Beneath the Stain - Part 1 (6 page)

—straight into Grant’s arms.

“You hear that?” Grant whispered harshly, pushing Mackey back into the dark.

“Whole fucking world heard it,” Mackey snarled, hurt and horny and desperate. “You couldn’t take her someplace I wouldn’t hear? You
like
what that does to me? You think that’s fun?”

“
No
!” Grant shoved at him, his height and the breadth of his chest enough to force Mackey back against the wall of the cul-de-sac meant to hide the guys in the changing rooms from the world. “You think it’s fun for me?” he whispered, nuzzling Mackey’s neck roughly, his tongue making forays against his skin, his teeth nipping Mackey’s ear and his neck. “I don’t want her. She’s a nice girl, but I don’t get hard for her. All I can think about while she’s touching me is how bad I want to be touching you.”

Mackey closed his eyes against the words, because they hurt,
flayed
, tore the skin from his flesh. “Dammit, how can you even
say
that to me?” He shoved at Grant’s chest, but Grant didn’t go anywhere.

“It’s the only truth I got,” Grant muttered, and then his mouth crashed down on Mackey’s and there was no more room for words.

It was a brutal kiss, teeth and lips, bony fingers digging into muscles, Grant’s stubble scrubbing roughly at Mackey’s cheeks.

Grant’s hands plundered, popping two of Mackey’s buttons from the bottom of the shirt as he spanned Mackey’s ribcage with his big, callused hands. Mackey clenched Grant’s dress shirt, trying to stay anchored, trying to stay in control.

“I’ve tasted your cock,” Grant muttered into his ear. “I want it again.”

Mackey moaned, stunned at the words, even more stunned when Grant sank to his knees and yanked Mackey’s pants down his backside.

He’d done this before. Mackey closed his eyes against the memory and yanked at Grant’s hair, hard, wanting
his
turn to taste, but Grant ignored him, taking Mackey down his throat and swallowing.

“You think I don’t want to taste too?” Mackey demanded, and Grant moaned against him. Words. Mackey knew words. “You think I don’t want your come…
fuckin’ God
!”

Grant’s hand and fingers were slick with spit and Mackey’s precome, but Mackey was still shocked when Grant shoved two fingers up his ass.

It hurt, was rough, but underneath the shock and the pain was an edgy dark ache of pleasure, and Mackey came, muttering obscenities under his breath.

“Come
here
!” he snapped, hauling Grant up by the hair. This time Grant moved, and Mackey lunged at him, tasting his own come before Grant swallowed and finding it bitter but sucking it off his tongue anyway.

Grant moaned, and even though Mackey was so much smaller, he let Mackey turn him around, shove him against the wall for a change, and then sink down to a squat on the cold concrete of the changing room alcove.

Mackey wanted more. He wanted to linger on Grant’s body, touch his skin, take his nipples into his mouth and pull. He’d seen Grant in his underwear, in his swim trunks, hell, naked often enough, Mackey wanted time to make that skin and flesh all his.

But he didn’t have time. He had this dark pocket of damp concrete, and Grant’s slacks bunched up in his fists as he pulled down. His own pants were still open, his dick chilling as he squatted half-naked, but it didn’t matter.

Grant was there, and for the moment, Grant was helpless wanting him.

He mouthed Grant’s erection through his briefs first, because Mackey wanted to taste the spot of wetness at the tip. Through the cotton and the fabric softener it was still salty, still bitter, and Mackey would write a song about that, bitter come—but later, much later, when he hadn’t just yanked Grant’s underwear down and taken Grant’s cock into his waiting mouth.

“Nungh….” He wanted. Wanted with everything. Straining, he shoved his mouth farther over Grant’s cock, taking it back in his throat like Grant had done to him. He had no time to compare their erections or to linger over the taste of skin—Grant felt huge in his mouth, big enough to force out his breath and his pain and his thoughts. Mackey swallowed, wanting more, wanting it all, and Grant dragged him back by the hair and then let go.

Mackey shoved his head forward again, not even close to the root. He grasped the rest of it in his fist and let his spit drip, making it slick and wet. Grant spurted, salty, and spurted again, bitter, and then muffled his groan in his palm and he came, hard, dumping down Mackey’s throat and again and again and again.

Mackey couldn’t swallow it all, and it spilled out on his new shirt with the busted buttons, down his chin, down his throat, and he kept trying to swallow until he choked on it, sobbing for breath, wanting all of it, wanting to be good, wanting to be good
enough
for Grant to keep him, for Grant to stay.

“Shh….” Grant whispered, tugging on his sweat-stiff hair. “Shh. C’mon, Mackey, let me hold you a minute.”

Oh! Of all things. Mackey felt himself engulfed, held, cuddled, all the things he’d wanted that desperate moment in his bedroom, all the things he’d needed when he’d been coming down from the performance in the gym.

He let out a little whimper, and Grant palmed the back of his head, forcing Mackey closer to Grant’s chest.

“Grant….” he whispered brokenly, and Grant hushed him again.

“’S okay, Mackey. It’s okay. You did good. I needed…. God. I get so lost in you.”

Grant said that, again and again and again. The thing Mackey wanted to say sounded stupid.
I’m found here. You find me. You know me.

He couldn’t have spoken anyway—he was absurdly near tears.

Eventually Grant pulled up their pants and did the belts. His hands were shaking, but they felt so firm, so warm, Mackey was comforted just the same. When he was done, Grant stood up and pushed Mackey’s hair from his face with both warm, comforting, shaking hands.

“Hey,” he whispered. “I love you.”

Mackey closed his eyes, lit up inside and torn up too. Because there was no promise in those words, just the words themselves. “I love you too,” he answered, because like Grant right now, the truth was all he had.

G
RANT
TOOK
him home a few minutes later, texting Sam to tell her that he’d seen Mackey after he’d “cleaned up” and that he didn’t want the boy wandering around by himself.

Mackey was so grateful for the ride, for the small show of aftercare, that he didn’t resent the lie or the implication that he couldn’t take care of himself.

He opened the door to the minivan as Grant stopped outside the apartment building, and Grant risked a touch to his hand.

Mackey turned to him, uncertain.

“Mackey?”

“I….” They’d lived in this apartment complex for years, knew their upstairs neighbor, their downstairs neighbor, the people on either side. People would be looking out at them, would know the minivan, would know the people inside. There would be no goodnight kiss, no gentleness. Mackey had gotten all he was going to get in the alcove next to the boys’ locker room.

“You and me, we’ve got… we’ll find a moment, okay? That may be all it is, but… man, you’re in my blood. I need to work you out.”

Later Mackey would look back and wonder where his pride was. But then, later, Mackey would have a place to pull pride from.

“Anything. I need….” Mackey closed his eyes, not even sure
what
he needed, just knowing that moments in dark corners weren’t doing it. “Anything.”

Grant nodded and stroked the skin on the back of his hand. “Night, Mackey.”

“Night.”

Mackey walked up the stairs and let himself into the darkened apartment with one goal in mind.

He shed his clothes into the hamper in his room before the door even closed behind him and before he’d turned on one light. He hit the bathroom naked and turned on the shower before he hit the light switch. He jumped under the water before it was anywhere near warm.

He could smell Grant’s come.

It saturated the shirt crumpled in the hamper, coated the skin of his chest, and was probably flaking off his mouth and throat. Every breath he took reminded him of the feeling of Grant’s cock in his mouth, of the white-blindness of his own orgasm, of the coldness of slipping out of the car without a backward glance.

He ached with needing someone to hold him. His skin hurt with it, his joints throbbed with need of it.

He needed his own skin back.

The water froze first and scalded second, and he scrubbed hard at his face and neck, shampooed his hair twice because of the sweat and the come that had smeared in it when he’d stood up.

He wondered if anyone noticed that Grant had Mackey’s come on his face.

Would Grant wash it off? Would Samantha notice? Would he kiss her good-night with Mackey’s semen still on his lips, tanging his tongue, streaking his chin?

God.

The tears started when the water ran hot and didn’t stop, not long after it ran cold or even after Mackey left the shower. He dressed in threadbare cotton briefs and sweats with holes in the knees and a shirt that had been old before Kell got it and then passed it to Jefferson who passed it down to him.

His hooded sweatshirt, though—that was his. That had been a Christmas gift from his mom the year before, fleecy and warm, plain, blue, and clean.

He left the bathroom light on because he couldn’t make himself care to turn it off and huddled in the corner of his bunk, invisible in the dark, willing the terrifying mix of joy and awfulness to die.

He heard noises, feet on the stairs, the door opening, and then his bedroom was invaded with light. He rolled over and squinted against the light from the bathroom, grateful when his mom’s silhouette blocked the glare.

Cheever was asleep on her shoulder, and from the looks of it, he’d had some night.

“Mom, what’s all that on his face?” Mackey asked, surprised out of his misery.

His mom gave a muffled little squeak. “Jesus, kid, you scared me. Shh… shh….” Gently she laid Cheever down on the top bunk, then pulled the rail up into place. Cheever didn’t move, his four-year-old body limp and heavy. Kell once forgot to pull the rail up when they’d put Cheever to bed. Cheever had rolled out of bed and fallen to the floor and his breathing hadn’t even stuttered.

“C’mon, Mackey,” his mom said, smiling at him tiredly. “Let’s go watch some TV.”

Mackey was the only one of them who really liked television. His mom liked comedies and movies and such—things to escape in—and Mackey could find songs in those places, so he would watch with her, especially in the summer when there was no air conditioning.

His mom kept the desperately old TV in her room, on the little dresser at the foot of her bed, and she piled the pillows high and turned it on, grabbing her own T-shirt and shorts from the dresser as it warmed up. “Lemme shower,” she mumbled. “I want to hear all about your night.”

He curled up on his side and watched the end of
Friends
, and it wasn’t until the end of the episode when the two roommates were jumping on top of each other in an effort to get to the door that he realized he was smiling.

He could smile. Good to know.

His mom was a champion at the five-minute shower. She came back in wearing an extra-large white T-shirt that came to her knees, still smoothing moisturizer on her face, while the episode was winding down. She sat on the bed, leaning into the pillows, curling on her side like he was so she could see the television and was comfy at the same time.

The episode ended and the commercials came on before she spoke into the comfortable quiet of the room.

“How’d the show go?”

Mackey smiled a little, remembering how excited she’d been for them. He wouldn’t kill that for anything. “It was great,” he told her truthfully. “Kids loved it. Kids who didn’t even know our name loved it. Frickin’ awesome.”

She laughed softly. “Good to know,” she said. Absently, like she’d forgotten he wasn’t a baby anymore, like Cheever, she started to smooth his hair back from his face. He let her.

“And they let us do seven songs instead of just six,” he continued softly. “That was nice. We did two songs
I
wrote, Mom. They
liked
them. It was kind of sweet, you know? Like… like I had something good to give.”

He huddled deeper into the new warm fleece hoodie, and although his mom left the window open at night, it still wasn’t cold enough to have it on.

“It’s always nice to feel like you got something to give,” she said. “Did you and the boys celebrate?”

“Mmhm,” he murmured. The next episode was about to come on, and he hoped it would get there before he gave too much away. “We all went out and high-fived and stuff, but we were thirsty and they had snacks, so we went back in.”

“Yeah? I thought you all would have gone out after?”

“Mm. Yeah, but the prom was stupid and I was tired. I didn’t want to wait for the rest of that to go out.”

“Did you walk home?” she asked, propping herself up on her arm in her concern, and he shook his head, keeping his eyes on the TV.

“Grant brought me. He was going back after he dropped me off.”

“Nice of him,” she conceded. He’d heard her before, trying to discourage Kell from putting too much hope in Grant as a friend. Grant’s dad was a car salesman—owned the only two lots in Tyson. He kept some stock on the farm and owned horses to show, but mostly he just sold cars and got rich. Too much money for the Sanders kids—she’d said that on more than one occasion.

“He’s a good guy,” Mackey said loyally. Stupid. Why would his mom even care?

“I know, precious,” she said, smoothing his bangs off his forehead. “He’s a good guy. I don’t mind that you’re friends. It’s just… you know. That money thing. It don’t seem to make a difference now, but you don’t know when rich people are gonna get mean.”

He grunted. “Not mean. But he sure does think different’n me.”

That was the truth right there. If Mackey had wanted Tony, he would have danced with Tony, no matter what anyone said. But Tony hadn’t been worth the bullshit, so he hadn’t. But Grant—if Grant had asked Mackey to get on his knees and blow him in the school auditorium, well, Mackey would have done that.