19. Sports With Balls Do Not Always Suck #3
He whirled again, and Connor was right there, close enough to bite.
He grabbed fistfuls of Connor’s gritty team T-shirt and yanked him nearer. “Thank you.”
Chest to chest. Thigh to thigh. Connor’s arms reacted automatically to the collision, wrapping around Jonathan, but Jonathan had already risen to his toes and pulled Connor’s head down.
His lips were warm and dry and tasted of lemon and beer. His skin smelled of a hint of beer, too, and sweat, things that would have made past Jonathan eww and insist on changing, but this Jonathan wanted Connor to know that he cared. That he saw Connor’s work.
“Thank you for this whole day. Thank you. I’ve never had anyone—I’ve never had—”
“Shhh, I got you. You don’t need to say it. I know.” Connor swayed, so Jonathan wasn’t certain at all, not at all, of the accuracy of the first part of that statement. But they stood together until Jonathan could swallow the lump in his throat and they’d regained their balance.
When Jonathan’s arms finally loosened, Connor led him to the couch. “Those are for you.”
He flicked his gaze sideways and lifted his chin. “You say those annoyingly obvious things just to make me look at you like this, don’t you? You have given away your secret.”
Connor’s grin broke free and he spread his arms along the back of the couch. “I’ll give you all of them. All my secrets. I don’t want to have any from you.” His speech was slower and thicker, perhaps a trace of the ranch emerging through the beer. “Go ahead. You want to.”
Jonathan rubbed the tulle and the ribbons, shiny fabric ones, between his fingers as he carefully untied and unlooped them.
The paper was slick and heavy, and the few pieces of tape Connor had used to secure it detached easily.
He didn’t have to rip Connor’s work. The wrapping slid off and revealed a plain white box which felt far lighter than Jonathan’s heart.
One of those things contained a gift; he suspected the other contained a future.
Inside, nestled in carefully folded tissue paper, was a white shirt.
Instead of a collar, the neckline ended in two long pieces of fabric like ties, and a row of pearlescent shank buttons down the front rather than the four-hole flat buttons common on oxford cloth shirts.
These were little details, but Jonathan registered them and knew this wasn’t a shirt, but a blouse meant for restaurants with cloth napkins or concerts with ushers.
Holding his breath, he lifted it from its bed of tissue. The sleeves were made of sheer white chiffon gathered into lace cuffs. It was stunning.
“I don’t know if it will fit,” Connor’s voice trembled.
The cotton was exceedingly smooth and the seams well stitched. He could assess it in an instant. “It will.”
“Remembered you like that kind of sleeve.” He dropped his head to Jonathan’s shoulder, a heavier weight than usual after three drinks, and rubbed his cheek against the knobby bone there. “Your arms are so pretty.”
Heat flashed over Jonathan and he couldn’t be closer to shattering if he’d been thrown into a kiln and then immediately dunked into water.
He clenched the blouse, unable to lower it or tear his gaze from it, unable to speak, almost unable to breathe. No one had ever said something so sincere, so simple, but entirely heartfelt, to him. No one.
“When I saw you the first time in the lobby, you were wearing gray pants and a tight white shirt. I imagined you wearing something like this.” He reached forward and slid the crisp edge of the neck bow between his first and second fingers, running his fingers methodically, hypnotically, along the fabric.
“A frothy cravat. Crah-vaht. Cra-vatte. This.”
What did the world look like through Connor’s eyes? Was it as beautiful and magical as it should be for him?
“I wanted to untie it and kneel at your feet.”
“Did you.” Making those two words emerge evenly took an effort possibly on par with writing a thesis, because he suddenly understood the first morning he’d been here.
In the kitchen, when Connor had given him a blowjob and then almost collapsed, Jonathan had been wearing a long white shirt.
Without even realizing, he’d met one of Connor’s needs, a true need.
He’d never been superstitious, and he’d internally mocked the skaters who had lace-tying rituals or invested time in complicated off-ice traditions, but he’d known plenty of people who believed.
He could recognize when an otherworldly force took control.
He shivered.
“You also wore boots.” Connor sighed and smiled at the far wall. His fingers never stopped fiddling with the edge of the dangling bow. “Riding boots. I took them off of you.”
Connor meant in his fantasy, because Jonathan had not worn boots in June with summer-weight trousers. But he could. He would.
He let go of the fabric and turned to Jonathan, or Jonathan turned to him; they were starting to do these things at the same time. Their knees brushed. “Do you have boots?”
“Black biker boots.” He’d find riding boots, a second-hand pair of English ones, and he’d make this come true.
Connor stared beyond Jonathan’s shoulder with a look he recognized, the one where Connor had sunk into his imagination. He’d come back in a minute, happy and smiling. Jonathan’s own brain associated that look with sex, because Connor often emerged with very specific goals. Sex goals.
“Biker boots work too. Just different.” He looked at Jonathan’s chest. “Maybe with jeans and a ripped shirt? Or…” Connor focused on his own hands, looking at the spread palms and the thick fingers.
Jonathan knew those callouses felt scratchy but also reassuring, the competent hands of a man who could do anything he tried.
“Maybe a shirt I can rip?”
Prickles rushed up and down Jonathan’s arms, and he shuddered as if he were a gothic heroine. He wanted that, wanted Connor to pull the clothes off him, wanted to hear that sound and feel Connor all over him. “This is possible.”
Time stretched and they didn’t move. Someone should move, but he felt so precariously balanced.
“One more.” Connor reached for the small box, and Jonathan’s momentary twinge that he might fall off the couch was unfounded, because Connor managed to return and offer the little box.
It weighed nothing, but his hand trembled and he fumbled with the tape, fingers that could wield a mascara wand with precision reduced to bungling.
Connor’s mitt-sized hands had achieved this wrapping, and Jonathan couldn’t even open it.
He could hear his breathing louder than it should be, but Connor, usually loud, was as quiet as if he’d expired.
With the edges of the dark blue velvet box revealed, Jonathan looked across at Connor. “Breathe.”
He whooshed out and in again. “Right. Thanks. So, ah, if you don’t like this, I can take it back. It’s no big deal. I can do whatever. Whatever you want.”
He laid his hand on Connor’s thigh and squeezed.
Velvet boxes were always jewelry, and no one since his grandmother had given him jewelry.
People had given him clothes, although never clothes that had as much meaning attached as the blouse, and Connor hadn’t even hesitated to tell Jonathan why.
And yet the jewelry had Connor on spin cycle.
He opened the hinged lid. Inside, there was a silver stick pin resting in soft cotton fluff.
The head of the pin consisted of silver strands twisted and looped like delicate ropes around a smoothly rounded black onyx center.
He touched it carefully with the tip of one finger, then lifted it into his palm.
He couldn’t look away from the wink of light in the depths of the dark stone.
It felt like it wanted to share a secret.
This jewelry was meant to accompany the bow on the blouse or be displayed on a jacket lapel, and it was exceedingly fucking tasteful.
“Let me see it. On you.”
He shook his head. “I’m too dirty.”
“Shower.” Connor sniffed his armpit. “I need one too.”
Jonathan started to carefully wrap the blouse back in the tissue paper.
“The buttons on the black shirt, the night we met, those were onyx too, weren’t they?”
His fingers stopped responding to his commands. This man saw every detail of him. Saw, and remembered. He needed to say something.
Connor sat next to him, vibrating and waiting.
He must say something.
He nestled the pin back into the bed of fluff inside the tiny box, gathered the box with the blouse, and stood. “Upstairs. Now.”