Heartstrings (19 page)

B
lake Bradley was
a miserable house guest when he was depressed. But Cal didn’t mind. He was determined to help Blake through his rough patch, come hell or high water.

He had no idea the situation with the band was quite so bad. Blowing up their record contract, canceling the tour, leaving it all hanging over Blake’s head like a ghost until the lawyers came to some conclusion. It galled Cal’s sense of right and wrong.

They didn’t bother with the pretense of setting Blake up in the spare room. Not since they’d both dropped the L-word. Sleeping with Blake on a nightly basis was a rare treat, considering how much traveling they’d done on the tour. The first couple of days, they spent more time in bed together than out. Not even solely occupied with sex—although some mind-blowing blowjobs did occur—but just acclimating themselves to one another.

Blake did his little nesting thing and unpacked his crap all over Cal’s apartment. But Cal, as minimalist as his lifestyle was, didn’t mind. He barely owned enough in his house to make a mess.

And, he soon discovered, he only had one of everything. He ate at work so often that he didn’t have two plates that matched. He had two burger plates that hadn’t been returned to work, one big Corelle plate left over from years ago, one saucer that didn’t have a teacup, and one mint-green plastic plate that Yanmei had left at his place. It had once contained cookies.

Blake got some of his old charm back, enough to eyeball the contents of Cal’s cupboards and call him an embarrassment. He never seemed to shake the worst of it off, though.

So, naturally, Cal took him shopping.

Being with Blake in a couple context was
weird.
When they’d done their tentative on-and-off hookups in their youth, they hadn’t been an out couple. Blake still wasn’t out in the media. But they went through the day-to-day domesticities of life together, the bits at home even more important than the bits when they were out and about.

Yet Cal felt selfish. Blake brought him happiness. Blake brought warmth and color and
life
to his home. Unfortunately for Cal, the joy on Blake’s end wasn’t ever enough to cancel out his heartbreak.

It wasn’t fair. Seeing Blake with a permanent damper on his happiness twisted in Cal’s ribs like a wound that wouldn’t heal.

When it was time for his shifts at The Garage, Cal left Blake alone at home. He had his own set of keys. He had his rental Jeep. Cal kept hoping he’d come home and find Blake out somewhere. Gone to the nearest bookstore, gone to a gig, gone to get a stupid tattoo signifying his deep-seated misery.

But it never happened.

Whenever Cal walked through the door, Blake was either curled up on the loveseat with his laptop, obsessively reading music blogs, or sulking in front of the television. Or asleep. Even if Cal stopped home for lunch in the middle of the day.

Slowly, the sense of unfairness Cal felt blossomed into actual anger. Not toward Blake of course, but toward Rhett fucking Ballard, who deserved to have his face beat in.

Blake’s banjo was still in its case, sitting in the corner, collecting dust.

They’d get through it. Cal had to believe they could. But it was hard sometimes, to love Blake and know Blake wasn’t quite as happy as he was. That guilt came creeping back, like it always did.

* * *

“
I
don’t know
what to do,” Cal said, locking up The Garage’s staff entrance. The night’s chill dug in beneath his leather coat, a bit of winter returned despite it being the middle of spring. “The band thing has him so devastated. I feel like he’s miserable and I can’t help.”

Yanmei put a hand to his back, leaving it there, a tentative brush of camaraderie.

“I can’t blame him. It sounds like apart from you, his life fucking sucks right now.”

“Any words of wisdom, since you were so ready with them last time?”

“I dunno, Calvin. Do something fun with him. Take him out. Take some time off work yourself. Come play laser tag with me and Travis.”

The laser tag Cal would have to pass on. But she was right: leaving Blake alone for hours at a time while he worked wasn’t helping either of them. Whenever he was apart from Blake, his whole body thrummed with the need to see him again.

He thanked Yanmei for her help, however few words it may have been, and started the walk home.

“Hey, wait!” she called from beside her car. “What about like, some not-band music? Get him to come out here and play a gig. If he’s so torn up about it, maybe remind him that life was okay before the band made it big.”

She had a way with words. They
had
been okay just playing songs for one another. With one another. Back before Blake’s success, the music itself was all they had. It had been pure. Untainted with any of the stresses that eventually fractured the Sinsationals.

Or maybe Blake didn’t want music of any kind right now. Maybe it was too painful a reminder. There was only one way to find out, Cal supposed. He had to try. He couldn’t stand finally getting Blake back, to feel so happy himself, if Blake couldn’t feel that happiness.

Back when he’d been an awkward, transplanted Texan struggling to make real friends outside the wrestling team, it was Blake who had taught him how to unwind a little. How to enjoy more than just the rush of endorphins after a workout. How to sit out under the stars in silence and admire them and feel at peace, rather than feeling like he was wasting his time.

Cal knew deep down there was nothing he wouldn’t do to bring that warm glow back to Blake’s eyes. He just had to figure something out.

N
ever before had
Blake been in an artistic funk. He’d had his ups and downs over the years—an especially prolonged period of down after Cal first left the band—but throughout all that, songs had sprung up inside him like weeds. Music was a part of him like his nerves and his blood vessels. When he woke up in the morning, notes wandered into his mind. When he practiced, he felt centered and calm.

Some days, when Cal was at work, Blake hefted Cal’s guitar off the wall and tried to play it. He wasn’t quite as proficient on guitar as he was on banjo, but he’d still played it for a good seven years. The banjo was too painful to look at these days.

He thought the guitar might offer a reprieve.

But when he plucked the strings, nothing sounded quite right. He double- and triple-checked the tuning, but the guitar was tuned correctly. Something sounded
off
, but it wasn’t in the guitar itself.

It was in his heart.

He waited by the phone like a lovesick teenager for word from Palmer. He texted with Lily and Carlo sometimes, but not much. Just check-ins and how-you-doings that he couldn’t even guarantee they were answering honestly.

Shopping with Cal was nice. Carving out a little living space for himself amid all the heavy wood furniture and solid-walled
Cal-ness
of the place was also nice. Blake wondered just how lost he’d feel if Cal wasn’t around to brighten his days.

On their ninth day of no word on the Sinsationals’ future, Cal came to Blake with an idea.

“Hey,” Cal said, home early from tending the bar. Blake, who was curled up on the loveseat, lifted his head.

“Hey yourself.” He smiled. The sight of Cal walking through the door, greeting him as if they were an actual couple, it was something he’d never grow tired of.

“I have a proposition for you.”

Cal folded his arms and leaned in the doorway, watching Blake with a bit of a squint.

Blake sat up, setting his phone down. Cal’s tone was oddly mischievous. He didn’t get that way often.

“You up for a side job this weekend? A buddy of mine runs that comedy club down the road from the bar. He had a comic drop out at the last second, needs someone to fill the gap.”

Blake twisted his mouth downward, cautious. A solo show? With no Sinsationals songs? What would he even play?

“I thought maybe we could suit up like old times. Keys To The Old Horse, Greatest Hits Edition.”

Blake sat up even straighter, interest piqued. Not solo, then.

“We?” he asked, hopeful.

“Yeah, you think just because I’m working at the bar again I never want to play music with you anymore?”

Blake didn’t admit out loud to that being exactly what he’d worried. Instead, he unfurled from the sofa and bounded across the floor, leaping up toward Cal and corralling him in a full body-weight hug.

“Easy, easy!” Cal said, though he returned the hug fiercely. “Neighbors downstairs, remember?”

“Oh, shit.”

Blake laughed breathlessly, tucking himself in against Cal’s warm body. He kissed his neck, toyed with the hair at the nape. Calvin Lindsay was an incredible man. Blake didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky. Nerves still tingled in his stomach at the idea of a show without the rest of the band, but as long as he had Cal in his corner, everything would be fine.

* * *

F
or all her
humility about being a small-fry bar manager, Yanmei was a hell of a promoter. In less than a week’s time, she’d whispered in enough ears that Blake was going to make an appearance at Follies that tickets sold out. Cal’s friend Clayton was over the moon.

Secretly, Blake was too. Practicing with Cal in the lead-up to the show was the highlight of his day.

Performing at a venue like Follies was a nice change of pace. No commotion backstage, no dozens of people to meet and greet, no caterers, no surly bandmates throwing punches. Just a few guys who worked there, one token person per occupation: lighting guy, sound guy, security guy. The smallness of it was refreshing.

Blake and Cal took the stage right on schedule, a guitar in each of their laps. Blake still hadn’t touched the banjo, so he acquired himself a nice little number with nylon strings to fiddle on in the meantime. It was smaller, rounder, the sound almost ukulele-like compared to the warm steel tones of Cal’s guitar.

They contrasted beautifully together. Just like Blake and Cal.

Their set list was minimal: a few old standard covers, the only Keys To The Old Horse singles that were ever released, and a couple Sinsationals instrumentals that Rhett didn’t have any claim to. They played a rousing rendition of “Whisky in the Jar”
that was in equal parts inspired by Thin Lizzie’s version and Metallica’s. When Blake sang, he mimicked that James Hetfield growl. The eight-hundred-strong crowd got a kick out of it.

But most importantly, when he looked over at Cal, there was a hint of wetness in the other man’s dark eyes. Eyes that had seen Blake at his worst and were smiling now. Making music with Cal had always had a strangely magic quality to it, as though there was some alchemy going on that nobody else could ever duplicate.

This show just proved it. Blake played and sang his heart out, and by his measure he sounded phenomenal, even with a half-broken heart and playing his secondary instrument. Cal’s guitar sounded incredible, too. The tone was just as he’d imagined it’d be up close.

They played not one, but two separate encores. They dug out every song the two of them knew. Blake fingerpicked a banjo version of “Cripple Creek”
on the guitar to wild applause. Cal showed off his own skills and played the riff from the
Top Gun
soundtrack, which was a ridiculous song to even play on an acoustic guitar.

“
Top Gun
? Really?” Blake said into his mic as Cal played. Laughter broke out in the audience. Cal casually rolled a shoulder and kept on going, tearing into the instrumental with vigor.

“Okay Cal,” Blake joked. “Take my breath away.”

By the time the curtain finally came down, they’d overstayed their welcome by almost half an hour. But nobody on venue staff seemed to care. And not a soul rose from their seats early. Because when Cal and Blake made music together, it was captivating like nothing else.

B
lake was
, without a doubt, the most stunningly sexy individual Cal had ever laid eyes on. Watching him on stage was stronger than the most potent aphrodisiac. Being so close to him, close enough to touch and smell and
taste
on a daily basis...

As soon as the show was over, Cal knew he had to have Blake to himself. As soon as possible.

There was no after-party. There wasn’t even a “let’s hang around and have a drink with our pals.”

Blake drove them straight home in that ridiculous rental Jeep of his, and the very second they stepped through the door, Cal shoved him up against the wall.

A startled sound squeaking out of his throat, Blake slammed the door with a foot, neighbors be damned, and let Cal devour him. Cal shrugged his leather jacket to the floor, peeled Blake’s jacket off too, and shoved his hands roughly up under Blake’s shirt.

The taut skin and muscle of Blake’s abdomen was hot to the touch. Cal toyed with the shirt, then locked eyes with Blake, perking up his eyebrows once in a nonverbal command.

Blake understood and obeyed, fingers fumbling with the buttonholes even as they staggered toward the bedroom. By the time they reached the bedroom proper, both men wore nothing but blue jeans. Cal grabbed hold of Blake’s belt buckle and pulled him close, tongue thrusting into his mouth, kissing him hotly. Blake groaned and leaned into Cal’s touch, pliant and willing, and Cal felt himself grow rock hard in his pants.

They rocked together for a moment, delighting in the friction, skin on skin and denim-on-denim, erections brushing through the fabric. Blake felt just as needy as Cal did. When Cal finally slid Blake’s belt free and tugged his pants and shorts down, he settled his hands on the curve of Blake’s ass, squeezing hard. Blake thrust against him, hips bucking, and Cal held on tight.

“God, I hope you’re not tired,” Cal rasped in Blake’s ear, tongue flicking out to lick along it.

Wasting no time, Cal shoved Blake down onto the mattress facedown, their bedcovers still mussed from the morning. He reached around, fingers walking a teasing path down Blake’s midsection, then took hold of Blake’s cock in a strong grip, hand forming a tight seal.

He stroked Blake’s dick several times, hard and already leaking, his hand soon slick. He worked his hand over Blake’s shaft several times, pumping slowly, just slow enough that Blake began to writhe and wriggle against him. The friction of Blake’s body against his was unbearable. Cal unzipped his own fly and pulled his pants down his hips, boxers along with them.

Hot flesh against flesh, he pressed his body to Blake’s, the hardness of his cock nestled in between Blake’s cheeks. Easing back and forth, Cal rocked his body to Blake’s, jolts of electricity quivering through his body, his heart rate rising.

Blake felt so good against him.

It would be even better once he was inside.

“Please,” Blake was whimpering. “I can’t.
Please.
”

Cal leaned down, mouthing a lewd, slippery kiss all the way along Blake’s neck, then pulled back and searched through the bedside table. There were still a few condoms floating around in there, he knew. Lube too. He found both in short order and returned to Blake with a low, wicked laugh building in his chest.

There was nothing in the world he loved more than watching Blake come undone beneath him. Blake shouldered so much, carried so much, between his band and his career and all the feelings he felt, that music in him yearning to be set free... Cal imagined it did him good to have someone fuck him until his brain emptied out.

Pooling cool lube on his palm, Cal dipped in a fingertip and brushed it teasingly along Blake’s crack, then toward his entrance. Blake let out a soft gasp of surprise at the cold temperature, then pressed back against Cal’s hand, desperate for more pressure.

Unwrapping the condom and working it slowly over his cock, Cal adjusted it around himself, but didn’t shove into Blake just yet. They got rough sometimes, but not that rough.

Slowly, Cal used his fingers to tease Blake open, just the tips of them working against the tight, sensitive ring of his entrance. He pressed two fingers against that muscle almost enough to breach through, then pulled his hand back, wringing a frustrated whine out of Blake. Cal pressed one fingertip in, slow at first, then to the first knuckle. Blake hissed in satisfaction, his hips arching somewhat.

Playing one finger into Blake at a time, Cal added a second once he felt ready. He began to thrust a slow rhythm, not too hard and not too deep, Blake rocking back against him to meet it.

Cal bent down and pressed a gentle kiss to the sweat-beaded skin of Blake’s back. At the same time, he pressed a third finger in. Blake let out a mewl, twisting his fingers through the sheets.

Ever so slowly, Cal worked the fingers in and out of Blake’s body, steadily pressing into the tight heat of him. Blake groaned with every thrust now, filthy sounds that went straight to Cal’s dick, which was just about so hard it hurt.

Cal withdrew his hand, running it over the latex covering on his cock, then spread more lube all over it, readying it. He leaned over Blake from behind, the very tip of him up against Blake’s hole, and Blake humped desperately back against him, whispering nonsensical little mumblings, begging Cal to fuck him.

So Cal obliged. He pressed in with the same slow care he’d used with his hands, enjoying the way Blake’s tight heat sheathed him. He clenched the muscles in his ass, driving forward a little at a time, every inch of his skin alive with sensation. He pressed into Blake with more than just his cock. It was like a joining of their bodies on a spiritual level. Like they were becoming one.

Only when Cal was fully hilted in Blake did he let out a soft, pleased groan. His chest flush against Blake’s back, he stroked out a bit, then back in. Blake cried out, squirming beneath him.

Yes. He was close to losing control.

Cal picked up the pace, his rhythm quickening, every slow stroke of his cock hitting a place deep inside Blake’s body that caused him to cry out into the mattress. Cal stretched a hand forward, gripping a handful of Blake’s hair, thrusting into him much harder now. Blake muffled his cries in the bedding, fucking himself back against Cal in short, needy thrusts.

It was only by the strength of his willpower that Cal didn’t come then and there. But he knew he was close.

His thrusting growing heavier, more instinct-driven, more animal, Cal gripped at the powerful muscles of Blake’s thighs with his hands. He kneaded them, fingers smoothing over the skin, then finally he reached around and took hold of Blake’s cock again. Blake practically screamed.

Squeezing hard, Cal began to stroke along Blake’s length in time with the thrusts he made into Blake’s body. Blake’s noises turned more primal, deeper, and his breath was ragged with effort. Cal felt a familiar tingle and tightness in his balls. He knew it was only a matter of seconds before he came.

Driving into Blake with all his might, he gave in with wild abandon for the last few thrusts, letting Blake’s internal muscles milk him as he drove in again and again. Blake cried out once, high and feathery, then came with a whole-body shiver, his cock twitching in Cal’s hand. Cal felt Blake’s body tighten around him and that was all it took.

White-hot pleasure arced through him, so intense it was temporarily blinding. He held Blake down into the mattress, erupting into the condom, deep inside him,
owning
him yet also belonging to him. It was the most intense orgasm he could remember.

Collapsing atop Blake’s back, Cal needed several seconds to just breathe, his limbs utterly incapable of supporting him any longer. After regaining some strength, Cal rolled off Blake and into the bed. He peeled the condom off, knotted it at the top, and tossed it into the bin in the corner of the room.

Blake hadn’t moved. But he let out a low, pleased groan. Where Cal had kissed and sucked along his neck, a couple welts were forming.

Slowly, as if pulled together by gravity, they drifted up into one another’s arms. It took some contorting and the blankets were completely messed up, but they got there in the end.

Blake took a single finger and traced it along the line of Cal’s jaw.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, in that silly post-coital punch-drunk voice of his.

“I’m not sure that’s the word,” Cal said with a laugh.

“Shut up.” Blake pressed a kiss to his neck, then nipped him, just a tiny hint of teeth.

Within minutes, they were dozing off in one another’s arms. In their rightful places.