THIRTEEN

 

 

At some point, Justin must have fallen asleep.

Not surprising, maybe. He and Ken had gone halfway through the night, slaking their thirst for each other in a way that was almost frenzied. Eventually, even after how long it had been since Justin had gotten laid, his body must have given up, and he had passed out.

What was maybe more shocking was that Ken, with all of his energy, must have passed out, too. Had Justin actually managed to wear him out? That was something for him to be proud of, for sure.

When he woke up, when his eyelids parted, golden sunlight streamed in through the windows, and he couldn’t figure out at first why his whole body ached. For a moment, he was confused, until his eyes fell on the spot beside him on the bed and he caught a quick whiff of a scent that was all too familiar.

Ken. Ken had been here. Delicious memories flooded through him at the thought, and, unwisely perhaps, Justin let himself think about it, remember it, all of it. Ken had been here.

He wasn’t anymore, and Justin tried not to be disappointed by that. After all, Justin had done his best to make it clear to Ken that he couldn’t stay the night, and that Ken had to be gone before Jade knew that he was there. It had been enough of a risk for Justin to let anyone into his house at all.

So Ken had respected that and was gone. That was probably for the best, right? With a soft sigh, Justin slipped out of bed, pulling on the first clean clothes that came to hand and tugging his favorite hoodie on.

Only something was weird. His favorite hoodie seemed to be about two sizes too big, and when he looked in the mirror, he couldn’t help but notice that the sleeves hung down over his hands, looser even than the clothing he usually wore. It was a different shade of the same color, too, and had a logo over the chest that wasn’t on his own.

It was Ken’s hoodie. Ken must have taken off without it, and Justin supposed he should give it back. For the moment, he left it on. It wasn’t that he was feeling some sort of sentimental attachment to what had happened the night before, but …

Well, actually, that was exactly what it was like.

With a smile on his face that he couldn’t seem to wipe away, Justin went to his daughter’s bedroom. Luckily, though he hadn’t remembered to set the alarm, it wasn’t too late for her to get ready for school on time.

She was fast asleep, and her color was normal now. She had been sick, but now she was better, and he gently pushed her dark hair away from her face, smiling a little bit as he watched her eyelashes start to flutter.

It never got old. This was, and would always be, the most important person in the world, and Justin had always known that he couldn’t be with anyone who didn’t know that. Ken, though, Ken didn’t seem to mind that at all, and Justin could kick himself for the thought, but he couldn’t help but hope that there was a chance that he and Ken could be more than they were now.

“Daddy?” Jade murmured, and Justin settled on the edge of the bed and gazed down at her as she opened her eyes.

“Yeah, baby girl,” he said gently. “It’s time to get up for school if you think you’re ready to go back.” She had been sick, after all, and he wouldn’t want to rush her back.

“Yeah. I’m ready,” she agreed and then sat up in bed. “Go away. I have to get dressed.”

Chuckling softly, Justin shook his head as he left the room. Go away? His daughter resembled him a little bit too much sometimes, though others it was like they were from completely different planets. Or maybe galaxies. With a shrug, Justin went to start fixing his daughter’s breakfast.

Everything went smoothly until they were heading out the door, and Jade had woken up enough to apparently notice that things weren’t exactly as they usually were. She stopped, blocking the doorway, and looked him up and down before her eyes narrowed and she put her hands on her hips.

“Why are you wearing someone else’s hoodie?”

Damned if the girl wasn’t too observant for her own good. She knew very well what his clothes looked like since he tended to wear similar things all the time. With a soft sigh, Justin explored her face, seeing curiosity but not hostility there.

“It was a work thing,” Justin tried to explain, as he put his hands on her slender shoulders and tried to guide her outside into the fresh morning air. She went, but only as long as he kept on talking. “There’s this guy that I work with. I must have grabbed his hoodie by accident.”

There was a brief, blessed moment of silence as they got into the car together, and then Jade turned to look at him, capturing his gaze with her own and refusing to let go.

“You’re smiling, Dad,” she informed him, and Justin shrugged, trying not to let it show just how self-conscious he was. She would notice that, too. She noticed everything. “What’s his name?”

“Ken,” Justin admitted because there didn’t seem to be much of a choice in the matter. Besides, did he really have anything to hide? He was seriously considering getting serious with this guy, and Jade was going to have to know about his existence sooner or later. Even if this was a conversation that he had been pretty sure he would never have to have with his daughter.

“Well, Ken makes you smile a lot.” Jade frowned, chewing on her lower lip, as was her habit when she was thinking things over. “I think I should probably meet this guy.”

Sometimes—Justin mused to himself—it was like Jade didn’t know which way the caretaking was supposed to go. She wanted to watch out for him, which he supposed was natural enough, given that they were really all that the other had. Natural enough, but, of course, he couldn’t actually let her do that.

He had spent far too much of his own childhood trying to take care of his mother, and he didn’t want the same for his daughter.

Luckily, Justin was saved from having to respond because they pulled up outside of her school. She did something strange, then, leaning in to press her lips against his cheek before she turned to go. She hadn’t done that in a while, not since she’d been trying to show her friends how cool she was. It felt nice, and he had to swallow down a sudden lump in his throat.

“Hey, Dad? Have you found anyone to do my makeup for the recital yet?”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. What with everything going on, Justin had almost completely forgotten her dance recital, and he had very vivid memories of how it had gone last year. Justin was good at a lot of things, but doing stage makeup for a child was not one of them.

“I’m on it,” he promised, and she grinned at him and scampered off. Her trust in him was flattering, but now, on top of everything else, he had to find someone to do her makeup, and he didn’t have a lot of time.

The recital was in a week and a half, and he made a mental note to figure something out. Maybe he should just Google it?

Well, as always, he had work to do, and once Jade was safely with her friends and they were all heading into the school, he drove off to get that work done.

 

* * *

 

Alone, unnoticed, Justin watched as the Lost Boys rehearsed. Truth to be told, he had done this quite a few times ever since he’d been brought on as the main songwriter for the band, and if anyone had ever called him on it, he would have just said that he wanted to see how the songs were working out, in case he needed to tweak anything. He was, after all, known for his consummate professionalism, for the way that he would keep going on a song until it was perfect.

It wasn’t like that wasn’t true, either. He did want to make sure that the songs were good, but more than anything else, he wanted to watch Ken. It had been that way almost from the first moment that he’d met the guy, and now that they were sharing each other’s beds, now that their relationship seemed to be growing and changing into something different, that was only more intense.

Today they were rehearsing the songs that Justin had already written for the new album, and he couldn’t help but be pleased with the end result. The songs were a little bit more mature, he thought, but then, these boys were growing up, too. All in all, he thought it worked.

There was just one song missing for the album now, and in truth, it was a song that Justin was struggling with. The song, Ken’s song, wasn’t quite behaving itself. It had been so easy to write at first. The words had just come pouring out of him.

And that hadn’t changed, that wasn’t the problem. He softly sighed as he tugged out his notebook and gazed down at the scribbled pencil on the white lined page, shaking his head.

No, the words were coming out a little too easily, but they were the wrong words.

“Justin?”

It was Ken’s voice. Ken, who had never noticed Justin watching before, at least as far as Justin knew. He glanced up, his eyes skimming over Ken’s lips, which were smiling, to his welcoming eyes. Justin being here, it seemed, wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, Ken seemed downright happy about it.

“Yeah. Hey. What are you up to?” Justin tried to sound casual, but what had happened the night before seemed to hang between them, something that neither of them spoke about but which they were both far too aware of.

“Nothing. Why?” Ken’s voice was breezy, almost too casual, and Justin smirked a bit to himself. Somehow, though it seemed impossible to Justin, he had gotten Ken interested in him. Funny, he’d always thought that his little crush would never amount to much of anything.

“If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to go over the song.” Justin leaned closer, drawn in by the magnetism of Ken’s hot body, of his warm, welcoming eyes. Though for a moment, he glanced away, drawn by some sort of movement out of his peripheral vision.

Aaron was standing there, though Lance and Jamie were completely ignoring all of this. They were, as they usually seemed to be, wrapped up in each other, but Aaron was watching, and there was a look on his face that Justin had no idea how to interpret. A sort of wistful quality, maybe? Though it was gone as soon as Justin had noticed it was there, like Aaron had noticed Justin watching, and he looked away from Justin’s eyes immediately.

Was Aaron upset that Justin and Ken were, well, whatever it was that they were? Did he miss Ken mooning over him? It was hard to say, and then Ken shifted in closer and he drew Justin’s attention back to himself effortlessly.

“Yeah, of course. We can use the studio,” Ken reached out and touched the small of Justin’s back, just a slight gesture, but such a possessive one, as he directed Justin toward the door. When he thought to look back, Aaron was packing up his own things, not even looking at them anymore.

Still, it rankled a bit. Justin had told Ken that he didn’t think that Ken had a chance with Aaron, and he had legitimately meant it. So what if he’d been wrong? He shook his head and looked up at the man at his side—the man who was still touching the small of his back in that curiously intimate way—and smiled a bit.

He didn’t think things had worked out so badly, and hopefully, Ken agreed. The question he still had, though, was what about Aaron? Did he agree? And if he didn’t, and if he tried to do something about it, would Ken be able to resist someone that he’d had such a thing for?

“You’re wearing my hoodie,” Ken murmured, softly enough that only Justin could hear but still able to pull Justin’s full attention effortlessly back to himself. It was actually a little inconvenient. Justin had always thought Ken was oblivious, and it seemed that he was, about a lot of things. But he noticed some things.

“Yeah. You left it at my place.” Justin sighed in relief when the studio door closed behind them, leaving them alone together. It was so weird, not knowing quite how to act around Ken, whether Ken was okay with people knowing that they were dating, or sleeping together, or whatever it was that Ken thought they were.

“It looks good on you,” Ken grinned, and then, much to Justin’s delight, the bigger, strong man was wrapping his arms around Justin and hauling him close, kissing him firmly. With a soft groan, Justin melted against him, pulling Ken just as close, giving himself over utterly to the sweet kiss.

“Jade saw it,” Justin admitted when the kiss finally ended. “It was a bit awkward. She asked me why I was wearing someone else’s hoodie.”

Ken arched an eyebrow in eloquent question, and Justin wondered if he should have gotten into this at all. He actually wasn’t sure why he’d brought it up, it had been largely instinctive, but then his daughter’s thoughtful little face came into his mind and he knew.

I think I should probably meet this guy …

Justin hadn’t been interested in allowing anyone to meet his daughter, and it was part of the reason that he hadn’t dated much, or at all. Maybe even the main reason. But this time, Jade had shown interest, and Justin was finding that he wasn’t as opposed to the idea as he would have thought. Not if the guy Jade would be meeting was Ken.

“Oh, man,” Ken sympathized. “That must have been pretty awkward.”

There was a moment of silence, both of them gazing into each other’s eyes, the tension between them spiraling, becoming more intense by the second. In Justin’s experience, usually the sex broke the tension, but in this case it seemed to have only made it stronger than ever.

The very air between them seemed to tingle and throb with excitement, and for a moment, Justin actually forgot what they were even talking about.

“Yeah,” he murmured absently, taking a step closer to Ken, who was also moving toward Justin. His mind sharpened, though, as he remembered Jade. “She wanted to meet you.”

More than anything, Justin wanted to keep his voice light and airy, but his voice just didn’t pull that off very well. The last thing he wanted was to put pressure on Ken, for Ken to think that he had to do this, or that Justin was going to push him into something too fast.

“Yeah?” Ken asked, the back of his hand sliding smoothly over Justin’s cheek. Such a light, little touch, but it made Justin melt against him as he slid his own hands down to grip Ken’s impossibly beautiful firm, round ass, groping him openly. After all, no one could see in here.

“Yeah. You don’t have to,” Justin promised. Just because Justin and Jade might be ready to take that step, it didn’t mean Ken had to. “She just wanted to …”

His voice trailed off as Ken leaned down and pressed his lips against Justin’s, both of them holding each other, embracing, as their lips parted and their tongues swept into each other’s mouths.

“Shut up,” Ken murmured, and the words might have been harsh, but the tone was affectionate. “I’d love to meet her if you’re cool with it.”

Once more, Justin thought about it, because this was his last chance to back out if he wanted to. When he examined himself thoroughly, even poking into the corners of his mind that he rarely looked at, he had to admit that he did want to. For the first time in Jade’s whole life, he wanted someone to meet her.

Ken was important, that was what it came down to, and Jade was, too. They should know each other. It made him nervous to think about, but it was also right.

“Yeah.” Justin breathed the word and was rewarded by Ken’s grin of pleasure. The guy was thrilled, clearly, and that made Justin even more sure that he was making the right choice.

“Good. Okay.” Ken grinned at him and then tilted his head to the side. “So did you want to talk about the song or was that just an excuse to get me in private so you can have your wicked way with me again?”

Justin laughed, shaking his head as he did. That was part of Ken’s magic for him that he could make Justin not only smile but actually laugh out loud. That was what made Ken so irresistible to him, if not downright dangerous.

“It can be both, can’t it?” Justin murmured, and through Ken’s jeans, he pressed his fingers into the sweet, hot cleft between his ass cheeks. The denim kept him from getting very far, but Ken still moaned and tilted his hips toward Justin.

“Both is good. So talk.” Ken walked backward toward a chair, drawing Justin along with him. Eagerly, he let himself be pulled down onto Ken’s lap as the bigger man sat down, because, whether he would admit it to himself before or not, he had wanted this for a very long time. Had had fantasies that had gone a lot like what was going on now.

“This song, it was supposed to be unrequited, right?” Justin murmured, his fingers getting lost in Ken’s shaggy dark hair as Ken lowered his head and brushed his lips along the column of Justin’s neck. Somehow, though Justin might never know how, he managed to keep his thoughts about him, though it was a close thing. Very close.

“Yeah,” Ken murmured, kissing up to Justin’s ear, sucking his earlobe between his teeth and lightly grazing the sensitive flesh. Just like that, Justin was hard and ready to go. He’d already been hardening, just from their stolen kisses, but this was a whole new level.

“I don’t think I can do it like that anymore,” Justin admitted, and there was some shame in the words. He was a professional. He wrote the songs that he needed to write, and if he had to feign emotion, well, he could do that. Or he had always been able to before.

“What do you mean?” Ken finally stopped tormenting Justin, straightening up to gaze down at him with curious eyes. It was probably a good thing that he could think straight, though actually, he wasn’t quite sure about that. Justin forced himself to breathe in a deep, shaky breath, trying to put his feelings to words without saying too much.

I can’t pretend that it’s unrequited because I don’t think it is. Oh and by the way, I think I’m falling in love with you, sorry about your luck. You’re probably pretty screwed because when I fall in love, I have a hell of a time letting go.

Yeah. That would go over well.

“I mean, when I write the song it comes off a bit different.” With trembling fingers, Justin reached into his pocket and pulled out his battered notebook. Nervous, but sure that this was what needed to happen, he read off some of the lyrics there, the ones that just came out whenever he tried to write. The ones that spoke far too clearly about his own growing, changing feelings for Ken.

“… Wow,” Ken commented, but he didn’t seem upset, so that was something. “Okay. So you’re thinking, what, maybe more like a love song? Something that could never happen before, only it’s somehow happening?”

Justin’s tense shoulders relaxed as relief swept over him, making it impossible, for just a second, for Justin to even speak. Instead, he just nodded, and by some miracle Ken seemed to understand.

“Okay. Let’s do that.” Ken’s voice was very sure, very definite, no trace of hesitation, and Justin tried not to read too much into that. Tried, and failed. He leaned in, kissing Ken again, this time to shut off the words that he so badly wanted to say but knew that it was too soon for.

“Then I think the song is almost done. Just give me a few more days to polish it up,” Justin managed, once the hot, lingering kiss had finally broken. He found himself caught in Ken’s eyes, utterly swept away, to the point where he didn’t even notice that anyone else had entered the room until it was too late.

“So this is how you’re spending the studio time that I’m providing for you,” Lester’s voice was cold and intense, and it felt an awful lot like a bucket of ice water thrown right over Justin’s head, droplets of pure dread slipping down his spine.

They’d been caught, and by probably the worst possible person to catch them. By the person who already seemed to have it out for Justin, and who was looking for an excuse to get rid of him.