Waiting for Clark (6 page)

“Not this one.” I reverentially touched another machine, this one a Whitewater game from the early 1990s. I’d read a thesis on strategy for the game and had heard Bryce’s father wax poetic about it, but I hadn’t seen one in person before.

“Want to play?”

“Can I?”

“Yeah.” Bryce’s smile got a bit wistful. “This was always Dad’s favorite. He’d get a kick out of watching you lose all your coins.”

“Crap. I don’t have quarters.” I patted my flannel pants like one might magically appear.

“I do.” Bryce lifted a bucket off the shelf. “A lot of the games in here I’ve rigged to be free play, but Dad always liked keeping a couple to take coins.”

“Want to show me first?” I asked.

He grinned and slid the quarters in. I was a fast learner and could pick up most games on the fly, but I wasn’t about to turn down the chance to watch Bryce play. He had a far more aggressive video game style than me. Whereas I never slapped or rocked a pinball machine, he played recklessly, with the intensity of someone out to bend the machine to do his will.

He bent over the machine, muscles flexing under his thin “I’m here because you broke something” T-shirt. Even the muscles in his neck went taut as he worked the machine. It got every bit of his focus, and he put his entire body into each play, rocking on the balls of his feet with each hit of the flippers. The lights and noises of the game filled the space, but it was Bryce who really clogged my senses, made me light up like one of the obstacles in the case.

He got bonus ball after bonus ball, but I didn’t begrudge him any of the playing time.

“Come on, come on. Right there. Yeah. Right there.” He talked to the game like he was coaxing a lover. He alternated between muttering and biting his lip on a particularly tricky sequence, and I had to suppress a moan at the sheer sensuality of Bryce attacking the game.

Finally, he lost. I suspected he’d become aware of me waiting and watching and he’d scratched on purpose. He wiped off his forehead like he’d just had a good workout. “Your turn.”

My turn didn’t last nearly as long as Bryce’s— I’d learned exactly nothing watching him other than how aroused he still made me.

“You’re doing calculations in your head instead of just following your instincts,” Bryce complained as he fed the machine more quarters. “Think less about odds and probabilities and angles and just enjoy the ride.”

I made a noise, forgetting for a second we were talking about the game.

Bryce snorted like he knew exactly which dirty places my mind had wandered to. “Come on. One more round, and then I’m putting on some
Red Dwarf
to put you to sleep.”

My second turn lasted about as long as the first, but I tried to channel Bryce and not overthink the game. Didn’t help because I kept overthinking
us.

Bryce got his fancy TV system ready to stream the show before joining me on the couch. This was kind of our thing— terrible sci-fi in the middle of the night. At decent hours, we both shared a love of the good stuff, but the middle of the night was strictly for cult classics and atrocities.
Red Dwarf
was one of our favorites. He leaned forward, pulling closer a stuffed ottoman that was larger than my dining table.

“Still a bit drafty,” he muttered as he popped the ottoman opened and removed a fleece throw and tossed it to me.

He’d made the drafty comment earlier in the family room. Rather un-Bryce-like, as he always ran hot, going barefoot in our room even in winter and sleeping with only a single blanket versus my stack.

He cares about you.
The concerns about drafts were all about
me.
He’d brought me to his special room because he cared about my comfort.

My chest went hot and tight, and my hands fisted in the fleece. I forced out what I hoped was a lighthearted laugh. “Bat signal blanket? Really?”

He snorted. “Gift from Tony.”

I shook the blanket out, spreading it out over my lap before I held one corner open. “Share?”

I held my breath, watching a range of emotions play out on his face. Just like insomnia and love of bad TV were our private things, this was another secret thing between us. I was pretty sure he would never, ever admit to it, but sharing covers and pillows was part of our TV ritual.

The snuggling up together was something that had evolved over several years, and we never discussed it. I’d been too scared to talk or even joke about it— afraid of losing that contact with him, afraid of taking the next step and making it the prelude to something more. And by some unspoken agreement, it wasn’t something we did when one or both of us had a boyfriend. But during our single-guy stretches it wasn’t unusual at all for us to wake up next to each other, the movie or TV show still going, our bodies cuddled together. Even though I’d often wake up hard and aching, it wasn’t really a sexual thing, and jumping Bryce at such a vulnerable moment always seemed like a violation of something sacred. Instead, we’d disengage slowly, moving back to our own spaces.

Just as I was about to drop the cover and look away, not wanting him to see my disappointment, Bryce nodded once, almost imperceptibly.

Luckily I was attuned to discovering minute data and I patted the square of cushion next to me, exhaling in a rush as he slid under the blanket.

****

Chapter Five

Bryce

I’d been wrong about what Clark wanted earlier when he knocked at my door, and I was pretty sure he meant his offer to share the blanket as a similarly harmless friendly gesture.

But as soon as I slid over, my ability to concentrate on the show went down to nil. I was not a cuddly guy, something all of my exes could testify to, some of them rather noisily. But with Clark, things had always been different.

It had started innocently enough, both of us cramming onto one bed to watch a movie on my laptop or sharing dorm couches way too small for two big guys. It was only natural to stretch an arm on the back of the sofa or share a pillow on the bed, heads almost-but-not-quite touching. But at some point, I started craving movie-watching time with Clark, and that scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

I didn’t want to need him like that.

Didn’t mean I called a stop to it either. I wasn’t strong like that, but I was also careful not to take things to the next level. After all, if I needed him so badly when we were just friends, then how much more could he hurt me if we were a real couple? Thoughts like that kept me from making a move, especially our first year as friends, until that day senior year we’d both given in.

And we all knew how well that turned out.

An amazing friendship destroyed and all because I couldn’t keep my lips to myself. The last few hours had reminded me how much I liked being around Clark— working next to him, talking with him, gaming with him. All of it was better with Clark along. And if we could have some semblance of that old friendship again, it would be stupid to jeopardize it, right?

I still slid over.

Still let my legs brush against him, still relaxed into the cushions, my body settling comfortably against his like it had known the way for years and had just been waiting for me to catch up. And when my arm felt weirdly trapped between us, it was the most natural thing in the world to stretch it along the back of the couch.

Clark exhaled like he’d just completed a really tricky game sequence. His full-body relief had me sighing too, had my hand dropping to his shoulder, pulling him against me. My heart beat like I’d just pounded out supersets at the gym, my whole body feeling alive and tingling simply by having him near.

“Bryce?” Clark looked up at me, a hundred questions in his eyes.

“Shhh,” I said. I couldn’t,
wouldn’t
discuss this. I needed it too much to reduce it to words and labels and uncomfortable truths. “Watch the show.”

I was a total hypocrite because I didn’t watch the show one bit. I watched Clark, watched how his eyes crinkled when he laughed at the show, watched how he relaxed more and more against me, watched when his eyes started to flutter shut. My hand drifted to his hair, sifting through the silky strands. That was new— not something I’d let myself indulge in before, but Clark hummed with contentment against me and hell if I was stopping.

Clark made sleepy little noises and nestled against me. Well, as much “nestling” as a six-foot-three guy with bigger shoulders than mine could accomplish. A warm and protective cape unfurled inside me, wrapped both of us in a cocoon where all the issues between us dropped away and there was only him and me holding him while he slept.

It was possibly the most perfect moment I’d had in the last five years, and I’d had some major high points, but this quiet embrace was
everything.

I needed this.
That was my last thought as I too drifted off.

****

I woke up to the TV having jumped at least two episodes ahead, characters reacting to some disaster on the ship. Their raised voices had probably roused me. Or maybe it was Clark, smushed against my side. Our legs were up on the ottoman, feet tangled together, and I was one good shift of my hips from being on top of him.

Every muscle burned like I was trying to keep a two-hundred-fifty-pound barbell aloft, trying not to sink into the inevitable.

Clark’s eyes fluttered open, and he smiled. A shy, almost bashful smile that was also so
pleased
it made my chest ache and my arms tremble.

“Your eyes are gold,” he mumbled. “Antique rose gold—”

“Go back to sleep,” I commanded. I couldn’t withstand any more sappiness from him. My willpower was shredding thread by thread.

“Don’t want to.” He nuzzled into me more. “I don’t want to miss even one moment of this. And if it’s a dream, I don’t want to risk a different one starting.”

“Maybe it’s a flashback,” I muttered, trying to convince myself more than him. No matter how familiar his bulk against me was, no late-night moment had ever been this charged between us. Sure, I’d been turned on before when we’d dozed next to each other, but I’d been able to ignore it. This was more like ignoring the giant five-story OMSI billboard. Only instead of advertising a science museum to come explore, this sign practically ordered me to explore Clark. Experiment. Try something new.

Friendship. Reinvented.

I must have smiled at my own idiocy because Clark’s lips curved again, revealing his perfect white teeth and making his chiseled chin jut forward. His jaw had the lightest dusting of stubble. I wanted to run my tongue against it.

I could do one-armed pull-ups and support my body weight without flailing. Heck, I could probably bench press Clark if I really wanted to. And yet, after all that gym time I didn’t have the simple bodily control to stop myself from rolling into him, aligning our torsos and placing his hard chest under mine.

“Oh, hello,” Clark said with a pleased grin. His arms came around me, locking me in place.

Ha. As if I was about to escape.

Clark was the scrap of driftwood keeping me from drowning. Or maybe he was the undertow that was going to do me in, but either way, I was powerless to move. Powerless to do anything other than bury my hands in his hair and my face in his neck and inhale. He smelled like the lemon and rosemary soap his mother made: a homey, uniquely Clark scent that I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed until it surrounded me.

He took a deep breath at the same time, something magical happening where time and our breath slowed down and synchronized. That I was going to kiss him was a given now, but neither of us rushed it. We lay there, breathing, holding,
knowing.

Finally, I raised my head and his mouth was right there, waiting for me. Our mouths met softly. The lightest brushing had my bare toes curling against the ottoman. What was funny was that I was generally a pretty aggressive guy in bed— I was the one who made the first move and the one who set the tone, usually with a lot of rough kissing and determined grappling until I and the other dude got to the fucking or sucking in short order.

But I wasn’t that guy with Clark. With Clark I was content to go at his slow, meandering pace. Our first kiss had been far more about enthusiasm than finesse, but once I ceded direction to Clark, he proved himself talented, using lips and tongue and teeth in concert to drive me crazy, wielding restraint and control like erotic weapons. He kissed like he ate— savoring each bite slowly like there would be a quiz on the precise ingredients later.

The build was so slow and deliberate that I didn’t notice when we crossed the line from trading kisses to rocking against each other. Clark was a couple of inches taller, but lying down like this, we lined up perfectly, dicks rubbing together through the loose fabric of our pajama pants.

“Oh my God, you feel so good.” Clark’s head tipped back, and I finally gave in to the impulse to lick his jaw and nip at his neck. The rough texture against my tongue sent electric shocks tingling down my back.

He groaned, and his hands left my shoulders to clutch at my ass, driving me harder into him. And apparently my body needed that direction, because his taking control of the motion of my hips tipped me unexpectedly close to orgasm.

“Yeah. Like that. Harder.” I moaned, body tensing, but staying pliant enough to let him move me at will.

The more he thrust and clutched at me and the harder he dug his fingers into my ass, the closer I vaulted to the edge.

“Bryce. Oh fuck. Bryce.” Clark panted my name, and I’d never loved it more than hearing it on Clark’s lips, head tipped back, totally lost in passion. I’d never hate my name again if I could only make Clark moan it over and over.

“
Clark.
Need…” I moaned.

“Going to…” His eyes squished shut, his mouth making tight little inhales that I swore I felt all the way to the tip of my dick. He pulled me tight, grip bruising now. The second his mouth caught mine, I came on a strangled moan, jerking hard against him, feeling his whole body shudder as he too came.

“Holy heck.” He laughed, hands petting me all over like he was checking for breaks. Not a bad impulse. I felt cracked, core parts of myself all jumbled up and rearranged. Took me a bit to come back to earth, gradually becoming aware of the drone of the TV and the late-night nip of the air. He leaned up to brush a kiss on the side of my face. “I haven’t come in my pants in like a decade.”