The morning after their night of intimacy, Kurt was awakened by the sharp tune of his alarm going off on his cell phone. The strident noise brought him out of sleep right away, and when he opened his eyes, he saw nothing but the blond waves of James' hair before him. He was wrapped up against the older man, and the heat of their naked bodies together kept him warm above the covers. Bringing up a soft hand, he moved James' long hair to the side and kissed his neck. When he didn't budge, Kurt unraveled himself and turned over to silence his phone.
With the time reading 5:01am, he sighed and rubbed his eyes, working the tiredness from his body as he stretched. When he glanced back over his shoulder at the man whose bed he had spent the night in, Kurt let his eyes glide over him, turned on by the mere sight of James lying nude with his arms folded under his head, one leg bent, and the dimples at his lower back were so rousing.
Leaning with a hand pressed into the bed, Kurt let his other rest on James' hip, stroking it around to the front of his pelvis and laid down pressed against his bottom. Grasping what he sought after, Kurt took hold of James' morning stiffness, forcing the older man's leg up slightly to get a better grip. Feeling his own cock harden with excitement, Kurt pumped the other man's with intent, wanting to witness one last orgasm before he left for another day at work.
He heard James grunt in his sleep, and when Kurt was able to rotate James all the way on top of him so that James' back was pressed to his chest, he locked both of his legs around the older man's to keep them spread open, kissing hungrily at his neck and shoulder.
James awoke suddenly, trapped in what felt like heaven when he registered what was going on. His mouth fell open and he groaned, body twitching when his back arched a bit off Kurt's chest. His hands searched desperately for anything to hold on to, but all he could do was grasp his anxious hands into the bedding under them. His stomach tightened as Kurt worked his cock, hips jolting with each tug that reached his sensitive tip. "Hmm-yeah," he let out.
"You like that, love?" Kurt said in a low voice, leaving the lightest of kisses against the side of the older man's neck.
"Mhmm," James whined, and his legs twitched as if trying to close, but with Kurt's bound around them, the movement was impossible.
James began to breathe even harder then, his chest rising and falling quicker when the resilient cum trapped in his body begged for release.
"Let me hear you," Kurt whispered, knowing the end was near, and just a second later, James' body began to shutter, and Kurt could feel the moist spill of cum filter out onto his hand. The older man moaned so loud, Kurt wondered if the neighbors who lived on the floor beneath them could hear, and when it seemed James might cry his heart out from the continuous pleasure, Kurt released him, instead letting his hands travel up the man's chest to soothe him from the piercing orgasm.
When James was limp atop him, Kurt turned the man over so he could lie back down on the bed, continuing the bath of butterfly kisses he'd been giving before, noticing, too, that whenever James came, his skin always held a new glow to it.
"Are you leaving?" James asked tiredly, eyes still closed as the twenty-year-old pressed his lips all over his neck and chest. It was still bruised from the love-bites left behind the previous night, and the younger man was pleased to see they hadn't gone anywhere.
"Yes," Kurt answered, finally backing away. "You know I'll come right back here when I'm finished. Don't think I want to go another night without you next to me."
James met Kurt's blue eyes then, they were such a dark and cloudy shade that it looked as if a storm was ready to rumble across the Pacific. "Does that mean," James started, "you would want to be more than just my neighbor?"
"After the night we've had, love, I think we already passed that several hours ago."
"And..." James sounded insecure and he did his best to sit up, crossing his legs while Kurt leaned back on his hands. "...you really don't care that I'm so much older than you? My age isn't something that bothers you?"
"Did you not understand me when I said I've got a thing for older men? I don't mind it, Dimitri, as long as you're not put off by the idea of starting something with someone so much younger than you. We may be from separate generations, but something as simple as time shouldn't hold two people with a mutual understanding from starting a relationship." Kurt yawned then and slipped out of the bed, gathering the clothing he'd been wearing the night before and tugged on his jeans. "Someone once told me I shouldn't be afraid of things that make me feel either safe, wanted, or even loved, and I believe you are definitely one of those three."
James felt his heart pound harder at the three intimate words, hoping to himself that he really did make Kurt feel one of those three things, or even all of them at once. "I'm - I'm going to miss you while you're gone."
"I'll be back, love," Kurt promised, and when a quick kiss was shared between them, James watched his bedroom door swing open while Kurt left the apartment. After hearing the front door shut, he then fell back asleep for a couple more hours.
_
Sunday afternoons were usually dull for James, and since he hadn't gone to the gym the other day like he did most weekends, he dressed down into a pair of running shorts and a muscle t-shirt with under armor beneath it. It was all he could do to make sure the hickies weren't visible. After bundling his hair up into a bun, he packed a gym bag with a change of clothes and a water bottle. When he was about ready to head out, he grabbed his phone from the bedroom and looked over the screen when he turned it on.
There was a missed call from Kellen from last night, so to make up for constantly shunning the guy, James redialed his co-worker before he left the apartment. The phone rang and rang as he waited by his bedroom door, and then the line was finally picked up.
"James," Kellen answered, sounding a little surprised on the other line, "Hey, what's going on?"
"Nothing much, just going to the gym after a lazy day. Thought I'd go ahead and give you a call while I was at it."
"Lazy day, huh?" Kellen said, "Does that mean you ended up not hanging out with your neighbor?"
"Oh, no, we did," James blushed, leaning against the wall by the door. "I just called it lazy because I avoided going for a workout like I always do on Saturdays. Think I might try to put in some extra work while I'm there today."
"I guess that means you won't be up to do anything when you're done, huh? I know this new restaurant a couple blocks from corporate that's supposed to be popular for people staying in shape. It's all protein, whole wheat, and gluten free galore. I went there the other day and now I'm crazy about their soups."
A decline was sitting on the tip of James' tongue, and he was a second from turning Kellen down for what felt like the thousandth time, but since he could use some replenishment after a workout, and he would feel bad all day if he shut the man down once again, James agreed to the get together. "I spend an hour and a half at the gym, so just send me the address to the place and I'll meet you there."
"Yeah?" Kellen sounded surprised again, "Alright, I'll see you later."
"Bye."
Hanging up the phone, James let out a dry huff, hoping this move wouldn't cause an avalanche of sorts that would crush everything he was moving towards. He and Kurt were still in the early stages of getting to know each other, and he didn't want a platonic friendship he had with Kellen to ruin it. And that was exactly what he and Kellen's relationship was going to stay: sexless, friendly, companionable, and almost every other synonym that could come from the words. Maybe except for neighborly, because, well, that was beginning to have a definition of its own for James, and it sure as hell wasn't platonic.
Gathering up his gym bag again, James glanced towards his bed before leaving the room. Yet again, he had taken the sheets off. They were piled in a bin near his door with other clothes, and momentarily he wondered if his sheets would be able to stay clean for longer than a night. After the late night he and Kurt had shared, he was kind of hoping he and the younger man would continue their sexual favors, and if that meant his bed would be without proper coverings, then he was quite alright with that.
He had enjoyed the times he and Kurt were together so much, that he wanted to do it again and again. Whether it was them trapped in his bedroom going round after round of having lustful sex, or laughing over dinner, and sharing stories, James wanted whatever they had to continue. However, he was fearful that they weren't something that was going to last, something that could fall apart at any moment. They were still complete strangers and James didn't want that. He wanted to know who exactly Kurt Callahan was, and get to know the attributes that made him who he was.
James looked away from the empty bed, cursing himself already for the foolish attachments trying to restrain him. He was always like this; the quick fall, the inevitable longing. Already he was so attached, and James was scared of the link attempting to bind him and Kurt was just about ready to break. For now, only time would tell if they were an item that could actually be something great...or just one big mistake.
Arriving at the gym by eleven o' clock, James signed in at the front and went back towards the men's locker room. When he stuffed all of his belongings into a locker, he made sure the laces to his sneakers wouldn't come undone and went out for the treadmills. When he had his earbuds plugged in to listen to music while he ran, James started his gym routine.
_
Kurt should have gone to lunch thirty minutes ago, but after having to help situate a new customer with their rented storage unit, he ended up going a little later. Not that he actually left the job site for something to eat. He sat back in the employee room in the office building, a packed meal half eaten on the table in front of him, and he watched the text messages from his brother flood in one after the other. For the beginning of his shift, he'd turned the device off, but now that it was finally on, everything was coming in all at once.
When the ongoing vibrations came to a stop, Kurt opened the messages and read the huge blocks of text waiting for him.
Danny: I know you don't think so because we've never been close brothers, but you mean the world to me Kurt, and I just want you to come back home. I thought when you took that flight to America, it would be a two way thing, thinking maybe you just needed a breather from the UK, but you've been gone for more than half a year now, and as your brother, I will do anything to get you to come back. What you did, it can be resolved, Kurt. I can fix it, but the longer you're gone, the hotter this situation gets and that's not something you need. What you need is to come back and let me help you deal with everything. I'm on your side. You don't think that because of the things I said before, but you're my little brother, and all I want is for you to come home. Mom and Dad wanted us to stay together, and if they were alive to see that I let you leave the country, they'd kill me. I just want to help.
There was one last text that came in then.
Danny: You don't have to be afraid anymore.
"I'm not afraid," Kurt said to himself, wanting to believe his own words, but there was another part of him that knew he was lying through his teeth.
Growing up in Birmingham, Kurt had loved his life, even despite his rocking relationship with his brother Danny. He had close friends throughout each year of school, high hopes for what kind of future he was going to lead, but it all shattered into a million pieces the moment his parents died, and only got worse when he was accepted into university.
Castleton University to be specific.
But Kurt was no fool. Every day he woke up, he knew the blame for everything that happened at Castleton was his fault, or so that is how he envisioned it all. He was the problem. And going back to the United Kingdom...it all only spoke of trouble he wanted to avoid, and being thousands of miles away from the source seemed to be helping. A little, anyway.
He had a new home, a green card, was still getting settled, and he even had someone to help him through this chaotic time in his life. Then again, Dimitri was far too unaware of the troubles in Kurt's life to know there was something wrong with him. As a foreigner in a country so big, Kurt was pretty good at hiding how he truly felt. Birmingham had been his home, where he was born and raised, and to feel like he could never go back, all because of the mess he'd gotten himself into back then, it made him feel lost, like a useless piece of rubbish tumbling through the wind.
Rereading over the text on his phone, Kurt finally replied with:
You're trying to help, I know that, but you have to let me go, Danny. I'm no good to you, and I never have been anyways. Worry about you and your wife and daughter, and I'll worry about myself. I'm not a kid anymore. I can take care of myself.
It didn't take long for him to receive a reply, and when he read the message to himself, Kurt could feel his anger ignite, but since he was still at work, he had to contain himself from screaming out in anger at the top of his lungs.
He couldn't believe what he was reading.
Danny: Mick said he wouldn't report you to the police if you just came back and talked to him. He's not as heartless as you want to believe he is, and I'll even be there with you to face him. Just come back home and all of this will go away.
"You have got to be shitting me," Kurt could instantly feel his anger rise, the heat in his body boil, and he had to hold his breath for a moment to make sure he didn't start tearing up out of frustration. If there was anything he wanted to do right now, it would be to punch his older brother square in the face.
You will never understand.
And with that, Kurt turned his phone off again, fed up with his brother's attempts to look like he gave a shit about him and what he was going through. He wouldn't be surprised if Danny was just doing all of this to make himself feel better. After all, they never meant much to each other anyways. Once their parents died when Kurt was fourteen, he felt utterly alone in the world. It was like he hadn't anyone to call family even though Danny existed. So Kurt had distanced himself from his older brother, went to school, made friends of his own, and did anything that would keep him out of the house, and that included sleeping around with much older men.
The minute he was accepted into university, he'd been so excited to get the ball rolling. With aspirations to become an editor for a publishing company, Kurt used his time at Castleton to open up more, went to parties, reached out to companies looking to hire once his last two semesters rolled around, but all of his dreams went away the second he'd broken his only rule: absolutely no relationships, and that's exactly what wound up fucking him over in the end.
Now here he was, a foreigner from his home, renting the cheapest apartment he could find, and buying overpriced slices of cheese from delis in the city. But not all of it was bad, Kurt remembered. Although he was living this kind of life, one he would have never imagined when he was a kid, he still had Dimitri to comfort him when he returned home. He just hoped that wouldn't be short lived either.
If for some reason he and Dimitri grew apart, Kurt would realize just how alone in this world he was, and that wasn't something he wanted to do.
_
James took a thorough shower after finishing up at the gym, and when he was finished, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went into the dressing area of the locker room. The walls were black and red, several full-length mirrors bolted to the walls, and there was a long bench running through the center of the floor, a few lockers and a countertop was nearby with vanity-like mirrors against the wall.
The first thing James noticed about himself was the many hickies and lovebites all over his shoulders and chest. There were just so many, and he could remember how it felt when Kurt left behind each and every one of them. The ones dug into his flesh from the younger man's biting, those had left behind teeth markings, and although they had hurt for just a second when Kurt would bite down, they were now just blemishes left behind after a night that James wanted to relive all over again.
Throughout the night they had made love a total of four times, and each made James feel more and more for the younger man. Kurt was gentle with him at times, and as rough as James would allow. He never crossed any boundaries, caused discomfort, or treated him like a piece of meat. The ways he'd been touched, kissed and pampered all through their intimate sessions, not an inch of his body was left unsatisfied, and the longer he thought about it, the more James hoped the up-and-coming evening would be spent just the same. He wanted to lay beneath Kurt and his mutual hunger, taste the lips that had marked his skin, and be lifted into an atmosphere far higher than heaven. Just thinking about the ways Kurt could make him cum...it was all giving him a hard-on.
So he wouldn't wind up with an erection in the middle of the men's locker room, James tried to think of other things to get Kurt and his sexiness off his mind. Once he was dressed in the change of clothes he'd brought, dark blue jeans, a collared black t-shirt, and an army green jacket with black cuffs and inner lining. He let his hair flow freely down to his shoulders after it was dried, but made sure to keep the tie around his wrist just in case it got on his nerves later on.
Bag in tow, James left the gym and went to his car. When he dropped into the driver's seat, he pulled out his phone and typed the address to the restaurant he was supposed to meet Kellen at and got a move on.
The place was called Lite Side and when he spotted Kellen's car parked in the lot already, he stalled beside the white Lexus and got out. It was currently 12:45pm by the time he got there, and one thing floating about his mind was how he wanted to be home in time to welcome Kurt back from another day at work. Meaning, he didn't plan to spend more than an hour here.
Tucking his keys in his pocket, James got out and went inside. It was a place that could give anyone the feeling of being near a beach, even though Anavrin was hours from any Texas coastline. Very open and lit brightly from the large windows all around the establishment, there were tropical flowers potted at the individual tables, tall fake palm trees, and a fish tank with exotic fish swimming around inside.
"James, over here!" Kellen called, and his co-worker searched for the voice by a window furthest from the ordering counter.
Kellen looked just as good outside of work as he did on the job, and it actually looked like he was ready to clock in at any second. If anything, it didn't seem like he preferred to dress more relaxed even when it wasn't on the job. Fitted into a short sleeved buttoned shirt with a lace frontal design, he also wore slim black slacks, and an olive green tie with a silver pin clipped to it. The only thing that probably wasn't too "work appropriate", was that his shirt was actually pretty see-through, and James could perfectly see his chest and abs underneath.
"Hey," Kellen smiled when James took his seat, he said, "Did you have a good workout?"
"Yeah, I did. Thanks for asking."
"So are you trying to bulk up or anything?" Kellen asked then, trying to keep the conversation going.
"Oh, no," James shook his head, "For some reason, I don't think muscles on top of muscles would look good on me. I think I'm just going to stay on the toning track. Besides, bulking requires heavy lifting, and I'm neither that strong, nor do I have the will-power to workout like a monster."
"Ah, I see," Kellen nodded, touching his brown hair. "Do you want to grab something to eat from the menu? They say you should eat after the gym, and they've got some pretty good stuff here."
"Order for me?"
"Sure."
James watched Kellen get up and walk to the counter. He was surprised he wasn't the least bit nervous about this little get together, and it actually felt pretty nice to be out with a friend. Usually he would have just gone home and continued watching the remaining episodes of Ultimate Spider-man he had left to catch up on, emptied half his pantry into his stomach, and then called it a day well spent. But maybe this short afternoon out with Kellen wouldn't be such a bad thing.
A few minutes later, Kellen returned to the table with two plates, one topped with two halved turkey sub sandwiches, and another holding a hot bowl of chicken, vegetable soup. Kellen placed the soup in front of James while he kept the sandwiches and sat down. "Dig in," he said, "that's my favorite, so I thought maybe you'd like it, too."
"It smells delicious."
For a good while, the two sat and ate their meals, talking mostly about work and the newest superhero movies that were coming out in theaters soon. James was glad the lunch date was going better than he'd expected, topics staying away from the obvious elephant in the room, but it was only a matter of time until James made the slightest mistake of itching inside of his shirt collar.
"Whoa," Kellen gasped, and then he leaned across the table to move James' collar down a little to get a better look. "Where the hell did all of that come from?"
James looked down immediately and pulled away. He brought a hand to his neck as if trying to hide the rest even though none of the lovebites were showing anymore. "It's nothing," he said, "They're just-."
"Hickies," Kellen finished, "Dozens of them. I'm not dumb, James, I know what hickies look like. And...were those teeth marks, too?"
Embarrassed, James sat back and looked off to the side, suddenly at a loss for words. There was no way he could explain the markings away without bringing Kurt into the mix, and that wasn't something he wanted to do.
"It was your neighbor wasn't it?"
Too late...
James didn't say anything again.
"Have you even known this guy for long?" Kellen asked, "If I'm correct, you didn't even have a neighbor last week, and you're already in bed with this guy. What if he's-."
"Stop, Kellen," James said, meeting the other man's eyes again. "You don't know anything about him."
"And I can probably guarantee you don't either. The way he bites you, that definitely isn't normal. James, he could really hurt you. You shouldn't just throw yourself into some guy's bed. That shit is dangerous. I mean, do you even know if he's got some kind of disease or anything?"
"He doesn't," James tried to defend.
"How do you know? Did he tell you? Show you any papers?" When James didn't say anything further, Kellen shook his head in obvious disappointment. "You shouldn't sleep with someone when you don't even know anything about them."
Angry with himself and with Kellen even though the other man wasn't wrong in the slightest, James couldn't stop his spite when he said, "You're just upset that I'm not sleeping with you."
Kellen froze at the statement but before he could come up with anything to say, James stood from the table and went for the exit. He had to get out of there, but Kellen's words worked quickly to get under his skin, and while he was on the road back to his apartment, James couldn't stop thinking about how right the other man was.