Chapter 33
Dawson
The bus ride back to Austin seemed to last forever even though it was only three hours from Fort Worth back to the city.
We’d won the game against TCU and I should have been as psyched as my teammates were that we were one step closer to the championship, but all I could think of was getting back to Theo.
However, I was still wrestling with the nerves of how he’d be when I got home.
It had been so hard to convince my brain that Theo still desired me under the haze of the drugs when we’d gone without sex since coming back from our trip.
I understood logically that Theo would have ups and downs even with his meds, but it was fucking hard to go from one of the best weekends of my life filled with life-changing sex to having my boyfriend unable to stomach touching me.
Okay, that was a bit dramatic, but it hadn’t made the rejection sting any less. After my therapist assured me that troubles with sex drive were common with Lithium use, I calmed a bit, but I still wasn’t able to shake the sense that I was losing Theo.
He’d been acting strange since our argument a week ago and I didn’t know whether to be concerned or if it was just normal weirdness from the pills.
He was still Theo but…more. Like the dial was now cranked up too far on everything that made him him.
His virtues and his faults, all magnified to an overwhelming degree.
It was a bit jarring after the last two weeks of his moodiness and disinterest.
I was still in my head when we stepped off the bus at the practice facility, but the buzzing in my pocket brought me out of it. I swiped to answer the phone call, bracing myself for what I knew was coming and I was honestly shocked it hadn’t come sooner.
“Hey Grandpa, now’s not a good time. We just got back to campus.”
“Well, that’s too bad because we need to talk about what happened today after the game,” he scolded.
“Why on earth did you blow off Mike Hancock? Your father asked him to make time specifically to meet you while you were up there and he told me you spoke with Mike barely five minutes before dashing off.”
I drew a calming breath into my lungs, trying not to snap that I had no damn interest in talking to the sports agent he and Dad had corralled into meeting with me without my knowledge or permission.
He’d been waiting for me outside the visiting locker room, all smarmy smiles and hard handshakes like I was selling my soul to him already.
I feigned nausea from the exertion of the game and ducked out of the conversation, knowing it would get back to both Dad and Grandpa fairly quickly.
“I didn’t feel well. I wasn’t really up to talking with anyone,” I said, holding back my surly attitude.
“This is your future we’re talking about. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t necessarily want to do, but that are—”
“Gramps, I can’t even sign with any agents before the season is over. I didn’t see any reason to waste his time and I didn’t want to violate any NCAA rules,” I said, but my flimsy excuse didn’t work.
“You know there is no violation if he’s there simply to meet you and give you information, and in any case, you still should comport yourself like the professional athlete you’ll soon be.
If you’re seen as difficult or flighty, that can count against you when agents are signing with players ahead of the draft. ”
A headache started to form behind my eyes from the pressure of holding in this secret for months on end.
It shouldn’t have been so damn hard to talk to them about it, but that didn’t matter when the fear took you.
Irrational or not, it had a way of digging in and poisoning the blood, whispering the worst case scenarios in your ear like a foregone conclusion.
“Yes sir,” I ground out, only wanting to be done with this pointless talk and get back to my guy.
“Good. I’m sending you his number so you can call to apologize and maybe fix up another get together with him one weekend coming up. I’ll see you next week for Thanksgiving and you can fill me in. You played very well today, Dawson. I’m so proud of you.”
I hated how much the little bit of praise warmed me inside. I couldn’t even fucking say why it mattered so much to me, especially knowing football wasn’t in the cards after this season. We ended the call and now I needed Theo more than ever, no matter what mood he happened to be in.
“Baby, I’m home!” I called out as I let myself into Theo’s apartment.
I heard the sound of his shower running and decided it couldn’t hurt to join him.
The stupid, insecure part of me just hoped he wouldn’t shoot down the idea.
I was aching to be with him intimately again, but I was a little gun-shy after weeks of distance between us.
As I made my way towards his bedroom, my gaze snagged on his pill organizer in the middle of the island. A small niggle in my brain said something was off, and when I drew closer, I recognized why.
I knew Theo refilled his organizer every Sunday and seeing as it was Saturday night, one pill was all that should have been left.
But the wells for the last four days were still full, the pills sitting there like little drops of betrayal.
I tried not to assume anything, but anger and disappointment ripped through me.
I was stuck in a trance, so I didn’t notice Theo waltzing into the room with only a towel around his trim waist.
“Hey beautiful, I didn’t know you were back yet!
Why didn’t you text me?” His cheery voice penetrated the fog I was in and I twisted to see a bright grin on his face.
It was such a far cry from the Theo I’d experienced the last few weeks that my nose stung and my eyes blurred the slightest bit.
This Theo was all I had wanted to see for nearly a month, but now I worried what the cost had been to get him back.
“Are you skipping your pills?” I croaked out, the question bursting forth before I could stop it. Theo’s face fell and a gamut of emotion ran across his features. Guilt, anger, embarrassment, sadness, and finally resignation.
“Yes, but it’s not what you think.”
My stomach plummeted and my lids slammed shut against the stab of pain from his admittance.
“You promised me,” I whispered roughly.
“I didn’t break it! Not like you’re thinking,” he rushed out. “I haven’t stopped taking them, I’ve just started…staggering them.”
“Staggering them? Theo, you can’t screw around with your medication like that!”
Theo let out a frustrated grunt. “I had to do something. I was fucking drowning again! Do you think it’s easy for me to be this dead inside? To not feel things like a normal person? I’ve seen how much I’ve hurt you the last few weeks. And it fucking hurts me too!”
He closed the distance and gripped my face, his sad eyes flaying me alive with their intensity.
“I didn’t want to slip further away from you.
I wanted to feel something again.” He leaned forward, growling the next words over my parted lips.
“I needed to get back that uncontrollable desire that makes me want to tear off your clothes and bury myself in your tight heat until the world around us no longer exists. But I couldn’t do that while I kept taking that fucking poison everyday. ”
My hands were wrapped around his wrists so hard I worried I’d leave bruises, but it was all that was tethering me to the earth right now. I felt so damn helpless. I wanted all the things back that we’d lost the last month, but there was a pit in my gut that didn’t feel right about this.
“You told me you didn’t want to try new meds because you were scared it could make things worse. What do you think this will do? You’re not supposed to just…pick and choose when you take hardcore pills like this. What if—”
My voice failed as a dozen horrible possibilities buzzed in my head.
What if you become manic? What if your sex drive becomes too much to control? What if you become suicidal? What if you get into trouble?
What if I lose you again?…
“Mercury, listen to me. In the past, I’ve always been ‘all or nothing’ when it comes to the Lithium, but that’s not what I’m doing this time.
I know I need them and I’ll never cut them out fully, so I skip some pills every few days and it’s crazy how much better I feel already.
I’m finally starting to feel like myself again! ”
“And you really think there will be no repercussions to this?”
“I know my own body, Dawson,” he said firmly, releasing my cheeks.
“Why hide it from me? You promised you wouldn’t lie to me about your health again, that you’d keep me in the loop.”
“I didn’t mean to hide it. I swear I was going to tell you once I knew if this staggering thing would level me out or not. I actually planned to tell you on the way out to your parents’ place on Monday.”
I wanted to believe that he was right. It seemed like he’d put actual thought into it and it wasn’t just a rash decision. And he was still taking the pills, which had to be better than nothing. I willed the anxiety brewing in my chest to go down.
“And you really think this is helping?” I asked cautiously.
Theo came towards me again and sank to his knees, staring up at me with a hunger that I had secretly worried I’d never see again. He brushed the backs of his fingers over my jean-clad cock and it twitched violently at the gentle contact.
“Let me prove it to you,” he purred, holding my gaze as he freed my length and began to stroke it slowly.
“You don’t know how much it killed me to turn you down, to not be able to give you this.
I would have given anything to bring back that fire you set off under my skin, the one that burns me up inside and makes me want to ravage your entire body until you’re completely drained. ”
“Oh fuck, Theo,” I gasped as he brought me to full hardness, my tip pearling with pre-cum. His tongue darted out to lap at my slit and I cursed, grasping his shoulders tightly to keep from crumbling to the floor.
“Jesus, I missed how good you taste,” he crooned, running the flat of his tongue up the underside of my cock. “Tell me this is okay, baby. Tell me you want this as badly as I do.”
All I could manage was a frantic nod before he took me to the back of his throat, drawing a loud cry from my lips.
Theo worked me over zealously, worshipping my cock with an enthusiasm that brought me to the brink too quickly.
My body tightened and shook with my impending orgasm, but Theo pulled off and yanked me to the carpet, pinning me beneath his weight.
He tore his towel away and shoved my shirt up to my armpits. The image of his naked body against my mostly clothed one was strangely erotic, and when he began to grind his velvet length against mine, the stimulation was almost too much to handle.
“I need us to come together,” Theo grunted.
He leaned down and let a string of spit fall on my dark red head, then took both our cocks together in his fist. A gravelly moan poured from my throat as he started jacking us off in a frenzied tempo, my hips thrusting into his grip uncontrollably.
His groans were buried in my neck and his filthy words seeped into my skin.
I wanted him imprinted on my flesh, on my bones, on my fucking soul that was branded with his name.
I clawed at his back desperately, canting my pelvis up to meet his as he drove us closer to the edge.
Theo latched onto my neck and sucked a bruise into the tender flesh, setting off my release.
I came on a guttural shout, jets of cum shooting across my abdomen and even hitting me under my chin.
Pure pleasure infused my veins, an elysian bliss that whited out my vision and devastated my senses.
Theo cried out my name as his orgasm overtook him and I felt the warm splash of his cum joining mine.
He kept milking our cocks together and the stimulation bordered on pain, but I never wanted it to end.
I didn’t realize how badly I’d needed this connection to him until hot tears slid down the side of my temple.
When Theo raised his head, he kissed the tears away and his soft lips skimmed my face in sweet caresses.
He kissed apologies on my eyelids and declarations of love on my cheeks.
We just laid there on the floor, our bodies fused with the drying cum and cooling sweat, but neither of us moved.
I didn’t care if the world burned around us. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
But as my high faded, the worry swept back in. As much as I wanted to trust that Theo had a handle on his disorder, my gut fizzled with nerves and an undeniable sense of dread. The danger was in waiting to see what would happen as we stood on shifting sands.