Flare (20 page)

Hugo opened his eyes again when Kevin pinched a nipple. He moaned, giving into his more femme side and allowing his voice to drift up in register.

“Fuck. Do that again. I like that,” Kevin said, breaths hot on Hugo’s neck as he spoke.

A few slippery drops started sliding down Hugo’s cock. Kevin caught them and used them to slick his way, but also took the time to glide a finger to Hugo’s mouth, urging him to suck the clear fluid from its tip. Hugo looked at Kevin in the mirror. His blond hair was clearly bothering him as it drifted in his eyes, but he shook his head to move it away, as if he refused to be distracted from Hugo. Licking his lips, Hugo opened his mouth for Kevin, inviting him to put his finger in. Kevin groaned at the sight but slipped in, while Hugo swirled his tongue around his finger, as if it were Kevin’s cock.

“I have a lake in my fucking foreskin,” Kevin said with a laugh. “Want to lick me clean?” Hugo nodded and turned so he could slide down Kevin’s body to take him in. “No. You need to face the mirror. You need to watch yourself.”

Hugo knelt and positioned himself so he was at an angle, still able to see himself, but also see the long, hard line of Kevin’s cock with his ample foreskin just starting to retract. Kevin looked down at Hugo and then over at Hugo’s reflection in the mirror, apparently so turned-on by what he saw, his cock bounced. A drop almost escaped. Kevin’s erection had helped gravity keep all that lovely precome from dripping down his cock. With a smile, Hugo carefully started to roll back Kevin’s foreskin, and sure enough, a sticky thread dripped toward the thick bathmat. Hugo stuck his tongue out and caught it, curving his tongue into a little bowl as he continued to push the foreskin back to reveal the pink, wet head of Kevin’s cock.

“Look up at me,” Kevin said, “and open wider. See? Fucking lake on your tongue. Swallow it.”

Hugo nodded and drank down the slippery drops, looking up into Kevin’s eyes as he wrapped his painted lips around the thick, hard cock. To say Kevin looked mesmerized was an understatement. He watched Hugo like he’d never done before, aside from possibly the first time Hugo sucked his cock back in high school. But even then, the eye contact had been quickly stopped by lids clamping closed so Kevin’s teenaged orgasm could be held off longer. Now, Kevin watched. He studied what Hugo’s mouth was doing to him, and he looked into Hugo’s eyes.

Love. It was all love that was looking back at Hugo. There was nothing sick or disrespectful in this. Nothing degrading or demeaning. It was Kevin literally in awe of Hugo’s mouth. And his hair. And jaw, cheekbones, ears, even his nose. His gaze hit on each of those. Kevin was treating Hugo so tenderly as he watched his cock getting sucked, and that just made Hugo try harder to help him get lost in the sensation.

“Can I fuck you?” Kevin asked, urging Hugo to rise to his feet again. “Please. Can I watch you in the mirror and fuck you?”

Hugo nodded in a hurry, still a little out of breath from sucking cock, but he turned to face the mirror, bracing his hands on the low countertop, one hand on each side of the sink. For a moment, Kevin stepped into the shower to grab the lube, but was soon back and guiding a slick finger in Hugo’s ass, gaze never leaving his face. Kevin studied him, watched each of Hugo’s reactions, smiling at some, lust filling his gaze at others.

When he was about to press his thick cock in Hugo’s ass, Hugo took a step or two away from the counter and arched his back. That caused Kevin’s eyes to partially close as he noisily sighed his desire, looking down again as he palmed the curves of Hugo’s lower back and ass that were opened up to him. Hugo wanted this. Hugo was ready and more than willing to explore this new place with Kevin, so he’d found inside himself that part, that kernel of femininity that he always held back in the bedroom, and he let it loose.

It was as if something
had
been unleashed. Hugo wasn’t Cherrie in that moment, as he anticipated he might be, but he wasn’t the Hugo he’d known for years, either. It was as though this new awareness inside of him was finally being explored, flaring to life, and he was loving it.

In the mirror Hugo watched as Kevin fucked into him, gaze only leaving Hugo’s if Kevin was looking down at his arched back or ass. Kevin teased Hugo’s nipples and tugged on his cock, but he breathed heavily in Hugo’s ear and told him he was “So beautiful.” Hugo responded with deep, gruff moans, tempered by the lithe, feminine stretch of his arm behind him, reaching for Kevin and silently urging him to suck and bite at his neck. Kevin stayed close as long as he could, but soon needed to pull back, thrusting hard, forcing Hugo to hold on tightly to the countertop as Kevin chased his orgasm.

“Jerk yourself,” he whispered. “I want you to come with me.”

So Hugo braced his upper body by placing one hand on the mirror dead center in front of him. He could no longer see himself, but that didn’t matter. He saw Kevin’s closed eyes, his face tight with pleasure. Kevin was who he wanted to see as he fell apart, losing himself in that moment. Hugo barely touched himself, but he came with Kevin, who knew how to glide over that place inside that drove his orgasm to such magical heights. The look on Kevin’s face, that placid look of calm as Hugo finally pulled his hand from the mirror and met his own eyes in the reflection, drew his mouth into a huge smile. His perfectly made-up mouth, flushed even darker from his pleasure as well as the tinted gloss.

They had yet to kiss, Hugo realized as Kevin collapsed in exhaustion against his back. Hugo’s smile faded to half. He was unable to stop grinning completely, but his mouth was starting to ache.

“Shower?” Hugo suggested since he could see it over his shoulder.

“Yeah.” Kevin straightened and pulled out. They moaned painfully at the lost connection, but they both knew there would always be more.

When the water was warm, they stepped into the large shower, Kevin looking Hugo over with reverence. It made him want to look away, being scrutinized so closely, but when Kevin finally moved in to kiss him, Hugo thought he understood. Kevin cherished what Hugo had just allowed him to do, whispering thank-yous into his mouth and skin.

For long moments, Kevin kissed him, always going back for more when Hugo thought he was about to stop and finish up his shower. He sucked at Hugo’s lips, and Hugo knew there was no longer any lip balm left because the taste of pomegranate and raspberry was long gone. Kevin didn’t seem to mind.

As Kevin spooned behind him in bed that night, he told Hugo, “The strength inside you, what you allowed me to see tonight, is
beyond
extraordinary.” A tender kiss below the knob on his back was followed by, “Good night.”

“Night,” Hugo replied, slightly befuddled but pleased by what Kevin said. Kevin knew Hugo had weaknesses, but Hugo never once thought Kevin would truly understand, let alone be able to see, the strength that had always been buried so deep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Transformation

I
T
HADN
’
T
been a big deal in Hugo’s mind or Kevin’s or even Rowan’s, but apparently when Finn showed up to school on Halloween with his nails painted, some of the kids thought it was a huge deal. That was where Rowan had taken Brooke for their girl’s evening out and Finn had talked his way into tagging along. While the girls’ nails were done up in pink, Finn had gotten black polish, which went very well with his zombie costume.

To be fair, the big stink didn’t really come until the next week when Finn showed up at school with dark-purple nails. Vikings purple, he told Hugo as he proudly showed off the paint job Rowan had done for him. Some of the kids told Finn that only girls wore fingernail polish, and that if he wore it, that meant he was a girl.

“Kids are mean,” Rowan said, vowing to take off the polish as soon as Finn arrived back home from a playdate at his best friend Charlie’s house. Charlie was one of the kids who apparently stuck up for Finn and told the kids to leave him alone.

“That they are,” Hugo agreed. “But it’s not like he showed up with pink-and-white tips. He went with black and now purple.”

“Yeah, but kids are categorizing,” Rowan said. “They’re making sense of the world. They’re always putting like things together or crossing out the one thing that doesn’t belong.”

“That’s true,” Hugo said, and watched as Kevin nodded beside him.

“So, basically we’re socializing our kids to be biased?” Kevin asked Rowan.

“I wouldn’t go so far as that. The reason they do such things in school is because it’s a math skill. Kids do it naturally. Did Finn or Brooke ever have toys that they’d sort by size or color or shape?”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Erin bought these bears that were supposed to be great for early math stuff.”

“Kids put cats with cats and dogs with dogs. It’s quite natural.”

“Boys with boys,” Hugo joked, and got a laugh from both of them.

“Boys with boys until the cooties stage is sorted,” Rowan said with a smile. “For some.”

“True enough,” Kevin agreed. “I just don’t want him picked on because of this.”

“I’ll remove it, Kevin,” Rowan reassured, but when Finn arrived, that was the last thing he wanted.

“No. I like it,” Finn said with such determination that Hugo actually saw Kevin rear back.

“Okay…,” Kevin said, clearly not sure what to do.

“Did it bother you what the kids said today?” Hugo wondered.

“Yeah, but they’re just stupid. Like Charlie said, it’s the Vikings. Besides, there’s a boy in fourth grade who wears colors on his fingers too. I’m not the only boy.”

So they left it and allowed Finn to learn a very valuable lesson in standing his ground and fighting for something he believed in, the freedom to be different. He knew what he liked and wasn’t about to let a few kids’ teasing words stop him. Hugo felt humbled by Finn’s conviction.

T
HE
SECOND
week in November there were parent-teacher conferences for both kids at their respective schools. Kevin left work a little early so they could both go, and they headed to Brooke’s school first.

Brooke found Kevin and Hugo sitting outside her English classroom. “Hey, Dad. Hi, Hugo,” she said, squeezing between them and giving them each a quick shoulder bump, also forcing Kevin to slide down a chair. “Where’s Finn?”

“He’s with Rowan. She’s going to be by soon to pick you up and take you both to gymnastics. Are you about done with your yearbook stuff?” Kevin asked.

When Brooke had announced that she wanted to work on the yearbook as a photographer, Kevin’s eyes had lit up, and he’d quickly shown her his old yearbooks. He had also worked as a yearbook photographer in high school and had loved it. He gave her some lessons on photography, including assignments to work on composition, lighting, catching action shots, and the like. It turned out Brooke was naturally talented at capturing great photographic moments, but it seemed to be because she sat back and waited patiently. Around the house for weeks, she had captured candid shots of Kevin and Hugo doing typically domestic things, but the images she caught showed a genuine, almost too-real quality. They were intimate shots that seemed to show the soul inside people.

“I have to download my latest shots before I leave. I’ll be done
way
before you guys, though. I’ll text Rowan and tell her I’ll meet her in the front of the school. That way you guys can actually talk to my teachers.”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Nope. I’ll show Finn and Rowan my locker and stuff if we have time before gymnastics.”

T
HE
E
NGLISH
teacher was a nice lady in her late twenties who seemed to like Brooke. “I enjoy reading her journals. She has a very mature perspective for someone as young as she is.”

“She’s been through a lot in the last few years,” Kevin said.

“She’s mentioned some of that. She also writes a lot about you, Hugo. You’re very important to her, based on her journal entries.”

Hugo was surprised and beamed with pride, missing a lot of the rest of that meeting, hoping Kevin would keep track of what they needed to know. When they left to sit outside the social studies room, Kevin teased Hugo about his pride.

“Stop it. It was cool, okay?” Hugo argued, trying to get Kevin to drop the subject entirely. He started pointing out various things he spotted, from a poster of a skeleton on a wall in a classroom to the American flag.

Kevin put his arms around Hugo’s shoulders and leaned in to whisper, “You’re so damn cute when you’re embarrassed. Do you know that?” Kevin pressed a soft kiss beneath Hugo’s ear and he could feel the heat of a blush spread across his cheeks.

“You’re shameless.”

“Not true,” Kevin chuckled and sat back in his chair. As Hugo looked around the hallway again, willing his blush to dissipate before they had to meet the next teacher, he saw several parents looking their way. He raised a hand and waved, quickly looking away when no one waved back.

“They’re a friendly bunch,” he said under his breath, causing Kevin to glance toward the other parents. Then the teacher opened the door and invited them in.

Brooke was doing well in all her classes and, for the most part, was managing the transition to middle school, according to her teachers—even socially, which had always been a concern for Kevin, though not for Hugo.

Then they headed over to Finn’s school. Finn was doing well too, but his teacher, new to the district but not to teaching, brought up the nail polish and seemed concerned. When Kevin didn’t share Mrs. Swanson’s worry and, in fact, seemed totally at peace, she tried to strengthen her argument, stating that it wasn’t a socially accepted practice. Hugo was more than pleased that Finn had gymnastics that night and had to miss the conference the way things started out.

Hugo took a breath to respond, but Kevin put a hand on his knee, stopping the angry retort that was right on the tip of his tongue. Hugo noticed Mrs. Swanson’s gaze as it darted from Hugo’s knee to Kevin’s withdrawing hand. She looked between the two men and then opened the folder in front of her that had Finn’s name on it.