Chapter 20 - Sleepover

Random thought #3268: why does human skin shrivel up like a raisin when we’re in water for too long? I mean, seriously, what’s up with that? If we really are descended from creatures that crawled out of the sea, shouldn’t we be able to handle extra-long showers without getting all pruny and icky? Asking for a friend who just really likes taking long, sweet, intimate, showers with his otherwise hands-off boyfriend but doesn’t like the raisin-fingers that come with the experience.

“We should get out of here and get you off that ankle,” Brian insisted when he noticed me surreptitiously scowling at my water-puckered fingertips.

“No. I’m fine. The hot water feels realllly good.”

“Maybe, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to put ice on swelling ankles and conked heads, not heat,” he maintained.

Brian turned the two of us slightly so that more of the shower stream would hit me. His large, soft hands glided over my skin, helping to rinse away any lingering soap. Did I mention how great the soap he used smells? Then he filled one palm with some shampoo from a dispenser affixed to the tiles of the shower wall and began to run his hands through my hair. Damn, if having your hair washed for you isn’t the most sensual experience ever invented! I hadn’t felt that cared for and loved in . . . well, ever. Who knew his hands were so soft? I sure as hell didn’t. It just felt so fucking good, you know? And, despite our shower adventure being relatively chaste up to that point, I could feel certain parts of my anatomy getting warmer even as the shower water was starting to cool. But, since I didn’t think we were ready to go THERE, I just took a deep breath and tried to concentrate on something other than my dick.

Seizing on the first topic that came to mind, I blurted, “so, how come you’re hairy all over except on your chest.”

I let my palm rest on his pec, centered right over the perky nub of a nipple, and allowed my puckered fingertips to play in the few hairs they found there. I could tell he hadn’t shaved or waxed or anything, because no stubble, so the relatively light hair growth that covered his pecs - heavier around the areolas and down the midline that led over solidly defined abs to a more pronounced treasure trail - was a little surprising. Judging by the bush of hair covering his chin, not to mention the magnificent bush down below, I would have expected him to be a regular caveman. But no. That chest was not only fairly sparsely covered, but the hair itself was a lighter color, more a light auburn than the darker brunet I saw elsewhere. It was fascinating. Probably why I couldn’t seem to keep my hands away. Or maybe that was because of the eminently touchable muscles underneath. Either way, I was revelling in running my hands all the fuck over that chest. I couldn’t get enough of the way he sucked in his breath when I ran my hands over a particularly ticklish spot.

“I blame Donal for passing on too many red-headed Irish leprechaun genes,” Brian surmised as he manually tilted my head back letting all the shampoo rinse out. “You should’ve seen me as a kid; after spending way too much time outside all summer I’d be practically ginger by the time September rolled around.”

“Mmmmm. Ginger Eggy. Wish I’d seen that. I bet you were adorable as a kid,” I concluded. But thoughts of a young Egbert brought up other questions. “So does that mean you weren’t always hidden away here in your tower.”

“You make me sound like fucking Rapunzel or something,” Brian grumbled. He moved away from me far enough to turn the shower off and then, after making sure I was holding onto the shower support bar for balance, he stepped out to grab two towels from the heated towel rack. “And, no, I wasn’t always . . . like this. There was once a time in my life where my body absorbed vitamin D naturally instead of through a supplement,” he stated rather matter-of-factly.

I took the towel he offered and began to dry myself off while I waited to see if any further explanations would be forthcoming. Brian ignored me, drying himself all over and then depositing his towel in the nearby laundry hamper. He also took that opportunity to pick up both his and my clothing, adding them to the hamper. Then he reached under the sink, pulled out a bottle of antibacterial spray cleaner and a sponge and started to attack the already spotless countertops surrounding the sink, his nose mere inches away from the counter as he scrubbed at non existent stains.

Okay. So, apparently, I’d hit on an anxiety-causing topic. Good to know.

I finished drying myself and then carefully hopped out of the shower, trying to prevent my bad ankle from making any contact with the floor. Brian immediately confiscated my wet towel and put it in the hamper too. Then he went back to scrubbing at the countertops with a vengeance I hadn’t seen before. Good thing they were solid marble or he would have scrubbed a hole through them by now. Maybe it was time for more Taylor distractions?

“Ow!” I yelled. “Damn. I knocked my ankle again. This totally sucks. I think you’re going to have to give me a hand again.”

Brian was so easy. He immediately dropped his cleaning supplies and rushed to my side, offering his nice solid body as a support. Of course, now I was standing there, precariously balanced on one foot, stark naked, and Brian had just taken away both my towel and all my clothing. It didn’t help matters much that Brian was still buck naked too. Or that I’d been fighting against all these naked-with-Eggy urges for the entire shower. I mean, come on! What’s a guy supposed to do in that kind of situation? It was pretty obvious what my dick thought of this arrangement, though, so I figured I might as well stop fighting it.

“Don’t know about you, Eggy, but I can think of at least one thing I’d rather be doing right now that doesn’t involve helping you clean the bathroom.” I waggled my eyebrows at him in what I hoped was an invitingly sexy manner. “How about you put down that sponge and help me to bed, huh?”

I watched as Brian’s eyes drifted over my pleasingly bare body and I could tell he was interested. More than interested, if the way his glance got stuck on my midsection meant anything. And, since he was still naked too, that interest was more than evident, if you get my drift. For about ten seconds I thought I had him and maybe my wildest dreams were about to come true.

But then, almost against his will, I felt him sorta pull back from me. Biting at his bottom lip, he looked back over at the counter he’d been cleaning. I peeked around his shoulder and could see that there was a foot-square corner of the surface that hadn’t been wiped down yet where you could see the sheen from his cleaning spray still glistening on the marble. I could tell he was caught up in his OCD thing. He just couldn’t leave that counter unwiped. Not even for something as tempting as my tight, twinkie ass on offer, free of charge. And it was pretty much killing him to stand there, unable to make the decision about what to do . . . which pull was going to win out.

Darn it. It was almost physically painful for ME to watch him fighting with himself like that. It was yet another reminder of all the stumbling blocks we’d have to overcome if we were actually going to try and make something out of this attraction we both seemed to feel. But it was probably a good thing that this interruption cooled things off between us so effectively, because we clearly weren’t ready for more.

“It’s okay, Eggy. I get it. You gotta do your thing, right? So, how about you just help me to bed first and then you can take care of whatever you need to do, huh?” I offered.

Which is how I ended up in Brian’s guest room bed, alone and in pain and ridiculously horny. I know I should have been happy with all that Eggy and I had accomplished that day. He’d come so far already. I could wait a bit longer, right?

Did I mention how much I HATE waiting?

However, I was obviously way more tired than I had realized, because I was fast asleep almost as soon as Brian had left the room. I heard him heading back to the bathroom to finish punishing the poor marble counter, but then that was it. I was off to dreamland where all my dreams were filled with naked Eggy kisses . . . so nice.

I was in the middle of a deliciously innocent dream about making out with my Eggy, when I felt the bed dip beside me.

“Wake up, Justin.”

“Huh?” Fuck, I’m so sexy, I think I may have also snorted as I came to.

“I need to make sure you’re okay. I’m not supposed to let you sleep for longer than two hours.”

I rolled onto my side so that I was facing Brian and smiled up into the darkness. His beautiful face was silhouetted by the light coming into the room from the hallway and, damn, it made me want to grab his face and kiss it. “You don’t have to do that, Brian. After my head’s last encounter with your floors, I asked my friend Daphne and she told me doctors don’t bother with that anymore. That’s just a myth.”

“No it’s not. I Googled it.”

“Oooh, then it must be true,” I teased, loving the way Brian scoffed at me, so obviously put out by being associated with such a clever clogs.

Brian crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away from me. “Fine, I won’t wake you. See how you like falling into a coma . . .”

“Brian, I didn’t mean . . .”

It took everything in him not to fall off the bed laughing at his own joke. “You’re so easy, Sunshine.”

“Um . . .”

“I’m still waking you at least a few more times, whether you like it or not,” he told me.

“Brian,” I moaned, rubbing my cheek tiredly against the pillow.

Out of nowhere, I felt Brian’s hand run very gently over my damp hair. “Calm down, Doogie Howser. You can prove your point tomorrow. But, until then, I’m doing what I think is best. Okay?”

I yawned loudly. “‘Kay.”

I couldn’t even remember falling back to sleep; it was only when I felt myself being poked continuously on my shoulder (he definitely enjoyed doing that too much) that I opened my eyes.

“What?” I snapped before I even realized I had done it.

Brian leant down until his mouth was right by my ear. “What year is it? Who is the current president of The United States?” he whispered. Fuck, I felt myself shiver as his warm breath hit my face.

“The longer you take to answer me, the more concerned I will get and the more I will wake you up.” That little shithead, that’s SO not how this worked.

“2015.”

“...”

“And to answer your other question, Barack Obama is the current president of the United States.”

“Justin???” I could tell he wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. The light wasn’t great in here as it was, and I’d answered completely dead pan. “You’re not fucking serious are you?”

I could feel the corners of my mouth turning up, knowing I had got him good. “No, I’m kidding. I know it’s 2019 and that the current president is a moronic orange buffoon whose name I refuse to say aloud. We would be better off having an actual Cheeto running the country . . .”

I heard him scoff loudly. “Asshole.”

“He is! That’s why I refuse to accept he’s my president,” I yawned, snuggling back under the warm covers.

“Agreed. However, I was talking about you.”

I fell asleep to the soft sounds of my Eggy laughing to himself.

“Justin . . . wakey wakey, eggs and bakey . . .”

“Mmmm,” I stretched. “You cooked me breakfast?” I asked tiredly. “Nothing smells burnt.”

“Twat,” he laughed “it’s only five am, so you still have a while until it’s breakfast time I’m afraid.”

“Ugh . . .”

“Are you hungry?”

I rubbed my tummy, like that would answer the question. I shook my head. “No.”

“Then go back to sleep.”

I didn’t have to be told twice. As soon as I pulled the covers up over my head I was fast asleep again.

“Do you think I should shave off my beard?”

“Huh” I pulled my head out from the cocoon of blankets I had made for myself and looked up at Brian. He was sitting next to me, on top of the covers, with his legs crossed at his ankles and was scratching nervously at his face.

“What are you talking about?”

“My beard? Should I shave it? Was it . . . too scratchy when . . . when we kissed?”

If I could die from how cute this man was, I’d be deader than dead.

I pulled my arm out from under the covers and let it graze the top of his sweat pants-clad leg, waiting to see if he’d grant me access. Once I knew he was okay with it, I started to stroke the soft cotton. “A little, yeah. But it felt really good at the same time,” I told him honestly. “Besides, you can’t shave it off yet. Not until . . .”

“Until what?” he asked when I realized what I’d been about to reveal and abruptly stopped myself. “Justin? What were you about to say? Why can’t I shave yet?”

“Well, it’s just . . .” I stuttered along, my brain still too fuzzy from sleep to think fast enough to come up with a way out of this. “I just . . . sorta . . . I . . .” Oh, fuck it, I might as well confess. “I had this one fantasy about you rubbing me all over with that beard and I could feel how it tickled and scratched along my thighs while you . . .”

I pointedly looked down to where you could see a noticeable bulge beginning under the sheet that was covering my crotch area. Brian snickered wickedly. I knew I was blushing because of the way it felt like my face was practically on fire - damn my pale skin - but I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound, right? I might as well tell him everything now.

“Besides, if you do shave it off, I want to be the one who does it . . . and we have to be naked . . . and there will be large quantities of soap involved . . . and . . . *moan* . . .”

“So, judging by your reaction, I’m going to assume that you’re fine and don’t have a concussion or any sort of permanent brain damage,” Brian assessed with a knowing little smirk, which was only partially hidden by the beard in question. “Now, if you can put those fantasies of yours on hold for a little longer, Tiger, I’ve got bagels in the toaster for our breakfast. Then we’ll try to figure out how bad your ankle is and whether we need to find a way to get you to a doctor.”

I pushed myself up in the bed so I was in a sitting position and tried to will away the raging boner I’d given myself while I carefully flexed my ankle. Yeah, it was still horribly painful. There was no way I would be walking on it yet. In fact, I dreaded even looking at it because I could already feel how bad it was. The second day of a sprain is always worse than the first, in my experience. Plus, not only does it feel even more stiff and painful, but it starts to get that black-purple-green tinge to it that makes you gag. Nope, I was not looking forward to this part of the morning at all.

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” Brian insisted, pulling back the covers.

And, yep, it was just as bad as I’d suspected. The swelling had gone down a little, so my ankle no longer looked like a grapefruit, but it was still distorted and didn’t look like an ankle. The bruising had also reached epic levels of ugliness. It LOOKED painful. It WAS painful. And that’s before I even tried putting any weight on it. Shit. What the fuck was I going to do?

“I don’t think I’ll be going far on this thing,” I concluded. “Any chance of getting breakfast in bed? If not, I’m thinking you’re going to have to carry me again, Eggy, because this ankle is not going to cooperate.”

I could immediately tell that my suggestion was causing Brian some discomfort. I could see him biting at his bottom lip as he assessed the possible messiness of me eating in bed. It was probably the thought of all those crumbs going everywhere. But the alternative was more touching and, despite all our progress from the night before, I could already tell that his OCD tendencies were rearing their ugly head. He hadn’t touched me yet this morning and, while he hadn’t pulled away when I reached out to touch his leg through his pants, there hadn’t been anything more offered. Which was infuriating, but probably not all that surprising. I mean, it made sense that years worth of an increasing spiral of OCD rituals wouldn’t just be overcome in one night, right? It wasn’t even like us touching had been his choice - he’d been forced to come rescue me when I knocked myself out in his basement - if he hadn’t helped me back upstairs the previous night I’d still be laying there in pain on the floor of his basement. So, yeah, it was disappointing that he was back to struggling against the pull of all his neuroses and compulsions, but it was understandable too.

Not that I wasn’t going to keep pushing, of course. “So, what’s your preference? Crumbs in your linens or hauling my perky yet plump posterior all over your tower all morning?” I batted my lashes at him while offering up the second alternative just to let him know where my own preferences lay. A boy can dream, right?

Eggy apparently found my flirty approach a bit humorous, causing him to crack a smile and relieving some of his nervousness. “What the fuck. I can always just chuck all the bedding in the wash once I do finally get rid of your freeloading ass,” he surmised with a dismissive shake of his head. “Breakfast in bed coming right up, Princess.”

When Brian returned a few minutes later, I was happy to see that his tray of breakfast goodies contained enough for two. Now, if I could only talk him into crawling in bed with me so we could cuddle while we shared our bagels, that would be something. However, judging by the way Brian took out a bottle of hand sanitizer to use on his hands, not to mention the way he wiped down the nightstand at least twice before he set down his own plate, that wasn’t likely. Hey, at least he was trying, right? I mean, he was eating with me off a tray in his guest room, so I probably should try and overlook the repetitive rituals and the way he was nervously moving items on the tray around until they were all in perfect alignment with each other, right?

I took a moment to devour about half of my own cream cheese-laden bagel before I said anything. “Have you ever considered some kind of anti-anxiety medication?” I blurted. It had been a topic I had wanted to bring up for a while, but I had never found the perfect time to ask . . . And it seemed I still hadn’t . . . Whoops.

He looked up at me, took the time to wipe off his fingers for the fiftieth time, and then smiled sadly. “I’m less fond of doctors than I am of annoying burglars who get crumbs all over my guest room or secret tunnels in my basement, so no.”

“I’m only asking because my friend, Daphne . . .”

“Your friend whom you cite endlessly to mask the fact that you’re nosy as fuck?”

“Yeah. That one,” I admitted, because, he had me there, no denying it. “Anyway, Daphne was saying something the other day about how there’s all these great new meds that might help you. I mean, they probably won’t cure your OCD or anything, but they might help you cope a little better. Make everything feel less stressful for you. Maybe even make it so you’d be more open to trying out some of those ideas I had for your beard . . .”

That earned me a chuckle or two but in the end he just shook his head again, dismissing my idea outright. “I’m not going to see some quack doctor, Sunshine.”

“But what if a doctor came here to see you?”

“I didn’t think doctors did house calls anymore.”

“Well, no, most don’t but . . .” I took another bite of my bagel and thought through what I was proposing. “I don’t know. Maybe Daphne knows someone who could help? She works at the Magee-Women’s Hospital and knows a lot of people. She might have some ideas. And I would really, really, REALLY like it if you and I could, you know, maybe, sorta get beyond all this.” I gestured with my bagel in a large circle indicating all the distance between the two of us, accidentally causing a cascade of cream cheesy crumbs to fly pretty much everywhere, resulting in Brian hoping up off his chair and diving for the box of wipes so he could clean up the mess I’d just made. “. . . case in point.”

Brian looked guiltily up at me from the floor, realizing what he’d done. Then he quickly dabbed up all the crumbs he could see with yet another of the endless supply of wipes, before resuming his seat. My poor Eggy, he looked so forlorn, it nearly broke my heart.

“How does this sound?” I spoke up, trying to help out a bit. “I need to call Daph and have her come pick me up anyway - because there’s no way I’ll make it home on the bus with my ankle like this - which will give you two a chance to meet and sort of get acquainted. And, assuming that goes well, we could ask Daphne to see if any of her doctor friends might be willing to come out and talk to you? No commitments or anything, just talking. What do you think?”

Brian looked a little spooked by this suggestion but, to his credit, I could tell he was seriously thinking it through. Did I mention how incredibly fucking brave he was? I’d been heaping one challenge after another on him for weeks now, and he was doing so well at trying to face them. No wonder I found myself falling in love with him.

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to talk to your friend,” Eggy conceded with a huge sigh.

“It won’t. And I promise you’ll love her. “

“Is she as annoying as you?” Brian asked semi-seriously.

“Even more so,” I laughed, thoroughly enjoying the look of dread on his face as he thought about being tagged teamed by me and my bestie.

I wasn’t sure why, but I had a good feeling about this.