Caleb

Theo was holed up with me at the farm. He’d called the band and told them he just needed a change of scenery, but if they gave him a week he promised he’d be back and ready to go with two new songs. He even offered to pay for the studio cancellation for this week out of pocket, a gesture that told me a lot about how he saw himself in relation to the band.

We went for long walks in the morning, and then worked on music all day. Once Theo went inside, I would wander around the property, muttering to myself for an hour and probably looking like a lunatic, but then the song would just be there. It was how they used to come to me, only it had happened when I’d been on tour, or walking through the city. Something about moving through space distracted me just enough that the notes and words settled in without me overthinking them.

The stuff I was writing was rough, but I knew it was good. I knew it with the gut instinct that had been slumbering for the last year but had now roared awake. It was dark, though, which is how I knew it wasn’t for Rhys’s album, even though I was pretty sure I was going to tell him I was in for the project.

Theo scribbled. He sat on the floor, long limbs scrunched or sprawled in various uncomfortable-looking configurations, with the keyboard in front of him and his notebook to his right. He’d scribble in the notebook, try something on the keyboard, and scribble some more. At first it sounded like he wasn’t getting anywhere, but if I stopped and really listened, I could hear the song emerge in three- and four-note clusters. And I realized that he wrote vertically, not linearly. Each bit he heard, he heard as guitar, vocals, bass, and drums. That little fucker was in there on my floor, writing rock music like he was composing a damn symphony. Not that I actually knew how one composed a symphony.

I had no clue how he kept all the parts straight in his head, and I’d had no idea that he wrote like that. It was like he was digging six feet down for every phrase. It kind of took my breath away, and it made me wonder what other surprises Theo Decker hid behind that fall of black hair, those gorgeous eyes, and the rock star persona the world saw.

When it was just the two of us, he was mercurial, sometimes shy and bumbling, sometimes awkward and goofy, often growly and intense, and occasionally so sweet I had to do a double take to check that he wasn’t messing with me. But he wasn’t.

On the third day he was there, Theo was writing in the living room and I was having a cigarette on the porch, when Rhys arrived in a growl of transmission and a cloud of dust from the road. It had been a dry week, and I was hoping for the sake of the garden that it would storm later.

“Your boy here?” he asked, gesturing over his shoulder to where Theo’s car was parked.

I objected to the phrasing, but didn’t bother trying to correct Rhys.

“He’s inside.” I also considered every version of Go easy on him that I could think of, then discarded them all because Rhys was gonna do what Rhys was gonna do, and if there was any hope for Theo and me going forward, he’d have to learn to deal with Rhys. And, fuck, was I actually thinking there might be a Theo and me going forward?

“Shit,” I muttered, and heaved myself up to follow Rhys inside.

Theo, still spread out on the floor, didn’t even hear us come in. He was wearing headphones, frowning at his notebook, his lower lip caught in his teeth, tapping out a rhythm with his pen. He looked adorable.

“Fucking shit hell!” he swore when he startled at seeing us there. Rhys chuckled.

“Heya, I’m Rhys Nyland.” He stuck out a fist to Theo, to shake, and Theo scrambled to his feet, headphone cord jerking him back down so that when he stood his hair was everywhere and the neck of his T-shirt was slightly askew. Something about him in awkward mode always got to me. I thought Rhys perhaps agreed, because his smile was charmed.

“Hi. Theo.” He shook Rhys’s hand and tried to pull away, not knowing that Rhys shook hands for an abnormally long time. This resulted in Theo trying to step backward, and almost stepping on the keyboard. I caught him by the arm and extricated him from Rhys’s grip, snugging a hand around his hip in the process.

“Oh, hey, my Casio,” Rhys said.

“Theo’s a classically trained pianist,” I said, spelling out the warning to Rhys in my tone. Rhys wasn’t one to start shit, but he was protective of me in general, and had been doubly so over the last year, so I didn’t put it past him to poke.

Theo flushed and started to shrug off my comment, but Rhys said, “Yeah? Cool. I could never play, really. Hands got all caught up.” He held up his huge hands, which looked comical in the context of the small keyboard. “Play something,” he encouraged.

“Oh, naw, this thing isn’t really—”

“Come on. I’m not expecting fuckin’ Carnegie Hall–style shit or anything. Just a little…thing. Classical…music…thing.” He grinned at his own ignorance.

Theo smiled and shrugged, then settled himself back on the ground. He hit a few notes, played a scale, then took a deep breath and started to play. I didn’t know what the piece was, but though he was on the floor, Theo’s posture was ramrod straight, shoulders relaxed, where usually he sat in a tangle of limbs. The music was lovely, though it sounded odd and tinny on the keyboard, especially in the highest octave. Even Theo’s hands moved differently as he played than when I’d seen him working on songs.

He played as expressively as he sang, and though he’d said he was never passionate about the classical music he’d played when he was younger, there was a joy to him like this, and even the crappy Casio keyboard couldn’t disguise it. When he finished, he lifted his fingers off the keys in a manner that looked ritualistic and rested his hands on his knees, and then I saw what I hadn’t seen with his hair in his face. His eyes were closed. When they fluttered open, they were dreamy, more silver than blue, and I saw the self-consciousness set in as he looked at a slack-jawed Rhys. He ducked his head down and shrugged, that perfect posture folding in on itself like a flower.

“It’s awkward,” he said. “The keyboard’s so much smaller.”

“Holy shit,” Rhys said. “Holy shit.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Oh, uh, a Chopin nocturne. I played it for a recital once, a zillion years ago. Always liked it.” He shrugged again, and when we were silent, made an awkward gesture to indicate he was going to the bathroom, then nearly ran out of the room.

“Whoa, dude,” Rhys said. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

“You won’t believe how he writes songs,” I said, leaning in. Rhys was fascinated by other musicians’ processes, so I knew he’d be interested in this. “He writes like he’s taking cross-sections every phrase or so. Writes all the parts at once.”

“What?” Rhys breathed. “That’s unreal. Nobody writes like that. I gotta ask him. He’s not…like, one of those kids where I’m gonna freak him into a fuckin’ panic attack or something? Remember that guy, Gary, in Memphis?”

Gary had been a guitarist who ran sound at the Ruby Slipper in Memphis, and he’d traumatized Rhys by having a panic attack after Rhys kept asking him questions about how he used his bottleneck slide. The panic attack, it turned out, had only the slightest bit to do with Rhys’s intense focus, but Rhys had felt terrible about it. He was a teddy bear, really, and it upset him when his bulk and intensity were read as aggressive instead of invested.

I snorted. “Nope.”

“Okay, come here and show me this thing where you write all the parts at once,” Rhys said as soon as Theo came back into the room. Rhys was perched on the armchair and he looked like a fucked-up Santa Claus trying to get Theo to sit on his knee. I shoved them both onto the couch and went to make another pot of coffee.

“Can I have some eggs, too?” Rhys called.

“I’m not making eggs.”

“Oh.” Then a long pause, and Rhys’s hopeful voice. “Can you?”

I rolled my eyes at my friend, but got out the eggs as I heard Theo start talking. Within minutes, the two of them were snugged up on the couch, keyboard resting across both their knees, with Theo talking animatedly and gesticulating wildly, smearing ink all over from the cheap ballpoint pens he chewed.

I put the eggs down in front of Rhys and he barely noticed me, so intent on what Theo was saying. As I sat down on Theo’s other side, I realized this was the first time more than one person had been in this house with me since I’d moved in. I had only fuzzy memories of visiting my grandfather when he lived out here. He had a stroke and went to live in a retirement home when I was thirteen. But I remembered how he’d look around at my mom, my sister, and me, in surprise, as if he too were unused to having anyone in the house. Maybe that was the kind of place this was—a one-man spot, be it cloister or coffin.

It felt good hanging out here with Theo and Rhys, though. As if this place that I’d found, that I’d made into a sanctuary when nowhere else seemed tenable, might actually become a home. I pictured waking up here with Theo on Christmas morning, or having Rhys and Matt over for a bonfire in the autumn.

The scenes of making a life here—a real, present life—flashed in front of me like a flip book. Desires long buried and possibilities I’d thought dead reared up from the depths of my mind as I eased the gates open. I’d have to wait and see. But they were still there, still lurking, waiting for me when I was ready.

In the meantime, I felt a warm satisfaction settle in at the idea of my best friend and my lover getting along. It probably had all the makings of an unholy alliance, given the stories Rhys could tell about me, but I was willing to risk it.

---

A few nights later, we were lying in bed, the breeze from the open window drying the sweat that streaked our bodies from sex that had left us breathless. I thought Theo had drifted off, when he started pressing tiny kisses to my shoulder, then buried his face in it.

“You okay?”

“Nervous,” he mumbled into my shoulder.

“About going back to the studio tomorrow?”

He nodded and I ran a hand over his hair. I’d meant to run my fingers through it, but they snagged, his ever-present tangles made worse by getting fucked into the mattress, and I settled for brushing it back from his face.

“The songs are solid, baby. They’re good.”

“You think?” His voice was small. I’d told him so half a dozen times, but I nodded anyway. “I’m worried that the bass line to ‘Cupcake Apocalypse’ sounds too much like the one in ‘Monsters’ from our first album.”

“Not your job to write every single part perfectly on the first shot. Ven changes the parts sometimes, right?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I’m just nervous in general.”

He lifted up on one elbow and trailed a light fingertip down over my nose. Without thinking, I caught his hand and kissed his fingertips, then placed it palm down on my chest and covered it with my own. We were looking at each other in the thin moonlight, and I saw his eyelashes flutter, lips part slightly.

“I talked to my mom this morning,” he said. “While you were walking. It was her birthday.” He bit his lip.

“How’s she?”

“Fine. She’s always fine.”

“What’s she think about the whole music thing? You never told me about them. Your parents.”

“They think it’s weird. Well, it is weird. They think it’s…silly, I guess? Embarrassing. When we were first in Tuneyard, I was so excited, and I sent them a copy. It was a two-page spread, with pictures and everything. And my mom said I should be humiliated by how I looked. It was a picture of me by myself, and I was kinda crouching, one hand on the ground, and the other near my mouth. It was silly, kind of, because what I’d been doing was biting my nails because I was nervous as fuck about the photo shoot. And the photog’s assistant kept being like, ‘Get your damn fingers out of your mouth,’ to me. But in that shot it looks…I dunno.”

“I bet you’re all sultry and fucking hot is what it looks like.”

“Yeah, well. You and my mother would disagree. Whatever. When I first joined the band, they washed their hands of the whole thing. They never thought anything’d come of it, so they weren’t concerned, but they thought it was a waste of time. They wanted me to be a doctor.” He laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right. It’d go over real well when I got to the part where I hate blood and that gross, Band-Aid-y smell of hospitals makes me puke.”

I smiled at the thought of Theo in a white coat with all his tattoos and his long hair and his eyeliner.

“They just liked it when I was playing piano. It was proper, respectable. Nothing threatening or humiliating.” His fingers crept into my beard, then he ran his thumb over my mouth. “You have the sexiest mouth,” he murmured. I smiled under his thumb, and he kissed me. Then he fiddled with the guitar pick he wore on a string around his neck.

“I tell you they’re not really my parents?”

“What? No,” I said, sitting up. “You adopted?”

He shook his head.

“They’re my grandparents. My mom—I guess she was kind of wild. Got pregnant when she was sixteen, and my parents were mortified. Her parents. Anyway. She wouldn’t say who the father was, and I don’t really know what the deal was—like, maybe she didn’t know for a while that she was pregnant? But basically they wanted her to have the baby, give it up for adoption, and go on like nothing had ever happened. She probably wanted to get rid of it. Me. But I think it might’ve been too late, medically?”

He delivered all this in a matter-of-fact tone, but the moonlight revealed a slight tremble in his limbs, and I tugged him down to lie close to me.

“She had it. Me. And then I guess she just took off. I think they got letters or something from her for a few years, then she ended up in L.A., and stopped writing. I think of her sometimes, when we’ve played shows in L.A. Like…what if she’s there? In the crowd. What if I’ve walked past her on the street and never knew? I’ve seen pictures, but only up until she was a teenager. Anyway.”

“Did you always know, growing up?”

He shook his head and rolled over so he was lying on his back next to me, our arms touching.

“They didn’t tell me until I was a freshman in high school. I just knew that—well, that they were…cold, I guess, is the best way to say it. They were nice to me and everything, took care of me. But it didn’t feel…intimate? And once they told me, it made sense. Like, they were going through the motions for the second time. They’d already had their own kid and I wasn’t supposed to be there but it would have been scandalous to get rid of me. Wouldn’t have been proper. Whatever.”

He shrugged, but the hurt in his voice carved into me like a blade, and I slid my arm under his shoulders, wanting contact.

“Right after they told me, that whole year, it was so weird. I kept having this thought that I had to, like, make it worth their while or some shit, so I tried really hard to be good. Follow all the rules, do well in school, clean my room, play the music they wanted me to play. I even told them that I’d try the whole go-to-college-be-a-doctor thing. But it…it didn’t matter, because they still didn’t—” He broke off, shaking his head, and I hugged him close, breathing in the smell of his hair.

“They still didn’t really love me very much at all, I don’t think,” he finished in a whisper, and the pain of it washed through me, followed by a fierce wave of anger at the people who had made Theo Decker think that he wasn’t enough. I held him to me, running a hand up and down his spine.

“When I joined the band, I kinda…it sounds pathetic, but I guess I kind of thought it would be like a family? But…” He just shook his head and burrowed closer to me, wrapping a leg around my hip and an arm around my waist.

He didn’t have to finish the thought because he’d already said it all. He’d joined the band looking for family, connection, acceptance. And instead, he felt like the odd man out, alienated by the people he’d wanted to feel closest to. Again.

---

“Caleb! Ca— Oh, shit,” came Theo’s voice from outside, interrupted by the sound of him tripping over something. I smiled down at the potatoes I was cutting.

“In the kitchen.”

He burst through the door, a blur of manic energy. He blazed into the kitchen and jumped on me, practically before I could put the knife down, kissing me deeply, still smiling.

“I take it things went well, then?” I said, smiling and trying not to drop him.

“Fuck, yes, it was great,” he rhapsodized. I deposited him on the counter and told him to tell me as I cooked.

“They loved the songs, and I wasn’t a fucking train wreck like before, thank god. Ven agreed about that bass line and he came up with a variation on it that worked great. And you know the part in “Cupcake Apocalypse” after the bridge? Coco added this bit like”—he hummed four notes—“that totally changes the rhythm and just makes the whole thing pop! And, oh, man, wait till you hear Ethan’s drum part for it. He went sort of the opposite of Coco, and sped up that part, so the guitar feels kind of like it’s racing the drumbeat, but they’re still synchronized. Oh, and Ven is singing harmony on the no-name song, right, and his harmony, gah! It’s sick. It’s kind of eerily close to the melody, but then he drops down a whole octave so it gets kinda sinister in the chorus, which makes the chorus sort of sound like a bridge. Anyway, it fucking rocks. The whole thing just worked, you know? After a whole week of fuckin’ nothing, we recorded both tracks today, and fuck, I’m so relieved. And tired. And hungry. And really horny. Also, did I say hi?”

I put the knife down again and nudged his knees apart, standing between them as he sat on the counter.

“I’m really glad,” I said, and kissed him. “I can’t wait to hear the tracks.” He was vibrating with energy, smiling into my kiss. I thought I could see the relief in his face, too. Relief that he hadn’t let down the rest of the band, relief that they’d liked his songs and played well together.

I cupped his cheek and kissed him again, and this time he snaked his legs around my waist, hooking his ankles together and pulling me in until my crotch snugged up against his. He moaned into the kiss and rubbed us together, my dick pulsing behind my tightening fly. I slid a hand up the back of his shirt and kissed him until his head thumped against the cabinet.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

His answer was to slide off the counter and push me back against it. Then he dropped to his knees in front of me on the aged linoleum, and dragged my pants down. He looked up at me, eyes silvery blue, black eyeliner smudged around them from yesterday, hair wild, and then he smirked, and goddamn if he wasn’t the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. There was something about the quicksilver shift from excited and manic to sultry aggressor that got me instantly hard.

He licked hot lines up the length of my dick with the flat of his tongue while he watched me. I tangled a hand in his hair, and let myself relax. Theo made a sound of pleasure around me as I sighed. He started going at it with everything he had, taking me in deep, mouth hot and wet, those perfect lips stretched around me, and his cheeks hollowed.

My head fell back as the sensations overwhelmed me. He squeezed the base of my cock with one hand, teasing my tip with his tongue, then went back to the glorious friction of his mouth as he slid a hand to my balls and tugged gently on the upstroke.

The jolt of pleasure in my balls intensified everything Theo was doing, and the wet sound of him on my cock was filthy hot. A glance down found him, knees spread on the floor, his erection visible in his tight jeans, cheeks flushed and fluttering dark lashes moist as he worked me in and out of his mouth. He was breathing through his nose as he took me deep. Then, like he could feel my eyes on him, he looked up at me, mouth stretched wide. Those fucking eyes just took me apart.

I put a shaky hand to his cheek, then traced his lips, and his eyelashes fluttered. He moaned and adjusted himself in his jeans. Then he tipped his head back, and grabbed my wrists, encouraging me to use his mouth as I wanted.

“Oh, fuck.”

He nodded slightly as I thrust, careful not to hurt him. But after a few thrusts, he caught the rhythm and closed his eyes, trusting me. His hand snaked down to his pants, dragging the zipper down, and he fisted himself, making inarticulate sounds of pleasure around my cock. One hand working his own erection, he reached between my legs and massaged my balls with the other, and my whole groin tightened, like every ounce of blood in my body was rushing to my cock.

The wet heat of Theo’s mouth felt like velvet around me, the pleasure sharp and clean.

“You look so fucking hot on your knees taking my dick and jerking yourself off.” Theo groaned, and looked up at me, eyes huge. He let go of his erection and grabbed my ass, pulling me deeper and swallowing around me. Pleasure broke like a wave and my hips snapped forward. He choked a little and I pulled out, running an apologetic hand over his hair.

“Fuck my mouth until you come,” he said, voice raw. Lust shot up my spine at the idea that tomorrow, in the studio, Theo would sing through a throat I’d fucked raw, his desire for me immortalized through sound.

I grabbed the base of my dick to keep from coming at the thought, but he brushed my hand away and I was engulfed again in his velvet heat. I thrust into his mouth, watching him; the flush across his cheekbones, black eyeliner even more smeared, spit wetting his chin.

“Touch yourself,” I said, and he started to stroke as I thrust, moaning around my erection. I could feel it starting, the clench of pleasure low in my groin, in my balls, my belly. I stroked Theo’s hair back. “I’m gonna come.” Theo nodded and moaned, and I let myself fall into orgasm. My thighs and ass tensed as I poured myself into him. It was a tangle of pleasure gathering itself to explode, and I pulsed into his mouth, my asshole clenching and my hips quivering.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

I caught myself on the edge of the counter with my elbow before my knees could give out, and pulled out of Theo’s mouth. He whimpered, and stuck out his tongue as if he wanted to hold onto the taste of me as long as possible.

At the sight of him, eyes closed, tongue out, I grabbed him, and kissed him hard, tasting myself in his mouth, then bore him back to the floor, reaching for his dick. He cried out when I took him in hand, tumbling against the linoleum in a fall of hair and elbows and knees.

“Please, please, please, Caleb, please,” he chanted, and I jerked him hard. He clutched at my shoulders and scrabbled at my back, and then came on a soundless moan, head thrown back, swollen lips parted, hands clenched to fists, panting. His release spilled over my fist and I kept working him until he pushed at my hand, and dropped his head back on the floor with a dull thunk, limbs splayed, hair in his face, breathing heavily, a look of peace on his face.

“Mmmmmm,” he moaned, stretching. “Good work, team. Are you making hash for dinner?”

“Yeah.” I smiled, brushing his hair back.

“That’s kind of all you can make, huh?”

“Basically.”

We grinned at each other, and I collapsed on top of him, burying my head in his neck. His arms came around me as if they belonged there and he held on tight.