Winter Ball (5 page)

“Yeah.”

That seemed to be all Richie needed. He pecked Skipper on the lips again and scooted off, letting the blanket slide with him.

Skipper stood up and wrapped it around Richie’s shoulders, then put on his own underwear. “Go on and find something good,” he said, turning Richie around and giving him a little shove. “I’ll get us snacks.”

His kitchen was small and unremarkable save for kitchen tile in a miserably heinous yellow/gold/lime green pattern that made most people want to vomit on sight. For some reason Skip wanted to avoid the inevitable discussion of barf in his kitchen—he wanted this to be nice.

He pulled out the box of cookies and paper towels and got a big cup of milk so they could share it.

But what if he doesn’t want to share a big cup?

He just had my dick in his mouth—he’s going to get picky now?

But people have preferences!

If he doesn’t like it, he’ll tell you. You can get him another glass.

I just want this to be….

What? Perfect? Different? What was he looking for from the man currently hunkering down under his comforter and channel surfing on his wall TV?

“Skip? Hurry up! I paused it, but they’ve already got to the part where the two guys bicker in the car. It’s the best thing about the show!”

“Coming! Do you need your own cup for milk?”

“No—we can share.”

Small things. Perfect things. How strange that the smallest things made the big thing, the unspoken thing, perfect.

“Lemon Oreos?” Richie asked when he got into his bedroom.

“I’ve got Chips Ahoy! if you want those instead.” Skip said, taking his knee off the bed and replacing the coverlet. His bedclothes were browns and blues right down to the flannel sheets, and he was pretty sure it would hide the crumbs.

“No, no—they’re just unusual.”

“Yeah, well, I thought they’d be like the Girl Scout cookies—you know, the lemon ones?”

Richie made a little “oooh” shape with his lips, and Skip had to stop himself from just staring, fascinated. Those lips… they were soft and plump. How had Skip never noticed that those lips making that shape were….

His cock started to swell with blood underneath his boxers.

Yeah. They did that to him. Richie’s lips, and the thought of what they had just done. Skip’s hands were full or he would have had to stop and adjust himself. As it was, he balanced everything until he got into the bed, then handed Richie the milk and set the cookies between them.

Richie glanced at him casually and then caught sight of Skipper’s semi falling out of his shorts, and leered. “That’s awesome,” he said bluntly. “What made that happen?”

Skipper’s face heated. “Your mouth.”

Richie flushed in blotches, and he pulled a cookie from the package with meticulous care. “That’s, uhm….” He shoved the cookie in his mouth and then grinned at Skip with bulging cheeks.

Skipper laughed, not sure if he was
trying
to be dirty, but pretty sure he was trying to be funny about not knowing what to say. “Scoot over—they’re about to blow shit up and that’s my second-favorite part.”

They situated themselves and Richie hit Play. Except for the fact that they were wearing their underwear and in bed, it was just like when Richie came over any other Friday night. Hazel hopped up and purred at the foot of the bed, and Skip and Richie sat shoulder to shoulder, commenting on the show.

“Hey, the little guy got to drive, didn’t he?” Richie would say.

“Yeah—it sort of sucks that the other guy drives. It’s his damned car.”

“A power thing,” Richie agreed, mouth full of cookie. “Big guy wants to have the biggest dick, so he gets to drive.”

“Mm,” Skipper disagreed. “‘More’n that. See, the big guy, he’s supposed to take care of things. He wants to take care of the little guy—it’s how he’s built.”

“Little guy can take care of himself!” Richie laughed, sputtering crumbs, which he wiped off the comforter in a hurry.

Skipper rolled his eyes and offered Richie a napkin, which he took. “Yeah, but the big guy—it’s not just cause he’s big. He’s like… you know. Special Forces. A commander. Everybody looks to him, and he’s trying to take care of the little guy too. It’s like me not letting Hazel out. That’s not what she really wants. What she really wants is to stay here and crap in the cat box and get three squares a day. The little guy, he can take care of himself, but maybe he wants the big guy to protect him. He’s had it sort of rough, you know?”

A commercial came on right then, and Richie paused it. “Rough how?” he asked.

Skip looked at the television. A woman was frozen there, showing off her scrawny ass in tight jeans, but Skip had never been interested in that kind of thing. “Uh… well… in the
show
he’s had a divorce, and his wife hid her pregnancy, and you know this show. All family members are gonna get kidnapped or something.”

Richie thought about that for a minute and then leaned in, their bare arms touching. He shifted his legs, and their calves tangled too. “And, uh, not on the show?”

Skip swallowed and stared at Richie’s hand lying on the comforter between them. He reached out tentatively, like they hadn’t just been naked and putting their mouths on places in the front room, and hadn’t just come all over his couch. With one finger extended, he stroked the curve of Richie’s thumb and forefinger, noting how still Richie held himself waiting for the touch.

“Maybe the little guy’s family is sort of mean to him,” Skipper said, thinking of the times he’d visited Richie at his parents’ pick-n-pull but not wanting to intrude. Lots of shrill voices, people calling Richie small and weak and stupid. “Maybe the big guy just wants to not let that happen.”

Richie closed his fist around Skipper’s finger. “That’s really… what’s the word? Gallant. You’re really damned gallant. But don’t worry. Little guy, he can drive his own car, take care of himself. He’s done it for years.”

Skipper reclaimed his finger and covered Richie’s hand with his own. “Yeah. Okay. Just know it’s not always ’cause the big guy wants to have the bigger dick.”

To his surprise, Richie leaned his head against Skipper’s shoulder. “We already know you got the bigger dick, Skip. I know you don’t got to prove anything.”

Skipper’s brain shorted out. He hadn’t actually
seen
Richie’s dick in the light, swollen and dripping, held tight in a fist. Suddenly he very much wanted to.

But Richie was
leaning against him
, and their hands were still touching. Skip took his cue from their moment together and laced fingers with Richie. Richie used his other hand to hit Play on the remote.

Their patter about the television show stilled, and it must have been the only thing keeping Richie awake, because before the show was done, Skip felt a gentle snoring against his shoulder.

He smiled a little. After checking that the milk glass was empty and safely stashed on the other end table, he set the rest of the cookies on the table closest to him. He turned off the light and the TV and stashed the remote, all without disturbing that gentle snoring.

Then carefully, very carefully, he slid down and rolled over to his side, nudging Richie until they were spooning, Skip’s arm over Richie’s chest.

“We were gonna do round two,” Richie grumbled, and Skip nuzzled the back of his neck.

“We can do round two tomorrow,” he reassured. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” Richie took Skip’s hand and kissed it, leaving Skip stunned and breathless in the dark. “Don’t know what I’d do without our Skip.”

Your Skip, Richie. Team captain is sort of small compared to this right here.

But he didn’t say it.

Richie was asleep, in his arms, in his bed. A week ago this was something he’d not even dreamed… okay, had he dreamed about it? In the dark, a new lover breathing against his chest, he had to ask himself if he’d ever dreamed about this.

I… I wanted his company. I wanted to look at him. I….

An image of Richie from that summer, running across the soccer pitch with his jersey held aloft in both hands, screaming in victory while the sun crisped his stringy body to a fine sweaty pink, crossed behind Skipper’s eyes.

I really,
really
liked to look at—

Skip remembered that moment, felt in the pit of his stomach the urge to touch. They’d hugged and whooped and swatted each other’s backsides, but had Skipper really….

I remember his hip bone pushing against my thigh. I wanted it harder. I wanted to hug him tight until all our skin was touching. I had to peel myself away, jump up and down, hug the other guys, because all I felt from them was sweat.

But not Richie. Richie had been special even then. Yeah, some of the guys came by Skip’s place to watch Friday night television. Some of them had been over in the summer to help with the backyard. Some of them even asked if he had Halloween or Thanksgiving decorations up. But Richie knew it all. He knew what Skipper was doing over the weekend. He sent dumb YouTube videos over the week.

He knew about Skipper’s mom.

This thing, this living breathing warm human thing, it had been brewing between them for a long time, hadn’t it?

“Round two,” Richie grumbled again, and Skipper hushed him and squeezed him tight enough that he’d be able to find himself.

“You won’t lose me in the morning,” Skipper whispered in wonder. It was true, because this moment here, this was not a sudden shot-in-the-dark, holy-crap-look-what-random-chance-made-us-do kind of thing. What lived between them hadn’t changed overnight,
wouldn’t
change overnight, because this heat, this live electricity passing from Skip’s skin through to Richie and coming back again, this had been
building
. Six years before, the moment when Richie had looked up at Skip and said, “Yeah! Sure! Let’s play rec league,” had been the first layer of concrete that was them.

Or maybe the foundation had been laid before that, when Skip had wanted something, anything to impress his new friend in the dreary matter-of-factness of tech school.

This right here wouldn’t go away. It breathed and murmured against Skip’s chest, and sighed in his arms. It was him and Richie, as they always were, just a little more naked now.

IN A
sitcom, they both would have awakened in the morning and been all freaked out about sleeping with a man, but sleep doesn’t really work like that. In the middle of the night, Richie got up to go to the bathroom, and Skip rolled over to his other side. Richie spooned him, and they fell back asleep. A little closer to dawn, Skip did the same thing, and when he got back to bed, Richie was facing away, all ready to be spooned. Skip
couldn’t
forget he was sleeping with Richie. Richie’s smell permeated his dreams; the touch of his skin slid over Skip’s body like silk, even in the deepest part of the night, when not even dreams disturbed unconsciousness.

In the morning Skip’s eyes popped open and his hand immediately splayed over Richie’s stomach, learning the feeling of each hard little ridge of muscle before his brain even screamed for coffee.

Richie
mmm
ed and rippled his body in a movement that was part stretch and part response. Skip’s hand slipped lower, to the elastic of Richie’s underwear, and he felt the bulge of Richie’s cock against the cotton.

Without meaning to, Skip let out a long moan that shuddered through his body, and he mashed up tighter against Richie’s back, nuzzling his neck and licking the edge of his shoulder. He traced that bulge with his thumbnail, thinking that it felt beautiful and warm and alive against his fingertips. His palm itched to hold it, to squeeze it, and when he thrust his hand under Richie’s shorts to do just that, Richie let out a breathless little “Yesss” and arched into Skipper’s grasp.

Oh…. Skipper’s hips would not stay still.

That heat, the soft skin over it—he knew this feeling, had held his own cock in his hand when the mood struck him, but somehow Richie’s was… better.

He grasped the base and stroked slowly up to the crown, and Richie leaned back against him, giving himself over completely to whatever Skip wanted to do. Skip wanted to touch first, to feel the incredible heat of Richie’s shoulders against his bare chest under the covers. He wanted to rub his lips against Richie’s ear and trace the edge, and whisper inside the whorl.

“That okay?”

“So good,” Richie breathed.

“Want me to taste?”

Richie’s noise then—raw and carnal and needy. He bucked his hips, and Skipper adjusted his grip so Richie’s cock slid through.

He shifted position, scooting crossways on the bed in the same place Richie had been the night before, the blanket forming a forest green cocoon over his head.

Richie reached out, stroked Skip’s backside through his shorts, ran his hand over Skip’s flank. “Move,” he begged throatily. “I want to touch—”

Skipper refused. Oh wow. There he was, eye to eye with the thing. He wanted to play, to taste, to learn what made Richie want, and he couldn’t do that with the burn of Richie’s touch on his body.

“My turn,” he breathed, and even in the shadows of the blanket fort, he saw the spurt of precome as it washed over the head. It looked magical, and he stuck out his tongue to taste it.

Mm… bitter and earthy. Women were usually sweet. He’d never objected to a woman’s taste, but it had never made him crave like that touch of magic on his palate. He flattened his tongue and licked the bell outright, enjoying the pound of Richie’s hands through the comforter. More. He wanted more.

Skip covered his teeth with his lips and sucked Richie’s cock until it bumped the top of his mouth.

No choking, not there, so he swallowed around the intrusion and stroked up some more. Oh Lord, this was
easy
. A leap like this, from having his dick sucked to having one in his mouth—it should have been frightening, but it wasn’t. He wanted it. He
needed
it. He stroked his fist toward Richie’s balls and sucked a little farther.