there must be some way out of here;

[wingborne]

“My apartment’s going to be empty tomorrow night,” John says, “If you want to come over.”

They’re on their fifteenth official date, and John thinks Dave’s missed the hint. Dave is glancing outside, his sunglasses reflecting the tinny line of cars buzzing next to the restaurant, his burger sitting untouched beside his salad. John rubs his fingers together under the table, sweat sticky on his neck. This is stupid. He’s stupid, he chose the wrong time, he should have picked an anniversary, any anniversary, even the anniversary when Dave picked the biggest booger up his nose or the one where John accidentally shot him too hard with paintballs, leaving bruises the size of fists up and down his back. He chose the wrong time to ask, Dave was probably thinking about Dave things. Raps. Foreign policy. Raps about foreign policy.

“Okay,” Dave finally says, “Sure.”

“It’s going to be really empty,” John tells the half-empty ketchup bottle on the table, “Nobody’s going to be there all night. Except for you and me.”

“Emptier than a senior citizen’s karaoke night.”

“We’ll be the only ones there—”

“Jesus shitlicking Christ, I get it.” Dave pushes the burger away from himself, and John knows he’s got it, because the red has spread from his face to his ears.

“We don’t have to do—”

“I get it, for once in your life, you can shut your cherry pie hole.”

That’s what John likes about Dave. They can say things without saying things, talk in roundabout ways, but really get each other. Really, really get each other.

Just in case, though, John tells him, “I want to fuck you tonight.”

“Jesus!”

Dave’s face burns with the color of residual sunburn, even after he’s paid the bill at the restaurant. John jogs to catch up with him down the dirty street. In punishment and shame, Dave cranes his head away from him for the rest of the afternoon. They pass by a park, children with wealthy shoes weaving through the trees, unaware of their soft skulls that yield like bird eggs. They pass by a garden, ripe fruit hanging low in rich curves with gliding vines clutching fast. They pass by a bakery, the ovens working to an enraged red over black, yeast rising in swells and gasps.

“I’ll come by at seven,” Dave tells him at the apartment, “I’ll wear my fuck me clothes.”

--

John scrubs himself in the shower. He’s bought new soap, and new shampoo. His soap is something like cocoa butter, kiwi, shea, aloe vera, stout, a flower from the east, a flavor from the west, a broken coconut from a lost island, mixed together in this small, slippery thing. His shampoo is cherry, and he likes it very much.

The suds collecting in white foamy clusters between his fingers, dripping down like clouds. They are washed away by the persistent spray of the shower head, even as his fingers dig deep into his scalp. He washes his skin until it’s painfully pink, scraping away the layers of his skin and himself until he’s barely there. In the privacy of the shower, he pinches a roll on his stomach between his forefinger and thumb.

He wishes he got a haircut a few months ago, because his hair is long and unmanageable now, sticking to the sides of his face in the foggy mirror. He wishes he attended the gym with religious fervor, because the fat in his stomach sticks out over the towel he’s clutching to his groin. He wishes he could open one of Dave’s art programs, the ones he uses to touch up his photographs, except this wouldn’t be on his shiny computer. This would be in real life, removing the embarrassing stray hairs, embellishing the tweedy ones running down his stomach, add more muscles to his arms and legs. He can’t see what Dave sees in him. He regrets asking for sex in this sorry state.

But he’s only got an hour to regret, and then he’s dabbing cologne on himself. He saves time by regretting a second after he’s finished, but he only seems to make the peachy smell worse when he tries to rub it out against his palms. He tries to cover the smell with different cologne, but the mingled smell together makes him gag and open the tiny bathroom window, inhaling the smoggy smoke from the barbeque downstairs. He pulls on a red sweater, then switches it to his green sweater, then settles for the blue, but the bell’s already ringing when he realizes he should change the shirt underneath.

Dave’s at the door with a bottle of cheap wine and a bouquet of weeds, picked from the apartment communal flower pot, which barely boasts dimmed cigarette butts and empty gum wrappers on a good day. His hair is clean and his teeth are white, and he’s dressed in a casual sweatshirt and dutifully ripped jeans.

“Hi,” John says.

“You smell like a skunk died on you,” Dave says.

They watch a movie together, except John’s not really watching the movie. The lights have been turned off, leaving the flashing flesh colors of the actors to dash across his well-worn couch. He can see Dave watching the television impassively, jaw line moving when he eats the popcorn.

Dave is probably good looking. He sees girls looking at Dave, sometimes. They look at him like they hadn’t had a good meal in days, hungry and wanting, even as Dave scratches his stomach underneath his lumpy unwashed shirt. John doesn’t know how he looks at Dave. He thinks Dave is handsome, but it’s more dangerous than that. Dave smiles at him, and his heart twists when that happens.

He pretends to yawn, draping his arm over Dave’s shoulders. His heart is beating fast, and Dave snorts. When the aliens flash onto the screen, he kisses Dave, pushing against him with his cold fingers crawling underneath the sweatshirt.

“My, oh my,” Dave mouths against his shoulder, “Why, I never. You take me to be an easy woman, Egbert? Gotta slide that ring first on my middle finger, I’ll take on your name for a fat dowry.”

“Shut up and kiss me, stupid.”

He kisses him on the neck, because that’s what they do in romantic movies. He likes romantic movies. They are simple and clean. But he has no candlelit dinner or dozen roses, just the remote control digging into his calf and the television roaring too loudly in his ears, the faint echoes of cars in the background and the apartment creaking in the wind. His elbow misses Dave’s nose by inches when he scrounges around to turn off the television, leading him to the bedroom.

Dave flops down on the bed, like he’s done time and time again, and John could almost mistake this time for another time. But it isn’t. The bed creaks under their combined weight, and Dave slobbers on him for kisses. Dave’s got too much spit to be a good kisser, but John’s got too much teeth. They even out between themselves, tangling their limbs together and grabbing onto solid parts to keep themselves whole.

His glasses are cutting an edge over the bridge of his nose, so he folds them. Sets them aside on his stand, next to an open box of band-aids and a stray dollar bill that’d been lost from its scarce herd. Dave snaps his sunglasses shut, pushing them over the glasses, and then he raises his sweatshirt over his head. He’s not wearing a shirt underneath. John can watch with the light from the window. Dave’s muscles shift like shadows under skin, veins like ribbons over his thin arms. John is envious, watching the chest and stomach flatten until the sweatshirt has been discarded to the floor, because he is not so thin. Dave’s hip bones and ribs protrude like embarrassed cliffs, jutting out when he inhales.

“Like what you see?” Dave asks, and his voice almost cracks on the last word. “Six fifty for five minutes of ogling, ten for a picture in your wallet.”

“Shut uuuup.”

“I take credit cards, Visa’s fine, get your Wells fucking Fargo in here,” and Dave’s voice continues even as John leaves a hickey on his chest. Dave smells like apples, with a hint of cinnamon, but he tastes nothing like it. His flavor is intoxicating, and John leaves purpling marks where his teeth had dug in. Dave is talking about banks, money, and love, breathing heavily. He doesn’t say the love part, but John can feel it through the reverberations on his chest, echoing in the sound chamber of his body. The room is dark. When he raises his head, he can barely see the dark dime spots of his nipples. But he can feel them between his fingers, perked up and tight against his body.

“Nothing’s going to happen even if you press them,” Dave tells him, stopping abruptly after a few cutting remarks about Alexander Hamilton.

“You don’t like me touching there?”

Dave shrugs, embarrassed, hands going to the hem of John’s sweater to pull it up. He’s unsatisfied even when his top half is laid bare for him in the dark. He tugs down on the jeans, and John unzips them, feeling the belt press against his waist, denim rubbing against his legs.

“Sexy,” is what Dave says about the Ghostbusters boxers, and then he pulls them down, too.

It’s growing cold in the room, and his skin sprouts goosebumps down his arms and legs. Dave’s hands are on him now, and he’s rolled on top, touching everywhere. He palms down his chest and across the line of hair over his stomach, fingers touching over his ass and grinding against him with the cold belt of his jeans pressing along. It’s strange. It’s an invitation to a foreign body. It’s a good feeling, but he feels exposed, nevertheless. The terrible shamefulness of being lies in the small paunch and lacking muscles and strange little hairs. He anchors himself in kissing Dave’s mouth, housing himself in the warmth of sliding tongues, murmuring when Dave’s hands stroke him in a particular way that makes his body stiffen and his arousal more apparent.

He’s not used to this.

Or, more precisely, not used to this way of being loved.

Dave’s always been sweet on him, he knows, even when they were children. He doesn’t know why. He thinks it’ll always be a mystery to him, why Dave orbits around him when even the most handsome stare at him like wolves. He’s new at being boyfriends, and never remembers anniversaries, but here, Dave is still bending his neck to him in worship, kissing him in butterfly darts down his chest and stroking down his thighs, raking his fingers until he’s choking back startled moans. From between his legs, Dave glances up at him with his striking eyes. They’re ordinary in red, but striking in how needy they look, and John can’t quite understand why, when he rests his hand in Dave’s hair, that brings a small, awkward smile to his face in satiation.

The romantic movies fade to black, and the porn he watched doesn’t linger on the intermediate, in the time when someone is slobbering and half-dressed, the other pitifully aroused and wanting. Dave is barely even making a sound while he’s lying there in his cacophony of lascivious moaning. He knows Dave is sometimes quiet, but he rolls on top of him, pulling down his jeans. Something stirs inside him when he catches sight of the tent in front. Dave is attracted to him. In a sexual way. He thinks he’d sound quite stupid if he said that out loud, but he can’t tell if he did or not, because Dave is blabbering about bears eating twinkies.

They must be fuck me clothes, because Dave isn’t wearing any underwear. His cock appears in small increments, somewhat erect and yielding against the jeans. It’s a darker color than his thighs, standing out almost violently in arousal, and he isn’t sure if he’s imagining the dampness from where his knuckles brushed against it. The freckles darting over his cheeks and shoulders reappear over his thighs, a constellation of darker colors over his pale thin legs. Dave lies back over the sheets, tugging off his socks, watching him with almost worry.

“It’s pretty damn good,” Dave says, and John can’t connect if he’s talking about what he was rambling about before (wooden cabinets? Seals? Walruses?) or his body. He watches Dave’s fingers tighten, knuckles growing white on the sheets, as he spreads his legs. He’s fallen silent, now, letting John look. It must mean something special. John can’t figure out what it means.

Dave is thin, muscles clean and simple. His shoulders slope shallowly to his arms, his waist barely curving, his legs falling into straight lines. Dark bristly hair curls over his stomach and groin, though he has less. He is like a bird, bones fragile and John suddenly realizes, in horror, breakable. He doesn’t know why Dave is letting him examine him like this, especially if he already knew he was fragile. In the darkness, he searches to catch Dave’s eyes, but he’s watching the wall and breathing in shallow gasps, shadows pooling in his stomach, arousal prominent in display. He waits for Dave to snap up, ask him if he’s watched his fill, make a snappy comeback, because this was the same Dave who spraypainted a hairy purple cock on a wall just because he was bored, and he knows this to be true.

Maybe this was what love meant. He doesn’t know. He’s frightened, heart jumping like a rabbit, because he’ll always know this terrible fragile secret, even as he touches the muscles on Dave’s thighs and sides, trying to feel the ropy strength tied to his core. But he knows, now, these things that mean love.

“Everything okay?” Dave sits up, legs still spread, but hand going to John’s cheek and feeling across his jaw.

“You’re pretty hot,” John tells him, tracing down his thighs with his fingers.

“Damn straight.”

He’s never sucked another man’s cock before, but he’s not completely stupid. When he sinks his mouth over the cock, he thinks it tastes different from the other parts of Dave. It’s hot, and hard in his mouth. He swallows and Dave strokes his hair, like he’s worried. But this, this was in porn, so he can do this. He can bob his head and hollow out his cheeks, he can slide his tongue over the veins and rub at the testicles hanging low and pressed against the clean sheets. His jaw already aches in small pangs, and the taste fills his mouth, but Dave breathes harder and hikes up a knee. Something must be going right.

His nose sometimes brushes against the bristly hairs, but he’s too new to encompass the erection completely. He’s disappointed, even if Dave’s hot breathing isn’t. But his hand wraps around the base, jerking against the silky skin in stuttering movements, feeling the heat of the core. Porn doesn’t teach him the important things, and he’s disappointed in that, too. It doesn’t teach him that the cock would twitch in his mouth whenever he licks the right way, draws a saliva-coated pattern, fingers curling against his ass. It doesn’t teach him that he could feel it getting harder, and that made all the difference, because he can make Dave make these sounds above him. He can flick out his tongue down the underside, and watch his clean thighs tremble. He can suck along the head, and watch Dave gripping tight against the blankets, inhaling through his nose. Dave’s hips sometimes jerk against him. It’s unexpected, making the back of his throat hurt where it rams. Dave sometimes grips his hair too tightly, making his scalp burn. But he sucks and licks and thinks that he’ll learn how to do this, one day, and let Dave fuck his mouth. Then he could reap all the aroused sounds he wanted, and he wanted more and more with every small, quiet groan.

He glances upwards at him. Their eyes meet. Something happens in his mouth before Dave is pulling him away by the hair, and semen dribbles out in a thin stream on the blankets.

“Fuck, sorry, fuck, I didn’t, it’s like Moby fucking Dick, nobody told Moby fucking Dick when to blow, he’s a whale,” and Dave blabbers on. John scrunches his face when Dave tries to wipe a few droplets near his mouth. The taste is strange. But he doesn’t dislike it. He watches as Dave’s whale want winds down, until he’s lying there, spent, with his own semen sliding down his thighs and softening cock pressing down against him. John hadn’t noticed before, but Dave has been sweating, a sheen coating him where the light happens to fall. His rapid, frantic breathing slows down to a calmer lull, and he looks vulnerable, naked and dry on the inside.

John lies beside him, petting back his hair, and Dave watches him. He only moves his eyes, hand pliable when John holds it and covers over the knuckles. Dave never looks this relaxed, and he’s usually relaxed in his pose. But his relaxation usually comes from within, from a forceful apathy of his slumped shoulders and bent back. His within is all outside, now, in tiny splatters, so he lies boneless, truthful, quiet. John kisses him on the cheek, and he can feel the slick sweat from where his hands reach up to touch his shoulders. Dave’s spread out over the bed, but he seems to take up more space than that. John likes it. He likes the way Dave looks at him.

“I’ll do you,” Dave finally says, voice raspy.

“You don’t have to.”

“Nobody gets a free lunch.”

“It wasn’t really a lunch.” John sucks on his fingers thoughtfully. “And I can take care of it myself—”

“John fucking Egbert, come over here and let me suck your fucking weenie.”

“Wow. Sexy.”

Dave elbows him in the gut before they adjust positions. His muscles move like creaky cogs, and he doesn’t start for a while. John thinks it’s because he just came, so he doesn’t mind, even though his skin prickles in yearning for touch. He holds Dave’s hand, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles, and waits. But when the wait grows too long, he glances down at him to see Dave staring down at his erection almost shyly.

“You don’t have to,” John says.

“I want to.”

“Yeah. I know, stupid. But you don’t have to.” He squeezes his hand, and he thinks, he’s never really been as brave as Dave. He never would be. He doesn’t know what Dave thinks is at stake. But maybe Dave only thinks the same things he’s thought about him. A frightening thought. John rolls his head back and relaxes.

Dave lowers himself until he sucks on the tip, and John drops a leg over his shoulder to pull him closer. It’s still a strange feeling, a strange tongue lapping at his sensitive cock, at his secret arousal that’s been hidden since puberty. It’s not his fingers, and this fact perplexes him the most, though it shouldn’t. He’s used to his own fingers pressing down familiar paths, but Dave’s tongue is different. He cannot control it. It touches him, and he moans deep in his throat, feeling filthy and needy and strangely powerless.

He thinks Dave is humming a song, perhaps a theme song, perhaps the Power Rangers theme song, so he flicks him across the forehead to stop him. But he doesn’t mind, not when he can look down and see Dave’s head of hair moving between his legs. His cock feels good, but his hands feel worthless. He doesn’t want to knot Dave’s hair because when Dave had done it, it had hurt, and Dave spent too much time on his hair to appreciate the neediness. He settles for laying his hands over his stomach, curling up into fists when Dave pleasures him in some strange, new way, that nobody has ever done to him before.

In the dark, he cannot tell if his cock is bigger or if he could swallow more than Dave, but Dave’s hands play a bigger part than his mouth. He lets the feelings ride over him in swells, breaking his own promise to his hands when he flutters out his fingers to touch the top of Dave’s head in soft brushes. It feels good. He knows this, and he moans louder, and he must be saying things. It’s embarrassing, Dave is the one who’s supposed to talk, but he thinks he’s calling Dave’s name because when he talks with the vibrations in his throat, Dave hurries in licking him, fingers twisting against his cock. He thinks he’s saying something like harder or more, because Dave is giving that to him, but he’s not paying attention to his voice. The feeling wrecks upon his body, breaking him apart, splitting him open at the seams and his cock is moving under the faithful ministrations. It feels good. He knows this. It feels good and he’s twisting under his tongue, moaning louder than anything he’s watched in porn, begging for the release that Dave is clumsily and frantically trying to give, but it’s not enough.

He’s trembling all over, his bones barely holding up his frame, and he digs his heel into Dave’s back. It’s more than his hand could ever do, but it’s more than a mouth. It’s strange, and good, and strange, the way Dave’s hair feels when it brushes against his thigh, the way his back looks when he dips lower to service him, the sight of his clothes lying in rumples beside the bed, and he can feel it, coursing through him again, something that shakes him in a cry and he’s pushing Dave’s head away, and even when Dave moves back, his hand is still there, the thin fingers, and he comes and falls apart in front of him.

He’s numb, and Dave’s saying something. About water? Basketball? He needed to stop Dave before he got lost in a sports analogy, but his voice comes out shaky, and he can’t quite put himself together.

But Dave belly flops next to him, and kisses his ear in a slow, wondering way, like it’s the first time they’d ever kissed, and he slowly composes himself. Dave puts him back together, soft kisses and harder nips, slow and intoxicating, drinking him in. It’s love. It must be love, he thinks, because Dave must love him to fear the same vulnerability. All the same thoughts, Dave must have had at one time, too. He wonders what Dave could see in him to make him love so much and so hard. But sometimes, like now, when Dave gazes down with his adoring, quiet gaze, he can almost see it.

He drags the sheets over himself, and Dave already rolls up like a burrito beside him, resting his chin on his arms.

“You’re built like a quarterback,” Dave says, fingers playing across the nape of John’s neck, tickling and peaceful.

“Don’t start with the sports, jeez. What are you trying to say?” John turns his head, and he’s close enough to see every semblance of Dave, the curve of his cheek, and lines of hs jaw.

“Just that you’re hot. Can’t a guy compliment his boyfriend around here?”

“Yeah, well, you’re hotter.” He knows Dave is revving up for a complicated analogical hotness war, so he kisses him quickly, and watches Dave blush inside the warmth of his blanket. The burrito annoys him, because it reminds him that Dave steals blankets, so he unrolls him forcefully until he’s hugging and kissing him again, tangled in a sweaty mess.

“I like you,” he tells Dave.

“Yeah. And here’s looking at you, kid.”

“I really, really, really like you.”

“Don’t get cocky.”

“I really, really, really, really, really like you.”

“I know.”

Dave smells nice, and he tastes better, and he feels warm. John is glad they don’t need to say all the words to know what they meant. He knows Dave understands that he loves him, and he’s happy about it.

All the same, though, just in case, he says, “I love you.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, I know what you mean.” Dave sighs, chest rising and falling, then glances at him. “I love you, too, jackass.”

“I kn-ow.” John had twenty different plans to draw on Dave’s face, slip six fifty into Dave’s jeans, cook him breakfast in the morning. But for now, he rests his head against him, and kisses him soft and slow.