Spark (13 page)

“So blue.”

Then his long, straight nose. His lips were bowed, curving up at the outer corners just enough that even when he was as serious as he was then, Hugo still looked happy.
So beautiful.

Before Kevin even registered what he was doing, he was kissing Hugo. It felt amazing. Kevin pulled away and looked into those blue eyes before kissing him again, opening his mouth to this boy, to this person who made him feel accepted just for who he was. The kiss was intense, and Kevin lingered there, focused on all the new sensations, including the slight rasp of stubble.

That same night at supper, Peder talked about two men he’d seen kissing downtown in an alleyway during his lunch hour. “It was disgusting. No one wants to see that. I don’t even want to know clandestine liaisons like that happen, let alone see them.”

After eating, Kevin retreated to his bedroom and locked the door. He put some music on and lay down, wondering how on earth he could’ve been so stupid to kiss a boy. What the fuck was wrong with him? His dad would kill him if he ever found out.

“Kevin, we need to talk,” Peder said through the wooden door, knocking loudly then turning the handle. “What have I said about locked doors in my house?”

Kevin grudgingly got up and opened the door. “Sorry, I must’ve hit the lock by accident.”

“Right. Come to my office. We have to talk.”

Kevin dutifully followed, pushing away his worry about what happened with Hugo and burying it under layers of insulation so his dad wouldn’t be able to tell something was bothering him. Kevin sat across the desk from his father in the tiny chair that always made him feel so powerless, while his father sat in a huge leather monstrosity.

“I’ve pulled some strings,” Peder started, “and was able to get you enrolled into an accounting class at Riverland Community College. You’ll be starting about the same time as high school starts up. You’ll earn college credits, so you’ll have less to worry about once you get to Gustavus, and every businessman needs a good solid foundation in accounting. I’m not concerned about your success in this because your math skills have always been well above par.”

Kevin took a deep breath to keep himself from responding as defensively as he’d like to, slowly letting the air out through his nose.

“That sounds like a great plan, but I’m concerned about getting used to a new high school. The building is huge. I’m going to be adjusting to a lot. How often are the accounting classes?” Kevin was proud of himself for seeming calm.

“Saturday mornings. That’s it. You can manage.”

“Okay. That sounds good.”

“Great,” Peder said with a wide smile. “I took the liberty of picking up the textbooks you’ll be using,” he said as he handed Kevin three books, Kevin automatically thanking him. “I expect you to start reading through them so you’ll be more than prepared. How’s the job going?”

“I like it,” Kevin said.

“Like it? You like working in the mailroom?” He asked the question as if Kevin were crazy.

“Yeah. The people are nice, I get to walk around, and it’s cool that I get to meet so many different types of people.”

“Hmm. Well, remember, your sights need to be set on running a business like this, not being a grunt or a minion delivering mail. Shoot for the top, Kevin. Earn that corner office.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kevin was excused, and he immediately went back to his room to read through the new textbooks. He may as well get a head start. It helped him not think about kissing Hugo too. Until he fell asleep and dreamed about him.

The dreams were vivid. Kevin relived their kiss again and again, each night finding more and more he noticed about Hugo. When he saw him at work, Kevin had to look away to keep himself from staring. Hugo was gorgeous.

Can you say that about a guy, or is that totally uncool?

Kevin felt stupid. What the hell was going on? He was straight. He’d dated girls, kissed them, touched their breasts, gone down on them. Kevin was still a virgin, but he was far from sexually inexperienced. Never had he looked at guys before.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was the golf pro back at the country club in Fargo who had captured his imagination. Not in a sexual way, but Kevin had spent a summer talking to the guy about how to improve his putting skills, not because he needed help but because he enjoyed talking to him. Maybe there had been more than Kevin realized back then.

Kevin tried to avoid thinking about kissing Hugo until he could no longer ignore it. Hugo confronted him and told him the kiss they shared was the first kiss he’d ever really had.

And that Hugo was gay.

Kevin was so confused.

And he felt like total shit because Kevin had basically stolen Hugo’s first kiss. Never again would Hugo have his very first kiss. Kevin could see himself recorded in Hugo’s personal history next to the name of the Kari girl who kissed him on a dare—boiled down to nothing but an experience.

Kevin didn’t want to be turned into a footnote in Hugo’s history. He wanted to be a part of his life. This boy, this man…. Hugo was the first person who had ever seen the real Kevin and liked him for who he was, faults and all. Hugo even liked him enough to forgive him and still be friends after Kevin was defensive and evasive.

Thank God Hugo was strong enough to say something and to demand answers from Kevin, because Kevin would’ve just tried to avoid and ignore, losing one of the best friends he’d ever had. That’s just how things were dealt with at the Magnus house, and Kevin wasn’t sure how else to face conflicts until Hugo taught him new ways. Instead, they ended up spending more time together, and Kevin slowly but surely realized new and terrifying things about himself. Maybe he wasn’t straight, but he knew he wasn’t gay either because he really and truly liked girls. But he liked Hugo too.

K
EVIN
’
S
cell phone ringing brought him out of his daydream and he quickly hit the Handsfree button on his car so he could answer it.

“Hello?”

“Kevin,” his ex said.

“Hi, Erin. What’s up?”

“I was just wondering what time you thought you’d be arriving?”

He glanced down at the clock and tried to determine how far he was from the state border. He saw a familiar water tower up ahead and said, “I’m just about to Barnesville, so about a half an hour. Is everything okay?”

“Just my mother. She’s driving me crazy.”

“As usual,” Kevin said with a laugh.

“Yes. Some friends from high school were going to take me out on the town tonight, and you know how I feel about leaving the kids alone with my mom.”

“Going to find a hot date, huh?” Kevin said with a smile in his voice. They were both at the stage in their divorce that they could talk like this now.

“Maybe, but based on where we’re going, I think I’m more likely to pick up a man in his sixties who enjoys wearing plaid pants paired with a polo shirt.”

“Ah,” Kevin said with a laugh. “Going to the country club, huh?”

“You got it. There’s a wine tasting.”

“Well, I’ll let you go so you can get all gussied up for your sugar daddy.”

“Stop it, Kevin,” she giggled.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can so you can escape from your mom.”

“Talk soon.”

Kevin hung up, and the black plastic compass Finn had taped to the dash drew his gaze. It reminded him of another compass: the compass keychain he bought for Hugo’s sixteenth birthday.

T
HE
silver keychain was almost perfect but too generic, so he talked to the jeweler about how he could personalize it. For an entire day Kevin wrote and wrote the words he wanted engraved in a spiral on the back of the piece. He initially tried to copy over a font he’d found in a book, but that looked far too impersonal. In the end, he just wrote in the cursive he so rarely used unless he was signing something.

He did all that for a stupid keychain that he blew off with a quip, saying he wanted to make sure Hugo wouldn’t get lost in the woods, because he was terrified of telling Hugo how he really felt. It was about so much more. He just didn’t know how to tell Hugo besides through written words.

Kevin had finally found someone who made him feel like he was on the right track, on his
own
track rather than his father’s, and so he wanted to let Hugo know. He’d simply been too much of a coward to come right out and tell Hugo how intense his feelings were. It was terrifying. He learned from his parents that feelings were things to keep a lid on, not expose to the world.

He’d learned their lesson well.

Until he decided to act on his feelings, to see if there really was something going on. Kevin was nervous as hell and had tried to touch Hugo in both subtle and obvious ways. Unfortunately, Hugo just ignored him. But when Hugo slept over and was struggling to sleep, Kevin decided to take a chance.

Then Hugo touched him in ways Kevin never even imagined. Hugo did things that made Kevin willingly hand over every speck of control he’d been struggling to hold on to his entire life, even the tiny bits his father hadn’t managed to strip away.

When Hugo first slipped a finger into Kevin’s ass, Kevin couldn’t help his reaction. It was terrifying and wonderful and so fucking freeing that Kevin begged and moaned and wanted to just curl up and allow Hugo to take care of him for the rest of his life.

As the last couple of weeks of that summer burned away, Hugo and Kevin experimented with each other. Every single time, Kevin felt put back together even if his father had tried to break him earlier in the day. And when Kevin found out he liked to give Hugo pleasure in ways that were
so not straight
, he was more than surprised. It took a while for him to build up the courage to try something beyond a hand job, but when he did, he felt so accomplished that he could bring Hugo satisfaction like that.

Kevin could be vulnerable with Hugo in a way he’d never allowed himself with anyone before. He didn’t need to have shields up or barriers protecting his heart or reputation or feelings. Kevin could just lie there in the middle of his bed, naked and exposed, allowing Hugo to worship his ass and his cock. Kevin’s legs could drift farther apart, and when he watched Hugo looking down between Kevin’s legs as his asshole was stretched and filled with fingers, there was no shame. The only thing he felt was thanks and acceptance.

T
HE
rushing wind of a semi barreling past Kevin brought him out of his thoughts, and he realized he was hard as a rock. Just thinking about Hugo had done that to him. That hadn’t happened in ages.

How did I give up something like that? How did I ever walk away?

New Discoveries, Blow Jobs,
& Tricia Stevens

T
HE
final weeks of summer before Kevin and Hugo started their junior year were filled with moments of discovery. Kevin’s change of heart was never fully explained to Hugo aside from him wondering aloud if he were bisexual. That didn’t mean Hugo wasn’t curious what brought about the change in Kevin that caused him to suddenly be okay with their experimentation. Hugo didn’t want to jinx what they were doing by questioning it or delving too deeply into the reasons for the difference, which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Instead, they both found out they could literally spend hours kissing each other and often spent the time after work and before Charisse came home from work with their lips fused.

They allowed their hands to explore and stroked each other off almost every time they had a heavy-duty make-out session. On more than one occasion, they ended up naked on either the sectional in the basement or on Hugo’s twin bed, kissing across warm skin, exploring where each boy liked to be kissed or sucked.

This was how Hugo discovered how greedy Kevin was to have fingers in his ass. He begged for Hugo to “Please. Just touch me there. Fuck, Hugh. Touch my ass again, please.”

So Hugo reached for the lube his sister had bought him—embarrassing the hell out of him when she’d thrown it at him along with a box of condoms one afternoon after telling him to be safe. “Neither you nor Kevin need to deal with STDs,” she’d said.

Hugo drizzled the cool gel on his fingers and used his thumb to attempt to warm it. He was nervous as hell, but he wanted to give Kevin what he asked for. It had been so much easier in the heat of the moment weeks prior, but doing this while Kevin lay on his back looking at him, that was scary.

“It might be a little cold,” Hugo warned as he looked into Kevin’s hungry gray eyes. The moment he touched the tight gathering of skin, Kevin’s lids became heavy, and when he spent time exploring the snug pucker, Kevin seemed to have a very hard time keeping them from shutting all the way. “You like this?”

“What’s not to like?” Kevin smirked while Hugo circled around and over his tight hole. “Come on, don’t be stingy. I want you inside me.”

Hugo nearly came at Kevin’s words, especially combined with the look on his face and the steady pressure he was placing on Hugo’s cock with his thigh.

Hugo slipped past the fluttering muscles, much easier than last time because of the aid of the lube—also, he suspected, because Kevin knew how he had to relax. He easily slid past his second knuckle and started to finger Kevin, in and out in a steady rhythm, all the while listening to Kevin’s breaths become more labored.

“Another,” Kevin rasped. “Put in another.”

Hugo pulled out and looked down, not knowing how he’d get a second finger between the skin that seemed to draw just as tight as it had been before he slipped his first finger in. He added a few more drops of lube and started the same way he had before, slowly slipping two fingers in this time.

“Fuck, Hugh, finger my ass,” Kevin begged, and Hugo couldn’t stop himself from laughing softly.

“You’re a bit… eager, aren’t you?”

“You would be too if I was in your ass,” Kevin breathed as Hugo slipped past his second knuckle and pulled back out again, loving the warm drag on his fingers.