hands were reverent, and every touch sang. Ellery thick and hard in his hand was as important to the moment as Ellery’s touch on his own cock. Jackson’s stroke grew harder, faster, and Ellery sighed. Jackson kept it up, bending to catch Ellery’s spend in his mouth.
Ellery arched and came, and the joy of it was enough to send Jackson over into Ellery’s fist.
Jackson rested, his head on Ellery’s stomach, and Ellery stroked his hair.
“Jackson?”
“You love me,” Jackson said, confident of it as he never had been.
“For quite some time,” Ellery said, his voice thin. “And you love me.”
“But I think I finally believe it. Believe there’s a reason you’d love me.”
Ellery let out a strained and broken laugh. “There’s several. God, you’re dumb.”
“Yeah. I am. I’ll try not to be so dumb in the future. I don’t want to miss any moments like this.”
Ellery’s breath quickened, and Jackson looked up in time to see him wipe under his eyes.
“What?”
“You could have. You could have. So many times.” His voice shattered, and Jackson moved to pull Ellery’s face against his neck.
“I can’t do that anymore,” he said. Oh, Ellery. You deserve so much better. The least Jackson could do was give this man the healthiest, most real person he could be.
“No,” Ellery whispered. “Please, baby. We have so many more moments like this. Don’t end them before you have to, okay?”
“Not if I can help it.” Jackson kissed his temple, and the darkness protected them like it had protected the giant octopus. Sometimes the dark was needed, because the light hurt too much, and sometimes it was needed to see the light in a lover’s heart.
And sometimes it was both.
That One Shirt
A Jackson and Ellery Story
THE IRONY of being on medical leave forced vacation was that the bedroom was set up so that Jackson’s side of the bed was right next to the phone chargers.
Ellery’s phone went off, and Jackson woke up and handed it to him; he wasn’t allowed to get up.
He’d tried a couple of times. Couldn’t they at least go running together? And when the weather was milder, it worked. But not in mid-August, after their trip to Monterey. Yeah, sure, Jackson was doing better. He had everything, including his meeting with the rabbi, down on the planner.
But Ellery wasn’t about playing fast and loose with the rules, and the rules seemed unhealthily obsessed with the temperature on the steamy Sacramento streets.
Like this morning, about two weeks before Jackson was due to go back, when Ellery’s phone went off to—oh dear God—the Shins playing “New Slang.”
Jackson rolled out of bed hopefully, reaching into one of the two drawers he had in Ellery’s dresser for running clothes.
“No. It’s already ninety outside. You can go to the cooled gym and use the treadmill or wait until I get home and swim.”
“My dick’s getting pruny. It might never inflate again.”
Even with his hair rumpled and pillow creases in his face, Ellery could still manage a deadpan look that would freeze solid rock.
“You. Would find. A way.”
And with that, he got out of bed and quite literally glared Jackson back in.
“I have to get back in bed?” Jackson threw the covers back and slid his hand down his boxers. “If I have to get back in bed, I might as well do something useful.” He’d been soft when he’d rolled out of bed—morning wood had come and gone—but his own hand, squeezing, defining, sorting things that had been all crumpled, into a place where they could air out… well, it did make a helmeted warrior stand to attention, as it were.
Ellery’s eyes widened in surprise, and he stood, wearing his tank and boxers, scratching his head like he’d never seen Jackson stroke himself before.
“That’s… that’s your alternative? I tell you to go back to bed and you’re going to masturbate?”
The fact that it made Ellery uncomfortable was an even bigger turn-on. “Sure,” Jackson said happily, spreading his knees and arching his hips, getting really comfortable. “Just me, here on the bed, my good right hand.”
Oh wow. He was getting hard. He closed his eyes and enjoyed knowing Ellery was watching with his mouth open. With his other hand he reached up to pinch a nipple, enjoying that too.
“I’m… uh….”
Jackson slitted his eyes to see that Ellery’s boxers had tented, and his eyes had gone from wide to half-lidded and heavy. Jackson allowed his to close again, pretty sure he could get what he wanted without needing to see.
Jackson shoved his boxers