Page 75 of The Company We Keep

He loved Dust. He'd said that he loved him. That he might leave it all for him.

The words still rattled around in his brain like they weren't attached to anything. The words made him reach for Carrow's hips, urging him to roll deeper. It made him kiss the man again, dragging him closer, tasting Carrow's blood on his mouth.

Fuck the world, fuck their pasts — this was all Dust needed.

Carrow slicked his hand as they separated, producing the bottle of lube from before, and began to twist around Dust's neglected hard-on in rhythm with their bodies.

Even on his back, Dust moved with desperation againstCarrow, grinding up to meet every thrust as if he couldn't take Carrow deep enough, couldn't get enough of the sensation of being claimed.

He'd had Dust urgent and he'd had Dust slow and sweet — but he'd never had the man quite like this before, moving under him as if there was a point to this, as if he needed to prove something in the way their bodies came together.

It was too much, and the orgasm he'd been fighting for what felt like ages now began to unfurl into him.

"Gonna come, Dust," he warned. Dust just nodded and kept working his body, rutting up to meet Carrow's strokes, fucking into the slicked heat of his palm.

He hated to come first, hated the thought of shortchanging his partner, but his body was helpless against the way that Dust was moving, and his own thrusts in turn went harder, faster, his hips stuttering at the overwhelming pleasure of it all.

Dust cried out abruptly, and then he was throbbing in Carrow's hand, painting stripes up his taut belly as he came hard. The sight of it — his slick release over tanned skin, the way Dust's eyes went glassy and strange with satisfaction that seemed to be otherworldly — was enough to push Carrow past the point of no return.

The orgasm seemed to have no beginning and no end as he rocked into Dust, pumping his release into the eager body beneath him. He lost the sense of himself for a moment, no longer aware of whether or not he was hurting Dust, what he was doing, just riding the wave of pleasure as it crested. And when he was back to himself, Dust's muscles were trembling, his breathing funny. Carrow was still stroking him, he realized, twisting around his overstimulated length as the last sensations of his own orgasm ebbed. He stopped gradually, holding his own weight, letting his forehead drop to rest against Dust's.

He couldn't remember when they had become more than this — couldn't put his finger on the moment he realized it or what had factored into it. Carrow knew he should be afraid of it, should reel back from the reality that he cared so deeply for Dust.

Instead, he basked in it in that moment: in what they were, in what they could be, in the way that this new reality circled around to make moments like this meaningful.

For the first time, maybe, Carrow wasn't scared.

There wasa strange negotiation in Dust’s mind in the months that followed the night they’d both remember as the first time they’d admitted the obvious to each other.

He no longer felt that his entire world was suspended in a state of cognitive dissonance.

AIIB was out there, and they weren’t going to stop. But The Company was his life.

There were loose ends he needed to tie up. Dust needed to somehow let his parents know that he was alive and well. He needed to set up some way that he could get money to them as they grew older. Maybe he could find a way for Carrow to help him do that — or maybe it would have to be behind the other man’s back. But he could not abandon them, disappear without a trace, and pretend that he owed them nothing for the many years he’d relied on them. He did love them — of course he did.

March became April and the days sprawled out longer. Everyone had been shaken up by how badlyDusthad been shaken up after the bank job — and so they waited weeks between jobs. Carrow went back to planning out every aspect of every heist.

April faded into May. It became easier to put off thethings that Dust knew he had to do as they fell back into a steady rhythm with jobs.

AIIB didn’t make a move. Emerson no longer called.

Maybe…Maybe,Dust allowed himself to think.

Maybe they gave up on me. Maybe they gave up on The Company.

In June, Antoine Lefebvre contacted Carrow with a request: help him gain a little relief with a simple diamond heist. An insurance scam, at the heart of it, the younger Lefebvre said. Carrow shook the man’s hand, accepted a deposit, and began planning.

At the end of that month, they celebrated the anniversary of Dust joining The Company. Wayles set up a party on the roof, everyone lounging after the sun set, Herron mixing drinks while Vashvi splashed Dust in a perfect recreation of that first night he’d spent at the penthouse — before they were his family, before he loved Carrow, before he’d found a home.

And afterwards, when everyone retired, Carrow made sure that Dust didn’t get lost on the way to their room.

15

July 2015 • AIIB Mission Month 13

Even if the cops come calling

I’ll never talk

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