Hush (10 page)

“I’m too tired and drunk for rational,” Cam explains. He thinks back on his night, and how many ways he’s called himself weird in the last few hours. “I had a strange night. It’s been a crazy year… so much is happening and suddenly I’m realizing I have so much
stuff
. Pey, I’m not sure I know how to handle it,” he blurts. He swings his legs out of the bed and trips over his shoes on the way toward the mini-fridge. Kicking the shoes mostly out of his way, he grabs a bottle blindly and cracks it open. Lemon lime. Not the worst he could have done in Gatorade roulette. “Moving here—having Maggie and Nate to talk to is something I didn’t realize I needed so much.”

“Oh?” Peyton says softly.

“But they aren’t you. They’ll never have that… this
thing
that only we have,” Cam grimaces and swallows an irrational surge of anxiety as honesty swells. “
Had
. That we had.” His voice rises. “You’re here and not. I never know. I tell myself you know when I really need it, but it’s on
your
terms.”

“Cam…”

“I’m just… god, Pey, I’m so
pissed
about this, at
you
.”

“Apparently,” Peyton says.

“It’s not the first time I’ve been mad at you, you know?” Cam points out, sitting back on his mattress. It sags a bit, but he’s gotten used to it.

“Oh, I know, I remember that time when we were six—”

“I don’t just mean when we were kids, Pey,” Cam interrupts. “I’ve been mad at you plenty since then.”

Peyton pauses before she speaks; her breaths amplify. Is he suffering some lingering brain-to-mouth, alcohol-removed fil­ter issue?

“Why don’t you tell me?” she asks. Her voice is quiet again, this time with sadness.

“I—” Cam starts. “I’m not sure I realized it before.”

“Before now?”

“I’m—I feel like…” He places his fist over his heart. “There’s a lot I haven’t let myself feel, for a long time.” He doesn’t have to specify.

“Well, I could have told you that, stupid.”

“Fuck off.” He laughs when he says it. The tension begins to split apart.

“Oh god, listen to that mouth; college has corrupted you,” Peyton says between giggles. They both fall silent for a while.

“I miss you,” he admits. “I’ve needed you.”

“I thought I always called when you did,” she says morosely.

“Like I said—you called when it was always
worst
, Pey,” he explains. He tries to tell himself to test the words before they come out, but they rush out on their own anyway. “There are lots of ways I’ve needed you. And I miss—” he clenches his eyes shut. “I’ve needed you to need me too.”

“Oh, Cam,” her voice thickens. “I didn’t think… you’re always so—”

“So what?”

“I don’t know when it happened, but sometime when we were teenagers, you changed. Or I did. But you… I don’t know. It’s not that you pulled away. But you seemed suddenly so… insular. Like you’d stepped back.”

“I
had
to,” he says. “I had to, I just felt like I was suffocating under it all at home; removing myself felt like breathing. I know it doesn’t make sense, but… it wasn’t necessarily about pulling away from you, or not needing you. You pulled away too. And over time, we changed. I’ve trusted that you’re here for me whenever I’m at my worst or lowest and ignored that it really hasn’t been enough because I love you and need you for more than that.”

“Cam, I tried for a while, for the first few years. I know you didn’t pull away from
me
—but you pulled away from everything and I didn’t know how to reach you. What we’ve had—I thought it’s what you wanted,” she says, a slight sharp edge in her voice.

He pauses, and breathes, and frowns through the tangle of thoughts jamming his tired brain. “I think…” He wets his lips. “I’m really kind of drunk.”

Peyton laughs.

“I might be too drunk for this, because maybe we’re talking in circles I can’t quite make sense of right now.”

“Cameron,” Peyton chides him carefully. “Things don’t always have to make sense.”

“I’m sorry if you hated
that,”
Maggie says over dinner the next night.

“I didn’t.” Cam sits cross-legged on his bed with a box of Sia­mese chicken balanced precariously on his lap. “I’d like to go again sometime.”

Her hand pauses halfway to her mouth and she eyes him suspi­ciously; her chopsticks dangle sprouts. “What?”

“I had fun for a while. I’d like to try again.”

“You hated it.”

Cam rolls his eyes. He knew she’d be suspicious. He hadn’t liked it all that much—he hadn’t hated it, though. “I’d like to try again. Now that I know what to expect. And not to do shots.”

“Point,” Maggie mumbles around a mouthful of food.

“Oh, and find out what it was that Nate was giving me to drink, because those were good.”

“Oh, that’s a Tom Collins,” Maggie supplies.

“Hmm.” Cam busies himself with finishing off his chicken. The TV hums in the background while they hang out. The judges on some singing contest she likes chatter on low volume.

“Heard from Jason?” she asks. She wipes her mouth delicately with her napkin, folds it and puts it into the container.

“Just put it in the takeout bag,” he says when she stands to put the container in the trash. “The room will smell like Chinese food for days if I don’t take the containers out tonight anyway.”

“Okay.” She climbs onto the bed next to him and settles down to watch the show.

“I texted him to apologize. He said it was okay.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve been having a good time with him, but…”

Maggie gives him a sympathetic look he’s not sure he wants to receive.

“Shut up,” he says with a laugh, pushing her over. She just mock-glares and settles back down; he should know better than to trust this complacency, but he’s lost in his thoughts and caught completely by surprise when she suddenly attacks him with tickles.

It’s hard to be mad though, when Maggie makes him laugh harder than he has since he was little.

* * *

When they go to the
bar
again, Cam is careful to go with­out Jason. He hasn’t seen Jason in a week or so, and the only exchanges they’ve had are sporadic texts that have been petering out as he’s responded to them more and more slowly.

“So, are you guys not going out anymore?” Nate asks one night.

“I don’t know.” Cam flips quickly through channels. “I’m just… looking for something.”

“What?”

Cam pauses at a cooking show. “I have no idea, but I don’t think he’s it.”

It’s not that he’s looking for something nebulous. He’s look­ing for Wren. It’s stupid, to expect that he’d come back to the same bar. But it’s the only lead he’s got. Cam knows it would be completely disingenuous to go there with Jason looking for Wren. And while he could have something concrete with Jason, Cam doesn’t want to stop chasing something he’s not been able to replicate.

* * *

He keeps going back.
After
the third time his request gar­ners strange looks from both Maggie and Nate, so he starts going alone. Saturday nights he once spent at the library, studying or opening his mind to a host of things he’d never considered, he now spends in the dark, with the glitter of colored lights and the claustrophobic comfort of hot bodies.

It’s actually nicer, going alone. There’s a freedom in being there without having his movements tracked by eyes that know him. He moves on the dance floor in revelation, emancipated from his previous reservations. He orders his own drinks. He observes and files away information and always, always leaves every sense open for another surge of recognition, which is why Cam is so startled to find Wren the way he does. He feels nothing other than the sway of people dancing around him; he doesn’t feel Wren at all. He
sees
him.

Wren avoids Decoy as long
as he can,
but Nora loves it here; she loves the drinks, which she claims are the best, loves the mix of music. And Matt’s on management duty Saturday nights. Wren’s not sure about him, but Nora seems to like him—enough to press for their visits to this particular club so she can see him even for short minutes. Wren assumes he must have a fantastic aura, or something else he can’t see.

Despite what had happened the last time, coming back isn’t a huge deal, not big enough to make a fuss over, when all he needs to do is be careful to close himself off; using his skill to avoid sensing Cam feels like necessity. The last time he came, he’d been drunk and loose, and that bond ripping through him, startling and hot, had been two -way. He’d known instantly that Cam could feel him too. So now he locks down inside, tries to exercise a muscle of sorts that he hasn’t before. He doesn’t drink, but he does dance; he’s never needed alcohol to burn away inhibitions. Wren knows his body. He knows how to move it, how to use it to express the deep streak of his own sensuality. Wren is careful not to open himself to any interactions beyond touches on the floor and the feeling of bodies against him. He’s not here to search for something new, no matter how hungry he feels for that sort of touch.

Wren probably won’t see Cam here again anyway. Even the quick glimpse he’d caught that night, standing half behind a pillar and out of sight, had shown him how out of his element Cam was.

It’s a complete shock when the lights shift and he turns and sees Cam face to face, because he
should
have sensed him. The shock roots him, freezes him so that his partner bumps him awk­wardly, and keeps him there long enough to watch Cam take a deep breath and begin to work his way through the people between them.

It’s hard with so many people here, but Wren tries to sense what Cam is feeling; he gets a glimmer of determination. His sens­ing ability is not well honed, but Cam’s projecting and it pierces through him; Wren’s body and senses respond instinctively. The part of himself that always desires the upper hand reacts the way it’s been trained to when this much fervor is aimed at him: by pulling it in.

Cam stops less than a foot from him. His eyes are darker in the shadows of the room, and his breath comes fast and hard. Wren pulls a bit harder, until Cam is dragged into his space. But he doesn’t make him do anything more. Cam’s hands coming up to cup his hips do so by their own volition. Cam’s breath, hot and damp, ghosts over his ear, and the words Cam speaks are of his own choice.

Wren smells like nothing
Cam
has ever experienced: sweaty and masculine, but also clean and light, a peculiarity that floods his brain, makes him sway and fuels a rising, uncontrollable fire. He’s been looking for Wren, but never had an idea what he’d say if he found him.

He’s probably as surprised as Wren when his lips find the skin of Wren’s neck, when his teeth bite it lightly. Somehow their bodies are responding to the beat of the music, throbbing and sen­sual and encompassing, moving with it and each other.

“Wren.” Cam mouths the edge of Wren’s ear and feels the edges of his plug under his lips, and he can’t help what happens next. “I’m not new.” He pulls Wren closer with a sharp tug. His thumbs slip under the hem of Wren’s shirt, feel the ridges of his hip­bones through the low-slung waist of his pants. “I’m not new and I know.”

“
How
?” Wren asks. Cam wants to imagine there’s some­thing breathy and needing in his voice, but it’s impossible to read nuance over the throb­bing music.

“Do you really want to talk right now?” Cam asks. He rubs his thumb under the seam of Wren’s jeans and feels the slap of desire hit him, some­how stronger and more des­perate than before. Wren’s skin feels electric against Cam’s mouth. Touching it feels like greed.

“Tell me what you want, Cam,” Wren says—commands, sweet but steel-strong.

“Now,
now
.” Cam pushes Wren back, guiding him with his body. Wren laughs and something… unclenches. Releases. Cam feels light­headed and awed. He feels so much when Wren compels him. Even without that compul­sion, the push, the drive, of
now, now, now
doesn’t leave him. Wren laughs again and takes Cam’s hand, pulling him roughly through the crowd.

Cam hesitates at the threshold of the bathroom when he real­izes what is about to happen. But when Wren looks back at him, eyes beguil­ing and provocative, he pushes it down. This feeling, this thrill, brings him into his body high and fast and hard. When Wren pushes him into the stall, banging the door shut care­lessly, he’s laughing too.

“Do it,” Cam begs. The cacophony of the music is dimmed. He doesn’t need to yell; in fact he whispers low, needing, as he arches his body against Wren’s. The tile wall feels cold under his shoulders,

“Do you know what you’re asking?” Wren crowds closer; now his hands are on Cam’s hips, pulling their bodies hard against each other.

“
Do it
,” Cam says urgently.

Wren’s eyes meet his, then darken a little. His lips shine with moisture and his skin seems to glow in the strange light. And then he does it,
compels
him. Cam’s whole body rises to a new height of pleasure. Everything he feels—the chill of the wall and Wren’s body against his, the light and the air he breathes—is a sensual caress.

“How’s that?” Wren asks. Cam can’t formulate a response. He doesn’t think about what comes next, he
acts
what’s next, cup­ping the back of Wren’s neck and pulling him in for a desperate kiss. It’s hungry and starts sloppily, but then Wren shifts, tilts his head up to meet Cam’s lips better and it’s suddenly
every­thing
, lush and slow and heady. The kiss escalates and heats until Cam isn’t sure he’ll be able to breathe. He breaks away, panting, eyes closed, focused on every sensation coursing and rolling through his body. He hardly feels Wren’s fingers flipping his belt open. Wren’s mouth is at his neck, biting and suck­ing and draw­ing whimpers from him. He’s never made noises like the ones Wren’s mouth wrings from him, and when Wren pushes his pants down far enough to get a hand into them, some­thing primal and broken rises through him and comes out in a pained groan.

“Wren,” he manages, and moans. Wren’s hand is sure and hot, pumping fast and spreading the pre-come dripping from his dick. “I’m going to—I—”

“No,” Wren uses his other hand to cup Cam’s cheek. He shakes it a bit until Cam’s eyes open. Cam feels the swamping rush of orgasm recede. “You’ll come when I let you.”

“Yes,” Cam says faintly. The bathroom door swings open, music spills in and anyone coming in will
know
. He bites his lip hard to keep himself calm. Somehow the threat of being caught here with Wren makes him so hot he can hardly contain himself. Wren’s eyes bore into his. His hand slows a little. Wren licks his lips, breath shaking. His cheeks are red, flushed with the heat between their bodies.

Wren puts his free hand against Cam’s chest and presses him against the wall more firmly. Cam’s eyes flicker from Wren’s eyes and lips down to where his hand is working Cam’s erection expertly. Cam’s sure he’s never been wet like this on his own; after a little while it’s tacky, and Wren’s hand catches. It chafes, but Wren’s hold on him sends him pleasure sig­nals even while he reg­isters discomfort. Wren stops and licks his hand quickly before gripping Cam again.

Wren takes his time, rubbing his thumb against the ridge of Cam’s frenulum and then over the slit, slipping down what mois­ture he gathers there. Then he grasps Cam in his fist and pumps him from root to tip. Every few strokes, his hand closes all the way over the head, his palm cupping and passing over it.

Cam can tell Wren is working him in more ways than one, let­ting him feel the intensity of pleasure and also keeping his slide back up slower, inching up by degrees until Cam is gasping and gripping Wren’s shoulders, his fingernails digging into the soft cotton of Wren’s T-shirt.

“Wren, please.
Please
.”

“Mmm.” Wren rolls his body sinuously and sensually against Cam, leaving enough room for his hand to keep pumping. “You beg so pretty.”

“Oh
fuck
,” Cam manages weakly, his head falling back when the pleasure crests hard and fast and wrecking through him. He comes and comes, crying out and thrusting his hips up into Wren’s hand, gasping as a horse does after a hard race. His orgasm lasts and stretches until he finally becomes incrementally aware of his surroundings. Wren’s forehead grinds against his collarbone, and his chest heaves along with Cam’s as they gasp for breath. Cam can feel a faint vibration running under his fingers; he can’t tell if Wren is shaking or laughing or on the verge of orgasm himself.

“Let—” he tries, voice hoarse and weak. He runs his hand down Wren’s arm, over his stomach and down to the button of his pants. The door to the bathroom opens again, and this time with louder voices, more than two.

“N–no.” Wren takes his hand gently. “Not here—”

“But—” Cam recoils when Wren pulls his hand away from his soft­ening cock, which feels more sensitive than he can ever remem­ber. He’s felt Wren’s erection against him—initially, when they’d been kissing, and just now as their bodies were plastered together.

“Don’t worry.” Wren kisses him softly, confident and sly. “I’ll take care of it.”

Cam frowns; disappointment is cold in his body. Wren smiles, and Cam calms and acquiesces. Distantly, he notes that Wren is doing it again. It’s different from the pull of desire and heat.

“Can I see—will I see you again?’ he manages. Wren gently tucks him back into his pants; at Cam’s words he looks up, sur­prise clear on his face.

“You want to?”

“Are you kidding?” Cam says. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Wren averts his eyes and shrugs. He takes a breath and after a moment draws himself a bit taller. “I’ll think about it,” he says.

“How will you know where to find me?”

Wren’s hand sneaks around to Cam’s back pocket to pull out his phone. He frowns when he gets a lock screen and holds it out for Cam, who manages to unlock it with unsteady fingers. Wren works fast; Cam barely hears the chime of Wren’s phone—he must have sent a text to himself.

“I have your number,” Wren says.

“Okay,” Cam says, dazed. He doesn’t want to leave, not when Wren’s eyes are still so dark, when his body still seems to be vibrat­ing against Cam’s.

“Go,” Wren commands, but softly. Cam obeys and knows it’s because Wren is compelling him. He stumbles out and avoids the eyes of the man leaning against the sinks waiting for a free stall. He washes his hands quickly and opens the bathroom door into the chaos of the club. Eyes half blind, senses oversaturated, he makes his way out of the bar and into the night.

Wren’s got his pants open
before Cam has made it out of the bathroom. One part of his brain is occupied with compelling Cam out of the club, as far as he can project. But most of his mind and body is focused on the rush of power, the sense of control and the pure erotic stimulation of Cam: Cam’s smell; his long dick, so hard in Wren’s hands; his pleasure ebbing and peaking at Wren’s command; the intensity of his orgasm and the noises—
fuck,
the noises he made.

Wren comes in seconds, one hand shoved against his mouth to keep it muffled. When it’s over, he sees a perfect ring of tooth marks where he bit down.

The taut string of desire he felt from the moment Cam’s lips grazed his neck relaxes by fractions.

Wren leans against the opposite wall of the stall. He cleans his hand automatically with toilet paper, closes his eyes and tries to center himself. Exhaustion begins to set in; it’s not just post-orgasmic lethargy, but the drain of his energy; he exerted so much to compel Cam. Manipulating someone lightly is one thing; Wren’s skill with this is very well developed. But Cam’s energy had a will of its own. It had taken a lot for Wren to control the pace of his pleasure.

Wren waits until the last person exits the bathroom before step­ping out himself. He feels his feet rooting to the earth, which he knows means he needs to sleep and recharge.

Home is far away, and Wren almost falls asleep a few times on the bus. He staggers through his door, falls face down on his bed and passes out in seconds.

* * *

Cam doesn’t remember
getting home.
He doesn’t remember talking to Nate; from Nate’s questions the next day, it sounds more as though he was talked to
by
Nate.

“What was your deal?” Nate says. He’s trying to balance on one foot while putting his jeans on. Cam can tell by his lack of balance that Nate is hungover.

“What do you mean?” Cam stretches and thinks vaguely about breakfast. He’s ravenous.

“You were in a zone last night, man,” Nate responds. He tucks his wallet into his back pocket and gives Cam an expectant look.

“What?” Cam runs his fingers through his hair. It’s getting too long. It’s so thick that if he doesn’t get it cut regularly, he gets overnight tangles and mats that are extremely annoying.

“Are we going to eat or what?” Nate says impatiently.

“I didn’t realize we had plans.”

“We don’t. But I’m hungover and either you are or… something. I can tell.”

Cam turns away and searches for a clean pair of jeans in his dresser. He doesn’t want Nate to see the face he’s making. How on earth will he explain what’s going on? Went on. Will hope­fully keep going on, and on, and on. He struggles to remem­ber what he told Nate about his plans for the previous night.

“Um,” he says, trying to cover his uncertainty with an over­zealous search for a T-shirt.

“Where did you go, anyway?”

Cam takes a chance. “The library.”

“I didn’t even soxile you, man,” Nate mourns. “That’s just sad, Cam. What was your deal, then?”

“Found something that blew my mind,” Cam says absently.
Did something
, is more like it.

“I’m starving.” Nate shoves him toward the door as soon as Cam has his shoes on. “Tell me about it on our way.”