17. A Sport Without Balls #2
Although the charcuterie platter was generous, Connor was more than hungry enough to tackle it on his own while they had decided which wines of the tasting flights they preferred.
A happy warmth pushed back against Connor’s stiffening muscles, and that throbbing chest thing had abated.
Of course, he was not sitting on the bike.
When Jonathan stretched his quick sneaky fingers across the table and twitched a slice of hard salami to his side, Connor glared. “You don’t fully appreciate the amount of protein required to run my body.”
“I certainly appreciate how cranky you get if the tank gets low. That’s why I bought two desserts.”
Jonathan was chasing smudges of hummus with increasingly smaller pieces of pita bread when Connor pulled both plates of tiramisu to his side of the round table.
By the time Jonathan set aside his empty salad plate, Connor had finished one, deliberately divided the second piece of tiramisu down the middle, and mostly finished one of those halves, too.
Jonathan usually gave him a leftover half of any dessert he ordered, so this was just getting a jump on things.
Jonathan’s glare was about as threatening as an orphan baby deer, especially because his mouth twitched when he looked at Connor’s face.
He must have a little bit of cream or maybe cocoa powder on his lip.
He watched Jonathan reach across the table for the remaining half of the tiramisu, like a fawn about to enter the fire swamp.
Poor Jonathan. Connor snagged the edge of the plate and stopped him from pulling it back to the other side.
“Hey! You’re trying to kidnap what I have rightfully stolen.
” That line was from one of his parents’ favorite movies.
There was a secret pleasure saying it to Jonathan, whose gaze assessed Connor like he’d heard a faint echo and was waiting for a repeat, so Connor continued.
“I can’t compete with you physically, and you’re no match for my brains. ”
“Fuck me, this is that movie, isn’t it?” Jonathan’s eyebrows drew inward the moment the Princess Bride quotes clicked into place. “Am I supposed to challenge you to a battle of wits or something similarly annoying?”
“A battle of wits for the tiramisu?” The plate with a partial remaining dessert taunted both of them. “To the death? I accept!”
Jonathan reached for the last of his white wine.
“How far are we taking this? Because I’m almost out of material.
” He glared at the empty plate in front of Connor but didn’t actually object.
In fact, his eyes crinkled at the edges as if he was fighting laughter.
“And it seems I’m the only one with dessert left. ”
“But I am not out of iocaine powder!” Connor wasn’t going to wonder if he was taking this too far.
Jonathan liked him, this was him, he was always all kinds of over the top coming out of his mouth and weird facts and random words, and he’d ridden on that evil bike seat for twenty-four miles, so he was going all the way.
All the way.
“Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own dessert or his enemy’s?
Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own marscapone—mascaprone—mascarpone—whatever the fuck that sweet white goop is called—because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given.
I am not a great fool.” He pointed his fork at Jonathan.
“Don’t laugh, it’s not nice. You might hurt my feelings. ”
That jump-charged rather than stopped the other man’s snickers.
“I can clearly not choose the tiramisu in front of you.”
“Because it’s mine.” Jonathan reached in the air, wrapped his fingers around Connor’s wrist, and pulled Connor’s fork-hand to the tabletop.
Huh. It had still been in the air.
Jonathan tightened his grip and pressed his thumb on Connor’s pulse.
Exhale.
He fell into Jonathan’s smile, his pointed chin, the span of his cheekbones and the hollow of his throat and just…into Jonathan.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Looking at Jonathan’s dark eyes, the way they sparkled brighter than the facets on their empty wine glasses, was better than anything he’d ever shared with anyone else. Not even that last playoff run in high school could hold a candle to being right here with Jonathan at this table.
This was a stupid and beautiful moment to have a big revelation, it was probably only a jumble of his aching butt, his sweet little wine buzz, and the really nice floral scent from the overhead vines. And Jonathan.
He felt a new and big, actually huge, but oddly not frightening, thing filling his chest, and suspected he knew its name.
Jonathan stared at him, eyebrows raised, clearly waiting.
Connor opened his mouth.
Chill out.
He closed his lips on the stupid, stupid thing he’d been about to blurt out because a guy had spent two weeks with him and instead fumbled for the next movie line. “Uh, whatever, but I can clearly not choose the dessert in front of me.”
Jonathan snorted. “Because you ate it all.”
“Focus, Jonathan. Focus.”
“Believe me, I’m focused.” He let go of Connor’s wrist to raise his water glass. “I’m so focused, we’re absolutely going to do this again when we’re somewhere private and you can wear a black mask and tight black pants, understand?”
“Wait, if I’m the one in the black mask, then I’m Wesley instead of you, and then that means you can be Buttercup and order me around and I get to say as you wish.
I can be Farm Boy.“ The ball in Connor’s chest bounced, and it left a glitter cloud—metaphorical, not real, he hated that shit in real life—that billowed into a grin. “Wait, am I already Farm Boy?”
Jonathan rolled his eyes. “A day for self-discovery.”
Connor cleared his throat and straightened in his chair, adopting a serious voice and a concentrating frown. Jonathan really deserved the full treatment. “So, you’ve beaten my giant.”
“Should I ask if beating your giant maybe doesn’t mean what I think it means?”
He pointed behind Jonathan. “The bikes!”
Jonathan turned around, and Connor pulled the half-full plate all the way across the table and thrust his empty one onto Jonathan’s side before the other man turned back.
Connor threw his head back and hooted with victory. “Aha! First rule, never get involved in a land war in Asia, but also, never go against a second-grade teacher when snacks are on the line!”
“You fucker.” Jonathan crossed his arms over his chest.
“Your expression.” Finding that look arousing was probably a sign that he was a bad person.
“I’m going to land war in Asia your ass. We have to ride back to the car and there will be no mercy. No mercy at all.”
Connor filched the spare clean fork from the other side of the table and dug into the fluffy dessert. That soft lower lip might be caught in a scowl, but Jonathan’s body was already curving back toward the table, so Connor didn’t believe the anger.
Or at least not much of it.
Jonathan’s gaze dropped to the fork in Connor’s hand. “Really?”
Connor held it out with a perfectly-sized bite. “It’s yours.”
Like me. Like everything.
Jonathan’s head tilted and he continued to scowl, but he reached for the fork. “And I remind you, I’m not a baby bird. I feed myself.”
“I’m giving you the fork.” And myself.
The next six minutes—Connor timed it—were torture. Jonathan kept his gaze locked on Connor’s as he took small bites of tiramisu and licked his lips between each taste. His tongue peeked out. Cocoa powder dusted the dip in the center of his top lip, but he didn’t lick that away.
No, he left it for Connor to focus on. Somehow this square of soft, fluffy dessert required him to nibble the flesh of his lower lip and drop his chin and stare at Connor like a…Connor didn’t know the word.
He didn’t know what Jonathan eating that tiramisu was doing to his brain, beyond taking his words and his breath and leaving him a husk.
Then he finished. Even when Jonathan stood, hands on his hips, Connor didn’t know what to do. “Time to go, Connor.”
He wanted to. He did. Leaving would get him closer to being alone with Jonathan and wrapping his hands around Jonathan’s waist and sliding them to that perfect butt and lifting him against Connor’s own body.
Leaving was the first step, but he wanted a car to miraculously appear. Most of all, he didn’t want to go back on the two-wheeled ass-torture device. “I’m happy right here. On the cushion you brought me.”