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A FEW DAYS LATER
Zack’s Apartment in Marie the Ex-Nun’s Basement
***
ZACK SPENT FRIDAY GROCERY shopping and cleaning the little basement apartment. He’d barely picked up pantry staples in the time he’d been in the Twin Cities, relying far too much on takeout and convenience food. And, while he could tidy the basement apartment he rented from Marie, it was not a space that could impress anyone. In a way, Zack was relieved. Whatever was happening with him and Aaron, it was progressing entirely on their own merits as people rather than any metric of American material success.
Aaron arrived punctually at six, ringing the bell as Zack finished chopping the vegetables for a stir fry.
“Hi!” he said brightly when Zack opened the door. He was holding a small bouquet of flowers and a bottle of sparkling water, both of which he pressed into Zack’s hands. “These are for you! And also, us. Since I don’t really drink, and I don’t know if you do.”
“Thank you.” Zack said, touched. He stepped back to let Aaron in. When was the last time anyone had brought him flowers? It was such an unnecessary gesture, and yet one that was so very Aaron in its concern for detail. What an absurd and lovely creature he was.
“You know, I’ve never been in here before.” Aaron toed off his shoes, looking around. “It’s nice. In that skater kitsch way.”
“I’d say thank you, but I’m not sure you’re being nice,” Zack said, amused. He moved into the kitchen to find something to use as a vase.
“I am being nice! I’m a skater; I’m kitschy.” Aaron said.
From the back of one of the shelves Zack pulled out on a giant ceramic mug emblazoned with a cartoon dog wearing figure skates.
“Like this?” He held up the mug so Aaron could see.
Aaron’s face lit up. “Oh my God, yes. That’s great!”
“Marie deserves the credit.” Zack filled the mug at the sink and put in the flowers.
“Tell her I said so, then.”
“Are you hungry?” Zack asked, returning to the piles of vegetables and meat on his cutting boards.
“Starving.”
There was something effortless about having Aaron in his space. As he cooked, Zack watched him walk around the living room taking in the art on the walls and the few of Zack’s own possessions scattered around. He touched things and picked them up to see them closer without any kind of self-consciousness or embarrassment.
“You didn’t tell me you were a photographer too,” Aaron said, running his fingertips over Zack’s Nikon where it was sitting on the TV stand.
“It’s a hobby more than work. It lines up sometimes though. Sometimes, I can get pictures no one else can get.”
“Show me?” Aaron asked.
“Maybe.” That was going to be another potentially fraught conversation, and Zack thought he deserved at least a week of enjoying Aaron before that needed to happen. He wanted to pick him up, set him on the kitchen counter, and make out with him.
Aaron caught Zack staring as he ran his fingers across the spine of a spiral notebook next to the camera. He flushed, but didn’t retract his hand.
“Is this weird?” he asked. “Am I being weird?”
“You don’t normally date people who aren’t skaters, do you?”
Aaron paused a moment, his gaze a little distant, like he was calculating. “Uh. No. Not dated, anyway. But mostly skaters either way, yeah.” He drifted over to the kitchen. “What can I do to help?”
“Sit there and look pretty?”
Aaron gave him an exaggerated show smile and laughed. “No, really. You know I work at my parents’ restaurant, I’m good at this kind of stuff.”
“I thought you did accounts for them? Not the chopping and cooking.”
Aaron shrugged. “I’m doing accounting now because it’s one of the things I can do remotely, and I need to help out somehow. But no, it’s usually messier. Lots of fish. Peeling, slicing, dicing, cleaning, bouncing....” he trailed off to steal a bite of pepper out of Zack’s skillet. “Hey, that’s good.”
“Thank you. Wait. Bouncing?” Zack asked. He was sure he’d heard wrong.
“Yeah. Lots of drunk and rowdy patrons on a summer island.”
“But, you’re....” Zack didn’t know if it was all right to say, but Aaron tiny, at least compared with the size and stature of the bouncers he typically associated with venues and bars.
“Not all bouncers are huge. And I’ve been keeping you on your feet for weeks.” Aaron stole another piece of vegetable out of the skillet. “When I skate I have to fill the entire rink with my ‘presence.’” He licked a bit of sauce off his thumb and then made the air quotes. “Up close and personal, it tends to grab people’s attention. After that I just have to talk them into chilling out and doing what I want.”
“Which you’re good at, I’ve noticed,” Zack said. Aaron did, indeed, seem to have a distinct talent for getting what he wanted.
Without invitation, Aaron started opening cupboards and taking out dishes. “Mmm. Ari’s better at it, though.”
“Who’s Ari?” Zack asked.
“My sister.”
Zack rapidly searched his memory for any conversation they’d had about Aaron’s home or family where he’d mentioned any siblings. He came up blank. “You have a sister?”
“Yeah?” Aaron sounded surprised the question had ever been in doubt.
“Older or younger?” Zack asked, in lieu of saying why have you never mentioned her? It wasn’t that Aaron owed him any information, but Aaron always seemed so open about everything the omission seemed odd.
Aaron was now laying plates on the table. “Older. Technically. By a few minutes.”
Zack stared at him.
Aaron stared back. “We’re twins?” he said, as if Zack were missing something quite obvious. Which apparently he was.
“You have a twin and you never mentioned her to me? I wrote a whole article about you!”
“About my skating. Ari doesn’t skate competitively. And she doesn’t like it when I talk about her to outsiders.”
“Outsiders?” Zack was confused again.
“People not from the islands,” Aaron explained. He returned to the little kitchen corner and started opening drawers.
“Silverware’s to the left of the sink. And why?” Zack asked.
“Because people who aren’t from there don’t know what life there is like.”
“I thought it was a massive vacation destination.”
Aaron found the drawer and started pulling out forks and knives. “It is. But only for a few months of the year. And that’s the main island, they have about fifty families there. Our island just has four families.”
Zack was frozen, mouth open, with a wooden spoon in his hand. It was probably not a good look. But all the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. Six weeks he’d been here, talking to Aaron and learning about his life. Six weeks and he hadn’t known Aaron’s family was all but alone on their own island or that he had a twin. Zack’s journalistic instincts were good, but Aaron had somehow managed to do a complete end run around them.
“Did you wait to tell me this until I’d finished your part of the article?” he asked.
Aaron shook his head. “It never came up.”
But it was an evasion, Zack knew, and he was pretty sure that Aaron knew he knew it.
“Okay.” Zack put the spoon down, wiped his hands on a towel, and turned around to lean back against the counter. “What do I have to do to see the island?” he asked.
Aaron shrugged. “Fly to Ohio and book a ferry ticket like everyone else.”
“No. Not that one. Yours.”
Aaron laughed and tipped his head to the side as if Zack was the biggest fool in the world. And, truth be told, he probably was. “Why, be very, very good, of course.”
***
WHILE THEY ATE, AARON chatted happily about his day and updated Zack on little happenings at the rink. It was a disgusting portrait of domesticity, and Zack wasn’t quite convinced that he wasn’t dreaming. Life with his ex had never exactly been about domestic bliss. Zack hadn’t known he wanted someone to do the pleasant little niceties of home life with and yet, here he was, listening to Aaron with rapt attention.
Aaron nudged his socked toes against Zack’s ankle in the middle of a story about a lesson he’d taught the other day when his student had landed their first single jump. It was a little thing in itself, next door to innocent, but the touch sent a bolt of heat through him.
“You’re used to getting what you want when you want it, aren’t you?” Zack asked, in lieu of focusing on the story.
Aaron scoffed. “If I was used to getting what I wanted when I wanted it, I wouldn’t be trying to get on my first Olympic team; I’d be expecting to get on my second.”
“I wasn’t talking about your career.” Zack wasn’t offended that that was where Aaron’s mind had gone first. He adored Aaron’s drive. Also, Aaron’s foot was still pressed against his, and there was a knowing gleam in his eyes.
Aaron tilted his head from side to side as he thought about it. “Maybe. I don’t feel like I’m particularly demanding or persuasive. It’s all performance. So what that gets me is what other people want to give me. Or what I earn.”
Zack had a lot of questions, but as much as he was fairly sure he’d have Aaron in his bed by the end of the evening, he knew it was too forward to ask any of them directly.
“You mean on the ice?” he asked instead.
Aaron shrugged. “Sure. Or with my family. Or Katie and Brendan. I had to earn my place here as surely as I’ve had to earn my life off the island.”
“Does that feel fucked up?” Zack didn’t want to lean in to Aaron’s self-confessed desire for winning other people’s approval if he had issues about it.
“Nope. I know where I stand with people and I know what is and isn’t under my control. It makes things clear. And...” he added, with a look from under his eyelashes at Zack, “most importantly, I enjoy it.”
***
SOMEHOW THEY MANAGED to finish eating. As soon as they had, Aaron stood and started collecting plates. Zack took the plates out of his hands, set them on the counter, and looped his fingers loosely around Aaron’s wrists.
“Dishes later,” he said against Aaron’s ear. “This, now.”
“Oh, good.” Aaron all but melted against him. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Zack chuckled. “Does that mean you want to skip the awkward makeouts on Marie’s couch and just get right to the main show?”
“If I say yes, does that mean you’ll throw me over your shoulder and drag me off to bed?”
“Yes.” Zack tightened his grip on Aaron’s wrists and watched as his eyes fluttered closed. He took a deep breath, tried to school his features into some sort of calm, then snapped them open.
“Then yes, please,” Aaron said.
Zack obliged. He’d never be strong in the ways Aaron was, but he had height and breadth on Aaron and enough athleticism that it was an easy enough thing to hoist him up in a fireman’s carry.
Aaron yelped briefly.
“You all good?” Zack asked.
“Fantastic,” Aaron said.
Zack grabbed Aaron’s ass—which skating had made perfect —with one palm, and walked him into the bedroom to dump him across his bed. Zack looked at him, sprawled there, breathless and flushed.
“Take your shirt off,” he said quietly.
As Aaron did as he was told, Zack swooped in to grab the shirt once it was over Aaron’s head but before his arms could get free of it.
“I’m tangled,” Aaron said, laughing awkwardly.
“Do you mind?” Zack asked. He didn’t like to think there were tests in sex, but this trick served as one. It had always reliably told him where he could or could not go, although he was pretty sure he’d already clocked Aaron on this.
Aaron, as he expected, shook his head.
Zack let himself take Aaron in for a moment. His body was almost that of a dancer’s, but not quite as lithe or corded. But even just sitting there on Zack’s bed, he had definition and grace and a defiant sort of fearlessness. Zack leaned in to kiss him. Aaron’s lips parted instantly and it was desperately clear how eager he was to go where he was led. Zack twisted the shirt in his hands and hooked it over one of the bedposts so that Aaron was pinned and slouched against it.
“Okay?” he asked Aaron.
“Okay.”
“Say red if you want—”
“I know. And I won’t.”
Zack wasn’t into the type of play that took that type of statement as a challenge, but it was still hot as hell. He ran his nails up and down Aarons sides, to watch how he squirmed with the sensation and to see also how the blood rose to the surface of his pinking skin.
That wasn’t the only thing rising. Aaron’s dick was obviously hard and miserably trapped in his jeans. Zack grabbed his thighs through the thick material and kneaded, his hands slowly drifting towards, but never reaching, where Aaron clearly wanted them.
“I am suffering here,” Aaron breathed out, still with all that lovely laughter.
“Is that a problem?” Zack asked.
“No.”
“Good. Then keep suffering.”
Aaron moaned and dropped his head back against the bedpost. And Zack used the moment—so perfect, so hot—to pull out of his own clothes.
Naked, he stood next to the bed, and waited for Aaron’s eyes to open and focus on his body. He watched as they tracked up and down him, lingering and returning, lingering over and returning to his tattooed arms and his thickening dick.
“See something you like?” Zack asked.
“So much,” Aaron said. “You’re ridiculous, but so much. Are you going to give me any of it?”
“What’s going to make it the most agonizing for you,” Zack asked, “if I don’t let your cock out?”
“Fuck my mouth?” Aaron asked in a small eager voice.
Zack wasn’t going to make him beg today, but he would bet anything that he could make Aaron beg and love every second of it.
He fisted himself in himself in his hand and gave himself several sharp tugs before holding his dick out to Aaron barely an inch from his face.
“If you want it,” he said, “you have to stretch for it.”
Aaron did, leaning forward and stretching his neck out the best he could with his arms still trapped in his shirt and bound to the bedpost.
“That’s it,” Zack cooed as Aaron flicked his tongue over the head of his dick. This was, he knew, going to be amazing.
“That’s it, that’s a good boy,” he said as Aaron got his lips wrapped around the head. “Now let me feed it to you, nice and slow.”
Aaron whined back in his throat and shifted and squirmed on the bed. Zack forced himself to keep his eyes open to see Aaron thrusting up into the air, desperately trying to get friction against his jeans.
“You don’t come until I’m done,” he said.
Aaron, his mouth full, nodded in agreement, and made a small noise of assent.
Zack gripped the back of his head and started to thrust gently.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “Trust me. I don’t want you to think or feel or be anything else right now.”
Aaron moaned and Zack nearly did too as he felt the other man slip under the spell of a moment he was determined to drag out as long as possible.
After Zack came, panting and having to shove a hand over his own mouth to make sure he wasn’t heard in Marie’s house above, he let himself linger in Aaron’s mouth. It was overwhelming, almost too much, but Aaron’s soft whimpers as he tried to hold onto Zack’s dick with his lips while he made shallow circles with his hips on the bed were hard to let go of.
Eventually, Zack let himself slide out of Aaron’s slick mouth. He watched as the man took three sharp, shallow breaths, his lips glistening with what they had done.
“Please,” Aaron said like a prayer, his eyes still closed.
Zack crashed to his knees to get Aaron’s jeans open, his dick popping free.
“Please please please,” Aaron started begging now, eyes pressed shut so tight.
“Can you be quiet?” Zack asked. He doubted this apartment was any type of sound proof.
Aaron shook his head frantically.
“Then can I put my hand over your mouth?” Zack asked.
“Yes,” Aaron said. Zack clamped his hand there. Aaron pressed up into it, as if he liked that confinement as well.
As Zack took Aaron’s cock into his mouth down to the root, he felt the vibrations of Aaron’s cries against his palm. He wanted to keep them forever.
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