Page 64 of Teach Me To Sin
When Benji’s front is clean, he breaks free of my grip and turns to lick water off my chest as Alek lathers and rinses his back and hair. He slips out of the way and nudges me toward Alek, like he did in the supply closet what feels like a lifetime ago. I’m supposed to be washing Alek, I guess, but instead I just rest a hand in the center of his chest with its traces of dark hair and push him back against the shower wall. Pinning him with my body, I rest my elbows on either side of his head and kiss his wet ear, his jaw, his neck while he shivers against me. I sink my teeth into the same place I marked the very first time and suck until he whines. Then our tongues are wrestling together again, with that familiar feeling that they were made for each other.
It takes us a while to get all three of us soaped, shampooed, and rinsed, because we’re busy running our hands all over each other, teasing our bodies until we’re hard. But absolute exhaustion is starting to set in as the water runs cold. “I’m extremely hungry,” I point out as I help Benji out and sit him on the counter to dry. “And as soon as I stop moving, my body will lose the ability to function. So I’d like to make it clear that I’m not fucking anyone until tomorrow.”
I thought they’d protest, but Alek looks a little relieved to slow things down and Benji gives a devious smirk through the water dripping from his hair onto his nose. “It’s okay. I have the perfect idea for tomorrow.”
“I’ve never been so scared to have sex,” Alek mumbles, pulling on a black t-shirt and a pair of shorts that fit distractingly tight around his thicker thighs.
While I reheat our dinner in the microwave that we finally managed to tame to our will, Benji explores the house now that he can see better. Hamlet and Triss follow him everywhere, refusing to wander more than an inch away, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Check this out!” he exclaims from the living room. I stick my head around the door to find him digging through the cabinet under the TV. He holds up a dusty Xbox controller like a trophy.
“Do they haveHalo?” Alek mumbles from where he’s snoozing face down on the couch.
Benji rattles around, then sits back with a cracked plastic case in his hand. “They have literally one game, and it’s a zoo building simulator.”
“Boooo.” Alek closes his eyes again, and I go back to heating up food. When I come back with three plates balanced in my hands, Benji is sitting a foot from the TV, drawing out zoo enclosure walls on a blank, grassy field. He has the controller propped against his cast, pushing all the buttons with his right hand, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing him down.
Setting Alek’s plate on the coffee table, I rest a hand on his sturdy back. “Move your feet and then eat something.”
He folds up his legs so I have a place to sit, then picks bits off his quesadilla without sitting up. I inhale my first taco with the plate balanced on my knee, watching Benji paint an enclosure with ice and then drop in a load of penguins. “Your food’s getting cold, little fish.”
“Yeah, yeah.” The sidewalks of his zoo fill with tiny pixelated humans as he starts in on a jungle for the tigers.
“I think your penguins are starving,” Alek announces suddenly, after the room has been silent for ten minutes.
“Fuck.” Benji frantically pans the camera around. “I forgot to put in a zookeeper gate.”
I lick the last remnants of taco sauce off my fingers. “While you’re at it, your hippo enclosure doesn’t have any water.”
“You know what?” Scrambling up, he drops the controller in my lap. “You fucking do it then.”
I pick it up and turn it over. “I don’t know how to use this.”
“Figure it out, you damn hippo expert.” He scoops up his twice-cold burrito and nudges Alek until he props himself up and spreads his legs for Benji to curl up in his lap. Alek kisses his neck, then drops his head back and returns to half-dozing, half-watching the game.
After a lot of trial and error, I work out the controls enough that I can add water for the hippos. I place one giraffe in a pen by himself, because Benji’s zoo seems to be hemorrhaging money and that’s all we can afford.
Benji sighs happily, putting aside his empty plate. “Hey.”
“What?”
“You should let the tigers out.”
Alek jerks his head up. “Don’t let the tigers out. You’ll ruin the whole zoo.”
I meet Benji’s eyes and cock my head at him. “Should I let them out?”
Before he can answer, Alek puts a hand over his mouth, ignoring Benji’s efforts to bite him. “No, you shouldn’t. Colson,” he warns as I look from him to Benji, then back to him.
Benji gives a muffled cheer when I delete the fence around the tigers. Even Alek cracks a smile as we watch them run around, throwing people into the air. I planned to shut the game off once the carnivores laid waste to the zoo, but as I watch the popularity decline and the finances go into the red, I start to wonder if I can save the place. After what I swear was only ten minutes, I look up to realize two hours have passed and both the boys are asleep in a pile of limbs. Unlike last night, there seems to be no question what bed we should use.
When I squeeze his shoulder, Benji whimpers and slips his arm around my neck. I gather the very last strength in my abused body to pick him up and let him wrap all his limbs around my torso. Alek wakes up from the jostling and blinks at us. When I nod for him to follow, he sleepily hooks a finger in the waist of my sweatpants and trails us to the master bedroom. There’s no room in a queen-sized bed for three men and two dogs, so I push the door shut behind us, knowing Hamlet and Triss will get cozy on the couch as soon as they recover from losing their new favorite person.
I drop Benji in the middle of the bed, then fetch him medication and a glass of water before letting him lie down. Alek crawls under the covers and wraps himself around Benji until the boy is almost invisible under him. When I get in on the opposite side, I realize Alek’s cloudy eyes are open and fixed on me. On an impulse, I lean across Benji and kiss him, once quickly, then again slow and deep.
The first time we shared a bed felt like a dangerous act, like we were defying the structure of how things ought to be and making our own confused path. Tonight, it’s just inevitable and more natural than anything I’ve ever known. And when Benji bolts upright at two in the morning, hyperventilating and whimpering, we pin him close between our bodies until he stops trembling.
Alek
I stayat the house with the dogs while Colson takes Benji for his follow up appointment. With a few calls, we were able to get his records transferred to a hospital near Birch Bay so we didn’t have to drive two hours to Seattle and back. None of us said it, but we were all afraid that we’d show up at Harborside to find his family waiting for him. From Gareth’s perspective, his informant has disappeared into hiding with far too much knowledge about the plans to ruin me, and I’m sure the man is getting more and more frantic to find him. That problem will be waiting for us when we decide to go home, but for now we focus on getting through each day.