Christmas Kitsch (Hol) (MM) (25 page)

We had enough time to eat and watch Nicole’s favorite TV show before I had to bring her home. I told Oliver he could come with us, but he shook his head and said he’d do homework until I got back. I grabbed his shoulder as he sat on the futon, his books spread out on the coffee table, and kissed him. I had to. There was no confusion about kissing Oliver. He smiled up at me, those liquid brown eyes adoring the hell out of me, and I had a sudden shiver. This was who I was going to come home to.

Or it would be, if I had a real home.

It was so much easier to drop Nicole off this time, at the mouth of the driveway, and then watch as she made her way over the frost-crispy grass to the front porch. Our mother opened the door as she knocked, and that actually made me feel good. They were worrying about her. But I couldn’t see how much, because by then I was backing up out of the driveway and hoping Mom couldn’t make out my face in the dark.

The streets were icy as I made my way back to the apartment, and I forced myself to go slow. The first time the front wheel threatened to skew away from me, it hit me. I didn’t have any health insurance, and this was my only car. Suddenly, I knew, completely, how alone I would be if it wasn’t for the little brown person sitting in my living room, doing his calculus.

When I got to the apartment and saw that light on, and him through the window, sitting there with his übercalculator and his notebook on his lap, I had a hard time breathing. I needed him. I needed him in a better place. But I needed him.

I kept it together, though. I had no place to go with this anxiousness, no magic to make this apartment any better. And I wouldn’t send him home to an empty house because of my pride. Not yet.

I got out my computer and for the first time in two weeks tried to remember history and English and generally what I was doing with my brain.

And it was weird.

It was like having all this dire, hand-to-mouth, food/work/rent stuff on my mind made the other stuff so much less complex. I mean, I still had to use my brain, but it was like I had this understanding—this stuff was important, yes, but if I got it wrong in a paper on my computer? I could still feed myself in the morning. Oliver would still be here. His dad would still have us over for dinner. Nicole would still visit.

I could fuck this up, and it would suck, but it wasn’t life threatening.

By the time Oliver was ready to go to bed, I actually had a rhythm going.

“Rusty, are you watching porn?” He stood to my side and was bending over my shoulder, trying to get a look at my computer.

I jerked my head up and frowned at him. “No, I’m trying to get those credits from Berkeley, why?”

“’Cause you were smiling.”

My grin stretched my cheeks as I realized I really was. And then Oliver’s expression got all sober and serious, and he leaned his head over and kissed me.

I closed my eyes and the still-shitty apartment disappeared.

Oh wow. Carefully, I closed my computer and set it aside. Then I stood up, kissing him the entire time.

This time when we got our clothes off and were naked, I had the teeniest little bit of room to think. And what I thought was that what we were doing, skin to skin, still felt too good to interrupt with things like lubricant and stretching and what goes where. I was still drunk on touching him, on the way his quick little hands stroked all over my body, and the way pulling apart from our kiss to breathe felt like drowning.

We made it to the bedroom, but we left little clothes puddles on our way. (The next morning I’d find one of my shoes in the kitchen.) And when we got there, it was urgent, but I made myself move slower, and I kissed places I might have missed. I fell slowly to my knees, kissing as I went down, remembering to pull on a nipple that tasted like plums in my mind, because that was its color.

His skin tasted so good, it was hard to stop kissing his stomach, his thighs, his hip, but there was that big thing in the middle that sort of called my name.

It went so smoothly into the back of my throat, I forgot there was a limit and sucked down harder, swallowing. He grunted and grabbed my hair, which was good. It was like the little prickles drove me on, made me hotter, made me wrap my arms around the back of his thighs and pull him tighter. I could do this forever, because he was inside me, and it was perfect, made me complete and whole in a way I’d never thought of before.

He was making urgent noises, half-framed words, almost-moans, but his hands in my hair? They were telling the complete story. Hell, they were damned near making legal demands.

I pulled back and swirled my tongue around his crown, and he started shaking, so I did it again, holding him up. He grunted and let go of my hair, leaning on my shoulders instead, and suddenly I loved my big body, my height, my strength—I could hold him. I had something to give him, and I swirled my tongue some more and gave it to him again.

“Rusty,” he managed, and I sucked him deeper. “
Rusty
!” I slid my hands between his thighs from behind, widening his stance, teasing the crease of his thigh, his balls, the cleft of his ass, with the sides of my hands. “
Ohmigod Rusty
!”

He came, and I could swallow this time, easier because I was upright, but then he spurted some more and I couldn’t. He trembled and spasmed, bending at the waist and wrapping his arms around my head as I gently, gently helped him down to the mattress while I stayed on my knees.

Finally he was done, and I raised my head and grinned at him, my chin dripping with cum. He touched my cheek with a shaking hand. “Proud of yourself?” he asked, panting for breath.

I nodded and smiled, and he reached down his body and ruffled my hair.

“You’re going to have to put the thing in the place sometime, you know that, right?”

I turned my head and wiped my mouth on the comforter under the quilt and said, “Scoot over! It’s cold out here, and I want to snuggle.”

“But you haven’t— Rusty, you still got wood.”

I snickered. “Got wood? Got milk? Got jizz?”

He giggled—not a snicker or a chortle but a giggle, right into my shoulder. And I wrapped my arms around him and laughed too. The laughter faded, and I was warm enough to run around the apartment and turn off lights and slide on my underwear (because sleeping naked sounds fun, but that thing starts to get in the way), and when I slid back into bed, he cuddled right up against me.

“You’re afraid to, aren’t you?” he said against my chest.

“Afraid to what?”

“Do the thing.”

“We did the thing. It was great!”

“No. You’re afraid to . . . I don’t know. Take advantage.
Take
me.”

I grunted. “It’s supposed to hurt.”

“It’s also supposed to feel
great
!”

“Awesome. You do it to
me
.”

“No.”

I tried to look into his face but he was almost under the blanket.

“You don’t want to do it to me?”

“Eventually.”

I brightened. “So,
eventually
, I’ll do it to you.”

“No.”

“No?”

He sighed, and I guess he was tired of the game. He straightened up and propped himself on my chest. “You are more than a pretty face. You are more than a strong guy who has trouble with your papers. You’re a protector. You protect people. You protected me through school, you take care of your little sister. You want to take care of me. Why don’t you want to take care of me and do this?”

I flailed for words. “Nngh!”

And he waited, perched on my chest, his darting little hands smoothing along the definition of my pectorals and my ribs.

“I’m not very good at it,” I said after the silence got too unnerving to actually let it go on.

He made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a
not good enough
.

I grunted back and then tried again. “The heat barely works, the television is tiny, and I don’t even have a bed.”

“I’d sleep with you on the street,” he said unequivocally.

Now
my
noise was difficult to define. “I wouldn’t let you.”

He kissed me then, lingering just long enough to remind me that I
hadn’t
finished. “Which is why I’d do it. When do I get to move in?”

“Nngh.”

“No, seriously. I want to make a home with you.”

“The dogs will die without you.” I know
I
missed them.

“We’ll feed the dogs every day. I’ll see my dad
most
days. Hell, I think my Aunt Gloria is coming over here tomorrow to see how things are going. When do I get to move in with
you
? I thought you’d ask me, but you’re being stubborn, so now I have to do the work. It’s why I’m making you top first.”

My brain shorted out, my words all flew south, and, of
all
things, my cock woke up in my undershorts. “Nngh!”

Oliver’s hand found my weakness, and his hand was cool and firm as it slipped under the elastic to fondle that weakness back to hardness. “You keep trying to say that like it’s a word. It doesn’t
mean
anything.”

He squeezed, and I said it again.

“See? It’s why I need to ask you questions. You have to do your share of the work.”

“Now you’re just
playing
with me,” I protested, and this time he squeezed
and
stroked, and I hardly heard him laugh, and I didn’t know why he was laughing anyway.

“Yeah, Rusty,” he said next to my ear. “I’m
playing
with you.” He punctuated that with a strong stroke downward and a thumb-swipe across the head of my cock. I saw stars. “And I’ll keep doing it until you give me an answer. When can I move in?” Now his speed increased, and I grunted, and the mattress creaked, and I had my answer.

“When I get a real bed,” I told him, and his hand stopped moving altogether. “Don’t stop!”

He pulled his hand out of my pants and folded his arms.

“
Oliver
!”

“Take it back!” he said, and I rolled away from him, onto my stomach, and started humping the bed.

“No,” I moaned. It wasn’t enough. I was aroused and trying to think and failing and the whole thing made me want him more.

“Roll over,” he said shortly, and I kept humping the mattress.

“No. You’re just going to stop again.”

His lips, soft against my arm, made me still my stupid desperate humping. “I won’t. I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to do. Roll over, Rusty—let me love you.”

It was the way he said it that kept me from grabbing myself and getting off. Pathetic and desperate—I know. But I wanted him to love me so badly. I rolled over and he was on me in a minute, kissing me and fondling me and stroking me. I groaned into his mouth and he moved his head down, pulling me out of my shorts and into his mouth almost at the same time.

I groaned again, too raw inside to hold anything back. It was good. So good. I wanted him so much and his mouth was just . . . ah . . . God . . . Down, up, down, up—sometimes the simple shit is all you need.

My climax blew through me all in a rush, seizing me by the throat and shaking me hard against the mattress and against Oliver. He held fast, though, wrapping his hand around me and milking me until my cock was tender and even the stuff that felt good hurt.

I made a pain sound then, and I felt him swallow twice, and then he wiped his mouth on the comforter under the quilt like I had. He pulled himself up to rest his head on my shoulder, and I wrapped an arm around him and lay there, panting for a minute.

“I want to move in with you,” he said quietly.

“I want you to move into a better place,” I told him. “How am I supposed to feel good about you living in this shitty apartment when you’ve got a real house—a real
good
house, right down the street? I don’t even have a drawer for you to put your stuff in. I think we’re pirating internet from the McDonald’s behind the apartment building—”

“It’s the Starbucks next door, and you’re welcome.”

I floundered for a minute. “Thank you. I didn’t even think about internet. And
see
? What happens if we break up? I can’t even provide basic shit for us, and you’ve got a family who loves you. What are you going to be able to tell people about your first boyfriend?”

The skin on my shoulder stung wetly. “I’d tell them that he was a really great guy, but that his parents really fucked him up, and that he never believed that I loved him no matter how hard I tried.”

Oh fuck.

“A bed, Oliver,” I begged. “That’s all I’m asking for. A bed, a chest of drawers—but mostly a bed.
Our
bed. Can I at least give you that?” A bed, and some furniture, and an area rug and a heater that doesn’t fizzle in and out and . . . oh, Jesus, a bed!

Oliver’s nod was mostly his cheek slipping around on his tears. “Yeah, Rusty. A bed. You’re right. I waited this long. I can wait for a bed.” He was totally lying. I so didn’t know he was lying at the time, and it was the thing to say at the time.

“I love you,” I told him, feeling helpless and stupid.

“I love you too. It’s all we need, you know.”

“Food is good. Heat’s good too.”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

“We want to do this right, we need to remember that stuff.”

“You keep saying you’re stupid, but I don’t believe it.”

I sighed. I didn’t want to tell him that the idea of Oliver, on his hands and knees in front of me, his body spread and shiny and ready for me—
that
idea—had been following me around for two days. I
wanted
that idea. I
wanted
to be inside him. Yeah, part of it was that it was hella hot and it made me hard, but part of it was that it was
Oliver
, and he’d be
mine
. I could have had him like that tonight. I could have. I had been thinking tonight. I slowed things way down, and we could have
done
that.

But I didn’t. Because I wanted a bed. I didn’t want it quick and dirty and awkward because of the stupid mattress under our knees and elbows. I didn’t want something sad and sort of silly because we were trying not to pop the thing we slept on. I wanted a
bed
.