Hush (23 page)

“Yeah?” Cam says breathlessly, adjusting himself. He untangles one of his hands to splay it over Wren’s belly; the backs of his knuckles just brush Wren’s cock.

Wren cries out, spreads his legs and tilts his hips and lets Cam ride him senseless. A build­ing press of pleasure is grabbing him. Cam fucks him and listens, fucks him and listens to every direction Wren gives when he can, voice plea­sure-stunned. Every movement carries Wren further into help­lessness, drives and drives slowly until he’s cracking open, crying out and moaning with tears gathering and filling his eyes. Wren’s fingers tighten against Cam’s until they hurt; he clamps down around Cam and just barely hears the way Cam grunts, his move­ments becoming less coordinated.

“Oh my god,” Wren says, his voice splintering with tears. His body feels like this beautiful live thing, this glowing presence, perfectly held with Cam all around him, Cam inside him, Cam taking and taking him. “
Oh
, I can’t, I don’t think—” He’s not even sure what he’s saying, just that what builds inside him is too big.

“You can,” Cam says against his scapula. “I won’t hurt you. I have you.”

Wren bucks and shivers and comes, Cam’s words a match that ignites his orgasm until it flashes resplendent, so long Wren loses himself to it completely.

He’s still gasping when he comes back to himself. Cam is plas­tered against his back, heavy and breathing hard and trembling. One hand is cupped around the curve of Wren’s forearm, running up and down it with uncoordinated, jerky move­ments. Wren sup­poses that Cam must have come too but can’t discern much more beyond the complete and boneless give of his body. It settles in him, like a deep, safe silence he’s never experienced before.

Cam wakes to gray darkness
and the sound of rain lashing against windows in a room he’s never been in. There’s a small lamp with a Tiffany-style shade in the far corner. The butter yellow glow from its tiny bulb barely breaches the night pressing against the rest of the room. Above him is a half-canopy of soft white, run­ning on a bar across the ceiling halfway above the bed, swooping to the wall and cascading down. The grays and blues of the walls give him the feeling of being inside a cocoon, sheltering and close and comfortable.

It’s cold; he’s barely under the sheet, and the body that had tumbled into dreamlessness with him, heavy with something like physical trust, a body knowing it won’t be hurt, is gone.

Cam sits, tugging the sheet a bit higher and letting his eyes adjust slowly to the lack of light. He finds Wren curled up on a win­dow seat, looking out the window. One hand mind­lessly traces the small rectangular wooden frame of a pane. Cam clears his throat and Wren doesn’t look up. The expectancy in the air curls suddenly into Cam’s belly, the pause preceding the drop, just before Wren speaks.

“I was too young,” Wren starts softly. He rests his head against the glass, eyes closed. “Much too young to fall in love.”

Cam waits for more. Should he let Wren take his time before asking questions? A slivered shadow of a smile crosses Wren’s face. It’s not a happy one, but rueful and quickly repressed. Wren looks at his knees, which are drawn up by his face. He is dressed again; his jeans are torn at the knees, frayed strings a clear white against the dark denim even in the low light. He’s wearing the loose-knit sweater he’d worn the first time Cam saw him. It’s comfortable-looking and too big, and slips precariously to the edge of his shoulder. Did Wren choose it on purpose?

“But I did.” Wren shrugs, picking and picking at loose threads. “It’s not like we know when we’re stepping into something awful when we do it. We see it later when the dust settles.”

Cam wonders if that’s what this will be, what Wren will be, if what’s been kicked up by this storm will settle and things will be clear in a completely different light.

“His name was Robert, and I was seventeen. We went to school together.”

“Where?” Cam dares to ask, hoping it won’t stop Wren from speaking all together.

“Le Grange,” Wren says absently. “It’s nice. My family is just a regular family, you know.” He looks at Cam briefly. It’s hard to picture that, because Wren is so startling, such a powerful force, Cam’s never been able to really figure out how he inhabits the world when he’s not busy taking Cam apart.

“My brother Kevin is gifted, my mom too, but not Dad or Sean,” Wren says.

“Is Sean—?” Cam can’t help but interrupt.

“Brother,” Wren waves this off impatiently, obviously wanting to carry on with the story. “It’s not important, other than to say that no one but my family knew. It wasn’t quite the city, where people are more cosmopolitan. It’s not dangerous, necessarily, to be gifted, but it’s easy to be misunderstood.”

Cam nods.

“I don’t know why I did it—why I trusted Robert with it. It was just this stupid high school romance; it was a stupid fucking high school cliché. But it began to feel like lying when I kept it from him for so long, when things got so serious. The more I loved him, the worse it felt to keep it from him.”

Wren looks up at Cam with something burning in his eyes. “We’d been together for a while, over a year. We had
plans
, we were going to go to college together. But—”

“But?” Cam’s voice is just barely louder than the rain against the window.

“But I couldn’t hide being gifted forever. And it was stupid, to think he’d be okay with it. It was so
stupid
—I was—not to see how much it hurt him.” Wren shakes his head and looks back out the window. “I didn’t know I could sense, then. It’s not a strong gift; I’ve worked on it a bit since I came here, and it’s grown too, which happens.”

“Anyway,” Wren says as he lifts a shoulder, “things were a little off after that, for a while. I thought he needed time, because I knew it must have hurt to be lied to, no matter how good my rea­sons were. Or had been. I could have told him much sooner, because holding off was my fear speaking louder than my belief in him.”

“You were a kid,” Cam says. Wren snorts and ignores this.

“He was with me, but not, after that, you know?” Cam nods. “After a while he said he understood. And it was fine. It seemed fine, everything was as it had been for a long time. But once we came here… I mean, you know this. There’s a lot more free­dom once you get to college. My parents are progressive, but it’s not like I could kick my brother out of our room while my parents watched TV to fuck my boyfriend.” There’s such bitterness in Wren’s voice. “It had been
months
and Rob knew about it the whole time, so it didn’t raise any flags when he asked to see what I could do. It didn’t seem unusual when that became more about… what we did together. To me, that meant something. I thought, ‘Oh god, he trusts me so much,’ and it was like giving him a present, like something just for the two of us.”

Cam’s heartbeat steadily speeds up as Wren speaks—it’s becom­ing clear to him what happened.

“I lied to myself for a while, because I was blindly in love. I used to be such a romantic.” Wren says. “So stupid,” he says softly. “Because that’s all it became. Because he pulled away in the in-between times, and every time he came back to me in bed, I thought that was equalizing everything. Like all the silence and Rob being grumpy with me and going out with other peo­ple but not inviting me… him asking me to compel him when we fucked—” Wren’s voice cracks, and it’s a long moment before he con­tinues. “I thought that was
love
Cam.
Making love
.” Wren says it with venom, with a voice laced with self-loathing.

“I let myself be used. My gift—it wasn’t a gift to him. He made it ugly. I guess he never got over me lying. And I was so wrapped up in him that I let him make me desperate. I let him manipulate me into fucking him any way he wanted and thinking I was
giving
. And in the meantime, I was alone. I was in this new place and I had no one until I met Nora. It was so lonely when he wasn’t there.”

He stops talking. Cam leans forward, catching the smallest glim­mer of a tear track on Wren’s cheek.

“So you made rules,” Cam says softly.

“Well, not at first,” Wren says wryly. “Because I was nothing when he left. He erased me.”

“You’re here,” Cam tries to point out.

“Oh,” Wren’s whisper is laced with something fierce, furious, “don’t kid yourself. I’m not who I was. You don’t really know me.”

Cam looks at Wren and remembers him in unguarded moments. He bites back a smile; Wren must believe he’s hidden himself. Maybe he’s changed, but he’s definitely not the enigma he believes himself to be.

“But, well, you’re not wrong. It took time, but yeah. I made the rules. I made myself a promise, because I’m never,
never
letting someone hurt me like that again. Erase me and leave me alone.” His words crack, revealing resonant pain in the deepest timbre of his voice.

Cam lets the silence play out for a long time. He watches as Wren slowly tries to pull himself together, crossing his arms over his tented knees and calming his breathing. After a while he sits, locates his underwear and pulls it on; Wren stiffens when Cam kneels next to him.

“Wren,” Cam starts softly, barely daring to speak. “Doesn’t this hurt too, though?”

Wren pulls away a bit and curls his lip. “What do you know about it?”

Risk and reward.
“I think I love you,” Cam confesses quietly, heart tripping in his chest. His hand barely touches Wren’s elbow.

“Stop.” Wren covers his eyes. “Stop, please.”

“I think you love me too,” Cam dares. “I think if you walk away, it’s going to hurt even more.”

“Cam, please, I can’t do this—”

“You can,” Cam insists. He kneels forward and puts his cheek on Wren’s knee. “I know you’re scared. Fuck, I’m scared right now. But don’t break our hearts without trying.”

“You’ll break me,” Wren says, voice cracking.

“No, no,” Cam whispers, kissing the tattered denim across Wren’s knee, feeling the texture of strings and the hint of Wren’s skin under them. He kisses the back of Wren’s hand and pushes up to bury his face in the thick chaos of Wren’s hair. “I won’t.
I won’t
.”

“You can’t promise that, Cam,” Wren says thickly.

“Sure I can,” Cam nudges Wren’s face up and looks him in the eyes. “People do it all the time.”

“People lie. They break those promises,” Wren’s lips tremble where he’s pressed his mouth tight and his eyes flit away. “They use each other.”

“I’m not using you,” Cam points out softly. Wren snorts.

“Are you kidding? What do you think we’ve been doing?”

“Wren,” Cam says evenly, “
I’ve
been trying not to. Every time we get close to something real, you push me back. I don’t need it. I wouldn’t care if you never did it again.” Wren’s skin is cold under his fingers. “I want
you
.”

“Cam,” Wren manages, face crumbling. Wordlessly, Cam opens his arms to him; Wren’s tears are hot against his neck. He’s so small and fragile right now and Cam wants so badly to shelter him.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Wren says through shuddering breaths. “I don’t know if
I
can promise not to hurt you.”

“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I don’t think you will,” Cam says, petting Wren’s head with one hand and keeping the other banded around Wren’s shoulders. “I’m willing to take the risk. You’re
so
worth the risk.”

“Cam,” Wren says against his neck, and pulls away. He combs shaking fingers through Cam’s hair. His face is wet and flushed and his eyes are red-rimmed. “I—I can’t jump into this. I have to think.”

“Wren,” Cam says as helplessness swamps him, “don’t send me away.”

“It’s not… it won’t be forever.” Wren kisses him so softly. “No matter what, I won’t leave you in the dark.”

“But… this—” Cam splays his hand against Wren’s chest, over his heart.

“I
cannot
rush into this. I won’t make promises if I don’t think I can keep them.”

Wren stands, pulling Cam up with him. His lips are damp when they kiss Cam’s shoulder.

“You should dress.”

Wren smiles, his quivering lips just barely managing it, and then leaves the room. All around Cam is too-thick air and a silence that breaks him. He closes his eyes and focuses but can’t feel Wren anywhere.

Wren curls on the couch
under the softest throw he and Nora own, eyes stubbornly closed, while Cam dresses. He doesn’t move or acknowledge Cam when he comes in and hovers awkwardly by the couch. He most definitely doesn’t lean into the soft kiss Cam leaves on his cheek.

And when the door closes quietly behind him, he most assur­edly doesn’t fall apart.

He does, however, open his eyes. Unfocused and post-tear sticky, they roam the cluttered shelves surrounding the television: framed family pictures, candid shots of him and Nora, of his dog, left in Sean’s care when he came to Carlina. Sean’s off to school this year; he supposes Cinnamon will have to make do with his parents. It’s not as if they don’t dote on him anyway.

The loud slam of their door shakes him from his scattered thoughts.

“Oh my god, Wren, what happened?” Nora says immediately. She drops her purse on the floor in the entryway and climbs onto the couch with him. He tilts into her warmth even though he prom­ised himself he wouldn’t.

“I’m fine,” he sniffles. His eyes burn, and he’s so cried out he can’t tell if it’s because they’re trying to produce more tears or if they’re just tired.

“You—” Nora waves a hand.

“He came,” Wren interrupts.

“Oh,” she says, careful and quiet. “And you ended it?”

“No.” He plays with the blankets. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so?”

“How does he know me so well?” Wren turns his face into her shoulder.

“Maybe you’re not as much of a mystery as you think,” Nora says.

“That’s not what I mean,” he replies. “I mean, that too, I must have been off my game, but that’s not the point.”

“So what is?”

“You know,” Wren says, settling back into the couch and letting him­self relax muscles that have been impossibly tight, “when I first saw him—there was something immediate. I’ve never felt any­thing like it before. I assumed it was because he was search­ing.”

“Cam didn’t even know gifted people existed,” Nora points out.

“Well, I didn’t know that then,” Wren says. “And then when I did, I didn’t really think about it too much. What was happening was so intense. I think if I had let myself really explore it, I would have been too scared to move on.”

“Haven’t you been scared anyway?” Nora asks

“Not like I would have been, had I seen it,” he says.

“Seen what?”

“The connection. Every time I felt like I was pulling him, every­thing—it was there. It was always there, and it had nothing to do with me creating it.”

“You think it’s just a natural thing?” She turns to look at him.

“Well,” he swallows; all of this is new. “It’s not like we under­stand every­thing even though we’re gifted. It’s not like new things aren’t found all the time.”

“True,” Nora says, then leans back against him.

Wren looks up at the ceiling, then down at his hands. He searches inside where he can always feel his gifts—one stronger than the other. “I think I could live without it,” he says at last

“Do you plan to?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d ever feel
right
without it. I could go on. But I can sense, inside, where it fits.”

“Oh?”

“I told him I wouldn’t let him hurt me. And he said—” Wren bites his lip to try to keep himself together. “He said that walking away is the only thing guaranteed to hurt me. He says he’ll keep his promises.”

“Do you want to know what I really think?” she asks carefully. He turns to look her in the eyes; they’re a blue that makes him think of clear Easter skies, the lightest blue of early spring. He shrugs and she answers softly. “I think he will.”