It's Not Shakespeare (9 page)

“Like you were respecting your parents’ beliefs while you were living your own life,” James said quietly, and Rafael nodded.

“Yeah! I mean sure! I’d like to tell them, and have them give my guy a hug at Christmas like they do my sisters’ husbands, but Curtis got to sit at the table, and people were nice to him—and it’s not like we were fooling anyone, you know? Everyone knew. But most guys, they think that makes me weak.”

“I don’t think so,” James said thoughtfully. “It means you love your family.” His own family had been very liberal: coming out had almost been a badge of honor.
Oh, honey, how wonderful! Now I can support PFLAG and no one will call me a wannabe!
But what if they hadn’t? His mother’s love and support (and his father’s kindly distance) had given him a happy childhood. Watching them be there for each other (because his father may not have been articulate, but neither James nor Susan had ever doubted, even for a minute, that he had loved their mother to the depths of his conservative white soul) had given James the desire to settle down, have a happy, simple life, to try to fall in love.

What if that hadn’t been his for the taking?

“Did you ever try to come out?” James asked, and Rafael looked away.

“Yeah. I was eighteen. I told my moms it was a good thing my little brother liked girls, because I liked boys, and that way, Chewie could carry on the family name.”

James blinked slowly. “Chewie?” he asked before he could help himself, and then, “Anyway, what did she say?”

“You want me to help with some salad or something?” Rafael asked nervously. “And Chewie’s a nickname. It’s short for Jesus, and Jesus, you really
are
white if you don’t know that!”

He pronounced the “J” in the second “Jesus,” and James had to keep himself from laughing in order to keep himself from being distracted.

“The salad’s in the fridge if you want to get it out. Your choice of dressing; it’s on the side of the door.”

“Holy crap, Jimmy! You stock up, don’t you? My refrigerator has maybe two things in it, and one of them’s ketchup!”

“Yeah, when you turn thirty the kitchen fairy shows up and gives you milk, vegetables, and low-cholesterol frozen foods.”

“The kitchen fairy, huh? He any good in bed?”

“Oh shut up and tell me what your mom said when you came out!” James laughed, realizing he’d pretty much completely forgiven Rafael for any lie he’d told. The truth was too painful—glossing over it had been human, and forgiving him was humane.

“Couldn’t tell what she said,” Rafael grunted, getting the salad and setting it out on the table. “Too much hysterical shrieking for real words. But the next day, when she’d calmed down, she said, ‘It’s a good thing this is a phase, Rafi, because if it was real, you know your Pops, he’d have to kick you out. We couldn’t talk to you no more. The church, it wouldn’t let us.’”

James digested this for a minute. “She gave you a way out,” he said quietly, and Rafael nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah. She knew what I was. Pops knows what I am. The first few times I tried to bring a guy over, and the guy got all offended because we pretended it was something else. That’s something they’re not going to forget and call ‘just a phase’. But if I can maybe not scream ‘gay’ in their faces, then they can just pretend ‘gay’ is not a thing. They’ll be civil to my guys, welcome them to the table, but we just got to play it cool. Otherwise….”

“Otherwise there goes your family.”

“Yeah.”

James nodded thoughtfully and then brought the pasta bowl to the table with the tongs and hot pad. “I can see doing that,” he said quietly.

Rafael went very still. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. There’s all sorts of things about my life I don’t want my mom to know. I don’t want her to know how much I spend on furniture or how often my car breaks down. When I was in college, I didn’t want her to know how many guys I was banging, and now that I’m older I don’t want her to know how many guys I’m
not
banging—”

“Just the one, right, Jimmy?” Rafael asked playfully—but also with a little bit of anxiousness in his eyes.

“Yeah. Just the one. But it’s….” James shrugged. “It’s compromise. You know, the older you get, the more of it you do. You just decided at eighteen that you didn’t want to lose your family, and your parents… well, they decided to compromise a little too. They’ll pretend not to know, and as long as you pretend too, you get to have a place where you can meet. That’s not small… a place where you can meet, Rafael? God. So much of the human condition is looking for a place where you can meet.”

Rafael looked away, his eyes shiny. “You want to know why I like you? It’s because you can take something that people make dirty, and just make it human. That’s nice. Can we eat now?”

Dinner was excellent.

They talked. Rafael told family stories—funny ones, mostly, about his brother’s dating escapades (Chewie apparently liked to date lots of girls at the same time. The story about dating three girls named “Kim” pretty much had James in stitches) and his three married sisters (one before she got out of high school).

James did the math and said, “I only count five. Don’t you have another sister?”

“Yeah, Liliana. She’s going to go to college, if I have to sell my worthless brother for spare parts. She’s a lot like Sophie—I think it’s because Sophie watched her and Mariella when they were little, and she sort of idolized Sophie—”

“The same way Sophie idolizes you,” James finished, and Rafael blushed.

“Yeah, maybe. But she’s smart. Sharp. Me, Chewie, Graciela, Mayra, Mari, we’ve been putting money away for her since we first started working. She knows it, too. She takes it very seriously. That girl’s got more A’s on her report card than the other five of us put together. She’s going to be something, you know? Like you.”

James almost spit out his wine. “Like
me?
”

“Well, yeah. You know. You’re a professor and shit. You don’t have to work nowhere you get dirt under your fingernails. You don’t have to take customers’ shit. You’re someone important.”

James blinked and looked at Rafael with watering eyes. “So. Are. You.”

Rafael stopped there, a bite of pasta on the way to his mouth. He set his fork down and swallowed. “Yeah,” he said softly, “but only in one of those places where two people meet.”

James opened his mouth and closed it again and then stood up and walked around the little table and kissed Rafael on the cheek. He sat back down and started eating his dinner again, and after a moment, Rafael did too. When the silence was broken, it was by James, telling a story about the last time he’d taken Marlowe to visit his sister, and how her three hellions had the poor little dog running all over creation.

Rafael helped with the dishes, and as they stood in the kitchen while James washed and Rafael dried, James had a sudden flash of those moments the night before, outlined in silver and black, of the two of them, touching, kissing, coming.

He looked at Rafael sideways and was surprised to see Rafael looking at him the same way.

“I know what you’re thinking, Jimmy,” Rafael murmured.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You’re thinking we’ve only known each other a week. It’s way too early to have sex after only a week, right?”

James grinned wickedly at him and saw Rafael’s wicked grin back.

“Absolutely. We need to know each other much better before….”

Rafael reached out and pulled the drain for the water, since the sink was empty, and then took that hand and put it on top of James’s. James stopped talking and looked at their hands, warm and wet and soapy, resting on top of each other, and Rafael took the drying towel and very patiently dried off James’s hands.

“What…?”

Rafael met James’s eyes very seriously and put down the towel. “Just in case you didn’t know I was kidding,” he said soberly and then crushed James back against the refrigerator with a kiss.

James kissed him back, thinking that, this time, he was going to go slow. He was going to be seductive. He had moves, dammit, and he was going to romance Rafael and show him how sweet slow could be and….

Oh holy shit… Rafael had already pulled James’s dress shirt out of his jeans and was unbuttoning the fly. James’s erection was thrusting up against the denim, and his skin, everything from his nipples to the pucker behind his balls, was tingling, begging to be set free and touched.

James tried to take charge then. He put his hands on either side of Rafael’s face and held him, turning his head and angling his mouth, thrusting his tongue in and giving and giving, thinking that Rafael would go all soft and pliant, but he didn’t. Instead, he cupped James’s cheeks back, and muttered, “Let me give you this, ’kay?”

James was surprised enough to pull back, and Rafael used that advantage shamelessly. He sank to his knees and peeled James’s underwear and jeans down in one go, engulfing James’s cock almost in the same instant. James knotted his fingers in Rafael’s hair, leaned his head back against the refrigerator, and let loose with a loud, uninhibited moan.

“Rafael,” he rasped, “how am I supposed to top you when you keep trying to make me come first?”

Rafael’s hand was down at his base, and his mouth was over the circumcised crown, sucking slowly down until his lips met the edge of his fist. His mouth was wet, hot, and strong, and his tongue was making little swirly licking movements, and James bent his knees and breathed as his body threatened to just explode, right there.

But James didn’t want that. He wanted slow. He wanted to make it right.

“Rafael,” he begged, feeling like Marlowe at his most piteous. “Rafael, come up here so I can kiss you some more.”

Rafael stopped there, his mouth at his fist, the crown of James’s cockhead brushing his throat. He swallowed reflexively, and James bounced his head off the refrigerator and tried to remember what George Orwell’s real name had been. Rafael kept trying to suck James’s testicles out through the end of his cock like golf balls through a straw as he pulled back, but when he was done, James kept a good grip on his hair, on the tender back of his scalp, and guided him back up. Rafael’s eyes were wide and dilated with honest desire, and his mouth was glazed with spit and pre-come, and
Christ
he looked sexy. James pulled him forward and placed a small kiss on the corner of his mouth, and then on his chin, and then on the other corner of his mouth.

Rafael groaned. “Oh, God, Jimmy—why you doing this to me?”

“Because I want to be good to you,” James muttered. “Jesus, Rafael, won’t you just let me be good to you?”

He didn’t wait for an answer but kissed Rafael square on the mouth, and this time, when he thrust his tongue in, Rafael groaned and welcomed him. James kept one hand positioned on the back of Rafael’s head and his other balanced on a sturdy shoulder while he kicked off his shoes and his jeans and never let up on the kiss.

Rafael groaned and clung to him, and James backed him up, steering him while his hands found Rafael’s shirt buttons and then his undershirt, and James stopped in the living room to pull them over Rafael’s head.

Smooth brown-gold skin—all over. James took a moment to put his mouth on Rafael’s shoulder, his throat, his clavicle. His nipples were plum colored, and James bent his knees in the living room, early evening sun still streaming down from the skylight, to pull that nipple into his mouth and tease the end with his tongue.

Now Rafael’s fingers were knotting in
his
hair, and Rafael was making little pleading noises. “Please… Jimmy, I’m not gonna… I’m not gonna make it… man, them things are
sensitive….
”

James forced himself to release the nipple with a little pop, because he’d already wrapped his thighs around Rafael’s upper thigh and was grinding against him while he suckled. He was going to come on Rafael’s jeans if he wasn’t careful, but
God
did this man’s tight, wiry body, his broad chest, his brown skin, the accented sound of his voice, the whole package,
God
did it turn James
on!

James buried his face in Rafael’s neck and took a quivering, unsteady breath while he tried to pull his hips back. Rafael was wearing black jeans again, and the denim abraded deliciously on the smooth skin of James’s cock and groin. He really would have come from just a few more seconds of doing that, and he didn’t want to yet. His hands shook as he fumbled with Rafael’s belt and fly, and Rafael’s hands shook as he helped.

“Doing okay there, baby?” Rafael asked, his voice husky, and James nodded, still breathing in something spicy and not subtle from Rafael’s skin.

“Bed,” he managed. “Need bed now.”

Through the living room, dropping Rafael’s pants and boxers, his loafers and even his socks, and finally, finally, into the bedroom and on the bed.

James ripped the covers back with one hand while pushing against Rafael’s bare chest with the other, sighing when Rafael’s bottom finally landed on the bed. Rafael took the hint, lay down flat, vulnerable, and James knelt over him, knees on the new cocoa-brown sheets he’d put on the night before. James started with a kiss on the mouth, claiming it again and again and again, until Rafael arched his hips and groaned, and
then
James worked his way down to erogenous-zone central.

Rafael’s cock was a wonder of nature. Brown, like his body, it was thick and curved to the left, and James hoped Rafael liked to top too, because it would probably feel fan
tastic
inside James’s ass, but not now. Now, it was James’s turn.

James moved to the side, kneeling so his backside was high in the air while he brushed Rafael’s erection with his mouth. Rafael took advantage, reaching down under his stomach and grasping James’s cock, starting to stroke, and James—forsaking the teasing he’d been planning—engulfed Rafael’s erection with his mouth, taking a breath and then expelling it as he slid his lips all the way down to the root, curve and all.

Rafael’s grip disappeared as he started clawing the sheets, babbling, “Oh God,
papi
, you’re killing me…. God… hard… strong… please… don’t make me wait. Please please please….”

James gripped him (delectable curve and all) and squeezed gently, stroking upward, while he pulled his head back, tightening his lips at the crown before he popped off.