Bad Things (30 page)

Gazing down at Carson, Dario stripped out of his pants and briefs. The sight of Dario’s rock hard erection sent a reanimating jolt to Carson’s cock. He couldn’t believe how lovely Dario was. Couldn’t believe how badly he wanted to touch him. To taste that perfect skin. To press his naked body to Dario’s.

They stretched out in the warming squares of sunlight cast through the old windows. Now that it was just the two of them, Carson wasn’t sure if he was supposed to touch Dario, if he was allowed to kiss him, or if they were waiting for Aidan to come back. But Dario pressed his body close, and coaxed him into a kiss. Given the state of Dario’s erection, Carson was surprised how sweet, how undemanding that kiss was. Wet, but slow and shallow.

“
I love how you taste,” Dario said in a low voice that seemed to roll slowly down Carson’s spine and into his cock, pulsing in a slow, warm thrum, now. “Your tongue. Your come.”

Fuck
.

“
Soon, tonight or tomorrow, I want to suck you, and taste it all as you come in my mouth.”

After an invitation like that, how was he supposed to wait?

“You deserve an Olympic medal for that recovery time,” Aidan teased him when he came back.

“
Dario deserves the medal, not me. How do you have any strength left for your music, living with him?”

Aidan’s happiest smile. Carson had only seen it when Dario was close by. “Believe me, it’s not easy.” Then Aidan’s smile turned shy again. Awkwardly, he set a bottle of lube and a handful of condoms on the table next to the lounge. “Just in case. Better than having to interrupt something to run upstairs, right?”

Carson’s heart thumped uncomfortably and his lungs seemed suddenly shallow, not giving him enough air.

Dario gave him a reassuring smile. “No rush. Condoms aren’t in any danger of expiring around here. Come on, Aidan. You’re overdressed.”

Sweet the way Aidan seemed shy about stripping off his pants. After his trip upstairs and his anxiety about overstepping with the condoms, he wasn’t hard, but his cock was hanging heavy, flushed. Carson was dying to touch it. To watch Dario touch it. To see it swell and harden. But fuck, he was nervous. Not sure how to start. What to do.

But they started it. Dario giving Aidan a deep kiss, one of those kisses where it’s obvious right away that two people really know each other, that they’re returning to the well of their closeness. In perfect sync, like dance partners who understand every nuance of each other’s signals.

Then they pulled Carson into their embrace, into their kiss, and soon he was touching, too, kissing, too. Aidan sighing and pulling him closer to him as Carson kissed a tawny nipple. God, like a beautiful miracle, the way it firmed and hardened under his tongue. The bliss of feeling Aidan’s body changing under that touch, Aidan cradling the back of his head to pull Carson against him, demanding more. Aidan hard now, too, Dario reaching down, encircling him in his fingers, just teasing him with a few cruelly gentle caresses.

Carson’s whole body was thrumming with pleasure, all his senses overwhelmed but greedily seeking the next touch, the next taste, his chest heavy and full with a joyful ache he’d never felt before. But when Dario started to go down on him, he froze.

“Too much?” Dario asked, taking his mouth from Carson’s quivering belly.

“
No. Not too much. Just—” He couldn’t help laughing at himself. “I must seem so greedy. But it’s just that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

“
Fooled me,” Dario said with a grin, then glanced over at Aidan.

“
First threesome?” Aidan asked.

Carson laughed. “Yeah. First threesome.” Suddenly it didn’t feel funny anymore. He tried to keep sounding playful, but could hear himself completely failing. “You’ll laugh.”

“We won’t laugh,” Aidan said, all earnest empathy again.

“
I just…I don’t know why, but I never hooked up with guys.”

Looking at him intently, now, like he was trying to figure something out, Aidan asked, “Because you didn’t know you were bi?”

Carson was laughing at himself again, but his laughter sounded sad, even to him. “I’m not bi.”

Aidan grinned, as if he was going to laugh, after all. But then his smile faded completely, and now he looked horribly, painfully sad, and for some reason that made Carson feel guilty.

“I’ve always known I wasn’t really attracted to women. But for whatever reason, I’ve been too scared to be with men,” Carson confessed.

Almost looking afraid, now, Aidan asked, “So we’re the first? Right now?”

Carson swallowed. Looked for his voice. “Except for Xavier.”

From the look on Aidan’s face, from the look on Dario’s face, Carson had the startling feeling they didn’t even need him to explain about the basement.

Trying to pull the collective mood out of its free-fall, Carson said, “With Xavier, I never really did anything. You know? I was passive.”

He didn’t say,
‘
I was gagged and in restraints the whole time, except for the one time he just pinned my hands overhead while he fucked me.’

He just said, “I don’t want to be passive now, with you. I just don’t know what I’m doing.”

Aidan looked at Dario, then met Carson’s eyes. “By passive, you mean Xavier penetrated you? But you didn’t reciprocate?”

Carson’s face flared hot, because he hadn’t been talking about that. Then hotter, because it was stupid to be embarrassed at letting Dario and Aidan know Xavier had fucked him. They fucked each other, didn’t they? Hell, weren’t the three of them possibly about to fuck each other right now? But it did embarrass him. He felt humiliated. Because what Xavier had done to him had nothing to do with what he’d heard happening in Aidan and Dario’s room upstairs. Had nothing to do with whatever was happening between the three of them now.

“No. I never reciprocated,” he finally said, frustrated at how small, how timid his voice had come out. “But what I meant to say was, I never touched him.”

Something inside of him was crumbling at the edges. Cracking down the middle. And something scary was coming out of those fissures. Why now? Just now when everything felt suddenly, impossibly beautiful?

Aidan looked startled. Upset, even. But Dario’s gaze stayed tranquil. That quiet, easy voice. “Do you want to touch us?”

“
Yes.”

He’d thought he was fine. Even as he’d gamely answered Dario’s provocative question. But he wasn’t fine. He shouldn’t have spoken. Carson heard the thing breaking apart inside of him crack in two on that one small word. What was it about speaking? How was it that sometimes one syllable could rupture a protective shield he didn’t even know he’d been clinging to?

It was like Dario knew before he did. Suddenly his playful grin disappeared and that searching look of his overflowed with worry.

It hit Carson hard and fast. He barely managed to bow and turn away, to escape Dario’s eyes before something at the center of his chest fell to pieces and shook him. Shook him so hard he couldn’t breathe.

They were touching him. Warm hands stroking his back, warm arms circling around him. Impossible. Impossible anyone could touch him gently. Hold him. Care for him. Impossible soft words when the room should be silent and he should be alone. Always and forever alone.

But they were there, holding him, rocking him.

He couldn’t stop it. The shaking. The gasping for air because none of it would get into his lungs. The tears streaming down his cheeks.

Someone had him. Dario. Pulled tight to him, arms wrapped tight around him, so tight it was making it hard to breathe.

No. No, it was the thing inside of him, the thing in his chest crushing his lungs. And the tighter Dario held him, the more air came in. The less dizzy and sick he felt. The less violently his heart beat.

Dario was still holding him close, so it was Aidan’s warm hand against his skin, caressing his back.

Little by little the thing inside of him lost its strength, wasn’t shaking him as hard. As it weakened, as Carson got his breath back, as the sobs shaking him died down, Carson was afraid, if Dario let go, he’d collapse, too limp to even sit up on his own.

But Dario didn’t let go. They both just went on holding him. Maybe it was ten minutes. Maybe it was half an hour. But they held him until he wasn’t limp anymore. Until he sat up using his own bones and muscles.

“I’m sorry.” he mumbled it, not looking at either of them.

Dario gently touched his jaw, then cupped his face, holding him in his gaze. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Not one single thing.”

“Would it be all right if I went up and took a shower?” Carson asked.

Just a faint shadow darkened that placid gaze. “Of course.”

Feeling calm, hollowed out, almost numb, Carson washed his face, eyes swollen and sore from crying so hard for so long, washed the traces of sticky semen off his abdomen. It wasn’t that surprising, his meltdown, but it was still sad. They’d offered him something so beautiful—once in a lifetime, beautiful—and he’d ruined it. The loss of that, with them, hurt. Like grief.

After, he put on his own clothes—the outfit he’d been wearing when Brian had handed him the envelope for Max—and packed up the tooth brush and the few other personal items he’d bought during his stay.

There was a soft knock on the door. Dario. When he saw the bag, he looked sad. Hurt, even. “Can we talk for a minute?”

Carson nodded, because after his meltdown, he was afraid to talk, terrified that thing inside him would shake him apart again.

Dario said, “I’m sorry. We’re both sorry.”

Carson almost laughed. “You’re not the one who needs to apologize.”

“Yes I am. I was careless with you.”

“
No. I wanted what happened.”

“
I know.” That serene smile. If Dario would just keep looking at him like that, smiling at him like that, everything would be okay. “But I was still careless.” He looked at the backpack. “I hope you won’t leave. I can understand that maybe after what happened you don’t feel safe here. You don’t feel safe with us. But you are. Aidan and I will be more careful with you from now on. I promise.”

“
I feel safe with you already. Probably the safest I’ve ever felt.”

He was still afraid he was going to start sobbing at any moment, every time he opened his mouth.

“Then why is your bag packed?”

With how nice Dario was being, with the way he was looking at him Carson felt dumb even saying it. “Because. You and Aidan are so happy. And I’m ruining it.”

“No you’re not. You’re not.” Dario reached out, like he was going to touch him, then pulled his hand back. “If you need space, I won’t,” he said.

Why did that move him so much, making his chest ache? Not because the sharp, scalding thing inside him was waking up again. It was a tender ache, a sweet sadness.

“It’s okay.”

Radiant smile. Dario caressed his arm. Then, in a voice that hurt Carson, because it sounded like his heart was breaking, Dario said, “I realize things are complicated, because Xavi and I are friends. Very close friends. But if…” His dark eyes were shimmering and his voice was wet and choked. “Carson, if he hurt you—”

“That’s not why I…” He rushed to say it, only half convinced. Because he couldn’t take it, watching Dario’s soul crack apart right in front of him. “I’ll tell you. Both of you.”

Because it was the only way he’d ever be brave enough to say those things, they went up on the roof with the pipe and the weed. They pulled three of the chairs into a circle, close together. Carson forced himself to start right away because Dario was almost gray, he was so anxious, even though he somehow manage to keep up that kind gaze that made Carson feel safe. Protected.

“I’m nervous. Sorry. I’ve never told anyone this before.”

Aidan said, “No rush. Take your time.”

And Dario said, “No matter what it is, it’ll be okay. You’re safe with us.” The look he gave Carson felt like proof that that was true. He was really safe.

“
I moved to L.A. when I was nineteen. After I dropped out of college. But I grew up in a small town outside of Eureka. I was the third of four kids. My mom ran a kind of child care out of the house in the hours after school. Just neighbor kids. So every day there’d be ten or twelve of us.”

Carson took a second hit off the pipe when Aidan passed it to him, smiling so sweetly, but his green eyes anxious and sad. Carson tried to hurry the story up so they could stop looking so worried and guilty.

“I was nine years old when a new kid started coming over after school. He’d just moved to the neighborhood. I don’t really remember why we were in the bathroom together, but you know how kids are. Boys, anyway. They’re not really shy about peeing in front of each other. Anyway, I noticed that his penis was different. He just wasn’t circumcised, but back then I didn’t have a clue about any of that, so when I saw it I was totally fascinated. When I asked him about it, I don’t know, I don’t remember exactly who said what, but we decided we’d each let the other have a good look, and see exactly how we were different. So we had our pants and underwear down, and were taking turns having a look, and my mom walked in.” He laughed, feeling nostalgic and sad. “Because we were so dumb, so naive, we didn’t even know we should have locked the door.