Twenty-One Arya #2
Arya’s pulses slowed; Ben’s spurts turned to dribbles. Arya gave him one last squeezing stroke, just to get the last drops out, and shook Ben’s dick, sending specks of cum flying off who knew where.
Whatever. He already needed to clean up; what did a few more cumstains matter?
(Not that Arya didn’t clean up; he did, often. You wouldn’t find anything with a blacklight.)
Arya exhaled and went to break their kiss, but Ben stayed with him, gripping Arya’s balls to hold him close. Arya nearly jumped out of his skin.
At last, Ben broke the kiss. He blinked at Arya, eyes warm and languid behind his slutty little glasses.
He cocked a smile. “Oops. Guess we broke the rules.”
The rain only got worse as Ben and Arya sorted themselves out.
Arya offered Ben some loose shorts and a worn Lions raglan from a couple years back.
Ben went to go clean out his dick while Arya picked up their discarded suits, adding them to his own dry-cleaning pile.
He could return Ben’s their next “date” night.
Or next kickball game. Or next PhilBall meeting.
Or next time he was at the Kauffman Center for a meeting or a show or whatever.
Now that Arya thought about it, there were actually more days of the week when he saw Ben than not.
That was fucking weird. Usually the only people Arya saw with any frequency were his coworkers and his friends.
And with his friends, it was because they had a standing dinner date at Shiraz Bistro on Thursday nights and brunch on Sundays.
And kickball, too.
Shit. When had Arya’s life become so scheduled? When did he start having to book time with his friends in advance?
And when had Ben crept into the top of the rankings for people he spent the most time with?
One of Arya’s professors back in college said that everyone is a combination of the five people they spent the most time with.
For Arya, for the longest time, that had been Farzan, Ramin, Mitchell, and Carley.
He didn’t even have a fifth, his life was so hectic.
Some months, maybe it was Val; some months, maybe his mom or Farah; for a brief, miserable period, it had been Ramin’s ex, Todd.
Then Farzan had gotten with David, and Ramin had gotten with Noah, and now Arya saw them all the time, too.
But Ben had shot past everyone else.
If this was pretend dating, Arya shuddered to imagine what real dating entailed.
He grabbed all the stuff that could go in the laundry, stealing a quick sniff of Ben’s discarded tank top, before pulling on some sweats and another old raglan of his own.
When he emerged from his bedroom, he found Ben already sprawled on the couch, looking cozy and soft with his hair in total disarray and his glasses on the coffee table.
Arya flopped down next to him and patted his thigh. “So that happened.”
“That happened,” Ben agreed. He sounded more subdued now that they weren’t naked. Was he regretting it?
Was Arya?
It was a rule. The most important rule. Their Prime Directive. No more fucking.
But it was good fucking. The kind that turns you inside out. The kind that makes your mind stop buzzing. The kind that takes you to another plane of reality.
How could that be wrong?
Arya grabbed one of his fidget cubes off the side table and started clicking it.
“What’s that?”
“Fidget toy,” Arya said. “Helps me… I don’t know. Focus? Think? Not feel so squirrelly?”
Arya mostly managed his ADHD, so he didn’t talk about it too much with people, especially people he was fucking. Granted, that was usually a one-and-done thing, so it wasn’t like he had time to build rapport.
But he and Ben had been pretend boyfriends for a while now.
“Cool,” Ben said.
Arya waited for a follow-up. About his fidget toy, or about the sex they’d just had, or about the weather, which showed no signs of abating.
The silence built inside Arya, like Mentos added to Diet Coke.
So naturally he blurted out the first thing he could think of. “What’s the deal with Justin anyway?”
Ben snorted and curled onto his side to face Arya, and suddenly Arya was back in that quiet room at Ben’s family vineyard. Just the two of them, and the quiet night around them, and no expectations. Safe and cozy, because whatever Arya said would stay in California.
How well that had turned out.
“What do you mean, what’s his deal?” Ben asked. “I told you he wanted an open relationship.”
“Yeah, but like… why is he fighting so hard to win you back?” Wait. That came out wrong. “Not that you’re not worth it! You’re hot and you’re a great fuck and you’re…”
Arya shut up before he embarrassed himself.
Ben quirked an eyebrow. “I’m… ?”
“You’re interesting. You’re easy to talk to. You’re kind to people. You love dogs.” Arya shrugged. “You tip well at restaurants.”
“How do you know that?”
“The servers told David. David told me.”
Ben’s cheeks darkened at that, and he hid his face against his shoulder.
“What I mean is… like, he followed you across the country. He’s practically stalking you. That’s kind of creepy. Did you check your car for AirTags?”
Ben blew out a low breath.
“This is going to sound worse than I mean it to, but Justin’s not used to hearing the word no.”
Fire sprang up in Arya’s belly. It filled his limbs, his lungs, his prefrontal cortex. If Justin had ever pressured Ben…
Arya had done all sorts of sex shit in his life, but all of it, every single act, had been one hundred percent enthusiastically consented to.
“If he fucking—”
“Nothing like that.” Ben put his fingers against Arya’s lips to calm him.