Chapter 1 #3
Johnny’s voice booms across the living room, “What the fuck is going on in here?” When I look up, he’s standing under the archway, and his face is twisted up in what I can only assume is jealous heartbreak.
To my surprise, as soon as Ezra spots Johnny, he takes my hand and guides it back to his softening cock, stroking up and down his half-hard length—not that it’s much of a journey.
I may be in love with Little Man, but I won’t lie to make him look better for the sake of a story.
He’s only rocking four inches, but they’re a beautiful four inches.
A life-changing four inches. Four spectacular inches I want to worship with my tongue, alongside Johnny.
“He made me come real hard, Jeremy.”
Johnny blinks at him. “You know my name’s Johnny.”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” Ezra shrugs, pointing at Johnny’s shaved head. “Either way, you have no hair, so I don’t care.”
“I do too have hair! Just not right now.” Johnny’s eyes narrow, and he looks over his shoulder, growling, “Clint!”
Footsteps approach from behind, and my buddy Clint enters the room, his long brown hair flowing behind him as he moves, looking like Fabio. His eyes dart back and forth between Ezra, Johnny, and myself. “The fuck is going on in here?”
Clint is the only strictly heterosexual man living in this house.
He calls himself queer-adjacent because he watches femboy porn sometimes, but he’s a ladies man—not that he gets a whole lot of action these days.
He tried to bring a girl home a few weeks back, but Austin was splayed out on the couch, fucking himself in the ass with a dildo, recording it all for OnlyFans.
Apparently, the woman licked her lips and asked to take a ride on Aussie’s disco stick.
Austin said no, but he thought she was fabulous, and now they're friends, and she's forgotten about Clint.
Johnny smirks at Ezra, aiming his words at Clint. “Are you ready for work, bro?” When Clint lifts his lunchbox and motions toward the door, I lean in and kiss his forehead.
“I won’t be gone long, baby.”
“Yeah,” Johnny says, laughing like he’s mocking Ezra. “Don’t worry, Ezra. I’ll only keep him the whole day. You can have him back when I’m done.”
Ezra’s hand grips mine with an unbearable strength, and I just kneel here in front of him, letting it happen, not pulling away. “Bubba?”
I hate this. The way they goad each other is cute sometimes, but more often than not, it ends with one of them getting their feelings hurt and sulking for the rest of the day.
Now, Johnny’s holding his time at work with me over Ezra’s head like a horse with a carrot, because going to work means eight-to-ten hours away from Ezra.
Eight-to-ten hours of him worrying about the time I’m spending with Johnny, and what we get up to when he isn’t around.
“I love you, Ezzy,” I whisper so only he can hear.
He swallows. “I know.” His voice is just as small as mine, but he quickly adds.
“Fire him. Fucking fire him, right here, right now.” Johnny flips Ezra the bird, and I shoot him a warning glare.
He jerks his hand down and mumbles an apology.
Ezra rolls his eyes. “Fuck you. Both. I’m going to be bored off my ass all day, and you’re going to be living it up in Sodom and Gomorrah sweatshop.
” He pokes my chest. “Don’t fuck him. You keep your penis away from his asshole. Say it.”
“Are you jealous?” I ask.
“Blow it out your ass. I’m a prisoner here.”
“You’re literally not,” Clint says.
Ezra scoffs at him. “Who even are you? You serve no purpose. Now, shut your mouth, or I’ll ask Austin to fuck it.”
I touch my forehead to Ezra’s. “I’m sorry, baby. I hate leaving you like this. What if I bring you a special treat home tonight? I’ll buy you that new bottle of cologne you want.”
“Who do I need to smell good for if you’re not here?
” he snaps back at me, his eyes bulging before he quickly adds, “Not that I’m trying to smell good for you.
Ever. Because I wouldn’t. Even if I had to go three days without showering, and my underarms were smelling like toxic waste, I wouldn’t spritz a single drop of cologne for your nasal pleasure. ”
I snicker as I stand and make my way across the living room. “That’s fine by me. I like your natural smell. I kind of wish you’d shower less often.”
Johnny digs his nails into my side, making me hiss.
Ezra lifts his hand long enough to flip me the bird.
Clint checks his watch and sighs like he hates the world.
When Johnny takes my hand and weaves our fingers together, I groan, because I already know what’s coming.
Ezra launches off the couch like a cartoon superhero, lunging forward, his arm high above his head as he readies himself to karate chop Johnny and me apart.
He roars a battle cry that makes him sound like the king of the jungle, even though we don’t live anywhere near a jungle, and Ezzy’s more of a queen than a king.
“Ah, Christ. Here we go.” I say with a sigh, readying myself for the pain.
“Not this shit again,” Johnny groans, and the next thing I know, a dull thud spreads across my wrist, and judging by the hissing sounds Johnny is making, he must be feeling it too.
“God dammit, Ezra,” I cry out, letting go of Johnny’s wrist and grabbing my own, rubbing softly like it’ll somehow ease the pain. “I’ve asked you not to do that. We agreed to non-violence.”
“Yeah, well, we also agreed Johnny would keep his fucking hands off you, but there he goes, practically stroking your cock in front of the whole room.”
“He was holding my hand.”
“Aha!” he declares like he’s just cracked the case. “So, you admit it? He was stroking you to completion.”
“He was stroking the side of my hand.” I turn and give Austin and Clint a look. “Can we have the room?”
Austin blinks at me. “Just go to yours. It’s right fucking there, up those stairs and literally ten paces to your right. Lazy fuck.”
“Give us the fucking room!” Ezra shrieks like an emotionally unhinged banshee. “Get out, get out, get out!”
“Did you just fucking screech at me?” As Aussie stands and walks our way, looking like he’s out for blood, Ezra swallows and takes a step behind Johnny.
“If you’re going to kill someone,” Ezra pleads, “kill Johnny. He’s bald and nearly forty. He has nothing to live for.”
“The thought of framing you for murder gets me by,” Johnny mumbles under his breath. “And I’m only thirty-three.”
“Yes, well, you look seventy.” Ezra stops and shakes his head.
“I mean, obviously you don’t, but that dig was designed to hurt, and I won’t apologize for it.
” He flicks a dismissive hand in the air.
“Besides, even if you managed to frame me and I got sent to jail, Bubba would just get himself arrested to keep me company. He’d kill Aussie dead just so he could spend twenty-to-life with me in Pretty Boy Prison. ”
“Boys,” I attempt, but they just talk over me.
“Oh, yeah?” Johnny asks. He holds his hands in front of him, moving them mystically like he’s reading a crystal ball. “Is that what your psychic senses are telling you?”
Ezzy’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you ever attempt to discredit my psychic abilities. You know I don’t like it when you do that. It’s a gift, Johnny. I can’t explain it, I can only experience the visions as they come.”
“A gift,” Johnny scoffs. “You just spit words out random, swindling people out of their hard-earned money.”
Ezra shakes his head insistently. “I don’t swindle. I let the spirits speak through me. There’s a difference.”
“The spirits? Are those the same spirits who told you I was fucking Bubba in the ass in the upstairs bathroom, so you called the fire department to bust the door down, claiming an arsonist was hiding in the shower?”
“Her name is Barbara. You know that. I was just minding my own, and then she bares in, shouting about fire and brimstone. I assumed she meant someone was setting fires upstairs. She said what she said, so I did what I did. Besides, you were making a lot of really weird noises. How was I supposed to know you were simply suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome?”
“You put four chocolate laxatives in my milkshake! Ten grown men barged into the bathroom while I was battling for my goddamn life.”
“When the spirits are at play, one cannot silence what they say.”
I stare dreamily at my boy, because he’s over here quoting Walt Whitman to put a smile on my face. “That was stunning, Ezra. Was that from O Captain! My Captain!?”
Ezra blushes. “It sure was, Bubs,”
“It was not,” Johnny says. “Half the shit you claim to be poetry is just stupid little rhymes you come up with on the fly. Do you think you’re the only one who knows how to rhyme? You think that’s how you’re going to take Bubba from me?”
“Ain’t nobody taking me from either of you.”
They both stare at me like I’m stupid. “This isn’t about you,” they say in unison.
“Roses are red, violets are blue,” Johnny says. “I’m gonna hang out with him all day. Sucks for you.”
Ezra jerks his head in my direction, his wavy brown hair bouncing every which way. “I want a job. I don’t care what fucking job it is; I want one. I’m not leaving you alone together.”
“Baby, it’s hot as hell in the machine shop.
Even if I hired you for a desk job, you wouldn’t make it.
You’re delicate. Gentle. You don’t do well in harsh climates.
” I cup his cheek. “You know, for someone who claims not to give a damn whether I live or die, you seem awfully invested in my friendship with Johnny. Where is all this anger coming from?”
We both know where it’s coming from, but my boy isn’t ready to admit it yet. I know I’m playing dirty, but if we don’t get to work soon, we’ll be late, and being late going in means being late going home. Ezzy’s always cranky when I’m not home by six, and I hate to see him like that.
“Fuck you, Bubs” Ezra says, but there isn’t a whole lot of heft behind his voice.
“I’ll miss you, you know.” I kiss the corner of his mouth, because it’s right there, and because I can. “I miss you already.” I reach down and caress his soft cock. “Are you going to miss me?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice so quiet it’s barely audible.
“Little Man,” I whisper, gently stroking his chin with my thumb. “I promise, I’ll wait as long as it takes for you to be ready to name this thing between us.”
“There’s nothing to name.”
I arch an eyebrow. “Nothing at all?”
He chews on his cheek, glancing at Johnny, then back at me. “Maybe something,” he finally admits, and damn if it doesn’t send my heart swelling in my chest. “Not a whole lot of something, though. Just a little.”
“Just a little,” I agree before turning to Johnny. “What about you, bro? Why are you so angry?”
He folds his arms over his chest and looks away, pouting. “No reason.”
“You,” I say, squeezing Ezra’s shoulder. I cup Johnny’s cheek. “And you. You boys are both my fucking world. We have to figure this thing out. I don’t like when you’re at each other’s throats all the time. Not when we could be filling those throats with something other than hateful words.”
“I’m not swallowing your cock, Bubba,” Ezra says.
“Not yet,” I agree. “But we know where this is going, and we know what this is about.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ezra says, but I don’t miss the way he leans into my touch rather than away from it. “When will you be home?”
“What do your psychic senses tell you?”
He chews his cheek like he’s deep in thought. “The spirits say you’re going to kick Johnny out for me.”
God help me, I don’t know where in the world Ezzy got the idea that he’s a psychic, but he’s really been going all in lately.
He holds hour-long OnlyFans psychic sessions with a gaggle of girls, gays, and theys he found on Facebook.
The boy can’t remember where he left his earbuds half the time, and he expects us to think he’s psychic?
Ah, hell. What does it hurt? It’s not like he’s got anything else going for him.
Before moving here, my boy was part of an acapella singing group, despite the fact that no one in the group could carry a tune.
When we left Texas to move here, Ezra left all but Austin behind.
He no longer has a social life outside of our found family, so I know he needs an outlet, but his psychic awakening definitely feels like it came out of nowhere.
“The spirits are wrong,” I finally say, shaking my head, because that’s not an option.
Ezra just shrugs. “Barbara usually is. You can’t blame me for trying though.”
I lean close enough to press my lips to his forehead, giving my boy a goodbye kiss. “I would never.”