Tinner Wheeled
“I loved this.”
“What a great night.”
“It was so good to see you.”
“Let’s hang out again soon.”
Liko stood with Dane on the porch, waving after the Jensens’ car. The red taillights floated along Oak Hill Road and winked out of sight. Then like a book closing, the two men folded toward each other and hugged.
“Hell of a party,” Dane said.
Liko exhaled into Dane’s hair and held on tight. Tired. Grateful. Suffused with belonging.
Dane turned his head and rubbed his brow along Liko’s collarbone. Then he sighed and rested his cheek again. The hug went on. And on.
“I think we’re both playing the Disney rule,” Liko said.
“You let go first.”
“No, you.”
“Don’t want to.”
“Me neither.” So they stood in arms for a long time. Stiller than a painting, except for the rise and fall of their breathing.
“You feel so good,” Dane said. “In my arms and in my house.”
“I love this place.”
And I think I love you, Liko thought, but didn’t say so.
He took Dane’s head and kissed him. No slow buildup like at the kitchen table.
This kiss opened immediately and the Disney rule lost its G-rating.
Their breath came fast and hard and their hugging bodies began to grind.
Liko backed Dane into the shingled wall, fencing him in.
His tongue curled around the stud in Dane’s tongue, sucking at it.
“You like that?” Dane breathed.
“Yeah.” Liko’s hand spread wide on Dane’s face, his thumb holding his mouth open and moving in little circles around the piercing.
“Someday,” he whispered, “I want to feel this on my cock.”
Dane groaned, his hands sliding into Liko’s back pockets and pulling him in. “You wouldn’t believe the things I want.”
“Try me.”
Dane’s hips bucked against Liko’s and they ground together again.
“God, man,” Liko groaned, head tipping back as Dane’s mouth went crawling up his neck.
“So hard for you,” Dane said.
“Can we get off this porch before I get arrested for public indecency?”
“We’re on private property.” Dane’s laughing mouth closed on Liko’s bottom lip, bit a little, then let go slow. “Come on. Want to put you on my bed and do something.”
Heading upstairs, Dane paused on a tread and reached to touch one of the dozen paintings hung in the stairwell. “I don’t know if you ever noticed this one. But now you’ve heard its story.”
Liko studied the painting, which reminded him of the White Witch from Narnia, though it had none of her sinister evil.
This proud empress was cloaked in silver and white furs, snowflakes dotting her long hair.
The light of a rising sun behind her, escaping in beams and rays that sliced through a tangle of leafless wisteria vines.
Her arms cradled a beautiful child that could have been a boy or a girl.
Tow-headed, their face pressed into the woman’s sleeve, one eye peeking at the viewer.
Three snow-white rabbits attended the queen: one tucked in her elbow, another on her shoulder, the third in the child’s lap.
The caption read Tinner Wheeled, with Ethan’s signature EJH beneath.
“He based this on the photo of me and Helen,” Dane said. “The one that was in Maisie’s apartment.”
Not a lot of blood was in Liko’s head, but tonight he knew a little more about Dane, about Ethan and his unique way of expressing love, and about the secret words within people’s names. His finger reached to touch the letters in Tinner Wheeled.
“H… E… L…” He felt his mouth stretch into a grin as he mentally rearranged and found it was all there. “Tinner Wheeled is the anagram of Helen deWinter.”
“Ethan was always smug about his goddamn anagrams, but this one? Even his jaw was on the floor.” Dane’s expression turned sly and he began backing up the stairs, pushing on the railings. “Now how about your clothes on the floor and your ass in my bed?”
Holding Dane’s eyes, Liko pulled off his shirt and tossed it behind him. Dane pulled his off, turned and took the rest of the steps two at a time.
“Do we need condoms for this?” Liko asked, following into the bedroom.
“No.”
Dane was stripping down in such a matter-of-fact way, Liko wasn’t sure what was on the agenda.
He pulled his own clothes off, watching as Dane closed the bathroom door, then lowered the shades on the room’s tall windows.
When the last one hit the sill, it wasn’t exactly pitch black, but all was reduced to silhouettes and shadows.
“Along with my massive praise kink, I have a thing for the dark.”
“I see,” Liko said, blinking. “Except not so much.”
Dane laughed. “Follow my voice.”
“If I stub a toe and ruin the mood, it’s your fault.”
He crawled onto the big mattress where, as it turned out, Dane wanted them to kneel facing each other and touch themselves.
Liko’s brows pulled tight. “You mean, me do me and you do you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay?”
Dane was reaching long for the bedside table drawer. “Need a minute to think it over?”
“No.” Liko laughed. “I think I can manage what I’ve been doing since I was twelve. I’m just curious why.”
“Because it’s the first thing I ever fantasized about you.” Dane said, pouring a little lube into his palm and passing the bottle.
“When?”
“Back in March. Not the night you rang the bell but the next. After you figured out who I was and drove home. That night, I lay in bed and thought about what you were doing, back at your house. It evolved into watching you jerk off.” His shoulder rolled.
“It was random but it was hot. So I joined in.”
“Really,” Liko said, settling down, letting self-consciousness slide off his back. “Just us touching ourselves. Not each other?”
“Each other was about a week later. Because, killing time.”
“Were we talking this much during it?”
Dane laughed. “Is that a smooth way of telling me to shut up?”
“Not at all. Tell me everything.”
“We were talking. Kissing. Confessing secrets.”
Liko’s eyes were adjusting better. He leaned and kissed a corner of Dane’s mouth. “What secret did I tell?”
“I invented something. You and some buddies stole a car. Drove it into a bog in Scotland or some shit. Totally got away with it.”
Liko laughed low in his chest. “It was a frog pond and I was grounded a month, but close enough.”
They were quiet an intense moment, watching the shape and stroke of each other’s hands.
“What are you doing with your thumb there,” Dane said.
“I love this little sweet spot. It has a name but I can’t think of it now.”
“Frenulum.”
“You’re such a geek.”
“It’s where I’m gonna get you with my tongue ring. Someday.”
“Fuck, man…”
They kissed a while, their hands moving, their breath drawing out long then quickening.
“Say more,” Liko said. “About the first time.”
“I started by imagining doing things to you. Making you come. I wondered what you looked like. What sounds you make. What you’d whisper.
What you’d yell. But then all at once, I wanted to watch you do it to yourself.
I wanted to watch you make it happen, not knowing I was there.
I wanted to see what you do when you’re alone with your hand.
I wanted to see you make yourself come before I did it. ”
“I did rub one out that night,” Liko said. He could feel it rising in him now. A tell-tale heat began to kindle between his shoulder blades, moving up his nape and across his crown.
“Tell me,” Dane said, dripping a little more lube into each of their palms.
“I was in the shower. Thinking about you. The clue you gave me on a plate. The things I’d do to get more. And then you texted me at three in the morning.”
“You gave me some bullshit about being too old.”
“It’s how I flirt.”
The memory of feeling sought out and desired in the middle of the night sent another surge of blood into Liko’s lap. He was past hard and approaching granite. The ache of not coming pulled him in all directions.
“Tell me what’s making you smile,” Dane said.
“One night he’s texting me. Few months later, we’re doing this.”
“Your voice changes when you’re coming around.”
“Does it?”
“It gets this little rumbling, hoarse edge. Sexy as fuck.”
Liko’s head lolled between his shoulders. He slowed down the stroke of his hand, trying to match it to Dane’s rhythm. Wishing he could match Dane’s words, but his mind had gone as slick and slippery as his fingers.
“Watching you work up a nut is so fucking hot,” Dane whispered.
“Keep talking to me.”
“Can’t believe I stopped the car to talk to you. When you were sitting on the stone wall.”
“Looking for myself along the roadside.”
“And it was my road.”
“It was your car that slowed down.”
“It was my house.”
“It was the Green Man on the pillar.”
“It was the guy from New Year’s Eve.”
“It was you at the door.”
“Now it’s you in my bed.”
They kissed, swaying a little, their kneecaps pressed hard. Their mouths broke open together.
“Don’t stop,” Liko said, poised on a knife’s edge.
It was on him, opening like a flower, petals erupting out of his lap.
He could feel it bringing Dane around, too, and then Liko’s voice disappeared behind the wall of his teeth, while Dane’s sling-shotted around the room, first a deep growl, then sailing up high into gasped laughter.
They keeled over sideways, sending pillows flying. One knocked the bedside lamp over.
“Shit, my bad,” Liko said, breathing hard.
“No worries,” Dane panted. “Break a plate. Break a lamp. It’s kind of our thing. Oh my God, man, that was fucking sick.”
“I approve this fantasy,” Liko said. “Solid ten out of ten. Will there be others?”
“Only about six hundred.” Dane shook his head hard, then slithered carefully off the bed and went into the bathroom. He came back and tossed Liko a towel, laughing as he wiped himself off. “Holy shit, you shot up to your collarbone.”
“One chance to make a first impression. Jesus, it’s on my neck.”
“Show off.” Dane came crawling along Liko’s body, took the towel and tossed it away. He dropped down, his head on Liko’s chest, an arm and a leg falling heavy and curling around. “This is fantasy number two of six hundred.”
Liko closed his eyes and pulled Dane in tight. “Another ten out of ten. You’re on a roll tonight.”
His palms glided along Dane’s back as his body and mind quieted down, shivering over the last of the pleasure. Then he gave an enormous yawn.
“You had a long day,” Dane said drowsily.
“I did, didn’t I?” His mind reached lazily backward, ticking off events that seemed a week ago now: the cemetery, therapy, meetings, lunch, and… “Oh my God,” he said, laughing. “I thought a finger up the bum was going to be the best part of today.”
“Day ain’t over yet.” Dane’s hand slid down Liko’s side and curved around one ass cheek. Liko laughed harder and batted the exploring touch away.
“One finger a day is my limit.”
“Bullshit.”
“Believe me, after the massive dinner we ate, you don’t want to be near that end.”
Dane yawned now, pulling the covers up and putting his head back down on Liko’s chest. “I loved tonight.”
“I don’t have a word for tonight.” Liko stroked his head. “Are you back in harbor?”
“Hm?”
“The other night, the conversation got heavy and you kind of got stuck at sea.”
“I think I’m all right. Are you?”
Liko thought about it, assessing. “It got heavy tonight too,” he said. “But you’re also starting to tell about people who rescued you. Which is a better place to leave off than that hellhole clinic. You gotta move, my arm is going numb…”
Dane rolled off him and onto his side. Liko moved behind and wrapped an arm around, twining their fingers. “Tell me another rescue story. I want to fall asleep hearing about someone who helped you.”
Dane hummed, his thumb moving across the edges of Liko’s fingernails. “Let me think.”
“What about… Who was the first doctor to treat you like a person?”
“Oh my God,” Dane said, laughing softly. “That was Natalie Obrera. She was so fucking good to me…”