Wade felt uneasy at the thought of going to Baton Rouge.
He didn’t feel uneasy about going to the game, of course—what kind of man would he be if he turned down the opportunity?—but he couldn’t shake his nerves about crossing multiple state lines to get there. Wade couldn’t drive stoned, but he wondered if that might bring his blood pressure down enough to not hate the idea of leaving Florida, if only temporarily.
With Carly fixated so far in the future that the game was barely a blip on her radar, the only solace Wade found in his worrying was working on the Charger. He was thankful that after cleaning and tinkering with it for a couple of days, a small pool of fluid was waiting for him on the driveway. Wade was lucky not to have to wait weeks, God forbid months for a replacement water pump, and pulled the Charger into the garage on a cool Thursday evening.
Wade had already installed the gaskets and laid down the drain pan when he heard an engine roar behind him. He turned to find the source of the noise pollution and felt his anxiety rev just the same.
He’d only seen Nick’s car once when he was over at Carly’s, and she interrupted some very heavy petting to go talk to him—though screaming on the front lawn was probably a much more accurate description. Wade thought distraction might cheer her up when she finally came back in from the cold but all she did was turn away from him. Maybe trying to reinitiate their lovemaking wasn’t the right move, but sometimes it felt like there was no right move with her, he just had to wait until she huffed and puffed it out of her system and like a light being switched on, Carly was back.
Wade wished Carly was here to act as a buffer now.
Nick parked along the curb and called out to Wade: “How’s it been, hiding from my sister?”
“I’m not hiding from her!” Wade stepped away from the Charger, standing in the garage’s threshold and puffing up his chest like that’d scare Nick away. “She wants space, I’m giving it to her.”
“Don’t give her an inch, man, she’ll take a fucking mile,” Nick’s voice was venomous. “For all you know she’s off fucking Mark from Ethics in Journalism as we speak.”
Wade’s blood was boiling just from the sight of him. Still, he continued to engage, like a fucking moron.
“Carly can’t make one move without you jumping down her throat, she’s not even here and she’s all you can think about. Don’t you have anything better to do, man?”
Nick walked up to Wade, and he instinctively backed up until he was standing beside the open driver’s seat door. Not like Nick was going to do anything to him—at least, he didn’t think so. His confidence was quickly waning.
They stood next to the Charger, Wade’s head spinning like he’d been socked in the jaw, and fury and anxiety mingled into something indefinable and weirdly bubbly in his chest. Nick’s face hardened, but that hardness didn’t reach his eyes. Wade wondered if he was wearing contacts, or something, they glimmered in the indirect light coming from the garage’s hanging bulb.
“You’re gonna let her leave you behind. You’re her bin of Barbie dolls she gave to the Goodwill—sure, she’ll cry her crocodile tears for a bit, but she’ll get over you faster than you can say ‘Carly, please take me back, I’m a useless fucking pussy of a man without you!’”
Wade scowled. “What d’you gain from being such a miserable asshole, Nick? Really. You think if you say the worst thing first that you’re invincible and nobody can hurt you?”
Nick laughed, the awful sound reverberating through the garage. What Wade wouldn’t have given to shut him up.
“I’m not miserable, Wade. And you’re sure as shit not gonna hurt me.”
He was confused by the lilt in his voice, a teasing that almost seemed flirtatious. Wade had to have been hallucinating—maybe he’d accidentally started the engine with the door closed, maybe he was suffocating on fumes right now and this was what the last desperate firings of his synapses came up with.
He didn’t have any time to try and force himself out of it before he was feeling the very real sensation of Nick’s mouth on his own. Wade was sure it had to be real, because he knew for a fact he wouldn’t have thought Nick’s lips to be soft, even softer than Carly’s despite her compulsive use of chapstick. He was pinned against his car and Nick’s body, and he never imagined he’d be in a compromising situation like this with another guy.
Wade fingered the driver’s seat sun visor until he found the garage door opener, pressing it hard until he heard it start to sink down to the ground. His first instinct shouldn’t have been to give them privacy.
Nick kissed him hard, sucked the breath out of his lungs before he grabbed Wade’s shirt and started to guide him down into the driver’s seat. He broke their mouths apart and stared at him hard, like that’d undo their saliva-swapping.
“What’re you doing?”
Nick forced him to sit and a weight shifted in his core; Wade felt powerless despite his height advantage, one that only grew when Nick got down on one knee like he was going to propose.
“I’m just following your lead, big boy.”
Nick undid his pants effortlessly, with the ease of someone who’d been in this exact position half a dozen times before, and Wade should have stopped him—Carly would find out, she would have killed him for getting too close to another girl at the bar, he didn’t want to think what she’d do if she knew he’d gotten head from her own brother. Worse still, that he hadn’t tried to fight him off at all.
Wade tipped his head back and held back a moan as Nick pulled his half-hard cock out of his boxers, massaging him to full mast with a slight grimace on his face. It felt like a pretense more than anything, but Wade’s blood was still boiling—there was still hatred on one side of this union. One blowjob wasn’t going to undo months of animosity.
“I’m not gay.” Wade’s insistence was putting a bandaid on a broken bone.
“Me neither,” the venom hadn’t left Nick’s voice.
Wade didn’t get him, even when Carly explained why he was the way he was. He especially didn’t get why he would pick fights with Wade one minute, and get down between his knees the next. His tongue was hot on his cock and that only confused him further. He wasn’t gay. He loved Carly. He loved the feeling of his cock descending into a velvet-soft mouth, regardless of who that mouth was attached to.
Nick wasn’t between his legs for long. Wade was holding strong while Nick craned his head up and down on his cock, getting the majority of his cock in his mouth before Wade could hear him gagging. The head of his cock hit something malleable, and Nick pulled back, a rivulet of drool trailing down the corner of his mouth. His eyes were red and teary. Wade felt like he’d bested Nick, and that satisfaction ran deeper than any oral stimulation.
That was, until Nick twisted his tongue across the underside of Wade’s shaft. He felt his muscles going taut as tension wire, they could have sliced through him with ease. Wade grunted and reached out to touch Nick’s head—his buzzed hair was similarly soft under his palm, like peach fuzz.
His body rocked against his will, and he felt like an inexperienced teenager again as he came after what could have only been a minute of head. The panting gasp that came out of him as he jizzed didn’t feel deserved, he was sure it’d go straight to Nick’s head, but it was too late to take it back. Wade opened his eyes and grimaced at the sight of Nick’s closed mouth with a small dribble of white passing his bottom lip.
Wade was still paralyzed when Nick grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into another kiss, forcing his mouth open. He wanted to gag as his own come was spat back into his mouth, he could feel it seeping into every crevice and he was certain Nick was getting some sick kick out of that. It was depraved, like something out of the ancient erotica Carly took a class on—in any other context, she might have liked to hear about him getting humiliated like that. Wires were crossing in his mind, his cooling cock was twitching and he was wondering if maybe there was something deeply sexy about that Nick had just done to him. In the moment, though, his temper was running hot and turning his cheeks an embarrassed pink.
Wade pushed him away, spitting onto the poured concrete floor and panting with his mouth wide open. “What the fuck, man?”
Nick pushed back up onto his feet, staring down at Wade and running a hand over his head. He was entirely satisfied with what he’d just done, and Wade wanted to deck him. Wade also wanted to shove his cock back down his throat, but he was hoping he could attribute that to the crossed, malfunctioning wires in his brain. The adrenaline and all his other feelings melding into something that was entirely confusing and he wanted to be away from as soon as possible.
“See you on the road, Wade.”
He smirked as he walked out of the garage, leaving Wade to roll the salty taste of his jizz around in his mouth. His anxiety boiled over in the pit of his stomach.