Going Up! (9 page)

“You’ve never bottomed?” Sean asked, stretching him gently.

“No,” Zach told him, pushing back onto his fingers because it felt
so good.

“You’re practically a romantic trope, you’re so needy,” Sean murmured. “Why haven’t you ever bottomed?”

And Zach was so mindless,
so
drunk on touch and conversation, that he actually told the truth. “Rent boys don’t usually top,” he murmured, and for a terrible second Sean’s hands actually stopped on his body. “Oh hell.”

“No,” Sean said, sounding like he was making a resolution. His hands resumed, the one soft and probing and the other hard and insistent. “Here, hold that for a minute,” and he placed Zach’s hand on his own cock while he fumbled with the condom from the nightstand. Zach knew his own body well, and he loved it when his crown was squeezed between the circle of his thumb and forefinger. He listened to Sean’s noises with the wrapper and the condom with only half an ear, and concentrated on the white light that centered at his penis and radiated out.

“Don’t come yet!” Sean admonished, and there was a sudden pressure at Zach’s entrance. Zach let out a little grunt and then… just sat still. Sean pressed forward and waited, waited, waited, and Zach’s body did an extraordinary thing. It stretched, and for a moment it radiated a sharp pain, and then… then… it stretched some more, and Sean let out a great sigh right in Zach’s ear.

“Oh….”

“Good?” Sean panted. Zach felt sweat smearing on his back when Sean wiped his forehead, so he knew this wasn’t easy.

“Yes. Yes… it’s… oh… oh yeah… move a little more. A little more. God… yes. A…
harder.
”

Sean’s breathless laugh tickled his ear. “Oh
now
you’re vocal.” And that was the last thing he said for a while with actual words in it.

Give and take—this kind of sex brought it to a whole new level. Sean gave and Zach took, then Zach thrust back and Sean took and again and again and again. A shift in position had Zach facedown in the mattress and Sean thrusting into him like a jackhammer while one or both of them started screaming
“Yes, God yes, hell yes, ohmygod don’t fucking stop!
”

Sean’s frantic spasms in his body were Zach’s only warning that Sean was close, and he groaned, desperate for his own edge, then grabbed himself and squeezed.

The pulses of come against the sheets splashed wet and hot on his stomach, and Sean fell against him, clammy with sweat.

“Wow.” Sean didn’t say anything after that for a while. Just panted and crushed Zach into the mattress. Zach took it, like he’d taken the invasion of his body and the whole other human being in his bed.

Like it was a miracle.

“Yeah,” Zach said against the darkness in front of his eyes. He was taking inventory. Everything either tingled, ached pleasurably, or was shaking too hard to tell. Little puckers danced across his back as Sean peppered his back with tiny kisses.

Sean pulled the hair back from his ear so he could place a kiss against the outer hollow, whispered, “How you doing?”

“I… uhm….” Oh no. His voice shook. His voice shook, and his eyes burned more and could he be any more of an idiot?

“Hey,” Sean whispered. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Sean rolled off of him, and his absence from Zach’s body almost hurt. While he was deftly dealing with the condom, Zach rolled on his side, away from Sean and toward the wall.

“It was great,” he said, feeling all sorts of desolation. “It was… I can’t believe… I mean….” He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t. It was like his entire life, he’d thought he knew what breathing was, what pleasurable meant, what human connection could be.

He was wrong. So, so far off the mark, so far short of what the world was about. He couldn’t stop the shivers that swept him, and it wasn’t until Sean plastered himself along his back that he was able to breathe again.

Sean’s kisses along his neck centered him. “You’ve never done that for real before,” he deduced.

“An orgasm is an orgasm,” Zach said tonelessly. “I’ve seen enough of them on TV.”

“C’mon, Zach, look at me.”

Zach sighed and rolled over, staring fixedly at Sean’s chest. Escorts didn’t have chests like that, he thought. They waxed and worked out, and their muscles were spectacular. They didn’t have imperfections like a soft waist or loose pecs or a little patch of hair in the middle. Tentatively he reached up and stroked Sean’s little patch of hair.

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked, and Zach met his eyes—sort of. His whole face was blurry, and it was dark, but he was pretty sure he was focusing in the right place.

“This is new,” he said shakily.

“What is? Sex? Been around awhile.” The words were flip, but the voice was soft, and kind. Sean wiped under his eyes with gentle thumbs.

“Happy. I’m happy. I’ve lived my whole life and not known what this feels like.”

Sean kissed him, and pulled back. “That’s awful,” he said, a little hitch in his voice. “We’re going to have to fix that.”

“Yeah?”

Sean kissed him again, and Zach opened his mouth and let that warmth fill him.

“Yeah.”

A
T
FIRST
,
Zach thought Sean meant for the rest of the weekend, which was pretty awesome. They stayed in bed for two days, getting out only to change the sheets, shower, and order takeout, but basically? They stayed wrapped up in each other. Zach fed on Sean’s family stories like magic beans fed on water, and felt his soul grow stronger, less tenuous and wishful.

Zach still had to work—but then, so did Sean. Sunday afternoon, he ran down to his apartment and came back with his outfit for the next morning and his satchel of papers to grade, and for a couple of hours, they sat at the kitchen table and worked quietly, reaching out to touch each other every now and then.

Zach had never worked with anyone like that. Not in grade school, not in college, not even in law school where group work had been part of the norm.

He was just happy to be there, in the same room, while Sean wiggled in his seat, ate all his apples and crackers, and worked in furious grading spurts followed by lots of pacing.

Finally, Sean put the last stack of papers back in his satchel and walked behind Zach, leaning over his shoulders and nuzzling his ear.

“Zach?”

“Yeah?”

“You gonna be late tomorrow?”

“Seven, probably. I was going to work out. Want to come with?”

Sean grinned at him. “I don’t have a membership.”

“I could get you one,” Zach said earnestly, and Sean kissed his cheek.

“Maybe after school settles, I’ll take you up on that. How ’bout this. You work out and come get me when you get home.”

Zach was sitting at the table in the open kitchenette. All he had to do was reach behind him to his pen drawer and pull out the little ring of keys.

“Here,” he said, pushing the spare into Sean’s hand. “Come in if you like—enjoy the quiet.”

Sean looked at the keys and then looked at him. “Can I bring a friend or two? Wendy or Kate might appreciate the quiet too!”

Zach nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” He looked sightlessly at his computer and leaned his head against Sean’s arm. “It will be nice to have someone home when I get home, I think,” he admitted.

Sean kissed his cheek, and then his jaw, and then down his neck. “We’ll try to make sure that happens a lot,” he promised.

And then, wonder of wonders, he proceeded to keep that promise, without any signs of wavering, forever.

Zach didn’t
know
it would be forever at first. He and Sean assumed it would be just what it sounded like.

A day.

A week.

A month.

And it was.

But August turned into September, and Sean moved more and more of his things into Zach’s apartment, until the only thing of his down in 1409 was the hide-a-bed, but he figured he’d let Todd keep that.

September turned into October, and Sean’s costumes came out again. He and Zach went down the express elevator every day with Jace and Quent, and in the last week of October, he wore a mummy costume, a Dracula costume, a pirate costume, a race-car driver costume, and a train engineer costume.

That last one made Zach quiet for the entire day, and after the Halloween party at 1409—which Zach dragged Leah and Jenn to as well—Zach told Sean about trains, and how much he loved them, and how they’d disappeared from his life.

And Sean had made love to him while wearing his conductor’s hat until Zach smiled and stole it and wore it for the rest of the night—and nothing else.

October turned into November, and Zach dragged Sean to the gym, and to Frisbee with Leah and Jenn, and to the Thanksgiving benefit dinner that his firm gave for their clients and that he let Leah organize because she loved it.

Zach dressed him up in a tuxedo and got him a new haircut and gave him a diamond tie clip, all so he could see his boy look like the prince Zach knew him to be.

He looked good, and he charmed pretty much the entire company in that suit.

Then they went home and Zach charmed him out of it.

Zach topped that night, and the feeling, the trust, of being allowed inside another human being’s body, inside his heart, left Zach breathless and thrilled. It took them hours to come down from the high of it, and this time, Sean’s eyes watered, and Zach discovered what it meant to be kind to someone naked and vulnerable in his arms.

It was terrifying, a responsibility Zach would never take for granted, a gift he would never cede back.

November became Thanksgiving, and they hosted Sean’s friends and Zach’s friends and Sean’s sisters. Zach’s apartment, now dressed with Sean’s tchotchkes and his movie posters and his bizarre statuette collection from various movies and his bright, cheap comforters of which he owned seven, seemed warm and welcoming.

It was a good place to have prime rib (because Sean hated turkey) and stuffing (because Leah loved stuffing and brought some to prove it) and wine and whatever anyone else felt like bringing, and they ended up watching
Mary Poppins
of all things on Zach’s big screen as the entire lot of them lay about with distended stomachs and blurry vision from too much wine.

It was a good place for Sean to ask Zach to accompany him to his parents’ house over Christmas break, and a good place for Zach to ask Sean to stay with him for all of the nights forever.

It was a good place for all of these things, but in the end, it was not the place they wanted to stay.

Zach’s lease was ironclad—he didn’t have to leave unless he wanted to. His one reason to stay had been Sean.

They moved the first week of December, from the penthouse flat to a second floor condo on La Portola, some place where Sean could have a cat and Zach could keep a car, and neither of them would ever have to ride in an elevator again.

It was less pricey than the penthouse, and not nearly as privileged, but Zach had spent thirty-four years paying for that privilege with his soul.

He had his soul back now—he figured the privilege could go to someone else.

His parents didn’t say anything when he resigned his lease, but something must have thawed. Two days before Christmas Eve, after Zach drove his spiffy new Mercedes home to get Sean and their suitcases for the trip to Sacramento, he checked the mail.

“Hey, look,” he said over his shoulder. Sean was bouncing around in the entryway, after having locked all the doors. He’d dressed warmly in his peacoat, with a gaudy fleece hat that his sister had made him on top of his head and around his ears.

“I’m looking at the night getting older is what I’m looking at!” Sean complained. “Let’s get out of here before the fog gets any worse!”

“Well seriously—it’s an invite for my parents’ party—look, it must have gotten lost after we moved. I think it’s been all around the city.” The vellum envelope was battered, marked, and redirected almost to tatters.

“Mm.” Sean’s ebullience fizzled away for a moment, and he abruptly stood looking over Zach’s shoulder, his arms around Zach’s waist. “Is that something you wanted to do?”

Zach smiled a little, and remembered the year before.

Someone please save me.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, leaning forward and capturing Sean’s mouth in a kiss. “You’re my knight in shining armor—you
saved
me from all of this. I’d have to be nuts to think about going back!”

Sean rolled his eyes. “I’m your knight in shining armor?” he asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Zach said, eyes dancing.

“And I saved you from your life in the tower?”

“Absolutely.”

“So, was the elevator my charging steed or my magic carpet or my—”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect metaphor!” Zach laughed. He threw the invitation away in the receptacle by the entryway.

“Was it my magic portal to your world, you know, like Rapunzel’s hair, except, your elevator?”

“I have no idea. Do you have our bags?”

“Absolutely, my prince. Do you have our charging steed?”

Zach shook his head. “I’ve seen you dressed in shining armor,” he said threateningly. “I have pictures to prove it.”

Sean laughed and wrapped his arms around Zach’s waist and pulled him in for a solid kiss. “C’mon, my prince. Let’s get on the charging steed and go have adventures in a neighboring kingdom, and you never have to go back in the tower again.”

Zach clung to him, secure and happy as he could never remember being. “Do you promise?”

“It is my solemn vow, my Christmas wager, my—”

Zach shushed him with a kiss. Over Sean’s shoulder, he could see the Bay Bridge, lit up in Christmas colors and flickering playfully. Yes, they would leave their little kingdom and visit another, and he would still be safe. He’d never have to return to the tower again.

~~~

A
MY
L
ANE
is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, Chi-who-whats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever, or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while at the gym, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/gymnastics/band oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate to keep her tethered to reality—which he does, while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She's been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn't see any reason at all for that to change.