Shiny! (22 page)

Kenny cocked his head. Wow. Put that way, he sounded like a real asshole. “You mean those Dr Peppers weren’t a declaration of undying love?” he asked, smiling, trying to make a better impression, and he got a gruff smile in return.

“Those are definitely appreciated. I just mean, I don’t know. You started out trying to set the world on fire, and you did, and now I’m not sure what’s left for you to do here. So I figured, you know—you’re moving onwards and upwards.”

Kenny gaped a little, stunned. Damn. He’d been so busy planning for stability, he’d almost worked and worried his way out of it. “I’ve got outside projects,” he said slowly, “but honestly, I sort of like it here.”

“You don’t sign up for any of the social stuff,” Cam pointed out, and Kenny gasped.

“Well, you know. Gay. In Sacramento.”

“Well, yeah, but you could have sounded us out. I mean, you work out during all your lunches, and you’re never around for a beer after work. You know. Passing through. I didn’t even know you
had
a boyfriend. How long have you been together?”

Kenny thought about it. “It’s sort of a weird story,” he said, thinking about it. He looked at his watch. “Want to hear it over lunch?”

Cam was decent company—Kenny had already known that. He cleaned up his cubicle, he told the occasional funny joke, and he took time off in the afternoons to coach his kids’ soccer league. Kenny had never minded that he got in earlier in order to do this, but now, sitting down and drinking his third vitaminwater with the guy, he had a realization. He’d been so busy trying to prove himself in his job that he’d forgotten that jobs were social places too.

And he’d been so busy trying to prove that he could be friends with Will that he’d forgotten anything he knew about being a good lover.

And he hadn’t known that much in the first place.

By the end of lunch, Cam was looking at him with pity. “See, I could have told you that thing with the job was a bad move right there,” he said, nodding. “That was my second wife. I tried to tell her that ceramics wouldn’t work as a business, but you know what? I hadn’t been paying attention to what she’d been doing at work at
all
.
Turns out she’d made all these contacts, and she had a business plan that would have put a
Fortune
500 company to shame. And even if she hadn’t? Even if she hadn’t done jack shit? Fact was, I
didn’t know—
I hadn’t made the time investment, you know? I mean, I don’t get a say if I’m not really in her life.”

“Oh
fuck
,” Kenny muttered, because this was pretty much the conclusion he’d come to the night before.

“What? You’ve got flowers to bring?”

“No,” Kenny said miserably, banging his head against the table just hard enough to hurt. “I’ve got cardboard boxes.”

Cam looked suitably puzzled. “Okay, my uncle is gay, and he never said anything about that as a romantic gesture.”

And of all things, that made Kenny laugh. “It’s not the gay, it’s the person,” he said kindly. “And would anyone mind if I took the afternoon off?”

“Are you kidding? It’s Friday—half the building is going on their August vacation next week. You could take a long weekend and nobody would give a crap if you came back.”

Kenny raised his eyebrows and thought of visiting relatives and maybe some extra time in bed. With Will. Naked.

“That’s awesome,” he said. “I’m going to drop you off and see you Tuesday.”

“Yeah? Do I get to know what you’re going to do this weekend?”

“Well, for starters I’m going to invite Will to meet my parents and come to the company picnic—when is that, anyway?”

“Labor Day,” Cam said drily. “So in a month,” he added as they stood up and left money for the tip.

“Fan
tast
ic.”

Cam laughed. “Yeah, well, don’t be a stranger. You’re funny when you’re riled.”

Kenny wondered if Will felt the same way.

H
E
SHOWED
up at Will’s place an hour later, after a stop in shipping and receiving, where they were glad to assign a really gigantic college kid named Artie to help him break down some boxes.

After that, he had to actually
find
the apartment complex, and he was relieved to know that it was shabby but not horrific, because that one place, the one closer to the dentist’s office, was a
dump
,
and this place was only a block away.

It wasn’t bad—brown wood paneled, a basic two-story building. He asked the super for Will’s apartment number. It was on the ground floor, which was nice, because Kenny’s arms were full of cardboard, and that shit sucked to juggle.

He set all the flattened boxes down against Will’s wall, took a deep breath, and knocked.

He could hear Will’s heavy tread, and he marked the passage through what looked to be a remarkably small cracker box kind of place until, about two seconds after Kenny knocked, the door opened.

A burst of cool air greeted him, and he had to hold himself back from just rushing the doorway, because sweat was pouring down his back like his neck was a spigot. It was another ungodly hot day.

“Kenny?”

Kenny tried not to glower. God, he sucked at this.

“My name is Kenneth Andrew Scalia. I have a brother named Joseph Kevin, but he’s in the service in Hawaii, and he’s got a wife and two kids. My parents are Phil and Barbara. Dad owns a small travel agency and Mom taught science until she retired early, last year. They’re
constantly
out of town, but the next time they’re
not
out of town on a weekend, I’ll take you to visit. They don’t give a crap about the gay and think I’m too young to have children, so they’ll love you.”

Kenny took a breath and Will opened his mouth to say something, but Kenny stopped him with an outstretched hand.

“Gif was not my first jerk of a boyfriend. You guessed that, but it was a lot easier to talk about comic books and graphic novels and shows and what happened to us during the day, so I forgot to tell you that I was, like, the guy to cheat on during college. See, I kept going for pretty and hoping for forever. And the problem was, these guys, they were going for pretty and hoping for pretty around the corner. Nothing in my brain was wired to accept a Will Lafferty into my life. But I want you in my life. I want you in my house. I brought boxes. We can start packing the boxes. I’ll start moving you
today
.
I’ll meet your mom anytime. I want her to know I love you too. I want the world to know I love you. I’m just not great at—”

Will reached out, grabbed his collar, and hauled him inside to the blessed, blessed air-conditioning, and Kenny didn’t even get a chance to look around before Will’s mouth was on his.

The door slammed behind them and Will framed Kenny’s face in both hands, pushing him against it. For a moment he was a deep, thick, comforting blanket of kiss.

In this alien and admittedly crappy apartment, Kenny was suddenly home.

He kissed back again and again, climbing Will like a tree. He wrapped his legs around Will’s hips and ground up against him, their groins mashing and their chests pressed together tight enough to breathe in tandem.

Kenny leaned back against the door and trusted that Will would hold him as he reached between them with one hand. He got Will’s belt undone and then his own, and Will pulled back long enough to gasp, “Bed!”

Kenny whimpered, because the bed seemed too far to walk without touching, but Will grasped him tighter under the thighs, and Kenny held on for dear life.

Will stumbled through the apartment like that, knocking over DVDs, CDs, and what looked to be an entire tower of graphic novels, but Kenny wasn’t getting down for anything in the world. He clung to Will like a magnet at true north, kissing his neck, nibbling on his jaw, and making desperate little noises in his ear.

“It’s only been a day,” Will panted as he lowered Kenny onto a rather lumpy mattress.

“Don’t care,” Kenny mumbled, shoving his jeans down to his knees and kicking off his shoes. “Too long.”

Will took a moment and shoved everything down and up, and in a second he was on top of Kenny, kissing him some more while Kenny finished kicking his pants off. It was probably five seconds total from hitting the mattress to being completely naked, and Kenny still wrapped his limbs around Will like a barnacle, trying desperately to get as much skin contact as possible.

“I was going to come by,” Will said between frantic kisses. He pushed his palm against the flat of Kenny’s back and pressed Kenny tighter to him before pulling away for a precious moment.

“Do you want me to take it back?” he asked contrarily, and Will smiled in pure joy.

“Hell no! Just, you know, so you didn’t think you were out there by yourself.”

Kenny’s smile grew suddenly shy. “I knew,” he mumbled into Will’s chest. “I knew. I’m just stupid about trusting….”

“Less talking, more kissing!” Will demanded, and Kenny’s grin was swallowed by another kiss that went on and on and on.

With a little wiggle and some impetus, Kenny rolled Will onto his back and slid down, kissing his chest and his shoulders as he went. He sat on Will’s cock and ground hard, frotting back and forth and wanting more.

“Lube, Will. Where’s your lube?”

“Under the pillow,” Will told him, bucking up against the friction.

Kenny stopped and squinted at him. “What’s it doing there?”

Will didn’t stop thrusting, but his cheeks turned pink. “You know, I’m here alone a lot in the day.”

For a moment Kenny’s eyes rolled back in his head and all he could see was an internal slideshow of Will jacking off. “Nungh!”

“Kenny,
focus
!” Will begged.

Kenny took pity, reached under the pillow, and came back with a jumbo bottle of lubricant—that was half-empty.

“But… didn’t I get you one of these, like—”

Will grabbed his hips and thrust hard, his ridge catching on Kenny’s little pucker. “Twenty-eight years, Kenny,” Will panted. “Twenty-eight years thinking sex was for the lucky and the brave. Then I find out I can close my eyes, think of you, and become a frickin’ god—now c’mon and make me a god!”

Kenny fumbled with the flip top. The lube was cool on his fingers when he lifted himself and greased Will up, a part of him wanting to stop and laugh in absolute glee and a part of him too turned on to care. He closed the bottle and dropped it on the comforter, then lifted up again and positioned Will just… so….

He slid down slowly, remembering the first time they’d done this and how everything had been new and bright and even the pleasure had hard, sharp edges.

Will groaned from his toes, and suddenly Kenny thought the world was just that bright and sharp and brilliant again, because
ah
,
didn’t Will feel good all straight and hard inside him. And this
wasn’t
the first time, wasn’t even the fifth or sixth time, and Will had the experience to hold Kenny’s hips still some more and to control the movement while Kenny just hung on for the ride.

“Ahh,” Kenny sighed, fulfilled, overwhelmed by how right this was.

Will arched up off the bed and palmed the back of Kenny’s head forward until they could kiss. “Good?’ Will asked breathlessly.

“God.” Kenny was so
full
! He moaned and wiggled and thought about the
size
of the thing inside him. “So good… Will….”

Will rolled over then, because he was good at topping. While Kenny was still scrambling for purchase,
he grabbed Kenny’s thighs and hauled them both to the edge of the bed so he could stand up.

And then he proceeded to fuck the holy hell out of Kenny with a raw, powerful, possessive, you’re-mine-dammit pounding that left Kenny breathless, helpless, gasping and incoherent. Will fumbled for his hand, and for a moment their fingers laced before Will wrapped Kenny’s fingers around his own cock and thrust like a train piston until Kenny saw stars. His rim was stretched to burning, and Will’s cock was pounding his gland like a giant pounded a kid’s trampoline.

“
Ungh…
gonna… gonna… can’t….”

“
Come
!” Will thundered, and the command in his voice, the absolute authority, washed Kenny’s vision in black and blew an EMP of nuclear ice through his skin, annihilating him in orgasm.

Come-come-shudder-shudder
-come
!

Will roared above him, and Kenny opened his eyes in time to watch him, head thrown back, cords in his neck straining, as he erupted in climax.

For a brilliant flash, every sensation was clear: the dull throbbing in Kenny’s still-spurting cock, the
major
throbbing in his distended body, the smell of their sweat, of his semen, and the feeling of Will’s fingers pressing into the tops of Kenny’s thighs. And through that, all Kenny saw was Will, lost in sex, almost angry with wanting. Wanting
Kenny
.

Will’s entire body trembled, and he dropped Kenny’s thighs and fell forward, sliding out. Always, always, that moment came too soon. He held himself on his forearms and panted, smiling a little and nuzzling Kenny’s temple. Kenny closed his eyes and traveled his hands from Will’s chest to shoulders to the back of his neck.

Will eventually flopped to the side and extended his arm. Kenny scooched up and laid his sweaty head on Will’s sweatier shoulder.

“Move in with me,” Kenny said when he could talk. “I’ll beg if I have to.”

“Yeah,” Will said. “Okay.”

And then Kenny rolled over to his side and rested his chin on Will’s chest—and took his courage into both hands. “And please, for me, think about working on your business instead of teaching. I want you to be happy. I don’t care how much money you make. I can make my own rent—I can’t be really happy without a good man to share my home.”

Will grimaced. “I’ll think about it,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to turn down the job just yet.”

Kenny swallowed and nodded. “That’s fair.” He closed his eyes then and realized he’d slept like hell the night before. “Nap,” he murmured. “Then we can pack.”