Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4
brANDON
I thought he would leave.
Despite him assuring me that he was interested in getting to know me, I had thought that Casey would disappear after the first night he invited himself over. I was ready for him to go, to know that he had done his good deed and that I was thankful for the time we’d spent because it meant I wasn’t alone with my own thoughts and worries.
But he came back and has done so frequently over the last few weeks. Now, he sits on my couch in a pair of green plaid pajama pants and a plain grey T-shirt like he has always been here, long legs curled beneath him and a textbook on his lap. He wears a pair of thick framed tortoiseshell glasses he plucked from somewhere in the backpack on the floor, and every so often, his nose scrunches and he lifts a finger to push them back up onto his face. When he isn’t turning pages, he glances up at the TV where some show he’s put on to listen to plays episodes he’s missed large parts of while studying. It doesn’t seem to matter to him though, he laughs softly at whatever he sees on the screen, then turns his head back down to his books.
My apartment is filled with the noise of Casey, and as I stand in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee maker to finish up, I am thankful for it.
As if he knows I’m watching him, he lifts his head from his textbook and smiles, pushing a lock of golden hair behind one of his ears. It’s growing long, but he’s told me that’s the point and that there will be no haircut in his near future.
“Coffee done?” he asks, stretching like a cat in the corner of the couch I’ve started thinking of as his.
“Almost. Studying done?”
He sighs, then shrugs. “I think so. I’m getting tired of words anyway. I wish textbooks weren’t so wordy. Just say what you mean and get on with it.”
I laugh softly as he closes the book and drops it on the floor beside him. He’s studying to become a teacher. Something tells me there’s a whole big future of textbooks ahead for him. I turn back to the coffee maker as it sputters and whooshes, the last few drops falling into the waiting pot. Grabbing it, I pour two mugs, adding sugar to mine and cream to his.
“Extra cream?” he requests, but I’m already turning the contents of his cup to the lightest shade of brown possible. I add just enough cream for it to be the color he likes best, and then pick up both mugs, heading for the living room. I place his mug in front of him and he grins, picking it up and taking a huge sip. He sighs happily as he cradles the mug in his hands, smiling at me over the brim of it. “Perfect.”
I sit down on the couch beside him, placing my own mug on the table as he sips at his again. He yawns, pulling off his reading glasses and wiping his eyes with the back of his free hand. Casey’s face is paler than usual, his eyes drawn and sunken a bit into his skin. He says he hasn’t been sleeping well since the new semester started, and that adjusting to the more packed schedule than he had when he was doing the simple course he took over the summer to gain some extra credits is tough.
“I’m fine,” he says before I can even ask if he’s all right.
“Just tired?” I clarify anyway, a tiny thread of worry uncurling itself inside me. I quickly check my hands for cuts or open wounds, knowing that while there has been no sex between us, we have kissed, and I have touched his face with my fingers. It’s irrational, I know, but I feel like I live with a monster inside my blood that’s just waiting to infect him simply because he keeps coming around me.
Touching me and letting me touch him in the little ways I do now.
Casey reaches out and places one of his hands on mine. “Stop. I’m just tired. I promise, Brandon.”
I offer a sheepish smile because I know better. I have read the entire packet of information that I was given and learned all the ways I have to be careful now. Holding hands and kissing aren’t on the list of super dangerous things, and Casey is quick to remind me every time I get lost in my own anxiety over infecting him.
As if to prove his point, he put his mug down on the table, grabs my hand and presses it to his lips, kissing my knuckles. Instead of releasing me, he places my hand to his cheek and leans his head against it, still holding onto my fingers. “I’m just tired. It happens every year with the ridiculous schedule. There are worse things.”
“Sharks,” I offer with a smile as I uncurl my hand on his cheek to hold him. I run my thumb over his cheekbone, and he leans into the touch.
“Exactly,” he murmurs, shuffling closer to me on the couch. Casey leans over and presses his lips to mine, and I revel in the feel of him against me, dropping my hand from his face to rest on his warm thigh. Usually, he stops the kiss by now, but today he doesn’t move away.
Instead, he moves closer to me, hands gently coming to rest on my chest. I’m wearing a thin T-shirt, and I can feel the heat of his fingers against my skin, sending thrills through me. Casey doesn’t move away from the kiss, but he does move himself onto my lap, straddling my thighs. I pull back as he comes to rest on my lap, need and want coursing through me at the pressure of his thighs against mine, splayed open over my body. He wraps his arms around my neck, looking into my eyes as he pushes his hips forward, applying delicious pressure to the front of my sweatpants. I am growing hard beneath them as he pushes himself forward again, but my heart starts racing inside my chest, and my worry is bubbling up from inside me like a freight train.
“Casey,” I choke out as he pushes his hips forward again, sending shivers down my spine.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead against mine. “We’re safe. This is safe. You could fuck me, and it would be safe, Brandon.”
“I don’t know,” I murmur as my breath hitches in my throat. He feels so good against me, hips gyrating against my pelvis and his cock behind his pants rubbing against mine, but my entire brain is at war with my body. I know the things I know about safe sex with HIV, but that doesn’t help me at all, and I am tensing beneath him as much as I never want him to stop writhing against me. I remember what it felt like to take him, to have him bent over in front of me, my cock slipping in and out of his body as he moaned and gripped my pillows tight in his fists. I want him, but I don’t want to hurt him at the same time, and now that he’s offering himself to me again knowing full well what I am now made of, I am screaming inside my own head that I will take this beautiful thing and make it worse. I will ruin him and wreck him with what I carry inside me. It’s too much, and I can’t get the rational side of my brain to kick in to remind me that I know we could be safe in enjoying each other’s bodies. I let loose a small noise of what can only be called distress, and Casey stops moving and pulls back, looking down into my eyes with concern written into his own.
“Hey,” he whispers, gently caressing my face with his hands again. “You can say no, and I will stop. We don’t have to do anything until you are ready for it, okay?”
“I don’t want you to get sick.”
“Oh, Brandon. Do you want me, though?”
“Yes.” I do. I want to explore his body without hesitation, take what he is offering me and wring his own pleasure out of every inch of him. I want to hear my name on his lips as he releases, knowing that I am the one that gave that to him. I just don’t know if I can let myself do it when everything else feels off-kilter and ugly inside me.
“Then let me show you how you can have me. I trust you,” he says, pressing his hips forward again, his cock rubbing against mine to send shivers down my spine.
My heart beats a rapid pace behind my ribs and my lungs squeeze as I force breath in and out of them, my cock straining beneath my pants and my head on fire with thoughts of infecting him. “I don’t know, Casey.”
What I mean is, I don’t know what to do here.
What I mean is, I don’t know if I can trust my own body.
What I mean is, I’m scared.
I’m so scared.
“Do you trust that I would not let myself get HIV from you?” he asks, looking down into my eyes.
That strikes me in a strange place inside, jolting my brain out of the fear and worry threatening to consume me. “Trust you?”
“Yes. If you are uncertain of yourself, then that is a better question. Do you trust me, Brandon? Do you trust that I know we can have sex safely and that I would not put myself into a position where I would get HIV from you?”
I go silent, thoughts rumbling through my brain like a train on a track. “I’ve never thought of it like that.”
Casey smiles, leaning forward and pressing his lips to mine briefly before pulling away. He crawls off my lap and sits beside me, leaning into my side as I put my arm around him. “Then think of it like that, and when you’re ready for it, Brandon, I’m here.”