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"Stop," Caesar sunk his nails into the soft hair sliding between his fingers. His knees felt weak, like balls in joints being held without a pin. The warm heat of the mouth around his cock was so close to perfect it hurt, but he wasn't gone enough yet that he hadn't heard the locker room door creak open or the tell tale clack of footsteps as someone rustled around.
Whoever it was, Caesar hated them, just like he hated the soft gasp that shook his chest as the girl--Anna? Ann?--pulled away.
"What gives?" Her lips were red, and she dragged the back of her wrist against her mouth even though her lip gloss was already gone. She didn't look too happy, the high flush on her apple cheeks bright even in the dark corner of the showers that they'd found.
Her brown hair was mussed out of its neat ponytail, losing the illusion of being shorter and much thicker. She had slim shoulders and full breasts that heaved with each breath under the thin layer of her t-shirt, and in a lot of ways she reminded Caesar of the girls in the magazines Joseph dragged over for the two of them to go through.
A small grimace pursed her lips, and the girl--it was definitely Mary. What had he been thinking?--stood up. "Look if you're not into it, just say so, jeez," she muttered, scrubbing at her knees.
"There's someone here," he retorted, and in the dark he caught the arch of her full eyebrows rising upward.
"Oh?" she asked, "Is that all?"
That was how it ended, Caesar's first blow job. Mary-possibly-Anna had shrugged her shoulders, told him to grow up, and left him with his pants around his knees because, as she put it, what good was a guy who pulled on hair?
She had been the first in a line of brunettes with blue eyes.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Woah would you look at that?" Joseph flipped his magazine around, a thick-bodied blonde greeting Caesar from the glossy centerfold pages.
"You shouldn't talk about girls like that," Caesar blurted out, and immediately wished he hadn't. Joseph's dark brows had pinched together as he turned the magazine back around. He'd smuggled them over in his backpack. Not that Caesar didn't have any dirty magazines of his own. They were all stored under the loose floorboard in his closet, about six in total depending on what Joseph stole during or after their study sessions.
"I didn't mean anything by it," Joseph replied softly. And the mood that had come over Caesar's room when the younger boy had first whipped out his prize from his backpack had evaporated.
This was not how things were supposed to go. Every Thursday Joseph came over to study, and at the end they almost always went through magazines like this. Centerfold girls, tall girls, short girls, thick girls, thin girls, the list went on, but they always looked and shared the pictures of the ones they liked best.
Maybe it was the talk his father'd had with him last night. Just after dinner the old man had called Caesar back and made him stand at the sink to dry dishes as he washed. You been with a girl yet? his father had grunted. Yeah Caesar had replied, maybe just a bit too quickly. But Mary-maybe-Anna counted.
He could still hear his father's grunt of acknowledgement, and picture the steady gaze he'd kept on the window before he'd set the dishes aside and wiped the soap bubbles off his hands. His grip had been strong, and he'd turned Caesar by the shoulders for them to face each other so that when he spoke not a single word had a chance to go unnoticed. Listen, he'd given Caesar a small shake, You be good to her, do you hear me? You respect her, and you do whatever she wants you to do. If you want to be anyone's lover, that's what you do. Respect them, love them. You're a man, that's your job.
He'd wanted to ask his father what to do if she'd been the one to suggest it but he was the one who'd had second thoughts even after she'd thumbed open the button of his jeans. The warmth and the friction had felt good, but there was just something that had seemed off.
Caesar doubted his father would have been able to answer him why that was.
In any event, the talk had gone on from there. Caesar had heard more about his father's self-described "ill-spent youth" than he'd ever wanted to know. But that first bit had stuck with him. Respect her. It had just slipped out in different words when Joseph had called the centerfold girl "that" and preened like he'd found some kind of special prize.
The bed jostled, and suddenly Caesar found his arm being lifted and tugged around a set of loose shoulders. Joseph had invited himself over, his back resting against the bedside just like Caesar's, but he'd tucked himself close enough to see the book in Caesar's hands. "You reading anything good?"
"Idiota, why would I show you?"
Joseph made a show of peering at the pages, his head hovering over Caesar's lap. "Come on, Caesarino, you know you want me to see."
"I don't!" Caesar jabbed his shoulder in Joseph's side and held his book up in the air. It wasn't anything bad. One of his sister's comic books, though the pages he'd read had made little sense to him before he'd figured out that the book read right to left.
"This stuff's pretty cool," Joseph mumbled distractedly as he finally snagged the book and managed to flip through a couple pages. "Mind if I borrow this?" he looked up, his blue eyes bright behind his thick lashes.
"Sure." It was so easy to just agree.
Respect them, love them. You're a man, that's your job His father's voice echoed in his head.
- - - - - - - -
His sister had a stack of GQ magazines, and more of those comics on a shelf in her room. He'd been on vacuuming duty when he'd knocked one of them off, and really it wasn't his fault when he'd just happened to pick it up and it had flopped open.
It wasn't his fault the one that he'd looked at had been a different story than the one his sister had lent him, with two guys groping at each other on a bed, their panting breath marked by the little sound effects in the background.
It wasn't his fault.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"There was Taylor, Cheryl, Sherry, Sharon--hey, Caesar, who was that one with the green hair?"
The music roared almost louder than the crowd that had gathered in the bar. He was on shot four of six, the number his teammates had bought him for his birthday before they started funneling beer down his throat. His limbs felt loose and heavy, the perpetual weight that sat like a cinder block on his shoulders not totally gone but at the very least somewhat less there.
"Amanda," he replied, slapping down another empty shot glass to a chorus of cheers. "She's studying art history." Her hair had been green by the time they'd split up, but when Caesar had first met her in line for renting textbooks she'd had pink hair, and her laugh had been smokey, thick, and deep.
He'd met a lot of girls since he'd come to college. He was twenty-one, he went to parties, he was on the baseball team, it all spelled chances for meeting women. Of the girls he'd been with so far only two had ever gone home with him for a long weekend, and both of them had come more as friends than as anything more than that. Caesar liked having fun, and the girls he was with liked that too. Since high school he hadn't had a bad break up, but that could all be chalked up to the fact he hadn't had a steady girlfriend either since then. There were just women, friends with benefits, and he was fine with that. It fit him well.
Standing up, the bar swayed as he found his footing. D'Arby pounded on his back as he passed by, the beer in his mug sloshing over to the floor. No one asked him where he was going, or maybe they did, but Caesar didn't shout back over the drunken yelling in the bar. On the plasma screen hung over the pool tables against the mirrored wall, the Yankees were going toe to toe with the Red Sox. It was bottom of the eighth, bases loaded.
Caesar stumbled toward the bathroom tucked into the far dark corner of the bar. The voices of the cheering crowd was cut in half when the door swung shut behind him, and he gripped the first sink, the white porcelain making his hands ache. He inhaled, felt the air fill his lungs the way it couldn't when he'd been at the bar, his shoulders bumping against Hol Horse's and Abdul's arms. God had it always been this hot?
The tap squeaked as he turned it on, the sound masking the opening and closing of the bathroom door. Caesar jumped as he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. Joseph stood behind him, a glower on his normally open face, his heavy brows drawn low over his bright eyes.
Joseph, who had been the subject on too many of Caesar's dreams which he would never admit to after the last time he'd went home and seen the eighteen year old for the first time since starting college.
"How did you get in here?" Caesar splashed the tepid water on his face.
"A fake ID. Was all that true?" Joseph asked. Joseph, whose arms bulged as he folded them tightly over his chest. He had shot up again since Caesar had last seen him, and where he had been tall before, now he towered. His shoulders, which had always been sturdy compared to the rest of his frame had filled out. There were washboard abs hiding underneath his t-shirt, Caesar knew, from when he'd last seen Joseph in a tank-top while he'd been helping his grandma paint the house. He'd used the hem of the old grey wife-beater to wipe his face, and Caesar, who had just gotten out of his car, had nearly dropped the bag of groceries his sister had sent him out to get.
"Is it true?" Joseph asked again. "Have you had all those girlfriends?" He didn't sound upset, or mad, not that he would have any reason to be. In fact, Joseph seemed almost a little disappointed, the corners of his mouth turned down as he waited for Caesar's answer.
Shutting off the water, Caesar shot a glance at the door.
"It's locked," Joseph interrupted. "I didn't..." his voice trailed off.
Caesar had drank, but he didn't miss the red flush to Joseph's cheeks. Was he embarrassed? About what? Easing back onto the balls of his feet, Caesar rolled his shoulders, that old familiar tension he'd felt ever since he'd found his sister's comic when he was young. Cocking his hip, he leaned against the sink, and met Joseph's stare head on. "That's a little presumptuous of you, don't you think?" he asked, dropping his voice into that low purr he'd been told was good.
Let Joseph feel the weight too, that feeling Caesar had been carrying around with him probably since that girl in the locker room showers who had made him feel good but just not right. He was drunk, he could laugh it off in the morning, around the same time he could question just why Joseph was here and how he had managed to find Caesar at this bar when he should have been at home, probably playing a video game on some classic platform that he'd spent too much money buying.
Only Joseph wasn't flinching. He continued to glower, his shoulders back and relaxed like Caesar hadn't just come onto him, like this was normal, like it was fine.
"I'm optimistic, what can I say?" Joseph replied, holding Caesar's gaze.
And that was it.
That was it.
His heart thundered in his chest, but it wasn't nearly as loud as the soft grunt Joseph let out as Caesar grabbed the lapels of his stupid leather jacket and pulled him in, crashing their mouths together in a hard, desperate press. He smelled like motor oil, and the bar, and underneath that Caesar could smell that familiar warm, musky scent he'd always associated with Joseph since they'd used to come home together, exhausted from baseball practice.
Large hands grabbed his hips, and Caesar was surprised to find the breathless sound that filled that bathroom had come from himself. He breathed out, a long, shuddering exhale against Joseph's lips. If he thought about this, he would stop it. If he thought about this, he'd freak, and he'd end up punching Joseph or running out of the bar, or maybe both. But this felt right, and sharp teeth nipped his bottom lip, and yes, this was what he'd been missing. This was it.
He dug his hands into thick brown hair, his nails scraping against warm skin as he clenched his hands into fists.
Joseph hissed. With deliberate steps he backed them up, the sink biting into the strip of skin between Caesar's shirt and jeans. He surged back against the hard press of Joseph's demanding grip. Even when he was bent nearly backwards in half, his head bumping against the mirror, he licked his way into Joseph's mouth, his tongue carrying the words that were stuck in his throat. Things like stop, and wait, and all the others that would end this too soon. He wasn't ready to let this go.
"Caesar, hold up," Joseph pulled back. His lips were red, and Caesar found himself licking his own as he looked. The fuzzy feeling from the alcohol was fading, and the weight he'd been carrying around was nearly crushing him, but Joseph held his gaze, his blue eyes nearly swallowed up by black, his pupils blown wide.
His knuckles was warm where they touched Caesar's cheek. "You want this?" he asked. "You're not going to hate me in the morning, right? You really want this?"
Maybe he was twenty-one and crazy, or maybe he was drunk and dying inside from all the years he'd denied it, or he was just simply damned and going to Hell, but Caesar swallowed hard around the dryness in his mouth. Pushing off the mirror, he pulled himself up onto the sink, his knees spreading to give him purchase. To fit Joseph's hips.
"I want you," he breathed.
He did. He really did. Mother of God help him, he knew he shouldn't, but when Joseph leaned in, trailing warm lips across the corner of his mouth, his cheek, his jaw--he wanted it.
And it felt right.