Once a Nerd Ch. 12

The only upside to any of this is the unequivocal, thoughtless acceptance of my sexuality. Beyond that, I contemplate pitching myself over the railing. The blurted confession is the only other way I can think to end this waking nightmare, consequences be damned:

"Ah, I'm actually—seeing someone!"

Of course, my mom would've chosen this moment to come check on the status of her son's chronically low social battery. "Sam!" She gasps excitedly, inserting herself in the clump we've formed under the lamp. "Why didn't you say?"

Well, now it just looks like I'm full of shit.

"It's...tentative." I hedge, polishing off the flute to give my mind time to catch up with my mouth. "You know me, I don't like to...rush into anything."

"My boy, so cautious." She sighs, though it's fond. "I can't wait to hear all about him."

Goddamnit.

My phone jolts in my pocket, and there's a 99.9% chance it's Dean. The few friends I'm close enough to exchange numbers with had already spread their holiday well-wishes around earlier in the day. I excuse myself to the bathroom, plucking my phone out as I retreat indoors. Dean sent a series of pictures: the gym, his dormitory's hall, a courtyard, and a few other snapshots from around the university. Empty, nary a soul in sight. His caption reads:

"You'd think it's the goddamn apocalypse."

I chuckle to myself, already typing a reply.

"Just say you're lone—"

Jumping out of the thread, there's the startling crash of glass and a woman's alarmed cry. Professor Harkin's wife had knocked over a row of upside-down wine glasses drying on a towel by the sink. She's mortified over this social faux pas, painted face engulfed in flames and hands clasped to her breast. "Oh my goodness, I'm so—I'm so sorry!"

Leaving my phone on the island, I rush to placate her. This is my mother's house, after all, so I'd be the next best suited to resolve an incident like this one. "No, no, don't worry about it. These things happen, I'm honestly shocked I've gotten this far without breaking something myself." I assure her, laughing. Self-deprecation is the simplest way to diffuse a person's embarrassment. The broom and attached dustpan live between the fridge and the short wall it's tucked against, which I happen to be in arm's reach of.

Grabbing the broom, I urge her to take a few steps back. "Please, I'd hate for you to get hurt."

"Thank you so much, Sam, and again, I'm so—"

"Is everything alright?!"

Mom came storming in from the patio at sounds of discord, hovering behind me. "Just a few glasses, no big deal."

"Oh, God, I'd thought someone was..." Tiny, seemingly insignificant details—like the way my mom's voice trailed off into faint silence. Squatted down with my back to her, deeply focused on collecting every shard of glass into the dustpan, it meant nothing to me. It didn't even register. When she picked that sentence back up, I didn't realize she'd dropped it to begin with. "...hurt."

By three, her guests have begun trickling out. By four, the common areas of her home are cleared of any evidence of said guests. The first heaping round of dishes clink gently against each other in the dishwasher, braving the scalding storm trapped to a box. The rhythmic churn of water makes for good white noise. It's our second Thanksgiving without Dad, and I'm sure Mom chose to surround herself with superficial company to avoid feeling the depth of that hole. I can't be upset with her for it, but this—just she and I, is all I would've wanted.

With nothing left to clean, we're sitting across from each other at the end of her long dining table, my untouched pie and a half-empty bottle of pinot grigio between us. Two slices are cleaved from the tin tray, and our glasses are refreshed with what's left in the bottle. Before this moment, nothing felt amiss. Mom and I chatted about inane things and gossiped about her company as we gathered trash, boxed leftovers, and rinsed away the remnants of food from her fine plates. But, now, something's definitely amiss. Mom's pensive, bordering on upset.

I'm thinking it's to do with Dad, but—

"So, tell me about this man."

Ah.

I should've expected this, but my mind blanks as soon as 'so—' leaves her mouth. Should I lie, and say I'd been lying earlier? There's nothing I can say about Dean that wouldn't give it away, only how he treats me in the bounds of our relationship. That anxiety I'd forgotten about is buzzing in my feet, creeping up my legs. Once it settles in my chest, my breathing becomes a forced, manual effort. For how proud I am of him, I desperately wish I could sing his praises to my mother. I wish I could go on and on about how handsome, talented, and toughminded he is.

I wish I could tell her how much he loves me.

How much I've grown to love him. How he molded that powerful feeling in my heart with his own hands.

But I'm my mother's thirty-year-old son. I'm not sure she'd care about any of that in the grand scheme. Who, in their right mind, would?

"There's no one like that, Mom." I sigh, fighting to sound honest and natural. "I just said it to get some space."

Her thin brows lift over the rim of her glasses. "Really?"

It's a tone I've not heard since I was a child. When you've lied about something, and your parents are giving you that last chance to own up to it: "Really? Are you sure? I won't ask again, Sammy."

My blood freezes over, and the only thing I can do is double-down. "Yes, really. Don't you think you're the first person I'd tell?"

She huffs a little laugh, but there's no humor in it. It sounds sad. "I'd hope so. I just want my boy to be happy."

"I am, Mom, I'm happy." I promise, and there's a sense of urgency to it. It's the truth, even if I can't share the details of why. While it's a parent's ingrained instinct to worry about their offspring, I never wanted to be a child she had to fret over excessively. I feel like shit for lying, but it wouldn't compare to what I'd feel watching her face contort with horror and disgust. If there ever comes a time I willingly introduce her to Dean, no matter what Jedi Mind Tricks he thinks he's capable of, I'll have a thoroughly fabricated story to tell about how we met. Dean's reckless pursuit might not sound as bad if he's...at least twenty-five.

"I'm happy I chose to come here, and I'm glad to be closer to you. My life has so much more purpose than it did."

"Well," She sighs, fogging the rim of her glass. "...we needed to grieve. There's nothing wrong with setting some time aside to do that."

God's looking out for me this time, because she lets the subject drop. Finally, we turn to the pie. Mom insists on warming the slices in the microwave, ten seconds each, and that first bite—

"My God, baby, you knocked this out of the park! Those stuffy pricks don't know what they've missed. Did you try something different?"

—

I'm home a little after five, and Dean's hot on my heels.

His jarring knock makes the door jump in place a quarter to six. If you're wondering how in God's name he's been getting here and back, he befriended an Uber driver. It's not a free ride, but he commissions the same guy for every trip. They exchanged personal numbers. His outgoing nature never ceases to amaze me. Of course, I force money down his throat every other week—sending the fare through Venmo and immediately blocking him. Dean despises it, a bruise on his Texas-sized ego, but a two-hour round trip once a week is an entire utility bill. Car payment, even.

When opening the door for him, he grins and wiggles a bottle of wine through the air.

"Wha—? Where'd you get that?!" I belt a laugh, because God, he's such a dork.

"I have—"

"—your ways, yeah, I know." Opening it wider for him, he pauses in the threshold to drop a burning kiss at my temple. He'd do more, but his hands are full. I'm suddenly reminded of just how many consecutive days we'll have together, and butterflies go haywire in my stomach. Nearly three whole days.

"Now, where's that goddamn pie?"

We adjourn to the kitchen, where I fish the clingfilmed tray out of the fridge. Setting it on the counter, I direct him to distribute our slices to a plate and warm them. Meanwhile, I crack into the wine. It's sangria from, what I assume, is a Chevron—there's a '10% off!' sticker on the bottom, and that's so painfully Dean. I'd also assume this is the first time in his life he's bought wine, as he does uphold the stereotype of preferring beer to anything else. Snorting, I dispense the syrupy drink between two glasses. It's sweet enough to taunt my nose with a sneeze.

"Did no one have any?" He gestures to the pie tin, frowning.

"Butter and sugar didn't agree with them. Mom and I had some, it was good."

"Sounds like it was a real rager." He scoffs.

"Intellectuals don't rage, Dean."

"Yeah?" He's leaned against the countertop by the microwave, arms folded across his chest. When I catch his eye, he curls a smile, sliding his tongue between the narrow gap of his teeth. "Little bit of ecstasy goes a long way, doesn't it, Sammy?"

It's precisely bullshit like that to drain the common sense out of my ears, liquefying my insides. Only Dean can pull off such a stupid line and an expression that should be fucking stupid. It'd look stupid on anyone else. What sets him apart is that otherworldly confidence. He embodies everything he says, and almost everything he says comes off as a subtle threat. Whatever he's threatening, he's more than capable of seeing it through. I slam back the sangria, hoping the rush of dopamine and opioids will sober me up.

"Just—try the fucking pie, please."

"You're not gonna feed it to me?"

"Sorry, I left the highchair back home, you big-ass baby."

"Touché." He grumbles, sliding the plate in front of me.

I'm sitting at my counter's bartop, and Dean slots himself in the bubble of my personal space like it's his natural place in the world. His forearm rests across the top of the barstool's back, and he leans into me like one side of a bracket. His heat radiates into my left side, his scent stronger than the rewarmed pumpkin six inches from my nose. Everything about him is pervasive and overwhelming. Resting my temple against his chest, we swap tidbits of our day between bites. Dean's slice is gone, sans a scattering of crumbs, before I make it a quarter of the way through mine.

"That was so goddamn good."

He leaves my side for another serving, and it depresses me to realize this is the only Thanksgiving he's had today. Not just today, but what of previous holidays? He's never known his mother, and his father's a blue-collar man through and through—more than a hundred hours logged biweekly. The man barely knows how to fry an egg, according to Dean. Did he spend his holidays at Jacob's house? Or, did he and his father gather around sauce-stained, paper boxes of lo-mein and General Tso's? I'm ashamed not to know these things.

"You really liked it?"

"Sam, would I lie to you?"

"Yes, you'd definitely fucking do that."

Dean decides to skip the microwave, tucking into his second slice cold. "I—" He coughs, either swallowing wrong or startled by the accusation. "Baby, I would never." He finishes in a rasp.

"Mm."

We carry our evening into the living room, and against my better judgment, I allow Dean control over the remote. He finds the most obscure of B-horrors, a cinematic offense dubbed ThanksKilling. It presents as cheap as it actually is, produced on a budget of less than five thousand dollars, and the plot's as intentionally bad as the name implies. The antagonist is a wise-cracking, homicidal turkey. Dean doesn't outright laugh, but he snorts at key moments and keeps this small, amused grin. For a while, I'm content with the place between his legs, my cheek pillowed just above his stomach.

I keep an eye cracked on the screen, but I'm much more focused on the way his abdominals flinch when he finds something funny enough to react. Dean's so...handsy. His fingertips dig into my scalp, behind my ears. Thumbs rolling down my nape. His hands slip the back of my shirt and drag slow, hot stripes along my spine. You'd think the drawn-out petting would put me to sleep, but—

I press my thighs together, humiliated.

Dean's not remotely hard in his shorts, it's just me. He's content with this mellow, familial atmosphere. He's content to hold me close through this garbage-fire of a movie, satiated on three slices of pie. I should be content with this too, what the fuck is wrong with me. His detergent, the organic scent of his skin a layer beneath, clouds my head. Even relaxed as we are, the strength trapped in his muscle maintains a line of tension against my body. He's so goddamn hot, like he's always on the cusp of a fever—

"Bathroom." I mumble, pushing up. I'd hate to ruin this sweet, onefold moment between us, for one. I'm also genuinely scared for my ability to walk through the weekend.

"You okay?" He turns to appraise me, and I wish to God he'd keep his eyes on the...bestiality?—happening on screen.

"Yeah, just—"

"Hey, woah, where the fuck do you think you're off to like that, huh?"

Shit.

He's got me firmly by the forearm, trapping me in an awkward kneel between his legs, one foot on the floor. Eagle-eyed bastard. Dean curls a finger in the waistband of my sweatpants suggestively, tugging. He raises expectant, questioning brows. "Why didn't you say something, Sammy?"

Wha—

Does he expect me to...answer that?

My face is burning, and I drop my head to hide behind my hair. "Dean, seriously—nngh! Shit!"

Yanking on my arm, he drags me gracelessly into his lap. I've no concept of how he got himself upright at the same time, but his feet are flat to the floor. His waist is thick enough to put a strain in my hip flexors, and Jesus Christ, he's already half-hard—

"See? Now we're both hard." I can hear the smarmy grin in his voice as he grinds himself against my ass. I hate how good it feels, how fucking easy I am for him. Just the outline of his cock through two layers of clothing is enough to make my guts clench with need. It reminds me of how miserably empty I am, and how much better I'll feel with that piece of Dean snapped into place. I clench around his shoulders, fighting the hindbrain urge to rut back into him.

"The—movie, it was...nice—"

"...you...liked it? ThanksKilling?" He's flabbergasted.

"No, asshole! Just...relaxing with you, I didn't want to..."

Dean breathes a soft, affectionate laugh, pressing his face to the underside of my jaw. He nips at the sensitive skin there. "Don't be embarrassed with me, please. If you want me to fuck you, speak up. If you want me to take it easy, say that too. I know I went...a little crazy last time, I'm sorry. You just...make me fucking crazy, Sammy. You make me insane. I love you so goddamn much, and I want to fuck you all the time. I was working so hard to watch this movie."

"Mm—nngh, Dean—I...I get it." I admit weakly, unable to resist that urge any longer. My hips moil in place, finding sweet friction against his stomach. His cock swells to something monstrous between my legs. It isn't long before our mouths find each other in a bruising kiss, and Dean lurches forward like I might pull back. Our tongues roll together like clashing currents, and his always feels so much bigger and hotter than mine. It might be my imagination inflating every part of him into something blinding and larger than life.

He flicks a design on the roof of my mouth, and I shudder with my entire being.

"Sam—"

"Mm?"

"Can I try something?"

I freeze, immediately terrified. Drawing back to look at him, his expression is unnervingly serious, albeit wildly turned-on.

"...try what?"

"It might be...a little intense, but I think you'll really, really like it."

No.

No.

No.

N-motherfucking-O.

How hard is it to say that? Why is it fucking impossible to deny Dean anything? Why can't I say 'no' to him? Is it his borderline supernatural ability to manipulate? Or am I just that feebleminded? If I could manage the one-syllable refusal, I wouldn't be in a position like this one, on the precipice of death via more shame than the human body can process.

Or, folded over Dean's thigh like a naughty kid, about to get my ass beat. Literally. It's been twenty minutes since he elaborated on that 'something', and we've since moved to my bedroom. While Dean's sitting proper and upright on the edge of the bed, I'm naked as the day Jane Marisol Powell was admitted to Mount Sinai, my lower stomach crushed by the bulge of muscle in his left quad. He's got the back of my knees pinned in the tight curl of his right leg, and his forearm pressing beneath my shoulder blades.

Me, a grown man.

"You look...so fucking good like this—" He breathes, and his cock twitches against my hip as if to agree.

The icing on the Indignity Cake?

He researched this.

Dean researched how to spank me properly.

Something inside of me is dying. Pride, maybe.

"You're gonna hold it in, right, Sammy?"

"Do you seriously fucking think I'm going to cum on myself from this shit?!" I snap, attempting to kick my legs out from the pinch he's got them in.

"I'd put money on it."

"You—!" My neck aches from where I've unconsciously held my head off the bed, so I let it drop. "Twenty bucks."

Dean snorts, squeezing my ass like a stress-ball. "You actually wanna bet?"

"Don't patronize me right now, Dean, or I swear to fucking God—I will nip this shit in the bud."

"Hey, I'm all about free money, baby."

I can't say where, when, or how, but I will get revenge for this.

"Alright, repeat the colors back to me."

For too many seconds, I stubbornly refuse to reply. Dean bumps his thigh upwards, evicting a breath from my diaphragm. "If you wanna get off at all, cooperate. Colors."

'Revenge' isn't severe enough. Retribution. Reckoning. Rueing. Dean will rue the motherfucking shit out of this. I get the need for the color system, and I understand why he wants to be sure I'll remember them. But, revisiting that 'naughty kid' analogy, this is making me feel like a preschooler banished to a corner—repeating the class' code of conduct. I don't understand what he thinks I'll get out of this, but he swore up and down I'd come out the other side enlightened. Through a tight jaw, I jarringly recite the system back to him:

"Green, fine. Yellow, too hard. Red, break."

"Good job, baby. Ready?"

"No, this is fucking stu—"

crack!

Tension shocks through me. The rest of that rebuke tangles up in my throat, and I audibly choke on it. He—he did it. He hit—no, he spanked me. Directly in the center of my right cheek, blood rises to the surface. It's hot, stinging. Tears spring to my eyes reflexively. Dean's slapped my ass more times than I can remember, but that was...a targeted, measured strike. It's not the hardest he's hit me, but I'll be damned if it didn't sound like lightning licking the ground. My nerves are humming, though it's more to do with mortification blooming ugly in my chest.

"Color."

It didn't hurt, necessarily. It was just...shocking. "...gre—een! Shit!"

crack!

Before I can get it out, he lands an identical blow on the opposite cheek. Because he'd used the same amount of strength, he doesn't ask for a color. It's up to me to blurt one out if I'm feeling overwhelmed. It's the second strike that dawns a horrific epiphany on me. It isn't all about how hard he'll hit, but the vulnerability of this position. The slight sensory deprivation. I can't see when or where it's coming, and I can't do anything but anticipate. He confirms this by letting several, deliberate seconds pass. Those few seconds are enough to ignite a powerful hypersensitivity in me, spurned by anxiety. When his hand comes down a third time, rocking off the fleshy underside of my ass, it's—