Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian

Day 6

Shamrock, Texas

Peter woke up feeling pleasantly sore and with an armful of Caleb. Strands of silky-soft blond hair tickled his nose and a wiry arm was flung across his chest.

“Caleb,” Peter whispered, but the other man didn’t stir. Peter carefully reached to the nightstand for his travel alarm clock and saw that it was only seven. He slid out from under Caleb’s arm. Caleb was still asleep when Peter returned from showering, so he quietly got dressed and slipped out to the office.

“I’d like to make a long-distance phone call,” Peter told the motel manager, and then spared her the trouble of figuring out how much to charge by simply putting a five-dollar bill on the counter. He took his address book out of his pocket and found his Aunt Patty’s number. But if it was seven in Texas, then it was five in California, and he wasn’t calling anyone at five a.m. It was eight in Massachusetts, though, so he called his uncle instead, figuring he could relay the message to his aunt.

His uncle picked up after the second ring.

“Hi, Uncle Tommy, it’s Pete.”

“Peter! Enjoying life on the lam? I got your postcard. Where are you now?”

“I’m in Texas. That’s why I’m calling. Do you think Aunt Patty would be all right with me bringing a friend? The friend I’m traveling with, I mean. I’m not sure he has anywhere to stay.”

“I doubt she’ll mind, but I’ll phone her later on to make sure. I didn’t realize you absconded with a friend.”

“It was a spur of the moment decision.”

“I can’t think of a lot of people I’d choose to spend a week in close quarters with,” Uncle Tommy said, very casually, as if he weren’t fishing for information.

“Your interrogation technique has gone to hell in a handbasket after less than a year away from Washington,” Peter observed. “Wow.”

“Damn it. This is what comes of not being surrounded by suspicion and enmity. Speaking of which, congratulations on your escape, but why California?”

“Well. I didn’t want to go to the Cape and deal with my parents. And California is in the opposite direction.”

“I can’t argue with that logic. And your partner in crime was heading to California for his own reasons?”

“He has a job out there.”

“How long do you plan on staying?”

“I’m sticking around in California,” he said. He didn’t add for a while, or until the convention. “Listen, Uncle Tommy. I’m not going to law school, and I’m not going to campaign with my father.”

“Does he know yet?”

“No. I’ll tell him when he’s in California for the convention.”

“Do you want me to fly out?” Uncle Tommy didn’t even hesitate before asking, and for some reason that just made Peter sad. He had never tried to lean on his parents, because there was no way that would have ended well, and now he wondered what it would have been like to have a parent who actually cared about him. He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You still there?” his uncle asked.

“Yeah,” Peter said, hoping his uncle couldn’t tell that he was a little choked up. “I just—thank you, but I think I’ll be okay telling him on my own. We both know how it’ll go. I’m a disappointment, Lawrence would never do such a thing, what kind of future can I expect to have when I can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum for the family, remember that time I quit the baseball team in tenth grade, I’m driving my mother to drink, Cabots don’t settle for mediocrity, and then he’ll finish up with an itemized list of all the things every member of the family had accomplished by my age.”

“The reason I’m offering to come is because I think you need to hear in person that there’s nothing mediocre about you.” Peter had never heard his uncle sound angry before. “If anyone talked to my kid the way your father talks to you, I’d be in prison.”

“Imagine how bad it would be if he knew about—you know.” There was only so much Peter was willing to say in a motel lobby.

“I don’t need to imagine,” Uncle Tommy said grimly.

When he hung up the phone, he turned toward the door and found Caleb standing there, his eyes wide.

“There you are,” Caleb said, and Peter knew he was nervous because Caleb never made that sort of obvious remark.

“I was going to bring some coffee back with me,” Peter said, because he had to say something. They poured themselves coffee from the carafe in silence, and Caleb fussed over the sugar packets and the little wooden stirrer more than he usually did. When they got outside, Peter brushed the back of his hand against Caleb’s as they walked. “Hey.”

“Good morning,” Caleb said, a little stiffly.

Peter had been prepared for Caleb to be a bit difficult. Last night had been a lot, for both of them, but Peter suspected that a few times Caleb had said more than he meant to, maybe even more than he meant. He had been almost excruciatingly gentle and careful with Peter, both during and afterward. Peter didn’t want to embarrass him by being too much of a sap about it.

“How much of that conversation did you overhear?” Peter asked when they got back to their room.

“I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Caleb said quickly. “I just didn’t want to interrupt, and then I realized what you were talking about and I was frozen. I cannot believe I’m going to have to vote for your father. I’m going to have to go into the voting booth and pull the lever for a man I’d like to run over with a truck.”

Maybe having two people get angry on his behalf in the span of ten minutes was too much for Peter, because he started laughing. “Yeah, same here. My uncle has said that he’ll need to hit the bar on the way to and from the voting booth.”

“The idea that anyone could say those things to you. Mediocre! What an idiot.”

Peter had never heard anyone describe his father as an idiot and was slightly stunned by the notion, so he laughed even harder.

“Oh, I see. You’ve lost your mind,” Caleb said, and Peter kissed him hard until he felt Caleb smile against him.

* * *

“I’ll drive,” Caleb said. “You did most of yesterday, and it’s mostly a straight line so I won’t accidentally take us back to Oklahoma or anything.”

Peter tossed him the keys and Caleb hopped into the driver’s seat. He was adjusting the mirrors when Peter got into the car. He winced as he sat and Caleb felt his entire body flush. They caught one another’s eye, and that only made Caleb flush more deeply.

“I didn’t—” Caleb started, breaking off when he realized how ragged his voice was, and also that he had no idea how to end that sentence.

“I like it,” Peter said, not dropping his gaze.

Caleb heard himself make a shocked noise.

“I can still feel you,” Peter went on.

“Stop,” Caleb managed. “Stop. I—” He reached out blindly, grabbed Peter’s thigh. “If I think about that I won’t be able to drive. I’ll plow straight into a lamppost.” Peter put his hand over Caleb’s, and Caleb turned his hand palm up before he could think better of it.

Caleb rested his forehead against the steering wheel. “You okay?” Peter asked, sounding amused.

Caleb was not okay and did not foresee being okay at any point in the near future. Last night had devastated him, decimated him, blown him to smithereens and it was a miracle he was still breathing. And it wasn’t the sex—well, of course it was the sex. But it was more than that—it was that the sight of Peter pinned beneath him, gasping into the pillow, his hands fisted in the sheets, all his trust in Caleb, had done something to him. He wanted that. He wanted Peter to trust Caleb to make him feel good. Caleb groaned.

“Seriously, Caleb, are you all right?” Peter asked, now sounding concerned.

“It’s not even nine a.m. and I have a hard on,” Caleb said, turning his head so his temple rested on the steering wheel and he could look at Peter. “And unless you want to give me a hand job in a gas station john, I’m going to be stuck with this thing until tonight. There’s no chance of it going away with you sitting there, looking like that.”

“Like what?”

Caleb buried his face in his hands and mumbled. “Like you want me inside you again.” He couldn’t believe he was talking like that in broad daylight. He had never considered himself a prude but he was going to have to reevaluate that.

“I do, though.”

Caleb groaned and dropped his forehead onto the wheel again.

“The motel clerk said the nearest garage where we can get my tire fixed is about three miles up the road,” said Peter. “Let’s get that dealt with and have some breakfast, then drive until we’re ready for lunch. And at that point we can stop for the day.” He was speaking very steadily and surely, and Caleb realized that Peter only spoke that way when he was just a little bit nervous. “It would add an extra day onto our trip. I don’t mind. I’d—well, I’d really like that, actually. I’d add another week onto the trip, another month even. But it’s up to you.”

“Yes,” Caleb said without hesitation. He was going to need to eat nothing but rice and noodles for his first month in Los Angeles and he did not care one bit. “Let’s definitely do that.”

The garage was exactly where Peter said it would be. Things nearly always were, Caleb realized. At first, he assumed this was due to Peter’s ability to ask for and follow directions, and possibly some hocus pocus involving maps, but now he was under the utter conviction that Peter Cabot could bend space and time through sheer will power. He was so good at acting competent and confident that buildings and landmarks simply rearranged themselves according to his needs.

Across the street from the garage was a diner that had PIE in neon letters in the window. They exchanged a look and walked in that direction.

When Peter paid for two slices of peach pie and two cups of coffee and then almost absentmindedly took the forty-five cents Caleb handed him, Caleb realized he was in love.

Or scratch that. He didn’t know if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. He also didn’t care if it was possible to fall in love in under a week. All he knew was that when he looked at Peter, he felt both fond and raw, like he had been turned inside out and was glad to have had it happen.

“The pie’s that good?” Peter asked, looking at Caleb from over the rim of his coffee cup. Without his sunglasses, his eyes were a frankly irresponsible degree of blue. Nothing really needed to be that blue. Caleb found it hard to look away.

Caleb realized his face must have been doing something regrettable. “Good pie!” he said much too loudly, like he was shouting amen in a crowded church. Peter raised his eyebrows and Caleb shoveled a forkful of pie into his mouth to stop himself from saying anything stupid.

Caleb needed to just sit there and eat his pie and stop letting his brain turn to mush. The only reason he was here in the first place, and not back home in Tennessee, was that he was able to shove all his softer feelings off to the side in favor of sheer self-interest, wasn’t it? If he let himself dwell on love and other dangerous things he’d start to think about how much he missed his mama, and then he’d never do anything with his life except pretend to be straight and worry that the tiniest slip would make everyone he loved think he was going to hell. And he couldn’t do that, he had ruled that out years ago, just like he couldn’t listen to the little voice in his heart insisting that it wasn’t such a bad idea to tumble head over heels in love with someone who was definitely going to break his heart.

Except—he knew that Peter didn’t plan on breaking his heart. The heartbreak might even go both ways. But the point was that it was inevitable, because Caleb could not imagine a future in which he and Peter Cabot could carry on the way they had been these past few days. This trip had been a holiday from reality. They were both able to ignore the fact that they came from different worlds and would soon return to different worlds.

“What the hell,” Peter murmured, nudging Caleb’s toe under the table. “Are you okay? You’ve been so weird today.” He bit his lip. “Is it because you’d rather keep driving and not stop for the day after lunch?”

“No!” Caleb said, before he realized that if he had any sense of self-preservation, he would have taken Peter up on this convenient excuse.

“If it’s money—”

“It’s not.”

Peter dropped his voice enough that when he spoke, Caleb had to lean in. “Well, just in case, I want you to know that if I were dating anyone else, I’d offer to pay for things and enjoy being able to do that for them. I know you like splitting expenses evenly, and I’m fine with doing that, obviously. But I’d also like to be able to treat you and do nice things for you. So if you wanted to let me pay for a couple of meals and the motel tonight, that would make me happy. And if you don’t like that idea, that’s fine, and I’ll still be happy.”

Dating? Dating? Caleb decided this had to be a euphemism for fucking. He didn’t know how to respond to any of that, because he was so caught up on the image of Peter dating him and buying him dinner like they were some kind of couple.

It took him a moment to realize that the woman behind the counter was staring at them.

Caleb immediately sat back in his seat. “You probably ought to start being more careful with your money,” he said in a normal volume. “Your father might cut you off, so you ought to stop throwing your money around.”

Peter looked like had been slapped. “I—I’m not throwing it around. What I said was—”

“Shh!” Caleb cut his gaze over to the waitress, hoping Peter would understand.

“Huh?”

Of course he didn’t understand. He wasn’t used to strangers staring at him and suspecting he was queer any more than he was used to saving his money. That was another way this trip was unreal—they had so much privacy. They didn’t need to sneak around or come up with excuses to see one another. Caleb didn’t know if Peter even knew how good they’d had it this past week.

Caleb sighed. “Finish your pie, Peter. I’ll go to the garage and see whether your tire is ready.” The sound of his chair scraping across the linoleum wasn’t loud enough to drown out the small noise of protest Peter made, but Caleb left anyway.

* * *

Albuquerque, New Mexico

“What the hell,” Caleb said when he caught his first sight of the Rocky Mountains, and Peter’s heart leapt with satisfaction at the knowledge that Caleb wasn’t trying to seem nonchalant. He still wasn’t sure what had gone wrong at the pie shop, or what he had done to deserve Caleb’s outburst, but he was ready to chalk it up to Caleb just being a bit prickly. He kind of liked the fact that Caleb was a bit prickly. He tried not to wonder if being raised by Cabots had conditioned him to respond to crossness.

“Pull over,” Caleb said. “Please?”

Peter pulled over.

“I grew up in the mountains, and those are…” Caleb shook his head. “What the hell,” he repeated. “Are we going through them?”

“Well, sort of. Flagstaff is in the mountains, I think, and that’s on our route.”

They bought sandwiches in Albuquerque and ate them on a bench, Caleb occasionally looking over his shoulder at the mountains.

“Let me take your picture,” Peter said.

“Not with a mouthful of pastrami,” Caleb argued. But when he finished his sandwich, he wiped his mouth on the paper napkin and brushed imaginary crumbs off his shirt and announced that he was ready for his close up.

During the last few days of driving with the top down, a constellation of freckles had appeared on the bridge of Caleb’s nose, along with a bit of pinkness. His hair had a few streaks of pale gold among the sandy blond. Compared to how tightly wound he had been on the sidewalk that first day in Cambridge, he looked like the tension had melted off his frame in the sunshine.

Peter took three pictures and then another two for good measure. He hadn’t even come close to using up the whole roll of film yet, and instead of taking pictures of the sights, he had only taken pictures of Caleb. He’d get them developed in Los Angeles, and he hoped they wouldn’t be the only trace of Caleb he’d have left.

“Do you want us to take a picture with both of you in it?” asked a stranger.

Peter turned toward the voice. There were a pair of men only a little older than Peter and Caleb, one in a suit and the other in his shirt sleeves. One had brown skin, and the other was white, and if it hadn’t been for that detail, Peter might have thought they were brothers because of the way they stood. Their arms almost touched—almost, but not quite.

“Sure,” he said, and showed them how to work the camera.

He sat beside Caleb on the bench, a good six inches between them, and Caleb didn’t make any move to come closer. It was safe, just two friends visiting a new city, sitting on a park bench. He heard the shutter go off.

The stranger took another picture, and then the man with him said, “Honestly, Bill, your thumb is going to be in all of them, let me,” and he took the camera. “Scoot closer, boys,” he said, and something about his tone made Peter turn toward Caleb, who was already looking at him, a question in his eyes.

When Peter held his arm out, Caleb ducked right under it. His head wasn’t quite on Peter’s shoulder, but it was close.

The man took a handful of photos in quick succession before handing the camera back to Peter. Both Peter and Caleb thanked them profusely, and the man who was apparently named Bill shot them a wink.

“They were together,” Peter said after the men left. “Right?”

Caleb nodded. He had wriggled out from under Peter’s arm and put a bit of space between them as soon as the man finished taking pictures. “That was why they offered. They thought we were a couple and that we would want a photo of our vacation.”

They thought we were a couple.The words rang in Peter’s mind, not because he objected to the idea, but because he wished it were true. And those men had been a couple, just as much as the honeymooners Peter had seen at the motel vending machine the other day. Obviously, he knew that men could partner up together; he had seen his uncle and that math teacher he all but lived with, but they were old. Those men today had been young, maybe out on a date, having fun. Peter thought of all the girls he had taken out, and how those dates might have felt if he had been with someone he liked the way he liked Caleb. His feelings about Caleb seemed to pivot around, aligning with something he hadn’t ever thought he’d get to have.

“We weren’t being obvious,” Caleb went on, a touch of defensiveness in his voice. “I’m always careful. They were just being nice.”

“I know. I didn’t think we were being obvious.” They were just to men eating lunch on a bench, right? Peter was pretty sure nobody could tell he was queer by looking at him—otherwise, he would surely have heard about it from his father. Caleb, however, was a different story—in public he acted straight, but he cast off those mannerisms as soon as he was behind closed doors, the same way he might take off his coat or his shoes.

He remembered what Caleb had said at Dairy Queen the other night about not wanting to be alone in a small town. Caleb had been afraid, then. And he probably was afraid a lot of the time. It was second nature for him to be afraid, but he called it being careful.

“If you catch me not being careful, let me know,” Peter said.

Caleb made a noise that Peter couldn’t interpret. “Jesus. Every time I’m nearly mad at you, you have to go and ruin it by being all…” He gestured vaguely in the air. “Good,” he concluded disgustedly.

“I ruin your attempt to be mad at me by…being good?”

“Yes, exactly, glad we understand one another.”

Peter figured he wasn’t going to make sense of that any time soon, so he leaned against the back of the bench and watched a couple of sparrows quarrel over the crust of his sandwich. “Sometimes I wish I knew who was queer, you know?” he mused a few minutes later. “I wish I knew who was safe. The only reason I could tell those two were a couple was that they were sort of almost touching in the same exact way that we were.”

Caleb didn’t say anything, so Peter folded the brown paper his sandwich had been wrapped in into a neat square.

Peter cleared his throat and went on. “I lived with my housemate for a full year before either of us said anything, and then it was only because I walked in on him kissing another man.”

He heard Caleb’s sharply indrawn breath. “Your housemate wasn’t Ernie Walsh, was he?”

“That’s him,” Peter said.

“But I know Ernie. I—he’s one of my best friends.”

“He’s one of my best friends too.”

“How in hell did we never meet?”

“We did meet, though. We took four classes together. I sat in the row behind you in one of them. We hardly needed Walsh to introduce us.”

“Why didn’t he, though?”

“Because I knew you didn’t like me very much, so I told Walsh to let it go.”

“You did what?” Caleb gasped. “I didn’t dislike you!”

Peter laughed and turned to look at Caleb’s outraged face. “Yes you did. You glared at me whenever we made eye contact. You disliked me straight through Chicago.”

“But I wouldn’t have if I had known you were Ernie’s friend.”

“That’s just it, though. I don’t want people to like me for who my friends are, any more than I want people to like me for who my family is.”

“But Ernie liking you is a sign of good character! It’s an endorsement!”

“Are you cross that I didn’t tell you about Walsh?” Peter asked, confused by the turn this conversation was taking.

“I’m upset that we could have met over three years ago! We could’ve—” He broke off, his eyes widening as he apparently realized where his sentence was going.

“We could’ve what?” Peter asked quietly.

“We could have been friends.”

“Is that all?”

“You know it isn’t. It’s unfair that we maybe could have done this years ago and instead we only have two more days. And I realize this is all grossly presumptuous on my part but I’m too angry to think straight.”

Peter wished they were somewhere private so he could take Caleb’s hand or kiss him and wouldn’t have to only rely on whatever words he could conjure up with his heart racing the way it was. “Don’t you think that I would have had Ernie introduce us if I knew it would end up like this?” he asked softly. “I would have begged him to. This past week has been good, right?”

Caleb made a strangled sounding noise.

“You know we’re both going to be in the same city, right?” Peter went on. “There’s no reason why we can’t still see one another.”

Caleb’s face was tomato red now, and Peter didn’t know if he was embarrassed because he wanted the same things that Peter did, or because he didn’t.

“Say something, will you?” Peter whispered.

“Say something? I’ve said too much. I can’t even look at you. I’m writing Ernie the most scathing letter,” Caleb said. “It will make him cry.”

“It’ll do him good.” Peter bumped his shoulder into Caleb’s. “We can see one another in California,” he repeated.

“We have two days left. Can we just enjoy one another’s company? I really don’t want to have to explain to you why I don’t relish the prospect of working my ass off at a job that’s really important to me while attempting to—whatever this is—with someone who may or may not stick around and whose family may swoop in at any minute to take him away.”

Peter wanted to argue that he could stay in California for as long as he pleased, but that didn’t really go to the heart of Caleb’s objection. It had been all of six days since Peter had made a very spur of the moment decision to go to Los Angeles. He couldn’t blame Caleb for thinking he might make another, equally spur of the moment decision to go somewhere else.

And the truth was that he didn’t know what he was doing. He felt horribly adrift knowing that he couldn’t fill his days and weeks and possibly the rest of his life by doing what his family wanted. He didn’t know what he was going to do instead. He was killing time, and he understood that Caleb might not want to feel like Peter was only with him for lack of anything better to do.

“Okay,” Peter said.

“Okay what?”

“Let’s make the most of the next two days.”

* * *

Gallup, New Mexico

Stopping at the first motel they saw after lunch had seemed like a perfectly excellent idea that morning when Caleb had only been thinking with his dick, but since then they had said too much—he had said too much—and now neither of them could pretend that this was just fun. It all felt premeditated and awkward, with the weight of everything they had said and hinted at hanging over them.

So Caleb kept driving through a landscape that he only knew from Hollywood Westerns, past rocks that looked like gods or aliens had dropped them there, with those spooky mountains hanging in the distance. They drove for nearly two hours, only stopping after they crossed into the Navajo Nation.

When, finally, the door swung shut behind them and they were alone in a slightly musty-smelling room, the bright desert sun shut out by heavy curtains, the only sound their shoes on the worn carpet and the clunk of luggage dropping to the floor, Caleb felt himself blush. He didn’t know what was expected of him, what kind of sex he was supposed to have now. He had a vague idea that after people had shown their hands and feelings were on the table, sex was supposed to be…meaningful or tender or something, and Caleb was about ninety percent sure he’d black out from sheer terror if he tried either.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announced, thinking it would at least give him time to collect himself. But he had the horrible suspicion that he’d never be able to collect himself again, at least where Peter Cabot was concerned. He had all but shoved his heart at the man, and the stupidest part was that he didn’t even regret it. Not yet, at least. He shut the bathroom door firmly behind him.

But then he thought about Peter waiting alone in the bedroom and he felt like an asshole, so he rushed through his shower, wrapped a towel around his waist, and left the bathroom while still dripping water all over the floor like some kind of idiot who didn’t understand how towels worked.

Peter was reading in bed, wearing slacks and his undershirt, one arm behind his head, showing off his biceps in a way that was frankly pornographic and made Caleb wonder what would happen if he stole all of Peter’s shirts.

“Did you know,” Peter started, his eyes still on his book, and Caleb prepared himself for trivia on D-Day, labor unions, or Ulysses S. Grant, depending on which book he was reading at that moment, “that Field Marshal Rommel…” He broke off when he looked up and saw Caleb, presumably because he wasn’t used to the sight of grown men who couldn’t operate towels. He put the book face down on the nightstand and looked Caleb up and down, appreciative and hungry. “You’re wet,” he said. “Come here.”

Caleb went. Peter had taken the bedspread off this bed and thrown it onto the bed they weren’t using, so when Caleb knelt on the mattress, it was the thin white motel sheet that he dripped on.

“Can I dry you off?” Peter asked, as if he had longed for nothing more in his life, as if having to deal with a dripping idiot was the highlight of his day.

Caleb let Peter take the towel and run it over his wet hair, then carefully dab at his face and neck. Peter was kneeling before him now, frowning a little, like it was really important to figure out the best way to go about this operation, like he had read about extensive research being done in the field of drying off colossal morons an..d was now about to put the theory into practice. He ran the towel down one of Caleb’s arms, then the other, then dragged it down his chest with painstaking slowness, managing to go even slower when he passed Caleb’s navel and got near Caleb’s already-hard dick. Then he repeated the process in reverse. Caleb shuddered, then groaned when Peter replaced the towel with his lips, kissing a slow line from collarbone to sternum and then across to press his wet mouth to Caleb’s nipple. Peter had a way of kissing body parts that Caleb had never given two seconds of thought to—collarbone, navel, a spot behind his ear—making Caleb think everything he knew about the human body was wrong.

“Lie down so I can dry your back,” Peter said, guiding him down to the pillow. Caleb wasn’t sure what to expect, but Peter just dried him off, occasionally pausing to kiss or stroke here or there. Sometimes he dug his thumbs into a muscle in Caleb’s shoulders or back and rubbed intense little circles until Caleb found himself making mortifying noises.

When Caleb was satisfactorily dry, Peter nudged him to roll over, and they lay side by side, facing one another. Caleb felt boneless, like whatever he relied on to hold himself upright had turned to mush under Peter’s hands.

“Hey,” Peter said, sounding a bit awkward, as if whatever crap Caleb had been dealing with in the shower had just caught up to him, and Caleb couldn’t tolerate that. He inched forward and brushed their lips together. Peter kissed back, almost shy about it, as if after everything they had said and not said, he too felt like they were doing something new.

But it wasn’t new, not really. Just because they had aired some of their horrible feelings today didn’t mean they hadn’t been there yesterday. And Caleb had known it—he knew what he felt about Peter, and Peter was hardly making a secret of what he felt about Caleb. Saying it out loud gave the thing a life of its own, but it didn’t change anything.

“You okay?” Peter asked.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Right, but other than that,” Peter said, and Caleb could not let that stand. Trying and failing to bite back a laugh, he pinned Peter’s disgustingly impressive shoulders to the mattress and straddled him. Then Peter, who it turned out had learned something in his family of crooks and grifters after all, dug a finger into Caleb’s ribcage in a spot that had him giggling and also yelping at the same time.

“Not fair,” Caleb panted when Peter showed no signs of letting up.

“Oh, did you expect me to be fair? Poor you.” Peter canted his hips up in a way that made Caleb groan, because his dick had not lost interest in the proceedings despite the emotional crisis and tickle fight.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

Peter responded by flipping Caleb onto his back in one impressively economical move. Then he produced a jar of Vaseline from under the pillow, which was some excellent planning, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Yes,” Caleb said too quickly. “Yes to whatever you’re asking.” And wasn’t that a strange feeling, being able to put himself in someone else’s hands without worrying about constantly needing to reassert his limits. He had already told Peter what he wanted and didn’t want, and he didn’t have a shadow of a doubt that Peter would respect that.

Peter used his knee to knock Caleb’s thighs apart and Caleb let out a horrifying whimper. It turned out he liked being manhandled if the person doing it was Peter, and that was a revelation he’d maybe turn over a couple of thousand times when his brain got back in the business of thinking. Right now all he could do was watch Peter arrange himself between Caleb’s bent knees, watch him lick his lips and take the head of Caleb’s cock in his mouth.

This was the second time Peter had sucked him off and he wasn’t any kind of expert, but he was sweet as hell. He went about it thoughtfully, curiously, as if paying close attention to what made Caleb react. Actually, there was no as if about it—that was exactly what Peter was doing. He was studying Caleb like a book. And Caleb wished him well, because all he was doing was babbling into the pillow he held over his head, and if Peter could make sense of any of that, good for him.

Caleb was made of nothing but want and a vague anxiety he couldn’t name, and those two things were held together with something soft that he didn’t want to think about. He had just enough time to be furious with himself, and his brain, and definitely his heart.

“Get rid of that pillow,” Peter said, his mouth tragically not on Caleb’s dick anymore. “I want to hear you.”

“Neighbors,” Caleb breathed, but tossed the pillow aside because he’d have done whatever Peter asked at that moment, and possibly any moment. When Peter bent his head again, Caleb buried his free hand in Peter’s hair. And when Peter worked a slick finger into him, Caleb nearly cried out, but instead resorted to a string of whispered nonsense interspersed with Peter’s name.

Peter’s mouth was hot and wet and his hands were firm and gentle. He didn’t try to open Caleb up so much as he just stroked him, almost carefully, almost fucking tenderly, the bastard. Caleb wished he had never found out that he liked being treated like this, liked being treated like something precious and delicate. It wasn’t fair that Peter was going to ruin him for other men. It wasn’t fair that he was too close to make this last.

“Come up here,” Caleb gasped, and Peter was already shucking the rest of his clothes. “With me.” And somehow Peter knew that this meant he wanted Peter to grab them both in one big fist, wanted Peter to cover him, wanted to feel Peter moving above him. When he came it was almost painful, and he had to bite down on Peter’s shoulder to keep from crying out.

When Peter came a moment later, it was with a sigh, his face buried in Caleb’s shoulder.

The room was silent except for the sound of their breathing, and Caleb was again assailed by the conviction that this mattered, that he had to say something, something important and profound, but also that he definitely shouldn’t say anything at all because this was all a terrible doomed disaster of an idea.

Caleb brought a hand up to Peter’s face, tracing that sharp cheekbone with his thumb, running his fingertips over the stubble on Peter’s jaw, admiring the abject ruin of Peter’s hair. “I,” he began, hoping the right words would materialize on his tongue. They didn’t. “Peter,” he tried again.

The moment hung between them, and Caleb didn’t know how they were going to get out of it without making things a whole lot worse. Peter caught Caleb’s hand and kissed his palm, and Caleb realized he was holding his breath.

But Peter huffed out a laugh and rolled onto his side, a grin on his face. “Want to go to the drive-in?”

* * *

It was occurring to Peter that maybe a movie about a lunatic who stabbed visitors in motel room showers was not the best choice for two people who had a couple of motel room showers in their immediate future.

“I regret everything that brought me to this point,” Caleb said, clinging to the bucket of popcorn as if would save him from knife-wielding maniacs. “I’m not going back into our room until you’ve checked the place for murderers.”

“That won’t do you any good,” Peter said, his mouth full of popcorn. “He has a key and sneaks up on you.”

“Oh my God, you couldn’t have said something reassuring?”

“Hey, you sent me in to get murdered while you waited outside.” Peter held out his hand, his palm full of those chocolates that were coated in white candies that always got stuck in your teeth. Caleb loosened his hold on the popcorn bucket in order to take a few candies, but then immediately returned his hand to its death grip on the cardboard. He was scared out of his wits by the movie and Peter probably shouldn’t think it was this adorable.

“Come here,” Peter said, patting the bench between them.

“Uh,” Caleb said, looking side to side. “We’re very much in public.”

“I’m asking you to scoot over, not to perform lewd acts.”

“Same difference,” Caleb said. “You’ve got to be more careful.”

“All right,” Peter said. He didn’t know how to be queer in public; he didn’t know where exactly the line was drawn between how men acted when they were friends and when they were lovers, because this wasn’t something that even in his most optimistic dreams he thought he’d have the luxury of worrying about. He needed to get in the habit of ignoring the fact that every cell in his body seemed to reach for Caleb, he needed to get used to denying the urge to touch him, to be near him. He needed to put those feelings safely away, erect a fortress around them, protect them.

He could do that, though. He could make that a part of who he was, of this life that was starting to come into view through the dust of the desert and the shimmering heat. Again, he had the sense of heading towards something, something that mattered, rather than merely running away from a life he couldn’t stand anymore.

“I don’t want to be the guy who got you arrested,” Caleb said.

“What do you want to be?” Peter asked, not expecting an answer. Whenever they got within twenty yards of the topic of what they were to one another, Caleb got all angry and bashful and tongue tied, and if he had any idea how transparent he was being he’d probably die on the spot. Peter loved it—loved him, if it came to that. It was definitely too soon to even be thinking things like that, but after a lifetime of throwing away love and affection, maybe he had a surplus, and Caleb was welcome to it.

Now Caleb shot Peter a murderous look as if he knew exactly what Peter was thinking, and pointedly returned his attention to the movie screen. Peter laughed mercilessly and poured out more candies for him.

Back at the motel, all of Caleb’s restraint disappeared as soon as the door shut behind them. He pushed Peter against the wall. He seemed to have developed a fondness for pushing Peter into things and then kissing him, and Peter at the same time had developed a fondness for getting pushed against things. It seemed amazing, a lucky coincidence of historic proportions, that they fell on opposite sides of the pusher/pushee divide. He loved the feeling that he couldn’t escape from Caleb’s touch, from his hot, wet mouth, from the filthy thrust of his hips or the weight of his body pinning him to the wall.

“I want you to fuck me,” Peter breathed. “It was so good. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Peter,” Caleb said, sounding agonized. “We can’t. It’s—not yet. I’ll hurt you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

“You can do whatever you want to me and I think I’d like it,” Peter said, feeling drunk on the mortifying truth of it.

Caleb looked at him, searching and desperate, and for a moment Peter worried he had said too much, had been too needy and embarrassing, but then Caleb swallowed. “I know,” he said, low and rough, and he kissed Peter again.

It was a shambles getting into the shower, neither one wanting to let go of the other for long enough to do things like untie shoes and remove pants, but they managed it. When the water was hot enough, Peter stepped back so Caleb could get the bulk of the meager spray. Caleb made a distressed sound and shoved Peter under the warm water, pressing up hard against his chest and kissing him.

Peter let Caleb wash him, obediently holding up one arm and then the other as Caleb lathered his hands with the bar of soap and ran them over Peter’s body. He let Caleb maneuver him so he had his hands braced against the cold tile wall, and even though he knew it was coming, it was still a shock to feel Caleb’s soapy fingers between his ass cheeks, embarrassing and arousing all at once.

Without realizing he was doing it, Peter hissed at the burn of soap on skin that was still sore and raw from yesterday. Caleb murmured soothing sounds. “Let me get you clean for me,” Caleb whispered, and Peter had to press his hot face against the cool tiles.

At some point, Caleb must have turned the shower off, because Peter was being wrapped in a towel, was being kissed by Caleb and steered toward the bed.

“Come on,” he said, tugging Peter by the arm toward the bed until they were lying side by side. “Come on.”

In the shower, some of Peter’s urgency had dampened, because he knew they would make this good for one another, and that all he had to do was wait. “What do you want? How do you want me?” he asked, hoping Caleb could hear tell me what to do.

And then Caleb was gently pushing Peter onto his stomach, messily kissing the back of his neck. He began mouthing along the top of Peter’s spine, circling his tongue around each vertebra. He kissed his way down Peter’s spine, gentle open-mouthed kisses, and when he reached Peter’s lower back it took Peter a minute to realize that he didn’t mean to stop.

“Can I?”

“Yes,” Peter choked out, both hands clutching the pillow beneath his face. When Caleb’s hands shifted to hold him open, Peter fought the urge to squirm in embarrassment. When he felt Caleb’s breath hot against him, he thought he had never been so mortified in his life, but he was rock hard, and he wanted this. The idea that embarrassment and arousal could overlap like this, could even fuel one another, was new and terrifying and wonderful.

But then came the warm, yielding wetness of Caleb’s tongue, and Peter was lost. Caleb was careful at first, but his touches got more insistent, more intense, until he was licking inside Peter. When he worked a finger inside along with his tongue, Peter realized he was sobbing into the pillow, babbling, begging, saying Caleb’s name.

When Caleb pushed Peter’s hips up, Peter went easily, like he was only there for Caleb to move around. When he felt Caleb’s fingers dig into his hips and realized this was to stop him from pushing back against Caleb’s face, a jolt of embarrassment burned through his body, with a hot thrill of pleasure in its wake. He couldn’t believe that he was letting Caleb see him like this—needy and desperate and vulnerable. It was the opposite of everything he had always tried so hard to be, and Caleb liked him this way, judging by the sounds he was making.

When his pleasure crested, he felt his orgasm everywhere from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. When he opened his eyes, Caleb wasn’t there, but the light was on in the bathroom. Peter thought he ought to join him. He wanted to get to his knees, do whatever Caleb needed to feel good. But he was boneless, and getting out of bed was more than he could ask of his body.

“Hey,” Caleb said when he returned from the bathroom, standing at the side of the bed. “Roll over.”

Peter rolled over, and let Caleb clean him off with a warm washcloth. Then Caleb took away the towel that he must have shoved beneath Peter’s hips at some point. Peter took his hand and lazily tugged him down for a kiss, and he tasted like toothpaste.

“Your turn,” Peter said when Caleb lay beside him.

“No, I, um. I jerked myself off,” Caleb said. “When I was, you know.”

“Really?”

“The sounds you were making,” Caleb said, pushing the hair off Peter’s forehead. “Jesus.”

Peter felt himself blush, and instinctively turned his face into the pillow, but Caleb stopped him with a kiss.