by Anna Martin
“Anytime. Big brother.”
“You know where the blankets are. Make yourself at home.”
“I’m finishing the wine,” he called after me as I jogged out of the house.
It only took a few minutes to get to the cafe, since I kept on jogging to get there quicker. The bar was busy, but I knew the bar staff, meaning I got served with a minimum amount of fuss and wandered through the noisy, crowded bar to where my friends were gathered in a booth.
“Hey, you’re here!” Meg said, and I grinned at her.
“Yeah. Leo kicked me out. He’s going to sleep, so he said I could come out to play for a while.”
She snorted with laughter. “Zane’s brother is here. Did you know? We’re all on our best behavior.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Apparently he— Actually, that’s his news, not mine.”
“What?” I demanded, but she mimed zipping her lips, and I couldn’t get anything further out of her.
From my vantage point I could see when Zane walked back in from the courtyard—he’d obviously been out for a smoke—with a guy I guessed was Cass. He was taller than Zane and broader, with a shadow of a beard and a crisp white shirt that made his skin look more tanned than Zane’s.
I wondered what his reaction would be to my turning up unannounced, especially if his brother was around and he couldn’t be affectionate with me. But he smiled and pulled Cass down to whisper something in his ear before they got to the table.
I slid out of the booth to let them in.
“Hey,” Zane said, reaching out to squeeze my wrist. “Cass, this is the guy I was telling you about. Ellis, this is my brother Cass.”
Cass offered me his hand, and I shook it. “So, you’re the guy my baby brother is dating, huh?”
I’d been part of this conversation before, when Leo started dating Reid, so it was weird to get it back from the other side. Cass was fairly intimidating too. He was as tall as me and had heavy eyebrows that gave him a permanent frown.
“Yeah,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
This must have been the secret Meg didn’t want to spill—Zane had finally come out to his brother. Cass nodded at me.
“Take care of him,” he said simply, and then he slid into the booth, where his half-finished beer stood next to Azriel’s. When Cass fell back into conversation with Az, I guessed the two of them had found common ground.
“You told him,” I said as I leaned down to place a small kiss on the corner of Zane’s lips.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “He said he already knew and was pleased I could finally tell him myself.”
“That’s awesome.”
He grinned and nodded and ushered me back into a seat so he could sit on my lap. I wrapped my arms loosely around his waist so I could reach my glass of wine when needed.
“No beer?” Zane asked.
“No. I’ve been drinking wine at home with Leo, and I don’t want to mix or I’ll get a headache.” I filled him in on my evening’s activities with my brother while he insinuated his hands under the hem of my shirt and stroked my belly. “Tell me about Cass.”
“He wanted to know more about you,” Zane said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been telling him a lot tonight, but I think he was a bit wary about the fact that you have Harrison.”
“That’s okay. I probably would feel the same in his position.”
Zane attached his lips to the side of my neck and kissed over the skin there while I held him tight, even though my legs were going numb.
When he ducked out for a smoke, I twisted around in my seat to where Cass and Azriel were still talking.
“Finally put him down, have you?”
“Fuck off, Az,” I said lightly. “Get a haircut.”
He laughed at that and flipped his dreads over his shoulder. I noticed Cass’s lips twitching with a smile.
“Did you two know each other already?” I asked, reaching for my wine again.
Az shrugged. “Only in passing. Cass works with social services, so sometimes our paths cross.”
“We’re talking shop,” Cass said apologetically.
“That’s okay. Don’t mind me.”
“No…. I need to learn when to leave my work at my desk,” he said. “It’s difficult sometimes. So, Zane said you have a kid?”
“Yeah. Harrison.”
“Too fucking cute for his own good,” Az said, winking at me.
“Of course he is. He’s mine.”
“Does everyone here know each other?” Cass asked with a laugh.
“Pretty much. It gets worse when you realize that everyone has slept with each other too.”
He pulled a face. “I didn’t need to know that.”
“You’re not married?” Az asked lightly.
“No.”
“Girlfriend? Boyfriend?”
“No girlfriend,” Cass said. He smiled and shook his head. “I’m definitely into girls. I’ll leave the boys to Zane.”
“Okay. Hang around here long enough and we’ll set you up with someone. Hey, my sister’s single. Have you met Lupe?”
“Lupe’s the evil twin,” I said seriously.
“There’s an evil twin?”
“Cass. Please,” Az said, rolling his eyes. “First thing they teach you at med school is how to identify the evil twin. Lupe has all the signs. There’s no denying it.”
When Zane came back from his smoke we were laughing, and he raised his eyebrow as if asking to be let in on the joke. This time I decided to keep him out of it and let him sit on my lap again in my own kind of apology.
We stumbled out of the cafe, drunk and carefree and a little bit in love.
“Are you coming home with me?” I asked.
He nodded and gave me his megawatt smile. “Yeah. I want you to take me to your bed and make love to me.”
“No,” I said. “Noooo. Later. I’m going to go home, make you drink some water and take some Tylenol, then go to sleep. Harrison will be awake in a few hours.”
“Nooo,” Zane cried, echoing me. “Okay.”
Leo was sleeping on the couch, covered in blankets, and I shushed Zane even though he wasn’t making any noise as I pulled the living room door closed. He nodded solemnly and held a finger to his lips.
In the fridge I found a few bottles of water and handed one to Zane, along with the promised Tylenol. Then he followed me to bed and crawled into it wearing just his tight, tight, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination boxers.
“Are you sure you won’t make love to me?” he mumbled as he rearranged my body to his liking, concluding with his cheek pressed to my chest and one arm and leg thrown over mine.
“I will,” I vowed. “When it all works properly again.”
He snorted with laughter, sighed heavily, then drifted off to sleep.
When morning dawned only hours later I was woken by the bedroom door opening and the familiar weight of my son being deposited on my chest.
“You owe me,” Leo said darkly. “I’m going out for breakfast.”
I nodded and groaned and shifted Harrison from my belly to the bed. “’Kay,” I mumbled around a yawn. “Have fun.”
The front door slammed, and Harrison fussed a little before letting me soothe him back to sleep. I could tell it was going to be another day of running on too few hours’ sleep, but for a different reason than I was used to.
Zane snuggled against my back, and I listened carefully to the sound of their breathing— both of them content—and mine.
Our circle was expanding outward with people who knew we were together and celebrated the two of us as a couple. Including Zane’s brother. I wondered why that was weird to me, when my own brother was the first person I’d told I was gay. Leo had returned the sentiment a year or so later, although I’d had to piece it together from the host of questions he’d peppered me with.
“Morning, baby,” Zane mumbled against my shoulder when he finally woke, nuzzling against me until I shifted so he
could pillow his head on my chest. Harrison was stirring again too, and Zane reached out to smooth down his cowlicky hair. “Morning, baba.”
This was how I’d imagined my life when I became a parent. Lying in bed, early in the morning, my child in my arms and my lover holding us both. I pulled Zane up so I could kiss him properly, thoroughly, not caring that his mouth was alcohol sour and mine probably was too. He stretched into the kiss, giving me all I’d asked for and more, running his fingertips over my cheek until I pulled away with genuine regret.
When I looked down Harrison was watching us with open fascination, as if wondering what on earth we were doing. When I grinned at him his face broke into a wide grin right back. I took that as his approval.
Chapter 10
It was Oliver’s weekend with Harrison, so we dressed and took Harrison over to my mom’s fairly early, so he was there ready for when Oliver arrived. I tried not to think about how much easier it would have been the night before if he’d picked his son up Friday afternoon, as was our previous agreement. Thinking about that just got me mad.
Zane didn’t have any work to do over the weekend, at least nothing that wouldn’t wait until classes on Monday, so we were free to do whatever we wanted.
It turned out whatever we wanted was going back to his apartment and taking all our clothes off.
By Sunday afternoon, we were yet to put them back on.
I stretched on his bed, enjoying how different it was from my own. Zane was pottering around his tiny apartment, making tea or something, bare-ass naked. It suited him.
There was music still playing from earlier, some indie crap I didn’t recognize and would not admit that I enjoyed. It was new, but it felt right.
He’d told me, late one night, that he sometimes acted as a life model for his drawing class. I was torn between amusement (that he had to stand naked in a room filled with strangers and friends—I wasn’t sure which was worse) and jealousy (that those strangers and friends got to see my boyfriend naked).
As far as I was concerned, he had the perfect body for nudity. It suited him in ways it didn’t suit other people, maybe because he was so at ease with wandering around without his clothes on.
When he returned to the bed he had a handful of acrylics and one long brush.
“Can I paint you?” he asked.
“You’ve already asked me this,” I said. “Sure.”
He grinned, flashing his teeth. “Excellent. Lay back for me?”
“Will you draw me first? Like one of your French girls?”
That sent him into a fit of giggles that took several minutes to recover from. “I don’t want to draw you at all,” he said.
I was a little confused when he swiped alcohol over my skin, my chest and shoulder and up my neck, cleaning away sweat and dirt with the circular cotton pad. Then he straddled my waist and squeezed a few blobs of acrylic onto my stomach.
“You want to paint me,” I said. “Not paint me.”
“Exactly.”
It was a strange sensation, the rough bristles of the paintbrush and the cold paint swirling around on my stomach, then over my shoulder.
“Tilt your head to the side for me?” he asked.
I couldn’t see what he was doing while he finished the section on my neck. The design licked over my collarbones and swirled around my nipple, making me shudder. He used blue and white and black, then yellow, which made me think of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
“Not dissimilar to that, I suppose,” he murmured when I voiced the opinion. “Did you know you’re hard?” He rocked back against my erection as if to prove his point.
“Mm.”
I watched as his eyes darkened and his pink tongue, which had been poking out the corner of his mouth, darted out to wet his lips.
“Lift your arm for me?”
“Won’t that smudge it?”
“No, the top layer has dried by now.”
More paint made its way onto the mess on my tummy, mixing with the colors that were already there. More blue, more white, then it was smeared along my ribs and up under my arms, tangling with the hairs there and staining them shades of azure and periwinkle and indigo.
The yellow highlights were a harsh contrast, never mixing enough to turn green, darkening at the edges where the lines blurred. Watching him was more interesting than the colors blending on my skin, how his eyebrows pinched together as he concentrated, the little huff of frustration when things didn’t go quite his way. I thought he was adorable, but that was nothing new.
I was reluctant to allow him to swirl the paint up onto my jawbone but let him because I was in love. This was yellow, bright and bold.
“You’re done,” he said. When he climbed off my thighs I noticed he was hard too, or almost, close enough. Whether that was his reaction to my own arousal or something all his own, I couldn’t tell.
While Zane washed his brush in the sink and set the acrylics back in a cardboard box, I wondered when this sort of thing had become normal. It surely couldn’t be. It was strange, no? To the outside world? We weren’t going to let them in, though. This was ours.
“Can I take your picture?” Zane asked. “I’d like to put it in my portfolio.”
I nodded, apparently unable to say no to him, particularly when he smiled at me like that when I said yes.
He fumbled with a white sheet, pinning it up to points in the ceiling and wall that told me he’d probably done it before. The light was failing fast, so he turned on a few lamps and pointed them at his makeshift studio.
“You can come here now.”
“Where do you want me?”
“Right here.”
Zane guided me into position, and I guessed he didn’t want me to put any clothes on. I wondered if I should make a disclaimer—that I didn’t want any pictures of my cock making it into his portfolio or anywhere else. But he wasn’t pointing the camera at my crotch, so I didn’t say anything.
He had an old SLR camera, a film one, rather than a digital version, which made me smile. God knew, if Zane was going to have a camera, it was going to be a classic.
“Is there black and white film in that?” I asked.
“Not in this one.”
“Not in that one.”
“Right. I have one that is better for black and white film. This does really good color. It’s old film, so the colors come out differently from modern stuff.”
“How the hell did you get your hands on that?”
“I found it,” he said, lowering the camera from his face, “in a box of my mom’s stuff. The film I found in it had pictures of my dad. I’m still not sure whether I want to take her the prints or not.”
I nodded, unsure of what else I could say.
“The rest of the film was unused,” he continued, “and I liked the way they look, so I shoot with it. Sometimes. Could you give me one of your angry looks? Like you’re really pissed off.”
“I don’t have an angry look,” I protested. “And I’m really not a model.”
“I disagree. You look incredible when you’re all grumpy and miserable and…. Oh fuck, like that.”
When he knelt in front of me I had to swallow hard and give my dick stern instructions to behave. He nudged my hands away from where they were covering my almost-erection and photographed the makeshift color palette, with all the smeary paint on my abdominals.
“Can I look at myself now?” I asked when he was done.
“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”
The only mirror was the one in the bathroom over the sink. It wasn’t very big, so I had to move around to look at different parts in turn. From what I could see of the painting, it was beautiful and strange and unique. I was impressed.
“I’m hungry,” Zane called from the living room, where I could hear him taking down the sheet.
“What do you want?”
“Not pizza.”
“Okay,” I said, laughing and walking out to join him. “Anything more specific than that?”
&n
bsp; “Not pizza.”
I pulled him against my chest and gave him a hard kiss, waiting until he submitted before easing off into something sweeter and slower.
“Something from that Jamaican place? They deliver now, did you know?”
“Ooh. Sweet potato curry with mushrooms and chickpeas.”
“Jerk chicken,” I countered, just to see if I could get a rise out of him. His response was particularly bitch, please.
I put on a pair of boxers, not as familiar with my own nudity as Zane was, and called to order the food.
He turned the music off and put the TV on and protested at the addition of my boxers. When the delivery guy arrived, he frowned at the painting on my chest before taking my money without comment.
“Let me give you half,” Zane said as I set the boxes of food down on the counter. He fussed for a moment, looking for his wallet.
“It’s fine. I’ve got it.”
“You don’t always have to pay.”
“I know. If I thought you expected it, I wouldn’t offer.”
“Oh.”
“Come get your dinner.”
We ate, then made love again, the movement of my body sending deep fissures into the paint. I was full of food, so it was a slow, intense affair. He licked the spice from my lips, and I liked it.
“We need to go pick up Harrison,” I murmured.
Zane stretched and groaned, then nodded and rolled off the bed to pull some clothes on. After spending most of the weekend naked, it was a damn shame to see all his skin covered up. I silently vowed to get him out of his clothes again as soon as possible.
I wasn’t convinced anyone looked good in Aladdin-style pants, those baggy, knee-length things made out of a red-on-red striped fabric, so my theory that he looked good in anything was tested. He looked like a Disney prince. Not that it was a bad thing.
Since the weather was warm, he wore a loose tank and flip-flops and held my hand the whole way back to my mom’s.
Even though I had my own key, I still knocked rather than letting myself in. She answered, looking worried.
“He’s not back yet,” she said nervously.
I frowned and dropped Zane’s hand. “What?”
“Oliver usually has him back by now,” Mom continued. Her gaze flicked to Zane.