Prima Donnas and Princesses

 

 

JOSIE WOKE him up early enough that he sat up in bed, disoriented, still wearing the Henley shirt and the sweats he’d had on when he’d kissed Justin goodnight.

“Uncle Hank!” she told him, her eyes wide and her jaw jutting out like she was angry, “Somebody highbacked my room!”

Hank blinked a good five or six times and finally figured out what she talking about. “Don’t you like your highbacked room?” he asked. What time was it? It took him a moment to make sense of the numbers on the clock, and when he did, he fell back against his pillows, squinting against the light coming from her hallway. “Great googly-moogly, angel—it’s five in the morning! You usually sleep until seven!”

“The smell woke me up,” Josie said, her cheeks scrunched. “The color is pretty, but I don’t like the smell!”

Oh hells. The smell. “It’ll go away in a few days. It’s the paint, Josie. Is that the only thing you don’t like, or can I go back to sleep now?”

“Why did you change my bedroom?” she asked, and Hank rolled to his side and looked at her.

“Because you hated the bed, and you didn’t feel like you had a place and I just wanted you to like living here.” Oh God. Now he was whining.

“I never had my own bed before,” she confessed. “I used to sleep with Mommy.”

Hank sighed, wondering if Justin had already gone. Probably. Hank dimly remembered him setting his phone’s alarm before they’d both fallen asleep talking.

“Do you want to climb in with me?” he asked, beyond proprieties, and Josie nodded.

“Can you hug me too?” she asked, her voice tiny. “I rode the motorcycle ride lots yesterday, and I keep thinking I’m still moving.”

Hank grunted and scooted over. “Yeah,” he sighed, caving in. “Go ahead.”

“No, Uncle Hank,” she told him. “Closer. Mommy let me hold her hand.”

So Hank did, wrapping his arm around her little chest and holding her tight, like nothing was going to get her, and she raised her little hands to pat his hand where it lay. In a few hours, he’d deal with his disappointment that she didn’t love her room, but right now, he forgot about what he was supposed to do according to the good book of parenting, and went with what made her happy. It was like Justin, he thought muzzily as he dropped back into sleep. That much spontaneous human happiness just could not be a bad thing.

 

 

AFTER THEY got the Christmas tree, they set it up in the corner of the living room. Josie was surprisingly willing to put off decorating until Justin came over, which was probably the only reason Hank had the fortitude to wait.

After that, they spent the day quietly: grocery shopping, doing laundry, cooking some mac and cheese and a crock pot of soup to put in little containers in the refrigerator, the better to eat during the week. In the afternoon Hank made some more cookies and let her put the sprinkles on again, and she didn’t complain. After she washed her hands, Hank heard her talking to herself in the bedroom. When he peeked in, she was sitting cross-legged on her new bed, playing with her dolls. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but it was extremely, almost painfully gratifying. Yes. Hank had finally done something right.

In the evening, after dinner and a bath, he pulled her onto his lap and turned on a Christmas special (Shrek The Halls, of all things) and they sat and watched it together. Her eyelids started to droop (and, for that matter, so did his) when she said a curious thing.

“You’re like Shrek, Uncle Hank.”

“Yeah?”

“All grumpy sometimes. And Justin’s like Donkey.”

Hank laughed like she wanted him to. “Shrek’s a nicer guy with his Donkey,” he conceded. He’d been thinking about Justin all day. The sound of his laughter, his animated voice, all of the flamboyance and, face it, fun had filled in all the quiet moments, whether he’d been there or not.

Hank wondered if a day like this one—peaceful and relaxed and perfect—might not be even better if Justin would be there to laugh in all the empty spots.

“Yeah,” Josie said, her head drooping on his shoulder. “Justin could be like Mommy, and be fun. And you could be Uncle Hank, and be safe.”

Hank opened his eyes. Safe wasn’t really a dirty word, was it? Hank had grown up with not particularly safe—his mother had worked and he’d been the one getting Amanda dressed and walking her to school. There had not always been enough to eat, and sometimes a place to sleep hadn’t always been a lock, either. His mother had tried—every day, she’d tried—but she had ended up dour and grim. Her drama tended toward the cynical, and sarcasm had been her armor against disappointment.

Fun and safe. It was like a super-hero duo, right?

Hank was falling asleep with Josie too, but still, he waited until the special was over before he picked her up in her Dora the Explorer pajamas and put her to bed.

“Think you can sleep here all night, Bunny?” he asked, tucking her new comforter under her chin.

“As soon as it feels like mine,” she mumbled. But she didn’t crawl into his bed that night, so that must have been progress, right?

 

 

THE NEXT day, as he fidgeted under the gimlet eye of the social worker, he hung on to that.

“So she has her own room and her own bed,” the social worker said, ticking things off handily on a triplicate form. “And your job at the bank has checked out—you’re doing really well financially.”

She glared at him and, given the grim financial climate, Hank managed a sheepish sort of smile back.

“You really are,” the social worker said, cocking her head. “So the judge is going to want to know why the mother couldn’t stay here?”

Hank looked desperately at Josie (who was playing on her bed again, ignoring the social worker in spite of her repeated attempts to get Josie to talk) and gave a nod to get the woman out of the room.

She was a short Hispanic woman in her fifties, and Hank got the impression that nobody had given her a damned thing. Ever. Not even for her birthday. Well, Hank had grown up through birthdays like that too, and the one thing that he’d given himself was the promise that when he got to be the grown up, he would have it all together, and he’d done okay that way. No boyfriend check on his list, but other than that, he had the job, he had the kid, he had the house, and he was barely twenty-six. This woman could damned well cut him a break by not bringing up the “big drama” that he and Josie had tacitly agreed not to talk about.

They got out to the hallway and the woman said, “Okay, so why didn’t you offer this sweet setup to your sister?”

Hank glowered. “Because Amanda didn’t ask, okay? There was no asking, there was only leaving. Do you think if she’d asked, I would have said no?”

Mrs. Ramirez fluffed her dyed black hair and raised a sculpted eyebrow. “So why wouldn’t she stay here?”

Hank sighed. “I like rules,” he said, feeling like a six-foot three-inch dick. “I like knowing where my next paycheck is coming from, and having the dishes washed after they’re dirty. I like going to bed around the same time every night and knowing the people in my life are going to be right where I left them when I wake up.”

Now both eyebrows were up. “That sounds like a perfect environment for a child.”

“Well, it was for the four-year-old,” he said shortly. “I think the twenty-year-old was tired of those rules, and so she did what lots of children do and ran away.”

Mrs. Ramirez nodded. “Fair enough. So, you want to make this situation permanent?”

Hank’s heart gave an excruciatingly awkward lurch in his chest. “Yes,” he confessed. “I really love having her here.” He gestured vaguely back toward Josie. “We found a really nice daycare lady—Mrs. Watson, her name’s on the paperwork. I spent all Saturday remodeling her room, and I’ve adjusted my workout so the gym childcare guy is the one she really loves. I’ve started going running on my lunch hour so I don’t have to go to the gym so much when he’s not there. I’ve added her to my health insurance and she’s had a dentist appointment and a checkup and I just… I really like having her here. It’s hard—harder than anything I thought I’d do. I can see why Amanda bailed. But I don’t want to bail. I want Josie to know her people are right where she left them when she wakes up.”

Mrs. Ramirez nodded some more and made some more checks on her list. Then she asked, “So, is there a missus Uncle Hank in the future?”

Hank grimaced. He couldn’t lie about this. Hell, he couldn’t lie about anything, as that giddy, delirious night of truth with Justin had proven. But he certainly couldn’t lie about this.

“Uhm, there might be mister Uncle Hank in the future,” he said, looking her gay in the eye.

She nodded, not even batting a thickly gooped eyelash. “Have there been a lot of Mister Uncle Hank’s in the past?” she asked. “The judge is going to ask.”

Hank thought. How long ago was Alan? “My last boyfriend was a year and a half ago,” he said frankly. “I don’t do random hook-ups, so it’s been a long dry spell—”

“Any water in the future?” she asked, not even quirking her lipsticked mouth. Geez, what did it take to get this woman to smile? Admittedly, Hank wasn’t a laugh riot, but she was the one to crack the joke!

“Uhm,” he said, wondering if she needed to know about Justin. At that moment there was a knock at the door and Hank looked at his watch. Wait, he wasn’t running late, right? He excused himself and opened the door, and Justin was standing there with a box of doughnuts.

“He-ey,” he said, grinning as he swished in. “My final was a breeze, and I wasn’t sure if you’d be back yet so I thought I’d check and here you are! My sister got some doughnuts from this place—ohmygah, you’ve got to taste these! They’re… they’re decadence in a pink….”

Justin petered off as he set the pink doughnut box on Hank’s kitchen table. Hank was staring at him, torn between joy, because he was really happy to see him, and horror, because Mrs. Ramirez was not cracking any smiles.

“Uhm, Justin?” Hank said, taking a few steps toward him. “This is Mrs. Ramirez, the social worker. She’s running a little late this morning. Mrs. Ramirez, this is Justin, he’s—”

“Your rain man, isn’t he?”

Justin raised an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“His first boyfriend after a long dry spell,” Mrs. Ramirez said.

“Well, I’m still sort of interviewing for the job,” Justin said, grinning at her now that he understood. “Would you like a doughnut? They are to die for!”

Mrs. Ramirez sent a pointed look at Hank, who had offered her a cup of coffee, which she apparently didn’t drink. “I’d love one,” she said, reaching into the box. She chose a French cruller and took a bite, then closed her eyes. When she opened them, she was glaring at Hank all over again.

“You should give this boy the job for the doughnuts alone. I’ll tell the judge this is a nice, stable home, and you all have a Merry Christmas.” With that, she looked around the house. “You are going to decorate, aren’t you? You’ve only got three weeks!”

“Oh yes,” Justin said, smiling at her and handing her a napkin—the icing was thick and flaking off onto her bright gold and black blazer. “Tonight—it’s going to be a thing.” He reached into the pocket of his windbreaker. “I even brought music!” he said, pulling out two CDs that looked freshly burned.

Hank realized that he was just standing there, stupidly, looking at Justin like his last best hope, and with that, he closed the final distance between them and took the CDs out of his hands.

“That’s a perfect idea,” he said softly, wishing they were the only two people in the room. Justin turned to him, radiating that absolute good will, and Hank ignored Mrs. Ramirez and the second disappearing doughnut, and kissed Justin on a chilly cheek, his lips actually tingling for something more. “Thank you,” Hank said sincerely. “Do you want to go get Josie ready while I close this up?”

Justin’s smile was bright and white and brilliant as the sun. “Oh Josie!” he called, before breaking off eye contact with Hank and trotting down the hall. “Are you ready to go to the babysitter’s?”

“Justin!” Josie squealed, as she rocketed out of her new bedroom and right into Justin’s arms.

“He’s something else,” Mrs. Ramirez said, and for the first time all morning, Hank detected a little bit of warmth in her voice.

“You have no idea,” Hank said, finally tearing his eyes off the two of them, chattering away in some secret kid language that Justin spoke fluently. “Now what do I have to sign to make sure she gets to stay here as long as she wants?”

 

 

SIGNING THE papers took a while, so Hank cleared it with childcare and let Justin take Josie to Mrs. Watson’s in Hank’s car. By the time Mrs. Ramirez left, Justin was pulling back into the driveway, and Hank walked out of his house with a feeling of relief. Six hours to go shopping, and then back to decorate the tree, and it was all, all in Justin’s company.

Oh God. He hoped he didn’t screw this up.

Justin rolled down the window. “Can I drive to the mall?” he asked. “I gotta tell you, Henry, this thing is sweet compared to that piece of crap I drive!”

Hank had to laugh at Justin’s battered blue Ford Neon parked in front of his house by the curb. “Knock yourself out,” he said, settling down in the passenger’s seat. “But I have to tell you, it’s not nearly as much fun as my Mustang.”

“Ohmygah, you had a Mustang!”

The way Justin said it made Hank feel like he was an old superhero. Like ohmygah, you were able to fly?

“Yeah—it was a recent model, though.” Because everyone knew the old restored ones were the best.

“So why’d you get rid of it?”

“I needed something sensible for Josie.”

Justin grunted as he turned left on Madison, heading for the freeway.

“We’re not going to Sunrise?” Hank was surprised—Sunrise Mall was the closest and the least crowded of the three major shopping networks in the area.

“When we have the Galleria?” Justin asked with a huff, and Hank suppressed a groan.

“Oh God,” he whined, “the crowds and the—”

“Oh yes, Henry. There’s gonna be drama. Get over it. I love the Galleria at Christmas.”

“I get lost,” Hank confessed. “I can never find my way around in the parking garage and—”

“Well, it’s lucky you have me.” They were at a light and Justin cast a flirtatious glance to his right. “I shall be your guide through the fields of frantic holiday shoppers. You will come to depend on me. I’ll be your Sherpa through the human mountain, your faithful Saint Bernard, guiding you through the shopping Alps, your Strider, hauling your poor hobbit ass through the perils of Middle Earth—”

“My Gollum, prepared to dump my hobbit ass in the volcano,” Hank finished, although it was hard because he was fighting laughter with every word.

“No-oo!” Justin protested. “I would never dump your ass in a volcano.” He gave one of those giggly smiles, the kind that was all teeth, and that popped his cheeks so close to his eyes that they got all squinchy. “I need to grope it first!”

Hank’s laughter cut off with a swallow, and heat swept his body. Justin pulled his chin back into what Hank was thinking of as his meerkat pose, even though he kept two hands on the wheel.

“You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you,” Justin asked, waggling his eyebrows.

“I… uhm… oh God.” Hank fought the temptation to put his face in his hands, and instead stared out the window. There was something about the gray skies of December that made the foothills look featureless as they drove to Roseville. But beyond that, Hank could see the mountains, and they’d always seemed to promise something great, something grand and perfect and magnificent. Hank had never questioned why his mother had moved to Reno—he’d only questioned why he’d chosen to remain in the valley.

“How long’s it been, Henry?”

“A year and a half.” Somehow, with his eyes focused on the mountains, that didn’t sound so pathetic.

“You know, I, uhm, haven’t gotten much past second base, right? A year and a half, a total butt-virgin—it’ll be very Sweet Valley High.”

Hank tried not to choke on his tongue. “God, you’re making a lot of assumptions,” he said when he’d recovered, and Justin thumped him on the back a couple of times to make sure he was done coughing.

“No, no,” Justin said, and although his smile was more low key, it was still there. “See, you don’t get it. I mean, I’ve worked at the gym for two years, right? And I saw you from afar, and… man, do you have any idea how hot you are?”

Could Justin hear him swallow? How about the screeching, rusty gears in Hank’s head, could he hear those too? “Uhm…”

“I mean, you’ve got that whole ‘Don’t touch me’ thing going, but from afar, I’ve got to tell you, you starred in a lot of pornographic dreams, Henry. And suddenly you show up with this little girl, and anybody could see you were struggling. But I see parents and kids all the time, and I’ve got to tell you, you’re one of the good ones. You keep your patience—and man, when a kid’s got all the baggage Josie’s got, that’s not easy. I thought if she said ‘But Mommy never did tha-at!’ one more time, you were going to crack a tooth, you were grinding your jaw so hard. But you didn’t. And maybe you can’t see it, but she’s happier already. It’s only been a couple of months, but I can see that she’s happier. And I love kids, so you went from my ‘worship from afar’ to my ‘dream guy’, even though you were a dick, and I thought you were straight.”

“I’m sorry about being a dick,” Henry mumbled, embarrassed down to his toes.

“But see? Then you got all human on me the other night, and it’s official. I’m there, Henry. I’m… I’m in the United States of Henry right now. I’m ready for the Henry lifestyle. And I know you’ve only gotten your toes wet in Lake Justin right now, but I want you to come in, take a swim, and build your house out here, okay?”

Hank was torn between laughing and hyperventilating, and he couldn’t seem to get a handle on either. Then Justin, eyes still on the road, put his hand on Hank’s knee, and the world slowed down, spun a little saner, became more a manageable, gravity driving mass and less a broken gyroscope on the edge of the abyss.

Hank covered that hand with his own. “You don’t have any gloves,” he croaked, because it was cold and Justin’s hand was icy.

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t planning on baring my soul to you. Some of that’s flop sweat.”

Hank laughed a little and squeezed. “It was a good speech. No flopping. I’m still in the car.”

“Good, Henry. It’s your car.”

“You’re a really good human being, and I wasn’t very nice. And now I’m worried about hurting you. I’m sort of a selfish bastard—”

“Bullshit. Start over.”

“I am worried about hurting you.”

“Let’s have us some sex, Henry, and then you can worry.”

“Are you saying it won’t hurt if we don’t have sex?” Because as awesome as Justin’s hand felt in his own right now, that was really, really tempting. Pain was drama. Drama was overrated.

“No,” Justin said, his voice gentle. “I’m saying that if we don’t have sex, this relationship will hurt, because it is a relationship. I’ve been dreaming about your kiss for two days, Henry. Don’t let me down because your chicken heart suddenly thinks we’re going too fast. Like I said, I can’t go too fast. I’m already there.”

Oh God, so am I. Hank thought it, but he didn’t say it. He didn’t let go of Justin’s hand until Justin needed it to steer, either.

 

 

“HMM….” JUSTIN said a half hour later as they tooled through Toys “R” Us. “I can see why you wanted to see it for real. This close it’s sort of….” They both looked at the item Hank had picked out in the catalogue and at all of the accessories that were chained to the display board too.

“Cheap,” Hank said grimly. “It’s cheap. It’s going to fall a—”

“Ohmygah! Ohmygah ohmygah ohmygah!” Justin had disappeared to the end of the aisle, and he was… vibrating there, his feet dancing in place and his hands flapping up and down so quickly they blurred. “No, no, no, no, no,… Come here, Henry! You need to see this!” And that last part was superfluous because of course Hank was going to go over there—if nothing else because it looked like he was having a seizure and Hank might be needed to hold his head or something.

“Oh.” Hank looked at it and could swear he saw a shining light from above beaming down upon it. It was just the display light, but still.

“That is the best damned dollhouse I have ever seen,” he said, ignoring the fact that he had never really looked at a dollhouse until this point in his life. It was immaterial. The house itself was made of wood, but it was sized to accommodate everything from Barbie dolls to Bratz, although Hank was pretty partial to the smaller, detailed wooden dolls that came with it. He looked up from his gift trance and was disoriented for a moment, because Justin had disappeared again. Before Hank could even look around for him, he came back, pushing the cart through the crowded store with all the aplomb of a Maharajah in the Imperial Bazaar.

“Here we go,” Justin said, squatting down and pulling out the first dollhouse on the shelf—and then setting it aside.

“What are you doing?” Hank asked. He loved this gift. He wanted to hold it to his chest and hiss at anybody who came to touch it. Well, maybe he’d let Justin touch it. And Josie of course. Definitely Josie. But seriously, only the three of them. That was the circle of dollhouse trust. Anyone else was not invited.

“We don’t want the first one,” Justin said logically. “It’s been picked up and looked at and fondled and rattled. We want the second or third one on the shelf—and here you are, my little beauty, come to Uncle Justin!”

Justin straightened triumphantly, and Hank had never seen a more beautiful heart than the one Justin wore out for anyone to see in his smile.

“Okay, we’ve got the house. Now the—”

“And we want this one, and this one, and this one—” Justin was already picking out the accessories; Hank had to act fast or get left in the dust!

“You want a big brother doll?” That was a little out of Josie’s detail range, wasn’t it?

“It’s an Uncle Justin doll. And see here? It’s an Uncle Hank doll. He’s even got your scowl.”

“Well, Uncle Justin has nothing near your smile,” Hank said without thinking, and his reward was that same smile, amped to the brightness scale of a solar flare, softened only by shining blue eyes.

“You like my smile?” Justin asked wistfully, and Hank nodded, suddenly tongue-tied.

“Very much,” he said, gnawing on his lower lip out of sheer shyness.

If Justin hadn’t stood on tiptoe and kissed him right then, in the middle of Toys “R” Us, Hank might have been blind for life. But that was okay. It was a very nice kiss.

 

 

THEY CLEANED out Toys “R” Us. Well, not exactly, there were a lot of toys, and the boys side of the store was definitely untouched (although Hank set his eye on a set of three Nerf air-soft pistols to give Justin, because he thought those looked like fun) but generally, after the triumph of the dollhouse, they’d gone a little nuts.

Everything.

Hank wanted to buy her everything.

He had not forgotten his common sense, though, and he did draw the line about ten gifts before Justin would have, but Hank figured that if he was tired shopping for the gifts, then Josie would be tired opening them on Christmas day.

“But…” Justin whined as they cleared checkout. “What are we going to look for now?”

Hank grinned at him, suddenly feeling like a kid playing hooky.

“Anything we want!” he said, surprised, and Justin giggled.

And then they went shopping.

Oh, it was fun. They didn’t actually buy much, but they wandered into almost every store, picking things up and commenting and cracking random, juvenile jokes, revealing hidden things about each other just by talking. Hank learned that Justin had failed algebra twice, until his father just started feeding him answers to get him through, and that a complete helplessness with math was one of the reasons he wanted to teach the very young children instead of the older ones. He learned that Justin had one older sister still at home (which he’d known) and two older brothers who were still in the area (which he had surmised) and that his parents had set up a very nice, very adult agreement about letting him live at home.

“I’ve got enough saved to move out,” Justin said, “but I like knowing someone will worry about me when I come home. Does that make me immature?”

“No,” Hank said. “That makes you human.”

Justin dragged him kicking and screaming into a woman’s bath shop, only to spray Hank with all of the scents in their men’s line, to see which one would smell best.

“Justin,” Hank whined. “I’ve got Earth on my left wrist, Sky on my right wrist, and Ocean on my chest,” because Justin had missed, “what are you putting on me now?”

“Oak,” Justin said absently, spraying Hank’s neck and hitting his mark this time. “Now shut up. I’m trying to smell.” He closed his eyes and stood on tip-toes, and inhaled, his nose very close to Hank’s neck. “Mm…” he said dreamily. “That’s your smell.”

Hank blushed and bumbled backwards, almost running over the woman behind him, who did not look amused. “Do you have a smell?” he asked, flustered, and Justin smiled wickedly.

“I’m all about Sky, baby, cause that’s where Oak is reaching for.”

Hank’s lips quirked sideways. “Unless they’re burying their roots in Earth’s firmament,” he said, and Justin set the tester down and burst into giggles.

“Let’s get out of here, big guy, before you make any more puns and hurt yourself.”

And off they went. They bought some extra ornaments and garlands in their next stop, and then went and got Josie from Mrs. Watson’s, who was so excited she reminded Hank of Justin.

“Oh boy! Oh boy! Is Justin gonna decorate with us? Oh is he, Uncle Hank?”

After a short dinner, they jumped into the fray, letting Josie hang most of the ornaments below waist level. She ran to one or the other of them before each ornament, so they could examine it and tell her it was perfect, and then she placed it very carefully on the tree. Hank tended to prefer the Hallmark ornaments—his childhood trees had been filled with hand-me-downs and homemade—but this year, he was particularly proud to put a candy cane made of beads front and center. Josie had made it in daycare.

Justin held her up so she could put the star on the top and then string tinsel garlands all around the living room, and Hank put a nail in the front door to hang the new wreath on. When he was done with that, he disappeared into the kitchen to make cocoa and came back, setting it on the coasters on the coffee table, and looking around.

“It’s wonderful,” he pronounced, and Josie ran to give him a completely unsolicited, delighted hug.

And then to ask him if she could watch Shrek again after her bath, which he’d forgotten about.

But finally she was bathed and full of hot chocolate and her teeth were brushed, and Hank had read her one story and Justin had sung her a Christmas song in his sweet tenor, and she was fast, fast asleep.

Hank came out of her bedroom to find Justin in the kitchen, cleaning up.

And fell very much in love. Again.

He moved behind that compact, vital body, placed his hands on Justin’s hips and started to kiss the back of his neck. Justin gasped and put the pot he was washing down in the sink, and simply leaned back into Hank’s arms and allowed him to….

To kiss him, his neck, his back, his ears, his jaw, his shoulders….

To touch him, his chest, his face, his stomach, his arms, his throat….

To feel him, pressed up against Hank’s front, a willing, warm human being who was moaning breathlessly and grinding back against Hank as he breathed, touched, and pillaged the young man who had come bouncing into his life and who showed no inclination of leaving.

“You have to promise me something,” Hank whispered, and Justin moaned in return. “You have to promise me that no matter how this goes, you’ll smile at me tomorrow morning, okay? I’m starting to depend on that smile. I need to see it when we leave the house.”

“Deal.”

Hank grabbed his shoulders and turned him around and took his mouth savagely, his breath sobbing in his throat when Justin matched him for urgency. He shoved his hands down the back of Justin’s jeans and pulled up his shirt, dying to feel bare skin, and was gratified when Justin did the same thing. Justin’s hands were warm and still a little damp, but Hank didn’t care. Skin-on-skin, after so long, it was amazing.

Justin panted and bucked his hips forward, then pulled back from the kiss and leaned his head on Hank’s shoulder. “Please tell me your door locks.”

“Yes,” Hank breathed back, reaching into Justin’s jeans and grabbing twin handfuls of taut yet squishy backside. “But we need to unlock it and get dressed when we’re done.”

“Deal.” And then they were kissing, and Hank was walking Justin backwards to the bedroom, leaving the dishes in the sink and turning off lights as they went.

The kiss didn’t stop when they got to the bedroom, but it did get interrupted as Hank pulled off Justin’s bright green sweater and the red T-shirt underneath it. Justin obviously used the gym too, but his muscles were smaller, more compact, and his chest had maybe three hairs on it.

“Does this mean,” Hank asked, kissing down Justin’s pec, “that I’m cradle robbing?”

“Yeah, Henry.” Justin tipped his head back and appeared to enjoy every one of Hank’s perfectly placed kisses down the center of his chest. “They changed the age of consent to read ‘age of chest hair’.”

Hank pulled away to snicker at him, and Justin knotted his fingers in Hank’s short hair and pushed him back to placing kisses on Justin’s nearly smooth chest. “If you suck on my nipple, I may come in my pants,” Justin promised, and Hank went for it, to see if that could really happen.

It was a near thing. Justin’s über-responsive body bucked under his mouth, and his grip tightened to the point of pain in Hank’s hair, so Hank moved to the next nipple to tease some more before shucking Justin’s pants and boxers in one go, and moving straight for ground zero.

“Henry,” Justin whined, struggling to get his pants and his shoes off at the same time so he could lie back on the bed. “Jeez, just give it a little bit of a—” His shoes finally landed with a plop, along with his jeans, and Hank pushed him back on the bed and took Justin’s entire length into his mouth with one hungry shove.

“Ohmygah!” Justin breathed, and Henry tightened his lips and pulled back, tasting skin, sweat, soap, and then pushing forward again as far down as he could go. Justin pounded the mattress in the sweet pain of almost instant arousal, and started to jerk hard. Hank hadn’t done this in a while—he took Justin’s cock in his fist and held tight, then clamped his mouth over the widely flared head and teased with his tongue, letting Justin thrust as hard and as fast and as wildly and—“Ohmygah omygah omygah… fuck!”

He surged forward and Hank swallowed, wanting all of it in his mouth, down his throat, the salty, the bitter, the surprisingly sweet, and Justin kept thrusting until every last bit of it was shot. When Justin made a sound of discomfort, Hank let go of his cock and pushed himself up onto the mattress, still hard and aching but content for a moment to just touch and see the first man he’d had in his bed in too long a time. He didn’t look Justin in the eyes, not yet. First he danced his fingertips across thighs—there was some fur on those, and black hair at Justin’s groin, proving that yes, in fact, Justin did have body hair. From the thighs, he stuck his tongue out and caught the edges of Justin’s oblique muscles and traced up while Justin held himself, quivering, and tried, Hank could tell, not to fall apart and giggle.

Hank moved to his side and tried to give him a hickey, and Justin lost the battle, curling up defensively and giggling like a little kid.

“Ohmygah, Henry! Way to kill a mood!” he said, still laughing, and Hank slid up to put his head on the pillow next to him and pulled Justin, giggles and all, into his arms. He dropped little kisses in Justin’s silky and enviably straight black hair, on his temple, on his cheek, and then, as the giggles stilled, on his mouth. Justin opened his mouth and returned the kiss and Hank made a sort of desperate sound and ground his still-aching groin.

“What do you want?” Justin asked, tucking his hands under Hank’s shirt and sweater, and Hank closed his eyes and shuddered.

“Just touch me,” he begged. “Just…”

“Yeah,” Justin whispered. “Here, Henry, let’s take your clothes off.”

There was some scrambling and some breathless giggling but in a few moments, Hank was naked and lying on the sheets across from Justin, who pressed a kiss on his mouth and then scooted closer and wrapped his arms and legs around Hank’s body, just pulling him into a full-length, skin-on-skin embrace that left Hank shuddering.

“C’mere,” Justin whispered against his neck, even though Hank was solid in his arms and they couldn’t get any closer without penetration. Hank didn’t want that, though. He found he was clinging to Justin, aroused—painfully aroused—but needing Justin’s skin, and his kindness and his joy with every fiber, atom, skin cell, particle, electron, platelet and neuron in his body. “Shh….”

Justin stroked his back and his sides and even his backside, and when Hank’s hips started to buck, he slid his hand between their bodies and grasped Hank’s cock. He stroked jerkily because there was no room for anything else, but Hank was so primed, so high off the thrill of being touched, that Justin’s stuttering, inexpert touch was all he needed.

He climaxed hard, the hot come spurting between them. His vision went black, the orgasm convulsing him into Justin’s arms until he huddled there, still shaking.

Justin held him, nothing delicate or fragile in his touch at all, until Hank got hold of himself and tried to pull back, if nothing else, to restore his dignity.

Justin’s embrace only grew tighter.

“Stay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

Hank wanted to laugh. It was ludicrous, wasn’t it? Hank was the banker; Justin was the fun guy the kids loved. Hank had the house; Justin lived with his parents. Hank took care of Josie like he’d taken care of Amanda, and Justin… oh God. He was taking care of Hank. He was. He was clutching Hank right up next to him, naked and vulnerable and unafraid in a way Hank had never been.

Hank found himself breathing shakily into the hollow of Justin’s neck, taking everything he had to offer.

 

 

HE WASN’T aware of the moment he managed to pull himself together, but it came. He drew back a little and yanked the comforter over the two of them to their chins. Justin laughed and pulled it over their heads and looked at him in the light shining through the deep gold comforter, and Hank blinked back, relieved that he was Hank again because he’d felt a little lost as Henry.

“That was good,” Justin whispered, and Hank smiled and nodded, feeling excited like a kid at Christmas.

“That was wonderful.”

“Want to do it again?”

For a moment he almost said no, they had to go to sleep, they both worked in the morning blah blah blah blah. Of course then it hit him; he had Justin, and he was naked, and he was in Hank’s bed, horny, and ready for a (hopefully slower) second round.

Common sense reasserted itself in a hurry.

“Oh God, yes,” he said, closing in for a kiss, and Justin’s laughing mouth opened for him and their secret hiding place from all the scary things in the world kept them safe while they made love again.