26. Brandon
TWENTY-SIX
brANDON
Being in Gabe’s bedroom always felt intimate.
It was such an expression of him. Art, both his and others’, tacked up on the walls, art supplies coming out of every crevice, a general mess that made Brandon think about Gabe’s creativity instead of any uncleanliness.
The shoebox size of it made it feel like a hug.
Brandon appreciated the familiar setting. He was almost twenty-three, and while he understood intellectually that it was not any failure of his to have waited to have sex, he felt behind the curve.
“Everything is going to be okay,” Gabe said, his body close to Brandon’s as they stood in the tiny amount of free space in Gabe’s room.
He put his hands on Brandon’s chest, looking up at him with those sharp green eyes.
“It’s going to be okay because we’re going to do it together. Whatever you want.”
It was easy, reflexive, to pull Gabe closer by his hips, always thinking about every spot he knew Gabe was bruised. The closeness was intoxicating enough to him. He could hardly fathom his luck at getting anything more than this.
“I’m going to need you to lead here,” Brandon said. “I don’t want you to do a single thing that hurts you.”
Gabe leaned up to kiss him, his press of lips soft and slow. “You truly are pure sweetness, aren’t you? How about you sit on the edge of the bed, and I blow you?”
The words weren’t romantic, but the way Gabe helped Brandon strip down was.
The way he took inventory of the remnants of the bruise on Brandon’s thigh was romantic.
The way he let Brandon take his clothes off, careful of his splint and bruises, was romantic.
Brandon sat and pulled Gabe, standing, between his legs so he could kiss the bruise across his chest. It had already faded considerably, unlike the kinds of bruises Brandon got from blocking shots, but the remnants of it still made Brandon’s heart ache.
Brandon was at half-mast, anxious and excited in equal parts, but then Gabe put a pillow on the ground for his knees and settled between Brandon’s thighs, and he was pretty sure the memory of this moment could get him hard for the rest of his life.
“Wow,” he said, cupping Gabe’s jaw in his hands as Gabe looked up at him. He licked his lips, and the sweetness of the moment tipped into something dirty as Gabe leaned in closer and flicked his tongue over the tip of Brandon’s cock.
“Don’t hold back. I want to hear every thought and feeling you have,” Gabe told him, backing off to kiss up his thighs.
Brandon kept one hand on Gabe’s cheek and leaned back using the other.
Gabe went slow, drawing out his movements as he sucked on Brandon’s balls, then finally closing his lips around his cock.
“Baby, you feel so good,” Brandon told him, the thrill of being able to call his boyfriend “baby” during sex heightening the feeling of Gabe’s mouth around him.
Gabe moaned, and the vibrations of it pulled a moan from Brandon’s mouth as well. Gabe was hard and leaking, eyes hooded with lust when he looked up at Brandon, like he was enjoying this as much as Brandon was.
He knew his first ever blowjob wouldn’t be a showcase of sexual endurance, but as his orgasm crept closer, he was already sad for it to be over.
“I’m close,” Brandon said, swiping his thumb over the sharp apple of Gabe’s cheek.
Gabe was using his mouth and his hand with practiced technique, and in the last moment looked up at Brandon with a meaningful depth in his gaze.
Brandon came, letting the moan that had been building in him loose, as Gabe sucked him through it.
Gabe let Brandon slip gently out of his mouth, breathing hard himself as he rested his forehead on Brandon’s thigh.
Brandon combed his fingers through Gabe’s rusty hair as he caught his breath and thought about how tightly this man had him wrapped around his little finger.
He didn’t know what being in love would feel like, but this felt good.
Better than he could have ever imagined.
“Fuck, you taste good, you sound good, you felt so good in my mouth. I am incredibly wound up, just so you know.”
“Let me take care of you,” Brandon said, helping Gabe up from the floor so he could stretch out on the bed on his back, long legs parted to make room for Brandon.
Brandon hovered carefully over Gabe, because in the time Gabe spent between Brandon’s knees, he’d missed kissing him.
His lips were kiss-soft, which was a brand-new revelation.
They felt so different now than when they had started kissing—soft and pliant—and he lost track of time attached to Gabe’s mouth, until Gabe wrapped his legs around Brandon’s hips, pulling their bodies closer. He was hard and needed relief.
“Sorry,” Brandon said with a blush. “Just obsessed with your lips.”
“I promise you’ll be able to kiss me until you’re sick of it,” Gabe said, with the implied after I come .
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Brandon said, even though he knew Gabe was aware of his experience level.
“Just don’t bite me and we’re good,” Gabe joked. He looked better than any of his sexy drawings all laid out like this, as Brandon arranged himself on Gabe’s full-size bed. Gabe found Brandon’s hand with his good one and gave it a squeeze, and that was all he needed.
Gabe was hard and beautiful beneath him, and he knew he would never forget this moment.
Without overthinking it, Brandon took him into his mouth.
The sharp saltiness of the precome, the silky softness of Gabe’s delicate skin, the way his mouth felt full with barely half of Gabe’s cock buried in it was all overwhelming, but what made him realize that he’d be doing this as often as physically possible was the way Gabe squeezed his hand tight, soft moans already coming from between his lips.
Every breath Gabe let out was a moan, as if positive reinforcement was his primary objective.
Brandon knew he could make Gabe come. He’d done it before, even if that hadn’t felt like sex the way this did.
It was still nice to hear how good he was making Gabe feel.
He understood why sucking him off had made Gabe so hard.
If Brandon hadn’t just come, he would probably have his hand on his own dick.
Gabe had used his hand along with his mouth on Brandon, so Brandon tried that too, wrapping a few fingers around the base of Gabe’s erection, stroking him in time with the way he sucked Gabe down and slowly pulled off.
“Wow,” Gabe said, voice tight. “I’m going to come soon. I don’t expect you to swallow it or anything.”
It didn’t even feel like a choice. Of course he was going to try to swallow it.
He wanted so much of Gabe. Every part of him.
He sucked harder and stroked faster, and finally Gabe was pulsing into his mouth, the moan he let out echoing around the two of them.
It was a lot, and Brandon did his best, but he was unprepared for how much come he ended up with in his mouth.
“Go spit it out,” Gabe said with a laugh when he saw Brandon struggling with it.
Brandon was grateful the bathroom was so close and Gabe’s roommates were gone.
He’d try again next time, he thought, as he rinsed out the sink.
He cleaned himself up quickly and brought Gabe a warm washcloth.
Then he climbed in bed with Gabe, the two of them completely bare, and pulled the comforter over them.
Gabe cuddled against Brandon’s chest, careful of his hand, his body less stiff and painful looking than it had been right after the accident.
Being close to him like this, skin to skin and under a blanket, felt nearly as profound as when Gabe literally had his mouth on his genitals.
Every feeling he was having felt big, bursting at the seams.
“I want to tell my family about you,” he said, playing with Gabe’s soft hair. It looked like he hadn’t been putting product in it since the accident, and somehow it felt more intimate to see him like this, hair undone. Sweats. Casual.
“Really?” Gabe asked.
“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I am. I had mentally prepared myself to be a bit of a secret from your family for a while.”
“Ashley knows. Actually, Ashley knows everything. The fake boyfriend situation, not the, uh, money situation. And she knows about your accident. She’s been asking about you.”
“Tell her Duncan baked me eight croissants and then lied about something being too wrong with them to sell, so I’m basically cured now.”
By now, Brandon didn’t have to see Gabe’s smile to know it was there.
Brandon had been “chronically single,” according to his friends and family, who didn’t know he was gay, and they always told him that love would find him when he least expected it. He’d never claim to have expected Gabe, that was for sure.
“I don’t think I’ve waited this long to have sex with someone since I was sixteen,” Gabe said, words mumbly with sleep.
The tangled mess of inexperience and shame in Brandon’s gut tugged tighter for a moment as he tried to figure out what Gabe meant.
“It was good to make such a solid connection before.”
The knot loosened, and Brandon pressed a kiss to his forehead.
“Unless you count whatever we did in your living room.”
“It felt like something, that’s for sure, but I don’t think it felt like losing my virginity.”
“Whatever it was fueled many jerk-off sessions,” Gabe joked.
“Why? When you could go get something…better somewhere else? Why me?”
Gabe wiggled away from him enough to look at him, the fingers of his broken hand gently resting on Brandon’s cheek. His heart still ached when he thought about the pain Gabe went through .
“You think I had time in my schedule to juggle more than one suitor?” Gabe asked, laughing a bit before his smile fell. “Seriously. Brandon, even when we just started talking. When we were just friends. When I was certain you wouldn’t want me?—”
“Who wouldn’t want you?”
“Maybe a big hockey player with money and fame wouldn’t want an old college student with shitty tattoos who can barely pay his bills.”
“Clearly, I don’t think of you that way.”
Gabe rolled his eyes and continued explaining. “Sure, I could have gone out and found a hookup. But I didn’t want to. I would have rather spent an evening or an afternoon texting you about a random sandwich place in De Moines than gotten off with a stranger. I was hooked on you from the get-go.”
“God, same,” Brandon said, letting Gabe coax him back into another kiss. “My brain hasn’t thought of anything except you since that first Zoom meeting.”
“You were a good distraction through fall semester. And now you’re going to be seeing a lot of me, I hope.”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m on a leave of absence from both of my jobs, and I can’t pick up coffee shop shifts, so I have a lot of time to twiddle my thumbs. Metaphorically.”
“Come to a game. Bring your roommates.”
“That would be cool.”
“Ryan has been bugging me about it.”
“It would be nice to have an expert there.”
Gabe’s voice was soft, borderline dreamy. Sleepy.
“Let’s nap. Figure it out when we wake up.”
Gabe was already asleep.