Bad Things (44 page)

“
I started doing Kung Fu when I was fourteen, because when my dad heard a rumor that some neighborhood kids saw me fooling around with another boy, he beat the shit out of me. Mostly, even back then, no kid my age would even look at me wrong, because I was so tall, and had a pretty big frame, just naturally. But when my dad did that, I suddenly felt…fuck, just weak. Vulnerable. I hated what that felt like. Being afraid someone could hurt me. It was way worse than the actual beating, the injuries.”

Carson didn’t say anything. He just looked horribly sad. Because of course, he got it. His dad hadn’t hurt him physically, but he’d attacked him, too, made him feel helpless. Xavier gave him a soft kiss. A smile of mutual understanding.

“For me, Kung Fu was never just about getting in shape, or being good at fighting. I had some anger issues, even before that happened with my dad. I would have been in a lot of trouble, as a teenager, without the martial arts training. It helped me focus my physical energy into something positive. But it helped me calm my brain down, too. Channel my thoughts. Maybe it’s an exaggeration to say it saved my life, but it definitely kept me off a much darker path.

“
Later…well, I know Dario told you what happened to Elena. When she was raped, I didn’t want to channel my anger and my energy. I wanted to fucking kill something. I wanted to kill the men who raped her. Kung Fu is by far the better training for actually doing that, but boxing and pumping weights and getting big was just what I needed to do with all that rage and testosterone. And, I know it’s ridiculous, but I wanted men to look at me, and feel afraid of me. And when I’d been at it long enough, I liked feeling like I looked like someone who could kill shitsacks like the men who hurt Elena. I know it’s not how the world works, and I know I can’t really protect Elena, or anyone else, but I wanted to be the guy that those three assholes would look at, and shit their pants, and know they should leave Elena alone.

“
But mostly, it just physically felt good. Sometimes I had to work out twice in a day, just to stop myself from going out and looking for a fight. From feeling like I was swelling up with all this hate, all this fuel that wasn’t getting used to punish those men.

“
Now, most of the time, I guess I’m just addicted. I have my habit. But the last few months, getting involved with Brian and Max’s shit, it’s been kind of like that year after Elena was attacked. If I couldn’t punch and lift and wring it all out of my system, I feel like I’d go crazy. Seriously crazy.”

“
It reminds me of your tattoos,” Carson said quietly.

“
My tattoos?”

“
Calm. Order. Safety,” he said, caressing the dragon’s armor like it was a beloved familiar. Then, resting his hand on top of the sea monster breaking free of its captivity, trapping it under his outstretched fingers, he said, “And the scary chaos you can never completely suppress.”

Xavier laughed. “There does seem to be a pattern with me, doesn’t there?”

Carson was looking at him so sadly, Xavier kissed him. As if he could erase the ugly things that had touched both their lives the way nurses give lollipops to toddlers so they’ll forget the sting of an injection.

“
Now I get to ask you something,” Xavier said. He’d been thinking about it for days. Why keep tip toeing around it?

“
Yeah? What?”

Xavier gave Carson a teasing grin. “What do you have against fucking me?”

Another adorable blush. “Nothing.”

“
Meaning you want to fuck me?”

Still blushing. “I…”

“You’re allowed to say no. Some men only bottom.”

Nervous laughter. “Slow down. I didn’t say I’d never want to.”

“Good. Because I like being fucked. And I know I can be kind of an asshole, sometimes, but if you’re hesitating just because you have performance anxiety, or something, I promise I can actually be patient.”

Carson looked slightly startled, the way he usually did whenever Xavier was trying to be nice. Xavier grinned, gave him a soft, wet kiss, then coaxed Carson onto his side and settled in behind him. Xavier traced a fingertip over the smooth roundness of Carson’s shoulder, tracing the irregular angles of a branch, the arc suggested by a fanning expanse of leaves. He could imagine a tree, black and gray trunk twisted, twigs barren, sprouting to frail life from his needle, Carson’s dark blood seeping from his alabaster skin, a bouquet blooming on a square of gauze between Xavier’s fingers.

The next day, it was back to work full-time in the shop. Back to life. Back to reality. The sick, wild months of Gomorrah felt remote already, like maybe none of that had happened. His ridiculous undercover prank. The trial.

Except for Carson. Sometimes it felt like he’d just materialized in his life, out of nowhere, like a present from a fairy godmother. Maybe this was just as crazy as pulling his stunt with the traffickers, seeing him every night. Xavier had never done that before, with anyone. There’d been a few on-again, off-again lovers, and their affairs would flare up hot for two or three consecutive nights before they’d cool and drift apart for weeks or months, but this wasn’t that.

But why question it? It felt good. As good to Carson as to him; he read it in his eyes every time they were together.

When he finished with his last client, he called Carson, and they met up for tacos, then went to the beach to lay in the sun. Too late to get any color, but the mellow heat of the sun and the breeze felt incredible on his skin. Warm sand rough and yielding under his naked soles. Carson, lying still for five minutes, then photographing for ten, mostly pointing the camera at him. Not as fun, out in public. But he was passive, practically napping, when Carson told him he wanted ’realistic’ photographs, then gamely cooperated, more amused than anything, when Carson asked him to sit up and meet the cold blank gaze of the camera.

Carson still turned him down every time Xavier offered to let him fuck him, instead, and would never say why. But they made an accord. Alternating nights, with and without bondage. So Carson could exercise his gay muscle, so to speak, without leaning on the crutch of being bound and feeling helpless.

On the nights without, Carson gave himself wholeheartedly. Xavier could see that in his eyes, too. Hear it in his moans. Feel it in the way his body trembled while they writhed together, when Carson came. But
puta Cristo
, when Xavier tied him, their fucking was on another plane. Xavier had never had anything like it. That absolute surrender. Like nothing existed but their bodies, and their pleasure.

The next morning they went to the corner diner for breakfast, and while they waited for their food, Carson slid in next to Xavier in the booth. For a second Xavier had the arousing thought that Carson was going to do something wild, like give him a hand-job under the table. Instead, he pulled his laptop out of his bag.

“I want you to see these.”

A photograph, a full-body wide, as Carson put it, of Xavier in profile, hitting the heavy bag filled the screen. Color, the red and yellow stripes at the top of the bag popping out vivid and crisp, more than the faded red of Xavier’s old shorts, but less than the saturated hues of his tattoos. Intense, dynamic composition that conveyed a feeling of motion, of power, of impact, even though there was no blur of movement and every edge was clean.

Another, shot from behind the bag, Xavier trapped in the right-most third of the frame, his fist hurtling toward the viewer.

“
Fuck, Carson. You are really good. These are even better than—”

Carson grinned. “The ones from the camera? Thanks. I’ve been putting in a lot more time, lately. Trying to treat it like a vocation.”

“Good. You’re amazing.”

“
It’s easy, with a perfect model.” God, the way Carson was looking at him.

When Xavier turned back to the screen, he saw it. In the shot from behind the heavy bag. In the next one, him laughing, a moment of self-consciousness before he’d jumped up to the horizontal bar, and before he’d trained himself to forget the soulless stare of the lens. Even in the few close-up shots, where a curve of his body or a slice of tattoo filled the entire frame. But especially in the close shots of his face. His eyes. His grin. His laugh.

“You don’t like them.”

He met Carson’s eyes. So fucking hurt.

Xavier made himself smile. “Your photos are fucking incredible. It’s just strange, seeing myself like this.”

“
Like what?”

Loved
.

But Xavier just said, “You make me look…different from how I think of people seeing me.”

Hurt look fading slightly. “How?”

Fuck
. He wasn’t used to this—trying to strike this kind of balance between two kindnesses, two cruelties. But like usual, in most things, he went for the immediate gratification. “I figure most people look at me, and see a blunt force object,” he said, trying for a teasing grin. “But in your pictures, there’s…a light inside me.”

Fuck. He’d gone too far. Because now, he didn’t just see it in the pictures. It was there in Carson’s gaze. Or maybe it had already been there, and he’d missed it. All morning. Maybe last night. Maybe for days.

“Pancakes?” The waitress held their plates precariously balanced directly above Carson’s laptop. Xavier took his plate while Carson closed his computer and tucked it away in the safety of his bag.

“
By the way,” Xavier said, “I’ve got a thing tonight. So maybe we’ll see each other tomorrow, or Thursday.”

Carson was quiet for a minute, looking down at his plate, suddenly meticulous about how he applied the little scraping of butter to his pancake. But the next moment, he looked up, met Xavier’s gaze, and said, “Okay, sounds good,” without any hurt in his voice, and only a faint shadow in his blue eyes.

By the time Xavier had finished work and was sitting home alone in his living room, he told himself—half aware it was a lie—that he’d invented half of what he’d imagined seeing in those photos, and in Carson’s gaze. And whatever he really had seen, he’d blown way out of scale. Him and his obscene ego. Him and his jealous attachment to his easy solitude. The next day, he called Carson, and they made plans to meet at his place at eight that night.

In bed, lying on their sides, looking and kissing and petting, Xavier held himself back. It was kind of fun, tormenting himself, barely even touching Carson, kissing his mouth but only tonguing and mouthing his body to provoke, never giving Carson half a chance to plunge into real pleasure, and never coming close to sating even a little of his own hunger. Within minutes of getting in bed, both naked, they were both panting, their taut bodies straining for each other, their cocks hard as cast glass.

How long would it take? Getting Carson to take the initiative? To take his pleasure? Greedy, hungry as he was, Xavier could wait, disciplining himself to feed on this excruciating torment as its own cruel form of pleasure. But Carson was starting to whimper with each brief brush of Xavier’s lips against his throat, or past his nipple, or against his ear, Xavier never sinking in to really lick or suck, leaving Carson expecting, waiting, over and over again.

And fuck, that ass. It took every ounce of will he had, when Xavier slid his hands over those round cheeks, not to grab and knead them, not to clutch and pull Carson against him. Not to slide a few fingers along his cleft and rub around his hole and make him squirm for penetration. But he forced himself to wait.

Finally,
gracias a puta Dios
, when he slipped his hand between them, caressing Carson’s flat belly, his wiry muscles contracting against his fingers, when he stroked his hard thighs, then let his hand graze his cock, his shaft smooth and hard as polished wood, Carson moaned and shifted and thrust, his body urgently seeking release.

Was it cruel? Xavier encircled Carson’s cock with his hand, but didn’t close his grip. Didn’t stroke him. He just kissed his mouth, and waited. Waited for that small, trembling movement. The tiniest of flexes, Carson’s dick blindly nudging against his palm. Muffled under his kiss, a frustrated grunt. To reward him, Xavier shrank the circle of his hand, just a little. Carson sighed, grasped Xavier’s head in both hands, pulling him into a deeper and deeper kiss as he started to rub against Xavier’s hand, desperately pumping into his lax grip.

When Xavier rolled onto his back, pulling Carson on top of him, Carson froze. But Xavier gave him a slow, penetrating kiss, licking, sucking his tongue, rising up from under him to feast, and after a few seconds Carson’s cool rigidity slackened. His hand still wedged between them, Xavier wrapped his fingers around both of their dicks, squeezing them together, and Carson gasped out loud. Fuck, Xavier could feel the trembling of Carson’s body all up and down the length of his own. But he still didn’t rub or stroke their cocks. He waited. Still. Torturing them both.

When Carson moved, flexing his hips, rubbing his cock against Xavier’s, pushing it into his slack grip, Xavier rewarded him by ravishing his ear, nipping and nursing at his lobe, licking and sucking the curves of cartilage, then driving his tongue into the hollow, Carson’s tormented cry, his almost convulsive writhing on top of him driving Xavier fucking crazy.

A groan of despair leaked out of Carson when Xavier took his hand away. Xavier grasped both meaty cheeks of Carson’s luscious ass, pulled him against him, Carson’s hard cock sliding against his own, against his belly as he dragged him a few inches up, then down as he kneaded his rump.