Chapter 14 #3
“Honestly? I thought it was expired,” Sam admits, but bravely takes a sip anyway.
It tastes fine—good, actually—and Sam makes a pleased noise as Jake smiles and says, “It almost was. Good ’til next month; I checked.”
“The industry’s rubbing off on you,” Sam says, grinning at him, but Jake’s smile shrinks down until it’s barely a sliver.
“Something like that,” he says, looking down into his own glass.
He swirls the contents for a moment and then, setting it down, firmly says, “Look. Sam. I can’t do this with you—hell, I can’t live with myself—if you’re going to carry on thinking that you…
that I—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head, tries again.
More quietly, he says, “I’m not saying it was great, you know, or that I loved it, but it wasn’t your fault, and it didn’t ruin my life.
Changed it, sure; but things are always doing that.
I’m not interested in letting it take away anything else, not from either of us.
” He meets Sam’s eyes, his own frank and pleading.
“Can we just… wipe the slate? Start again? Agree that it was a horrible freak thing that should never have happened and… let it go?”
“You’re asking me?” Sam blinks at him, stunned, his brain scrambling to catch up and meet the moment.
“But you’re the one who should get to—” Sam pauses, takes a breath, realizes he’s arguing against something he desperately wants, and tries again: “I mean. Yes? Obviously, I’d be fine with that. Are you fine with that?”
“Be pretty weird of me to suggest it if I wasn’t,” Jake says, with a slightly crooked smile.
More quietly, he adds, “You know, I never blamed you, Sam. Not even back then. You were only trying to help; you were the one person who was only trying to help. That’s how I remember it, and I kept a lot of journals at that point on the advice of one of the seven therapists my parents sent me to see, so.
It’s on the record and everything. I can prove it. ”
Somewhere in the back of Sam’s mind, a door opens.
It’s a familiar door, covered in band posters that slightly embarrass him now, a handwritten sign on paper torn out of a notebook insisting, EVERYONE KEEP OUT!
!!! The version of Sam it belonged to, seventeen and stuck all these years on the very last night it belonged to him, steps out, and grins, and walks away whistling.
So relieved to be free that what had trapped him there in the first place hardly hurts at all.
And all Sam’s inhibitions seem to walk out with him, leaving him only a man, and Jake nothing more or less than someone he’s never stopped wanting.
Suddenly, it’s all very simple.
“I need you to know,” Sam says, realizing the truth of it even as it hits the air, “that if what you want right now is anything—and I mean anything—other than to spend the rest of the night in my bedroom making up for lost time, you should leave. Go home. Right now.”
For a second Sam thinks he sees a flicker of hesitation in Jake’s eyes, but before his heart can fall, the moment’s past. Sam probably just imagined it, nerves or something; there’s no doubt at all in the look on Jake’s face as he drains his glass, sets it down, and smirks at Sam.
He sounds blissfully, invitingly certain as he says.
“Do you know what? Wildly enough, I think I’m good right where I am. ”
Sam rounds the counter in three steps; this time when they kiss there’s no question of who’s leading who.
There’s a moment where Jake tries to direct things, but it’s only a moment.
Sam, sure of his footing now, pushes Jake gently back into the counter by the hips, cradles the back of Jake’s head in one hand, and lets the other one roam as he kisses him with all the unwieldy, overbearing tenderness he’s been containing for months.
Jake makes a soft, surprised noise into his mouth and then all but comes apart in Sam’s hands, all his earlier frenetic energy drained away.
He’s languid and boneless against Sam, tipping his head back easily when Sam wants access to his neck, raising his arms obligingly for Sam to peel his shirt off.
When Sam leans away to get a look at him, meaning to lift him up and put him on the counter, Jake’s eyes are wide and starry, his pupils blown.
“God, Sam,” he says, his cheeks flushed crimson. Sam’s whole nervous system lights up, thrilled, to hear just how hard he’s breathing. “You, ah. You’ve become. Very good at that.”
In the warm glow of this praise, Sam decides there’s nothing the counter can provide for him that the bed wouldn’t do better. But he lifts Jake up anyway as he says, “Well, you know, I’ve had a lot of time to practice,” his body seeming to decide to go forward with his original plan regardless.
Or maybe it’s just talking to Jake’s body, on the deep, physical level more powerful even than speech that Jake used to talk about, way back, when he was talking about why he loved dance.
Certainly, the second Sam lifts him, without even touching the counter, Jake wraps both legs around Sam and puts his hands on Sam’s shoulders, balancing himself.
In a breathless moment of desire Sam realizes Jake’s only using his hands for balance, and only barely—the grip of his thighs is powerful enough that Sam could probably let go of his weight entirely without his actually falling.
A little dizzily, he realizes Jake must keep himself in much the same condition he had when he was in dance classes and rehearsal five times a week, just modified the exercises around his new parameters.
It’s so surprisingly hot—it makes Sam so unbearably fond of him—that he feels briefly and fervently that he might burst from it, pop like an overfilled balloon.
He kisses Jake as he carries them both to the bedroom on slightly unsteady legs, overwhelmed by the situation more than by Jake’s weight.
It’s that or say something that’s far too much and…
well. Either far too soon or far too late, depending on which way you look at it.
Sam doesn’t look at it. He looks at Jake, the way Jake’s responsive and pliable under his hands, his mouth; the way Jake looks and touches him like he’s not sure Sam’s totally real, that this isn’t some impossible, fantastic dream.
He looks at Jake until he can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else.
It’s a good night, maybe the best Sam’s ever had. If, once or twice, he thinks he sees that flicker of worry in Jake’s eyes, it’s probably only paranoia, just a remnant from years of misplaced shame. Nothing he needs to worry about.