Chapter 11 Henry
Henry
Iwoke to the sound of a snort in my ear. The sound was out of place enough that it had me jumping from my doze into full wakefulness from one second to the next, stiffening in my seat.
“Wha?” muttered a rough voice near my ear.
“Wha?” was all I could manage in reply, still trying to figure out where and when I was.
“Oh, shit,” said the voice. A hand patted my chest. “Sorry, big guy. I must have dozed off.”
Jamison. Right. We’d been watching a movie and he’d fallen asleep, and I’d decided to just rest my eyes for a second and must have dropped off too. How long had we been asleep sitting up on the couch? Long enough to get stiff, my neck informed me. I stretched it to the side and heard it crack.
The hand patted my chest again. “You with me, Hen? I didn’t mean to fall asleep on you. I missed the end of the movie!”
I chuckled, the sound vibrating in my chest. “Pretty sure they lived happily ever after.”
“Did you sleep through it, too, then? Wow, we must be getting old to fall asleep mid-afternoon like this. I feel like I just ate Thanksgiving dinner or something.”
“No,” I said, “I made it to the end of the movie. They made up and all was well. Then I decided to rest my eyes and must have zonked out.”
Jamison dropped his hand from my chest to my lap and for a second I felt a spurt of excited hope before I realized he was just moving to pet the cat, who was still curled up on my legs. “What a sweet girl,” he cooed. “Did you nap with your daddy?”
Curie let out a trilling cat-activation noise as she woke up and blinked her eyes open.
Her paws began to knead at my thighs and I winced slightly as the claws came out and went back in in rhythm.
“No more holes in these pants, please,” I begged her.
“If they develop one more hole, I think they’re going to just give up the ghost and fall apart. ”
Jamison grinned. “They are sort of holey, now that you mention it. Is that a hazard of working with heavy machinery all day?”
“Some,” I allowed. “Some of it’s just wear and tear, and some of it is clumsiness. This one -” I pointed to a rip in the left thigh “- I snagged on a door jamb just walking past it. I think the fabric is just losing integrity as it ages.”
His fingers danced lightly over the rip I’d indicated.
“You could probably patch this,” he mused, oblivious to the fact that my eyes had gone wide at his touch.
“Or even just sew it closed.” I was so focused on where he was touching me that I didn’t notice the silence until he looked up at me and pulled his hand back.
“Hen? Sorry, I shouldn’t have touched without asking. ”
Mostly focused on willing my dick to stand down - who, over the age of fourteen, got a hard-on from a hand brushing over their thigh? Honestly! - I stammered, “Uh, ok. I mean, no, wait. It’s ok. Right. S’okay. You can touch.” You can touch? What the fuck, Hen?
Jamison paused with his hand in the air, then cautiously placed his fingers back on my thigh.
“So what I was saying,” he said in a tone that seemed determined to be businesslike, “is that if you have a needle and thread you could probably sew this closed pretty invisibly and not run the risk of your undies sticking out in public.”
Wait, were my undies - heh, he called them undies - sticking out? I looked down in alarm but saw nothing other than skin. Not sure if that was better or worse - who wanted to get a glimpse of my upper thigh, either? - I shrugged. “I don’t know how to sew.”
He blinked at me. “Like, not even a button or anything?” he asked incredulously.
I shook my head. “My mom tried to teach me when I was a teenager but I kept stabbing myself with the needle accidentally and finally she decided she’d rather do the mending or buy me new clothes when they were needed than have to stain-stick blood out of everything.”
He winced, but his shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. “I don’t know your mom, but somehow I’m still picturing her face as she made that decision and it’s hilarious.”
“Hmph.” I tried to sound grumpy, but I think it mostly came out playful. “Anyway, I don’t wear these jeans out of the house, for obvious reasons -” I gestured to the hole we’d been talking about “ - so at least I don’t have to worry about flashing people.”
“Other than me,” he pointed out. “My virgin eyes!”
“Hey,” I protested, “I didn’t get a lot of warning that you were coming over. It didn’t occur to me to change. And I’m pretty sure your eyes are far from virgin these days.”
He grinned and stuck a finger through the hole in my pants. It wasn’t in my crotch, more mid-thigh, but it was still close enough to my junk to give me a jolt. “I’m not complaining. It’s a nice view.”
He thought my thigh was a nice view? I suppressed the urge to preen, followed by the urge to offer him a more expansive view. “Uh, thanks?” I managed.
“If you have a needle and thread, I could probably patch these up for you right now,” he offered.
I thought about that. It was unlikely I’d have a needle and thread around the house, considering my lack of sewing skills, but maybe my mom had left one some time or something?
“If I do, it’d be in my junk drawer,” I thought out loud.
“Let me…” I heaved myself up off the couch, unfortunately dislodging both Jamison’s hand and the cat, who hissed half-heartedly as I dumped her on the floor.
“Oh, poor baby,” Jamison cooed, reaching down to pick her up again and settling her on his own lap. “Mean old daddy kicked you off but it’s ok, you have me now. I’ll pet you and love you and sing to you.”
Sing to her? I’d pay to see that, but I refrained from saying that out loud in the hopes that he’d be less self-conscious and actually do it if I didn’t draw attention to his utterance.
In the meantime, I walked into the kitchen and started searching my junk drawer.
Take-out menus, spare keys, spare charging cables…
a padlock from my old shed that I’d pulled down two years ago…
a phone number scribbled on a post-it (I had no idea who or what the number was to.
Way to be organized, Hen). Finally, at the bottom of the drawer, I found a translucent purple plastic egg-shaped case that looked to hold safety pins, needles, buttons, and a few bobbins of thread.
I picked it up and trotted back into the living room, tossing it to Jamison. “Is this what you need?”
He jumped, startled out of whatever he’d been mumbling to the cat, and Curie dodged the flying sewing kit with a hiss and a growl. “Dude!” he said accusingly.
I winced. “Sorry. Didn’t think of the cat, I was just excited to have found it.”
Jamison picked up the sewing kit where it had landed beside him and examined it. “Yeah, this’ll do the job. I think I even see blue thread.” He looked up at me and smiled. “Drop your pants, big guy.”
Wait, what? Gulp. It was possible I hadn’t thought this through. “I’ll just…” I waved toward the bedroom. “I have some pajama pants…”
He rolled his eyes dramatically. “It’s not like I haven’t already seen everything, Henry,” he pointed out. “And your underwear covers as much as a bathing suit anyway.”
Sure, if he saw me in a bathing suit he’d see as much as he would if I exposed my boxer-briefs, but somehow it felt very different.
But there was a challenge now in his eyes, and I felt like if I retreated to my bedroom to change, he’d be silently judging me a wuss.
I coughed self-consciously and started to undo my belt.
“Ooh, baby.” Jamison let out a catcall whistle. “Take it off.”
I stopped dead and glared at him. “No.”
He pouted. “No?”
“No.”
“Fiiiine.” Still pouting, he looked away from me and focused on extracting a needle and the thread from the sewing kit.
I took advantage of the opportunity to finish stripping my pants off and toss them to him.
He laid them over his lap - and, incidentally, the cat, who made a noise of disapproval and scurried off of him.
I watched Curie beat a retreat to one of her pillows in the corner and then sat quickly on the couch, putting a bit of distance between us so that my bare thigh wasn’t rubbing up against his. I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable while he worked.
…or me. Ok, mostly I would be the uncomfortable one. But I wasn’t going to admit that. I glanced over at him and caught him sucking sensually on the end of the thread. What the fuck?
Oblivious to my surprise, he spat out the end of the thread and threaded it through the eye of the needle. I guess it helped ease the way or something? Lubricated it…
Ok, no. Now was not a good time to think about sucking and lubing.
I was sitting here next to Jamison in my underwear, which wasn’t going to hide anything if I got excited.
I focused on his hands, trying to distract myself.
He doubled the thread over and tied a small knot, then picked up my jeans, muttering quietly to himself.
“-side out,” I caught as he turned the jeans in his hands. “Come up through the back…” He matched deeds to words, and his voice faded out again for a few seconds before it came back with, “in a vee…”
I had literally no idea what he was talking about, and I felt kinda like an idiot sitting there dumbly while he sewed my pants, but on the other hand, it gave me a chance to just…
look at him. His asymmetric hair fell over his forehead in a swoop, and his eyes were narrowed as they focused on his work.
His generous lips were pursed in concentration, and no, I definitely was not remembering how those lips had felt around my cock, thank you very much.
Ok, it was possible that I was. Just a little. But they’d felt so good, warm and soft. And his tongue…hnghh.
I felt my dick twitch at the memory and winced. Good thing Jamison was concentrating on his sewing.
At least, I thought he was, until he paused his needle, shot me a sidelong glance, and smirked. “You got a service kink?”
I blinked. A what? “Huh?”