“What later?” Michael asked, doing as he’d suggested while Carl sat down with a plate of salad and lemon chicken.
Carl said nothing, shook his head and tucked in, and Michael suddenly felt foolish.
“Really?” he said, excited.
“I wanted to shower first,” Carl admitted. “And I wasn’t on a schedule. I just thought, you know, cuddling and dessert go together. He looked a little sad. “If memory serves.”
“No, you’re right,” Michael told him. Those had been some of the best parts of marriage. The sex had been… well, he didn’t want to think about the sex, because it had seemed so wrong lying to his friend like that. But the cuddling? He swallowed. “I’ve missed that,” he said, his voice naked. “Touching, making it sweet. After I told Beth about me, she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. We had to think of ourselves differently, and she couldn’t do it if we were cuddling.”
And for nearly two years before that, it had been prison, where no touch was a good touch. But he didn’t want to talk about that either.
“Have I told you how much I admire you?” Carl said between mouthfuls of food and washing it down with a glass of milk from the fridge.
“For what?” Michael finished with the cleanup and did what he’d been longing to do, which was sit next to Carl at the counter.
“For taking care of your kids. For not being shitty about your ex-wife. For staying friends with her. For doing your damnedest to leave absolutely everything in your life in a better place than it was when you found it. I think it’s really special,” he said. And then, like he hadn’t just rocked Michael’s world, he took another bite.
Michael couldn’t stop looking at him until Carl stopped chewing, swallowed, and stared back.
“What?”
“You think I’m special?” he asked, his heart absolutely on his sleeve, but he couldn’t help it.
“Yeah,” Carl responded, gazing into his eyes. “Yeah. I… I’m not easy with people. I’m awkward and reserved and quiet. But you I can talk to. And the more I talk to you, the more I want to be close to you. When I first realized you were crushing on me, I kept looking behind me. I was like, ‘Me?’ and then the more you looked at me—sort of like you’re looking now—the more I wanted to be that guy. The guy you seem to see. And the more I get to know you, the more I think being someone you think is awesome could be the greatest thing I ever get to do in my life.”
Michael couldn’t help it. He wiped his eyes on the shoulder of his new blazer, and he was going to do it again when Carl took the napkin by his plate and held him still, strong fingers underneath his chin while he mopped up the tears.
“Why’s that make you cry?” he asked softly.
“I’ve never been much,” he managed to say, voice creaking. “But you make me feel like I’m everything.”
Carl’s mouth on his was tender, and the kiss was probably a mess. Briny tears and traces of lemon chicken and all the things romance books said were bad were probably wrapped up in their lips and teeth and tongue.
But Michael didn’t register any of those things.
What hit him was Carl’s kindness and his strength. He gave a little moan and returned the kiss, harder, with interest. He needed that, all of it, kindness and strength, wrapped around his body. Wrapped around his heart.
Carl slid off the stool and cupped Michael’s face, holding him gently while he took over the kiss, mastered it, which was probably a good idea because Michael wasn’t an expert in that department. He followed Carl’s lead, though, opening his mouth, allowing Carl to taste, tangling their tongues and giving general enthusiastic encouragement. Carl pulled closer, stepping into the vee of Michael’s legs, shoving his hands under the back of Michael’s blazer and palming the small of his back under his shirt. Michael gasped and wrapped his legs around Carl’s waist, his body a live wire as his skin let out a primal roar of hunger, of yearning to be touched.
Carl pulled back, panting and burying his face against Michael’s neck. “This is not… going to plan…,” he breathed. “There was going to be a shower and the brushing of teeth and—”
Michael wasn’t proud of the sound he made right then, but he couldn’t help it. Every molecule in his body was crying out for touch, for the mix of tenderness and steel that Carl’s hands, his mouth, even his low, gruff voice promised.
“Please?” he mewled, out of words or complicated ideas right then. All he wanted was to be held.
And Carl gave him even more than what he wanted.
Carl took his mouth again and hefted him up by his thighs. Michael took the hint and wrapped his legs around Carl’s hips, holding on as Carl carried him into Michael’s bedroom and very carefully released his legs so his feet could hit the ground.
“We got condoms in the end table,” he said as Carl pulled back, but Carl shook his head.
“Won’t need them yet,” he said roughly, sliding the new blazer off Michael’s shoulders and kissing his neck. “There’s so much more touching to do.”
Michael didn’t protest, although he wanted to. He wanted to argue that he had bad memories to lose and needed good ones to replace them, but he hadn’t talked about the bad ones yet, so maybe he should let Carl…. Ah! Carl was kissing his way down Michael’s chest now, unbuttoning that pretty red shirt and laughing slightly at the white tank underneath.
“What’s funny?” Michael gasped.
“You’re just so, so sweet,” Carl gasped, nibbling on his collarbone as Michael shed the shirt. “I want to kiss every part of you.”
Michael was going to be very blunt and very rude then about the one part of himself he’d really like to have kissed, but right then, Carl rucked up his undershirt and brushed his nipples with rough thumbs.
Michael made another one of those sounds, the needy kind that made him wish nobody could hear him.
Carl all but yanked the undershirt over Michael’s head and bent to suck a sensitized nipple into his mouth.
Nobody had ever done that for him. Michael whimpered, aroused and shaking, tunneling his fingers through Carl’s thick blond hair.
“Augh! So good!” He had to work to get the words out because he was afraid Carl would stop if he didn’t. His hips started little minithrusts all on their own as his body sought to rut.
Carl moved away from his nipple and took his mouth again, calming him, leaving him clutching Carl’s sweatshirt with shaking fingers.
“Slow it down,” Carl whispered. “Here.” With that he stepped back and pulled off his sweatshirt and T-shirt, leaving his body—wide-shouldered, heavy-muscled, well-defined, pale-skinned—gleaming softly in the overhead light.
Michael made another little sound and stepped forward to stroke the patch of wiry blond hair between Carl’s pecs. “Soft,” he said, surprised. His chest had maybe three hairs on it, and he’d never really explored a man before. Even his doomed relationship with Chuck had been a series of stolen blowjobs, snuck in during corners of time when nobody would even know they were together.
“Touch me too,” Carl told him, and he rubbed his palms over Carl’s chest in response. “Good. More nipple.”