Corbin ran a finger up Alex’s arm, which was flung over his legs. They were sitting on the living room rug, leaning against the couch, in front of the fire. They’d been there nearly all day, and Corbin didn’t think he’d ever talked so much at one time in his life. His voice was growing hoarse from overuse, but the words were coming more and more easily.
They’d talked about Alex’s father, and what Corbin remembered of his mother. About what other kinds of signs Corbin saw and what other stories his aunts had told him. About how Alex had met Gareth, and the places he’d traveled. About Corbin’s dreams and his notebooks.
Corbin felt like a rusted lock that had finally found its key.
“When you left school and didn’t come back, was it only because your aunts died? Or because of that guidance counselor?”
“After my aunts died, I lost time. But there was also no reason to go back. It was them who would get in trouble for not sending me to school.”
“Didn’t the school try and contact you?”
“I told them I moved to live with family.” Corbin shrugged. “Wasn’t very hard. It was a big school.”
“I remember when you left because people told wild stories about it.”
Corbin leaned back against Alex’s shoulder. He could imagine the kinds of tales people would have spun.
The snow hadn’t melted and more had fallen throughout the day. Now, as the sun began to set, the white ground began to glow an eerie blue. There was a whine from outside and Corbin pulled himself up.
“Wolf,” he whispered into the cold. Wolf, Stick, and Dreidel were bounding toward him, running around each other with the joy of companionship and snow.
“Finally cold enough to come inside,” he asked Wolf, but Wolf just pawed at the snow and barked once. Stick and Dreidel trooped inside, leaving wet paw prints on the wood. “You sure.”
Wolf barked once more, and settled in next to the door, posture expectant, blue eyes watching Corbin.
“I think I might have broken the curse,” Corbin whispered into Wolf’s tufted ear. “I might get to keep Alex. Maybe.”
Wolf leaned his head against Corbin, nuzzling at him. Corbin could feel the animal’s warm, quiet satisfaction on his behalf.
For the next few days, Corbin couldn’t concentrate at work. Every time Alex came near him, the sugar turned to salt, the flour to cornstarch. When Alex pressed a furtive kiss to his hair, the egg whites curdled. When Alex slung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him close, the chocolate seized. All he could think about was Alex in his bed the morning after the Chanukah dinner, and what it would be like when he got Alex in his bed again.
Gareth came into the kitchen at lunchtime to drop off Alex’s car keys, and stood in the doorway staring at them.
“Whoa. The vibe in here is so intense I feel like I might get pregnant if I stay. Um, Alex, is it cool if maybe I have the house to myself tonight?”
Alex raised an eyebrow.
“Corbin, that means he’d have to stay with you,” Gareth said when Alex remained silent.
“You can stay with me,” Corbin said. His heart started pounding at thoughts of what might happen and the butter he was creaming melted.
Once Gareth left, Alex put a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t have to stay if you don’t want. That was an ill-advised attempt on Gareth’s part to play wingman.”
Corbin didn’t know what that meant, but he was already flushing at how badly he wished Alex would close the space between them and kiss him.
“Do you know how you’re looking at me right now?” Alex growled. “It’s making me pretty sure you’re okay with me staying over.”
“I want you to kiss me,” Corbin said, and watched Alex’s eyes darken.
“You can kiss me, you know.”
“I know. But I want you to kiss me.”
“Your wish is my command,” Alex murmured.
The kiss started sweetly, Alex leaning close and cupping Corbin’s cheek. But when Corbin touched his tongue to Alex’s, they found themselves crushed together, mouths moving desperately.
Corbin pulled away first. He could smell the bread in the oven starting to burn with the added heat.
“Are we almost done,” Corbin asked. They needed to burn off some of the tension between them or they’d ruin everything in the kitchen.
“I’ll never be done with you,” Alex said, looking almost shocked at his own words.
“With work, I mean. We’re messing things up. Everything’s going all weird.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re melting the butter and burning the bread.”
Alex grinned at him and ran a thumb over his lips. “I hear you. Let me get the last batch of cookies and bread out and we’ll go.”
In the car, Corbin was quiet. Since they’d spent the night together, he’d watched Alex intently to make sure that he didn’t see any evidence of the curse wreaking havoc. But Alex had seemed as confident and calm as ever. He’d kissed Corbin hello and goodbye, and smiled at him. He’d grabbed him by the elbow when he’d tripped, and told him his maple scones were perfect.
But he hadn’t come back to Corbin’s house. And Corbin didn’t know why. Moreover, Corbin didn’t know if Alex’s behavior was how such things normally went or not.
“Alex,” he said as he let them inside. “What happens next.” He’d been looking for signs but none had appeared. Without their guidance, he felt lost, like one of his senses was missing.
“Are you hungry? I could make dinner. Or we could order something.”
“No. Next. How do we know what happens.”
“What happens next in our relationship?”
Alex combed his fingers through Corbin’s hair and it shot a shiver down his spine. Corbin nodded and Alex pulled him down onto the couch.
“Anything we want.”
Corbin cocked his head. “Something still feels unsettled. It’s felt strange all day. The last few days. Since . . . You know.”
“Since we spent the night together, declared our love for each other, confessed our secrets, had the greatest sex ever, and hung out all day talking?”
Corbin choked on a laugh. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, baby. The earth shifted that day. It’s going to take a little while to be on an even keel again.”
“What do you mean.”
“I mean, it was really intense, really intimate. I’ve been feeling a little raw myself.”
“You have.” Alex nodded and Corbin felt better. “That’s how I feel sometimes. Like my skin has been stripped off and I’m just nerves being scraped by everything.”
Alex stroked the back of his neck softly. “Does anything help?”
“I go away with Carbon and Lex and Jasmine and Finnian. Or I go in the woods with Wolf. In the summer, sometimes I’ll work in the garden. My aunts always grew all our vegetables, but a lot of them died.”
“Maybe this summer Gareth could help you get it back up and running. His family had a huge garden growing up and he really missed it in New York. I bet he’d love to help.”
Corbin nodded, his mind wandering to Gareth and what he knew about him. “Is he all right. He seemed so . . . bruised when he first got here.”
“I’m not sure. He left New York to get away from his husband, Paul. And I keep asking him if Paul’s called him, but he won’t tell me. It’s good he’s here now, but I worry he might feel drawn back there.”
Corbin hesitated before he spoke. “Are you going to be here now. To stay.”
The air around them jangled, alive with tension.
“I don’t think I meant to at first. When my mom gave me the coffee shop, I imagined I’d stay for a year or two, relax, get my head together, sell it at a profit and give my mom the money, and then go. But after I met you, I didn’t feel that way anymore.” He grasped Corbin’s hands.
Corbin didn’t think he’d ever held hands with anyone before. Their fingers were braided together like the challahs they had made, Alex’s palm a warm rasp against his own.
“Now, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than here, with you. I don’t know what your plans are, but—”
Corbin launched himself at Alex and kissed him with everything he had.
As they kissed, the air around them settled, the storm allayed. Until now, Corbin hadn’t realized what would be the thing to set his quaking nerves to rights, to make the jangled, wrong feeling he’d been mired in the last few days recede. Hadn’t known the jittery uncertainty was the idea that maybe they had broken the curse . . . and Alex might leave anyway.
Corbin kissed down Alex’s jaw to his neck, and climbed into his lap, holding on to him.
Alex mmmed, then leaned back. “Is that yes, you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
Alex twined his fingers into Corbin’s hair and studied his face. “What are your plans? What do you want to do going forward?”
Corbin chewed on his lip. He’d never made any plans. Never thought of his jobs as anything more than money to buy groceries or pay the water bill. He’d never dared to dream of anything because he hadn’t known how. Now, suddenly, he felt as if the future yawned open before him like a grassy field. It was all there, wide swathes of it, all at once rather than revealing itself pace by pace as he walked forward.
No one had ever asked him what he wanted. He’d never asked himself.
“I want . . . to have something that’s mine.”
The words left his mouth and shimmered in front of his lips like soap bubbles, as shining with promise and as delicate.
“I’ve never had that. This house was my aunts’, and everything in it. My friends in my notebooks . . . they’re a part of me— Parts of me. The dogs belong to themselves. I don’t know what, but something.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Alex said, and Corbin believed him.
“Alex.” Corbin bit at his nails. “I still want to spend time with them. With Carbon and . . . everyone.”
“Of course,” Alex said. “They’re your friends.”
Alex didn’t mention Finnian and what they’d done together. Corbin flushed and smiled as thoughts of Finnian turned into thoughts of Alex, and everything they hadn’t yet done.
“Alex.”
“God, I love the way you say my name.”
Corbin looked into Alex’s face, all clean lines and generous mouth and those eyes that saw him as no one ever had. “I want you to fuck me.”
Heat flooded Alex’s eyes and his fingers tightened almost painfully around Corbin’s.
Then Corbin found himself crushed to Alex’s chest, his mouth taken in a bruising kiss. Alex’s tongue stroked against his lips and he opened his mouth to let him in. They kissed and kissed until they were both panting and grinding together.
Finally, Alex broke the kiss and stared, mouth swollen and red as a cherry.
“Let’s go upstairs.”
Corbin nodded and stumbled to his feet, heart racing. As soon as they got to his room, Alex was on him, hands running up his back, mouth on his neck. They tumbled to the bed and Corbin pulled Alex on top of him, wanting to feel his solid weight everywhere.
He tilted up his chin and Alex kissed him slow and deep, braced on his forearms on the bed. Corbin sank into the kiss and he pulled at Alex’s shoulders to press them even more tightly together.
“I want you to crush me.”
Alex stopped holding himself up, lay full out on Corbin and wound his arms around him.
“Yes, please. Everywhere.”
Alex squeezed him so tight he couldn’t move at all, and almost couldn’t breathe, then he began to lick at his neck. Alex licked and sucked at Corbin’s pulse point, and waves of heat rolled through him. Alex bit lightly at the curve where neck met shoulder and the scrape of his teeth was electrifying. He kissed Corbin’s throat, up over his jaw and behind his ear, and Corbin’s hips thrust up in arousal, but he couldn’t move.
Corbin dragged in a breath. “Kiss me, please kiss me.” Alex kissed him, devouring his mouth, sucking on his tongue and nipping at his lips until Corbin was so hot he felt feverish. He shifted his legs out from under Alex’s heavy weight and wrapped them around Alex, rubbing them together.
Alex eased up enough to align them perfectly, then thrust their hips together. Bolts of pleasure shot up Corbin’s spine and he felt himself thrusting and thrusting, seeking that sensation again.
When Alex moved away, Corbin whimpered and grabbed for him, not wanting to lose the contact for a moment. Alex stripped them both quickly, never breaking eye contact as Corbin panted. Alex opened the bedside drawer and put the lube on the table, then he paused.
“You don’t have any condoms, do you?” Corbin shook his head. “I got tested right after I moved here, and I haven’t been with anyone else since then. We can wait if you want, though.”
“No, I don’t want to wait. I want . . .” Corbin had never thought about this part, precisely, but what he wanted was so clear, suddenly. “I need to feel you, please. I want you like that.”
“Fuck, me too,” Alex ground out.
Alex spread Corbin’s legs with thumbs on his hips and kissed and sucked the join of his thigh. He sucked up blooms of blood under the pale, untouched skin and Corbin felt the bursting of each blood vessel, he was so attuned to Alex’s mouth on his flesh. Alex scraped stubble against the insides of Corbin’s thighs where he’d scratched himself in days gone by, but this was a rasping pleasure he had never felt.
“Yes, please,” Corbin gasped, and Alex rubbed his cheek over the delicate skin until it pinked. When Alex’s mouth closed over his cock, Corbin nearly flew off the bed. He felt like his very arousal itself was being swallowed by a vortex, sucking him inexorably into a black hole. Pull after pull of pleasure left him wrecked on the bed as he quivered toward an explosion.
Then it all stopped and Corbin lay shaking, his body on fire.
“Alex,” he insisted, and Alex groaned out, “Fuck, please, I need to be inside you,” and Corbin said, “Yes, yes, yes.”
Slick fingers slid inside him, and Corbin thought absently that they didn’t feel like his own at all. The way they moved, the size of them and the pressure, the unpredictability, it was all so different that it seemed an entirely other sensation.
Then he lost the ability to catalogue difference because Alex was kissing him and fucking him with his fingers and he was so overwhelmed by the onslaught of sensation that he kept thinking he was orgasming, but when he looked down his cock stood, hard and swollen and leaking against his stomach.
“You, you, you,” Corbin begged, tugging at Alex’s wrist. Alex’s fingers slid out of him and he slicked himself up, breathing shallowly.
He kissed Corbin’s lips and bumped their foreheads together. “I do love you,” he murmured in wonder. “I really do.”
Corbin tried to say it back, because incantations were all about repetition, but he found his heart had taken up residence in his throat and all he could do was nod and hope his eyes spoke for him. He thought Alex understood.
“I hope if your hot-as-fuck brain goes someplace amazing you’ll tell me about it,” Alex said with a smile, and Corbin closed his eyes, peace washing over him.
Corbin’s fantasies of a man fucking him had so often been oceans and planets and stars. As Alex pressed inside of him it was earth. The hot honesty of ground and flesh and rock. Alex’s hips pressed flush against Corbin’s and he paused, completely inside. He leaned forward slowly and pressed a kiss to Corbin’s mouth. They stayed that way for a moment, lips touching, chests touching, bodies interlocked. To Corbin, it felt like time stopped.
Alex slid forward on his knees and slung Corbin’s legs over his shoulders, and Corbin closed his eyes and let himself feel everything. The flesh inside him swelled impossibly large, pressing against muscle. As Alex began to move in deep, heavy thrusts, Corbin started to shake. Each stroke of Alex’s cock teased him open, and he squeezed himself tight around it until Alex groaned and swore.
As the thrusts grew harder and more powerful, Corbin lost himself. He clutched at Alex’s shoulders because he thought otherwise he might be pounded to pieces that would fly apart in all directions. His ass, his cock, his stomach, his thighs, all of it was one reverberation of pleasure as Alex moved, stroking over his prostate until he felt liquefied and mad with pleasure.
Then it happened. He could feel it. Alex’s cock swelled and grew and broke through something inside him, pressing deep, deep, like the tree roots, deep, like the ocean waves, deep, up through into his stomach. Still, Alex moved, hot and slick like he’d been formed of clay to fit perfectly inside. Corbin cried out, and that great pressure moved deeper still. Into his chest where he felt it in his heart and all through his lungs, as if his every breath would be Alex.
He pulled Alex down so he could feel even more of his weight, so it was Alex all around him and Alex all inside him, taking over every empty space and churning it all to throbs of pleasure.
“Alex, Alex, Alex,” he chanted, “you’re so deep in me, you’re everywhere, you’re the earth,” and Alex’s groan was a desperate thing pulled from him like sucking poison.
In his throat now, and if he swallowed he knew he would be swallowing around Alex, and his ears were full, his nose, his mouth, and then Corbin smiled with the brightness of ten thousand suns because he was free. He couldn’t tell Alex because he couldn’t speak, he was so perfectly full of him.
Fuck, baby, and Oh god, and their moans rose together, and Alex’s hand closed around Corbin’s swollen erection and he was coming in great gasping screams of joy, each faraway piece of him exploding.
When Alex cried out his pleasure, Corbin felt a blast of heat inside him that seared him everywhere. Burning in his ass, up in his guts, his heart and lungs, and lingering in his throat. He could taste the clay of Alex, mineral and elemental.
Seconds, minutes, hours, millennia, and Corbin came back to himself. Alex tried to pull out, and Corbin wrapped arms and legs around him so he couldn’t move. He needed to feel this just a little while longer.
Alex was stroking his face and the curve of his thigh and kissing him softly, whispering things Corbin couldn’t understand, but he felt them anyway.
Finally, they separated and lay facing each other, noses nearly touching.
“You’re incredible,” Alex said, but Corbin knew he hadn’t done anything.
He shook his head and kissed Alex. “You were everywhere,” he whispered.
A shudder ran through Alex. “You don’t know what it does to me to hear you say that.” But Corbin thought he did know.
“Alex.”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I want to get you something for Chanukah. It’s not over, is it.” Corbin wasn’t great with time.
“Nope, two more nights.” He ran his palm up and down Corbin’s side under the covers. “You want to know what I really want?”
“Yes.”
“I really want to stay here with you for the next two days, and walk through the woods with you, and eat with you. I want to take a shower with you, and cook eggs with you. And I want to do this about ten more times.” He smiled, a soft sincere smile.
“I want that,” Corbin said, shifting closer. “Is that a Chanukah present.”
“It’s the best present I can possibly imagine. And you never know. Maybe some Chanukah magic will shine down on us, and you’ll know for sure that the curse is broken.”
“I know you’re teasing me, but . . . you did say magic was the possibility of something that seemed otherwise impossible. Well . . . This all seems pretty impossible to me. You. Us. This.”
Corbin pressed his face into Alex’s neck and breathed in his smell. Freshly turned earth, heavy clay, salt, and the sweet hint of almonds.
As Alex’s hand came around him, squeezing the back of his neck, Corbin sighed in pleasure.
Something deep inside him settled into an unfamiliar pattern of knowledge.
Love was a curse. No love was a curse.
Solitude was a cure. Solitude was a torment.
Distance was safety. Distance was crushing.
There was more in the world than he’d ever been told. And there was less.
And here he lay, tangled up with the person he was in love with, for better or for worse. If the curse wasn’t broken, it was too late. The trap had already been sprung.
But if it was broken. If he could have a future. With Alex, and with this version of himself that could see more than signs. Then he wanted it. He wanted to fall asleep with Alex each night, knowing that there would be a morning to wake up to with him. And a morning after that. And enough mornings that they would hang together into something he could call a life.
He was nearly breathless with how much he wanted it.
“Maybe it is magic,” Alex murmured sleepily into his hair. “Feels perfect to me.”
Corbin breathed deeply as he drifted off to sleep in Alex’s arms. Earth from Alex and sea from himself. Fire between them. Outside, winter air gusting fresh snow to bury everything, and on the breeze, the barest edge of green apple and moss whispered of possibility.