(no subject)
Title: Worth It
Chapter: 2 of godknowshowmanyprobably4
Pairing: Max Talbot/Brooks Orpik. . .because I'm obviously trying to slash Brooksie with everyone or something
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Brooks and Max have a little something going on, and epic miscommunications are happening. What I'm doing with this is alternating perspectives. Part 1 was from Max's perspective, this one is from Brooksie's.
Disclaimer: So not mine, so didn't happen, so delusional.
So, no one commented on the first part of this but jisforjane is demanding more anyway so. . .enjoy!
He has no idea. It's better that way. Sometimes I wonder how he can be so dumb and not know. I know I'm not exactly laying it out on a platter for him, but when we're alone together I don't know how he doesn't put the pieces together. I'd never tell him. I'm not sure if I trust him. I'm just trying to protect myself.
But there's a thrill of the chase in going after Max. He'll send you these hesitant signals, he'll throw you into an emotional vacuum. I try to break through. I break him down. I make love to him til he screams and moans and says my name. But we never talk to each other, not about anything that matters. I love him because he's so difficult, as much as I hate to admit it, it's that masochism in me coming out. I know he's smart and funny and engaging. I figure someone like him must feel something. But I'm not sure if I can commit to a mere possibility. Some nights I make sure I stay away from bars, clubs, and sex partners and I make sure I get him over to my house as soon as possible. I let my heart break when I can tell he's had sex with someone else recently. I order us dinner and we watch some TV and then we fuck. Sorry, I shouldn't be crude, I mean, I make love to Max. I make love to him.
Then there are the nights when I've been with someone else, trying to wean myself off of him, and I feel dirty afterwards. I need his flippant nature, his smaller, gorgeously imperfect body next to mine. Something about him makes me feel wanted, and yet I wonder if he's just enjoying the attention, if he likes having someone do things to him without expecting much back. But he turns me on. He makes me smile. I feel a strength in chasing him and winning him back to my arms every single time, even if only for a moment.
I know exactly how it started, and by the end of it all I felt used and strangely enchanted and just wanting more and more. I was having a rough time after the Stanley Cup loss and I'll admit that I was crying the way only grown men cry, those fucked up, choked, silent sobs that always seem to jar everyone so badly. I was also drinking. I'd been drinking all night and I'd been to a lot of houses, but I was on Max's back porch, and he was drunk, too. There may have been some other guys in the house. There were a lot of guys there at one point anyway.
As I was crying, my feet resting on the ledge where the porch dropped to his unkept flower bed, the arm that held my beer resting languidly on my knee. He put his arm around me, rested his head on my shoulder. I instinctively moved toward his touch, too plastered to resist the urge to be near someone, no matter how silly we must have looked. He turned towards me and I realized how long it'd been since I last didn't have anything to worry about. It was over. I stopped crying and we looked into each other's eyes. And he drunkenly slid his tongue inside my mouth. I put all of my anger and feelings of loss into that kiss. Teeth clashed, lips were bitten, scraped, worn red and puffy. I set my beer down on the porch, but it was off-balance and it fell down into the dirt. I clawed through his hair. He scratched as he grabbed onto my forearm.
"Losing sucks," I said during a brief break in the kiss, half-crying again, my eyes blurring.
"I know," he muttered back. His face was smooth. The first thing he'd done coming home was ceremoniously trim and shave that monster off his face. I liked the way he felt against my mouth, brand new and comforting. He kissed me hard back, slowly seeming to draw his own frustrations out as I'd managed to calm down a bit. His skin was hot against mine, then moist with traces of tears. He pulled back and bit the flesh at my cheekbone, like a worn out animal trying to get one more swat in before giving up the fight and leaving himself for dead. He collapsed into my arms, half-asleep. Or did I collapse into his half-asleep?
After that night, things had gotten streaky and shady and odd. There would be phone calls. Ventures to my apartment, rendezvous in the upstairs of his house, in the dark, away from the windows. Before I knew it I was having sex with him and before I knew it I was in love with him, his stupid jokes, retarded smile, absurd energy. It was a cycle to get into, but it seemed like every time we met I loved him more and made love to him with more passion and involvement, and he was giving back just that much more, teasing me, driving me crazy with his subtle sexiness. I liked to go slow, to make it last as long as possible, because the longer I spent with him the better I felt. He responded so well to the bait I laid for him. It couldn't have gone better if it were scripted, the way he gently toyed with me and the way I took him in so gladly, so desperately. One day he'd realize all the things I did, I did for him. . .at least, that's what I told myself.
If I couldn't get in touch with him at least once a week, I started feeling terrible. One such week went by when he wasn't answering his phone, when he wasn't telling me any of his plans. I considered leaving him a voicemail, but every time the phone prompted me I quickly hung up, afraid of what I might say while I was alone. He didn't call back, he behaved as he always behaved around me. I wondered what he was having when I wasn't there. I hated realizing how little I knew him, how I'd based this whole exercise on superficiality. He might not mean to make me feel this way. He might not mean a lot of things.
It got to the point that I was simply dialing his number as a force of habit. When he answered, I was surprised. It was a Monday night and we hadn't spoken in over a week. The last time he'd been to my house it had seemed nearly perfect--he had been so happy. I could see it on his face. The sudden lapse in closeness had been nagging the back of my mind, tickling my skin that was incomplete without his tentative touches. His voice awoke my senses, as half-assed as his words were, as involuntarily as his voice cracked.
"Hey," he said, smugly, "how are you?"
"Fine, fine," I said, holding my breath between the words.
"Wanna come over?" he asked me. I could practically feel his eyes glancing over his shoulder--it seemed an inappropriate question.
"Yeah, uh, okay. . .I'll be there as soon as I can," I said, as if the dentist had called to tell me I was late for my appointment. I made my exit swiftly from wherever I was--I couldn't remember and tell you if you begged me.
I had to knock a few times to get him to come to the door, but he came, a small glass of some mixed drink in his hand, ice cubes clinking far too obviously, like it was written into the scene of a soap opera. He was wearing sweatpants and an old training camp t-shirt and he looked like he hadn't been out of the house all day. He had that smell of sleep clinging to his body. His hair stuck out at fuzzy angles. He almost looked smudged.
"Come on," he said, and we shuffled silently into the kitchen where he started making me a drink, too. A stereo was on somewhere in the house, lightly thudding something mellow and instrumental, but not quite musical. I never made any attempt to understand his tastes in anything. He was certifiably gaudy and obnoxious, but I'd learned to love it, despite my own predilection for the plain and simple. I accepted the drink from him and noticed the shaded crystal of the highball glass, a subtle pattern around the rim. Did he ever buy anything that wasn't worthlessly ugly? I couldn't help but laugh silently into the first sip of it.
"Are you okay?" I said finally, after he'd been uncharacteristically silent for far too long.
"Yeah, yeah. . .I'm just not feeling all that well. Good thing we had off today."
I looked at him appraisingly, trying to read between the lines. Had he just come off a bender or something? Was he really just a little sick? Something was obviously bothering him. But I knew it wasn't my place to ask. I almost felt like our time in this moment was running out, this moment where we were just two dudes in a kitchen with highballs.
"Max. . ." I said, but he set his drink down and moved across the kitchen and put his hand on the back of mine as it hung at my side. I extended my thumb, gave his wrist the slightest of rubs. His mouth parted, and he gave me two deep blue, slightly bloodshot eyes to stare into longingly. I could never get over a lot of things about him, but it was those eyes that always fucked me up--I was pretty sure there was no such color in nature except in his eyes. I knew what they were telling me.
I had to kiss him. By this point it was a natural progression. His tongue was, as always, sweetly exploring, prompting me to just keep going and going however I meant to. It was that reassurance in his kiss that made me do what I did--every little move said, "It's okay." Every touch of his fingertips to my body said, "Yes, please." His communication was unrivaled by anyone else I'd ever been with--I could feel what he wanted in my breathing as soon as he got near me.
The kiss was short. I broke it on purpose to rub my nose up against his, to try to tell him to just stop it, to tell him that I loved him. But my skills weren't nearly as good as his in this regard. He bit lightly just below my ear, eliciting a little moan from me. . .and I knew that slowly but surely we would be heading to any available location where we might have sex. We weren't going to talk about it. He knew what he wanted and it was my job to deliver, that bastard. I placed my hands at his ass, and moved them up, underneath his shirt, feeling the uneven skin on his back that I always did, all those glorious slight imperfections that I longed to run my tongue over. I scratched playfully, giving him just one-half of a smile. He perked up a little and grabbed my ass in return, biting his lower lip as an indication of his uncertainty.
"Come on," I said, wishing I didn't sound so sexually suggestive, but it's hard not to when you have a massive erection digging into another man's thigh. I kissed him on the cheek. It wasn't chaste. I let it trail closer to his mouth, where his tongue tried to edge its way back towards the warmth of my own. He had that sweet, almost tragic way of telling me that he wanted my attentions, and sometimes just dipping wordlessly into him was the part I hated. Biting my tongue as I bit his earlobe. I never said a damn thing.
Once again, I tried to tell myself that words wouldn't be necessary, that I could say what I meant to say with my actions. I lifted his shirt up over his head, knowing full well that the house was chilly and that his skin would instantly be run over by goosebumps, that he'd fold into the warmth of my arms. And not only that, but I would have the entire surface of his body to play with--the gentle arches of his shoulders, the detailed plane of his chest, the sensitive curves along his side. He shivered immediately, and I ran my hands lightly along his spine, barely touching, feeling him shake beneath the pads of my fingers. He melted almost gracefully into my arms, kissing my neck passionately, giving me the go-ahead.
I eased him against one of the kitchen counters, running one hand through his hair and sliding the other one down into his pants, fondling him familiarly as I felt him grow erect with guidance from my hand. I slid my hand back up, across his stomach, up his chest, continuing across the collarbone as I kissed him and bit him gently. The way he deferred to the multitude of ways that I touched him just made me more needy, more dependent on his reactions. "I need you now, Max," I whispered into his ear, pressing my fingers now into his favorite spot at his tailbone.
I pulled back and looked into his eyes again. The way he lowered his lashes at me was drunken, sad, lonely. I kissed his forehead, smelling his hair: the faint whiff of shampoo, and the almost sugary scent that I can only describe as him, curling into my nostrils. For that moment, it stopped being sexual, and I just hugged him, trying to burn this moment into my mind.
As I felt him breathe against me, though, I reminded myself not to linger. I turned my head away, and smiled stupidly, hearing myself say, "You wanna go upstairs?"
He nodded, and I could feel him trying to meet my eyes, but for some reason I couldn't look back. I just grabbed his hand and tugged him along behind me until we got to the stairs. Like always, I asked him to go first. If my love for him is the masochist in me coming out, the way I do foreplay is the voyeur in me coming out--sometimes I just like to watch him. But not for long.
Once we made it to his bedroom, he looked at me pleadingly, nervously, as if he'd never done this before and he was waiting for me to tell him what to do. To that look, I simply raised my eyebrows and cocked my head to one side, giving it a little jerk as if to say, "And. . ."
He took his pants off and stood before me, naked, but not proud about it. For the second time that night, I just said, "Come on." For once in my life I'd like to see him take control of a situation.
For the first time ever, he walked up and kissed me. Oh, I hated to think about how much I'd wanted that.
He didn't kiss like he was particularly sure of himself. It was unorthodox. He'd part my lips with his tongue, tantalize me with a few licks here and there, then maybe get too carried away. . .if there was such a thing as too carried away. His hand found my face and guided me back into him, hard and warm and fast. At first, I'd tried not to kiss back, but I couldn't resist any longer. I found myself moaning into him, enjoying the tentative touches from his rough fingertips, up underneath the thin cotton of my shirt, and I found myself shivering, almost regretting the fact that he was moving me back towards the bed.
He let me fall back and crawled on top of me instead, kissing me very, very softly, letting his fingernails catch the skin at the back of my neck. We worked together to get my shirt off and I sighed in deep satisfaction as the warmth of our skin came together. The way he felt between my legs had me grunting in anticipation as I kissed him, hard, pulling his hair. I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted him to be the one on top this time. That wasn't in my nature at all, but I'd be willing to try it if. . .
He broke the kiss, just as he'd started to get hard again against my own erection. He laughed a little, refusing to meet my gaze as I found myself captivated by the lines of his mouth. I had it that bad.
"I don't feel quite comfortable up here," he said.
I grinned, finding the bastard deep down inside myself again. "Not a problem," I said, flipping him over before he could even blink.
Before I knew it my pants were off. He hadn't lost his aggressive edge--that was all him. He was leaning up into my kiss a little bit more than usual, not just begging or teasing, but giving. I could get used to that. His arms stretched across my back, pulling me closer to him, and I could get used to that, too. I opened my eyes a little as I kissed him, studying the plane of his skin, the scruff that tickled my own so often.
I reached down to adjust myself before putting myself inside him, and it was, as always, warm and inviting, but this time I didn't have free reign, I wasn't just pushing into him: he was pushing back, he was kissing me, biting lightly at my collarbone as I grunted into him, saying the things I always said which felt tacky in retrospect. But at the time, we were in our own little universe, the one where I loved him and it didn't matter why or how.
He dragged his nails delicately along my hipbone as I thrust into him slowly, but as I quickened my pace his hands unabashedly grabbed at me, no doubt leaving bruises, and I kissed him again, just enough so that he could feel my breath inside his mouth. He pushed himself up towards me more and more, and I eventually had to break the kiss just to say his name, to say something. I breathed his name into his mouth, suddenly hearing the way the bed was shaking beneath us, the thuds of the headboard against the wall.
I was beginning to wonder how much more of this I was going to be able to take. I was good at keeping myself together, but not that good. Getting a phone call from him, coming to his house, seeing his sorry, dejected face and not having the emotional wherewithal to be a friend. . .it was just far too much. I knew I was there for sex, that he would never have asked anything more of me. But why couldn't I have him other times, too? Did I have to wait until I wanted to fuck to see him, in the bedroom, why couldn't I just. . .
"Oh fuck, Brooksie," he said, in such a way that was halfway between a pant and a scream, as he came first, and I used my hands to rock him gently back into me as I came forcefully, overcome by the sensation of him beneath me, almost powerful in his own way. It was absurd, the things he could do to me.
I cleaned us up, noticing silently that I hadn't used a condom, but I hadn't been with anyone else in awhile and I'd been tested recently, like the responsible person that I tried to be. He rested his head calmly on my chest, and I pressed my nose into the fluff of his hair, much more fragrant with his sweat after sex. The bedroom was quiet, though I could hear the hum of his stereo still downstairs. I felt the surfaces of our skin return to normal temperatures. Max's body was twitching slightly, the way it did before he fell asleep--and I hated how familiar that was to me without ever being able to tell him how I felt. I scooted down so that we were even with each other, my eyes to his, which were still closed. I kissed each one. They fluttered open.
"Are you ever going to tell me what's wrong?" I whispered. I had to know.
"What do you mean?" he said. His eyes closed again; he was still half-asleep. "Pourquoi?" he said, turning his face into the pillow.
"You were a mess when I got over here, weren't you?"
"Just a bad day, I guess." He was muttering now, losing his way with the words.
"But you wanted me over here?" I said, a little above the whisper, in an effort to get him awake again.
"I guess. . .I just. . .I don't sleep much lately. Je me sens fatigué."
"You can talk to me, you know, about anything," I said, hugging him closer, but he was down and out, having been fucked in a relatively marathon fashion and he probably had a few drinks on top of that.
I doubted if he would remember this conversation. "I love you, Max," I said, more softly than I could ever remember myself speaking. He was fast asleep.
Chapter: 2 of godknowshowmanyprobably4
Pairing: Max Talbot/Brooks Orpik. . .because I'm obviously trying to slash Brooksie with everyone or something
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Brooks and Max have a little something going on, and epic miscommunications are happening. What I'm doing with this is alternating perspectives. Part 1 was from Max's perspective, this one is from Brooksie's.
Disclaimer: So not mine, so didn't happen, so delusional.
So, no one commented on the first part of this but jisforjane is demanding more anyway so. . .enjoy!
He has no idea. It's better that way. Sometimes I wonder how he can be so dumb and not know. I know I'm not exactly laying it out on a platter for him, but when we're alone together I don't know how he doesn't put the pieces together. I'd never tell him. I'm not sure if I trust him. I'm just trying to protect myself.
But there's a thrill of the chase in going after Max. He'll send you these hesitant signals, he'll throw you into an emotional vacuum. I try to break through. I break him down. I make love to him til he screams and moans and says my name. But we never talk to each other, not about anything that matters. I love him because he's so difficult, as much as I hate to admit it, it's that masochism in me coming out. I know he's smart and funny and engaging. I figure someone like him must feel something. But I'm not sure if I can commit to a mere possibility. Some nights I make sure I stay away from bars, clubs, and sex partners and I make sure I get him over to my house as soon as possible. I let my heart break when I can tell he's had sex with someone else recently. I order us dinner and we watch some TV and then we fuck. Sorry, I shouldn't be crude, I mean, I make love to Max. I make love to him.
Then there are the nights when I've been with someone else, trying to wean myself off of him, and I feel dirty afterwards. I need his flippant nature, his smaller, gorgeously imperfect body next to mine. Something about him makes me feel wanted, and yet I wonder if he's just enjoying the attention, if he likes having someone do things to him without expecting much back. But he turns me on. He makes me smile. I feel a strength in chasing him and winning him back to my arms every single time, even if only for a moment.
I know exactly how it started, and by the end of it all I felt used and strangely enchanted and just wanting more and more. I was having a rough time after the Stanley Cup loss and I'll admit that I was crying the way only grown men cry, those fucked up, choked, silent sobs that always seem to jar everyone so badly. I was also drinking. I'd been drinking all night and I'd been to a lot of houses, but I was on Max's back porch, and he was drunk, too. There may have been some other guys in the house. There were a lot of guys there at one point anyway.
As I was crying, my feet resting on the ledge where the porch dropped to his unkept flower bed, the arm that held my beer resting languidly on my knee. He put his arm around me, rested his head on my shoulder. I instinctively moved toward his touch, too plastered to resist the urge to be near someone, no matter how silly we must have looked. He turned towards me and I realized how long it'd been since I last didn't have anything to worry about. It was over. I stopped crying and we looked into each other's eyes. And he drunkenly slid his tongue inside my mouth. I put all of my anger and feelings of loss into that kiss. Teeth clashed, lips were bitten, scraped, worn red and puffy. I set my beer down on the porch, but it was off-balance and it fell down into the dirt. I clawed through his hair. He scratched as he grabbed onto my forearm.
"Losing sucks," I said during a brief break in the kiss, half-crying again, my eyes blurring.
"I know," he muttered back. His face was smooth. The first thing he'd done coming home was ceremoniously trim and shave that monster off his face. I liked the way he felt against my mouth, brand new and comforting. He kissed me hard back, slowly seeming to draw his own frustrations out as I'd managed to calm down a bit. His skin was hot against mine, then moist with traces of tears. He pulled back and bit the flesh at my cheekbone, like a worn out animal trying to get one more swat in before giving up the fight and leaving himself for dead. He collapsed into my arms, half-asleep. Or did I collapse into his half-asleep?
After that night, things had gotten streaky and shady and odd. There would be phone calls. Ventures to my apartment, rendezvous in the upstairs of his house, in the dark, away from the windows. Before I knew it I was having sex with him and before I knew it I was in love with him, his stupid jokes, retarded smile, absurd energy. It was a cycle to get into, but it seemed like every time we met I loved him more and made love to him with more passion and involvement, and he was giving back just that much more, teasing me, driving me crazy with his subtle sexiness. I liked to go slow, to make it last as long as possible, because the longer I spent with him the better I felt. He responded so well to the bait I laid for him. It couldn't have gone better if it were scripted, the way he gently toyed with me and the way I took him in so gladly, so desperately. One day he'd realize all the things I did, I did for him. . .at least, that's what I told myself.
If I couldn't get in touch with him at least once a week, I started feeling terrible. One such week went by when he wasn't answering his phone, when he wasn't telling me any of his plans. I considered leaving him a voicemail, but every time the phone prompted me I quickly hung up, afraid of what I might say while I was alone. He didn't call back, he behaved as he always behaved around me. I wondered what he was having when I wasn't there. I hated realizing how little I knew him, how I'd based this whole exercise on superficiality. He might not mean to make me feel this way. He might not mean a lot of things.
It got to the point that I was simply dialing his number as a force of habit. When he answered, I was surprised. It was a Monday night and we hadn't spoken in over a week. The last time he'd been to my house it had seemed nearly perfect--he had been so happy. I could see it on his face. The sudden lapse in closeness had been nagging the back of my mind, tickling my skin that was incomplete without his tentative touches. His voice awoke my senses, as half-assed as his words were, as involuntarily as his voice cracked.
"Hey," he said, smugly, "how are you?"
"Fine, fine," I said, holding my breath between the words.
"Wanna come over?" he asked me. I could practically feel his eyes glancing over his shoulder--it seemed an inappropriate question.
"Yeah, uh, okay. . .I'll be there as soon as I can," I said, as if the dentist had called to tell me I was late for my appointment. I made my exit swiftly from wherever I was--I couldn't remember and tell you if you begged me.
I had to knock a few times to get him to come to the door, but he came, a small glass of some mixed drink in his hand, ice cubes clinking far too obviously, like it was written into the scene of a soap opera. He was wearing sweatpants and an old training camp t-shirt and he looked like he hadn't been out of the house all day. He had that smell of sleep clinging to his body. His hair stuck out at fuzzy angles. He almost looked smudged.
"Come on," he said, and we shuffled silently into the kitchen where he started making me a drink, too. A stereo was on somewhere in the house, lightly thudding something mellow and instrumental, but not quite musical. I never made any attempt to understand his tastes in anything. He was certifiably gaudy and obnoxious, but I'd learned to love it, despite my own predilection for the plain and simple. I accepted the drink from him and noticed the shaded crystal of the highball glass, a subtle pattern around the rim. Did he ever buy anything that wasn't worthlessly ugly? I couldn't help but laugh silently into the first sip of it.
"Are you okay?" I said finally, after he'd been uncharacteristically silent for far too long.
"Yeah, yeah. . .I'm just not feeling all that well. Good thing we had off today."
I looked at him appraisingly, trying to read between the lines. Had he just come off a bender or something? Was he really just a little sick? Something was obviously bothering him. But I knew it wasn't my place to ask. I almost felt like our time in this moment was running out, this moment where we were just two dudes in a kitchen with highballs.
"Max. . ." I said, but he set his drink down and moved across the kitchen and put his hand on the back of mine as it hung at my side. I extended my thumb, gave his wrist the slightest of rubs. His mouth parted, and he gave me two deep blue, slightly bloodshot eyes to stare into longingly. I could never get over a lot of things about him, but it was those eyes that always fucked me up--I was pretty sure there was no such color in nature except in his eyes. I knew what they were telling me.
I had to kiss him. By this point it was a natural progression. His tongue was, as always, sweetly exploring, prompting me to just keep going and going however I meant to. It was that reassurance in his kiss that made me do what I did--every little move said, "It's okay." Every touch of his fingertips to my body said, "Yes, please." His communication was unrivaled by anyone else I'd ever been with--I could feel what he wanted in my breathing as soon as he got near me.
The kiss was short. I broke it on purpose to rub my nose up against his, to try to tell him to just stop it, to tell him that I loved him. But my skills weren't nearly as good as his in this regard. He bit lightly just below my ear, eliciting a little moan from me. . .and I knew that slowly but surely we would be heading to any available location where we might have sex. We weren't going to talk about it. He knew what he wanted and it was my job to deliver, that bastard. I placed my hands at his ass, and moved them up, underneath his shirt, feeling the uneven skin on his back that I always did, all those glorious slight imperfections that I longed to run my tongue over. I scratched playfully, giving him just one-half of a smile. He perked up a little and grabbed my ass in return, biting his lower lip as an indication of his uncertainty.
"Come on," I said, wishing I didn't sound so sexually suggestive, but it's hard not to when you have a massive erection digging into another man's thigh. I kissed him on the cheek. It wasn't chaste. I let it trail closer to his mouth, where his tongue tried to edge its way back towards the warmth of my own. He had that sweet, almost tragic way of telling me that he wanted my attentions, and sometimes just dipping wordlessly into him was the part I hated. Biting my tongue as I bit his earlobe. I never said a damn thing.
Once again, I tried to tell myself that words wouldn't be necessary, that I could say what I meant to say with my actions. I lifted his shirt up over his head, knowing full well that the house was chilly and that his skin would instantly be run over by goosebumps, that he'd fold into the warmth of my arms. And not only that, but I would have the entire surface of his body to play with--the gentle arches of his shoulders, the detailed plane of his chest, the sensitive curves along his side. He shivered immediately, and I ran my hands lightly along his spine, barely touching, feeling him shake beneath the pads of my fingers. He melted almost gracefully into my arms, kissing my neck passionately, giving me the go-ahead.
I eased him against one of the kitchen counters, running one hand through his hair and sliding the other one down into his pants, fondling him familiarly as I felt him grow erect with guidance from my hand. I slid my hand back up, across his stomach, up his chest, continuing across the collarbone as I kissed him and bit him gently. The way he deferred to the multitude of ways that I touched him just made me more needy, more dependent on his reactions. "I need you now, Max," I whispered into his ear, pressing my fingers now into his favorite spot at his tailbone.
I pulled back and looked into his eyes again. The way he lowered his lashes at me was drunken, sad, lonely. I kissed his forehead, smelling his hair: the faint whiff of shampoo, and the almost sugary scent that I can only describe as him, curling into my nostrils. For that moment, it stopped being sexual, and I just hugged him, trying to burn this moment into my mind.
As I felt him breathe against me, though, I reminded myself not to linger. I turned my head away, and smiled stupidly, hearing myself say, "You wanna go upstairs?"
He nodded, and I could feel him trying to meet my eyes, but for some reason I couldn't look back. I just grabbed his hand and tugged him along behind me until we got to the stairs. Like always, I asked him to go first. If my love for him is the masochist in me coming out, the way I do foreplay is the voyeur in me coming out--sometimes I just like to watch him. But not for long.
Once we made it to his bedroom, he looked at me pleadingly, nervously, as if he'd never done this before and he was waiting for me to tell him what to do. To that look, I simply raised my eyebrows and cocked my head to one side, giving it a little jerk as if to say, "And. . ."
He took his pants off and stood before me, naked, but not proud about it. For the second time that night, I just said, "Come on." For once in my life I'd like to see him take control of a situation.
For the first time ever, he walked up and kissed me. Oh, I hated to think about how much I'd wanted that.
He didn't kiss like he was particularly sure of himself. It was unorthodox. He'd part my lips with his tongue, tantalize me with a few licks here and there, then maybe get too carried away. . .if there was such a thing as too carried away. His hand found my face and guided me back into him, hard and warm and fast. At first, I'd tried not to kiss back, but I couldn't resist any longer. I found myself moaning into him, enjoying the tentative touches from his rough fingertips, up underneath the thin cotton of my shirt, and I found myself shivering, almost regretting the fact that he was moving me back towards the bed.
He let me fall back and crawled on top of me instead, kissing me very, very softly, letting his fingernails catch the skin at the back of my neck. We worked together to get my shirt off and I sighed in deep satisfaction as the warmth of our skin came together. The way he felt between my legs had me grunting in anticipation as I kissed him, hard, pulling his hair. I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted him to be the one on top this time. That wasn't in my nature at all, but I'd be willing to try it if. . .
He broke the kiss, just as he'd started to get hard again against my own erection. He laughed a little, refusing to meet my gaze as I found myself captivated by the lines of his mouth. I had it that bad.
"I don't feel quite comfortable up here," he said.
I grinned, finding the bastard deep down inside myself again. "Not a problem," I said, flipping him over before he could even blink.
Before I knew it my pants were off. He hadn't lost his aggressive edge--that was all him. He was leaning up into my kiss a little bit more than usual, not just begging or teasing, but giving. I could get used to that. His arms stretched across my back, pulling me closer to him, and I could get used to that, too. I opened my eyes a little as I kissed him, studying the plane of his skin, the scruff that tickled my own so often.
I reached down to adjust myself before putting myself inside him, and it was, as always, warm and inviting, but this time I didn't have free reign, I wasn't just pushing into him: he was pushing back, he was kissing me, biting lightly at my collarbone as I grunted into him, saying the things I always said which felt tacky in retrospect. But at the time, we were in our own little universe, the one where I loved him and it didn't matter why or how.
He dragged his nails delicately along my hipbone as I thrust into him slowly, but as I quickened my pace his hands unabashedly grabbed at me, no doubt leaving bruises, and I kissed him again, just enough so that he could feel my breath inside his mouth. He pushed himself up towards me more and more, and I eventually had to break the kiss just to say his name, to say something. I breathed his name into his mouth, suddenly hearing the way the bed was shaking beneath us, the thuds of the headboard against the wall.
I was beginning to wonder how much more of this I was going to be able to take. I was good at keeping myself together, but not that good. Getting a phone call from him, coming to his house, seeing his sorry, dejected face and not having the emotional wherewithal to be a friend. . .it was just far too much. I knew I was there for sex, that he would never have asked anything more of me. But why couldn't I have him other times, too? Did I have to wait until I wanted to fuck to see him, in the bedroom, why couldn't I just. . .
"Oh fuck, Brooksie," he said, in such a way that was halfway between a pant and a scream, as he came first, and I used my hands to rock him gently back into me as I came forcefully, overcome by the sensation of him beneath me, almost powerful in his own way. It was absurd, the things he could do to me.
I cleaned us up, noticing silently that I hadn't used a condom, but I hadn't been with anyone else in awhile and I'd been tested recently, like the responsible person that I tried to be. He rested his head calmly on my chest, and I pressed my nose into the fluff of his hair, much more fragrant with his sweat after sex. The bedroom was quiet, though I could hear the hum of his stereo still downstairs. I felt the surfaces of our skin return to normal temperatures. Max's body was twitching slightly, the way it did before he fell asleep--and I hated how familiar that was to me without ever being able to tell him how I felt. I scooted down so that we were even with each other, my eyes to his, which were still closed. I kissed each one. They fluttered open.
"Are you ever going to tell me what's wrong?" I whispered. I had to know.
"What do you mean?" he said. His eyes closed again; he was still half-asleep. "Pourquoi?" he said, turning his face into the pillow.
"You were a mess when I got over here, weren't you?"
"Just a bad day, I guess." He was muttering now, losing his way with the words.
"But you wanted me over here?" I said, a little above the whisper, in an effort to get him awake again.
"I guess. . .I just. . .I don't sleep much lately. Je me sens fatigué."
"You can talk to me, you know, about anything," I said, hugging him closer, but he was down and out, having been fucked in a relatively marathon fashion and he probably had a few drinks on top of that.
I doubted if he would remember this conversation. "I love you, Max," I said, more softly than I could ever remember myself speaking. He was fast asleep.