Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 22:49:23 -0800 (PST) From: SJL Subject: Paul and Adam, Chapter Five OK, you didn't like Chapter Four that much. It's OK. Thanks to the few of you who wrote and said you *did* like it. For the rest of you, there will be sex in this chapter, I promise. All usualy disclaimers apply. Don't read this if you shouldn't read this. Do at least one good deed every day. Even with fewer responses to Chapter Four than previous chapters, I'm still swamped. If you ask me questions I'll email the answers back to you. If you just want to tell me what you think, know that I thank you for your input and I probably won't be able to get back to you. As always, the address is geekwriter143@yahoo.com On to Chapter Five of Paul & Adam, from Adam's POV. ____________________________________________________ "You hurt your leg, little bro?" Mitch asks as I rub my knee. I realize it's been aching nearly the entire morning. "I don't know," I admit. We're sitting in a large booth at McDonald's having breakfast with a bunch of other people from the team. "It's been hurting a lot, lately. Both legs, really, but it doesn't seem connected to practice." "Maybe it's growing pains," offers Laura Brown. She's a junior and she does a wicked 400 fly. "You think?" I ask. I realize as soon as it pops out of my mouth how desperate I must sound. I expect people to laugh, but no one does. "I got 'em bad when I was in seventh grade," she says. "I grew, like, six inches in a year. Kept me up at nights." The thought of growing six inches is extremely appealing, and my father is pretty damn tall so I might have inherited his genes, but I don't want to get my hopes up. "My mom's only five-five," I say, as if that explains anything. "Caroline and I are gonna catch a movie tonight," Mitch says to me. "You and Paul wanna come along?" I know he doesn't mean anything by it, at least I don't think he does, but the way he puts Paul and I nearly into the same breath disturbs me. It's like he's talking about us as if we were a couple. "I don't know what I'm doing tonight," I say, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole thing. Mitch shrugs and starts talking to Laura and a couple of the other guys about the benefits and drawbacks of drag suits. My heart's pounding in my chest. No one seems to notice it. It felt totally natural last night to lay in bed next to Paul. Kissing him and holding him close to me seemed normal, and it was honestly the best I'd felt in a long time. It was just waking up in the morning and seeing everything in the light that was weird. Paul had still been asleep when the alarm went off, and it didn't seem to faze him a bit. He kept sleeping, his chest rising and falling with his slow, shallow breaths. I got dressed as quietly as I could, then just stood in the middle of his room, watching him sleep. I tried to call back the feelings from the night before, the absolute calm I'd felt in his arms, but it was gone. Now he was just my best friend, and the things we'd done together hardly seemed real. "You need a ride home?" Mitch asks me, and I realize that everybody is getting up to leave. "Uh, no," I say. "I've got my bike." "You sure?" he asks. "That was a hard workout today. I feel like jelly." I am tired, and my muscles are weak, but I shake my head. "I'll be OK," I tell him. I pedal my bike slowly, too tired from that morning's sets to do anything but coast along. When I get home there's a message from Mark and Jimmy telling me to come to the arcade. I erase it. There's a note on the kitchen counter from my father, too, telling me to be ready to go out to dinner at six. I crumple the note up and toss it into the trash. I don't feel like going to the arcade at the moment, so I go to the bathroom, instead, and strip out of my clothes. I start the water, run it hot to soothe my muscles, and stand in front of the mirror as the tub fills. I stand up straight and look at myself. Have I grown any? I'd like to believe that the ache in my legs is growing pains, but I'm not sure. With my luck I'll stay 5'6" forever, and no matter how hard you work, a 5'6" swimmer can't get very far. The longer the boat the faster it goes, as Coach says. I'm strong, and I've got great cardiovascular strength, but there's only so much you can do without the proper body length. Legs too short, arms too short, but my torso's long and lean. I hope I'll grow into it. I smile as I realize that every time I look into the mirror I only see my faults. I squint my eyes and take a step back, turn sideways. I wonder what Paul sees when he looks at me. Whatever it is, I don't see it. I give up and slide into the tub, groaning at how good the hot water feels. One of my parents' first really big fights was about redoing the bathroom. Mom said we needed to get it done and Dad said it was fine like it was, plus redoing it would be expensive. My dad's kind of a Scrooge when it comes to money, no matter how much he makes. My mom ended up winning, I guess, because she got to redo the bathroom. I'm glad she won, because she put in the biggest bathtub I've ever seen. When I sit in it, the water comes up to my armpits. I can stretch out all the way and not even have to bend my legs when I lay back. Maybe it's not exactly a manly thing, taking a bath, but I tell myself it's purely therapeutic. After all, our team can't afford a spa, and it's good for your muscles to relax in warm water after a tough workout. Especially when you put the jets on, which I do. Soon, I'm stretched out in the tub with whirlpool jets sending the water in eddies around me. I close my eyes and know I'll fall asleep. I usually do, though only for about five minutes at a time. I stay in the tub until the water's nearly lukewarm. I massage my leg muscles, my sore thighs. I stretch as I get out of the water, then reach down to pull the plug and let the tub drain. I feel a lot better, not an ache anywhere, and I wash my face with cool water to get rid of the sweat that always forms when I take a hot bath. It's past noon, and my stomach's growling, so I wrap a towel around my waist and pad barefoot into the kitchen to make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I sit down at the kitchen table to eat, and pull a crumbled up ball of paper out of the trash and smooth it out. It's the note from my father. "Adam, please by home by six so that we can go out to dinner. See you then. Love, Dad." Love, Dad. Hmmm. He's definitely different than he was even two days ago. I wonder if it's Rebecca's influence or just the fact that he doesn't have my mother around to fight with. They're both OK on their own, a little annoying but not too bad. It's when they're together that they turn into assholes. I don't want to admit it, but it's probably best that my mother left. I finish my sandwich, then make another one. It's almost one o'clock by the time I head back to my room to get dressed. Mark will be pissy that it took me so long to get to the arcade, but he'll live. In my room, the faces of my heroes look out at me from the walls. Ian Thorpe frozen in the air as he dives from the starting block, toothy Pieter van den Hoogenband pumping his fist in the air after a win, and Alexander Popov, my favorite, the man I want to swim like. He's a dolphin in the water, gliding through it with what seems like no effort at all, his powerful kicks propelling him nearly as much as his smooth, gliding strokes through the water. He looks a little bit like Paul. Nothing that anybody else would notice, really, but their coloring is similar. The cheekbones are the same. I wonder what it would be like to race him. I'm too small for the sprints he does, I have to rely on my atypical cardiovascular strength for distance races, now, since for whatever lucky genetic reason I don't tire half as fast as most swimmers my age. But if I did race Popov...I grin as I realize that he'd shoot by me so fast I'd probably rock in the water as if a torpedo had just gone by. He can kick 50 meters in 29 seconds, after all, using nothing but the power of his legs. "Adam?" The voice startles me. I tighten my towel around my waist and take a step towards the doorway. "Adam, where you at?" It's Paul. "You scared the shit out of me," I say, stepping out into the hall. "What are you doing here?" "Mark sent me to get you," he says. I feel annoyed that he just came in without knocking, though I know I shouldn't. Neither one of us ever knocks--we haven't since we were kids. We treat each other's houses as if they were our own. "Since when do you run Mark's errands?" I ask, turning back into my room. "Since I'd rather be here with you than at the arcade," Paul replies. That annoys me, too. Everything he does annoys me-how he comes into my room without asking, how he locks the door behind him as if something's going to happen. "I was just about to leave," I snap. "He didn't have to send you like a little errand boy. Jesus." Paul doesn't say anything. I turn and drop my towel and stand naked in front of my closet. I can feel his eyes on me. I turn to face him and what I was going to say, <> catches in my throat. It's hard to stay mad at Paul when he looks at me like he does, when I can see in his eyes that he looks at me in a way no one else ever has. "What do you see when you look at me?" I ask softly. Paul's leaning back against my closed door. He shrugs. "I just see you," he says, as if it's the simplest thing in the world. "Yeah, but I don't think I see the same thing you do when I look in the mirror," I tell him. "I see short legs and a skinny chest. I see everything that's wrong with me. Tell me what you see." Paul smiles and moves towards me. "There's nothing wrong with you," he says. "You're perfect." I shiver when I realize that he means it. "I love your thumbs," he says. I laugh. "What?" He takes my hand in his, turns it so that he can see the back of my thumb. "See, here how below the first knuckle it tapers in, then widens out again? It's called a waisted thumb, and it means you have a kind heart. My grandmother taught me that." I look down at my thumb. I never paid much attention to it, except to wonder if I should hold it tight against my other fingers or in a dog-ear crimp during my stroke. "The hair on your arms is like threads of white gold," Paul says, running his hand over my forearm. "Your skin is the color of caramel, except here," he touches my hip, "where it's the color of cream." "You're making me hungry," I tease. I want to break the seriousness of the moment because it scares me a little, how sincere Paul is. He's thought about this before. He's thought about it a lot. I'm not sure if I want to know how much he's thought about me. "And here," Paul continues. He touches the hollow just behind my jaw. "Your skin is so soft here, and it makes me want to..." He leans and kisses me there and I sigh and close my eyes. "Your nipples are dark pink, almost brown," he says. His fingers brush my nipples and I swallow hard. "And you have the most adorable bellybutton I've ever seen." I laugh and look down at my navel. I'd never thought of it as adorable, never thought of it much at all. My cock's getting hard and part of me tries to tell me that I should cover myself, that I shouldn't be getting hard just by standing there naked while my best friend looks at me. "I always thought," Paul says. He's moving around me, now, coming to stand behind me. "I always thought that if you got a tattoo, you should get it here." He touches the small of my back and spreads his hands out to the sides. "Because it's a perfect little hollow, and something here would draw attention not only to itself, but to your strong back above it, your round ass below." "You're the artist," I say. My voice is thick and I swallow hard to clear my throat. "What would you put there?" "Hmmm." He squats down so that his eyes are level with my lower back. He touches my spine, his finger drawing spirals on my skin. "I don't know, yet," he admits. He starts again, this time the movements of his finger are more jagged, with swirls only at the end. He stands up and the heat of his hands on the skin of my back is driving me crazy. "I'll have to think about it," Paul says. I turn and pull him to me, kiss him frantically. He seems startled at first, as if he wasn't aware of what his touch, his look did to me. Then he kisses me back and moans into my mouth and his hands shake a little as they touch me, and I know he wants me as much as I want him. And it's like swimming--there's no thought, just action. There's nothing in the world except Paul's body, my body. My fingers are in his hair and I grip his head in my hands as I kiss him, hungry for him, pulling him as close to me as I can. I'm tugging at his clothes, yanking them off his body, not caring if I rip anything because all I want is his skin against my skin. I wind my arms around him and his bare chest presses against mine. Our feet move and stumble over each other as we kiss, turning in slow circles as we grab and grope each other, marking skin with urgent fingers. His arms are around me so tight, his fingers digging into the skin of my back so deep it hurts, but I don't care because the pain is good. I want him to hold me that close; I want him to need me that much. I'm breathless by the time we make it to the bed. I push Paul back and climb over him, refusing to keep my mouth from his for more than a few seconds. I suck on his tongue and bite his lips. My cock is hard and dripping precum, aching for contact. I fumble with Paul's fly as I continue to kiss him. I can't undo the buttons and I end up just pulling at it and I hear the buttons pop but I don't pay any attention because I'm kissing him and his hands are sliding up and down my back and squeezing my ass and I jerk his shorts down and groan as our cocks finally touch. I'm on top of him, straddling him, grinding my cock against his and sucking on his lower lip and he's squeezing my ass, parting it, and I moan low as his fingers find their target. It's the most intimate thing anyone's ever done, the way Paul touches me there, his fingers stroking and probing my asshole, sending sharp stabs of pleasure through me. He rolls me over and pins my shoulders to the bed. He starts kissing my jaw, my neck, the hollow of my collarbones. I want him at my mouth again, I feel empty without his tongue against mine but I can only moan because I can't find the words to tell him. I can't speak at all, couldn't form a sentence if my life depended on it because nothing exists except Paul and the places he's touching me. His mouth finds one of my nipples and he licks it gently, suckles, lightly grazes it with his teeth. I writhe beneath him and want to throw him off me, want to take control again, but I'm weak, my muscles are jelly as he kisses and caresses me. I let my head sink deeper against the mattress and surrender to him. He can do whatever he wants with me. In that moment, I'm his. Paul kisses my other nipple, runs his fingers lightly down my ribcage and I feel the hairs on my body prickle. His mouth is on my abdomen, kissing my navel, flicking his tongue against it. His fingers trail down to my hipbones, circle them lightly. I shiver. His hands are beneath my thighs, pressing them up, and I let him lift my legs as he kisses the inside of my thighs. His tongue flicks against the smooth skin beneath my balls and it's like explosions in my brain. I want to tell him not to stop, that it's the spot that drives me wild, but I can't speak and then he presses my knees to my chest and his tongue moves down and I forget how to breathe. Paul's tongue is on my asshole, bathing it in spit, teasing it so gently. Christ. Jesus Christ, nobody every told me about this. I wouldn't have believed them anyway, could never have believed that anything could feel so good. Every touch of his tongue and it's like electricity shot through me. I feel myself relaxing, opening to him, and his tongue probes further inside me and I'm gripping the sheets in my hands and twisting them and pressing my head hard into the mattress and I know I'm moaning. I'm probably screaming, it feels so amazing. I'm probably screaming but I can't tell because even though my eyes are open I can't see anything, can't hear anything, can't feel anything except Paul's touch and his tongue pushing deeper and deeper inside me. I come without even touching my cock. I come just from the feel of Paul's tongue in my ass, and when I do it's like the air cracks. I expect to hear thunder, see lightning. I expect the walls to collapse around us, to be buried beneath rubble, because how can you continue to exist after something like that? How can you experience pleasure that intense and live? Paul's kissing me. I feel his mouth on my stomach and chest, feel his fingers in my hair, feel his mouth over mine. "Adam," he says, "Adam, baby, did you like it? Was it OK?" I want to laugh. Was it OK? I open my eyes and he's peering down at me and he kisses me again and I manage to lift my arm enough to stroke his hair. I'm shaking. I open my mouth to speak and when I do all that comes out is, "Love you, love you, love you." "I love you, too," Paul says. "God, Adam, I love you so much." I want to return the pleasure, make him feel like he made me feel, but I can't keep my eyes open. I try to wrap my arms around him and can barely control my muscles. I'm dizzy and drifting and I don't know if I fall asleep or if I pass out. Then I'm conscious and Paul's lying next to me, holding me, kissing me gently. "Wow," I manage to say. He smiles down at me. "You like it?" I nod. "Wow." "You don't think it was dirty?" he asks. I shake my head. "Paul," I whisper. "God, Paul, it was...how did you know to do that? How did you know it would make me feel so good?" "I didn't," he admits. "I've read about it, and I thought it was hot, wanted to do it, but I didn't know if you'd like it." I smile. "I liked it." "Yeah, I figured that out." My strength is starting to come back and my chest is filled with a giddy lightness. I start to laugh. "What's so funny?" "Nothing. I just feel good, that's all." I sit up and push him onto his back, climb over him and sit on his thighs. I reach forward and touch his face, trace my fingers over his high cheekbones. I gaze into his almond-shaped eyes, dark as midnight pools of water. "You're amazing," I say softly. I can tell the comment pleases him because he smiles and his cheeks turn pink with a slight blush. I lean forward to kiss him and feel his cock hard as steel against my stomach. "Tell me what you want," I whisper in his ear. "Tell me what you want me to do. I'll do anything you want, you just have to tell me." Paul hesitates, then whispers, "Suck me." I grin down at him. "Yeah? You want me to suck your cock?" Saying the words feels sexy--I like to hear them come out of my mouth. "Yeah," he says. He reaches up and strokes my hair. "Please, Adam, suck me." I kiss my way down his chest and I know he's watching me, but I'm not self-conscious. I don't care if he's watching me. The whole world could be watching me, and it wouldn't change a thing. I dip my head down and take the head of his cock between my lips. The taste of it, which would have worried me before, is nothing. It's better than nothing-it's good. It's the taste of Paul. His skin is silky soft against my tongue, and as I wrap my lips around it I can feel the hot hardness underneath his soft skin. I slide my mouth up and down slowly. I don't know what to do, really, but in a way I do. After all, I've been sucked before and I know what feels good, what doesn't. I make sure my lips are over my teeth, since I know from experience how bad teeth feel slicing over your cock. And it's natural, not weird at all to have my mouth so full of him. I close my eyes and lose myself in the hypnotic rhythm, making long, even strokes and feeling him groan and twist beneath me. I cup his balls in my hand, squeeze them gently to the rhythm of my mouth on his cock. I could do this all day. I could do this forever. Whoever it was that decided being a cocksucker was a bad thing obviously hadn't done it much. When Paul comes I pull back and feel it pelt my face. I'm laughing as I hold his cock and his cum splashes against my chin, my cheeks, my neck. I slip my tongue out and lick some from the corner of my mouth and it's not bad at all. I wouldn't order it in a restaurant, but it's good in an exhilarating, slightly dirty way. "You're covered," Paul says, laughing with me. He leans up and I feel his tongue on my cheek as he laps it up. We kiss, sharing the taste of his cum and the sheer fact of what we're doing, how forbidden it is, makes me groan into his mouth. We fall back onto my bed, kissing and laughing, sweaty and cum-covered. We press our foreheads together, and I gaze into his dark eyes as he gazes back at me. A million things are going through my head-random, unconnected things like the 4th of July, and the time I broke my arm jumping off the roof, and whether or nod my dad will let me get a dog now that my mother, who's allergic, is gone. "We should get to the arcade," Paul says finally. "Mark's probably got his panties in a twist wondering where we are." I laugh at the thought of Mark wearing panties. "I think we stink," I tell him. "We should probably shower." "If you spend any more time in the water you're going to grow gills," Paul whispers. He kisses the end of my nose. "With any luck, you're right." We shower, and though it's sexy it's not about sex. I soap up his back and kiss his shoulders and he washes my hair and his soapy fingers slide along my ass crack. "That's way better than showering alone," Paul says as we step out of the shower. We towel each other off, and I can't help but love how gentle he is with me, how tenderly he dries me. "Maybe we should blow dry your hair," I say as I rub the towel over Paul's head. "The guys might get suspicious if we've both got wet hair." "Do you have a blow dryer?" Paul asks. I admit that I don't, and I doubt my dad does, either. "It'll be fine," Paul says, combing his hair with his fingers. "It'll dry in the sun by the time we get there." And he's right. His hair is dry and mine nearly so when we reach the arcade. Mark and Jimmy are too busy trying to destroy each other at Pole Position to be pissy about Paul and I being late. I like the arcade with its old-fashioned video games, skee ball, electronic darts. You win tickets at darts and skee ball, and though we win a lot we give them to Jimmy, who collects them for his little sisters. It's not like we give a shit about trading them in for plastic yo-yos or glitter pencils, but his sisters, who are both still in elementary school, go crazy every time we give them pocketfuls of those stupid gray tickets. "You wanna catch a movie tonight?" Mark asks as I play him in darts. He always loses because he doesn't have the patience to take his time and aim. I almost agree, then remember the dinner thing with my dad. "Shit," I say, tossing my last dart. It hits the bull's-eye and Mark curses. "I have to go." "What the fuck for?" Mark demands. "I'm going out to dinner with my dad," I say. "And probably Rebecca." "Who's Rebecca?" "Probably my future stepmother," I say. I wave to Paul and Jimmy as I hustle out of the arcade and unlock my bike as quickly as possible. "Hey," Paul says. He's come out of the arcade and he's looking at me. "Were are you going?" He annoys me again, but I try not to show it. "I have to go to this dinner thing with my dad," I tell him. "I'll talk to you tomorrow, OK?" Paul seems like he wants to say something more, but he doesn't. I wave at him again as I take off on my bike. The clock on the side of the bank says it's 5:53. I'm cutting it damn close. "You're late," my father says as I fly into the house. I look at the clock on the microwave. 6:01. "Barely," I say, panting. Instead of yelling at me like he'd normally do, he laughs. "OK, barely," he agrees. "Go get changed. We need to leave soon." I start down the hall towards my room, then turn. "Where are we going?" I ask. "Mel's," he replies. Mel's is good. Mel's is nice, but you can still wear jeans there. I change into jeans and clean tennis shoes, pull on a polo shirt since my dad has this thing about how much nicer it is when you wear a shirt with a collar. "How was your day?" he asks as we pull out of the driveway in the red Saab convertible he got when my mom accused him of having a midlife crisis. "Do anything interesting?" I smirk and look out the window. "Not really," I say, managing to keep my voice steady. It's not like I could tell him that I discovered how fucking amazing it was to get your asshole licked. "We had a wicked practice this morning, coach had us do a 1650 right off the bat to see how in shape we've been keeping ourselves." "I thought distance was your thing," my father says. I'm surprised that he remembers. "Well, yeah," I say. "But first thing, that's tough. It's a mile, you know. Thirty-three times across the pool." "Up and back, or just across?" he asks. "Just across," I say. "It's a 50 yard pool." My dad whistles through his teeth. "Still. You have to have gotten that from your mother," he says. "I sink like a stone." I smile and slide down in my seat. It's the closest thing to a compliment I've ever gotten from him. Mel's is a local treasure. Everybody goes there, townies and college kids, old and young. When we get there the parking lot is packed and we have to walk past a long line of people waiting to be seated. Rebecca is sitting alone at a table, inspecting her napkin. The place smells good, like baking bread and the barbeque ribs it's famous for. It's dark, but not so much that you can't see where you're going. The chairs are heavy wood covered in soft vinyl cushions that look like leather. "Sorry we're late," my father says as we near the table. He leans over to kiss Rebecca and it's weird because I've never seen him kiss my mother like that. My father sits next to her, and I sink into the chair across from her and spread my napkin over my lap. "I ordered you a Manhattan," Rebecca says to my father. She looks at me, "I didn't know what kind of pop you liked, so I didn't get you anything." "Adam doesn't drink pop," my father says. It startles me. He seems to know a lot more about me than I thought he did. "Empty calories," I explain to her. "I usually just drink water or milk." "Always training," my father says, and if I'm not mistaken I hear a little glint of pride in his voice. "He's told me what an amazing swimmer you are," Rebecca says. I feel like I've stepped into the Twilight Zone. I had no idea he talked about me, that he even thought about me when I wasn't in his immediate line of sight. "He hasn't told me anything about you," I say. I don't mean it in a bad way, and I don't think she takes it badly, either. "Well, that's what this dinner is for," my father says. "For the two of you to get to know each other." I look at Rebecca and I want to hate her, but she looks so nervous that I can't. We're not going to be buddies any time soon, but she seems to put my dad in a better mood than I've ever seen him in, and that makes her OK by me. The waitress comes and brings my dad's Manhattan and a margarita for Rebecca. I didn't think she'd be old enough to drink, but she apparently is. I just ask for a big glass of water. Turns out, Rebecca's the youngest of eight kids. She laughs when she tells me this, like it embarrasses her. "We're Catholic," she says. "Obviously." She only works for my dad part time, because she's also in school to become an accountant. It seems like it would be boring as hell to me, but she sounds really excited about it. "Do you know what you want to go to college for?" she asks me. I shake my head. "No. I just know that I want to go to Stanford." My dad looks surprised. "You do?" he asks. "Really?" I guess he doesn't know everything about me, after all. "Yeah," I say. "Their swimming program's amazing. And I've got the grades. I'll definitely be able to go if I ever start growing." "I was your height until I was a junior," my father says. "Built a lot like you, too, although you take after your mother in looks, which is lucky for you." He laughs. "You'll start sprouting up, soon. Uncle David didn't stop growing until he was 21." That's encouraging, since my uncle David is nearly six foot six. "Can I get a dog?" I ask. My father laughs. "Where did that come from?" "I don't know." I shrug. "I just always wanted one." "I'll think about it," he says before taking a sip of his Manhattan. I smile as I look down at the menu. I'm going to get Mel's famous tequila barbeque ribs, coleslaw, baked beans, and cornbread. And I'm pretty damn sure I'll have a dog before the middle of July.