Chapter 15 - BlueEthan
Chapter 15
Blue
I had no idea how much I secretly love being domestic. I mean, I can cook well enough not to poison myself, and Gabriel and I eat together when we both happen to be home, but we both have food-service jobs and time-consuming artistic interests, so home-cooked co-meals don’t really end up happening all that often. For years, I’ve spent every free moment I haven’t been at work out with my friends, getting my fix with a hookup, out in the woods, or in the hot shop. There hasn’t been much opportunity for domesticity, and it hasn’t ever been something I’ve felt was missing in my life.
It’s yet another way that I’m finding my time with Ethan has changed me. Since the first night we spent together almost six weeks ago, we’ve become nearly inseparable. We still spend Friday nights out on friend dates, we both still work, and I haven’t cut back on my time at the shop, so I suppose it’s not really that we’re spending a drastically increased amount of time together; it’s simply that the time we are together has changed. Ethan still hasn’t agreed to sing any karaoke, but he dances with me every Friday night. He still gets adorably flushed and shy every time I ask him, but he tightens his hand in mine - because our fingers are always already tightly tangled together in our laps under the table - and follows me into the pulsating crowd without hesitation. He wraps me in his arms and buries his face in my neck as we press our bodies together so tightly that even atoms couldn’t slip between us. We cling to one another and close our eyes and lose ourselves in the throb of bass and the sound of laughter and the light brush of lips across salty skin.
We spend late evenings after I’m off work at home. It doesn’t matter whether it’s his apartment or mine; when we’re together, any place feels like home. We curl up on the couch, idly reading or watching old movies while we chat about nothing and everything, and fingertips lazily play with tresses of auburn or turquoise. We split boxes of Chinese and platters of enchiladas and laugh with Gabriel, who is constantly smiling at us like he can’t quite believe we’re real.
Every night in his arms is different than the night before. There are moments of need and desire and lust and passion so intense that, for brief moments, I wonder if my heart might actually give out with my next thrust, and there are moments in which a cocoon of peace and gentle embraces filled with whimpers and panted breaths surrounds us as we tenderly search for oblivion together. I’ve enjoyed most of my past sexual partners, but I’ve never known it’s possible to find so much, to feel so much, with the same person time and time again. Ethan drifts off to sleep in my arms most nights, sated and content as I stare at the ceiling and take in the way his spicy scent envelops me and revel in the fact that I’ve never felt as grounded as I do with the weight of his head tucked in against my shoulder. A small, terrified part of me tries to whisper that this is why hope is so dangerous. Tries to warn me that I would never survive the loss of this feeling, of Ethan. For once in my life, it feels like I’ve actually found what I’ve always wanted, and even though I promised myself long ago that I wouldn’t, I let myself hope. Ethan is nothing like any of the men I’ve fallen for in the past. He’s kind and generous and thoughtful, and I can’t imagine any scenario in which he’d deliberately hurt me. And yet…I find myself waiting for the bubble to burst, for the other shoe to drop, for my luck to run out. Love has never felt like this for me. I’ve never felt secure and safe and happy and appreciated the way I feel with Ethan, and I’m holding my breath and pleading to anyone or anything that might be listening to let this work. Just let me keep him.
Ethan and I spent this morning in the car with our usual Sunday brunch of pastries and long blacks before wandering for a couple of hours along his favorite forest trail before I had to head to work. I came straight to his place when my shift ended at ten p.m., and when I arrived, he’d been standing in the kitchen wearing low-slung black sweatpants and a simple green T-shirt so tight it was nearly criminal while cooking us a late dinner. He’d ushered me to the bathroom, where I’d found almost identical pants and one of my overly worn, old concert tees that had migrated to his place at some point laid out on the counter waiting for me. When I’d emerged from the shower feeling like a new man, I’d found him pouring wine, with candles lit and dinner on the table.
The groan that escapes me as I shovel another bite of creamy pasta into my face is obscene, and it’s hard to keep my attention on simple dinner conversation with the flavors bursting on my tongue and Ethan’s shy, enticing smirk sitting so close to me.
“Before you got distracted by making pasta sex noises - which, for the record, mean that I now plan to make pasta for you every chance I get.” Ethan chuckles. “You said the words ‘this morning’ and then just stopped talking.”
“I absolutely, wholeheartedly look forward to eating nothing but this for the rest of my life.” I grin and try to ignore the rush of butterflies that flits through my chest at the way he blushes when I mention the rest of our lives. We haven’t talked much about the future over the past month and a half, and I can’t help the tendril of fear that appears every time I consider him leaving for another job when his contract at the gallery ends. I push it aside like I always do, brightening my smile and focusing on enjoying our evening .
“I was saying that Max called me this morning with an interesting offer.”
“Max from the gallery?” He looks a bit confused.
“Mmhmm,” I mumble around more pasta.
“I didn’t realize you guys know each other. I mean, it makes sense now that I think about it. It feels like even though the art community in Seattle is huge, everything is also interconnected somehow, so of course you know the owner of the gallery who is working to purchase your shop.”
“Well, ya, I guess I’d probably know her that way, but I mean, we do talk when I drop off new pieces or pick up a check for ones that have sold, which hasn’t been very often lately, but still.”
“Wait.” He sets his wine glass down, looking almost dumbfounded. “Your work is at the gallery? I’ve seen your art at the shop a few times, and I haven’t seen anything like it at work. I haven’t seen your name on anything either.”
I set my fork down, a bit unsure as to how the conversation seems to have shifted so quickly from Ethan promising me sex pasta for every meal into one that, for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, feels heavy and serious. “Well, I use my legal name for my professional work, not Blue, and she doesn’t have any of my current pieces. The ones that are on display at the moment are from a collection I created a few years back. They’re quite a bit…darker and harsher than the collection I’m working on now. They’re on the top floor in the back corner, single sculptures on black pedestals.”
Ethan just stares at me in silence. His breathing has sped up, and he looks like he might hyperventilate. He seems more than confused now; he looks lost or hurt, and I don’t know why he looks like that, but I don’t like it. Ethan should smile always, and whatever has happened, I need to find a way to fix it.
I can’t get out of my chair to kneel at his side fast enough. “Hey, darlin’, I'm not sure what's going on here, but you’re sorta freaking me out. Can you breathe and come back to me?” I take his hand in mine gently, unsure how to help him through whatever is happening. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”
He breaks himself out of his trance and clutches my hand tightly. “I just…oh my god, I mean…I don’t even know your name. I’ve known you for months, and we’ve slept together, and I’m completely falling for you, and I don’t even know your name. God, what is wrong with me? I mean, who does that?”
“Hey.” I can’t help but laugh despite the seriousness of the moment at the relief that rushes through me over the fact that the thing he’s freaking out over is something so insignificant, and I haven’t somehow missed the occurrence of a serious problem. “You know me. My name is Blue, and you know everything about me that matters; you just don’t know what my parents called me before I turned eight and decided blue foods were the best. I don’t think that’s really that big of a deal, do you?”
He’s no longer crushing my fingers into dust, and the corners of his lips are trying to twitch up into a smile, so I must be getting through to him.
“It’s Xavier. The name I use when I display my work is Xavier.”
Ethan’s eyes are suddenly glassy, and he chokes out something that sounds like it’s trying to be a laugh, but it’s tainted by too many other emotions to really be successful.
“Xavier Prescott?” he asks in a near whisper.
I just nod, confused and more than a little worried about the way he’s behaving as he leans forward and presses a lingering kiss to my forehead.
“Wait here for a second?”
“Always.” It’s not the first time I’ve told him I’ll always be here for him, and yet again, I find myself hoping. I hope that he knows that when I say it, I actually mean always .
He chokes out another rough attempt at a laugh as he stands and slides past me. I’m desperately afraid that somehow I’ve done something wrong, that he’s going to come back from wherever he’s gone and ask me to leave, and even though things didn’t end with violence this time, once again, I’ll find myself alone and in pain and wondering how a love that seemed so promising one moment could have ended so badly the next. I don’t turn around when I hear his footsteps behind me, preferring to live in the blissful knowledge that he is mine and I am his for at least one moment longer.
“Blue…” He doesn’t sound upset as I work up the courage to spin around, only to feel my heartbeat stutter and wonder swirl through my veins when I find him holding one of my darkest sculptures.
“I bought it my first day in the city, on my first trip to the gallery. I bought it before I met you, before I met Max, before I knew that my life was about to change. I stood in front of it and felt all of the loneliness and pain and grief and confusion and hope that have been my permanent companions over the past decade all swirling together in harsh lines and soft curves. I couldn’t leave without it.”
I rise and take the fragile glass from him with shaking fingers and set it on the table before cupping his cheeks in my hands. He’s smiling at me even though his eyes are still glistening, and it feels like hope and fate and the universe finally telling me that I can breathe. It doesn’t make any sense that the first piece of glass I fought with and cried over for hours once my ribs had finally healed enough to step back into a hot shop should have found its way into the hands of this man I love. It doesn’t make sense that he would have seen all the darkness and hurt and despair that it holds and somehow felt hope inside of it as well because when I made it, I had run out of hope, at least the kind of bright, comforting hope that Ethan believes in. All I had left was one tiny spark. A dangerous thing that I hid in a fireproof steel box and buried deep so that it could never trick me again. But Ethan found it. He found me.
I need to touch him, to feel him, to show him just how grateful I am that he found me. I slide my hands from his cheeks down to his jaw and close the distance between us in a blink, crushing his mouth with mine and thrusting my tongue deep until he whines and melts against me.
We part only to make our way to his bedroom and tear off our clothes before coming back together, and my eyes flutter shut as his fingertips trace along my cheekbones and jaw before sliding down the front of my throat. His palm on my chest presses me back to the mattress, and this is what I want - to be his and only his. I throw my legs around his hips and arch up against him as his fingers curl into my hair, pulling my head back to expose more of my throat. He presses slow, gentle kisses down my chest and belly and the rise of my hip, and I revel in the sensation of his lips and tongue and the scrape of his teeth.
I love everything Ethan and I do in bed - and on the couch and the floor and the shower - but watching him discover what he likes. Watching him lose control as he chases his own pleasure and meticulously crafts mine is the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced.
I’m already panting and thrusting my hips up, and our cocks are sliding slickly together between our bellies, but I want more. I don’t have to ask or beg or tell him what I want. He knows me now. He knows how to care for me and pull me apart until I’m a trembling mess of need and desire. I’m so entranced by the feel of him, so needy and desperate for more, so focused on how he catches my lip ring between his teeth and the way the bars that pierce my cock roll just under my nearly too-sensitive skin as he rocks against me, that I don’t even notice when he reaches under the pillow for the lube that now lives there.
Delicate kisses rain down along my cheekbone and jaw as he reaches down between my legs, and cool, slick fingertips circle and tease for an eternity before he slips two deep inside of me with one sharp, quick move. I groan and bear down against the intrusion as he spreads them wide and twists them back out before plunging them in again…and again. They move inside of me until I’m whimpering and gasping and begging. Until I’m arching up and writhing under him. Until there is nothing in the world other than heat and sweat and his strong fingers and tender lips on my skin. They disappear for only a moment before I’m filled once again, but now his hips have settled between mine, and it’s so much more. It’s so much pressure and he’s splitting me open and my legs wrap around his hips, unable to decide whether they want to hold him back or pull him close. I’m shaking with ne ed or pain or pleasure and I can’t even tell which it is, but he doesn’t wait for me to decide before his hips begin to rock in short, quick bursts. He lifts his head from the bend of my neck, and our gazes connect and hold as he adjusts his movements each time until…
“Fuck…Ethan.”
I cry out and fight the urge to drop my head back because as much as I want to let myself get swept away in the sting and the fullness and the jolts of pleasure that rush through me each time his hips snap forward, I want to watch him more. His pupils are wide, and there is only a hint of green left encircling the black, and even with sweat beading on his forehead and his breath coming in harsh pants, he’s wearing the softest of smiles as if he knows that he is the best I’ve ever experienced. As if he knows that I would happily trade every other sexual encounter I’ve ever had for one more moment with him like this.
I tighten my calves against his hips, pulling him deeper as I roll and writhe and squirm against him. He pulls back, slipping from me completely before thrusting forward to breech me again and again with long, deep strokes. My fingers dig into his back as he rides me with slow, deliberate care, each movement driving me higher. Closer to him and further from the rest of existence. Any pain has long ago disappeared, and he is nothing but pleasure and lightning as I careen toward the edge of the world .
The air is pulled from my lungs as he vanishes, pulling from me completely and leaving me empty and searching, but then he’s prying my legs from around his waist as he kisses his way from my inner knee up toward my body to suck at the sensitive skin where my leg joins my hip until its tingling and sore, and I know a bruise will blossom there by morning. He places my calves on his shoulders and takes himself in his hand. His thighs are pressed against my ass, and every inch of me is so sensitive and overstimulated that I can feel his downy leg hair tremble against my skin as he shakes with exertion. As he lines himself up, his expression is one of awe and reverence, and every moment I spend with him touching me leaves me feeling exactly that. His gaze finds mine as he thrusts forward, filling me again with one long, slow movement. I want to lose myself in his eyes, but his angle has changed with my legs like this, and every inch of him spreads me wide and sends sparks up my spine and he’s so deep inside me that it’s hard to remember how to breathe. His eyes fall away as my head drops back to the pillow with a cry.
“Just like that, beautiful?” His voice is a deep, panted rumble against my skin as he falls forward, nearly bending me in half as his forearms land beside my head.
“Yes. God, please like this. Please, Ethan.”
Our cheeks are pressed together, and my breath rustles the soft auburn strands that fill my vision as he pulls back and pauses with the head of his cock barely inside of me, stretching me wider. The rough scrape of his evening stubble rasps across my freshly shaven skin, and then his mouth is covering mine as he snaps his hips forward. I scream into his kiss. My hands reach down to clutch at anything I can find, grasping at the sheets and his ribs and hips as he presses and presses, leaning his weight onto my legs. He is so very, very deep inside of me, and I never want him anywhere else.
Every drive of his hips, every plunge of his cock steals away my words and my sanity and there has never been anything like this. Never anything like Ethan. I lean up, chasing his lips as his body shifts and rocks against mine, our tongues tangling as I seize the sides of his thighs, pulling him to me as I grind back against him. We’re curled tightly around one another, our limbs messy and tangled as our bodies fall into a smooth rhythm together like this is something we’ve done since the universe was young. He slides in and out of me, filling me completely in a way no one else ever has, and I clench down, making his movements stutter and his exhale rush out with a curse.
Sweat is dripping from his skin to blend with mine, and the pressure is building inside of me. A stream of “gods” and “yesses” and “deeper” and “please” and “more” escapes between my grunts, and I’m nearly sobbing with the perfection of this moment and my desperation to live in it for the rest of time. He shifts his weight onto one arm and reaches the other between us to grasp me tightly. I scream his name into the universe as my release floods warm and sticky between us, and I barely notice as his head falls to my shoulder and heat erupts inside of me as he follows me into oblivion.
Ethan’s fingers trail along the tattoos that cover my ribs. Our skin is hot and sticky, our souls tender and sated as we fall back down to earth together.
“Promise me you won’t ever scare me like that again.” I mumble the words into his hair.
“Scare you?” He sounds genuinely confused as he shifts to lean up, his eyes searching mine carefully.
“When you got upset that you didn’t know my professional name.” Ethan’s hair is longer now than it was when we met, and I reach up to push an auburn lock behind his ear. “It felt like I’d done something to upset you, like I’d scared you away somehow. I’ve barely found you, and I was afraid I was going to lose you.”
“Oh, Blue.” His breath is warm as he leans close to whisper against my lips. “You couldn’t pry me away from you, okay?”
When he leans back up, his emerald eyes are smiling at me. “I just panicked for a minute over the thought that maybe if I don’t know enough about you, like where you display your work or…” He snickers. “Little th ings like, I don’t know…your name, that it somehow makes this thing between us less…” he pauses, searching for the right word, “solid, I guess.”
I laugh and slip my fingers into his hair, curling them tightly and dragging his mouth to mine. I taste him and worship him and let our lips play until they’re swollen and red, and only when he pulls away with a contented sigh do I let the relief swirling in my soul finally settle. “I am yours for as long as you’ll have me. No matter what.”
He looks so open and vulnerable as his eyes hover close to mine, and his smile is wide enough that his nose freckles scrunch, and the tiny dimple in his left cheek makes an appearance. When he looks at me like this - like I'm worth knowing, worth loving, like I'm his entire world - it’s so easy to let go of my past. So easy to get lost in his evergreen eyes as I count the small brown flecks that speckle the edges of his irises. When he looks at me like this, it feels like coming home. I'm happy with the life I've built for myself, but until Ethan stumbled into my world, I hadn't realized just how much I'd been missing the simple contentment of belonging to someone.
A sense of serenity and belonging so deep and unshakable that I feel inexorably connected to the rest of the universe is something I've only found wandering misty beaches or through forests, listening to the sounds of remote and unspoiled beauty and life untouched by man…but I feel it around Ethan now too. It's in the touch of his fingertips and the taste of the salt on his neck, the quiet, stuttering gasps he breathes against my ear, and the way he whispers my name in a voice filled with wonder and worship and passion and love. It’s in the way he’s captured my heart and my soul and the way the universe seems to exist only to bring us together.Being with Ethan is like finding the meaning of life.
His arm tightens around my chest, and he presses a silent kiss to my collarbone.
It would be so easy to let his touch consume me until nothing else matters, but it feels important that we finish our conversation before that happens.
“How about we just have normal human conversations instead of panicking from here on out?”
His teeth nip at my skin with a chuckle. “Well, that sounds far less interesting.”
I walk my fingers up his spine. “I’m thinking we can come up with more enjoyable ways to keep things interesting.”
“Mmmm.” He stretches against my side, rolling his still sweat-sticky naked leg further over mine. “But, in the spirit of at least attempting to have…” he shifts his tone to one of playful mockery as he utters his next two words, “open communication, do you want to try to tell me for the third time why Max called you this morning?”
“Hmm? ”
I’m suddenly too distracted by the way his heavy thigh is now pressing against my quickly hardening cock to pay much attention to anything more than the way his words are rumbling vibrations against my chest.
“Max. You said she called with a proposition?”
“Oh. Ya, she did.” I shift my attention back to his words and my hand over to his, threading our fingers together on my belly. “The gallery is going to have an exhibition next month. One night only, one local artist per medium. She’s asked me if I’d be open to displaying the collection I’m working on as the entry for glass.”
Ethan leans up on an elbow, propping his head in his hand. “Blue, that’s amazing. I mean, clearly, you’re amazingly talented. I don’t know a lot about art, but even I can see that. It has to be so fulfilling to be chosen for something like that.”
“It is.” I nod. “It’s also terrifying. I mean, it’s nearly impossible to make a living as a glass artist, at least with sculptural things. If you’re open to working at a glass production house, you can usually find a decent salary, I guess, but that’s not the same thing as getting to create work that offers up pieces of your soul, you know. It’s just putting things together the way the work orders say to. My whole life, I’ve told myself that while it’s rewarding to sell a few pieces at the gallery now and again, I have to be careful to remember that kind of success is temporary, and what matters is the way it feels to create art. That way, I won’t end up disappointed by the fact it will never pay my bills. Displaying at an almost solo exhibition could change that. It’s not very likely, but it could, and it’s terrifying to think about finding myself in a place where I potentially have so much to lose.” Like I am with you.
He leans in close, his evergreen eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiles and presses featherlight kisses against my lips, my forehead, my throat. Each one punctuating a single word.
“I” - kiss - “believe” - kiss - “in” - kiss - “you.” Kiss.
I don’t know if he has more to say on the matter. Four drawn-out mumbled words with his lips pressed to my skin are all I can handle before I wrap him in my arms, roll us over, and pin him against the mattress for hours.