Wicked Boy (56) (Patreon)

 ⚠️ WARNINGS FOR:  ⚠️ 

Abruptly mature content.  not exactly skippable, sorry!  also, don’t kill me!  you’ll come to understand Ezra and his reckless motivations better as Milan does! Neither are perfect!  

—

I have nothing left on my home to busy myself with when Ezra steps in through the open door, so I stand at the island counter, not knowing exactly where to look or what to say.

There isn't a distraction large enough anyway, not with a presence like Ezra's. There hasn't been, not since the first day I caught sight of him at the diner, where he took up so much space with just one smirk, and never since.

Ezra, not one to express any discomfort, snickers before kneeling to discard my makeshift doorstop. His shoulders roll beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt, his jacket from months before discarded with the heat of summer.

My stomach feels warm, and I wish I could blame it on the season. Ezra glances back at me as he pulls back into his height, waggling the loafer like discipline. The shoe becomes something blurry and unfocused because my gaze is on Ezra — on his sharp eyes, on his dimple, the way his words crookedly depart from his lips,

"... These nice-ass apartments don't come with the necessities?" He hums, brushing off the edge of my shoe as I shake my head. His returning regard wavers, almost as if he's contemplating my reaction to him. Perhaps, I've been too apparent, again, or maybe he's always been this calculating. Before, I just couldn't look, "no wonder you're in a hurry to go home with me."

I press my fingers to the counter until they bend and the color drains from them, and attempt a smile, attempt anything.  We could be friends. I want to be friends.  There's a bizarre element of distress crawling, and I hesitate.

How?

No. This doesn't have to be so hard. Attraction shouldn't build a barrier like this, so — what would I say to Tamela? Like anyone else,

... I would tease her, wouldn't I?

"You don't even have a doorstop," I say. It doesn't carry the snotty, matter-of-fact tone that Tamela and I often trade with our barbs, but the tension from my side of the room seems to release into nothing, Ezra's brow perking in subdued surprise. "You have a rock."

He saunters closer, head tilting. He picks up where my invitation to tease dangles, expression all too curious and studying mine.

"I do."

I lean my weight against my hands, shrugging, my nervousness at something as simple as a conversation creating a stupid sort of smile,

"So. A big garden rock isn't a doorstop." I shrug a second time like that's that, and oh — bickering is easy, familiar, and straightforward. This feels better. "Even if you paint it."

Ezra chuckles, humored, with steady eye contact still lighting misfired nerves. I try to return his stare, try to add the petulance and superiority that Tamela and I often pepper into play-fights and Ezra nods in recognition — grinning sly and slow.

"And neither is," He lifts the shoe again, leaning over the counter in a casually defiant way, and tips it slowly, "this."

Oh no.

Teasing — teasing doesn't feel like this with Tamela.  My heart is fluttering unsteadily.  Ezra's eyes drop to my neck as I flatten the collar of my shirt, stare dragging upwards as I right the fictitious crookedness of my glasses.

Oh no.

"Well." I leave the counter, and the heat of his regard, to grab one of the two boxes near the wall. I don't know why simple bickering feels like flirting, but it does, and my cheeks are starting to feel ruddy with sudden shyness.  Great. I'm delusional. "It stops the door, doesn't it?"

Ezra approaches behind where I've knelt, dropping both shoes in front of my socked feet, and reaches for the second box — stalling, the same as me.  I tip slightly as he crouches beside me,

"So does my rock." He smells good.  He smells clean with the absence of cigarette smoke — like sandalwood or cinnamon, and he's warm, even this close.  "These your only boxes?  We can take a cab with these."

"Did you quit?"  I turn to Ezra, held up by my knees,  and find myself closer to him than I thought.  He leans into his haunches, peering down at me, waiting for me to continue.  My stomach flips.  With him so near, and above me, my world does the strangest of tilts.  "Cigarettes, I mean.  You don't smell like smoke.  And — you were chewing gum last time."

Ezra's bright eyes narrow slightly, another long, measuring stare.  I tell myself not to look away and instead take in the acidic hue of his irises, a green so warm that they border yellow, dark — thick limbal rings, unusual and severe,

"Mhm.  Tryin' to."  His smile appears, tilting and deepening dimples.  He touches his shoulder lightly, with ringed fingers, inked knuckles brushing down the fabric that covers part of his bicep,  "Even got the patch."

"Oh."  I suck in my inner cheek, nodding, awkward and wary of how close we are.  I've never been a smoker.  I assume, with someone with willpower like Ezra's, that the patch signifies that quitting isn't so easy.  So I smile back at him, rolling my palms over my thighs.  "Um.  Good job.  You — you smell nice."

Well.  Fantastic.  It was a good start.

But all good things end in disaster.

My face floods with heat, and I whip back around to face the open boxes, desperately reaching for a lid to busy my hands and pressing the folded clothing inside down and out of the way of it.

I'll slap myself later when I'm losing sleep over this moment, and reconsider trying to converse with anyone ever again.

"... Thanks."  Then I feel the warmth of Ezra's touch, the calloused slide of his finger wrapping through a strand of hair near my hairline — just at the base of my neck.  My teeth click as my mouth snaps shut.  "By the way...."

His other hand is at the ground beside me, and he leans over my back, his lips at my ear,

"Your hair is a lil' longer.  Messier."  He huffs out a quiet chuckle, and his breath ghosts my jaw.  It smells like mint-flavored gum.  He feels hot. "I like it."

I falter, my hand slapping down behind me to steady myself, which coincidentally happens to be his thigh.

Ezra tugs the segment of hair as I make contact, and I — don't know what goes wrong.  I don't have an excuse.  I don't know if it's his voice, how much I missed him — the touch, the heat, the teasing, or the tug, but my inhale doesn't sound like an inhale at all.

It sounds like — like a whimper, and I turn back to face him, flushed, mortified, and frantic to explain.  Our eyes meet over my shoulder, his gaze narrows,

"Got a sensitive neck, pretty boy?"

And his considerate, one-fingered touch turns to a full grip — grasping my hair to tip my head back.  Then, explanations are forgotten; the flat of Ezra's pierced tongue drags up the pillar of my throat.

I gasp out something startled and strangely akin to the affirmative, dizzy with the tide of my pulse, with the rare swallowing feeling of lust, and Ezra's free arm comes around my shoulders to hold my back steady against his chest.

My fingers splay over his thigh, clutching muscle that's dangerously close to his crotch.  I breathe in, squeezing my eyes shut, but he kisses the skin there, and another vulnerable sound lodges in my throat.

"Am I right, Milan?"  The low drawl Ezra's voice has fallen into doesn't help, or the way he presses the tease close, like a secret.  "Are ya' sensitive?"

He sucks the side of my neck, trails upwards to nip at my jaw, his hold on me strong — a little too tight, another drag of his tongue to the skin below my ear, and I squirm in his grasp, lips pursed with pride and a fumbling hope to stay quiet.

I try to rationalize this.  I try — wondering what's changed?  But Ezra pulls my hips back until I flatten into his lap — and then he pushes over me, my chest hitting the carpet, and his pressed along my shoulder blades, and the thoughts scatter into need.

"Oh my God,"  I manage, the small of my back curving — and my father would hate blasphemy, but Ezra inhales quick and harsh, and suddenly, I only care what he thinks.  His hips dig into my backside, thumb drawing over my lower lip, and abruptly....

Ezra hesitates.

He seems to really consider his next offer.  At first, it worries me.  Then — I see it.

There's an AA pamphlet that's fluttered from my box, just out of reach, but in both of our sight.  I think about that — or what he may think about that.  And his patch.  His problems with Daphne.  That phone call in the lobby.  Our talk on his porch swing... Where he looked exactly like himself and not himself at all.

Maybe, all of that — is  what makes me waver when Ezra murmurs,

"... You still want that kiss?"

Because I can still hear,

‘I want you to see me as a person.’

-

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