Whatever the Cost (21 page)

But that evening, when they return to their room, closing themselves away from the world, with plans brewing in their heads, and old dreams finding new life, Liam and Jacen can feel it in the air between them, that expectations, desires, are there. They are no longer friends, nor co-workers, nor roommates. They are so much more than that. Yes, it has happened in a way both stranger and quicker than it should have, but it has happened nonetheless.

Sitting side-by-side in the dark, on a worn, old couch in the Seabreeze Motel, the blue, neon-tinged light filtering in from the city streets just past the window, Liam’s hand slips inside Jacen’s.

“Guess you’re stuck with me now, old man,” Jacen sighs.

“Hey, right back at’cha. At least I married someone that can cook.”

“At least I married someone as crazy as me. And whose ass looks
fantastic
in a pair of jeans.”

“Wow, you’re so shallow sometimes,” Liam laments with a smirk.

“Yeah. Well. You’re my trophy husband. Get used to it.”

Liam nudges Jacen’s side.

It’s not real, though
, Jacen tells himself sadly.
It’s just another game. New characters to play.

The shimmering silver rings on their fingers feel real enough. But what feels more real is the absence of deception or distance in Liam’s eyes when Jacen holds his gaze, searching it, trying to read it.

“What are you thinking about?” Jacen asks.

“I’m just glad. I feel like I can breathe. It’s really going to be okay. It seems possible now. I mean, I know it just seems like none of this really happened, like it’s all a bizarre vacation or some weird, long assignment we were sent on. But we don’t owe anyone anything anymore, no one but ourselves, and each other. No one else gets to tell us what to do, or what to be, or who to be with. We can be whatever we want to be.”

“And what do you want to be?”

“Safe. I want to be safe and wherever you are.”

“What else?”

“Hmm. I’m still figuring that out. Right now what I want is to celebrate. We should celebrate this. We did it. We really did it, Jace.”

“Yeah, we did,” Jacen smiles.

Liam emerges from the bathroom in pair of loose-fitting flannel pajama pants, immediately putting Jacen more at ease just because he didn’t try to come up with a special outfit in an attempt to characterize their marriage celebration. Going directly to the bed, Liam flops down on the empty side, right beside where Jacen is leaned back against the headboard, fiddling with his new ring.

“I still can’t believe you’re pierced,” Jacen mutters, eyeing Liam’s bare chest.

“Why?”

Jacen shrugs, glancing between the shining, shimmering symbol of his new union with Liam and the equally brilliant jewelry embedded in his companion’s dark, semi-erect nipples.

“You don’t seem like the type,” he says finally.

“What’s ‘the type’?”

“I don’t know.”

“They feel good. They make sex feel even better. That was kind of a bonus for me,” Liam says dryly. “Why, you don’t like ’em?”

“Doesn’t matter if I like ’em,” Jacen murmurs, staring at his hands, not really thinking about what he’s saying, too bogged down in everything buzzing around in his head.

“Um. Yeah. It kind of does matter,” Liam argues, sitting up and spinning around to sit cross-legged, facing Jacen.

Jacen’s eyes flutter closed. “I didn’t,” he sighs, stops and tries again. “That’s not what I meant. I like them. They’re just really distracting. They keep making me lose my train of thought and it’s kind of aggravating.”

Repressing a smile, Liam clarifies, “My nipple studs make you lose your train of thought.”

“Only when you go flashing them around,” Jacen says, shaking his hands slightly and wiggling the fingers in the air. Because his tone is perfectly serious, Liam snorts with laughter.

“I’m deeply sorry about that. Should I get a shirt? Take them out? Or maybe just remove my pants so you can enjoy the complete set.”

“Don’t even get me started on the penis one. That one’s
totally
unfair. I can’t even look in the general direction of your crotch without thinking about it.”

“Do you look at my crotch often?” Liam asks with a smirk. It doesn’t get much of a reaction from Jacen, he only sinks deeper into his funk, frowning. His fingers twist together, his wrists resting on his drawn-up knees. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

Jacen’s lips purse as he shakes his head, dismissing the worry in Liam’s voice. “It’s nothing. Yasha’s going to drive up and visit us tomorrow. He doesn’t know about this,” Jacen says, raising his left hand and wiggling the ring finger.

Understanding unfolds. Liam hums thoughtfully. “So, can we talk about this? Yasha? You? Can you tell me a little of what happened there? As far as your past goes? I mean, does he know about it?”

“The molestation? Yeah. He knows. He’s the only other person I’ve told. Or, well, not
outright
. He kind of guessed from the way I was reacting to certain things and I didn’t deny it.”

“You initially told me you slept together because it was your first time.”

With an icy smile, Jacen replies, “Yeah. No, that wasn’t my first time. It was just the first time it was consensual.”

Liam reaches out and takes Jacen’s restless left hand, stilling it, holding on to it.

“I had issues,” Jacen continues, sounding like the words are coming out faster than he wants them to. “Clearly. Yasha... helped. His background with counseling was a bonus. And he was a trusted friend. He showed me how good it could be, that it wasn’t always scary. I can never repay him for everything he did for me. He cared, you know?”

“I was always kind of jealous of Yasha for being so close to you. But I get it now. I’m glad he was able to help.”

“Me too,” Jacen nods, softening when Liam gives his hand a gentle squeeze. With a sideways glance, and after a thoughtful pause, Jacen ventures, “What was your first time like? Who was it with?”

Exhaling around a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, Liam says, “That was a long time ago.”

“Tell me about it. Was it with Timothy?”

Liam’s grin widens, but stays cold. “Nah. Sex really wasn’t a big deal to me any more by the time I was with Tim.”

“But you were eighteen,” Jacen frowns. “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“Hmm, let’s see. It was when I lived on the ranch in Minnesota, so... eleven? Twelve? Maybe. I can’t remember. There were three of us. All boys. Foster brothers. They had us staying in this big room over the garage, and during the day we’d be responsible for chores. That’s why they’d wanted to foster older boys—to work. And as you can probably imagine, they didn’t really go out of their way to be affectionate parental figures. We were pretty much the help. I was the youngest, and the smallest—didn’t get a good growth spurt until I was older—so it was harder for me. My brothers were sixteen and seventeen. God, I can’t even remember their names,” Liam says quietly, to himself, with emotionless amazement.

He’d been lying in the double bed under the room’s one window, which was opened to let in some of the cooling night-time breeze. That summer was a hot one, and their room was nearly always stifling. The only thing they would sleep in was their underwear, with a thin sheet covering them. There were two beds in the room. Avery and the sixteen-year-old shared one, and the seventeen-year-old took the other.

“I was starved for attention. When my brothers were nice to me, that was like the best part of my day,” Liam explains. “When the younger of the two started to touch me one night—just running his hand lightly over my body, a caress—it was nice. It started slow. Gentle.”

The hand moved over the sheet covering the both of them, restless. When it ventured farther, bit by bit, slowly, down between Avery’s legs, at first he tried to draw up his knees. Laying on his back, he felt the playful squeeze of his penis, and heard the whispered, “This okay?” He was swayed more by curiosity than anything sexual to let his much physically larger sibling do what he wanted. The squeeze shifted into kneading and stroking. From the other bed, a low, post-pubescent voice said, “Take the sheet off. Lemme see.”

Liam makes the mistake of glancing up at Jacen’s face. His expression is one of growing rage, as if he wants to reach back through time and defend the child in that bed. Jacen sits up straighter. Dropping his gaze to his hands, Liam presses on. “I didn’t know what was happening. I was too young to get it, but it felt good when he touched me. And hardly anyone ever did, even to hug me. So I let him. They threw the sheet back, slid off my briefs, positioned me so that they could both see everything.” Sensing Jacen’s movement, Liam looks up at him. He’s shading his eyes with both hands, jaw clenched, breathing like a freight train. “Should I stop? If this is upsetting you....”

“Finish,” Jacen breathes, his baritone voice more vibration than sound.

“Okay,” Liam says doubtfully. “It was just manual stimulation for a while. I closed my eyes and went with it. I could feel my face was, like, beet-fuckin’-red, but their attention was just locked on me. I wasn’t used to that kind of scrutiny. Kind of made me feel powerful. Special.

“My older brother tossed a bottle of lube and a rubber onto our bed. The one jacking me stopped and looked over at him, deciding, I guess. I think they were saying stuff like, ‘Go on, he’s into it,’ and arguing about if I was too young, but it didn’t last long and I didn’t catch most of it. The one touching me, I remember he had such dark eyes, like almost black. Dark hair, sun-browned skin.... He got between my legs, hooked ’em over his shoulders and leaned down over me.”

Cold and wet, the first finger entered him in a slow push, and it was such a strange, foreign sensation that a scared, startled little noise erupted from Avery. “Feels weird, huh?” Avery nodded, grunted in agreement, the sound of it wavering. He tried to see what was happening between his legs, but couldn’t quite. The finger pumped in and out, smearing lube, coaxing the muscle. The boy on the other bed moved to get a better view, told his brother to add another finger. Avery’s face felt so incredibly hot, the blood made the skin tight. Sweat broke out freely over his lithe, pale body, glowing in moonlight that fell in pools through the window above. “You like that?” he was asked, as a lube-coated palm squeezed up his shaft. Wriggling, he grunted again, frowning. The blood roared loudly in his ears, the heat of the body pressing down on him stifling, the probing of the fingers moving inside his body—it started to overwhelm him. A scared whimper left him as it started to become far too much, too fast.

“Come on. He’s ready.”

“M-maybe. Uh,” Avery tried, voice trembling.

“Relax, okay? I’ll take good care of ya.”

The finger withdraws and the friction is startling. His brother picks up the condom.

“Um,” Avery blurts, trying to sit up and see what’s going on, unable to. “What—Are...are you going to put it in me?”

“My dick? Yeah,” his brother told him with a nod as he rolled the rubber on, watching Avery stare at the thickened flesh cradled in his hand. “Don’t worry. You’ll like it.”

“He was small, which was good for me, I guess. It didn’t hurt as much as it would have otherwise. He had me take these deep breaths, and every time I exhaled, he’d thrust. Once he was in me, it felt... real. Like, it’d happened. It was done. No going back. I was scared, and I was probably making a lot of noise, but he was gentle with me. I calmed down once I started to get used to feeling full of him. He was really worked up. Sweating, trembling, flushed, moaning. I thought it was funny. After he finished, he brought me off too and I think I fell asleep. I don’t really remember.”

“They took advantage of you,” Jacen accuses, sounding incensed, bordering on furious.

Calmly holding his gaze, Liam shrugs. “I don’t know, it didn’t feel like that at the time. I looked up to them. They appreciated me, took care of me. I felt kind of proud to be able to make them so happy. And it felt nice. I liked it.”

“Was that the only time you slept with a brother?”

Liam chuckles. “What do you think? Once I’d started, why stop? I mean, I’d only fuck the ones that were interested.”

“Jesus Christ, Lee.” Jacen’s disapproval oozes from the words. Shaking his head slightly, he seems tired, very tired. He rubs his eyes and turns his face slightly away. After a moment, he turns back and asks, “Was it always guys?”

“No, some of my foster sisters would come on to me. Hey, I was cute, I guess. And we’d screw around, for the hell of it, but,” Liam scrunches his nose, “wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t really into it. How about you? Did you ever try messing around with a guy when it wasn’t for money?”

Jacen shakes his head.

“Did you ever want to?”

“No. Not really,” Jacen admits. “It was always girls. When it was just for fun, it was girls.”

“Huh.” Feeling the possessive fire burning hot and strong enough to scorch flesh behind the intensely piercing look Jacen is giving him, Liam clears his throat and resolves to shift the conversational gears away from the murkiness of their pasts. “Okay. I have another question. Needs to be asked.”