by J. M. Lee
Maybe the guilt will be enough to keep his fingers from stroking the back of Cassius’ curls while he takes Joaquin into his mouth this time. Sitting the now-empty bowl down on the coaster, he shakes himself out of his thoughts.
After that blowout over what seemed like centuries ago, they met up so that Joaquin could do an interview with Cassius about his rumored retirement and transition to the announcer booth. Back then, Joaquin was the only columnist, and Cassius had taken the extraordinary step of pitching the interview himself.
“Future hall of famer,” Cassius said, by way of explanation. “You could use the exposure,” he added. Joaquin fumed, but admitted he was right.
Traffic to the site spiked almost immediately. Rory insisted on having Cass over for dinner, more than purchasing the drink Joaquin had suggested, and their friendship began anew. Rory hadn’t touched him in months.
The sex naturally spilled out of friendship, Joaquin reasoned, the first time it happened. Ten years had gone, and they missed each other. They played basketball in Cass’ private court. A foul gone wrong, they tumbled on each other, locked eyes and froze.
Then, Cass kissed him while he tried to explain that this was wrong, his divorce wasn’t final, and they shouldn’t do this.
They did anyway.
Afterwards, Joaquin quietly admitted that he’d had quite the crush on Cassius back in college. To his bewilderment, Cass said the same thing. Laughing, he added, he couldn’t stand Ahmad.
His mind wanders to when they took Cassius’s daughter and Joaquin’s nephew out to a football game. Joaquin had put someone else on the story, so he had been free to buy his nephew popcorn, roast Cass and trade sidelong glances over the kids’ heads. To have fun and not feel like he was faking it for the first time in a long one.
They hadn't gone out on a proper date though--and Joaquin wasn’t sure if he was ready for that just yet. What he did know was Cass’ bullshit smiling face and his big hands and his big dick put a smile on his face that made strangers think he was friendly. His mama said that he looked a bit like his old self again.
Joaquin thinks of Cassius’ smile, and the very idea of doing anything to hurt him feels like a punch in the chest.
Before, Joaquin never needed the comfort of kissing or snuggling before. He preferred typing away at his keyboard in the dark to mornings in bed. Rory once told a group of their friends that he had to teach Joaquin how to be romantic, for crying out loud. But there’s something about Cassius that makes him need it like nothing else. He wants to be touched and truly loved again, not lugged by Rory for another painstaking year.
So yeah, maybe he has a bit of a thing for the guy he’s been…he doesn’t even know what he’s been doing. Something. He’s been doing something, and that he’s certain of.
He’s not dumb enough not to realize that the stuff that they do together is different; Joaquin’s never gotten off with someone who makes his head feel like it’s coming loose from his shoulders while he’s swallowing around their cock.
He knows he owes it to Rory to come clean about him and Cassius. He owes himself that much.
And talking about it shouldn’t be a problem, except for the clinical way that Rory initiates things between them, the half-repressed flinch away from Joaquin’s hands when he dares to make the first move, the cold sheets that Joaquin wakes up to in the morning on the off days where they actually make it to a bed. There’s something in Rory’s face, in his eyes when they first start touching each other, every time, without fail, that makes Joaquin swallow every aching word he has sitting at the back of his throat. It makes him feel certain that Rory already knows what he wants to say. He knows, and is pleading with Joaquin not to say it.
Joaquin puts the remote control down, pulls his legs up to his chest and buries his face in his arms. His throat is dry, and there’s a burning sensation pressing at the back of his eyes. This is ridiculous he thinks, before taking a shuddering breath. Then another. In. Out. In. Out. He outright refuses to cry over this. It’s so stupid.
His phone buzzes and he grabs it quickly.
C u in ten
— C
Anticipation mixes with the gross feeling in Joaquin’s chest, churning against the lump of cereal in his stomach. He looks down at his boxers and sweatshirt, stained with what is probably barbecue sauce but technically could also be blood. It feels like too much effort to go upstairs and change, plus that would be weird because then it’d be like Joaquin put in effort to look good for Cassius. Except the stain is really gross and Joaquin’s going to be thinking about it the whole time if he doesn’t change.
In the end Joaquin ends up running around the living room for five minutes before he spots a t-shirt on the floor that most likely belongs to Rory and most likely hasn’t been washed in, well, ever but doesn’t actively smell. He tugs it on just as there’s a knock at the door, glancing down to see the words White Boy Wasted printed in block letters across his chest. Rory.
Before Joaquin can fully rethink his taste, Cassius is barging in, two coffee cups in hand and a huge smile on his glowing face, clean shaven. Joaquin feels his heart start to beat double time against his ribcage and silently prays that his face is doing something normal when he returns Cassius’s greeting.
“What are we?” Cassius asks as he toes off his shoes. He asks it so casually. It’s unnerving to Joaquin.
He snorts. “I don’t know. Are we a ‘we’?”
Cassius hands Joaquin his drink and flops down on the couch.
Joaquin laughs and takes a sip of his drink, which turns out to be hot chocolate, then wonders if Cassius remembered him saying that he prefers cocoa to coffee or if it was just a coincidence. The satisfied smirk that unfolds on his face when Joaquin takes an extra long sip makes him think it was maybe on purpose. Joaquin quickly makes himself turn away from the warmth in those brown eyes.
Cassius picks up the remote and starts flicking through the channels, stopping on some stupid reality show he’d never publicly admit to watching just as Joaquin finally relaxes into the couch. He startles a bit when Cassius’s feet land indelicately on his lap, and when he glances over Cassius is already looking at him, a grin on his face as he launches into a terrible impersonation of the contestant doing a confessional on-screen.
His voice washes over Joaquin, steady and sure, settling Joaquin’s scattered thoughts. For the first time this morning he feels able to sit still, the ache in his chest eclipsed by simple contented warmth. Just being here, right here on this couch, pinned down by the weight of Cassius’s legs, by the weight of his gaze, feels like everything - and nothing; such a nothing moment, another Saturday morning about to be wasted on ratchet TV and video games. Joaquin will probably kick Cassius’s ass at Kickoff 10, and Cassius will probably drag them out to some hipster microbrewery for lunch just to complain about how hipster everything is, even as he shells out 20 bucks for a hamburger.
And maybe they’ll have a late night, go out to the grimy Irish pub on the edge of town, drink too much and dance with other people but somehow, inevitably, go home with each other. Or maybe Joaquin will suddenly develop an instinct for self-preservation and send Cassius home after lunch, work on the ethics paper that he really should have started by now.
But right now he doesn’t have to think about that. He can just sit here with his hand on Cass’ ankle where the cuff of his jeans has ridden up, thumb brushing the bottom edge of his tattoo--a carnation in bloom, Joaquin knows, done in black ink just like the rest of Cassius’s pieces--and sip his hot chocolate.
Joaquin feels like he’s made it, completed some long journey he was getting tired of trekking through. It feels like a culmination, an ending. He lets the familiar taste comfort him even as the sweetness of it catches at the back of his throat and begs himself not to overthink things, just this once.
The End