Chapter 4
FOUR
Jesse scrubbed everything clean using the ancient box of washing soda he found in yet another supply closet. He trusted nobody’s hygiene in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, but he especially didn’t trust the hygiene of a psychopathic kleptomaniac.
So he washed all of Maddie’s stuff — the pink panties, the blue pair, the flowery, skimpy pair that he really should have added to the discard pile but didn’t — then he washed it all again, washed his own stuff and Wyatt’s, washed everything except the flannel he was still wearing and laid it all out by the fire to dry.
It left him with a weird mix of clothes, mostly all too big or nearly too small, but it was better than nothing. He’d make it work. Plus, it meant he could keep his own shit for when he had to venture outside into the freezing cold.
And speaking of freezing cold: even with the fire still burning, it was getting a little too chilly to be freeballing.
So Jesse took a second to apologize to his sheer, raw, untamed manliness, then he shimmied his way into the pink panties — and snorted out a weird gasp of air when he caught sight of himself in the old, speckled mirror above the fire.
“Looking a little femboy adjacent there, bud,” Jesse told his reflection. Then he cracked up. “Jesus.” Couldn’t help it. Because genuinely, “What the fuck is my life?”
He was still laughing, disbelieving with it, when he tossed himself down onto the bed. He could do that now, because he had a bed, had safety, had heat and water. Had all of those things because Wyatt had made sure of it.
Wyatt.
The thought that Jesse had been avoiding all day throbbed an ache in his chest that matched the aching in his beat-up ankle. Jesse pressed the heel of his hand to his breastbone, a weakass sternum rub.
Had Wyatt made it to where he needed to be, or to some kinda safety, at least? Or was he still holed up in the truck, pulled up on a potholed roadside, hiding out from zombies and nutjobs besides. No way for Jesse to know.
“Fuck.”
Jesse was still wearing Wyatt’s flannel.
He wrapped it tight around himself, tucked his nose under the collar again and breathed deep until his eyes stopped stinging.
He pretended, in some weak, pathetic part of himself, that it was a hug, a Wyatt hug, like the kind Wyatt doled out when Jesse had been unusually brave or incredibly stupid.
One of those hugs, Wyatt wrapped all around, holding Jesse in, holding him together, just—
Fuck, just holding him.
So close that he was all Jesse could smell and touch and feel. Jesse, all wrapped up in Wyatt’s clothes, breathing in Wyatt’s scent, Wyatt everywhere and all around — and a really unfamiliar throb coming from below deck.
Jesse stilled, but only for a second. He lifted his head off the pillow. Wyatt’s flannel was unbuttoned. Jesse let it slip to the side and—
“Yup. That’s a boner.”
It was. One hundred percent a boner. An ongoing erection. A hard-on getting harder, progressively.
“Jesus.”
Jesse fell back onto the pillow. He didn’t want to make eye contact for too long. Erectile dysfunction and the apocalypse went hand in hand, limply. He knew from past experience that if he looked too close, his hard-on would scurry away like a frightened animal into the blue-balled undergrowth.
So he didn’t look. Touch, though? Yeah, he could totally do that. Blindly, Jesse slid a hand down his belly. He cupped his dick, gently, almost as gentle as Wyatt had cupped his—
No. Not relevant.
Jesse blew out a breath. Shook that weird, disconnected thought away. Concentrated instead on the heat under his hand, on the throbbing swell.
Because it was still there. Still.
He wasn’t bricked up, not yet, not fully. Half-chub, maybe. Three fourths of a chub at most. But it was there. The jerk-off potential was exponential and growing.
“Damn,” Jesse whispered, honestly a little in awe of his own dick.
When you were running for your life every minute of every day, bedtime was for sleep. But fuck, Jesse was done running. He was warm and safe, and for once he had all the time in the world — to pop a boner, laying in bed, wearing nothing except pink panties and his best bud’s shirt.
Everyone gets lonely, bud.
Wyatt. The voice in Jesse’s head was always Wyatt — be smarter, Jess, be quicker, be careful, you gotta look after yourself, bud — and it was Wyatt right then. The gravel of it. The concerned rumble. Jesse could hear it in his head like he’d heard it with his ears.
Everyone gets lonely, bud.
Everybody did get lonely. Jesse was lonely right then, point of fact. He hugged the flannel a little tighter to himself, the soft cotton shifting against his clean, warm skin.
He liked that. Liked all of it. Liked the way the sleeves pooled down over his hands, because the flannel was way too big on him, because Wyatt was way bigger than him.
And that thought sparked some weird kinda feeling too, like wearing Wyatt’s flannel made Jesse smaller somehow, like Jesse was small or delicate or dainty, like Jesse was the kind of girl who could crawl into guys’ laps, not the other way around.
But Jesse wasn’t small or delicate, sure as fuck wasn’t dainty. Wasn’t a girl, didn’t want to be one.
It was just…
“God. So stupid.”
And it was. It was. But chicks like Maddie, people looked after them, got protective and shit. Jesse had felt that urge himself back at the warehouse, and in the before times too. He’d felt it since.
Not the other way around, though, right? Because Jesse looked after people. Helped them and healed them and was there with them when everything fucked up in the worst way possible. That was his job, his profession, had been anyhow — his fucking calling either way.
But no one looked out for Jesse. Of course they didn’t. No one ever had.
No one, until Wyatt.
Everyone gets lonely, bud.
Jesse was safe in the place that Wyatt had picked out for him, safe because Wyatt had made sure of it. Jesse was safe — because of Wyatt.
And everyone was smaller than Wyatt, right? Turn that situation around, and on its head, and inside out, spin it until it was dizzy, and compared to Wyatt, Jesse could be like Maddie, maybe.
Jesse could be Maddie, for Wyatt.
“God, fuck.”
Jesse’s breath was coming in weird little pants, synced up with his pulse, beating fast, kinda hard, like the throbbing in his panties, fully caught up with the horny program and straining up against soft cotton.
“Fucking god. Jesus.”
Any kind of rationality flew out the window and drowned in the creepy, cloudy lake outside. Jesse caught Wyatt’s shirt between his teeth, tipped his nose to the side. He breathed in until all he could smell was Wyatt.
Gonna be good for me, bud?
When was Jesse ever good?
Never, not ever, and not then, trailing his fingers down his bare belly and imagining — suddenly, crazily — that his fingers were Wyatt’s fingers, and Wyatt’s hands, and that Wyatt was touching Jesse instead.
Jesse let out a wavering sigh, one that hitched up to a moan. He gave himself the warm cup of his palm. Did it again. Just that. Then just his thumb rubbing idle over the head of his dick, the pink cotton growing slick, wet and sticky with precum.
You deserve it, Jess. You’ve been so good.
Jesse hadn’t been good. He’d fucked up with Maddie. Lost his gear. Delayed their departure. He’d whined his ass off, complained the whole way to the cabin. He’d made Wyatt feel bad about leaving. He’d been the reason Wyatt fucking left.
None of that was good. He didn’t deserve this.
You do, bud.
He didn’t, he never did, but he couldn’t deny himself, not with the image of Wyatt behind his eyelids: eyebrow raised, mouth ticked up, eyes gone so, so warm.
You deserve it. Take it.
With a shuddering breath, his hands shaking just a little, Jesse pulled himself out of his panties. No point trying to pretend now that his hands were Wyatt’s. He’d be lost in Wyatt’s grip. He couldn’t copy it.
But Jesse could work himself over anyhow. Nothing fancy. His stroke game was rusty, everything too tight and too dry, but Wyatt wouldn’t be fancy either. Whatever got the job done, that was Wyatt’s MO.
And fuck, he’d get the job done, Jesse just knew it. That big, calloused hand wrapped all up around Jesse’s aching dick. Maybe his mouth brushing Jesse’s jaw. Not kissing him. Just— close. He’d be close. Have to be.
You gonna come for me, bud?
A noise rose in Jesse’s throat that he legitimately couldn’t describe. Didn’t sound human. Didn’t sound inhuman either, thank fuck. But that was it, that was all he had. He made the noise, because he couldn’t not make it, and then everything sparked — tight and hot and hard and clenching.
“Oh fuck. God, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Jesse came like coming was breathing and Jesse was hyperventilating. He came, and he kept on coming, and then he came a little more, almost dry, flinching from the force of it and from the overstimulation of his own hand.
He came so hard and so much that for a full minute after he couldn’t catch his breath. Jesse melted into the mattress, spent. His hands went limp and his dick flopped down onto his belly. He gulped down straight-up mouthfuls of air until he stopped seeing shooting stars.
Then he risked a glance down at himself.
Wyatt’s flannel was rucked up past his nips. The waistband of his panties was tucked up under his still-tight balls, and his belly and his chest were streaked pearly white with cum.
“Damn,” Jesse whispered, gutted by it, wrung dry — but not freaked. Weirdly, not that. “Damn, dude.”
He should have been freaked. He’d just come harder than he’d ever come before, wearing panties while doing it, smelling Wyatt’s smell, hearing Wyatt’s words, imagining that everything he felt was all Wyatt.
That should have freaked Jesse out. He should have been spiraling like an out-of-control chopper crashing down onto a zombie-infested city. But he was suspended in jello instead, floating there, the edges gone soft and muted, nothing reaching him.
Jesse lay and waited for it to flood over him, the wash of feeling that should have been shame. Wasn’t, though, when the flood of it finally came. It was something, sure, but it wasn’t shame.
Too hot for that, lapping softly at the edges of his awareness. Hot and liquid and really fucking addictive.
Jesse didn’t know what it was, couldn’t even begin to guess, didn’t want to — but it wasn’t shame. He knew that much, right down in the squishy marrow of his bones. He knew it.
Just like Jesse knew that this sure as shit couldn’t happen again.