Sweet His

chapter two

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DAVID

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Present, 2021

HIS BACK WAS STILL turned at me when I opened the front door of our apartment. He had his headphones on again, a sign that he's still drowned in his own world of rhythm and rhapsodic mania. He certainly hadn't heard me coming in. I smiled at how vulnerable he looks right now. Good thing that he has the habit of locking the door, though. Yet, what would I have done if I didn't have a key then?

I paused by the hallway in front of the door and indulged myself for a moment at the sight of his comfortable self, sitting alone on the couch with his feet propped up and his Gibson Les Paul guitar resting above his legs.

My beautiful Colin.

I silently watched as he moved to lean across him, still oblivious of my presence, and strummed a chord on the strings of his guitar. When he finally hit a note that he liked, he stopped and reached for that old journal beside him where he writes down all his compositions. He must be writing another song again. I kept standing there, just smiling, while I took off my jacket.

'Some good old experiences,

Some new and intense...'

I heard him softly sing those words in a whispering note to the air and the soothing sound of his voice made me feel itchy with longing underneath my fingertips. I quickly dropped my bags on the floor and walked towards him, failing to endure the intense urge to touch him. As soon as I wrapped my arms from behind him and settled them on his chest, I rested my head on the side of his neck and kissed him on the cheek. His hands automatically found mine in a tight grasp. And with a surprised intake of breath, he immediately relaxed after seeing my face.

"David," he uttered my name. Soft, deep, sultry, and manly... These are the sounds of his voice every time he speaks in his natural manner. But when he starts singing, it's entirely on a different level... Just imagining him doing it in front of me, instantly makes my body heat with desire. It always turns me on. I quickly sought a kiss from him just to fill up the lust daring to crawl out of my chest. And with a quick brush of my lips over his, Colin slowly moved to control the motion between us, kissing me down to my jaw as he pleasantly searched for a way to make me feel more intoxicated.

"How was your day?" I asked him, inhaling his scent as it brushed away the fatigue I felt from today's photoshoot.

"Same old, same old," he nonchalantly responded back at me, leaning back and I grinned down at him.

I moved around the couch to sit on its arm and ran my fingers through Colin's disheveled hair. Then I asked again, "How about the band? Did it work with them?"

He met my stare with a glint in his eye. I grinned back at his expression because it's the classic Colin way of saying that things went so well for him, and he's happy.

"So did they all agree with your rules?"

"Who cares about rules?" he told me, his smiling eyes sparkled with delight as he happily strummed another random chord on his guitar. "As long as I have members, everything will go the way I say it should be."

I laughed at how confident he sounded with his prideful remark. And because I just find him adorably enticing, I planted a soft kiss on his forehead and asked him another question, "So, have you finally got a name for the band?"

"Yeah," he replied with discernible enthusiasm. "You'll be the first one to know once I've finalized things with them tomorrow. We still haven't filled in the spot for the drummer yet. But Evangeline told me this morning that she's got someone she'll recommend. So I might drop by her bistro tomorrow, to talk to her."

"Evangeline?" I frowned, and the mental image of a tall woman standing behind the bar counter of her bistro with that usual Davidoff cigarette stuck between her lips like a permanent fixture, instantly entered my mind. "When did she even start knowing people who play drums?"

Evangeline was like our mother back in Rockville where Colin and I used to live during our teenage years. It was right before we decided to move out of the town and chose to live together in the city. After high school, Evangeline was the first and last person to know about the relationship between us and she was also the only person to completely accept who we are.

I never once had a warm relationship with my parents because of how distant they used to be while I was growing up, and Evangeline was the closest thing to a parent for me and Colin. After everything that had happened to us way back then, we never really got any closure from our respective families after coming out. And now, just looking back on the memory of a hot-blooded transwoman with her long blonde hair tied up in a high ponytail spurting out a whole book of wisdom at me back in my high school years, made me miss her all of a sudden.

"Exactly," I heard Colin commenting, and the deep sound of his voice pulled me out of my momentary trip-down-memory-lane. I laughed at the accurate sound of that word and met his eyes as they stared back at me. "But I'd still try. Maybe she does know someone that good."

"And by good, you mean exceptionally genius in the field, right?" I teased back, knowing fully well how much of a perfectionist he is when it comes to his craft.

That's one big thing to keep in mind when working with Colin. He's the type of person who would say 'trash' like a f*****g shameful curse word. And believe me or not, hearing him say it straight to your face will definitely do some serious damage to your ego. I've seen it happen before. And I see no reason for it to never happen again anytime soon.

"It depends on who plays the instrument anyway," he casually responded back with a shrug, but a distinctive edge on his voice said otherwise. I laughed at his cryptic change of mood and playfully rubbed the fluffy bed of his hair to smoothen out the frown forming on his forehead.

"You'll gonna find him," I told him with utter optimism, and his face slowly eased into a soft smile as he pulled me down for another lingering kiss.

"Damn, if that doesn't just sound so sexy coming from you," he softly whispered back against my lips, his breath fanning a wisp of air onto my cheeks. I grinned at his silly remark as we dove down for another kiss that was followed by another and another and another...

I soon felt his hands slowly roaming all over my back with his fingers tracing down the indented trail of my spine over my shirt. I sensed the heat emitting out of my pores from the slow rubbing of his chest against mine. My mouth instinctively opened when I felt him asking for an entrance, and I submissively let him put his tongue in for a taste. Soon after, our teeth began clashing into a frenzied battle of dominance. And as I tried to readjust myself to settle on the couch beside him, a strange falling object hitting the floor below us caused a distraction to Colin. He immediately pulled away from me and picked up the folded piece of paper that had fallen out from my back pocket.

"What's this?" He asked, slowly unfolding it. I watched as his eyes immediately widened while he silently read what was written there. Whatever it was, it absolutely looked like something he could not believe was really there.

"What's wrong?" I asked, feeling nervous all of a sudden.

"I wonder if people in the modeling industry really hand out their business cards like this," He gave me a raised brow and slowly handed me the paper to see it myself.

415-878-****, Tanya Kordova xoxo

Fuck. That. b***h.

"I have no idea how this ended up with me," I said in blatant annoyance.

"So, you're earning personal clients now?" Colin asked me with an apparent flinty tone laced in his voice.

"She's a woman."

"Oh, it's from a girl? Then I should feel very relieved," he sarcastically replied, crossing his arms against his chest. I immediately took note of his obsessive temper showing. And instead of getting offended by his suspicious grudge, I conceitedly smirked down at his expression.

"Are you actually getting jealous, Colin Keaton?"

"Well, can you blame me?" he bit back and firmly pulled me to his chest, "When you're this f*****g beautiful, how can I not? Girl, guy, gay, or what. I'd be f*****g jealous because I'm the boyfriend. "

I felt my heart pounding upon hearing his words. And as I let my emotions ran with clouded arousal, I raised my hand up to his face to run my fingers down his cheeks, "You don't have to. I'm f*****g all yours, Colin."

"Then consider yourself lucky," he said back, taunting. And just to prove his statement to me, he forcefully thrust his hips against mine. "You just f*****g turned me on."

I laughed because it was hilarious yet I can also feel myself getting turned on by those words. And as soon as the laughter died down between us, Colin hungrily grabbed the back of my neck and pulled my face down to his, letting our tongues meet again in a collision. I slowly let myself compliantly caved into his kisses and dominant control.

 It was an intense heady experience, having me consumed by his aggressive desire.

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COLIN

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August, Summer of 2017

Never did I ever thought we would even be planning to go back again. I’ve told myself that I never want to go back here again. Five years ago, I pleaded that day when we left, but here we are now and I’m stuck here having no other choice but to do so. If it wasn’t because mom suddenly got a new job near the area, she wouldn’t ever think of going back again. Right after hearing her new job offer and the condition to change location, she immediately forced me to pack my things and clothes and told me to be ready to move back to this town.

The town where it all started.

I tried to tell her to find someplace else, but she insisted that we will be saving a lot of money if we just use the old house we had back here. I still tried to reason out, but since I didn’t have any good offer to bait her instead, we went with her decision in the end.

And that’s how I ended up driving the car back to the familiar road of Rockville today, with mom on the passenger seat beside me, triumphantly singing along to the song playing on the radio, Aretha Franklin’s “I Say A Little Prayer”.

I tried hard not to feel aggravated about this situation…

“Why are you so grumpy?” My mom teases me, and I only rolled my eyes, keeping silent. Aretha was still speaking about how not being able to live without someone would mean heartache for her in the background and I felt a bit better because she sounded so good while singing about it. I could really have appreciated it more, if not with the nasal voice singing on top of it, which turns out to be my mom’s.

“Can somebody silence the cat that has been making loud screeching noises for quite a long while now so I can have peace of mind with Aretha Franklin?” I say out loud, obviously teasing mom.

As soon as she heard me, mom laughed and playfully hit me on the shoulder and still kept singing, ignoring my pleas for her to stop. I soon cackled out loud when she suddenly went off the note and we both filled the car with our laughter. This is actually the kind of relationship we always had. When mom got pregnant too early and had me when she was only fourteen, she was forced to withdraw from school and lived away from her parents because they cannot accept me growing inside her. Mom chose to keep me, and she raised me alone, and I was the only family she has had since then. 

Our dynamics as mother and child are like best friends. That is why we almost could pass up like siblings. But recently, I have started to be mistaken as her boyfriend ever since I got taller than her. And on top of that, her mentality is also just as much at the same level as I am right now (I’m actually quite too mature for my age). I even always end up like the elder one deciding between us when it comes to our living expenses and grocery shopping.

She really is like a child. And it made me feel even more overprotective when it comes to her. Especially when she just easily lets any man walk into her life and leave her heartbroken. I even became so used to seeing her cry because of how too often it happened in the past. Yet, I still could not do anything about it.

“Now, you’re getting serious again. Why so grumpy?” Mom leans across the console between us and tries to tickle my jaw with her fingers. 

“Stop it,” I say, pulling over at a gas station to fill the car up. Few more miles and we are almost back in town.

“You know I love you, right?” she says again… her usual tagline. Every time I acted grumpy, or rebellious, or childish, or when something doesn’t go the way I want it, she would always brush her fingers down my jaw and give me this loving smile, “You know I love you, right?”

“I know,” I said, my typical reply.

“Then do you love mom too?” she asks now and I snorted.

“If you promise not to sing anymore, I’ll answer,” I tease back and she lightly hits me again, chuckling. We both got out of the car afterward. And as we waited for the car to fill up, we went inside the convenience store at the station to buy some snacks. 

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