Chapter 11 Tongue-Tied
Tongue-Tied
Liam couldn’t have imagined this was how he would spend his evening.
Not at Gracie’s, eating his favorite gingersnap cookies.
Not at home, curled up with his phone with a mystery man on a dating app.
Not at the store, covering for someone’s night shift.
But driving around town with Teague Jenson, the guy he only moments ago loathed, then seconds later found himself kissing.
Teague, whose insufferable charm all these years seemed reserved for everyone else in town and never for him.
Teague, steering his “steed” like a chariot he’s proudly escorting Liam across town upon, windows rolled down, night breeze combing through their hair in gentle, thrilling waves.
What a strange and unexpected night this has become.
They hit up a pizza place first, then decide to just eat in the truck as opposed to taking it back to Teague’s.
Over slice after slice of cheap pizza, the pair of them chat about everything that comes to mind—which is mostly the day-to-day gripes of working at Gary’s Grocers.
Liam finds himself chuckling several times despite himself, perhaps holding back his full belts of laughter, clinging to a pinch of resolve to not let every last one of his walls down just yet.
Teague goes on and on, pointing out absurdities Liam didn’t even realize about the store, like the placement of certain items in nonsensical aisles where they don’t sell as well or can’t be found.
Liam is amazed at how observant Teague can be, apparently, when he otherwise seems to not be paying attention to much at all.
And as Teague points out (and then imitates) a funny sound he always hears Mr. Michelson make when he’s in his office and thinks he’s alone, Liam explodes into laughter so loud, he’s sure the whole parking lot and half of Texas can hear them both.
Liam has never felt this free before. Maybe the same could be said about Teague, who looks like he’s beaming ear-to-ear every time he gazes at Liam.
When they finally arrive at Teague’s, it’s nearly midnight, but neither of them seem ready to end their time together.
Liam finds himself hanging out in Teague’s backyard, lounging on an old swinging bench that hangs from the patio covering.
Teague’s dog Rus rests on a comfortable doggy bed near the back door.
Liam was protected from a face full of licking from the excitable dog when they first arrived and he got to meet him, thanks to a overly-protective Teague.
A lull in conversation leaves the two in a comfortable silence as they gaze into the starry night sky, sitting side-by-side on the swinging bench. It feels like they’ve talked about everything.
Almost everything. “We gonna avoid it all night?”
Liam instantly knows what he’s referring to. “Well …”
“I just don’t want you to have any lingering questions.
I don’t know if you realize it, but … despite it looking like I’ve got dozens of friends, the truth is that none of them really know me all that well.
I would reckon no one in town could name three personal facts about me, let alone the name of my dog, the fact that I have a dog, or …
the more obvious fact that I’m into you. ”
Liam turns to him.
Teague bites his lip as he continues gazing off into the dark yard. “And you know all three of those facts, so … I guess you officially know me better than anyone in town.” He turns his face, giving Liam a look into his eyes. “How’s that make you feel?”
Liam stares at Teague in wonder. He’s been doing that a lot tonight. “Terrible.”
Teague’s face wrinkles up. “What? Why?”
Liam frowns. “I … I shouldn’t have been mean to you. Back at Gracie’s. Or before. All day.”
“Don’t sweat it. Really, it’s no big—”
“It’s more than just tonight. I’ve been treating you terribly all month.
At the store. Since the first moment I saw you.
I had you wrong. Totally wrong. This whole time …
” Liam averts his gaze. “You’re actually …
possibly the fucking sweetest guy I think I’ve known.
I mean, yeah, you’re an annoying showboat sometimes who always wants to be looked at by everyone,” he adds with a shrug, “but maybe that’s just a front to hide the fact that you’re actually super thoughtful and …
and really kind. You see so much more around you and inside others than you ever let on. ” He looks at him. “You see me.”
Teague appears to sit with those words for a while. A breeze brushes past the backyard, stirring everything up, all the grass sighing and the arms of trees swaying.
Teague puts his arm over the back of the bench, scoots closer, and brings his face within inches of Liam’s. “For someone who’s such an annoying showboat who wants to be looked at …” His voice is soft and sensitive. “I’ve … never actually felt seen … until right now.”
Feelings can’t be contained a second longer.
Liam leans forward and pushes his lips against Teague’s, as if in a desperate search to reclaim whatever they discovered while pressed to the side of the truck.
He feels Teague respond instantly, like it’s the gift he’s been waiting for all night.
The boys move even closer together on the bench, Teague tucking Liam under his arm as their kiss deepens.
Chasing his desires, Liam pushes Teague down onto the bench as they continue making out, crawling over him.
Their hands are starved to explore one another, held back too long.
Liam starts working Teague out of his vest, button by button.
The tuft of hair turns out to be just a square of craft faux fur stuffed into the top of the vest, which is swiftly tossed aside, revealing Teague’s real chest. The hanging bench creaks as the boys explore one another, their kissing fevered and unapologetic.
Even the dog must be alerted by the activity, popping his head up.
The heat is fast becoming too much for this bench to handle.
A moment later finds a trail of clothes surrounding Teague’s bed.
The sweaty sheets are spilled half onto the floor along with a checkered blanket and a pillow.
The ceiling fan draws circles over their heads as the boys, naked and breathless, continue to kiss one another as if they may never have a night like this again.
At one point, Liam might have considered that making out was all they’d do tonight. But the chemistry was building longer than just since the moment they started the staring game. It’s obvious neither Teague nor Liam wanted to hold out any longer.
“Will you top me?” asks Teague, out of breath, during the tiniest of windows between their kisses. “I’ve only been with one other guy. It was terrible. Neither of us were into it. I feel like … I feel like this is my real first time. I should’ve waited. I should’ve—”
“You’re talking too much.” Liam smiles as Teague chuckles at himself and rolls his eyes, red-faced.
“I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever makes you comfortable.
” The two kiss again. Liam runs a hand through Teague’s sweaty, messy hair.
“I’m surprised Mr. Cocky Satyr wants to bottom for the bossy guy he’s been working under all summer. ”
“I trust you.” The two lock eyes, the humor in them traded for something far more sensitive and intimate. “I want you to take the lead. Take care of me. Show me how it’s done, Liam.”
For a moment, Liam thought he was going to be called by the other name. He realizes he wouldn’t have minded. It would have seemed sweeter all of a sudden, coming from Teague’s lips in this moment between them. Maybe Peanut is a cute nickname.
“I’ll take care of you,” he says. Then the two give in to another wave of kisses.
It’s a promise he very much intends to keep.
The wind brushes softly against the window as Liam rolls on a condom and lubricates himself from a bottle Teague keeps in a red shoebox under his bed.
When he lays himself over Teague’s back, pressing him to the sweaty sheets, Liam whispers, “You ready?” Teague’s soft grunt and a glance over his shoulder is his answer.
It doesn’t take much force before Liam slides inside, and the boys moan from the long-anticipated sensation of unity.
Liam begins to thrust in and out, gently and slowly at first, then picking up speed as their bodies grow accustomed to each other.
The bed soon squeaks with every thrust. Their fingers entwine as the boys grab hold of one another in a tight embrace.
Liam didn’t imagine his night’s plans would possibly include making love, thrust by slippery thrust, hands linked and bodies glistening with sweat, with their soft moans and breaths touching every wall—as well as the occasional squeaking from the bed that can’t be avoided.
Whatever tensions or awkwardness transpired earlier tonight are long gone as Teague and Liam become one.
Did they even have any problems? Did they even attend a hangout at Gracie’s?
Any and all thoughts of the rest of the living world are so far away, they might as well be the only two people left on the planet.
Liam would love nothing more than for that to be true.
A moment later finds the boys turned onto their sides, Liam’s hand wrapped around Teague’s cock and jerking him in rhythm with his thrusts. They cling to each other in a tight and twisted embrace as their bodies rock as one, giving no care anymore to the noise of the bed.
Their speed increases.
The edge draws closer with every ticking second.
It’s an edge neither Liam nor Teague are in a hurry to reach, yet every cell in their bodies shoves them closer and closer toward it with inevitable urgency.
Liam clings to Teague tighter, his long fingers digging into him.
Teague’s groans grow louder as the two resist for as long as they possibly can.
The pressure is insurmountable.
So is the desire to finally let free.
And when they finally do, nothing in their whole lives seems to compare to the explosion of pleasure they experience together in the thick air of Teague’s room.
Wave after wave of pent-up joy spills from them like the ocean itself with a power that has both of them turning vocal, moaning their satisfaction into the night air and filling the whole room—or the whole town of Fairview, for all they know.
When they’re spent at last, the two lie there on the sweaty bed under the amber glow of the desk lamp, which paints their sweat-glossed bodies in its warm light.
Calmness replaces the frenzy as the two bask in the afterglow.
Liam swears he could lie here forever with Teague in his arms. Neither want to move.
Neither want this to end. The night could stretch on for a thousand hours and the boys wouldn’t care; they would fill every one of those hours with their satisfied breaths, gentle squeezes of their arms around each other’s bodies, and the pure joy in their hearts of knowing they belong in this moment together with nothing and no one in the way.
“I understand if you still need to head on home,” says Teague softly, “and I will be happy to take you as I promised … but you’d better decide in the next five or so seconds, because otherwise I’m gonna fall asleep right here, right now, still messed up and sticky.”
Cuddled against his side, Liam offers a sleepy smile. “Yeah, I know all about you and being able to fall asleep in a matter of seconds, no matter if you’re on a pile of mud or on a haystack.”
“Either one of those sound kind of nice, actually.”
“Of course you’d say that.”
“Hey, gotta get my hours in whenever I can get them … and sometimes that’s balanced on a row of milk crates.”
“You’re so weird,” laughs Liam.
“I’m just lucky I’m on a bed right now!”
Liam rubs Teague’s arm, then sits up. “Okay, give me a sec. I just need to shoot my parents a quick text. Just in case they didn’t already assume I’m staying at Gracie’s.”
Teague wasn’t kidding. By the time Liam slides off the bed, pulls on his underwear, and succeeds in fishing his phone out of the pile of clothes on the floor, he’s already fast asleep on the bed, snoring softly.
Liam watches him for a moment, smiling and, with a strange out-of-body feeling, finds himself adoring the sight of the sleepy-boy-wonder, enjoying a rest in an actual bed for once.
He really is so adorable.
What a bizarre, incredible, beautiful night this has become.
Liam stands at the bedroom window as he sends his parents a text. The window faces the backyard, so he can see the hanging bench where this whole mess started as well as Teague’s dog, still sleeping on his bed.
What was the dog’s name? Rus? Teague started to say earlier what Rus was short for.
Cer … Didn’t Teague start to say “Cer” …
? It reminds Liam of the question that drew him into that dating app at all.
That would be quite the freaky coincidence, Liam chuckles to himself, if Teague named his dog Cerberus.
You know, despite having only the one head.
The thought makes him smile to himself as he glances down at his phone.
He finds himself staring at the dating app now—and the unanswered messages to Hate2LoveU—with a strange and peaceful feeling of resolve.
Maybe the dating app was in the way all along, proving itself more fruitless fantasy than reality.
If he hadn’t spent so much time on it, he might’ve seen what was right in front of him.
He might’ve seen Teague Jenson for who he really is.
But he has more courtesy than Hate2LoveU apparently does, so he decides to do the respectable thing and type out one final message.
TongueTiedInKnots
I appreciate the time we’ve spent chatting about everything under Apollo’s sun, but I’ve found someone in the real world I’d like to pursue.
I hope you understand why I need to end things, though I’m not sure if anything started.
I don’t know your name. You don’t know mine.
That’s OK. I think we gave each other something more valuable on this dating app than a fleeting hookup.
Thank you. I hope you find the right person for you and don’t have to take a trip to Hades to meet him. Farewell, Electric Butt Cheeks.
With a smile on his face, Liam hits the send button.
He hears a chime nearby. He lifts his gaze from the glow of his phone and stares at the desk where it came, confused.
Teague’s phone rests there, its screen lit up.
Liam stares at that phone. He seems incapable of blinking as he waits for Teague’s phone to make another sound, to convince him it isn’t what he just heard.
But the words on the screen are plain.
And it only takes one step toward the desk to make them out.
A single notification: Unread message from TongueTiedInKnots.