Page 103 of Sean's Sunshine
“Well, yeah. You kept saying I was supposed to plan, so I said I had to bail.” He tried to keep the resentment out of his voice, he really did, but gah! He was so tired of planning!
Ellery swallowed, his eyes even shinier. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “You go deal with??”Crash!“—that, and clean up the worst of it so I don’t see, and I’ll let you go play with the other boys. When are they meeting?”
“Around eleven,” Jackson said, hope lacing his voice. Oh wow.Freedom, sweet freedomwas only a few household chores away! They might even have time for some happy naked things in the interim.
The shininess left Ellery’s eyes, and the look of pure calculation that crossed his face told Jackson he was on the same page. “Done,” he said. “But go get them while the house is still standing!”
“Woohoo!” Jackson practically leapt out of bed, still in his boxers. Without bothering to put on any clothes—or slippers—he ventured into the chill of the morning. “C’mon, you no-thumbs-having motherfuckers. Daddy’s gonna give you areallesson in zoomies!”
ELLERY CHUCKLEDa little as Jackson ventured into the living room, because the initial phase of curing the zoomies, he’d learned, had nothing to do with trying to calm things down. If anything, Jackson was going to spend a good fifteen minutes racing around the living room, yelling at the furry little reprobates, waving his arms, and making dives to smack their tails as they fled. The first time Ellery had seen him do this, he’d been appalled. The whole purpose of Jackson intervening was to stop the devastation, right?
But then he’d realized that Jackson wasplayingwith the cats, and he was alsocontrolling their flight path. He’d trap them behind the couch, feinting going one way and then the other, until they both gave up and fell asleep. He’d zoom them into the guest room, where they’d hide under the bed panting until they started cleaning each other’s ears and forgot what they were doing to get there.
Once when they’d been particularly destructive, he’d herded them into the guest roombathroomand then into the shower, which he’d shut them in for the half hour it took him to clean up.
Ellery lay in bed now, listening for Jackson’s trajectory, trying to decide where this mishigas was going to see exactly how much damage he was going to have to repair on the fly.
For a moment it was all Jackson’s footsteps and “Ha! Gotcha, no-thumbs! You go that way motherfucker!” and “Jesus, Lucifer, if you were any clumsier you’d starve to death!” Finally, there was the opening of the guest room door (uh-oh), and then the opening of the guest room bathroom (oh no), and then the slamming of the guest room shower, (fuck fuck fuck fuck bugger fuck fuck!), followed by Jackson snapping, “Now calm the fuck down, you little bastards, or your next stop is the swimming pool!”
Ellery buried his head in the pillow, much like Jackson had, and his hand found the lubricant they’d put there two nights ago when they’d made love.
As Ellery heard Jackson’s cleaning-up sounds—accompanied by a lot of swearing—he remembered that thought about having all the time in the world before Jackson took off to do boy things, leaving Ellery home alone to plan by himself, which would take him a tenth of the time it was taking to drag the reluctant Jackson through his Thanksgiving planning.
They might even have time to… to…. Oooh….
He hedged his bets first, used the bathroom, brushed his teeth, took a short shower, getting all the creases. When he got out, Jackson was still stomping around swearing, and Ellery wondered if he wasn’t going to have to fake it through Thanksgiving dinner with rips in his drapes and divots in the tiles under the fireplace.
Such things bothered him, but not as much as they used to before moving in with Jackson and Billy Bob and now Lucifer. People and pets were messy. Houses got banged up. He would replace the drapes when it was possible, and perhaps wait until Lucifer got over his clumsy stage to replace anything else. (Jackson had suggested sewing a penis-shaped patch onto the corner of the couch because both the cats had been dicks about using it as a scratching post instead of the cat mansion in the corner of the living room. Ellery had simply gotten it reupholstered.)
When he got out of the shower, he heard Jackson moving around in the kitchen, which suggested he’d been sweeping, and Ellery was pretty sure he’d heard the vacuum going, which suggested the Ficus might need to be repotted. As Ellery was drying off, Jackson came stomping into the bathroom, irritated and frustrated and growly. He stepped into the shower muttering something about “Fucking no-thumbs-having-motherfuckers-oughta-be-a-law,” and Ellery took that to mean that the next part of his plan was very necessary.
Still wrapped in his terry-cloth robe, he went looking in his closet for his old shaving kit and was ever so pleased when he found it easily. A trip to the sink while Jackson was still grumbling, to wash all the things, and then….
JACKSON STEPPEDout of the shower and gave himself a cursory swipe with the towel, stopping to brush his teeth and make sure all parts of him were cleaned of the potting soil and the ceramic dust of the (thankfully) mass-produced vase that had no sentimental value but had still been one of Jackson’s favorites.
The cats had done a number on the living room, and he was going to have to make a trip to the hardware store to fix the place where the cats had literally ripped the drapes off the curtain rod and then torn the curtain rod down as well. Jackson had removed everything and left the drapes neatly folded and the curtain rods propped in a corner, and he figured it would be his job after the pickup game. He might get Henry to help him since Henry seemed to be handy like that—together they should be able to make it not look awful on Thanksgiving.
But he was still in a grumbly, growly funk when he entered the bedroom, and Ellery blew his mind.
He was lying naked, which was unusual because even when he was feeling sexy, he was still Jackson’s occasionally shy Counselor who didn’t go for the Tinder pose. But that wasn’t all. His cock—well oiled—was in his hand, and he was stroking it slowly, for his own pleasure as well as, Jackson hoped, for Jackson’s appreciation.
Jackson appreciated—oh, how he appreciated.
And he especially appreciated that Ellery’s knee was cocked, and between his taut asscheeks, there peeked… oooh. A handy, sexy toy that Ellery and Jackson had talked about using a lot but—until now—had never broken out to play with.
The no-nonsense black handle was clearly visible against Ellery’s pale flesh.
Jackson wasn’t even aware he’d dropped the towel.
Ellery’s body—slightly cooled by the air but still moist and clean from the shower—was smooth under his as he rubbed their chests together, and Ellery let go of his cock to wrap his hands around Jackson’s biceps.
“We still mad?” he purred.
“About what?” Jackson asked, sucking on his neck, his shoulders, his collarbone.
“Nothing,” Ellery moaned, his hips thrusting a little, his cock bumping up against Jackson’s, turgid and dripping.
“Good.” Jackson moved his mouth to Ellery’s nipple, and Ellery whimpered in the back of his throat. “Do you have any needs, Counselor? Any particular wants you need me to fulfill?”