14. Maddox
MADDOX
Six-forty in the morning and there's a kid in my bed.
That's the first thing I think when I wake up. It's gray out. The city is still waking up on the other side of the window. My alarm hasn't gone off. It’s a day off. And there's a kid in my bed.
Not a kid. Theo. Asleep. On his stomach, turned toward me, one hand tucked under his chin.
His hair's in his face. There's a mark on the side of his neck where I bit him and it's darker this morning than it was last night. Purple showing it’s definitely going to bruise.
His back has the shape of the sheet pressed into it where he's been sleeping on a crease.
I don't move.
I don't know what to do with this.
I've had guys in this apartment before. Not many.
Not in this bed. The ones I bring home I send home.
I don't sleep next to people. I don't like waking up with breath on my neck that isn't mine.
Last night I didn't want him to go. I didn't want to call him a cab.
I didn't want to put on pants and drive him.
I wanted him here. I wanted him here so hard I didn't even notice I was going to fall asleep with his hair under my jaw until I woke up now and his hair was still there.
Which is its own fucking problem.
He makes a small noise in his sleep. Not quite a word. His hand moves across the sheet and finds my hip and stops there.
My chest does something. I don't name it.
I lie there and I look at the ceiling and I try to talk myself into being pissed off. I'm Mad Dog Creed. I fuck and I leave. I don't hold guys. I don't watch them sleep. I don't let them put a hand on my hip in the morning like that's a thing we do now.
Except, apparently I do. And apparently I'm going to have to deal with that.
I turn my head an inch so I can see him better. The bruise on his neck. The line of his shoulder. His breathing, slow and heavy and trusting. Nobody has slept in this bed like that. I'm not sure I've ever slept in this bed like that.
His hand flexes on my hip.
“Hey,” I say. Quiet.
He doesn't answer.
He's asleep. He's half-asleep. His eyes are closed but his fingers know I'm there.
His hand slides off my hip, down, under the sheet, and he finds me already half-hard without looking and wraps his fingers around me and strokes me once, slow, and my whole body goes still.
“Theo.”
His eyes are still closed.
He pulls the sheet down off me. He moves without waking up all the way. He crawls across the mattress in the half-dark and he puts his mouth on my hip bone and he kisses it. Then lower. Then lower. His hair brushes my stomach. His breath is warm on me. He doesn't open his eyes.
He takes me in his mouth.
Oh fuck.
He takes me like he's been thinking about doing it in his dreams. He takes me in slow and deep; he doesn't rush.
His tongue flattens. His cheeks hollow. His hand wraps around the base of me and holds me steady as he works me slow and patient, and it's the most beautiful thing anyone has ever done to me in my life.
I put my hand in his hair.
I don't push. I just rest it there like he did for me last night. He makes a small sound around me. His eyelashes are dark on his cheeks. He's got a crease in his face from the pillow.
He takes me into his throat. I have no idea how he knows to do this.
I don't ask. I hold on to the back of his head with my other hand and breathe through my teeth, and I don't move my hips.
And then he does something with his tongue on the way up, and I fuck up into his mouth before I can stop it and he takes it.
He just takes it. He hums around me like yes.
“Fuck, Theo. Fuck.”
He's smiling. Around me. Around my cock in his mouth, he's smiling.
I come in his throat about ninety seconds later.
I come with my hand in his hair and his name in my mouth and his eyes still closed like he's dreaming this.
He swallows. All of it. He comes off me wet and he wipes his chin with the back of his wrist and he crawls back up the bed and lays his head on my chest and he's asleep again in under a minute.
I lie there.
With his head on my chest.
With his come-wet mouth against my collarbone.
With my hand still in his hair.
I lie there and look at the ceiling as I try to remember how to breathe like a normal human person.
Six-fifty-eight. I'm awake enough now that I can't pretend I'm not.
Theo is asleep again, heavy on my chest, his leg thrown over mine. He's drooling a little on me. His mouth's open against my skin. I should be annoyed. I'm not annoyed. I'm something else and I'm not going to name it.
I put my arm around him.
I hold him.
That's what I do. I hold him. My hand comes up without asking me and goes flat against his back between his shoulder blades and I hold him against my chest. My thumb moves in a slow stroke across the dip of his spine because my thumb has decided that's what it does now. I don't stop it.
It's uncomfortable.
It's good.
It's uncomfortable because it's good.
I've spent my entire adult life making sure nothing gets this close.
I've had guys for a night. I've had guys for a weekend.
I've had one guy for a month in the off-season when I was twenty-three and I broke it off because he wanted to meet my friends and I didn't have any and didn't want him to know that.
I've been alone in this apartment for two years.
And now there's a kid breathing into my collarbone and his hand's on my stomach and my thumb's moving on his back and the uncomfortable part and the good part are the same part and they're not separating.
Fine.
Let it be that then.
He stirs against me. His breath changes. His hand flexes.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
He doesn't move. He just breathes against me.
“That was…”
He trails off. He's waking up the rest of the way. I can feel it happen. The quality of his weight changes.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was.”
“I don't know where I learned that.”
I laugh. Actually laugh. Into his hair.
“Internet, sweetheart.”
“I guess.”
He curls his face deeper against my chest. His hand moves on my stomach.
“What time is it.”
I glance at the clock.
“Seven.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
He goes still against me.
“Paul.”
The word lands in the room and the room gets smaller by two feet.
He sits up and pulls the sheet with him, wrapping it around his waist because he doesn't think about the fact that I've seen all of him and more. His hair's standing up on one side. He has pillow creases on his face. His lips are swollen.
He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I want to put him back down.
I don't. I sit up with him. I lean against the headboard. I put my hand on his back so he knows I'm here. He reaches for his phone on the floor where his jeans are and he turns it on and I watch his face go pale.
“How many?”
He swallows.
“Fourteen.”
“Jesus.”
His thumb swipes at the screen.
“Eleven texts. Three calls. One voicemail.”
“You listening to it?”
“No.”
I flatten my hand between his shoulder blades.
“Good.”
He sets the phone down on the mattress between us, face-up. The screen's still lit. PAUL (14). His hand's shaking a little. Not a lot. Enough that I notice.
I reach across and I put my hand on his.
“Hey.”
He looks at me.
“Breathe.”
He breathes.
“Put the phone face down.”
He does.
“Good boy.”
Something moves behind his eyes. I said it last night inside him and he came apart around it. I'm saying it now at seven in the morning in my bed and it lands differently but yet the same way. He breathes out slow.
“He's going to lose his mind.”
“Yeah.”
His thumb runs over my knuckle.
“I've never stayed out all night.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
I turn his hand palm-up on my thigh. Trace the line.
“Not once in your entire life?”
“Not once.”
I run my thumb across his knuckles. His hand uncurls under mine.
“Okay,” I say. “Then let's talk about that.”
“I'm going to tell you something and you can take it or leave it,” I continue.
“Okay.”
I pull him with me against the headboard until his back's against my chest, his ass settled between my thighs, my arms crossed over his collarbones.
“I'm not your dad. I'm not anybody's dad. I don't know shit about how to do a family.”
“Okay.”
“But I know how to not be anybody's bitch.”
He turns his head to look at me.
“I know how to walk into a room with a guy who's trying to tell me who I am, and I know how to stand in that room until he stops.”
“Maddox—”
“Shut up. I'm talking.”
He shuts up.
I put my hand on his neck. I don't grip. I just put it there, the way I put my hand on him last night when I wanted him to stay with me. His pulse is going under my fingers.
“He's going to yell at you.”
“I know.”
My thumb finds the tendon behind his ear. Settles.
“He's going to tell you I used you.”
“I know.”
My thumb presses harder against the tendon.
“He's going to tell you I'm a piece of shit and you're a weak kid who got taken in and the only reason you let me touch you is because I'm a better liar than he thought.”
“Maddox...”
I tighten my arm across his chest. Hold him there.
“Do you know he's going to say that?”
“Yes.”
He stays still under my hand.
“Do you know why he's going to say that?”
“Because he doesn't want me to be gay.”
I turn his jaw toward me with two fingers.
“Because he doesn't want you to be yours.”
He looks at me.
I tighten my hand on his neck. One squeeze.
“Kid. Listen. He's had you for twenty years.
He's had every day. Every practice. Every meal.
He's told you who to be every second of every day since you could remember.
And then I came along and you did one thing he didn't plan for and he's going to burn the house down to put you back in the box.
That's what this is. It's not about me. I'm the excuse.
It's about you being a person without asking him first. Do you hear me.”
“Yes.”
“You're allowed to be a person.”
His eyes go wet.