Tenebrosity

Chapter Six: “Solitude's A Reason to Die”

Part 2
 

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I really, really thought that things were changing with my dads. I thought that maybe they were finally going to begin to move forward with their lives. I still wasn’t sure if that was going to happen with them remaining together or by separating, but I had hope that whatever way they continued living, it would be better than the way they had been surviving. Now I don’t know if all the little bits of progress I was building hope on were only illusions or not. Everything is so fucking fucked up!

I’m so pissed off that I honestly wish my mom wasn’t moving to fucking Berlin because if she wasn’t, I’d pack my shit right now and move back in with her. I don’t know if I can take the constant up and downs I get living with my dads. I knew it’d be really fucking hard to get them back together, so in my head I prepared myself to start small and start by helping them separately, and I fooled myself into believing that I had helped them. I don’t know if any of it matters in the end.

Working with my dad at the office started to make me see a different side of him. Uncle Ted told me that he hadn’t seen him so relaxed in a long time and all the other employees were benefiting from it. According to Cynthia, Dad was coming up with better campaign ideas than he had been. Just last night at the party, Hunter and Harper were saying that they’re seeing that he loves his job once again. Apparently, he shows excitement and drive they hadn’t witnessed in three years. In their own way, they all said that me being at Kinnetik has forced my dad to focus on his love of advertising.

I agree completely. He acts as if he has to prove to me that working at Kinnetik isn’t only about collecting a paycheck and he doesn’t want to disappoint me by acting as if it is. He probably wants to show me how good he is at what he does. For lack of a better phrase, I’ve lit a fire under his ass. He laughs and smiles there and I’ve noticed a huge change in his work ethic in the past couple of weeks.

Work isn’t the only place that I thought that my dad had changed. This is why I became excited about the possibility that Justin and he were going to get better and work things out. He’s changed at home with Justin; it’s much more subtle, but I’ve picked up on it. Usually it’s subject to Justin’s current mood and the small possible refining he’s accomplished within himself, but I was sure there was something there.

The possible differences in Justin are much smaller than they are in my dad, but I thought that I noticed them. This morning he actually came to me to talk. I almost freaked out when I saw him hovering nervously in the doorway of my bedroom. I thought that maybe he needed me to help with something but he didn’t. He just slowly sat down on my bed and proceeded to watch an old episode of the Simpsons with me and somewhere in the middle of it he started talking to me.

He started by asking me if I had fun at Carl’s birthday party last night. I joked around and told him that there’s no way that fun could be had at Carl’s birthday party. He gave me a real smile and a real laugh and then I asked him if he had fun, though I figured that he hadn’t but I wasn’t sure since I spent most of the party hiding in Jenny’s room and playing PlayStation with some other kids there.

I didn’t think that Justin would answer me, but he did. He told me that he didn’t have fun and then he started talking and he told me why. It was as if he was making some kind of confession and felt guilty when he told me the story about that lady asking him about the painting she’d bought of his. His words were filled with such pain and unhappiness I thought he’d cry any moment, but he never did. He continued to talk and revealed to me all sorts of things about the way he feels being around people.

He told me that he likes strangers more than he likes people he knows because they don’t know that Arella died. I was fucking flabbergasted that he actually verbally acknowledged that my sister had died, because after that shit in the kitchen a few weeks ago, I was really beginning to think he might need some psychiatric help. Of course, I think he still does, they both do. So after he told me that stuff about preferring the company of strangers I told him exactly what I thought about that.

One of the reasons I so badly wanted to move back to Pittsburgh was because I couldn’t take having that label any longer too. All of my best friends have pretty big families and they’d invite both me and Jenny with them to a lot of their family outings, but then they stopped doing that and when I was around them I’d pick up on things they’d say or their parents would say to me.

They’d rarely call Jenny my sister when referring to her like they usually did, and my best friend Brent, who always called his sister ‘sis’, started calling her Katie and if he’d slip up he’d get all weird on me and apologize. It was like for some reason everyone around me thought they couldn’t say the word “sister,” even though I still had one who was alive and that to me Arella would always be my sister, even if I never saw her again.

My moms did the same thing about rarely referring to Jenny as my sister for a while too, but they stopped that when I freaked out about it.

It all got to the point where all my friends were constantly walking on eggshells around me. It wasn’t only the sister thing. Yeah, seeing certain things made me think about what happened to Arella, but I didn’t need my friends to feel like they needed to divert my attention away from them all the time. I never even broke down about it to any of them, but if I mentioned my dads or Arella, they’d all fall silent and immediately change the subject. I wasn’t allowed to be their friend, Gus, anymore. I was Gus, the kid whose youngest sister died.

I told Justin that it felt like they all wanted me to forget her and I just couldn’t take it anymore. The only person in Canada who ever talked about Arella was Jenny and I think that’s only because she’s still innocent. I said that I looked forward to going home so that I could be around him and my dad because I knew that they wouldn’t have forgotten about Arella, but I was disappointed because in many ways it seemed that, they had and that they wanted to.

Justin apologized for disappointing me. I assured him that he didn’t because at the time I felt like there was complete justification for both his and Dad’s actions. But now… now I don’t feel like that at all. They have disappointed me, I don’t think what they did to Aunt Molly and Grandma is okay.

What’s worse is that Grandma accepted the way my dads treated them! But I can’t accept it. They can’t just retreat into themselves again now that they have another reason to be upset and not face the world.

I won’t deal with it and I won’t be stuck in my room for the rest of the night because they want to revert to either fighting with one another or hiding from one another! They’re going to fucking talk to each other, or me at least, because they have to want to fix this too.

“They have to want to fix this too,” I speak aloud as I rush out of my bedroom and pound down the stairs two at a time. I didn’t see them go upstairs so I’m sure they’re not in their bedroom or the media room.

I look in the living room first but don’t see them there so I check the office and then the kitchen next. I’m tempted to look and see if they’re outside, but neither one of them sits out on the back porch anymore and Justin smokes inside now so he’s probably not out there smoking.

I’ve called out their names a few times and they aren’t fucking answering so I’m starting to get worried. The only other place they could be is in the guest bedroom down here unless they did sneak past me into their bedroom upstairs. They’re probably in the guest bedroom fighting with each other.

I storm down the hall and see a little light shining from the guest room and notice that the door is still open. If they’re in there, they should’ve heard me fucking yelling, calling for them. I almost pass the room up to head out to the backyard instead, but out of the corner of my eye, I see that I have found my dads.

There is only one light on in the room and it’s a small bulb but I can make them out through the dark. They’re both sleeping deeply, still fully clothed I think because I see they’re wearing the same sweaters they had on earlier. They’re under the blanket, positioned on their sides and facing one another.

The anger and hopelessness I feel begins to evaporate just a little bit at the sight of them. Even though I may not like the way they treated Aunt Molly and Grandma, it seems they’re united in their despair and they’re sharing it, which is in a totally mind-fuck kind of way a good thing. The bad feelings that remain are snatched from me and replaced with a seizing feeling of minor achievement when I notice that they are not only sharing space, sharing their despair, but also sharing comfort.

Dad has his hand on Justin’s chest, placed right over his heart and Justin, scratch that, Daddy, is holding it there. Things may not be going the way I thought they would, but it’s possible they are getting better than I thought they were. They’re slowly showing signs that they may actually get to the place where when I call them my dads, it reflects who I knew them to be.

 

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Friday December 22, 2006

“Brian!”

I look up and see Justin slam the door behind him and then he’s running toward me. I barely have time to push my chair out from under my desk before he launches himself into my lap and starts kissing me.

“Whoa, Sunshine,” I laugh out as he stops the kiss and starts sucking on my cheekbone. “You’re going to give me a fucking hickey on my face.”

He pulls away from me and gives me a smile that makes me want to listen to my kiss-hard-cock and pull his pants off and fuck him this very second. I don’t though because I’ve got news I want to tell him first.

“I have good news,” he tells me.

“You do?”

“Yeah.” He goes back to kissing me and begins swiveling his hips and torturing my dick by letting me feel his warm ass crack.

“You’re fucking naughty, Justin.” I grab his hair in my fist and pull his head back. “You’re not wearing underwear.”

His sly grin is not amusing at this moment. I have mixed feelings with telling him my good news, listening to his good news or shoving my dick up his tight ass. I choose to listen to my dick and the wanton little slut in my lap and give us both what we need.

I push his sweater up his chest, suck one of his nipples into my mouth, and tease it with my tongue and teeth as he takes his sweater off and drops it beside my chair. I reach behind him, push the calendar and files off my desk, and lift him up so he can fall back on it. His head bangs against the surface and he coughs. “You okay?”

Justin nods while licking his lips. “I’ll be better once you fuck me.”

I shove my pants down to my ankles and fling his ugly tennis shoes off his feet as he unbuttons his jeans. I tug his pants down as he lifts his hips and throw them somewhere near the door. He spreads his legs wide and I see his hole isn’t prepared; it’s tiny and tight and begging to be fucked with every breath he takes.

Justin pouts and whimpers, “You did that so I’d have to walk bare ass naked and pick them up when we’re done.”

I shrug and grab the condom and lube from my desk drawer. I won’t deny it. I do things like that, so that I can get another glimpse of his freshly fucked asshole. This kink he pretends not to appreciate.

“That’s fucking cold,” he whines as I squirt the wet right into his hole with one hand and use two fingers of my other to shove inside him and open him up. I fucked him twice last night and once in the shower this morning so his hole opens easily.

He leans forward while I finger him and puts the condom on me, staring into my eyes as though I’m about to be the one to be fucked. The second Justin leans back; I pull my fingers from his body, line up my cock and slide inside him in one forceful thrust.

“Uh… fuck,” he growls against my ear, wrapping his legs around my back and squeezing his hands around my neck. His fingers pinch, giving me a taste of the pain I know he feels from my quick thrust and stretch.

I stay seated inside his moist, fevered hole for a few breaths; long enough for me to feel his dick react to his wanton desire and the satisfaction of having my cock fill him. I pull my hips away from him, slowly sliding out and pausing so the muscles of his rim will caress my crown and I push back in roughly.

His eyes squeeze shut, his back bows and he shakes under me as his legs slip off my back and fall open. I grab them under his knees and cradle his legs in my arms as I straighten my body so that I’m completely standing. He opens his eyes slightly to watch me and moves his ass so it hangs off the side of the desk a little so I get better leverage in my stance.

I really start pounding Justin then. His arms reach back behind him and he awkwardly holds onto the front edge of my desk. It’s almost as hot watching him like this, as it is to fuck him like this. At no point during me pounding his ass do I give a shit that we’re being loud enough for the whole staff to hear. The thin walls erected at each entrance to my office serve practically no purpose. Justin and I are still making up for lost time and no matter how many times my dick is inside him, no matter how hard I pound him, he begs for more and we always want more.

He’s neglected his cock until now and I angle my glide into him so that I press against his prostate every other thrust. I love watching him play with his cock, especially when my dick is playing inside his ass.

I know I could come right now, the heat of his ass seemed to get hotter when he started stroking his dick and the muscles in his ass began to flex much more rapidly. His eyes open wide and lock with mine, he’s going to come any second. I pick up the repetitions of my thrusting and hold back my orgasm until his ass becomes impossibly tight, holding onto the first moment of his climax.

My fingers press into his knee caps, probably bruising his pale skin, but it’s that or me falling forward on top of him as the force of my orgasm amplified by his own takes control of me. My knees buckle as my hips undulate inside him and my body can’t seem to decide if it wants to be inside Justin’s spasming ass or not. But contrary to popular belief, my dick doesn’t do the thinking all the time. I force my hips to press against his ass while the last of my jizz shoots into the condom.

I crack open my eyes, having no idea when it was that I closed them. My ears are ringing and my vision fades in and out. The first time that happened with Justin it worried me, but then it happened to me again the second time I fucked him and it continues to happen whenever we have a particularly intense and fast fuck.

I let his legs go and he grunts, “My whole body is going to be sore for a week, but that was worth it.”

I clear my throat, “Yeah, definitely worth it.”

He gives me a sloppy grin, removes his hand from his still-hard, perfect cock and places two of his come-covered fingers against my lips. He looks beautifully erotic, lying on my work desk, completely fucked, still filled with my hard cock and covered in his own come. I open my mouth and let him push his fingers into my mouth. His sweet come coats my tongue and pulls a jerk from my dick.

I look down where my cock is still in his ass, hold the condom around my cock and slowly pull out of him. I quickly skim the condom off and throw it toward the trashcan.

“I think you should really eat my ass now,” he says with a hiss, his legs still spread around my hips.

“Really?” I say, as though it’s the most ludicrous thought I’ve ever heard. “Why would I do that?” I hand him a couple wipe packets I keep in my drawer and clean off my cock.

He spreads his legs even wider and tilts his pelvis up, wiggling his hips to entice me. “Please, it hurts,” he rasps.

“It does, huh?” I ask, my mouth watering as I recall the taste of his ass perfectly.

He throws the wipes onto the floor, his right hand pulls his balls up under his thickening cock and his left pointer finger trails against his taint and then circles around his hole, collecting the remnants of lube. “It hurts real bad, Mr. Kinney,” he says with an innocent voice, jutting his lower lip out and drawing his eyebrows together.

It’s hot, but it’s also really fucking corny. Good thing I don’t mind being corny every now and then. I pull my chair close to the desk, sit down and wipe away the traces of lube with my fingers, making him hiss from the pressure on his reddened hole. He’s on the brink of pain and anticipation. I shove his hands out of my way and bury my tongue in his ass.

“Oh, fuck!” he shouts as I tongue his ass as quickly and enthusiastically as I fucked it with my cock.

He struggles to keep his hips from jerking every which way, sometimes jamming my face, but I don’t mind. I love it when he gets like this. Hearing his noises and knowing that he’s so far gone so quickly, so soon after I fucked him, makes the taste of lube and occasional awkward moments worth it.

I give my tongue one more swirl around his rim and look up at him. His dick is half-hard now, but he’s just going to have to wait to come again. I have plans. “Does it feel any better, Mr. Taylor?”

“Yes, Mr. Kinney.” He grins while obscenely batting his eyelashes, sits up and leans in to share a kiss that tastes like him with me.

“Glad I could help with your problem, Taylor,” I tease as we break the kiss.

He gives me the same, ‘I’m going to fuck you’ expression as he did before. “So, how good was this news you have to share?” I think it has to be damn good if he so smugly thinks I’m going to allow him to reciprocate the fuck. I mean, it isn’t some special occasion. His birthday isn’t for another two months and it’s not Christmas, not yet anyway.

“I’ll tell you after I put some clothes on,” he tells me the same moment I see goosebumps breaking out on his skin.

“Wouldn’t want you to catch a cold,” I say, tweaking one of his nipples as he stands up in the small amount of space between the desk and me. “I need your body at its best tip-top shape.”

He bends to the side to pick up his shirt and I have to run my tongue along his ass cheek as I bend to pull up my pants. He squeaks in surprise making me laugh in response and I practically push him onto the floor and fuck him again when he bobs his ass up and down again before moving away from me.

I’ve seen and fucked thousands of beautiful, enticing men but there’s something completely unexplainable about fucking Justin. Not only does he have the perfect body, the perfect technique and enthusiasm for sex which matches mine, but there’s something else he has that draws me to him and I’m not just talking about the emotional shit. It’s as if he’s holding onto a secret that I beg him to share with me but never get to hear it all, so I keep coming back. The thing is, I don’t think Justin knows what that little secret is either, which makes it even more exciting to find out about.

While I’m sitting here rambling these stupid, usually only pot-induced thoughts, Justin has assumed my most favorite position as he picks up his pants. I still haven’t zipped and buttoned my own and now that I’m trying, while watching him as he teases me with peeks at his hole, it’s not exactly conducive to me actually doing so.

“You’re so easy, old man,” he taunts, finally and so sadly covering up his delicious ass.

Truthfully, you’d think I’d want him naked all the time, but I really can’t fuck him 24/7 no matter how much I’d like to. If some day they make a pill wherein that is possible, of course, I’d be the first in line to test the fucker out. Alas, no such pill exists and he has to cover up so that he doesn’t catch a cold from this drafty office. Or so that he doesn’t catch my raw dick in his ass because it’s getting harder and harder not to just spit and stick; especially because he’s the only one I’ve been sticking my dick into for a long fucking time.

Not that I’ve told him that. I’m almost afraid to tell him because I know what it means and even though I know that Justin has the right to fuck who he wants when he wants, I don’t want to find out that he has. There would also be more issues if perhaps we found out that he hasn’t.

I sit back down in my chair just as he’s fixing his light blue cashmere sweater. If he does have to be clothed, at least now he dresses tastefully. I loved the light blue sweater he used to wear a lot, but somehow a cigarette burned a hole in one of the sleeves and he needed a new one. He got confused and wore some other items of clothing to paint in that he just didn’t remember painting in.

So, while in Paris, I had to take him on a shopping trip to help him replace those. Of course he bitched when I practically bought him a new wardrobe, but I smiled at him, the way that makes him hard in a moment, told him that we were in the most romantic city in the world and that it meant I was allowed to be romantic and buy my partner whatever I wanted.

You see, the trick to not hurting Justin Taylor’s ego is to add romance. I don’t even have to think it’s sickly romantic to make him think it is the most ridiculously romantic thing I’ve ever done for him. It’s manipulation, I know, but you’d do it too if your partner was a decade younger than you and was determined to dress like a teenager even after he became an adult.

“God, my ass is killing me,” Justin says, bringing me out of my thoughts as he picks up the last file and places it on my desk.

“You like feeling me there afterward, so stop complaining.”

“I do.” He smiles at me and sits down in the chair on the other side of the desk.

“Why are you sitting over there?” I ask, holding my arms out. There’s no logical reason why he isn’t straddling me.

“Because I’ll never get to tell you my big news if I sit too close to you.”

Okay, I guess that is logical. “So, what’s the big news, Sunshine?”

His face lights up and he straightens his posture. “I’ve got another show!”

I knew that once he got one there’d be others rolling in. “When is it? Where is it?”

“It’s in Philly but not until March, thankfully, since I’ve got to have four new pieces,” he explains, bouncing in his seat. “The governor actually fucking owns this art gallery. It’s one of the best places for any Pennsylvanian artist to show their work.”

“That’s great, Justin,” I say, pride swelling into my words. “You’re going places.”

His brows narrow and the smile falls from his face.

“What?” I ask him, hoping there isn’t some catch to this whole thing.

“The only places I’m going are with you, Brian. You got that?” he speaks, agitated with my poor choice of words.

I lean over the desk and hold my hand out to him. The moments he makes me wait for him are agonizing and finally when he puts his hand in mine I feel like I just fucking won the lottery. Fucking Justin Taylor and his secret. “I don’t want anything to hold you back from what you want.”

He squeezes my hand tighter than I’d like and grumbles, “You do that every time you insinuate that I’m going to fucking leave you.”

A chill races up and down my spine as he drops my hand and stands up, glaring at me as he does. I hate that part of me that allows for such a thing, but that part of me is Justin’s and I’m beginning to realize I can’t do much about it. “I just don’t ever want to be your back-up plan,” I admit.

He shakes his head and walks around the desk, his lips no longer frowning but the grin he wears isn’t happy. “Brian,” he says my name as though he’s speaking to a little kid as he sits down on my lap. “You’re what I want. I don’t have a fucking plan that doesn’t include you, that doesn’t put you first. That’s the way it is when you love someone. You include them in your life and you put them and your relationship first.”

His words are sweet and they’re the same kinds of things Deb said, but I’m reluctant to believe that pursuing something that is so much a part of who he is should ever come second. “You’re an artist,” I tell him. "It isn’t just some job to you.”

His eyes dart all around my face and he places his right palm against my cheek. I feel him doing the thing he does, when he’s memorizing me to draw me later, and this makes my point even more valid.

“I wanted to be an animator, Brian,” he speaks after long moments of his memorizing. Finally his eyes lock with my own and they’re much softer than they were before, “Do you remember I told you that when we first met?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Making Rage and doing graphic art here at Kinnetik incorporates a lot of stuff an animator would do.”

“So?” I really don’t get what this has to do with anything.

He lets out a soft laugh that ghosts across my face and smiles peacefully at me, making me want to fucking kiss him. “So, that’s actually better than being an animator. I didn’t know much about comic books before I met Michael and I didn’t know shit about advertising before I met you, but I knew all about painting. PIFA never really showed me anything I didn’t already know.”

“As you’ve said,” I remind him.

“Right. Well, drawing for Rage is almost better than any animation job I could probably ever get, and the story, it’s better than any other fucking story I could ever think of. As happy as I am to paint and get gallery showings, it’s not my fucking dream, Brian. I might’ve enjoyed going to Hollywood and I’m thrilled that people want to buy my paintings but I don’t love it, it doesn’t make me happy.”

He certainly seemed happy coming in here to tell me about his news and he definitely seemed happy enough to stay in L.A. as long as they wanted him there.

“I love sitting with Michael and sketching out a new idea for Rage. I get so fucking excited to tell a story and to draw the characters because without motion, they’re still animated, you know?”

I nod my head in answer to his excitement, but I still am a little lost and wondering if he has a point.

“Then, working on an ad campaign, that fucking drives me, Brian. I love it for different reasons than you do I’m sure. Telling the Art Department to change a font size and border color on a mock-up and seeing the better and final result gets my blood pumping and not because I feel like I have something to prove to you or want to one-up you, Brian. I love doing that stuff because I can put a different part of myself into advertising. I can be an artist in advertising in creative ways that I never knew were there until you showed me they were.”

“I knew you were a size queen, but a font-size queen?” I joke because I am quite confused by him and have nothing else to say.

“Laugh all you want, but it’s true. I like being an artist and as you once told me, there are many ways I can be an artist. I just want you to understand that I get to choose what way that it is. You wouldn’t allow me to let Hobbs choose it for me, Brian. I won’t let you choose it for me either. If I am driven to create art sitting in a fucking booth at the diner on my sketchpad or by sticking my hands in some clay and producing some shitty ceramics, it’s my choice, it’s my creativity. The only way you could stifle it is if you didn’t trust me to know myself and know what I want and what is best for me.”

I have no idea how to reply to that.

He laughs at me and kisses my lips softly, whispering against them, “That’s the longest you’ve let me talk…ever.”

“Mmmhmm,” I agree.

He leans back, laughing more at me and cocks his head to the side, studying me again. “So, do you understand?”

“So, you want to get married?” I mean, come on, if I have to trust him then I guess there’s no more need to wait.

“What?” he gasps, still chuckling.

“Do. You. Want. To. Marry. Me.” I speak slowly.

He sighs. “I say all that and you ask me to marry you?”

“I’m trusting that you’ll do what you want, that I won’t be stopping you. What better way for me to show you that I trust you with our lives than by marrying you?”

“You’re serious?”

“As serious as I was the first and second time I asked,” I assure, taking his hands in my own.

“You make the weirdest proposals.”

“So are you turning me down?”

“I don’t want a big wedding, Brian. I don’t even want anyone to know until after we're official.”

“Yeah, I’m sure your mother and Debbie would love it if we eloped,” I laugh.

“Well, we’ll have to figure something out,” he concedes.

“So it’s a yes?”

“Yes, it’s a yes.”

“Do we really have to go through this again?” I ask him.

He shrugs and places his hands around my neck. “Yes, I will marry you.”

I kiss him softly but pull away just as he begins humping me. “I’ve got news to tell you, too.”

“And what is that news?” he asks, sounding disappointed.

“I don’t know if I want to tell you if you’re going to be an ass about it.”

“Oh, shut up and tell me. What’s the news?”

“Your mother called and told me that the new Kinnetik building is in escrow,” I announce.

“That’s great,” he replies, grinning. “So when do we move?”

“The closing date isn’t until February and then we’ve got some remodeling to do. I’m shooting to be moved into Kinnetik’s new office by May 1st!”

“That’s great!” he exclaims, pecking my lips.

“It is,” I agree. And for some fucking reason I decide to set flame to the smouldering question I’ve had on my mind for months. “Do you want to be monogamous?”

His smile fades a little and he clears his throat before speaking again. “I didn’t think you’d ask me to marry you if…”

“I want to be,” I cut him off before he thinks the worst.

He licks his lips and stares at me with an uncertain expression. “You want to be?”

He’s asking me if I have been. “I have been, since before you went to Paris,” I confess.

“What?” he gasps. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Do you think I’d joke about fucking you raw?” Fuck. I think I have my answer from him. He hasn’t been.

“Whoa! Just give me a second to breathe, Brian. We didn’t agree that we’d be monogamous this whole time.”

“I know,” I say. “I wanted to be sure that it was something I could do with or without you in my bed every single night. I mean, I’m going to have to go on business trips and so will you… so I wanted to be sure before…”

“I haven’t fucked anyone but you since before Paris, Brian. I get that you wanted to test yourself, but why not tell me?”

The biggest reason. “I didn’t want you thinking that just because I prefer to take the grand prize instead of some meaningless consolation, that it makes me into some hetero-wanna be. You freaked out on me when you realized that I actually wanted the same things that you did, that I wanted to go in the same direction you did. I don’t want you to do that.”

“So, you haven’t fucked anyone and you haven’t told me you want to be monogamous because you were afraid I’d leave you if I knew.”

I shrug. “You were quite the hypocrite, telling me what you wanted when you left to live in that shitty apartment and then acting like it was impossible for me to be the man you always wanted me to be. It wasn’t very hard for me to push the idea of you living in New York because you were, I think, in shock.”

“Jesus, Brian. You really are full of yourself.”

“Are you telling me that it isn’t true?”

“You might be right,” he concedes. “Everything was happening so quickly and…”

“You panicked,” I finished for him. “You thought that I wasn’t the man you fell in love with and you didn’t want to be with me. It made it a lot easier to decide to leave.”

“That’s not true, Brian,” he replies. “It wasn’t easy for me to leave.”

I know it wasn’t exactly easy, but I think New York City was looking damn good to him because I certainly wasn’t. “It wasn’t easy letting you go; but I knew that if you and I were going to ever move in the same direction, I had to use other tactics for a while.”

“Well, those tactics worked because you are the man I fell in love with, Brian.”

“Good to hear.” I grin. “Now, if we have a discussion about fucking raw are you going to hop the next flight out of here?”

“Don’t be an ass,” he laughs. “By the way, I’m not the only one who is a hypocrite, Brian. Not ten minutes ago, you were trying to get me to leave you when in reality this whole time you’ve been trying to get me to stay. You’re fucking confusing.”

I smirk. “It’s not my fault you were born blond.”

“So,” he leans forward and whispers in my ear, “when can I feel you come inside me?”

TBC in Sfumato 2
 

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