Page 102 of College Town

Fuck anyone waiting in the hall, or downstairs. The whole world can go to hell for all Lawson cares, because his baby needs him, and he’s not going to scrimp, no way.

He strips Tommy’s slacks and boxer briefs the rest of the way off and then lifts his legs and hooks them over his shoulders. He’s tall enough that the position lifts Tommy’s hips up off the desk, which makes him gasp and arch and paw at Lawson’s sides.

“Shh, shh,” Lawson murmurs again, and feeds his cock back inside him, slow and steady.

“God,” Tommy says, and then claps a hand over his mouth.

I wanna hear you, Lawson thinks, but he can’t now, not here, not with witnesses. He wants to drink the sounds out of Tommy’s mouth, and he doesn’t want anyone to hear the ones that slip past the seal of their lips.

Instead, he fits his hand around Tommy’s cock, and starts fucking him again.

Tommy’s shirt falls up around his chest, and the overhead lights gleam on his stomach, the play of well-defined abs and obliques as he tries his best to keep up.

Lawson alternates long, slow, firm strokes of his cock with rough pets across his stomach, fingertips dragging through sweat and silky hair. He hooks a fingertip in Tommy’s navel and Tommy makes a strangled sound, his complexion blotchy around the hand still welded over his mouth.

Look at you, Lawson aches to say.Jesus Christ, look at you.

When he can’t stand it anymore, he lowers Tommy’s legs and urges him to wrap them tight around his waist. He plants his hands on the desk on either side of his head and fucks him hard and fast, chasing the bright spark of an orgasm so close he can feel it sizzling in his back teeth.

Tommy clutches at his neck and hauls himself up so they’re kissing. It’s sloppy, uncoordinated, smearing mouths and humid breath against one another.

“Don’t pull out,” Tommy rasps. “I want it in me.”

The words punch Lawson right in the stomach, and he comes.

He’s dimly aware of Tommy’s hand between their bellies, cupping around his own cock and catching his spill before it can get on their clothes. He feels like shaken champagne; like a victim trapped beneath an earthquake.

When he opens his eyes, his forehead is pressed to Tommy’s, and Tommy’s mouthing inelegantly at his slack mouth.

“Thank you,” Tommy murmurs.

Lawson shifts so he can press his face into his throat and catch his breath, his eyes stinging.

29

A week later, Lawson arrives home from his morning shift to find the yard humming with activity and stacked with lumber.

“Um,” he says when he climbs out of his car. “What the fuck?”

The question’s a general one, and he doesn’t expect an answer from the four-man crew in toolbelts currently swarming the latticework of what used to be the back deck, but a burly man in a Carhartt jacket breaks away and comes over to shake his hand.

“Mack Atkins,” he greets, and his hand is rough with calluses. “You’re the son? Lawson, right?”

Lawson peers at him, searching for censure, for a curled lip or a slanted gaze, some sign that this Mack is a friend of Steve who screwed first him, and then them over so epically years before. But he finds what looks like genuine friendliness in the man’s face.

“Um. Yeah. That’s me.” He surveys the activity. There’s two trucks and a van crowded in the driveway, and a pile of old, rotted timber off to one side that clearly came from the old deck. Two men are securing a bright yellow new post with concrete, and another is firing a staple gun with pneumatic, rapid-fire pops. “Hey, so, uh, Mack, what are you doing?”

Mack fishes a business card from his back pocket:Mack’s Magic, General Contracting Services. “Don’t worry, I’ve already met your mom and talked things over with her; wanted to get her opinion on the ramp.”

“The ramp?” Lawson echoes, stupidly.

“Yeah. Hold on and I’ll get you the work order.” He walks to a muddy Chevy truck and then comes back with it, paper fluttering in the breeze before Lawson takes it steady between two not-so-steady hands. “Tom Cattaneo,” he reads, with a drop in his gut.

“Yeah, Mr. Cattaneo hired us,” Mack says. “Originally just for the wheelchair ramp – and don’t worry, it’ll be up to OSHA standards – but when we got out here and did our inspection, we found that the whole deck was rotten, so he said to go ahead with it, too.”

“…Okay.”

When he assures Mack that he doesn’t have any questions – not about the construction at least – he goes inside and finds his mother standing at the kitchen window, peering out through the lace curtains, cup of tea cradled in both palms. She’s wearing a satisfied, eager sort of expression he hasn’t seen on her in recent memory: the face she used to make when a persnickety relative complimented her Thanksgiving dinner; or when Lawson tore into his Christmas gifts and shouted with excitement because they were “just what he wanted.”

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