Summer Sons(101)
Sam hummed his understanding. He wormed his foot behind Andrew’s calf. Andrew swallowed and cast a glance to the side. Sam drew one knee onto the couch, letting his legs fall open with his thumb on his waistband. The sweatpants clung to an enticing bulge, and he allowed himself to notice. Andrew’s eyes tracked up from that imprint, across the wrinkles of Sam’s shirt and the pebbled bumps of his nipples to the divot of his throat, then at last met his welcoming stare. Caught and catching in turn. Thunder rolled overhead. The close call from the day before, his corpse-puppet hand hanging in the air, flashed through him like lightning. His jaw clenched around the impulse to warn Sam about the haunt, the risk he’d taken laying his hands on Andrew, the risk he’d be taking again if that really was what had kicked off the last, nastiest altercation—
“C’mere,” Sam said, cutting through his turmoil.
Andrew went, wordless. He ended up crouched over Sam in an ungainly hover, sneakers wedged between the couch arm and the cushion. Sam spread his thighs open to brace across Andrew’s, corded-taut hamstrings exerting a sturdy pressure above his knees. His outside heel hooked over Andrew’s calf while his other leg stayed pressed to the couch cushions. Andrew planted a hand on the seatback to support himself.
“I’m bigger than you, dumbass, just get in here.” Sam tugged Andrew close by his shirt collar, mashing their bodies together. The kiss landed off-center, noses bumping. Front teeth clacked. Sam grunted and moved Andrew’s head with a hand on his jaw, licking into his mouth. Andrew twitched with surprised, blazing pleasure. Such simple touches threw him. Sam said, muffled against his lips but undeniably eager, “Yeah, there we go.”
The house creaked with the storm. Andrew rocked in an unsteady rhythm, teased with friction but unsatisfied, fed with biting kisses. His hands gripped the couch while Sam’s nails dug stinging furrows into the gaps of his rib cage. Pain and desire sparked to a warm burn in the cold hollow of his belly, the cave of loss his revenant had dug out for itself filling instead with life. Sam’s hands dropped to his ass for an aggressive groping squeeze at the fat of his cheeks, fingertips pressing at the crease. The shocked flash of heat that bolted through Andrew in response had him choking on a whine. Forget spending the night talking in circles around Troth and the research, getting nowhere, he wanted—
A white flash cracked outside the big windows of the living room. The lamp on the table cut out, plunging the room into a darkness that radiated menace. Andrew froze. Sam paused as well, panting in the quiet against his slack mouth. The band around his ring finger radiated a bitter cold he hadn’t noticed until it contrasted with the fever Sam stoked in him.
“Andrew,” Sam breathed.
Static crackled from the surround-sound system. Sam gripped his waist spasmodically. The porchlight stayed dead. He held his breath. The hissing from the speakers hooked into his ears with the faintest hint of consonance, and a solid spike of pain drove into his head. He reared to a sitting position while static filled the room from end to end. A speaker popped. Sam grabbed his rising left hand and smacked him across the face with the other, as if attempting to wake him from the living nightmare unfolding around them. Andrew yelped, high and afraid.
The front door slammed open, rebounding from the wall it impacted, and the punishing shriek of the speakers cut short. A lamp flicked on to cast its welcoming glow. Riley stood soaked and furious in the doorframe with a bag dangling from his wrist. He bounded across the room, wrenched Andrew’s hand from Sam’s, and pulled the ring off, only to drop it immediately as if it burned. With a mundane clack, the band fell to the floor. Sam took Riley’s hand and turned his palm to the light. A blister marked where he’d touched the platinum. Andrew’s finger was hale and whole, unmarred.
“Where in god’s name did you get that thing,” Riley said, staring at the innocuous ring on the floor. “Can you not tell something is wrong with it? Like, seriously, extremely wrong with it?”
“It was Eddie’s,” Andrew said.
“Of course it was,” Sam said.
He struggled out from under Andrew’s unresisting form, kicking him in the thigh during his escape. As he leapt off of the couch, away from Andrew, he stepped with careful precision over the ring lying between their bodies.
Riley said, “Get me a towel or something.”
Sam disappeared into the kitchen. Riley’s clothes clung to him, water dripping from his flattened hair. The rich brown of his roots made a dual-color line in the dye. He held a hand out for the rag Sam passed him a moment later. The remaining tingles of fear and desire faded in the face of Riley’s intrusion and Sam’s—disappointment, maybe anger, Andrew wasn’t sure.
“Let me handle it,” Andrew said as he swung his legs off the sofa.
“Nah, that’s cool, man,” Riley said with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “Frankly, I don’t think it should be in the same room as you. Seriously, you can’t tell?”
“Just get rid of it,” Sam said.
With great reluctance, Riley crouched and scooped the ring onto the rag, which he knotted into a pouch. Sam plucked it from him like a bag of dog shit. He left the room again and a kitchen drawer shut with a forceful wood-on-wood collision. The storm of his displeasure outdid the rain lashing the windows. Andrew shook his head and massaged his temples, a creeping ache settling into the sockets of his eyes.