shuddered, almost screamed, and bit his lip. He moaned Ethan’s name, his hips pumping faster. Ethan’s cock grew impossibly larger, pushing deep into Jack, filling him in ways he never had before. Fuck, it was so much, too much, when Jack did this, when he rode Ethan like he was trying to mine his own soul. Ethan could barely breathe, the white-hot pleasure was too much, every single nerve firing at once, his whole body taken over by the purest pleasure he’d ever felt squeezing his cock.
“Ethan, Ethan, Ethan,” Jack chanted. His eyes squeezed shut. “Ethan, fuck, fuck—"
Thrashing, bucking, Jack came, his cock shooting ropes of come up Ethan’s belly and chest. His ass clenched around Ethan’s cock, and Ethan’s thread-thin control snapped. Roaring, he pushed up, driving into Jack, and exploded. Jack kept bucking, kept riding him through his orgasm, making it last, and linger, until he couldn’t breathe and the world went white and red.
Finally, Jack collapsed forward, breathing hard into Ethan’s neck. Ethan managed to find the strength to wrap first one arm, and then the other, around Jack’s waist. He kissed his sweaty forehead and left his lips against Jack’s skin.
“Look what you’ve done to me,” Jack teased breathlessly. “I was a boring president before you. Very boring.”
“I’ve created a monster. The instrument of my own demise.”
Jack beamed, laughing. “You’re too good of a lover. I can’t get enough of you.”
“I’ll work on that for you. Back it down some. Adjust your expectations lower.”
Laughing again, Jack finally slid off him and rolled to Ethan’s side, cuddling close. “You couldn’t make bad love to me if you tried.”
Ethan snorted, but Jack kissed him, and they spent the next four minutes of consciousness trading kisses until their heavy eyelids pulled them under.
* * *
Moonlight woke Ethan hours later, spilling through Jack’s bedroom window. Jack was awake in bed beside him, tablet in hand, his reading glasses low on his nose. Despite their wild lovemaking from only hours before, Ethan’s cock twitched.
“Hey you.” Jack kissed the top of his head. “Merry Christmas. It’s three AM.”
“Don’t you know you can’t stay up all night Christmas Eve? How will Santa sneak in and out of the house?” Ethan wrapped his arms around Jack’s waist and laid his head on his thigh. He eyed Jack’s tablet. “Reviewing the contracts?”
“Triple checking everything.” Jack kissed him again. “And Santa actually has already come and gone.”
“You bet he has.”
Jack chuckled. “I mean, this.” He pulled a box from under the bed and handed it to Ethan. “Merry Christmas, husband.”
Ethan sat up. The package had been rewrapped, he could tell, retaped, the bow retied. He slid it off and undid the paper. Inside the box, under a layer of tissue paper, he found a book.
He looked up, met Jack’s gaze. Jack smiled.
Year Two stretched across the front cover of the hardback, above a selfie they’d taken over the summer after everything, after Jack had resigned and Congress had decided not to investigate further and the Justice Department had held off on pressing charges, and they were finally free.
He flipped through the pages. From last Christmas to this one, it seemed like a million years had happened. His decision to resign from the Secret Service and move back to DC, move in
to the White House. Become the First Gentleman. Headlines from that decision and official White House press releases shared pages with photos of the two of them at the White House, as the first family. Photos of him with his staff in the East Wing. His heart clenched.
Sergey’s State Dinner. Official photos of the evening and Jack and Sergey’s selfies from before and after. A few that must have come from Levi and Scott. There was Sasha, dour and stone-faced in the background, a stern shadow behind Sergey. That was the first time they’d met the man.
He whistled, memories flying past him like a speeding train.
Evgeni’s funeral and Jack’s trip to Russia without him. Jack and Sergey side by side, Sergey with his arm around Jack, comforting him during the state funeral. Russian and rainbow flags together. Sasha in the background, pale as a ghost.
Jack never shied away from the truth, and as he turned the page, he knew what he’d see. The devastation at CIA headquarters, a quarter of Langley burning, rubble set fire against the midnight sky. Secret Service agents combing the wreckage alongside FBI and CIA officers. Welby, running across the debris field toward a waiting helicopter, a bloody body in his arms.
He skipped ahead. The next of the photos were Sergey’s, snaps from his cell phone as he managed his insurgency from the mountains. Jack and Sasha arriving. Jack cleaning his first rifle with Sasha’s help. Jack, glaring at a map. Pictures of Russia as they trekked across the continent. A sign that showed the kilometers to Vladivostok. And then, Simushir Island.
Jack must have gotten the next photos from Captain Anderson and his crew. Images from cell phones, from sailors who had obviously taken a moment to snap a quick photo of Jack and Ethan and Sergey and everyone else clambering on board the Honolulu. Him and Jack in the conn. Standing in the cramped corridor, heads together, talking softly.
He’d known it at the time, but it hadn’t registered. Captain Anderson’s executive officer took photos while Captain Anderson married them inside his cabin on the Honolulu. In the rush of everything, in the frenzy, in everything after, he’d forgotten about the silent cell phone camera recording in the cramped corner. But here they were, photos of the moment. Jack’s lips forming the words I do. Ethan looking like he was about to shit himself, his knuckles white where he was holding onto Jack’s hands so tightly. Sasha and Sergey and Scott in the background, three expressions of complete shock on their faces. Captain Anderson pronouncing them wed.
Their kiss.
Written in marker on the printed picture in the bottom corner of the page were the coordinates from Ethan’s watch. “I made a quick addition,” Jack admitted.
“It’s perfect.”
There weren’t any photos of what came next, but there were of their homecoming from the Arctic. Bedraggled and exhausted, the arrival at Andrews Air Force base. President Elizabeth Wall rushing to meet them both, embracing Jack. The convoy back to the White House.
The congressional investigations. Jack, testifying in isolation, alone against the committee. His wedding ring glittered in the photos.
Coming home to Mary and Andrew. The impromptu wedding reception Jack’s parents had thrown for them. Dancing together on the porch, napping together in the hammock. The moments before, and the moments after the congressional committee’s decision. Beaming, explosive smiles, once their freedom was assured.
Buying their house together in Washington DC. Moving day. Halloween, and Jack’s outrageous costume. God, he’d nearly had an aneurysm that night. He’d been so turned on, so horned up for Jack. Selfie after selfie, them together, them kissing, them smiling. Them in perfect, perfect love.
“I love it,” Ethan breathed. “I love these books. I can’t even explain how much I love them. It’s like I fall in love with you all over again, reliving everything.”
“That’s how I feel putting it together for you.” Jack kissed his cheek, nuzzled his face. “Here’s to year three.”
“Year three,” Ethan said, turning and kissing Jack sweetly, and then not sweetly, and then pushing him back into the mattress as Jack rolled into his arms, his hips, and their lips met in another endless kiss.
* * *
9
McLean, Virginia
For them. Kris kept his hands in his coat pockets and waited, stalling, as the rest of the men and women filed into the masjid. The call to prayer rose over the speakers, the wailing adhan a lightning rod to his soul. Almost twenty years he’d heard the call to pray, day in and day out.
And now, here he was.
He watched Dawood and Behroze take their places in the prayer line, bow their heads, cross their arms. Soft murmurs rose, Arabic and English and a few other languages mixed in, Swahili and Urdu and Pashto, all offering praises to Allah and giving thanks.
What I believe… He took a breath. Held it.
He didn’t know what he believed. He’d abandoned his mother’s Catholicism before the Twin Towers fell. He’d spent a majority of his life in the trenches of Islam, watching the true believers—Dawood, Imam Youssef, and others—fight against the radicals and the extremists. The faith Dawood had showed him was beautiful, and gentle, and loving.
His heart had hardened so much, though, over the years. He only had room in there for one man and one boy now. Dawood and Behroze.
It mattered to Behroze that he be a part of their faith. That he join them, slide beside them both and move together, whisper together. Kris’s love for his family rested on convictions and fire, passion that moved wars and worlds. The conviction to keep his family safe, the conviction to put Dawood and Behroze first, always. His love for Dawood that had shaped a war that had gone on to shape the world.
The conviction of a man who watched the towers fall and fell in love with the best man he’d ever met, a Muslim man, who raised a Muslim boy.
Behroze understood love differently. Love was togetherness. Love was connection. Love was eternal. Love was Dawood pining for Kris in his prayers every day and night, in teaching Behroze the ways of Dawood’s own father, and in patience, and endurance, and eternity.
Behroze looked for him at Dawood’s side and found him missing. He found Kris’s love wanting.
Can I do this? For them?
What did he want his family to be? He’d thought the fault line would be Behroze struggling to accept his and Dawood’s love. He’d thought the tension would always be centered there, in his hesitating before kissing Dawood, in feeling Behroze’s sidelong glare, in a nameless, formless, seething rage against him personally. He’d expected jealousy for loving Dawood first. For stealing him from Behroze. Condemnation. Hidden hatred.
He’d prepared himself for everything, he’d thought.
Except for Behroze to want more.
He’d never, ever imagined Behroze would want it all. For a full family, and Kris at his side in every way, the same as Dawood. Two parents, an orphan’s hunger for love not happy with only one parent. Give me two, I don’t care that you’re another man. Give me all the love I can have.
He’d never realized how deeply Dawood had pined for him those ten years apart. How his everlasting love for Kris had burned so fiercely in front of Behroze, and what Behroze had taken from that.
Compared to Dawood’s decade-long example of everlasting love, how did Kris measure up?
No wonder Behroze nurtured resentment for him. Not because of his love for Dawood, but for all the ways he seemed to fall short of loving him as deeply, as truly, as he should.
Kris toed off his shoes, tucking them beside Dawood and Behroze’s. He slipped out of his wool coat and hung it up.
It wasn’t that he believed in Allah, or in Islam. It wasn’t that he believed in anything, necessarily. But he did believe in Dawood, and he believed in Dawood’s father, and he believed in the men and women who made the world a better place. And in Behroze.
He stepped onto the masjid’s rug. The subhanaka prayers had already begun, the blessings to Allah before the recitation of the first surahs. Whispering apologies, he slid t
hrough the lines, making his way to Behroze and Dawood. He squeezed in between his husband and son.
Dawood slid automatically to the side, making room for his brother in prayer without opening his eyes or missing a beat of his prayers. Behroze looked. When he saw Kris, his voice locked up. He froze.
Kris smiled. “Hello, habibi,” he breathed. “May I stand here?”
It was Dawood’s turn to jerk in surprise, hiss in a breath as he jolted from his prayers. His jaw dropped. His mouth moved as his forehead creased, one long, straight frown line deepening between his brows. “What are you doing?”
Dawood had never pushed him, not once. He’d never asked him to convert, or to attend prayers or iftar gatherings at the break of the daily fast during Ramadan. He’d never once pressured him.
“I’m trying,” Kris whispered. His voice shook. He swallowed hard. “For our son.”
Dawood closed his eyes, but the tears slipped free a moment later, trails flowing down his cheeks and to his chin. He grasped Kris’s hand and squeezed, squeezed so hard Kris thought his bones would break. He squeezed back.
“Like this,” Behroze said, pulling Kris’s attention to his right. “We do ruku,” he said, bowing forward. He waited for Kris to mimic him. “And then we do sajdah.” He moved to his knees, tucking his feet beneath him, and waited. Kris followed. On his left, Dawood slowly kneeled as well. “Pray with us, habibi,” Behroze whispered. “I will thank Allah you are beside me and Baba today.”
Kris heard Dawood’s choked sob, the wet sniff. He squeezed Dawood’s hand, and they bowed together a moment after Behroze’s prostration. Kris could hear Behroze’s whispered Pashto, the excited quiver in his voice thanking Allah for Kris, that he was there, that they were together. Dawood’s rougher voice simply whispered Allahu Akbar over and over as his fingers threaded through Kris’s.
Kris closed his eyes, his forehead to the ground. My love for you both is my devotion. My faith I place in both of your hearts. You are my everything. Always.