Page 12 of Shades of Henry
Randy arched his almost transparently ginger eyebrows at him. “I go poof in the sun,” he said. “That’s sweet, but I prefer pasty and sad to surfing and peeling. Really.”
Henry let out the most amazing sound, but Lance was the only one to notice. The guys went back to their movie, with the addition of pizza, of course, but Lance couldn’t help staring at Henry, wondering if he could get him to laugh again. Just once. Just for real. Because that had been like rain after a long dry summer, and Lance yearned to feel it over his body again.
Old Habits
SOMEONE WAShaving sex again.
Henry rolled over on the couch and covered his head with the pillow, thinking he could probably manage another hour of sleep if they finished in the next five minutes.
When he’d first heard the idea—him, crashing with a bunch of oversexed porn stars—of course he’d been outraged and morally horrified. Because hisfatherwould have been outraged and morally horrified. But after that first night, eating pizza with all those sweet young men, he’d gone to sleep with memories of his first leave after basic training. He and Mal had ended up with a bunch of their fellow sufferers in a bar in Georgia—because there was seriously nothing else to do—and they’d bullshitted and played pool and swapped life stories and given one another a ration of crap. Even though he and Mal had been hoping for some time together, the camaraderie had made him so happy. It was almost more important than friendship—it had been the knowledge that he could fuck up and somebody would have his back.
To a point, of course. Because if anybody had known about him and Mal, well… well, he would have ended up on somebody’s couch anyway, except now he was twenty-seven and not nineteen.
But at the time, that sense of belonging had empowered him, and he’d reveled in it. Watching those young men drape themselves over the furniture, over one another, and talk about their futures with such hope, he’d remembered his promise to Lance that he’d be kind to his “little brothers,” and he remembered his own brother’s kindness and had been determined to make good on it.
It was the least he could do.
And as for the sex?
Sometime after the third night, when he’d been sleepless and as on edge as a traumatized cat, he had a flashback to his first week in the barracks, when everybody had been waiting for the guy next to him to stop snoring so he could jerk off. Mal had been the first to pretend to snore, and then Henry, and then they’d been surrounded by relieved privates, doing the private under the covers. Henry and Mal had caught each other’s eyes and giggled, then shivered, and then nursed their own hard-ons, quietly, waiting for the noise around them to subside.
The minute it did, they’d closed their eyes and came, and it had been just the two of them in spite of the twenty other men and the overwhelming smell of spunk.
Yes, they’d been surrounded by guys getting off.
None of it was for them.
And in spite of the absolutely open sexuality of every guy in the apartment except him and Lance, this was the same situation.
From the bedroom with the queen-sized, he heard Zeppelin’s low moan and Fisher’s strangled cry, and the banging of the headboard slowed down, then stopped. Henry gave a sigh of relief, until he heard another sound, this one from the air mattress next to him, where Cotton curled up in a tight, defensive little ball.
For a moment, Henry groaned, thinking he was going to have to wait for Cotton to get his rocks off before he got to sleep, but then he heard the actual sounds Cotton was making.
Tiny sobs, the kind that sputtered because the body wanted to do more but the mind was trying to do you in. Cotton wascrying.
Oh shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit.
Henry got up, not sure what he was going to do—he wasnotcuddly—but knowing that he had to do something.
Lance. Lance would know. Lance deftly managed these hyperemotional, high-strung post-adolescent hormone bundles with the sweet touch of a mother—except Henry’s mother would have turned her kids over to his father for the strap, when all the poor kids needed was a hug.
Henry stood up quietly and leaned over to squeeze Cotton’s shoulder, as if to say, “Help is coming,” and Cotton seized his hand, hard enough to overbalance Henry and pull him onto the air mattress. Henry ended up on top of him, wriggling around and trying to escape, while Cotton just clung to his shoulders, sobbing on his chest.
Oh Jesus. They were both sleeping in their briefs, and he was almost naked with another man for the first time since the time he wasn’t going to think about.
“Cotton… uh, buddy….”
The kid was warm and smooth-skinned, stringy with muscle, and hysterical. He looped his arms around Henry’s neck and held on so tight, Henry couldn’t breathe—and Henry’s libido started tugging on his shirt.
Uh, Henry. Buddy. ’Sup. Been a while, right?
No! He’s a freaked-out kid. Chill! Dammit!
Cotton felt it—of course he felt it—and he started to grind, his sobbing easing infinitesimally, his hips apparently doing what came as natural to him as breathing.
“No no no no,” Henry mumbled, scooching to get away. The mattress was pretty well constructed, but Henry was a solid guy, and Cotton followed him across. When Henry got to the end, the side collapsed just enough to send him tumbling to the ground, bumping the cheap coffee table and sending it over on its side. A still hysterical, mostly naked Cotton landed on top of him, and Henry couldn’t seem to wiggle away without making things worse.
“Cotton, man, c’mon. Let’s go get… coffee. Or ice cream…. Buddy, you’ve got to get off me. Come—” Oh God. Cotton’s groin caught Henry’s right where things counted, and the stroke against his shaft was unmistakably arousing. “On. Oh Jesus, dude, this isn’t what either of us wants!”
