43. Butter On Toast
BUTTER ON TOAST
Connor felt like a pat of butter on toast, maintaining his shape by surface tension and the memory of once having been cool, while his entire self melted into spreadability.
Jonathan had done all this. Secretly. For him. He shuddered.
Without letting go, Jonathan shifted their bodies until Connor saw them both in the mirror, his own upper body and a half-concealed Jonathan standing behind him.
“Watch us. We’re the only people here.” Jonathan’s right hand crept under Connor’s T-shirt.
Those slender fingers could wrap around the thickest books or around Connor’s hips, could be tender when Connor needed it or paint the walls when Connor needed that instead.
“I’ll take care of you. Like you took care of me last weekend.”
He brushed his hand delicately across Connor’s belly.
Back and forth under his shirt, the lightest touch, again and again, until Connor shivered and the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up.
If he was in a field, he’d run for shelter, afraid of the electricity in the air, but his feet couldn’t move while Jonathan trailed fingers over Connor’s stomach.
That simple touch shouldn’t steal his breath. It wasn’t a weight preventing him from inhaling, and yet, it did.
The mirror hung low enough to show flashes of his waist and abs in the moment before Jonathan let the shirt fall into place.
Half of Jonathan’s face peeked from behind his right shoulder.
Watching their reflections, combined with the feedback of seeing and feeling, made him greedy for more seeing, more feeling, more touching.
He poked a mental finger at the memory of being here with Tony, and nope, nothing bit back.
He only saw Jonathan and the dark blue wall behind him. He only felt Jonathan and the rasp of his shirt over his skin. He smelled Jonathan and the yummy candle. He heard Jonathan’s little hum, both a sound and a feeling at the same time.
All good. Very good.
Jonathan used the hand resting loosely on Connor’s left hip to raise his shirt. His nail polish was blue, midnight at some angles, navy at others. Connor saw the pink flush spread across his own neck and cheeks.
In the mirror, their eyes never left each other.
Too low to be reflected, Jonathan’s other hand traced the edge of Connor’s waist band and stroked through the hair on his stomach.
He couldn’t see what Jonathan did, but he could feel the delicate questions asked with fingers and answered by the vibration of his skin.
His stomach tensed, trying to follow when the fingers would change course, whether they would go up and down, follow his waistband or strike out in a new direction to trace the path of his hair.
They just went over the same track. Light. Teasing.
Not enough.
Finally, Jonathan pushed his shirt higher, revealing all of his stomach, and spread his fingers as wide as they could go. The heat branded Connor. “I love this. I love your stomach.”
Every sensation felt concentrated in those fingers, because Jonathan had kept his mouth away from Connor. His cheek didn’t press against Connor. He used nothing but his two hands and the support of his chest on Connor’s back.
“It quivers when I touch you. It quivers when you laugh. When you breathe.”
The cotton fabric crept higher, almost on its own, until Connor raised his arms and bent his knees to lower himself. When the shirt was off, Jonathan retreated behind Connor’s body until only his hands and forearms were in view where they wrapped around Connor.
He leaned forward, trying for a fleeting glimpse of dark hair.
“I want you to watch me touch you. Watch my hands, and think of us, just us. We’re the only people here.”
He’d said that twice.
Connor shuddered, an involuntary motion that made his eyes close and that wasn’t what he was supposed to do.
Only them. Connor and Jonathan. Only them.
“Are you watching us?” Jonathan’s question sounded like an accusation and a purr and a command, all in one.
He opened his eyes and watched both of Jonathan’s hands dance and stroke and circle. Around his nipples. Around his bellybutton. Through his chest hair. His head felt too heavy and his legs were thick trunks, but also thin grass, and he had to keep standing here while Jonathan touched him.
Jonathan had told him to watch in the mirror.
This was going to be slow. This was going to be long.
“You and me.” Jonathan stroked from the base of Connor’s neck out, toward his shoulders, down his upper arms, his hands as gentle as a leaf falling on a deck. “Watch us.”
He felt loose and dizzy. The candle smelled like pine and vanilla and now that smelled like sex.
“You’re strong, Connor. These arms are strong.” The hands changed direction, went back to his shoulders, squeezing and stroking. “You take care of people with these arms. You make them feel good. You make me feel good.”
He wasn’t sure which sensations were coming from Jonathan’s touch and which were figments of the web of words Jonathan was weaving around him.
Both of Jonathan’s palms came to rest on Connor’s left pectoral. “Your heart is so good, Connor.”
He couldn’t even see a hint of Jonathan’s expression. He wanted, no, needed, to see him.
“Your heart believes the best.” Jonathan pressed and Connor could swear that he heard the combined beats in his ears and it sounded like love you love you, but that must be fantasy.
Jonathan said he was strong, but his knees were weak, too wobbly to support him, and he tilted forward to brace his hands on the cabinet.
For a moment he was falling into a different room, the old room, the old table, shards in the reflection and a bad taste in his throat.
Something echoed in his head, a distant noise of glass that his brain knew wasn’t real even as his heart spiked, but then he bent forward enough for the mirror to reveal Jonathan.
“Look at me.”
Jonathan was here, only Jonathan. Glossy dark hair. Pretty pink lips. That lower lip like a plushie, so full, so soft.
“Keep looking at us.” Jonathan’s face was a set of flushed cheeks and flattened eyebrows, a man with a goal that he was going to stroke out of Connor’s skin. “I’m here. I’m with you. Say it. Say it, Connor. We’re here.”
Connor would be every prize in every fair booth, if Jonathan promised to step up and always look at him like that, like he was the thing to be won. He shuddered. “We’re here.”
“This is our space, Connor. Ours.”
The word ended with Jonathan’s hard look, the closest his mouth ever got to thinning out and being severe, the look that made Connor pant with the need to feel Jonathan bite him or something equally silly but was so fucking hot that it almost scared him and also made him leak.
“Say it. This is ours.”
“Ours.” The word sounded so good. He was a mess for this man. “This is ours.”
Jonathan pushed his thumbs into the muscles at the base of Connor’s spine, making him arch and reveal his neck. He was flushed pink and red all the way down past the edge of the mirror.
Firm fingers now, not ticklish ones, kneaded up and down his back until his feet melded into the floor and his palms flattened hard on the cabinet, but at the same time his spine went soft and kept him upright only by a miracle.
Each stroke of Jonathan’s hands made his hips push toward the empty space in front of him. He needed to find something there. Something had to touch him, and that something was Jonathan, was always Jonathan, was always going to be Jonathan.
Moving slowly, carefully, and letting Connor watch, Jonathan slid a hand from Connor’s back, under his arm and around his chest, until it spread across Connor’s clavicle. That midnight blue polish snapped against his skin.
This hand, these fingers, this touch, they were everything.
For a moment they both breathed. Waited.
Jonathan’s fingers rose and fell in response to Connor’s chest moving, the motion hypnotically small but visible.
Then Jonathan moved.
Connor didn’t know if he would have been able to feel the ghost touch if he hadn’t been watching, but Jonathan let his fingertips trail down, so light, too light, crossing his sternum and following the center line of his chest to the trail of hair, and below what Connor could see.
But his brain filled in the parts he couldn’t see, so he knew Jonathan’s hand had reached his waistband and this time he wouldn’t stop.
Connor would melt or collapse if he did. Probably also if he didn’t.
Jonathan disappeared from behind him, but it wasn’t away, oh fuck yeah, it wasn’t away, it was down.
He was on the floor slipping between Connor’s legs and tugging on Connor’s shorts, because he could move like water, and shit this better be a strong dresser.
He was good and Jonathan was very good and this was going to be so good.
Cool air on his cock did nothing to lessen his need. He lifted a foot and shook his leg and then the other and his shorts were gone, and in less than a moment, his cock was in Jonathan’s beautiful hand.
He waited. He trembled. He wanted.
Jonathan breathed on him but nothing more. Holding. Breathing. Warm.
Even his skin shook with the waiting.
“Connor. Look in the mirror.”
His voice was sharp and Connor struggled with the compulsion to obey, but also, he wanted to watch his cock and Jonathan’s lips because, fuck, who wouldn’t.
“Don’t look at me. Look at yourself.”
“Uhhh.” He was groaning and couldn’t stop.
“I want you to see what I see, when I see you. Look in the mirror.”
He should listen. Didn’t want to listen.
“No whining.” That tone meant Jonathan would stop if he didn’t. “Look in the mirror.”
Glassy. Mirrors were glassy. His eyes were glassy. Suddenly Jonathan’s mouth was on his cock, and he jerked deeper because he was rude and needy and he wanted to dive all the way into that feeling.
He saw the flush spread further down his own chest, making his skin splotchy with it, and his shoulders now too. He watched his arms tremble as he pushed onto the top of the cabinet.