“Hey,” I say, my voice sounding too loud and jarring.
“Hey.”
Cade looks at me, but doesn’t say anything else. I think about all the other times we’ve been in a bed together, next to each other but kept apart by some kind of invisible, unspoken barrier.
“Do you wanna play video games and jerk each other off? Heterosexually, of course.”
Cade is still for a moment, before gracing me with a small snort and a half smile.
“Oh, he’s got jokes. Robot boy, world-renowned for his sense of humor, here to Patch Adams me back to health.”
He’s speaking softly, and still so dull compared to his usual self that I worry for a minute he’s really making fun of me, but then I catch sight of that half smile again and relax.
“No homo,” I murmur, which makes his lips tug up again. Cade went through a phase of ironicno homojokes after we started living together that I thought were always a little on the nose, but made him laugh every goddamn time. I follow it up by taking gentle hold of his chin and planting a chaste kiss on his lips.
“Full homo,” he sighs, the second half of his call and response bit. “Extra homo, if that’s possible. With rainbow sprinkles on top.”
He still sounds exhausted, but at least he sounds like Cade, deep down in there somewhere.
It takes me a minute to figure out what I want to say. How to keep it light.
“Yeah, well you won’t let me baby you the way I want to. Jokes are about all I have left to offer. Which is pretty dire for both of us, I reckon.”
I almost think his lip quivers, but it’s gone before I can be sure. The thought breaks my heart, either way.
“You don’t need to baby me, robot boy. I’m fine. I just need to sleep it off. It’s not like I didn’t bring this on myself.”
It’s nice to hear he’s stopped putting 100% of the blame on his dad, but piling on himself until he’s drowning in shame isn’t helping anyone, either. I wiggle to shift a little closer to him, reaching up to smooth a stray dark curl off his forehead and then cupping his chin in my hand.
“You’re always mine to baby. That was the deal, remember? Whether you think you deserve it or not.”
“And what about you?” Cade asks, his voice thick.
I force myself to speak with a lightness I don’t feel. “I let you baby me plenty. You’re still my hero. You still saved me.” My fingers tighten on his jaw. “We take turns saving each other, remember? It’s not like either of us got a lot of babying when we were kids, I don’t think it’s weird to fill that void now. I’ll cut the fucking crusts off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for you every day, if you’d let me.”
He doesn’t say anything, and the tension continues to mount, until I break it by leaning across the space between us to kiss him, more deeply than before. Cade’s lip is still swollen, so he winces, but kisses me back with more energy than he’s shown since the fight. Hands find their way to me under the covers, grabbing at my torso with a sudden kind of desperation.
In an instant, the kiss deepens, and I grab his hip as we grind together the same way we have a million times before. I feel overwhelmed by the need to touch him—to taste him—to make him feel good, and don’t let myself second-guess as I break off the kiss to move down in the bed. For just a few minutes, I want to forget about everything else, and it seems like he does, too.
Cade’s only wearing sweats, and he’s not hard yet, but I can still tell he’s commando underneath. As soon as I tug down the waistband and gently slide them off his legs, I’m rewarded by the sight of him naked, the comforter thrown somewhere to the side. His bruises are fading, and he’s starting to look enough like himself—minus the hand splint and the nasty eyebrow gash—that I don’t immediately feel a throb of pain. Instead, I start sucking deep, bruising kisses into the skin at the crease of his groin, dragging my teeth over his inner thighs to make him shiver.
My eyes flick open, looking up at Cade for confirmation that we’re on the same page. He’s staring down at me with something other than lust. Desperation, maybe. But when he slides his fingers into my hair and sighs, his body relaxing incrementally, I know I chose the right path.
His cock is soft as I take it in my mouth, the skin tender and warm. He gasps when I suck him gently, and I run my hands up his ribs as tenderly as I can manage. The overwhelming need to be as close to him as possible has me burying my nose against his pelvis, hooking one of his legs over my shoulder until it feels like I’m a continuation of his body. I pull off him to lick at his sac for a minute before gently sucking one of his balls into my mouth, making him gasp again and again.
The noise is all I need to get hard, already aching for his touch, but it isn’t about me right now. It’s about me a lot, I realize. Cade loves to throw himself at me, opening himself up to me and begging me to fuck into his mouth or ass as hard as I can. I know he loves it. But right now I feel compelled by the urge to treat him tenderly, something he hardly ever allows.
I lick and suck a trail around his groin, finding every piece of sensitive skin I can find. It’s easy to reach underneath him and tilt his hips up, moving my face lower until I drag my nose through his crease. Cade gasps a little, but relaxes into the contact as I gently lift his balls out of the way, split open his ass cheeks as much as I can and then run the flat of my tongue from the bottom to the top.
He shudders when my tongue hits his hole, and that’s all the encouragement I need to go back down to it. I attack his hole with as much force as I think his body can handle right now.Already, all my plans of tenderness are drifting away, but the way Cade begins to groan and fist my short hair in his fingers makes me think it was the right choice.
There’s so much sensitive skin to tease. I lick at his hole before eventually pushing my tongue inside, and when he relaxes even more into the contact, I join my tongue with a finger. I’m not trying to make him get off this way, I want him to just lie back and enjoy something for the sake of it.
I’m not sure how long I play with him for. Long enough to know his mind has drifted off on the pleasure, and he’s finally unwinding a little of that tension he’s been carrying around since the fight. He’s noisy, like always, and constantly moves underneath my grasp in the way that makes me crazy for him. This time, when I take his cock in my hand, he’s mostly hard, and makes a hissing noise as I start to jerk him off.
Moving up his body, I sink my mouth back over him, and he fucks up into me once, just a little. I barely want to move, instead rocking us gently together as I work my tongue up and down his length, feeling him stiffen bit by tiny bit.
It seems to go on forever. We move together, slowly building up friction but keeping his sweaty flesh pinned beneath me as tightly as I can. Cade isn’t quite as loud or as active as he usually is, but he’s still making choked, bitten-off noises that drive me crazy. He sounds raw and desperate, and by the time his fingers tighten in my hair and he pulses hot cum into my mouth, he’s whispering the word “please” over and over into the quiet room.
