Page 55 of Steam

“Thanks nothing,” Reese says—and Owen thinks that more positive talk is coming, some new pleading for Owen to take care of himself—but instead Reese has leaned into him and he catches Owen’s mouth in a kiss. And as the kiss continues, Reese begins to push him back, to lay Owen down against his own bed.

“I’m basically just trying to get you back in bed with us,” Reese says with a crooked smile when they finally break, Owen flat against the bed and Reese leaning over him. “With me specifically, let’s be real.”

“Reese—”

Reese grabs him by the ass with a stupid smile on his face, squeezing him hard.

“Gotta take care of this precious cargo, knowmasayin?”

“That’s the goofiest line I’ve heard in a long time,” Owen says, rolling his eyes. But Reese already has hands at work under the hem of Owen’s t-shirt, stroking the skin there. Owen sucks in his gut, tensing the muscles of his abdomen—and Reese fixes him with a look.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It just still feels fucked up,” Owen says.

“I won’t touch you if you don’t want to be touched, Owen,” Reese says, his hands going still on Owen’s belly. “But hell, man. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

Owen doesn’t know what to say—feels like he wants to disappear for a moment, not sure what to do with the embarrassing feeling of Reese’s hands on the part of him he’s the most ashamed of.

“I love your stomach,” Reese says. “I love every inch of you.”

And as if to offer proof of concept, Reese hitches the hem of Owen’s t-shirt up a few inches and lowers his mouth to the smooth skin there. He presses his lips into Owen’s stomach for a beat and then moves a few inches to the side, pressing another kiss there—and another, and another—and slowly Owen begins to feel less tense about it. His body is already responding to the attention, to the weight of Reese there between his legs.

“I wouldn’t change a thing about you, Owen,” Reese says, looking up, slipping hands further under his shirt. “Your stomach… your chest.”

Under Owen’s shirt, fingertips find one of his nipples, teasing him—and Owen breaks, letting loose a quiet, low moan.

“Can I?” Reese asks, working the t-shirt up. Owen nods, hitching himself up as Reese takes the shirt off of him and then letting his body fall back.

“You’re perfect,” Reese says, smiling and admiring him. Owen resists the urge to flip over or move, resists the sudden surge of anxiety that the lights are on and bright and someone is seeing him exactly as he is.

“You’re perfect because you’re you but…” Reese trails a hand from the middle of Owen’s navel to the middle of his chest. “You’re perfect because you just are.”

“You don’t have to say anything—”

“Yeah, but fuck that,” Reese says, rolling his eyes and bringing his face down again, laying a kiss against Owen’s collar bone. “I missed this whole situation. You don’t even know.”

“I’m sorry I’ve been so fucked up about this—”

Reese shushes him.

“There’s nobody like you, Owen,” Reese says in between long kisses against Owen’s skin. “We could be in a relationship with 20 other people and I’d still be pissed off if you didn’t want me anymore.”

“I do want you, Reese,” Owen says.

“Them’s the magic words,” Reese says in a parody of a smooth Casanova voice.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“And you like it,” Reese says before sucking hard against the skin of Owen’s chest—both of them knowing that he’s leaving marks now and Owen not caring. It feels too good for him to care, and as his blood surges, any vestiges of being worried about how he looks are momentarily gone.

It will come back—of course it will. The insecurities. The uncertainness.

One session of attention from Reese won’t solve anything in the long term. They both know that.

But it’s easier to believe that Owen is wanted—that he is acceptable and valuable and worthy of the relationship that he is in—when Reese is here, touching him, mouthing him, praising him.

“Fuck, Reese,” Owen says, rolling his hips up off the bed and into the man on top of him as Reese licks across one of his nipples.

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