Ex-Daredevil by Zoe Lee
Chapter 31
Gavin
I was eating Indian food at one of the delicious places on Devon Ave. with my cousins when my cell started buzzing. I ignored the first few, since Barley was a crazy person who sent each sentence as a separate text and was probably just wishing me Happy New Year.
“We should order tee-shirts,” my cousin John suggested.
“Anyone know of a good inappropriate pun about rock climbing?” I joked.
“How can you even think anything’s sexy while your junk is squeezed into a harness?” my cousin Kale laughed at me.
“That’s why I free climb,” I retorted with an exaggerated wink. “Plenty of room.”
“Plenty of room for what?” John piped up.
While everyone bit their lips or snickered, my cell buzzed up a storm again. Worried that there was an emergency or something too hilarious to miss, I unlocked my screen.
Turned out, it was a bit of both.
Eliott: Did you know your contact is !Daredevil Gavin?
Eliott: Which means you’re the top of the contact list alphabetically.
Eliott: That’s so fucking cute.
Eliott: Just like you.
Eliott: Oh this is Sam Radcliffe, one of Eliott’s best friends. He’s dancing right now.
Eliott: Okay so I’m not sure if it classifies as dancing. Asher says he’d call it flailing.
I snickered at the texts, but then curiosity welled up, hot and with an awkward flare of jealousy. I had seen Eliott let loose in bed—and that one incredible time in his office—but that was during intimacy, private and safe despite the pleasure and the little bite of kink. But his best friends got to see him let loose as a person, not as a sexual creature, and that was where the jealousy came into it for me. I wanted to be allowed in to see flailing.
Gavin: Hi, Sam Radcliffe.
A few seconds later, I got a blurry, murky photo of Eliott in black pants and a navy short-sleeved button up, one arm thrown up over his head like a cheerleader pumping his fist. His mouth was stretched in a smile, eyes almost closed from how wide it was. A guy who might have been Camdon was mid-air behind him, but his face was behind Eliott’s arm.
Eliott: Proof.
Gavin: Looks like boys’ night is going well.
Eliott: Here’s the rest of us.
A second picture popped up of two men, their faces squished together, one with dark red curls I loved and one with a short black beard, their skin the color of a light bulb from the camera flash. They were both grinning, teeth bared, their eyes hazy like they were at least half-drunk already, and the curly-haired one was giving the bearded one bunny ears.
I narrowed my eyes because the bearded, broody looking face was vaguely familiar.
Gavin: Who’s who?
Eliott: I’m the cute one.
Eliott: Fuck you, Sam, I could be cute. I’m Asher Bernthal.
I sat back, my eyebrows popping up high in surprise.
Gavin: I know you.
Eliott: Please don’t tell him you’ve seen his band. He’ll puff up like a rooster.
Gavin: Hate to do it, but I have. I’m Barley Finn’s PA.
Eliott: No shit?
Gavin: Yes shit. Your band played at his daughter’s graduation party. I was there.
Gavin: What a small world. How did I not know this already?
Eliott: Now you definitely have to get over here asap.
Eliott: Sam again. Especially because Eliott’s one drink away from Slutty Eliott.
Gavin: What!?
Gavin: … Sam. Asher. WHAT!?
But there was no response.
“Damn, Gav, what’s going on over there?” Kale exclaimed.
“Apparently Eliott’s drunk already, at a club with his friends and he gets slutty when he’s drunk?” I summarized. I knew they didn’t mean cheat-on-me slutty, but the thought of him flirting and grinding on some other man aggravated me. There was nothing wrong with flirting and grinding and he was free to do both—I trusted him and he could do it as much as he wanted to—but I was aggravated because I wanted him to flirt and grind on me.
“You better go now,” Kale muttered. “Your mind’s already over there.
Nodding, I pulled out some cash and stood up. “Later, losers.”
Gavin: I’m on my way now.
I ordered a ride and then sat in the car with my knee bouncing in anticipation.
When I got there, I had to wait in line even though I already had a ticket for the club’s New Year’s bash. I wasted the time joking with the people around me and lighting up my cell screen every thirty seconds to see if I’d gotten a new text, my excitement ramping up.
I finally got in and beelined for the dance floor, my eyes roving across the crowd.
Then I saw him and I stopped dead, my breath catching in my throat.
There was Eliott—my self-described boring lawyer—writhing against Sam, his head dropped on Sam’s shoulder, hands dangling lazily behind Sam’s neck. Sam was laughing, a bright, adorable smile, shorter than Eliott, letting Eliott use him like a cat’s scratching post.
The song changed and I watched Eliott’s mouth move as he started to sing along.
Suddenly I was moving again, driving through the crowd towards my man.
“Gavin!” Camdon exclaimed, appearing out of nowhere since I’d been locked on Eliott.
I tipped my chin at him, but kept moving the last feet until I could grab Eliott’s waist.
“Baby!” he cried, his eyes crossing and uncrossing as he tried to focus on me. “Hi!”
He flung his arms up and around my shoulders, clipping Sam in the face on the way, and smashed his mouth into mine. It was all spit and teeth, and I laughed into his mouth, pulling him against me. I pressed my fingers into his cheekbone, angling his face until we were in the best position to kiss deeply, and his hips hitched eagerly against me.
“That better be Gavin,” I heard someone murmur in a soft, amused tone.
Eliott yanked back with a gasp, stumbling, and turned to glare. “Of course it is, Asher.”
“Nice to meet you, Gavin,” Asher said with a smirk. “But I’m getting away from here.”
Eliott pouted but leaned over precariously to smoosh his face against Asher’s, then turned back to me and said with serious earnestness, “He’s going to flirt with his fiancé.”
I didn’t know how I managed to keep a straight face, but I did. “I bet he is.”
“Why are you here so early?” Eliott asked suspiciously, even as he petted me with big, clumsy strokes of his hands, nails scratching little divots into my neck and collarbones.
“Sam has your phone and texted me to say you’re a slutty drunk,” I said with a grin.
Instead of arguing the point, he groaned and twirled to put his back to my front, his ass swiveling over my junk like the most practiced exotic dancer, hands going high in the air like in the photo Sam had taken. “I love the way you say dirty words,” he said loudly.
“Nope,” Camdon declared.
“We’ll leave you to it,” Sam said with a snigger, then disappeared after Camdon.
Eliott didn’t seem to be aware of that, he just kept swiveling and singing along.
“This is a nice surprise,” I said, bending my neck to speak right into his ear.
Then I sucked his earlobe into my mouth for a couple hard pulls. He froze and then arched hard back into my now iron-hard cock, silently begging me to keep it up, so I did. His shirt was tucked in so I couldn’t snake my fingers under to pet his abs, but I held him close.
As I was nibbling along his neck, he moaned raggedly, “I want you in me so badly.” Instinctually my teeth bit down hard, making him shiver against me and keep going like he was trying to kill me right there on the dance floor, “If I’m single, I can go for a year or two without even missing it, but since the first time I ate your ass, I’ve been craving it.”
My movements stuttered in total shock at the blunt, dirty words, but my imagination went wild, and I ground mercilessly against him as I swore, “I’ll give you everything you crave, baby, but right now, we have to get out of here before you make me cream my pants.”
It was true, but it was also tantalizing enough to get drunk, slutty Eliott compliant so I could get him home, pour some water down his throat, and tuck him in for the night.
And it worked, with a delightful number of gropes along the way, plus some way-too-loud declarations he was going to be embarrassed our driver had heard tomorrow.
But finally, he’d had some water and aspirin, brushed his teeth, and slithered into his blankets, rolling and twisting his head on his pillows until he was perfectly comfortable.
Since he was holding my hand and wouldn’t relinquish it, I carefully climbed over him and mirrored his position. We were on our sides, our fingers tangled together under his chin, his knees nudging the tops of my thighs. I used my free hand to comb my fingers through his sweaty hair while I told him, “Happy New Year’s, sweetheart. Get some sleep.”
He blinked at me and his brows drew in over the top of his nose, making a cute dent of dismay. “But you said you’d fuck me,” he mumbled pitieously, grabbing at my thigh.
“It was a trick to get you home,” I said solemnly, my lips twitching as I caught his hand and squeezed it gently. “But you’re still drunk and now you’re about to fall asleep.”
“Am not,” he denied, his eyes drifting over my face and pouting when he saw I wasn’t going to change my mind. “If you won’t fuck me, then you have to tell me a secret instead.”
“What?” I asked, startled by the request. “I should’ve known you’re a sneaky drunk.”
“Just want to learn everything about you,” he argued in a sleepy whisper.
My heart clenched at his sweetness and, thinking he’d be dead to the world any second anyway, I confessed softly, “I think you’re my best friend, Eliott Navarre.”
His fingers twitched around mine. “What about your cousins?”
“They think they know everything about me and how I feel about everything, how I lie to myself like we all do a little bit, just because…” I sighed and let my eyes fall shut, unable to maintain eye contact from so close to him while I explained. “Because they were there when I met my biological father. He came around when I was about twelve, a few weeks before school started. Just showed up one Sunday afternoon and rang the doorbell. I answered and he asked to speak to my mom, and I yelled someone was at the door for her and took off back down the block with the squirt gun I’d come inside to get.
“My mom came and got me a little later and that was how I really met him for the first time. Baby blue swim trunks with yellow sharks all over them, bare feet, my hair dripping wet and my shoulders and nose burned. He introduced himself using his full name and held out his hand for me to shake, like it was a job interview or a business meeting. I thought it was hilarious, so I shook his hand back, grinning at the way he made a face and wiped it dry.
“He told me that he was my father and he’d like to get to know me.”
“What did you do?” Eliott asked while my throat worked, remembering the confusing explosion of surprise and anger and hope I’d hated, magnified by being unprepared and by all those preteen hormones, staring at this man who had a little bit of me on the outside.
“I looked at my mom, of course. When she’s mad or upset, she doesn’t fold in on herself or plaster on a fake smile like a lot of people. She just laughed, a sharp spray of energy like fireworks scaring the shit out of someone who’s heard a lot of live gunfire. And I looked back at this total stranger and told him if my mom thought he was good enough to be my dad, I would have already known him, but I didn’t, so he wasn’t. I told him to get lost.”
Eliott whistled, a sad little noise, and I looked at him, my heart stopping when I saw the tears bright in his eyes. “You sweet, brave boy,” he breathed out. “And was that it?”
I managed to rasp out, “Yeah. I was old enough to know what he’d done. What did I need from this asshole who lied to her from minute one? If he and his wife had kids, I might’ve wanted to know them, but they didn’t. My mom and I don’t always see eye to eye about relationships and responsibilities, but there’s no one better than she,” I said fiercely.
With a wrench of his body, he moved enough to bury his face against my heart.
“And my cousins, my besties, they were living up the block with one of my aunts and uncles that summer. They’d been in the water gun fight I’d been in that day. So my mom sent me over there for the night and they were my best friends so I told them everything. But it’s like… they think every decision I make, every reaction I have, is rooted in that.”
Eliott’s arm burrowed under me, meeting the other one in the small of my back, his fingertips digging in painfully as he held me as tight as he could, muscles shaking.
“That’s how Camdon gets sometimes about Peter and my anti-flamboyant fashion sense,” he mumbled a minute later. “So you remember that the next time you even think about asking me if I don’t just want to buy a red throw pillow or whatever the hell.”
Utterly blindsided by this sneaky, agile argument, I kissed the top of his head.
He didn’t say anything else and I didn’t need him to say that I was his best friend too, because him listening and holding me like this was perfect.
I had no idea if he would remember any of this in the morning and if not, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to say it all again. It was true, that moment hadn’t defined my entire life—but of course it had impacted it. I hated people who said that children, boys especially, needed a father. No, what we all needed and deserved was for whoever raised us to love us, to teach us and support us, and call us out and hold us responsible for our mistakes. My mom had always done all of that, and been helped and supported by her parents and siblings.
So trust had never come easily, and I knew the bullying during my childhood and the predatory way I’d been treated as a young man only bolstered that. But Eliott had earned my trust too, ten times over by now, met me challenge for challenge and kiss for kiss. He’d laid himself bare, tried new things, shown me new things, and laughed and moaned with me. He saw me, but he also asked questions, not only to learn more, but so he didn’t make assumptions. All of that meant he had become my best friend, as well as my boyfriend.
If that was more, by far, than any other singular person had been to me, well…
“Thank you for listening, baby,” I sighed into the top of his head. “Sleep now.”
“Sweet dreams, Gavin,” he mumbled into my sternum, tickling it with his stubble.