Better Than People (Garnet Run 1)

“Draw Puddles baking cookies.”

Jack snorted. Then he remembered he’d drawn a book about a Bison who’d taken the subway and he shut up.

He picked up one of the pens Simon had brought. It wasn’t what he usually sketched with, just a regular ballpoint, but it didn’t matter because this was just for fun, just for Simon.

It’s not real, so there’s no pressure.

He closed his eyes and the scene fell into his head. Puddles on his hind legs, measuring ingredients at the counter; Puddles turning the mixer on too high and being engulfed in a cloud of flour that settled on him, turning his fur from yellow to white.

Jack chuckled at that and Puddles lolled onto his back in his sleep, paws twitching as if he knew.

Jack began to draw.

* * *

Days later he was still drawing.

He wasn’t drawing animals or landscapes like he usually did. He was drawing Simon. They were blushingly private drawings in a sketchbook he shoved under the couch cushions any time he got up.

It had begun with his face, in an attempt to capture the way that sleeping Simon looked like another person. Something in the lack of tension around his eyes, in the softness of his mouth...sleeping Simon was unburdened. The only other time Jack had seen him look that way was when they were fucking.

Simon, head thrown back, eyes hot with lust, mouth open on a scream.

Every time he remembered it he got hard. In fact, he was beginning to feel a little strange about how hot Simon got him. He’d never thought the virgin thing would do it for him. In the past, he’d gone for uninhibited guys who were just looking for a quick good time. Guys who made eyes at him in a bar or looked him up and down at the gas station. Guys who knew what they wanted and were ready for him to give it to them.

But Simon’s surprised, wide-eyed sensuality got to him more than the most enthusiastic, knowing encounters he’d ever had.

Which was how Jack found himself transitioning from sketching Simon’s beautiful sleeping face to drawing Simon facedown on his bed, legs akimbo, round ass raised and begging, hole glistening. The desire to be spread open and fucked hard eloquent in every tensed muscle and in his hand twisted in the sheets.

He didn’t even mean to draw it. It’d been the middle of the night, he’d woken as usual, and, as if the previous eight months had just been a horrible dream, stoked the fire, flopped onto the couch, and lost himself in the lines of his pencil.

When he got up to use the bathroom hours later and focused on the page before him, it seemed almost to have been drawn by a stranger. His style, yes, his shading and his line work. But Jack didn’t draw people—and he’d certainly never drawn people like...that.

That had been three days ago and to show for his recovered artistic impulse he had a sketchbook of fantasies that rivaled the Kama Sutra, a body that seemed to be on sex overdrive, and a renewed sense of hope that maybe his career and his artistic passion hadn’t been snuffed out after all.

It was this last that he was thinking about when Simon arrived for the morning walk and Jack shoved the sketchbook under the couch cushion.

The shy smile that Simon gave him made Jack melt. He pushed to his feet, fumbled for his crutches, and let himself be carried toward Simon on the tide of the pack who instantly circled him, excited to go out.

“Hi,” Simon said, then ducked his chin like he felt self-conscious about what he’d said, or how he’d said it. Jack couldn’t always tell which it was.

“Hi,” he said, in case it was the former.

Jack had found that if he kissed Simon first when he showed up in the mornings, Simon’s shyness lingered, but if he put himself in a place where Simon kissed him, it dissipated faster. So he stepped close, enjoying the way Simon naturally tipped his face up.

He brushed his knuckles along Simon’s cheek and looked at his mouth. Simon’s lips parted and he slowly moved to press a soft kiss to Jack’s mouth. Jack cupped the back of his neck and Simon kissed him again, deeper this time.

When Simon wrapped his arms around Jack, Jack pulled him close. Then they were hugging, mouths awkwardly pressed together and crutches smooshed to Simon’s back, and Simon huffed out a laugh.

“Hi,” he said again, and now he sounded more relaxed.

Satisfaction bloomed in Jack’s chest the way it had when he’d realized the reason Puddles kept stopping in the middle of the road was the lightning shaped sticks. Jack had gently removed the obstacle and Puddles had looked at him with such gratitude, as if all the time he had simply been waiting for someone to pay attention.