Page 142 of The New Place

It’s so easy to tease him. So fun, too, a lightness between them that Abbot hasn’t felt in longer than he realized. “Will we?”

Ned crowds him towards the stairs. “I don’t know about you, but I have the next two days entirely planned out.”

I get her until Sunday, Susan had said, holding Liesl in a long hug. You can’t have her back until then. And Dan and Cheryl had taken Peggy with them, no mention of Ned following them back to Boston anytime soon.

And his father in town—no, Abbot doesn’t need to interrupt his time with Ned to see him. “Why, do you have a lot of grading to do?” Abbot asks blithely.

“If that’s what the kids are calling it these days.” Ned grabs Abbot’s hand and hurries them up the stairs.

Abbot goes willingly, stopping only to turn on the lamp on his dresser, and the other on his nightstand. He wants to see Ned. To know this is real, after the flurry of today.

He feels real, when Abbot puts his arms around him and finds his mouth in a kiss. Feels like he always does, solid and warm, Ned’s hands falling to Abbot’s waist and gripping there. Abbot revels in it, the answer in Ned’s mouth as it moves with him, the strength in his hands that slide up his ribs, down to his hips, and then press flat to his back, bringing their bodies close. Ned touches with such confidence, and that certainty passes through him to Abbot, grounding him as it always does.

Ned’s the only and the last person Abbot will ever be intimate with again, their mouths working together, his fingers in Ned’s hair, the shape of his body held so close against him. There’s so much relief in that, the sure end to any searching, to the years of dissatisfaction and disappointment with other men. He hadn’t even known this was who he’d been waiting for, couldn’t have conjured up the idea of Ned because he’d never been able to guess at who he truly wanted. A crush, he’d told himself when his skin tingled anytime Ned was in the same room, sure even then that he ought to look for someone more like himself, not this friendly, funny man he’s holding now.

“Remember that first time up here?” Abbot asks, pulling away to tip their foreheads together. Remember? Ned had asked him just hours ago in Pat’s apartment. Abbot grips the back of Ned’s neck, his body alight with how Ned’s hands draw slowly down his back to rest low on his waist. Abbot remembers. He remembers all of it, everything from that fall. That first time he’d gone to Ned’s apartment, nervous and excited all at once at the chance to be in Ned’s space. The first time they’d kissed, which Abbot had been certain would be their last, wanting to memorize the brush of lips and the scent of Ned’s skin, just as surely as his mind spun and his heart hammered and he could focus on nothing at all in the rush of the moment. Making Ned laugh, not the uncomfortable sound he’d heard so often, but a true, genuine note of delight. Taking Ned out to dinner after his dissertation defense with the sure knowledge that it was a date, and the calmness and thrill that thought had been.

“The first time?” Ned asks. “Hell yeah I do. You invited me upstairs and I nearly died right there.”

“Really rather fortunate that you didn’t.” Abbot drops his hand down Ned’s side, tracing light over the ladder of his ribs, the dip of his waist. “I thought you were going to say no.”

“Me too,” Ned says and laughs, a puff of air against Abbot’s mouth. “And then you told me to shut up and stop talking.”

“Self-preservation. I could only handle so much.”

And it had been, the very thought of Ned in his bedroom overcrowding his brain, so that Abbot could barely stand the fact of him, the sight of his chest and shoulders that Abbot had spent so long trying not to imagine, and then quickly the rest of his body too. Turning away from him had been the only choice, a matter of steeling himself against the sight of the man he’d wanted for so long, and so surely couldn’t have for more than that one night.

Now, Abbot gets forever. He presses Ned back to the bed, kissing him again as he climbs over his body, Ned laid out beneath him. Abbot rises onto his knees, unbuttoning his shirt, intent on baring them both down to skin. He gets this. Gets Ned. Not just once, the shock that first night had been, and not twice, following Ned up the narrow stairs to his apartment, desperate to be together again and pained with the knowledge that if once was sheer luck, twice was so impossible it had to preclude anything more.

But more had come, more and more and more, and he has Ned beneath him, his eyes dark, his mouth opening for another kiss.

He works Ned’s shirt off, sliding his hands greedily over his pecs, tracing the muscles in his shoulders, the line of his collarbone, hungry for the feel of him. Abbot backs off the bed to kneel on the floor, Ned scrambling to help him with his belt buckle, to open his pants and shove them and his boxers down.

Yes. This. Ned up on his elbows, his mouth slack as Abbot takes his cock in his hand, and then his mouth, earning a deep rumble of sound from the back of Ned’s throat.

“That’s so good,” Ned whispers as Abbot bobs down and back up, his hips rocking, his hand gripped hard on Abbot’s shoulder. “That’s—ah—like that, exactly like that.”

Abbot could bring him off like this, working at him, Ned’s taste leaking onto his tongue, and he’d gasp and his body would tense.

Instead Abbot pulls off of him and strips off the rest of his clothes, throwing them after the pile of Ned’s on the floor. Ned scrambles up the bed on his back, heels pushing, his long torso turning as he fumbles at the nightstand drawer. Yes, they understand each other. Hasn’t that always been the crux of their connection? As different as they are, as separate as their lives, they’ve always been able to find in the other that deep patience and acceptance, more intimate than anything they could do with their bodies.

Not that they can’t try to match it. Abbot had always preferred sex on his knees, only the mattress and pillows to look at, his hands bracing his weight, any pleasure and the touch of another as distant from him as he could manage for such a personal act. He sits on Ned’s legs, letting him look his fill, and looking in return. Ned’s skin is golden in the lamplight, his cheeks flushed and eyes bright. Abbot slicks Ned’s cock with lube, enjoying the fingers that dig into his thigh, the way a twist of his fist can get Ned’s body to twitch, and the slow drag of his thumb, Ned’s breath to come harder.

“C’mon,” Ned urges, a tremble of eagerness in his voice, a hastiness in his hands when he grabs Abbot’s waist.

He doesn’t make Ned wait, just shifts forward. Ned helps guide him, and Abbot pauses for a moment, adjusting to the stretch. Ned stares up at him, eyes blown wide.

Abbot moves, rocking slowly. Ned’s body is so familiar now, the ways he reacts and what he likes most. Sex has never been so easy or so fun, wringing such delight out of his partner as its own enjoyment, the pleasure building in his body second to the flush on Ned’s face, the desperation of his gasps.

“Is that good?” Abbot asks.

He knows it is, can already tell Ned is past the point of joking conversation, his focus drawn to their bodies moving, his mind right here and here only.

“No…” Ned manages. “Talking.”

“Ah, so it just took you a year and a half to agree.”

Ned’s cheek bulges as he clenches his molars and his mouth works, silent, as Abbot shifts the angle slightly.