I didn’t know if I had ever been with anyone as responsive as Grey Foster before.

It was stunning—the sounds he made, the little movements, how he grasped his hand to any part of me that was near him when I pressed my tongue against him.

He was writhing, pale and gorgeous, and I was practically about to come, myself, just from witnessing how dismantled he had become. Grey had been a wound-up ball of tension ever since the day I’d met him, and I’d wanted so badly just to help him, to ease some of the distress he always wore on his face, and finally, it seemed like I had.

I’d been able to make him feel in his body again. Bring him back down to Earth, using nothing but my hands and tongue. And he was every bit as amazing as I thought he would be—more, even, because I never could have guessed how open he could be, easing for me after just the slightest press.

And now he was here in my bed, already looking thoroughly fucked and stunning, and I hadn’t even gotten to make him come yet.

He deserved it. And I wanted nothing more than to give him that release.

I reached down to stroke a hand through his hair that was matted up against his forehead, and he stared back at me.

“Jesus Christ, you almost just did make me come,” he said, gesturing to the wet spot beside me in bed where his cock had just been pressed.

I smiled, loving that I’d had that effect on him. “Glad you didn’t yet, though, because I want to taste you.”

He whimpered at that. “Jesus fuck, how are you so perfect?” he blurted out, still breathing heavy.

I could have asked him the same thing.

He took a deep breath, nodding yes, and I sank down in front of him, pressing a kiss to his inner thigh. His cock was twitching, dripping precum in front of me, and slowly I dragged my tongue across the tip, tasting him.

The moan that elicited from him just made me want more. I reached over to my bedside table and grabbed my lube, slicked my hand quickly, and moved down to tease my finger against his hole again. He was already loosened from my tongue and so I pressed my finger into him easily, feeling his warmth and tightness around me.

“Mmmh,” he moaned, squeezing against my finger, bucking slightly against me. I worked another finger inside him slowly and sank my mouth down around his cock, watching his face, how his mouth hung open and he called out as the twin sensations hit him.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” he whispered as I started to bob up and down in rhythm with my fingers inside him. “Adam I’m already so close.”

I hummed around his cock, encouraging him, sinking down so far that I took all of him in my mouth.

“Oh God—Adam,” he moaned at me.

I worked faster and knew he was about to come as he started bucking up against me involuntarily, and I moaned as I felt him coming into my mouth, burying my fingers deep inside him as he let go.

He was utterly gorgeous—twitching, groaning, gripping his hand against my hair as I slowly went still on his cock.

“So good,” he whispered, eyes still closed. “So, so good….”

As he lay there, breathing deep, I slowly slid my fingers out of him and took my mouth off his spent cock. I watched him closely, slightly overwhelmed by his response. I had never seen him look so peaceful, and it was so different from his usual manner, tense and tightened and on-edge. This other, calmer version of Grey was something I never knew I’d get to see, a facet of him he didn’t usually show the world.

He raised a hand, languidly, gently making a “come here” motion with his fingers. I leaned over him and he brought my face down into a deep, slow kiss, taking his time and stroking his hands across the sides of my face. He was warm, flushed, and I enjoyed his heat against me, his hands for once not freezing from the cold.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered afterward, and all of a sudden I felt his hand between my legs, palming me. I’d nearly forgotten about my own cock, so lost in him, that when he touched me I shuddered slightly under his hand, all at once remembering and wanting.

“I want you,” he said, meeting my eyes with a resolute stare.

I let out a quick breath and kissed him hard once again before leaning back and hastily getting out of my sweatpants. It seemed ridiculous that I was even still wearing them. Once discarded I paused for a moment, watching him, not quite sure what he’d wanted, exactly.

He gazed down at my cock, hard and freed. “Give it to me,” he uttered, gesturing at his mouth.

“Like this?” I asked. He was still lying flat on his back, fucked-out, but he nodded.

“I want to taste you, too. Come here.”

I knelt straddling above him, and slowly sank forward so that my cock gently pressed up against his mouth, slicking his lips with precum.

“Mmm,” he hummed against it. He slowly slipped his tongue out onto his lips, tasting me, and then took the tip into his mouth. I sighed at the contact, after my cock had been hard and neglected for at least an hour even just this was sending me perilously close to the edge.

And even if I hadn’t just spent so long neglected, I’d probably have been close to coming anyway, seeing Grey take me into his mouth like that. It was like something out of one of my dreams, but better; Grey so warm and ready and yielding. I knew now that this memory would stay with me, the sight of him like this seared into my mind.

He wrapped his lips around me and laid slow, deliberate strokes onto my cock for a few moments as I watched, still and breathless from above. After a while he pulled off for a second to speak. He eyed me, giving me a resolute look.

“You can really give it to me,” he said, “You can fuck my mouth, Adam.”

“Oh my God,” I uttered, letting out a gasp. I finally sank down, letting my hips rock forward to push into his mouth. He hummed around me again as I slid inside his mouth, then back out. He was so wet and hot, and I had to work not to thrust too quickly into him, but God damn was it a lot, hearing him ask so specifically to give it to him like this, and seeing how much he was enjoying it.

He reached his hands behind me to grip against my ass, giving me a firm push forward, and I felt my cock go deeper into his throat.

“Fuck, Grey,” I said, worried I was going to hurt him and pulling back a little.

But then he did it again—pulled me forward into his throat, looking up at me from under his lashes as if to say: like this.

So I breathed deep, and I fucked into his mouth—slowly and steadily working up a rhythm, trying hard not to lose control immediately. He made noises, and his eyes alternately squeezed shut and then opened to look up at me, sweet and filthy, like he was asking for even more. It finally reached a point where I was on the edge and couldn’t hold on any longer.

“Grey, Jesus, I’m gonna come—” I uttered, and then I let out a loud moan, feeling his cheeks hollow around my cock, sucking against me until I let go inside his mouth.

“Holy fuck,” I said, breathless, pumping into him in a couple more short strokes, and as I came he swallowed. Shudders rolled through me and I’m pretty sure I forgot who I was, forgot where I was, forgot anything that wasn’t the sensation of him around me, taking me.

Finally my eyes opened slowly, and I pulled out of his mouth. I bent down again to meet him in a kiss, tasting him and me and us, his lips swollen and ruddy against mine.

I collapsed onto the bed next to him, breathing deep. He was propped up on his elbow, lying on his side, staring at me with sleepy eyes.

“That was goddamn amazing,” I said. “Thank you for that.”

He let out a low chuckle. “You’re thanking me? Holy shit, that was the best massage I’ve ever gotten in my life.”

“Well, I love giving them,” I told him. “Your body, Grey….”

He made a small, dismissive groan.

“What?” I pressed.

“It’s… nowhere near as good as yours,” he said.

I raised an eyebrow, then let it fall. I brought a hand to his hip and then slowly traced it down the side of his leg, rubbing back and forth. I didn’t really even know how to counter his statement, since it was so absurd. “You are beautiful, Grey. You don’t even know how incredible you look.”

“You’re just saying that because I brought you flowers,” he said, but there was a distinct blush to his face, one that hadn’t been there before, and for a moment he averted my gaze, lashes pointed downward.

“It helps,” I said, with a smile. There was a quiet lull where I kept my hand skating over his hip and thigh, just softly, enjoying the moment.

* * *

“Where’d you get all these… things?” Grey asked after a while, his eyes scanning around the room to the tapestries I had on my walls. His warm weight was gentle against the side of my body in bed, and I looked lazily around at my decorations.

“Lots of different places,” I said. “Some of them are just gifts from friends. That one—” I said, pointing to a blue and gold one on the opposite wall, “—was given to me in England, actually. A few years back I was over there, living with a friend, and her husband actually weaved them.”

“Wow,” Grey said, gazing at it, “So it’s totally one of a kind.”

I nodded. “They were really talented people.”

He inched a little closer to me, and I shifted upward so that his head fell at the side of my chest, and I could idly stroke his hair.

And oh God, his hair. It was such a simple, stupid thing, but I couldn’t get enough. Because it was kind of incredibly, impossibly soft. I’d just had my hands against his skin for well over an hour, and the contrasting sensation of the downy-soft hair under my fingers was unbelievable. It took all of me not to bury my face in it. I started to realize there was no part of Grey that I didn’t want to touch, nothing about him that didn’t fascinate me, and it was alarming in a strange, deeply satisfying way.

The rain had started again outside—just lightly now, nothing like the downpour earlier, but the soft patter of the drops on the window just across from my bed was gently calming, like the room was wrapped in a cozy blanket.

“Was it hard being in 5*Star?” he asked, his voice low and relaxed.

The question kind of took me by surprise—not because it was at all weird, but because I so rarely thought about my days back with the band anymore. It certainly hadn’t been anywhere near the forefront of my mind in that moment.

“Those days were a little hard sometimes,” I said, considering his question, “but not really because of the band. People always want to know if we fought, all four of us, but we really didn’t.”

“That’s lucky,” Grey said.

“It really is. Of course there would be times on the tour bus where we’d get at each other’s throats, kind of like siblings would do—but at the end of the day we loved each other, you know? I mean, I grew up with Chandler, he was just a neighborhood friend, and I still think of him that way.”

“Chandler Price?” Grey asked. “Like, mega superstar Chandler? You just think of him as a kid from the neighborhood?”

I nodded. “Yup. Sounds weird now, but he really was just an outgoing, nice kid. He’s the reason I joined the band anyway. He brought me in.”

“Wow,” Grey said. He moved in a little closer to me, paused for a moment, and then draped an arm over my chest, hugging in close to me.

It was maddeningly intimate—we had just fucked, and I’d been touching him incessantly, but something was exceptionally sweet about the tiny gesture, him hugging me like that even after he’d long since come.

It gave me pause, and my hand stilled in his hair a while before resuming gentle strokes.

“So you said it was hard, even though you didn’t fight with the other guys?” Grey asked, and I could feel his voice against my chest.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d always thought that getting out of New Mexico would make me feel better. It had never felt like home to me. But when I started being able to travel the world, spending all my time with the band, I realized that even if my day-to-day life was better, it didn’t change everything.”

I wondered if Grey could feel my heart rate pick up, just a little, in my chest. I didn’t usually talk about my days growing up in New Mexico. The years of fame and travel afterward were usually much more impressive to people anyway—who would care about a boring childhood passed in the desert?

But Grey pressed on. “What did you want to change?” he said.

I took in a deep breath, then sort of without thinking, pressed my lips in a kiss to the top of his head, against his hair. For a moment I wondered if I’d overstepped some line, but instead of waiting for any reaction I just kept talking.

“I wished my family would change. I told you I came out to them when I was 16… it was never easy after that. My dad would seem to bring it up somehow every time we talked—still did, actually, until the day he died, 5 years ago. He’d ask me when I was going to get a wife. Tell me he wished I could be different. My mom basically just parrots everything he said, too.”

“God, that is so rough, Adam,” Grey murmured.

“Tell me about it. So, I got very good at distracting myself from thinking about any of that. It was easy, with the events and concerts and endless travel. And I loved traveling, so it wasn’t some big sacrifice. But yes… it was hard. I’d see the other guys in 5*Star so happy to go home for Christmas, and I’d have nowhere to go that actually felt like home. And I knew that if the fame ended, I’d have to go back to them, back to New Mexico, to people who didn’t really know the real me.”

Grey took a deep breath, and I dropped my arm to behind his back, giving him a gentle squeeze against me. “I’m glad I got out of there,” I told him gently.

“Me too.”

He paused for a moment and I almost thought he might have fallen asleep, but he spoke soon again.

“It’s weird, hearing you say all that about New Mexico,” he said, “because even though I want nothing more than to get the fuck out of Fox Hollow, I absolutely feel like it’s my home. Through and through.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded against me. “Yup. I’ve been here forever. It’ll always be my home. There’s nothing here for me, and I need to get out, but it’s still true.”

He nodded against me and for a while we listened to the rain, and I watched the gentle rise and fall of his head against my chest.

“I have a question for you,” I said to him.

“Oh no. Should I be worried?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said, my lips curling into a smile. “I wanna know why you like romances so much. The movies, the books… it’s kinda your thing, huh?”

“Oh God,” he said, bringing a hand up to rub over his face.

“Don’t be shy,” I said, touching his chin and turning his face up so that I could see his eyes. He squinted at me as if he was embarrassed by the question. “I’m not judging. I love puppet movies, for God’s sake. You can tell me about the romances.”

“It’s just a guilty pleasure,” he said quickly.

“I don’t believe in guilty pleasures,” I said. “You shouldn’t feel guilty about anything that gives you pleasure.”

He met my eyes for a moment. “Fine,” he said, burrowing against my chest again, casting his lashes down. “I just… they’re the perfect escape,” he said. “After a long, shitty day of work, or a day when zero animals get adopted at the shelter and we’re short on supplies… I just need to read or watch something that will sweep me away. And God damn it, Casablanca does that for me. Hell, even Sleepless in Seattle does it for me, sometimes.”

I couldn’t help but smile, and I tried hard not to laugh. I wasn’t laughing at Grey, at all—I was involuntarily smiling because of how adorable it was, and because it made me have a wave of affection for Grey so strong I didn’t even know what to do with it.

“I get it,” I told him, “I really do. That’s what fantasy novels do for me. I can’t get enough of them. I’ve traveled a lot, but when someone can paint an entirely new world for me… it gets me every time.”

“Yeah. Exactly. An entirely new world. And… I don’t think I’ve ever really been in love before, so that’s what the romances do for me.”

The last part of what he said was quieter, and he said it kind of quickly, as if he was afraid to admit it. And to be honest, it was kind of a shocking thing to hear—Grey had never been in love?

The only thing my brain could think of how to respond was to say, But you’re so lovable.

But I held that back. I knew how nervous Grey could get, and I was pretty sure that would send him running.

“You’ve still got time,” I told him, gently, and he hummed a little in reply.

And shit. As the sound of the rain filled the room again I came to the realization that I’d inadvertently made Grey sad, and that was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.

“Hey,” I said to him. “Guess what?”

“Hmm?” he replied, soft against me.

“I’ve still got a few of those ridiculously good mangoes you brought for me. Wanna go have a midnight snack?”

He pulled in a deep breath, drawing his hand over my chest, and then lifting off of me, sitting up. His eyes were a little dimmer now, devoid of the spark they’d had earlier in the night.

“Actually, I was thinking I should head home soon,” he said simply, “Chewy’s home all alone.” He stepped off of the bed, still naked.

I scrambled for what to say. “If… if you wanted, you could always bring her over here for the night. Got plenty of space and food for her.”

He looked up at me, realizing that I was essentially asking if he wanted to spend the night. I felt a slight blush on my cheeks. For a moment his eyes were wide, almost surprised, but then they fell down to the floor again, looking around for his wet clothes he’d come over wearing.

“No, I really should just get back.”

“You don’t have to put those back on, you’ll be freezing,” I said. “You can just take mine for tonight and bring them back sometime later.”

He picked up his waterlogged hoodie, as if he was considering it, but then put it back down with a heavy sigh. “You’re right. This is still soaked. You sure it’s fine if I borrow yours for the night?” he asked, shooting a glance my way.

“Of course,” I said. “Not like you’re far away,” I said.

He quickly got dressed again, and I tugged on my own sweatpants, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I had an amazing time tonight, Grey.”

“Yeah, it was a lot of fun,” he replied, finally looking up at me and giving me a tight-lipped smile.

I felt like the ground had dropped out from beneath me. Where had Grey gone? He’d been so warm, so open and with me, just minutes ago. And now he was the other Grey, all anxiety and haste.

“I’ll see you, Adam. I’m off work tomorrow for once, so Chewy won’t need a walk ‘til Tuesday.”

I stood up off the bed, crossing over to the door. “Good night,” I said, and with another quick, nervous smile, he was back out the door, racing over to his house in the light rain, with his pile of soaked clothes in his hand. I watched until he got in his front door, and stood for a moment just looking out at the rain falling in inky puddles on the street before returning back inside.

I wandered aimlessly back into the kitchen, where the flowers he’d brought me were at the center of the table, a dusting of raindrops still clinging to the petals. The bottle of rum sat next to them, cap off, now emptier.

The scent of it reminded me of his mouth, now a slowly fading memory. It was stupid, but for stretches of the night I had let myself feel like Grey was mine, and now only a short time later I was reminded completely that he was not. He’d fit so well against me. It had felt as natural as anything, and I’d seen no reason for it to come to an end.

But now the main room felt empty, the sheets and pillows still askew from how he’d twisted on the bed.

Loneliness had never been a feeling I’d really struggled with—there was always somewhere new to go, someone else to meet, adventures to be had. But now I’d been in one place long enough to feel what a heavy absence it was after Grey left. I’d gotten used to my little house, simple and quiet and exactly the way I’d wanted it, but now it had shifted: I saw things through his eyes now, like the tapestries on the wall that he’d asked about, and the abundance of gifts he’d given me, scattered throughout the house.

As I finally lay down, shutting off the light and tucking into the sheets alone, I thought of what he’d asked me about earlier.

New Mexico had never felt like home to me. Nowhere else really had, either, even though I’d been in many places I’d truly loved, before.

Fox Hollow was the closest I’d gotten in a long time, but it was still new, different, something I was getting used to. But having Grey there with me had been a step closer, and I knew it, though I’d never admit it to him.

Because it was too much to tell someone, especially someone you’d only just met weeks ago, that they might be starting to make you feel like you belonged.