Waiting for Clark (7 page)

“At least,” I grunted, using the gruffness to hide how rattled I felt. I sat up, disentangling our limbs, and ran a hand through my hair. I flipped off the TV system, and the silence only made me feel stickier and sillier. “Gonna need another shower.”

“Want some company? You could fit a whole basketball team in the shower in Tony’s room.” Clark’s grin was too wide, eyes and cheekbones too tight, like the effort of seeming casual might be more than his facial muscles could pull off. My stomach gave a weird little flip. I wasn’t doing so well with the casual either.

The smart thing to do would be to end this insanity right here, retreat to my room and spend the rest of the weekend avoiding Clark.

Clark’s smile wavered as I hesitated. “Tell me I’m not sleeping alone without even getting to see your skin?”

I laughed. “You’ve seen me naked plenty.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen your tats.” He gave a playful tug at my shirt, but his voice was too bright, facial muscles still working double time to keep that smile up. It was his nervousness that inched past my resistance. This mattered to Clark.

And maybe all we’d ever have was this night. Sure, the morning would suck donkey balls, but I couldn’t deliberately knock that expression of barely contained hopefulness off Clark’s face right then.

“My bathroom’s probably cleaner than Tony’s,” I said at last, standing before holding out a hand to help him up from the couch.

His answering smile was deep and genuine and he bounded after me as I led the way upstairs.

My bedroom wasn’t the master, but it also wasn’t my childhood room, which I now used as an office. My room had once been my mother’s best guest room, and I moved into it partly for the large glassed-in shower. I might not have been able to face taking over the master bedroom, but I shared Clark’s appreciation for a nice-sized shower.

It was the middle of the night and my eyes were doing that late-night, burning-itchy thing. I put the dimmer on in the bathroom.

“Oooh.” Clark-the-ever-observant made a pleased noise. I’d known he’d like the candlelight effect, and yeah, maybe I’d messed with the lights to make him smile as much as for my vision.

His smile lit me up inside, made my whole body feel like I’d spent hours hanging out under the warming lamp. I kissed him as I took big fistfuls of his shirt. Naked? Sure I’d seen Clark change clothes a zillion times, but I’d never gotten to do the undressing. My body still hummed with the recent orgasm, and this wasn’t about arousal as much as about a deeper need I refused to name. I needed to kiss him, to strip him bare, to learn that he did not, in fact, have any tattoos.

“You lied,” I said as I shoved his pants down.

“I did?” He bit his thumb. His hands were broad and oversized, even for a guy his size. I wanted them all over me again.

“You made me spend my last shower wondering where you might have a tat. Tease.”

“Oh,
that.
Yes, I’m horrible.”

“The worst.” I kissed a birthmark I’d never noticed before on his shoulder. He tanned easily in the summer, but now, in early spring, his skin was winter pale, faint freckles on his shoulders standing out. From a distance, his chest looked smooth, but this close up I could see the sparse hairs around his nipples and between his pecs.

“My turn.” Clark pushed off my shirt before I was done with my perusal of him. “Holy cow. I was thinking one, maybe two tats. This is…”

“Excessive?” I didn’t really care what he thought of the hobby I’d discovered after he left, my first tat being a fuck you to the world at large, the later ones more thoughtful additions because I genuinely loved the process of getting inked.

He circled me like I was a statue at the Portland Art Museum, a strange piece of sculpture he was going to need to catalog later.

“This one was first.” He touched the Tick tattoo on my left bicep.

“Lucky guess.” In college I’d talked about getting it, but it had taken a while before I finally decided to stop theorizing and actually plunked down in the artist’s chair.

“And these are for your mother.” His finger trailed across the hummingbird with a spray of hydrangeas on my left pec.

“Yeah.” Knowing Clark, he could probably label the exact varietal, but I’d just brought the artist a picture of the huge bush in her favorite corner of the yard.

“And this one is for your father.” He touched my biggest piece. It started below my right collar bone and spread out into a full sleeve on my right arm. All done in inky bluish-black ink, it was a complex series of M.C. Escher patterns and textures.

No one else who had seen my art immediately got the significance, and even though I’d started the large panel after my dad’s passing, only Clark had looked at me with such understanding. He traced the various tessellations, eyes wide with a kind of awe I hadn’t seen from him before. He was Clark, so of course he found the dates and initials hidden in the patterns, fingertips circling each number and letter.

“I’m going to get pinball art on my back,” I said gruffly.

“But you haven’t picked which yet.” His palm skated across my back like he could already see the art. “And you weren’t ready before.”

I nodded sharply. Pinball was the great love my father and I shared. Like my mother with her garden, my father’s love of Escher was exclusively his thing, the prints that decorated his offices his own personal treasures. He and Clark had discussed their favorites at length over dinner, and I’d watched more from a distance, participating but not really emotionally invested. Working with the artist to come up with the perfect Escher tattoo had been healing in a way that I couldn’t articulate, but Clark seemed to get it.

“How many artists did you interview?” he asked as he stroked my right arm again.

“What makes you think I didn’t just go to the one who did Tony’s Flash tattoo?”

Clark made a scoffing noise. “You’re picky about who you let touch you. No, for something this special, you would have been willing to travel. Seattle?”

“Damn. You are part bloodhound.” I flipped on the shower to distract myself from the tightness in my chest. I kicked off my pants before I tugged him under the scalding spray with me— too hot for me, but perfect for Clark who made a happy noise.

He stuck his head under the spray, but to my surprise, he fiddled with the handles, bringing the temperature back to moderate.

“I can compromise,” he said with a laugh.

“Sometimes.” I caught his mouth in a kiss to ward off thoughts of the big compromises neither of us had been willing to make in the past.

I’d kind of expected us to head straight for shower fuckery, but I should have known better. Clark took the process of getting clean very seriously, opening up my various shampoos and bodywashes from the long shelf on the wall above the shower and sniffing each.

“What are you doing?” I took one from him, not looking at the label. I squirted a dollop on my hand before rubbing it over his chest.

“I’m trying to find the one that makes you smell like expensive soup.” Clark opened another. “Ah. Found it. My mother would kill to pull off this blend. Such a delicate yet masculine herbal—”

“It was a gift.” I looked down at the bottle. “From a guy, but hey, if you want to send the bottle to your mom, I’m not attached.”

“Ex-boyfriend?” Clark’s nose wrinkled. “In that case, I hate it. I’m having Mom send you a case of sandalwood to chase that stuff out.”

“You’re cute when you’re jealous.” I kissed him.

“Was he someone special?” Clark asked as he grabbed a different bottle. His hair fell in damp clumps around his face and I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes.

“Nice guy, but not particularly.” I decided not to tease him.

“What about Derek? Was he special?”

“Derek, your ex who also lived in my guest room about a month too long?”

“Yeah.” Clark aggressively shampooed my hair, fingers digging into my scalp.

“We made out once. You were right. He kisses kind of like an aardvark.”

“He totally does.” Clark made another of his pleased noises. “So you guys weren’t a thing?”

“Nope. Now can you leave some hair attached please?”

His touch gentled immediately. “Sorry.”

“How about you? Anyone special in your travels?” I tried to keep my voice light.

I felt him shrug behind me. “Some very nice guys, but no one I particularly miss, if that’s what you’re asking.”

It was indeed. We were wading through something, a fundamental truth circling around and around that I was only too happy to let filter down the drain in favor of safer topics. I tilted my head back to kiss him, but Clark was busy soaping me.

His touch wasn’t unpleasant, but it took me a bit to relax into the attention— kind of like the first few minutes of getting a tattoo before my body got with the program and decided to ride the wave of endorphins. But once it did, the same sort of trance-like high descended over me and I couldn’t tell whether three or thirty minutes passed with him working out kinks I hadn’t known existed.

He washed my arms and my calves with the same steady focus, making encouraging little noises, the more I let go and let him do his thing. Rising, he dropped kisses all along my spine.

“Mmmm. I should wash you now.” My voice sounded drugged, and I didn’t follow up my halfhearted offer by reaching for the soap. Felt too good to stand there, hot spray cascading over both of us, him working some sort of voodoo on my neck.

“Not done yet.” His voice took on a seductive tone as he moved to soap my hips and ass.

“Hey!” I yelped as he slid his slippery fingers down my crack. Those square inches weren’t ones my infrequent shower buddies usually paid any attention to. “A little warning?”

“Should I buy you dinner first?” Clark laughed, but didn’t remove his hand, instead slipping back and forth, playing in the lather. He nipped at my neck.

I moaned despite my protests. His fingers felt sure and strong against my rim, and his teeth on my neck had the perfect amount of bite.

“Do you have supplies in your room?” he asked against my ear.

“Rather sure of yourself, aren’t you?” I pulled away to rinse, not at all sure I liked him knowing so much about me, seeing
all
of me, not just the parts I liked to show off. Clark saw every detail, every nuance, and it was a bit terrifying.

Clark stopped me before I could escape the shower. He wrapped both arms around me, pulled me tight, my back against his front.

“Hey. This is just us, right?”

I made a snort because it was the middle of the night, we were naked and wet and pressed together and in my bathroom— this was the most “just us” we’d ever been. And yeah, that was probably a large part of what was freaking me out.

“We can do whatever you want.” He kissed right under my ear. “Or sleep.”

“We’re not sleeping.” I pushed back against him, his hard dick pressing insistently in my back.

“Good.” He nipped where my shoulder and neck met, and he could pretty much have me right there if his teeth never left that spot. “I know you, Bryce. I know what you like. What you hate to ask for.
I know you.
Let me do this for you? Let me give you what you need.”

What I needed. What I needed was for him to keep saying my name in those patient, almost loving tones. I needed his strong arms around me to never let go. I needed him not to leave again. I needed this not to screw up our friendship all over again— an impossibility. A mere kiss had detonated the best friendship I’d ever had. Tonight was sure to be another atomic event in my history with Clark. And yet I didn’t move away.

Instead, I relaxed against him. Let him hold me up. And nodded, because I knew Clark didn’t need to see my face to read my yes, knew he wouldn’t make me say the words.

What I needed, what I’d
always
needed was Clark.

****

Chapter Six

Clark

I turned off the water and grabbed two towels from the neatly folded stack on the built-in shelving outside the shower. I wrapped Bryce in the towel before he could protest my attentions. I liked toweling him off for the same reason I liked washing him so much. I’d never known a guy so in need of pampering— or so resistant to it. Bryce carried the weight of the world on his sturdy shoulders, never letting on how badly they ached or how much he needed someone to rub them. I wanted to be that person for him, and I tried to tell him that with my motions as I gently toweled him off.

Bryce and I knew things about each other that no one else did. It was the product of so many late, late nights and early mornings together. Earnest conversations over beer and silly truths spilled in the middle of terrible TV.

And so I knew that Bryce liked to bottom. A lot. But he didn’t like to have to ask for it and hated any sort of negotiations about “turns” or who was doing what to whom. Basically he wanted a clairvoyant toppy dude who saw past all the shields Bryce threw up as decoys and who wouldn’t make him ask or discuss it afterward. For all Bryce was out and had been out since high school, he wasn’t the most comfortable with this part of himself.

He was so self-assured in every other part of his life that it made me want to wrap him in my arms and cuddle him until he realized that he didn’t have to be Bryce-the-all-powerful with me. I wanted him to see that it was okay to let me take care of him— in all sorts of ways— because he took care of so many people and problems every day. He needed a space to let go, and I wanted to give that to him.

I kissed him under the warming lights of the bathroom, soft glow wrapping around us, and tried to tell him all that with my lips. Maybe I hadn’t realized these things back when we were kids, but I saw clearly now the person I wanted to be for Bryce. Part of me had been scared before, not ready to confront this thing between us, but I’d waited too long for this moment to shrink away this time.

“I know you’re part iguana, but I’m roasting here.” Bryce laughed a bit uncertainly as he tugged me out of the steamy bathroom.

He went right to the ebony wood nightstand beside the bed, rummaged through a drawer and tossed some things on the bed. The lube and condoms were interesting, for sure, but I was also interested in what else the drawer might contain. I peered over his shoulder, trying to see—