Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (3 page)

“You do that,” Grant said, his voice so growly Mackey might have been the only one to hear it.

Didn’t matter.

It was more than enough that Grant knew Mackey hurt. It was Mackey’s only weapon in the war they’d fight for the next five years.

P
ROM
. H
ELL
,
it wasn’t even
Mackey’s
prom—he was still a freshman. In fact, although Grant was still seventeen and Kell had just turned eighteen, they didn’t even think of it as
their
prom. Seniors got a ball, and since Kell couldn’t afford to go and wasn’t dating anybody, Grant had decided he wasn’t doing it either, girlfriend or no. Jeff and Stevie were juniors, but they hadn’t taken an interest in girls yet. Or, well,
apart
they hadn’t taken an interest in girls. So far, their entire adolescence had been spent taking an interest in the
same
girl, one girl at a time. They didn’t compete, either. They just both looked at the same girl longingly and consoled each other when she didn’t look back.

The weirdest part was that nobody seemed to notice how weird it was. Mackey just accepted it for Jeff and Stevie, and that was okay, then, right?

But the fact that nobody in the band was actually
going
to the prom didn’t stop everybody from getting dressed up. They assembled at the Sanders boys’ apartment a week before prom, bringing their best clothes, with the intention of making sure they didn’t look like shit when everyone else was going to be in tuxes.

But the Sanders boys had underestimated the bond of brothers—even ones who didn’t live in a two-bedroom apartment and swap clothes until they disintegrated. Grant’s and Stevie’s parents could afford suits—Mackey had already figured that. He didn’t expect Stevie to bring Jeff a barely worn sport coat to go over his best jeans and the collared shirt he wore to church on the rare occasions their mother still made them go. It was the same cut as Stevie’s best sport coat—the illusion of their shared parenthood was even greater, but Jeff didn’t acknowledge that. He smiled shyly at his best friend and stroked the arm of the nice wool. “Thanks,” he said softly and then held his arms in front of him, pretending he was holding his guitar in the suit to make sure he could move when he held one for real.

Grant was slimmer than Kell, so he didn’t have the pretext of lending an old piece of clothing, but that didn’t stop him. He
bought
Kell a brand-new suit and lied, telling him it belonged to his dad. He’d forgotten to take the price tags off, but before Kell could look, Grant jumped in and jerked them off the sleeves without even an apology.

“I don’t take—” Kell started, and Grant scowled back.

“Shut up. Just shut up. Let’s see if Mackey’s stuff fits.” Because much to Mackey’s discomfort, Grant had bought
him
an outfit too.

Mackey’s outfit wasn’t a suit like the other guys’.

Red superthin pipe cleaner jeans, the kind with a dropped waist even though Mackey hadn’t had hair down there to reveal until middle school when his voice dropped; a tight white shirt, the kind with almost lacy sleeves and collar and the tailored bottom so Mackey would wear it untucked and flared; a blue velveteen suit coat, cut to let the sleeves and the collar spill over. It was outrageous, stunning, and could only be worn by a pixie-sized leviathan. Mackey would feel like five feet five inches and ninety-five pounds of sheer personality on stage in that outfit and knew Grant saw him that way too.

He stared in awe at the clothes pouring out of the shopping bag and then looked over his shoulder to where Grant was helping Kell on with his sport coat and trying not to make eye contact.

“Do you think…,” Mackey breathed, and Grant met his eyes then. Was Mackey the only one who could see his cheeks were flushed? His eyes wide and shiny? His breathing coming a little fast?

“Yeah, Mackey, try that shit on,” Grant said, gathering up a grin. He could pull his upper lip crooked, and it did something to Mackey that he couldn’t even define.

“Here, I’ll be back in a sec,” he muttered. He was hard. His dick was
hard
. He was fourteen—he knew about wet dreams, and he’d had a few. Grant starred in all of them. And now Grant was looking at him like he wanted Mackey to star in his own private dream factory. He didn’t give a shit how weird it looked to go changing on his own—he was going to have to take off his underwear to fit into those jeans, and he didn’t want anyone to see.

A few minutes later, Grant banged on the bedroom door. “Mackey, let me see!”

“No!” he hollered, looking miserably at the pants barely fastened over his hard-on. The hard-on wasn’t that impressive—he had hopes it would grow as he did. He’d be fifteen in a month, right?

Outside the door he heard Kell, suddenly panicked. “Cheever, goddammit, put down that fucking Sharpie!” and then some general chaos after that.

Underneath the guys screaming at Cheever and Cheever wailing, he heard Grant. “C’mon, kid. It’s you and me. No one else’ll see.”

It was that promise—that illicit promise of privacy—that made Mackey open the door and shut it immediately after Grant snuck in.

Kell had recently moved out to sleep on the couch, so this room held the other three boys—Mackey slept on the bottom bunk, Cheever on the top, and Jeff on the twin bed in the corner. Mackey stood there, between three beds decorated with Star Wars comforters, and gestured to his suddenly adult body, swelling and proud underneath pants that showed off hair he’d barely even gotten.

Grant’s gaze swept over him appreciatively, up and down his skinny body, face lighting up when he came to Mackey’s crotch.

“That’s some package there, McKay,” he drawled, and his eyes bored into Mackey’s.

Mackey’s dick only got harder.

“It hurts,” he confessed miserably. “And you can see my hair.”

Grant licked his lips and then scrubbed at his face with his hands.

“I’ll be back in a sec,” he muttered. “Where’s Kell keep his razor?”

“Bathroom in the hall.”

Grant nodded, and almost like he couldn’t control it, his hand crept out, brushed along the distended zipper of the forbidden jeans.

Mackey groaned, so close to coming he was almost weeping.

“Gimme sec,” Grant reassured.

He slid out the door, and Mackey considered bending over Jeff’s bed and just rubbing his dick until the ache stopped, but Grant was back by the time he figured out that bending over in the jeans hurt.

“Here,” Grant said grimly. “Stand up straight.”

Mackey did, holding his hands behind his head. The shirt wasn’t buttoned, and it gaped across his thin chest, but the jeans loosened and so did the pressure on his cock.

Then he felt Grant’s touch across his stomach, pulling the skin of his lower abdomen tight, and his cock got tight in a whole new way.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

Mackey closed his eyes and ignored the yelling and frantic washing of something still going on in the crowded living room. He concentrated instead on Grant’s fingers across his tender skin and the puff of breath across his stomach and the silky, alien sensation of going without hair.

“Mackey,” Grant murmured, and Mackey was shocked into looking into those hazel eyes.

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna unbutton your fly and pull down your pants. I want to shave lower, okay?”

Mackey moaned breathily. Oh… oh, he wanted….

“Yeah,” he whispered through dry lips. He suddenly could not stop staring. Grant did what he’d said, unbuttoned his fly and peeled the jeans off his ass and down to his thighs.

Mackey’s cock flopped forward, bigger than Mackey had ever seen
it.

Grant made a “nungh” sound, so close to it that Mackey could feel his breath across the moist tip. Sensation fluttered across his abdomen, and Grant swept the razor a width below the line of the pants before he dropped it into the glass of water he’d been using to rinse it off.

And stayed right there, on his knees, in front of Mackey.

He sighed and then met Mackey’s miserable stare. He held his fingers up to his lips and Mackey nodded, and then with his other hand, he grasped Mackey’s cock.

Mackey had to bite his hand to keep from screaming.

Grant stroked, back and forth and back and forth, and his other hand made delicate dancing movements at Mackey’s balls.

“Grant,” Mackey whispered, “I’m gonna….”

Grant did the unthinkable. He opened his mouth and took Mackey inside, sucking his way halfway down, which was when Mackey moaned into his cupped hands and came.

His knees started to shake as he pumped jizz into that sweet-lipped mouth, and he grabbed hold of Grant’s shoulders. Grant kept swallowing until finally Mackey was done. He and Grant locked gazes, and he saw satisfaction and fear. Then, when Mackey’s hands were still shaking and he wanted a kiss in the worst way, Grant raised a towel he’d brought in and started wiping Mackey down.

“There,” he said, and the word was crisp, but his voice was husky, his throat probably rough with Mackey’s come. He cleaned Mackey’s groin with efficient movements and was standing up, pulling Mackey’s pants up, when the knock came at the door.

“Jesus, you guys—Cheever damned near fucked up Jeff’s new suit—what the hell are you doing in there?”

“Grooming!” Grant called back. He took a step away and looked down from his six-foot height. “You ready,” he asked quietly, and Mackey touched Grant’s cheek. Grant turned his head and kissed Mackey’s palm, then let him go and stepped away.

“Come in!” he called, and Mackey hauled at the pants again. His hard-on was gone, so they fit now, and his stomach was smooth.

Kell took him in with a scowl. “Jesus, Mackey, button your shirt. You look like a slutty girl or something.”

“I didn’t want him to shave the damned thing!” Mackey retorted, fumbling with the buttons—and fumbling for the lie Grant was bent on telling as well. “It’s a good shirt!”

“It is,” Grant said, his voice gruff. Mackey finished the top button, and Grant
un
buttoned it. “Leave it.” He stepped back and nodded. “Yeah. Here, straighten your coat, Mackey. What do you think, Kell?”

Kell grinned. “He looks like Mick Jagger, only, you know, fourteen and better looking!”

Mackey grinned.
That
was the sort of compliment a boy wanted to hear before he went on stage. “So, you think people will like the music?” he asked, suddenly worried. What he
looked
like didn’t really matter to him. But the music? That was everything.

“If we rehearse more than we play dress up.” Kell grunted in disgust. “Now take that shit off before Cheever sees it and goes after
you
with a Sharpie too!”

Mackey nodded and started unbuttoning his shirt while Kell turned to leave. He left the door open a little, because hey—six boys in the house, who gave a shit, right?

Grant turned his shoulders to leave, too, and Mackey made a sound as he was sliding off the coat and the shirt as one piece.

Grant turned back around, and Mackey could see the shudder taking over his body. He looked down in time to see Grant adjust himself in his pants.

“What you do to me,” Grant whispered. “We can’t do this, Mackey, but God. The things you do to me.”

And then he turned and walked out the door.

T
HE
SCHOOL
had a mirror ball and some basic spotlights that the theater kids worked like crazy when the band was on stage, and they got to rehearse with those, but even then Mackey looked at the lame lights and wished for something bigger. He had an
idea
for stage effects, things that would go with the lyrics and the beat that you couldn’t do in a rinky-dink high school gym.

But for now, he had the basics and he had Tony Rodriguez, theater kid, student council member, marching band member—everything Mackey’s brothers picked on, Tony was it. But he’d been more than helpful this past week helping them figure out how to load the equipment in for prom. Kell wouldn’t work with him—called him fag to his face—and Grant couldn’t seem to get Kell to stop, but Mackey thought Tony was okay. He worked hard, even if he didn’t have any guts for the sound work.

“’Kay, I got you all plugged in, Mackey,” Tony said, almost pathetic in his eagerness to please. “Your amps’re all set and—” His voice was suddenly picked up by the mike and the resultant feedback loop about blacked out Mackey’s vision.

“Yeah,” Mackey muttered, adjusting the feed and the output and then checking Jeff’s guitar too. Jeff could play and maintain a bass beat, but everyone knew Mackey had the best ear for that shit. “Anything else, Tony?”

Mackey turned to find Tony right over his shoulder, body close, sweating in the gym, which was actually a little cool the Saturday morning before prom.

“Uhm….” Tony licked his lips and smiled nervously, then suddenly jerked upright. His face flushed in the cold. “Uhm, no, Mackey. No. I just…. Wait. Are you going to prom with anyone?”

Mackey squinted at him. “I’m a freshman,” he said, puzzled.

“Well, yeah, but someone coulda asked you,” Tony said, and then he looked away. Tony was one of
those
kids, the kind who hung out with girls constantly, the kind who always had his finger in a pie and seemed to be the center of attention. Here, in the empty gym, he was as lonely as Mackey had ever seen him.

“I don’t know any girls,” Mackey said, staring hard.

Tony’s blush got brighter. “Well, yeah,” he said, not meeting Mackey’s eyes. “I, uhm, know lots of girls. I’m not taking any of them to prom.”

Something about the admission shocked Mackey, made his eyes open wide, parted his lips. “You’re asking me to—” he breathed, half-flattered, half-appalled. Tony was a scrawny two-bit like Mackey himself, but he had brown eyes and brown hair and brownish skin, a bold nose, and a mouth not quite as plump as Grant’s.

Just that moment, it occurred to Mackey that Grant’s mouth wouldn’t be the only one that looked so sweet wrapped around his cock.