The Tower Floor

 

 

ZACH DIDN’T see if there were people in that elevator or not. Everything was a haze except Sean’s mouth on his, and the quietly murmured instructions.

“It’s a dialog,” Sean said. “See?” He pressed his mouth against Zach’s and Zach opened in response. Sean pulled back and breathed, “Good, now listen to this next one.” And then he touched his tongue to the edge of Zach’s lips and Zach drove his tongue into Sean’s mouth like a deep-core drill trying to strike oil.

Zach half expected Sean to correct his form or punctuate his tongue work or something but Sean went boneless in his arms, opened his mouth, and melted against the back of the elevator. Zach tasted everything—tongue, teeth, tonsils—and then pulled back, touched Sean’s lips and then moved in a little deeper and then accepted the quest of his tongue and sucked on it gently and released it and teased his lips some more. There was no coming up for air, there was only Sean, who tasted like coffee and magic and unicorns and knights in geeky armor and some sort of gravy he’d had for dinner.

Sean’s hands slid down the back of Zach’s slacks and squeezed, and Zach whimpered and buried his face in Sean’s neck.

“Lesson over,” Sean whispered. “You kiss like a Shakespeare sonnet.”

“It’s not dialog,” Zach apologized.

“Nope.” Sean’s hands were squeezy and intimate on Zach’s backside. “‘Sheer poetry, ah!’”

Zach shuddered, and while one hand was still clutching his briefcase, the other hand was sort of mauling its way under Sean’s shirt. “I have no idea what that means.”

Sean growled into Zach’s mouth and the kiss was on again, except this time Zach got a good handful of Sean’s backside, and it felt so good in his hand. Sean whined a little and ground up against Zach’s thigh, and Zach had a sudden flash of the obvious: That’s his cock. And it’s getting hard. And I’m going to see it, and touch it, and taste it and ***!

Zach’s brain sort of shorted out after that, and his briefcase hit the floor. Now he had two handfuls of Sean’s ass, and that magic thing in the yoga pants was getting harder and grinding closer and—

Ding!

He couldn’t seem to stop kissing Sean.

“Zach…. Zach—”

A little smack on the top of his head snapped him out of it. He pulled back from Sean and they both regarded each other stupidly. Sean’s pupils were blown and his breath was coming like a sprinter’s at the line.

“Huh?” Zach said, looking around. Jace regarded him over Sean’s shoulder, his steel-blue eyes sardonic and unamused.

“If you two don’t get out of the elevator and down the hall, you’re going to get evicted for indecent exposure.”

“Jace!” Quent protested.

“Their hands are still in each other’s pants,” Jace snapped. “I’m doing them a service.” Then the irritated stockbroker turned back to Zach and literally grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back. “Get out your key, Romeo, and go kiss yourself an entire play—just do it out of the elevator.”

Zach grabbed his briefcase in embarrassment, and was fumbling around in his pocket for his key when Sean grabbed his arm and started hauling him down the hall. “Bye fellas!” he burbled. “Have a nice evening!”

“Not as nice as yours!” Quent called, and the last thing Zach heard as he opened his door was Jace growling, “Wanna bet?”

Sean chuckled and the two of them fell through the door and the rest of the world was forgotten.

Sean—oh wow. Taste and taste and taste and it didn’t get old or awkward or weird, it was just… kissing him was like eating chocolate and raspberries—it shouldn’t have to stop. And Sean’s hands—his presumptuous, forward, filthy-minded hands!

First they were fumbling with Zach’s fly, then they were pushing his slacks down to his thighs and then they were shoving his suit jacket off his shoulders and, between kisses, nibbles, breathless little cries, unbuttoning his shirt.

Zach managed to pull back and gasp, “The bedroom. There’s condoms in the bedroom.”

Sean pulled back and looked at him suspiciously. “Yeah, Zach, but how old are those condoms.”

Zach flushed. “I, uhm, bought them this week.”

“Cause the other ones were… c’mon. Fess up.”

Zach looked into that ordinary, beautiful, freckled face with the riot of hair and the windburned nose, and actually felt like he could fess up, to everything.

“Expired,” Zach mumbled, because it really had been that long since he’d even called up the escort service to allay the loneliness.

Sean nodded then, and kissed his forehead. “Okay then. A little slower. We’re going to do this a little slower.”

Zach whined and did his own filthy-minded exploration of Sean’s backside with his hands. “Fast first!” he begged. “Slower later!”

Sean reached behind him and grabbed Zach’s hands firmly, hauling them out of his pants and pinning them to Zach’s sides. “Go get undressed,” he ordered softly. “Down to wherever your courage fails you. Get the condoms out and ready on the dressing table, and the lube too, but don’t get too disappointed if we don’t get that far. You and me, we’re going to have us a long, meaningful body conversation tonight, and I have waited too long to rush it.”

Zach swallowed, some of his urgency fading. “Undress?”

“I’ll be right in,” Sean murmured, kissing him quickly.

Sean must have remembered where the guest bathroom was, because he disappeared in there, and Zach picked his jacket off the ground, left his briefcase where it was, and pulled his pants up so he could shuffle into his bedroom.

He felt a little better after he hung up his suit jacket and his pants, and he managed to unbutton his dress shirt and take off his tie without any nerves whatsoever.

But down to his tank—that’s where his nerves failed him, and while he managed to take it off with shaking hands, he was huddled under the comforter, looking balefully at the supplies on top of the nightstand when Sean came out of the bathroom.

Naked.

Zach stopped huddling, and actually propped himself on an elbow to check him out.

Sean grinned and gestured to himself suggestively. He didn’t work out—he had a little tummy, and his chest was narrow. He wasn’t fat—just soft—and Zach thought about how real he’d felt under Zach’s hands.

“See?” Sean said, still grinning. “One-hundred percent red-blooded gay man. Right here. No preservatives or additives, just—”

“Just you. Get in bed, okay? You promised me dialog.”

“Dialog?”

“Repartee, banter, an exchange of quips—”

“Oh hey! Look who’s getting all teacherly and shit!” Sean got close to the bed and reached down to feather his fingertips along Zach’s jaw. “Why are you so worried? You’re the one who’s buffed and toned and—”

Zach captured his hand. “Do you have any idea what you mean to me? How important you are? How much I need to touch someone who’s real?”

Sean knelt on the mattress and captured his mouth. Zach accepted the first sally, and replied. He listened with the opening of his mouth and his touches along Sean’s back, and replied with a leg thrown over a slender, naked thigh, and arching into Sean’s aroused body, so they could continue the conversation.

The dialog whispered when Sean kissed along his neck and down his chest, and exploded into babble when Sean’s swollen pink mouth closed around his nipple. When Sean’s soft hands pushed Zach’s boxers down his thighs and grasped Zach’s cock, they were no longer bantering; they were negotiating for the territory of Zach’s soul.

Sean’s mouth closed over Zach’s erect flesh, and Zach conceded the conversation with a shout, with begging, breathless sobs, broken syllables of raw need.

Sean responded with tenderness, with firm touches, with increased pressure where it was needed, and Zach ended the conversation, spilling his soul in his lover’s mouth.

Silence, hushed and reverent, filled the darkness.

Zach threaded shaking fingers through Sean’s hair, and Sean rested his cheek on Zach’s upper thigh and gazed up at him with sober eyes.

Sean captured Zach’s hand and squeezed.

“You didn’t… uhm, I mean, well….”

Sean shook his head then, squinting inscrutably. “We have so many more things to talk about,” he said quietly. “This conversation is going to take way longer than a night.”

Zach nodded and tried a shaky smile. His eyes burned absurdly and he closed them and returned the pressure of Sean’s fingers.

“Could you come up and kiss me, then?” he begged. “I… I don’t even know what to say anymore.”

“A kiss is good. I think kisses are where all good things start.”

Zach closed his eyes and accepted the kiss, accepted the taste of his come on Sean’s tongue, and all he had to return was that acceptance, that willingness to be himself and only himself for the man who had just made love to him in what had once been a cold and lonely bed.

The kiss ended, and Sean lay next to him, rubbing the hard muscles in his chest and the planes of his stomach. Zach took the tacit invitation and started to explore Sean’s body with tentative touches as well.

“That was wonderful,” Zach breathed, and Sean nodded.

“Your hands are still shaking.”

Zach’s hand stilled the tentative petting of the soft oblique muscle of Sean’s stomach. He watched curiously and saw that Sean was right.

“I’ve… it’s uhm….”

“Zach, you’re the loneliest person I’ve ever met.”

Zach shrunk in on himself in mortification. “I wasn’t a minute ago,” he muttered, trying to turn his back.

Sean stopped him with a quiet hand. “Come back here. C’mon, I won’t bite.” Zach rolled back and Sean opened his arms for him. Zach found himself cuddled up to that narrow chest with a few silky chest hairs peeping out, which Zach petted when Sean began to talk.

“My parents are still stupid sickly in love, you know,” Sean told him, and Zach didn’t even have to make listening noises, because suddenly, oh gift of gifts, Sean’s life story was spilled out before him like treasures for Zach to sort through.

His parents were still in love and living in Sacramento, and he had two younger sisters and a brother who was still in high school.

“They’re both retired, right? So Timothy gets dragged everywhere—I think he barely attends school, but his test scores are phenomenal, so he can go almost anywhere he wants. Of course, mom and dad can’t really afford anywhere, so it’s probably going to be state college, but he’ll do amazing, like he always does. And the girls are both getting their degrees in humanities and teaching, because it’s like, the family curse, you know? Some families do business, some are cops, ours are teachers. I picked middle school because I can teach almost anything, and I like being busy. So, every year we meet at home for Christmas, and my parents invite our significant others and we pick on each other and eat way too much and help mom with the dishes and tell her all about our personal lives and try not to let them give us money.”

“Sounds happy,” Zach whispered.

“We are. I missed them so bad when I went away to school. I called three times a week and about drove my mom crazy with e-mails and pictures. But eventually I really started to love it here, and I met Chris and Toby, and we all moved in together and then when my student loans ran out, we recruited Wendy, Katie, and Todd. And I dated a few guys for more than a month and partied a lot, and had just about decided I was ready to date like a grown-up when this really nice guy smiled at me on an elevator, and that was pretty much it.”

“Why?” Zach asked, thinking about the guy with the play tickets in a hurry. “You had other offers.”

Sean kissed the back of his neck and the edge of his shoulder blade, and Zach’s breath hitched and he pushed backward just to feel Sean’s curly pubic hair and his growing erection.

“Because I was ready to feel something important,” Sean murmured. “And that’s just how you looked at me.”

“Yes.” Zach’s hips started to undulate all on their own. “That’s exactly how I felt.”

Sean’s hands smoothed down his chest, stopping to tweak at his nipples and then centering at ground zero. “So,” he purred in Zach’s ear, “tell me about yourself.”

“Nungh….” Zach thrust into Sean’s fist, and Sean sighed.

“It’s a good thing this part of the convo has it going on,” he murmured, and then he proceeded to… well, just proceeded. He stroked Zach until he was crazy again, and then, boldly and without apology, propped Zach’s foot up so his bottom was accessible. His fingers, slick and probing, were a surprise at first, and Zach made a shocked sort of sound.

“You’ve never bottomed?” Sean asked, stretching him gently.

“No,” Zach told him, pushing back onto his fingers because it felt so good.

“You’re practically a romantic trope, you’re so needy,” Sean murmured. “Why haven’t you ever bottomed?”

And Zach was so mindless, so drunk on touch and conversation, that he actually told the truth. “Rent boys don’t usually top,” he murmured, and for a terrible second Sean’s hands actually stopped on his body. “Oh hell.”

“No,” Sean said, sounding like he was making a resolution. His hands resumed, the one soft and probing and the other hard and insistent. “Here, hold that for a minute,” and he placed Zach’s hand on his own cock while he fumbled with the condom from the nightstand. Zach knew his own body well, and he loved it when his crown was squeezed between the circle of his thumb and forefinger. He listened to Sean’s noises with the wrapper and the condom with only half an ear, and concentrated on the white light that centered at his penis and radiated out.

“Don’t come yet!” Sean admonished, and there was a sudden pressure at Zach’s entrance. Zach let out a little grunt and then… just sat still. Sean pressed forward and waited, waited, waited, and Zach’s body did an extraordinary thing. It stretched, and for a moment it radiated a sharp pain, and then… then… it stretched some more, and Sean let out a great sigh right in Zach’s ear.

“Oh….”

“Good?” Sean panted. Zach felt sweat smearing on his back when Sean wiped his forehead, so he knew this wasn’t easy.

“Yes. Yes… it’s… oh… oh yeah… move a little more. A little more. God… yes. A… harder.”

Sean’s breathless laugh tickled his ear. “Oh now you’re vocal.” And that was the last thing he said for a while with actual words in it.

Give and take—this kind of sex brought it to a whole new level. Sean gave and Zach took, then Zach thrust back and Sean took and again and again and again. A shift in position had Zach facedown in the mattress and Sean thrusting into him like a jackhammer while one or both of them started screaming “Yes, God yes, hell yes, ohmygod don’t fucking stop!”

Sean’s frantic spasms in his body were Zach’s only warning that Sean was close, and he groaned, desperate for his own edge, then grabbed himself and squeezed.

The pulses of come against the sheets splashed wet and hot on his stomach, and Sean fell against him, clammy with sweat.

“Wow.” Sean didn’t say anything after that for a while. Just panted and crushed Zach into the mattress. Zach took it, like he’d taken the invasion of his body and the whole other human being in his bed.

Like it was a miracle.

“Yeah,” Zach said against the darkness in front of his eyes. He was taking inventory. Everything either tingled, ached pleasurably, or was shaking too hard to tell. Little puckers danced across his back as Sean peppered his back with tiny kisses.

Sean pulled the hair back from his ear so he could place a kiss against the outer hollow, whispered, “How you doing?”

“I… uhm….” Oh no. His voice shook. His voice shook, and his eyes burned more and could he be any more of an idiot?

“Hey,” Sean whispered. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Sean rolled off of him, and his absence from Zach’s body almost hurt. While he was deftly dealing with the condom, Zach rolled on his side, away from Sean and toward the wall.

“It was great,” he said, feeling all sorts of desolation. “It was… I can’t believe… I mean….” He couldn’t explain it. He couldn’t. It was like his entire life, he’d thought he knew what breathing was, what pleasurable meant, what human connection could be.

He was wrong. So, so far off the mark, so far short of what the world was about. He couldn’t stop the shivers that swept him, and it wasn’t until Sean plastered himself along his back that he was able to breathe again.

Sean’s kisses along his neck centered him. “You’ve never done that for real before,” he deduced.

“An orgasm is an orgasm,” Zach said tonelessly. “I’ve seen enough of them on TV.”

“C’mon, Zach, look at me.”

Zach sighed and rolled over, staring fixedly at Sean’s chest. Escorts didn’t have chests like that, he thought. They waxed and worked out, and their muscles were spectacular. They didn’t have imperfections like a soft waist or loose pecs or a little patch of hair in the middle. Tentatively he reached up and stroked Sean’s little patch of hair.

“What’s wrong?” Sean asked, and Zach met his eyes—sort of. His whole face was blurry, and it was dark, but he was pretty sure he was focusing in the right place.

“This is new,” he said shakily.

“What is? Sex? Been around awhile.” The words were flip, but the voice was soft, and kind. Sean wiped under his eyes with gentle thumbs.

“Happy. I’m happy. I’ve lived my whole life and not known what this feels like.”

Sean kissed him, and pulled back. “That’s awful,” he said, a little hitch in his voice. “We’re going to have to fix that.”

“Yeah?”

Sean kissed him again, and Zach opened his mouth and let that warmth fill him.

“Yeah.”

 

 

AT FIRST, Zach thought Sean meant for the rest of the weekend, which was pretty awesome. They stayed in bed for two days, getting out only to change the sheets, shower, and order takeout, but basically? They stayed wrapped up in each other. Zach fed on Sean’s family stories like magic beans fed on water, and felt his soul grow stronger, less tenuous and wishful.

Zach still had to work—but then, so did Sean. Sunday afternoon, he ran down to his apartment and came back with his outfit for the next morning and his satchel of papers to grade, and for a couple of hours, they sat at the kitchen table and worked quietly, reaching out to touch each other every now and then.

Zach had never worked with anyone like that. Not in grade school, not in college, not even in law school where group work had been part of the norm.

He was just happy to be there, in the same room, while Sean wiggled in his seat, ate all his apples and crackers, and worked in furious grading spurts followed by lots of pacing.

Finally, Sean put the last stack of papers back in his satchel and walked behind Zach, leaning over his shoulders and nuzzling his ear.

“Zach?”

“Yeah?”

“You gonna be late tomorrow?”

“Seven, probably. I was going to work out. Want to come with?”

Sean grinned at him. “I don’t have a membership.”

“I could get you one,” Zach said earnestly, and Sean kissed his cheek.

“Maybe after school settles, I’ll take you up on that. How ’bout this. You work out and come get me when you get home.”

Zach was sitting at the table in the open kitchenette. All he had to do was reach behind him to his pen drawer and pull out the little ring of keys.

“Here,” he said, pushing the spare into Sean’s hand. “Come in if you like—enjoy the quiet.”

Sean looked at the keys and then looked at him. “Can I bring a friend or two? Wendy or Kate might appreciate the quiet too!”

Zach nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.” He looked sightlessly at his computer and leaned his head against Sean’s arm. “It will be nice to have someone home when I get home, I think,” he admitted.

Sean kissed his cheek, and then his jaw, and then down his neck. “We’ll try to make sure that happens a lot,” he promised.

And then, wonder of wonders, he proceeded to keep that promise, without any signs of wavering, forever.

Zach didn’t know it would be forever at first. He and Sean assumed it would be just what it sounded like.

A day.

A week.

A month.

And it was.

But August turned into September, and Sean moved more and more of his things into Zach’s apartment, until the only thing of his down in 1409 was the hide-a-bed, but he figured he’d let Todd keep that.

September turned into October, and Sean’s costumes came out again. He and Zach went down the express elevator every day with Jace and Quent, and in the last week of October, he wore a mummy costume, a Dracula costume, a pirate costume, a race-car driver costume, and a train engineer costume.

That last one made Zach quiet for the entire day, and after the Halloween party at 1409—which Zach dragged Leah and Jenn to as well—Zach told Sean about trains, and how much he loved them, and how they’d disappeared from his life.

And Sean had made love to him while wearing his conductor’s hat until Zach smiled and stole it and wore it for the rest of the night—and nothing else.

October turned into November, and Zach dragged Sean to the gym, and to Frisbee with Leah and Jenn, and to the Thanksgiving benefit dinner that his firm gave for their clients and that he let Leah organize because she loved it.

Zach dressed him up in a tuxedo and got him a new haircut and gave him a diamond tie clip, all so he could see his boy look like the prince Zach knew him to be.

He looked good, and he charmed pretty much the entire company in that suit.

Then they went home and Zach charmed him out of it.

Zach topped that night, and the feeling, the trust, of being allowed inside another human being’s body, inside his heart, left Zach breathless and thrilled. It took them hours to come down from the high of it, and this time, Sean’s eyes watered, and Zach discovered what it meant to be kind to someone naked and vulnerable in his arms.

It was terrifying, a responsibility Zach would never take for granted, a gift he would never cede back.

November became Thanksgiving, and they hosted Sean’s friends and Zach’s friends and Sean’s sisters. Zach’s apartment, now dressed with Sean’s tchotchkes and his movie posters and his bizarre statuette collection from various movies and his bright, cheap comforters of which he owned seven, seemed warm and welcoming.

It was a good place to have prime rib (because Sean hated turkey) and stuffing (because Leah loved stuffing and brought some to prove it) and wine and whatever anyone else felt like bringing, and they ended up watching Mary Poppins of all things on Zach’s big screen as the entire lot of them lay about with distended stomachs and blurry vision from too much wine.

It was a good place for Sean to ask Zach to accompany him to his parents’ house over Christmas break, and a good place for Zach to ask Sean to stay with him for all of the nights forever.

It was a good place for all of these things, but in the end, it was not the place they wanted to stay.

Zach’s lease was ironclad—he didn’t have to leave unless he wanted to. His one reason to stay had been Sean.

They moved the first week of December, from the penthouse flat to a second floor condo on La Portola, some place where Sean could have a cat and Zach could keep a car, and neither of them would ever have to ride in an elevator again.

It was less pricey than the penthouse, and not nearly as privileged, but Zach had spent thirty-four years paying for that privilege with his soul.

He had his soul back now—he figured the privilege could go to someone else.

His parents didn’t say anything when he resigned his lease, but something must have thawed. Two days before Christmas Eve, after Zach drove his spiffy new Mercedes home to get Sean and their suitcases for the trip to Sacramento, he checked the mail.

“Hey, look,” he said over his shoulder. Sean was bouncing around in the entryway, after having locked all the doors. He’d dressed warmly in his peacoat, with a gaudy fleece hat that his sister had made him on top of his head and around his ears.

“I’m looking at the night getting older is what I’m looking at!” Sean complained. “Let’s get out of here before the fog gets any worse!”

“Well seriously—it’s an invite for my parents’ party—look, it must have gotten lost after we moved. I think it’s been all around the city.” The vellum envelope was battered, marked, and redirected almost to tatters.

“Mm.” Sean’s ebullience fizzled away for a moment, and he abruptly stood looking over Zach’s shoulder, his arms around Zach’s waist. “Is that something you wanted to do?”

Zach smiled a little, and remembered the year before.

Someone please save me.

“Are you kidding?” he asked, leaning forward and capturing Sean’s mouth in a kiss. “You’re my knight in shining armor—you saved me from all of this. I’d have to be nuts to think about going back!”

Sean rolled his eyes. “I’m your knight in shining armor?” he asked dubiously.

“Yes,” Zach said, eyes dancing.

“And I saved you from your life in the tower?”

“Absolutely.”

“So, was the elevator my charging steed or my magic carpet or my—”

“I didn’t say it was a perfect metaphor!” Zach laughed. He threw the invitation away in the receptacle by the entryway.

“Was it my magic portal to your world, you know, like Rapunzel’s hair, except, your elevator?”

“I have no idea. Do you have our bags?”

“Absolutely, my prince. Do you have our charging steed?”

Zach shook his head. “I’ve seen you dressed in shining armor,” he said threateningly. “I have pictures to prove it.”

Sean laughed and wrapped his arms around Zach’s waist and pulled him in for a solid kiss. “C’mon, my prince. Let’s get on the charging steed and go have adventures in a neighboring kingdom, and you never have to go back in the tower again.”

Zach clung to him, secure and happy as he could never remember being. “Do you promise?”

“It is my solemn vow, my Christmas wager, my—”

Zach shushed him with a kiss. Over Sean’s shoulder, he could see the Bay Bridge, lit up in Christmas colors and flickering playfully. Yes, they would leave their little kingdom and visit another, and he would still be safe. He’d never have to return to the tower again.