“If you try to go for that ladder again, I will spank you. You need to get some sleep. We have a lot on our plate tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to sleep. As soon as you fall asleep, I’m just going to lie here thinking about Red, so I might as well do some work.”
“Not tonight. Look at it with fresh eyes in the morning.”
Cas dropped a kiss on Jonah’s chest. “You’re so pushy.”
“I know.”
“It’s not attractive,” Cas lied.
Jonah traced the prongs of Cas’s trident. “I’ve made peace with that. Try to sleep now.”
But Cas couldn’t. He rolled into the crook of Jonah’s arm, staring up at the night sky long enough that the stars swam in his vision. “I got that tattoo for you,” he said softly after a while, not certain he even meant for Jonah to hear the confession.
“What?” Jonah’s voice was rough, as if he’d been dozing.
“The trident. I got it for you.”
“Because of my deep spiritual beliefs?” It came out tinged with amusement.
“No.” Cas burrowed closer. “Did you know some people thought Poseidon used the trident to summon thunderstorms?”
Once more, Jonah began to trace shapes along Cas’s side. “No. At least, I don’t think I did.”
It was such a Jonah thing to say. Cas smiled in the darkness.
“And thunderstorms make you think of me?”
“Thunderstorms make me think of that night. You’d been gone for days, and I hadn’t gone up to the loft once, but then, when I finally gave in to temptation, you fucking came home, calling out for me while I was lying in your bed, sniffing your pillow with my hand around my dick.” Cas groaned in embarrassment. “I thought for sure you’d know I was there. Well, I guess you did know I was there.”
Jonah’s laughter was quiet. “I could see your feet sticking out from behind the mattress.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I just thought you wanted a bed to sleep in for the night. It never occurred to me that you wanted to be inmybed, not even when I realized what you were doing down there on the floor. I just blamed teenage hormones. I never thought I could be the one featuring in your fantasy.”
Cas rolled his eyes. “Youweremy fantasy, dumbass. My only fantasy.” He nuzzled into Jonah’s neck. “If I’d known the reality would be so much better, I don’t know if I could have ever forced myself to leave.”
Jonah tipped Cas’s chin up so he could capture his lips in a kiss that lingered. “Goodnight, Caspian.”
Cas’s cheeks flushed at the echo of words from long ago. “Goodnight, Jonah.”
20
Jonah
Jonah had rarely slept with another person. Even with Madigan, he usually left before morning. He’d always liked separation. A sense of his own space after so many years crowded in the communal dormitories of group homes hearing every cough, snore, and sneeze.
He’d once lived with a foster family for a few months where he had his own room. As tiny as it had been, it seemed enormous at the time, with a door that shut and locked and a small closet he couldn’t even fill half of. His foster mom had taken him to Walmart to pick out some posters to decorate the walls. He stood in front of the bins for a half hour, carefully looking over the selection before picking out a couple of superheroes he recognized and some fancy car he didn’t know the name of. Other things he didn’t even recognize, too uneducated and unaware of pop culture to know the name of the boy and girl bands. He’d stared at their poses, the carefully styled hair and clothes, in wonder. He desperately wanted to be like the other kids, so he tried to choose things he thought a normal kid would.
But the house and the room and the tiny closet hadn’t lasted. Jonah hadn’t done well enough in school. He hadn’t been good at making friends, and he didn’t like his foster dad, who seemed always to be waiting for him to do something wrong. Over the weeks, he saw his foster mom’s enthusiasm wane to resignation until one day she’d taken his hands in hers and told him it wasn’t working out. Jonah knew that kind of speech was polite code, but for what, he wasn’t sure: their failure or his own. He didn’t remember much else about either of them, but he remembered that room perfectly. The next room he’d had all on his own had been after he’d left Bennie behind and gotten into the car with the man in the suit. He remembered almost nothing of it now; he’d scrubbed every inch of it from his mind.
Jonah liked sleeping with Cas, though. He’d assumed Cas would be a restless sleeper, but he wasn’t. Strange dreams played behind Jonah's eyelids, mingling in the waking moments with visions of Cas lying next to him in a shifting kaleidoscope of positions.
Dawn broke in patchy shades of gray and steel blue. Cas nuzzled closer to Jonah as rain began to beat on the glass roof, drowsily rubbing his ass against him until Jonah got hard again. He’d been wrong about what Cas had needed last night. It hadn’t been tenderness he’d wanted but a rough distraction from Red’s death.
Jonah had been more than willing to give both.
