It's Not Shakespeare (5 page)

James swallowed and shook his head. “Some people say Christopher Marlowe actually wrote all of Shakespeare’s plays—that Shakespeare was just the tradesman who made money on the theatre, and Marlowe faked his own death and used Shakespeare’s name to publish his work.”

Rafael opened his mouth, closed it, and then backed up and dropped that companionable arm and put both his hands on his hips. “Get the fuck out of town—is that no bullshit?”

James ducked his head and blushed, feeling for the first time like maybe he had something to offer in conversation that didn’t make him sound lame or a thousand years old.

“Yeah—but I don’t really like everyone’s reasons for thinking that,” James clarified. “See, the reasoning is, that Shakespeare
was
a tradesman—he wouldn’t have had the education to write the stories he did, even though history has proven that he’s had access to the basic stories that he drew inspiration from. I think that’s—”

“Bullshit!” Rafael said excitedly. “Because, like, Mexicans—they tell stories and live soap operas and shit all the time. They don’t get all upper-level academic about it, but—”

“But it’s beautiful!” James finished for him, nodding. He always felt like he was boring people silly with this, but not now. “See, yeah! I figure who would be better to understand what goes on in everyone’s head than a person who gets to know
everyone.
He got to know royalty through the theatre, but he’d worked with the everyday schmuck all his life, and I figure that maybe he just had a sensitive soul, you know?”

“I hear you.” Rafael nodded, and, even better, listened. “So, why didn’t you name your dog Shakespeare?”

James looked at Marlowe, who was loyal and unassuming and trotting over toward them with the air of a dog who had pretty much finished up all his business and was ready for his traditional bearing in the royal palanquin.

“Because Marlowe wrote some really lovely stuff. Not enough of it, because he was killed off too early—probably in service of the Queen—but nobody ever hears about him. It’s like everybody wants him to be Shakespeare and nobody is interested in Marlowe.”

Marlowe’s happy trot landed him at James’s feet, and he went through his custom-developed James-guilting flop.
Ohhhhhhh puuuullllleeeeezzze, nice human, bear my poor lazy doggie ass to the car so that I might liiiiiiiiivvvvvvvvvve!

James laughed gently and, for a moment, managed to ignore Rafael as he stood and watched the performance of the century. He bent down and picked Marlowe up and allowed his face to be licked and laughed while it happened. Marlowe calmed down, and James picked up the ball that had been left at his feet, and Rafael gathered his lead, and together they started for the car.

“
I’m
interested in Marlowe,” James said quietly, rubbing cheeks with his dog.

“Yeah, Professor Jimmy. I got that.”

There was a Mexican-food place that made fresh salsa and had a patio not far down the road, and they ate dinner there. Marlowe sat quietly at James’s feet and ate the pieces of chicken breast that James had ordered especially for him (because a chicken taco would have had long-lasting gastronomic repercussions—James had discovered this already), and James and Rafael talked some more.

Talking to Rafael was really, really fun. He was cocky, he was funny, he was sharp and smart, and once James realized he liked language free-for-alls with no rules except an intended outcome, James could even keep up. It was fun to toss the rules out the window and turn nouns into verbs and verbs into adjectives without thought. And sometimes, with all of this rule tossing, he even made Rafael laugh, and the way his heart pounded in his ears, chest, and under his skin when this happened made him feel
outstanding.

It was a shame it had to end. The car ride was quiet, until the turn onto 193 when Rafael started to give terse, softly voiced instructions. Marlowe had fallen asleep on the mat at his feet, and that reedy, accented voice went all soft and husky in the dark. James had turned on his radio—he listened to rock and roll that had been old when
he
was a kid, and Rafael rolled his eyes and turned off the radio.

“Better nothing than that crap, Jimmy,” he said, and James had sighed.

“You know, if we were going to know each other longer, I think I should make you call me James,” he said peevishly, mostly because “Sympathy for the Devil” was one of his favorites, and it had just been cut off mid-verse.

“Yeah, you go ahead and try, Professor,” Rafael said, and he managed to charge a whole lot of come-and-make-me into his voice. “In fact, I think I’d like that.”

James grunted to disguise a little sigh of want. “You could always just turn the station,” he said, hoping for something between them, even sound.

“I like the quiet and the dark,” Rafael responded smugly. “Makes you think of all sorts of things you told yourself you can’t have.”

“Why would you even want them with me?” James asked, feeling wretched. “I’m… I’m old and not great company and—”

“Turn right here. Good, now a quick left. Okay—you see that Dodge Charger? The blue one?”

It was so electric blue it practically sparkled in the spring-softened moonlight. It was hard to miss.

“So, is this your house?”

“It’s Sophie’s house. My house is down the block—Moms can’t see us from here, which is good.” He didn’t elaborate, and before James could ask him why it was good, he said, “So, I bet you top, don’t you?”

All rational brain function ceased. In fact, even his involuntary brain functions seemed to have ground to an abrupt halt too, because James was pretty sure he didn’t breathe for a second. And then two. And then three.

He just sat there with his mouth opening and closing until Rafael said, “You do, right?”

“Sometimes,” he squeaked.

“Most times, hah?”

It was true. James liked to top—he liked to make his partner all wet and limp and loose and panting. He liked to rim—not so much the act, but the sound of it—he loved it when his partner made “Oh God this feels so good!” sounds, and he loved the little whine men made when he softened the rim of the hole with his tongue and then entered them with fingers or his cock.

He’d spent his formative fuck-anything-that-moves years figuring out the exact angle with which to hammer a man’s sweet spot, and his more mellow, looking-for-a-long-term-relationship years learning how to draw out that pleasure, making it excruciating, making a man’s body sing. He could swallow pretty much any cock that came his way all the way down until his nose was buried in pubic hair—and he
loved
the feeling of hard, hot hands in his hair, begging him to
move faster, suck harder, use his tongue there, please, please God, James, finger my asshole now!

He was shy, and enjoyed his academic citadel as much as the next mild-mannered professor, but once he got to know someone, once he was comfortable enough to take his clothes off with someone, he liked to take charge. He had a select group of skills, and feeling a man come on his face or his chest or his stomach or his hand—that was his favorite praise. It was better than academic accolades or a good book review or the really prestigious position he’d used to hold back east. Most of those things were things that someone reasonably competent in his field could earn with hard work. Making a man in his bed come, making him
beg
to come, making a man call his name pleading—that was something that made James feel like, for just a moment, he was completely appreciated for being James alone.

James hadn’t felt appreciated for three years, five months, and seven days. And the five years before that had been a lie. Those simple words, “I bet you like to top, right?”
started up a terrible, intense, ball-shattering
craving
to be appreciated.

They’d rolled down the windows to let in the roses and wildflowers and humid cool air of the spring night, but even so, the atmosphere in the Volvo was suddenly unbearably intimate. Rafael reached over and turned off the ignition, and there was nothing left but the hum of the outside, Marlowe’s quiet snoring from the floorboards, and the two of them breathing softly.

James swallowed. “Why did you do that?” he asked, but he knew.

“Because you’re thinking about you and me naked right now,” Rafael said, his teeth gleaming with a quick smile. “I want you to keep thinking that.”

“You’re too young for me.”

“
He
was too young for you,
papi
. For all you know, I’m just right.”

“He?”

“Three-years-five-months-and-seven-days ago. Mr. Sugar Daddy in the closet. The last guy you laid and remembered. You know who he is.”

James sighed. “His name was Austen Saunders. I try not to say it a lot.”

Rafael nodded. “So, how long were you together?”

“Four years, eleven months, twenty-eight days. We’d been living together for two years.”

“And the whole time he was….”

“Waiting for his sugar daddy to come out of the closet,” James confirmed. God, that had rankled. James had been building a life. Austen had been buying a meal ticket with the one thing that made James a different James than every other gay motherfucker with the same name.

“What a cocksucker,” Rafael said, with enough aggression to make James laugh.

“Not often,” he said, some of the bitterness he tried to ignore seeping into his tone.

Rafael made an “oooolf!” sound and clapped his hand over his mouth as he literally choked on his own laughter. “Oh, my brother—if nothing else,
that
situation needs to be remedied and right quick!”

James blushed. Jesus! Damn Rafael for being so easy to talk to. He may as well have pulled up his favorite porn on his phone and said, “Come here, Rafael—look at these two guys boning each other! This one guy’s cock is fucking enormous—wanna see if mine measures up?”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. That’s one hell of a mixed signal. That’s not fair. ‘I’m too old for you’ and ‘true confessions’—it’s not very con…” Rafael’s hand rested on his shoulder, and he looked away from the steering wheel (which wasn’t that interesting anyway) to Rafael. “sis…,” he tried, and Rafael’s grin showed very plainly that he wasn’t listening to James’s protests even a little. “…tent…,” he finished weakly, and those soft pillow lips were on his own, and his eyes closed, and his lips parted, and his linguistic centers took a powder, and all that was left was his horny monkey brain, screaming in anticipation.

James pushed forward, trying to take over the kiss, because that was his job and he was good at it—but Rafael wouldn’t let him. There were long-fingered hands on his chest, pushing him back against the door. Rafael was leaning against him, one knee on the car seat, pressing his hard, muscular chest against James, (in spite of and around the steering wheel) and James was burying his hands in the long, coarse, slick black hair and drinking that kiss in like the elixir of life.

He tasted so
good.
He tasted like soda and spicy salsa and the sunshine and the wind they’d spent their time in. He tasted like enthusiasm, and hunger and sex and all the things James had pretended he hadn’t wanted in so, so long.

He groaned into Rafael’s mouth, and in return, Rafael arched against him, letting James feel his arousal, letting James know that, just like himself, Rafael’s groin was tingling, aching, throbbing, and his skin was zinging, and together the two of them were having trouble breathing as the kiss went from zero to Mach Six at one touch of their lips.

James thought that maybe he should pull back, but he couldn’t—he was up against the door—so he raised his chin and tried for sanity.

“Rafael… oh… ohhhhhhhh….” Because Rafael was nibbling little kisses down his jaw, in the hollow of his neck, along the cord at the side. Rafael raised his lips to James’s ear and whispered, blowing as he spoke.

“What,
papi?”

“We’re… uhm… oh God….” One of those capable, long-fingered hands rubbed on his stomach, up under his undershirt, along his muscled abdomen and to his chest. Suddenly all those hours working out in his spare room seemed worth it, so he could thrust his chest against the skin of Rafael’s palm. That palm brushed up against his nipple, and he whimpered.

“We’re making out in front of Sophie’s house,” Rafael murmured, licking his earlobe between words. “It’s where I’ve been making out since I was twelve.”

James whooshed out a breath of laughter. “Twelve?”

“Yeah. My moms don’t believe in gay, and Sophie’s moms wouldn’t rat me out.”

James laughed again, and then stopped as Rafael licked his way down to the little vee of flesh exposed by James’s button-up plaid shirt, and Rafael’s hands, both of them, headed south of James’s chest and straight to his fly.

“We can’t—” James protested, and Rafael’s lips covered James’s lips as his clever brown-fingered hands made quick work of James’s fly. James mumbled something—probably something like “We shouldn’t!” and then Rafael’s hand was cupping him through his boxers, squeezing, firmly and steadily, stroking upward in spite of the oddness of the angle and the surroundings.

James keened, his hips bucking, his monkey brain taking over, and Rafael took excellent advantage of that.

“You like that,
papi?”
he asked, stroking harder. “Is that good?”

James didn’t want to ask for anything, but there was one thing that would make it better, and he wasn’t going to say it, because if he opened his mouth he’d say, “We need to stop,” and he might
die
if they stopped. He groaned instead, and Rafael laughed, low and evil, and licked at James’s ear again.

“You want skin,” he whispered. “Here….” He reached down two hands to James’s waistband and yanked his khakis and boxers down around his thighs, and James lifted his hips to let him. James’s cock bobbed up against a fairly flat stomach, and Rafael gasped. “Here, Jimmy, spread your legs out.” Without apology or even permission, Rafael backed up and pulled James’s right leg out so it was spread across the passenger seat, and James’s pants slid down the thigh of his left leg and then stopped, leaving him trapped by his clothes. Rafael maneuvered back to him then, thrusting his hips between James’s thighs, grinding up against him, even as Rafael’s hand clasped tighter and stroked. It was inexpert and awkward, because Rafael had to angle his body around the steering wheel and, hello, they were frotting in a fucking
Volvo,
but it was someone else’s touch on James’s body, and he was hungry for it,
starving
for it, and Rafael’s mouth covered his as James groaned again. His vision went white/red, and the pressure in his balls, his spine, the clenched and tingling base of his ass, built with immediate, painful ferocity.