Jack woke by degrees to warmth, pressure, and the slow complaint of a bedframe that had not been making that sound when he fell asleep.
The room remained gray with early morning. The globe beside Caleo's bed had gone dark, but daylight had begun gathering at the open window and laying pale bars across the floor. From the garden below came the wet shake of leaves surrendering the night's rain. Percy had left the bedpost. Somewhere above them, claws traveled briskly across the roof tiles.
Jack lay on his side facing Caleo. They had crossed the empty space between them in their sleep. One of Caleo's legs had slipped between Jack's, and Jack's arm lay over Caleo's waist beneath the blanket. Caleo's face was tucked against Jack's throat. His hair smelled faintly of smoke, crushed leaves, and the soap from the bathing room.
Lower down, Jack's borrowed shorts had twisted around his hips. His erection strained beneath the thin linen. Caleo was hard too. His naked cock lay caught between them, long and hot against the cloth covering Jack's own, and every sleepy movement of Jack's hips slid the two together.
Jack pressed closer.
The pleasure was soft at first, blurred at the edges by sleep. Caleo's shaft shifted against his through the linen, bare skin dragging over the damp cloth. Jack tightened the arm around Caleo's waist and moved again, more firmly. The bed answered beneath them. Caleo made a low sound against Jack's neck.
That sound brought Jack far enough awake to understand what he was doing. It did not make him stop. He drew his hips back until the pressure eased, then rolled them forward deliberately. His cock slid along Caleo's. The sensation sharpened at once. He wanted the cloth gone. He wanted to know what Caleo's skin felt like against his without anything between them, and the certainty belonged to him before any inherited memory could offer an opinion.
Caleo's hand closed around Jack's hip and held him still.
Jack opened his eyes. Caleo had lifted his head. Sleep remained in the creases beneath his eyes, but his attention had cleared.
"Are you awake?"
"I am now."
Caleo's hand stayed at his hip. He did not move away, and Jack could still feel the hard length of him pressed between their bodies. "Do you want to keep doing that?"
Jack's first answer caught somewhere between embarrassment and the pressure in his shorts. He made himself give the useful one. "Yes. I want you."
Caleo watched him for another breath. Then he leaned in and kissed Jack's cheek, just below the bone.
His mouth was warm from sleep. Jack caught the back of Caleo's neck and held him there while Caleo kissed the same place again, then followed the line toward his ear. Caleo shifted closer. Their erections pressed together, and Jack moved his hips on purpose until Caleo lifted his head with a breath against Jack's temple.
"Those need to come off," Caleo said.
Jack pushed at the waistband. The shorts had knotted themselves during the night, one tie buried beneath his hip. Caleo freed it with more patience than Jack possessed and drew the linen down. Jack lifted first one leg and then the other, and Caleo dropped the shorts beside the bed.
Cooler air moved across Jack's bare skin. His cock stood hard against his stomach, foreskin drawn behind the swollen head. A clear bead had gathered at the opening and stretched when Caleo passed one thumb beneath it. Jack's breath shortened.
Caleo did not resume their grinding. He moved down the bed instead and folded the blanket away from Jack's legs. "Lie back."
Jack settled onto his back. His head found the warm place where Caleo had slept. Caleo swung one knee across him and straddled Jack's legs just above the knees, keeping his weight in the mattress rather than on the healing hip. Naked in the growing daylight, he was no longer the strange forest boy who had stepped out of the ferns. Jack knew the scar crossing one palm, the pale marks on his knees, the narrow ribs beneath his skin, and the small patch of golden hair above his cock. Familiarity made him more desirable, not less.
Caleo let his attention travel down Jack's chest and stomach to the erection standing against it. "That isn't fair. You get a body like that and a cock to match."
Jack smiled slightly. He kept his eyes on Caleo's chest instead of trying to meet that frank appraisal. "You're gorgeous," he whispered.
Caleo leaned forward. His erection lowered with him and came to rest across Jack's loose balls, its underside hot against them and its head reaching the base of Jack's cock. The contact made Jack's balls draw closer. Caleo placed one hand beside Jack's hip and wrapped the other around his shaft.
Jack's whole body tightened around the first stroke.
Caleo drew the foreskin forward over the head and then back with his hand. His grip was firm without being hurried. He watched Jack's face rather than his own work, adjusting when Jack lifted into his palm and again when Jack's breath caught. The ring remained close and dark at the base, warmed only by their bodies.
"You can move," Caleo said.
Jack did. He pushed up into Caleo's hand and felt Caleo's cock slide against his balls at the same time. Caleo rocked with him. The underside of Caleo's shaft dragged over the loose skin, leaving a line of wetness as the clear fluid at its head spread between them.
Jack reached down. His fingers closed around Caleo near the base.
Caleo stopped moving. For an instant Jack thought he had mistaken what was permitted, but Caleo did not take his hand away. He shifted his knees wider, giving Jack room to hold him without trapping his wrist between their bodies.
"Like this?" Jack asked.
Caleo answered by moving into his grip.
Jack stroked him as far as the position allowed. Caleo was slimmer than Jack but nearly as long, with skin that moved easily over the shaft. Jack drew his thumb across the wet head, watched Caleo's stomach contract, and did it again. The pleasure on Caleo's face was less composed than anything Jack had seen from him the day before. His lips parted. The easy amusement went out of his eyes.
Caleo's hand tightened around Jack. Their rhythm failed, found itself, and failed once more when Jack pushed too eagerly. Neither of them corrected it with words. Jack learned the motion from what Caleo's body did above him; Caleo learned Jack by the sounds he could no longer keep quiet. The bed creaked beneath the joined movement of their hips.
Jack had not known whether wanting a boy would feel like something foreign added to him. It did not. Caleo's cock was hard in his hand. Caleo's hand moved over him with practiced attention. Jack wanted both facts and did not need a word large enough to contain them before he was allowed to enjoy them.
Caleo bent over him and pressed his mouth beneath Jack's ear. The angle settled Caleo's cock more firmly across Jack's balls and trapped Jack's hand between them. Jack released him long enough to pull Caleo closer by the waist. Caleo's hair fell around their faces, and his lips traveled once down the side of Jack's throat. His strokes shortened as their bodies crowded together, working the head and the upper half of Jack's shaft while Jack rocked into his fist.
The pressure built too quickly. Jack tried to slow himself and found that he had already spent most of his control while half asleep. Heat gathered behind the ring and climbed through his cock. He turned his face into the pillow to breathe.
"Caleo."
"Let it happen."
Jack disliked the calm answer enough to reach for Caleo again. His fingers found the wet shaft lying across his balls. He closed his hand around it and stroked hard enough to strip the calm from Caleo's next breath.
"With me," Jack said.
Caleo's eyes closed. He drove once into Jack's hand, then opened them again and looked directly at him. Whatever private refusal had lived behind his easy giving did not win. Caleo lowered his weight, his cock sliding hot between Jack's hand and balls, and worked Jack faster.
Jack came first.
The initial spurt struck high on his chest. The next crossed his stomach in a thick white line. Caleo kept his hand around him. More followed than Jack expected his body to hold: white semen mixed with clearer, thinner fluid, spreading across his skin, running into his navel and over his side, and collecting between Caleo's fingers. His cock pulsed again and again. Jack's heels pressed into the mattress. He heard himself make a helpless sound and could not spare enough thought to be embarrassed by it.
Caleo stared down for half a second, startled into stillness by the amount. Jack tightened his hand around him.
"Don't stop."
Caleo moved.
Jack stroked him through the last weakening pulses of his own climax. Caleo's hips lost their careful rhythm. His cock slipped wetly over Jack's balls and pushed into Jack's fist. Caleo braced both hands beside Jack's hips, leaving Jack to work him. His head dropped. The muscles of his stomach pulled tight beneath Jack's knuckles.
Caleo came across Jack's groin. The first hot release struck the underside of Jack's softening cock and spread over his balls. Another followed when Jack drew his hand upward. Caleo shuddered above him, thrust once more into Jack's grip, and then remained there breathing hard, his forehead nearly against Jack's chest.
For several breaths neither of them moved. Morning continued around them with offensive normality. A cart rattled somewhere beyond the garden wall. A woman called an order in the bakery below, and pans answered against a worktable. Jack lay beneath Caleo with semen cooling across his chest and stomach and more warm between his legs.
Caleo lifted his head. His gaze traveled over the mess on Jack's torso, returned to Jack's face, and stayed there.
"That was more than I expected," Jack said.
"Does anything hurt?"
Jack tested the question against his body, then shook his head. Caleo leaned down and left a slow kiss against his temple, with one hand resting beside Jack's ribs.
When he sat back, their skin pulled apart damply. Caleo reached for the shorts on the floor, reconsidered what condition they were meant to remain in, and left them there. He crossed naked to the washstand and returned with the basin and two cloths.
Jack took one. "I can help."
"I hoped you might. This is partly yours."
They cleaned one another without pretending the work was dignified. Jack wiped the release from Caleo's stomach and the pale hair at his groin. Caleo washed Jack's chest in broad strokes, rinsing the cloth twice before the water stopped clouding.
Caleo used the second cloth between Jack's legs. His touch remained gentle around the ring, but no longer clinical. Jack cleaned Caleo in return, drawing the foreskin back just far enough to wipe beneath it before letting it settle over the softened head. Caleo watched his hands and made no joke.
The basin water had gone milky by the time they finished. Caleo set it on the floor and lay beside Jack again rather than rising to dress. Jack rolled onto his side with his back to Caleo. The position was easier on his healing hip, and the room had begun to cool wherever the blanket did not cover him.
Caleo drew the blanket over them both. A moment later his arm came around Jack's waist. He settled close enough that his chest warmed Jack's back, and his mouth rested near the hair at the nape of Jack's neck.
"Think we can be friends? You're a likable person."
The question hurt more than Jack expected. After all Caleo had given without being asked, friendship was the one thing he offered cautiously. He had offered his body with less hesitation than he now offered the hope that Jack might remain in his life.
Jack covered the arm around him with his own. "Yes," he said. After a moment, because the first word did not seem sufficient, he tightened his hand around Caleo's wrist. "I want that."
Caleo exhaled into his hair. The arm around Jack drew closer, and neither of them tried to turn the answer into anything easier.
They remained beneath the blanket until the bakery made staying impossible. The first oven door opened below with a hollow iron bang. Someone dragged a sack across the kitchen floor. Mrs. Gowrie called Caleo's name once from the bottom of the stairs, not loudly, and received no answer.
"She knows we're awake," Jack said.
"She knew before we did."
Jack considered the bedframe and could not dispute it.
Caleo rose first. He poured the dirty water into the pipe beside the washstand, rinsed the basin, and dressed in the same frayed shorts he had abandoned the night before. Jack put on the patched linen pair. They had survived the floor, but not the morning without evidence; Caleo washed the damp place at the front while Jack wore them, wrung the cloth into the basin, and declared the result passable.
Jack found the gesture should have embarrassed him. Instead it left him watching Caleo's bent head and wanting to pull him back into bed.
"If we don't go downstairs," Caleo said, "Auntie will come up, and then you'll learn how little privacy belongs to a person who sleeps above a bakery." He drew a breath through his nose and glanced toward the bed. "The room smells like sex. I couldn't bear for Auntie to catch me up to my elbows in cum."
Jack tied the shorts securely. "We're still going to Thornfield?"
Caleo raised his head from the basin. "Did you change your mind?"
The fortress would be waiting above Briartown. Jack had not changed his mind. For a few minutes he had forgotten to be afraid.
"No," he said. "I'm going."
Caleo handed him the folded cloak. Jack wrapped it around his shoulders rather than his hips. It left his chest bare and fell almost to his knees, but the shorts remained where Mrs. Gowrie had promised they would. Caleo adjusted the cloak once at Jack's collar, smoothing the fold flat with both hands.
They went downstairs together.