Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

He slid a hand down his belly and into his underwear and brought himself off in just five glorious strokes, shuddering and biting his lip. He couldn’t help but wonder if maybe, 6.8 miles northwest, Jack might be doing the same.

He fell blissfully asleep, but woke up with a dragon of anxiety curled in his stomach. What would it be like when he saw Jack this morning? What if Jack thought the whole thing was a mistake and everything they’d been building was ruined? Simon had talked to him! What if Jack pretended it had never happened? Simon couldn’t bear to see him twice a day and pretend. Or what if Jack assumed they’d fuck now? That was normal for people who had sex, right?

By the time he got to Jack’s he was nauseated and shaking apart. Jack opened the door with a warm smile, but it slid off his face the second he saw Simon’s expression.

“What’s wrong?”

He held a hand out and Simon followed him in.

“I didn’t know if—What are—We don’t—”

Too much, too many possibilities all intersecting, contradicting, overloaded. Choking.

“Hey, hey, c’mere,” Jack said, leaning his crutches against the wall and opening his arms.

Simon stood face-to-face with something he’d wanted since the moment Jack first opened the front door. The chance to be held close to that big, warm body, in its soft, worn sweatshirt. Something he’d wanted far longer than just since then, if he were honest.

Someone who regretted kissing him and wanted to pretend it never happened wouldn’t open his arms, right?

He stepped forward, heart racing, and let Jack’s arms enfold him.

Jack squeezed him tight, then stroked his back.

“What’s up, darlin’?” he asked softly after a few minutes. It was only when Simon pulled back that he found the pack sitting in a circle around them, watching them.

It felt right, somehow.

He tried to put his thoughts in order but they started to get tangled up again, and the tangle stuck in his throat.

“You wanna text?” Jack offered when he cleared his throat for the fifth time.

Gratitude for the unexpected kindness of this man flooded him and nearly leaked from his eyes.

He nodded and pulled out his phone.

Sorry. I got so nervous and I didn’t know if it would be weird today bc of the whole kissing thing and then I freaked out like what if you regretted it or maybe I’m a terrible kisser or what if you thought that kissing meant I would just have sex right away and I don’t think I’m ready and then I thought you might be mad at me.

He couldn’t quite make himself send the message, held his phone until Jack gently took it from his hand. After a minute, Jack cupped his cheek.

“It’s not weird for me. I definitely do not regret the whole kissing thing.” He winked. “You’re, fuuuck, the opposite of a terrible kisser. I thought maybe I scared you away with how much I, uh, liked it.”

Simon flushed, thinking about touching himself to memories of their kiss, and shook his head.

“Well, that’s good. I’d never assume that kissing me meant you wanted to have sex with me, even if you’d kissed a million people before, and anyone who’d be mad at you for not being ready is a piece of shit. And I’ll knock their block off.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say and from Jack it sounded like the most natural thing in the world.

“Okay,” Simon said. He dropped his forehead forward to rest against Jack’s shoulder. “Good.”

“Good,” Jack echoed.

Bernard howled, echoing it in his own way too.

* * *

The next week was perhaps the strangest in Simon’s life.

He wasn’t used to waking up excited about where he was going or who he was seeing. He wasn’t used to getting out of his car and not feeling a sick sense of dread creep through him. He wasn’t used to falling asleep with memories from the day that he wanted to ruminate on. And he absolutely, certainly, one hundred percent was not used to being gathered to a man’s chest, his lips and cheeks and brows kissed; to the taste of someone else’s lips tingling on his own as he walked the dogs, made coffee, did his work.

It was visionary, transcendent, addictive.

It gave him the unfamiliar sense of having a place in the world. Of being tethered, rather than floating, ghostlike, through a land that belonged to others.

He didn’t suppose that a week of kissing was supposed to be able to change the world, but his world was sweetly, irrevocably altered.

Of course his grandmother had noticed. Simon worried she might tease him, but that was a worry from another time.

“What’s Jack’s favorite cookie?” she’d asked, taking out the flour.

Simon didn’t know.

“Well, ask him, silly!”

Simon had stared at his phone. It had never occurred to him that he could contact Jack when they weren’t together.