Peter Cabot Gets Lost by Cat Sebastian
Day 7
Gallup, New Mexico to Flagstaff, Arizona
There were worse ways to be woken up than by insistent kisses and the aroma of fresh coffee, even if Caleb might have preferred this all to happen sometime after dawn.
“Do you want to see an enormous crater?” Peter whispered in his ear.
“Um, not really?”
“It was made by a meteor! And you can go right up to the edge. We can skip it, though, and go straight through to Flagstaff.”
At this point Caleb realized two things. One, that Peter really wanted to see this crater. And two, that Peter would pretend not to mind missing this crater if Caleb wasn’t fully on board.
“I love craters,” Caleb said, yawning. “I demand to see any and all craters along our route.” He opened his eyes and saw Peter grinning at him. Caleb would have happily gone to see five dozen stupid craters if it put a smile like that on Peter’s face. Fortified by a few sips of coffee, he realized that it wasn’t still dark out after all—Peter had only drawn the curtains and let Caleb sleep late, undisturbed by the bright desert sunlight.
There was probably a lesson there about give and take, about cooperation and partnership and shared burdens and a number of other important things that Caleb had very strenuously avoided thinking about these past few days.
At the drive-in, Peter had asked him what he wanted this to be, but Caleb hadn’t had an answer then. Now he knew that he didn’t want Peter to be the person who broke Caleb’s heart, and he didn’t want to be the person who broke Peter’s heart either. He wanted to be able to look back on this week as time spent with a person who was unexpectedly wonderful, as time learning what it meant to have a lover who respected him and was generous with his affection. More than anything, he wanted to look back on this time as a happy memory, not a sad story.
He could see perfectly well how it would all go wrong if Caleb wasn’t careful. Peter would stay in Los Angeles for a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months, but eventually he’d leave. The Cabots were all in Massachusetts, and even if Peter didn’t care much for them, they were his family. Caleb knew better than most how hard it was to walk away from family. And Peter’s father was running for president—of course Peter would feel like he needed to be a part of that. He was fundamentally generous and kind, and if one of his less loathsome family members asked for his help, he’d do it.
Caleb needed to build a new life for himself—a life with a job he cared about, the possibility of a community he could be open in, and a sense of permanence. That was something he missed about home, and he wanted it back. He wanted to know that there were people and a place that he belonged to, even if he had to work hard to find that place. There was no room there to get attached to a person who was going to leave.
A niggling voice told him that it was too late for Caleb to start worrying about getting attached to Peter, and that Caleb’s stupid heart had been a goner since sometime around the fucking Chicken Basket.
But Peter was taking his shirt off—nope, Peter was taking all his clothes off—and climbing back into bed, and all Caleb’s worries evaporated in the heat of plain want.
A few hours later, the sun was high in the sky and Caleb was staring into a crater outside Winslow, Arizona.
Four years after leaving Tennessee, Caleb had mostly stopped worrying about people thinking he was some kind of hick. He had worked hard to replace his accent with something a little more generic, he made sure he wore the same kind of clothing that everybody else did, and he never gawked or goggled.
But he was definitely gawking now. So was Peter, to be fair. Actually, everybody here was gawking a little. Caleb used Peter’s camera to take a picture of him smiling goofily in front of the crater, and Peter proceeded to take what Caleb could only hope was a slightly more dignified picture of himself.
“It looks like it ought to be a movie set, with alien robot monsters crawling up the sides,” Caleb said. He knew he sounded like a hillbilly, and he knew his accent had come back in force. Peter didn’t appear to be bothered by any of this. He kept shooting Caleb looks that were painfully fond.
There was nothing to do at Meteor Crater other than look at the crater, read signage about meteors, and resist the urge to buy handfuls of rocks that seemed to have nothing to do with either meteors or this crater. Caleb bought a postcard and a stamp, and while Peter admired the crater some more, Caleb addressed the card to his sister. “The crater is even more bizarre in person,” he wrote. “Give Mama my love and tell her I’ll call when I get to Los Angeles.”
He had written a few similarly bland postcards home during the past week, and each time it felt increasingly strange, as if the more the landscape changed, the less connection he had to home. New England at least felt like the same planet as Tennessee: they both had gentle mountains and leafy trees and they looked the way he expected the world to look. The striated red rock formations they passed on the road and the sharp mountains that filled the horizon all felt startling and new, and it was increasingly difficult to believe that Judy and his mother and Hickory Creek even existed anymore. It was hard to believe that anything was quite real.
But then Peter came up to him and started cheerfully nattering about fossils, and that sense of unreality blew away like so much dust. Peter was real and solid and they were doing this together, leaving behind the things that hurt them and reaching for something strange and new.
They had a long lunch and spent the afternoon walking around Flagstaff, Caleb slightly drunk on beer, too much ice cream, and something he suspected was contentment. They had utterly abandoned all pretense of being in a hurry to get to Los Angeles.
In one of the souvenir shops that dotted the main street, Caleb saw a rack of brochures. Similar displays had been in every motel, gas station, and diner they had stopped at, and until today, Caleb hadn’t paid much attention to them. This trip was supposed to be a means to get from point A to point B, not a sightseeing jaunt. But it had stopped being a simple trip a while ago.
“Peter,” Caleb said carefully, taking one of the brochures from the rack and holding it out to Peter, “have you ever been—I mean, if you’re so keen on giant holes in the ground, you probably wouldn’t hate it, and it’s only an hour and a half away.”
Peter took the pamphlet and grinned. “Are you offering to take me to the Grand Canyon?”
Caleb really couldn’t deny it.
When they got back into the car, the sun was beginning to set and the air was chilly, so they put the roof up. Peter turned the car north, leaving Route 66 for the first time in days. When they reached the highway it was dark, and Caleb slid over to the middle seat and rested his head on Peter’s shoulder. He let his eyes shut, drifting off to sleep with the movement of the car beneath him and the sound of an old song on the radio, Peter a solid and warm presence against his side.
* * *Grand Canyon, Arizona
Only after passing three motels with bright NO VACANCY signs did Peter begin to wonder if the Grand Canyon in the summer was a place where a person ought to make reservations ahead of time. After three more motels, he started to worry. He pulled into a parking lot so he could worry some more without also worrying about car crashes.
“Everywhere seems to be full,” Peter explained to Caleb, who at that point was rotating the map in his lap, like he might finally be able to make sense of it if only he turned it so all the words were upside down.
“Huh,” Caleb said, seeming significantly less concerned than he ought to be.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Peter admitted. Because of course he didn’t know what to do. He ought to be used to this by now.
“Wait. Hold on.” Caleb dug his hand into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper, which he smoothed out on the bench between them. “Some motels were listed on the back of the brochure.” He tilted the paper up to catch the light from a neon sign. “And there are phone numbers, so all we need is a pay phone, which—” He peered out the window “—is right there. Do you want to call or should I?”
Peter should have thought of that. He should have thought of all that. “I’ll call. Do you want to go into that store and buy some soda and chips?”
Dropping dime after dime into the slot, Peter called all the motels listed on the brochure, most of which weren’t motels at all, but proper hotels that charged proper hotel prices. As far as he could find out, all the less expensive options were booked, and the only place that had vacancies for tonight was about four times the price of anyplace they had stayed previously. But he wasn’t spending the night in the car, and he sure as hell wasn’t letting Caleb spend the night in the car, so he booked a room.
“I’m sorry,” he said when he got back in the car. “I fucked up. I should have called ahead from Flagstaff, but everything’s booked, and the only room I could get was—not cheap.” He didn’t even want to say out loud how much it was going to cost.
Caleb looked at him, his face alternately lit green and yellow from the flashing sign. “First of all, it was my idea to come here, so I should have thought ahead too. Second, if we really can’t find anywhere to stay, we can head back to Flagstaff. We passed plenty of motels down there, and it’s not so late yet.”
Everything Caleb said was true and reasonable and Peter was absolutely going to ignore it and instead continue to feel like shit. “Okay, is that what you want to do?” he asked. “Head back toward Flagstaff?”
“Not really,” Caleb said. “When you said this motel was expensive, how bad are we talking?”
Peter swallowed. Caleb hadn’t asked for an exact dollar figure, so Peter wasn’t going to give him one. “Less than I’d pay for a hotel in New York. But…enough so that it would need to be my treat,” he said firmly. “It’s right on the south rim, so it’s not like I’d be throwing away money for no good reason. And it’s just a cabin, not anything fancy. It’s the location that you’re paying for.”
Caleb was silent for a long minute. “All right,” he said finally.
“All right?”
“Let’s go to this cabin.”
“You’re not going to fight about paying half?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No! I want—I want to see the Grand Canyon, and I want to treat you, if you’ll let me.”
“Okay,” Caleb said.
“Okay,” Peter agreed, gripping the wheel.
“Budge over,” Caleb said, getting out of the car and walking around to the driver’s side window. “It’s my turn to drive.”
This, Peter figured, was Caleb’s way of telling him that he was in no fit state to be driving anywhere, which was no more than the truth, so Peter slid across the bench to the passenger side.
The hotel was actually a cluster of log cabins, some housing multiple families and some free-standing. Theirs was one of the free-standing ones, consisting of a small bedroom and an even smaller living room.
“It looks like Hollywood’s idea of the house I grew up in,” Caleb said, flopping onto the bed. “Peter, we have two entire rooms to ourselves. Quick, go into the other room and say something.”
Instead Peter crawled onto the bed beside Caleb and collapsed. “Sorry again,” he mumbled.
Caleb propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “Since when did you become the one who worries about money?”
“I’m not worried about the money. It’s the principle of the thing. I shouldn’t have put you in a position where you pretty much had to let me pay for you. I know you hate it, and I’m sorry.”
“I don’t really have a problem with friends spending money how they want,” Caleb said. “Ernie used to like to see these boring double features, but he didn’t want to go alone, so he’d buy two tickets and force one on me. It’s the same idea. I don’t like…largesse. I don’t like the idea of someone picking up the tab because I can’t afford something. But if a friend wants to do something with me, that’s a little different. I don’t really like it, but I can get over it.”
Peter was an idiot. Of course it would be different now that they were friends. He groaned and buried his face in the pillow.
“What are you beating yourself up for now?” Caleb asked. “Just give me the whole list and let’s get it over with.”
“I’m sorry that I’m being like this,” he mumbled into the pillow.
“Like what? A human being? Or a human being who has the idea that he’s supposed to read minds and predict the future and never make mistakes? This is the flat tire incident all over again, isn’t it?”
Peter cringed inwardly, remembering it. “Pretty much, yeah.”
He felt a hand on his head, combing through his hair. “If I remind you that you’re allowed to be imperfect, will that help?”
“Probably not.”
“Do you want to hear it anyway?”
“Sure, why not.”
“You’re allowed to be imperfect. Anybody who expects perfection secretly likes being disappointed in people. You’re good enough exactly the way you are. Everything else is a lie.” Caleb’s hand didn’t still the whole time he spoke. “When I nearly crashed your car in Indiana—”
“You didn’t nearly crash it.”
“—you were so good to me. I think you’re like that with everyone, aren’t you? Why can’t you be just as generous with yourself?”
Peter rolled over and looked up at Caleb. “I’m beginning to think you’re a bit biased when it comes to me.” He thought Caleb would give him one of those rare blushes or go into one of his snits.
Instead his jaw set into something almost fierce. “Good. We all need people in our corners, and somehow, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, the people in your corner are horrible and I want to hit them with a pipe.”
Peter was pretty sure there was nothing attractive about him at that moment, but he found himself being kissed soundly, Caleb simultaneously pressing him into the mattress and unbuttoning both their shirts.
“This all right?” he murmured into Peter’s neck.
“You get turned on by weird things,” Peter said.
“No, I’m just crazy about you,” Caleb said, and then everything about him went still. In slow motion, he turned his head to look at Peter, his eyes wide, his expression stricken.
“I’m crazy about you too,” Peter said. “I mean, obviously.”
Caleb made a pained, aggrieved sound and kissed him again, this time with less finesse and his fingers digging into Peter’s shoulders.
Christ, Peter liked this, Caleb tugging his clothes off with swift, impatient movements, hurried and ungentle, almost proprietary. It felt—it felt almost as if his body was Caleb’s to do with as he pleased, and the thought made him shiver.
“Let me,” Peter gasped when Caleb knelt above him, his legs straddling Peter’s hips. “Come closer.” He gripped Caleb’s cock in his fist and took the head into his mouth, giving it a long, slow suck until he felt Caleb’s hands come to settle on his head. Then he tried to slide his mouth down to meet his fist, the way Caleb had done to him. Whenever he got close, he started to gag and his eyes watered, but it didn’t feel bad—instead he thought about the stretch of his lips, the fullness of his mouth, and he moaned.
Caleb pulled back, gasping. “Stop.” He tilted Peter’s chin up. “Peter, are you—Jesus, are you punishing yourself for what happened before? Because if you are, I can’t—I just won’t, so—”
“No,” Peter said. “Can’t you tell I like it? I want to make you feel good.”
Caleb ran a thumb over Peter’s wet lips. “I like it too. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. I feel like I’m using you.”
“Will you use me, just a little? Please?” Peter asked. Caleb made that shocked, reproachful sound but his dick twitched in Peter’s fist. “I think we’d both like it, and I know you’ll make me feel good after. I know you’ll take care of me.”
Caleb stared at him, wild-eyed and slightly panicked. “I will. Okay. Yeah.”
Peter leaned forward and licked the wetness off the tip of Caleb’s erection, then tried to swallow him down until he felt the head bump against the back of his throat. One of Caleb’s hands stayed in Peter’s hair, but the other went to the back of his neck, as if he expected to feel himself back there. The idea made Peter moan, and then he swallowed, which made Caleb cry out. Peter lost himself in a rhythm that he could barely keep, in the pained, desperate noises that Caleb made, in the urgent need to make this good.
“Your mouth,” Caleb moaned. “So good, sweetheart.” His voice was honey-thick, a drawling purr, and he never stopped telling Peter how good he was, how good his mouth felt.
Peter drew a spit-slick finger past Caleb’s drawn-up balls and dragged it over his hole, back and forth, until Caleb was muttering a warning and his entire body went tight and tense, and Peter kept taking it.
Caleb’s mouth was on him before Peter could protest, licking him clean, soothing his sore, hot lips. Peter was completely, painfully, hard, looking for friction but only finding Caleb’s thigh to rut against.
“Shh, sweetheart,” Caleb said. “Let me.” He kissed Peter lazily while fisting his dick even more lazily, until Peter was almost frantic with the need for more. When Caleb pulled away and got to his feet, Peter nearly sobbed. He watched Caleb ransack his suitcase for the jar of slick and then disappear into the bathroom, emerging a moment later with a towel.
But he didn’t get back into bed. Instead he stood at the foot of the bed, watching Peter stroke his own dick.
“Don’t stop on my account,” Caleb said. “Show me.”
Peter let out a mortified little whimper and did as he was told.
“Finger yourself,” Caleb said a few moments later, tossing him the jar. “Get yourself open for me.”
Peter bent his knees, trying to ignore the flush that spread from his chest to his face.. He scooped out some of the Vaseline and rubbed it over himself before sliding his middle finger inside, never taking his eyes off Caleb.
“When we get to Los Angeles,” Caleb said, his voice low and rough, “I’m buying you a dildo.”
Peter was positive he would have blushed scarlet if he weren’t already doing so. “Is there going to be something stopping you from fucking me yourself, or do you plan on being lazy?”
“I’m going to be there, watching you fill yourself up.” He crawled onto the bed and slid one of his fingers alongside Peter’s, and Peter thought he was going to die. “You love it.”
“Yeah,” Peter breathed. He pulled his finger out and squirmed at the emptiness until Caleb slicked himself up and entered him. It was so much easier than last time. There was the initial stretch and burn, followed by an overwhelming, satisfying fullness. Peter gave himself up to it, let himself be desperate for it, allowed every needy little sound to escape his lips, and didn’t stop himself from begging. He felt weightless, knowing that he could be like this.
When Caleb shifted position, settling back on his knees to change his angle, Peter reached between their bodies to feel the place where they were joined. “You should feel this,” Peter said. “Look how you’ve filled me up.”
“I wish you could see,” Caleb said, his eyes trained right on that place. “Fucking beautiful.”
Caleb picked up speed, made him take it harder, and Peter locked his legs around Caleb’s waist and reached an arm up to brace himself against the headboard. It was so much, and it was so good, and when he came it felt like his whole body slid into the pleasure like something inevitable. When Caleb followed, his lean body taut, his eyes squeezed shut, Peter could feel it inside him.
They lay there, panting and messy, their limbs still tangled. Outside, an owl hooted and thunder rumbled in the far distance. Peter felt like he had been scrubbed clean of everything bad, and all that was left was his body, and the warm presence of Caleb, who might have been asleep if not for the steady scratch of his fingers through Peter’s chest hair.