Chapter 9

Waking up with Frank's morning wood against his legs made John push back as he pulled Lily closer to kiss her awake. There was light coming in through the skylights, but the alarm hadn't gone off yet. Lily responded by stretching and rolling in his arms to face him.

"G'morning," she mumbled, lifting her face to be kissed.

John started slow with light kisses along her lips, then he teased her mouth open with his tongue hoping his own morning breath was as nice as hers. She responded by pushing her breasts against his chest and letting him nuzzle her neck.

Frank must have woken up because he arms slid around them both while his teeth nipped along John's shoulder. When Frank began to slide his erection along John's ass it made his flesh prickle enough for Lily to notice.

"What's going on back there?" she chuckled as she ran her fingertips along the bumpy flesh of John's arm.

"Nothin'," Frank murmured. "Just enjoyin' the mornin'."

John recalled that first morning after he and Frank had been together the first time. They'd woken up like this, albeit without Lily, but this time his reaction was completely different. Instead of feeling an uncomfortable fear or panic, he welcomed his friend's attention by bowing his back and rumbling deep in his chest.

"You're right. That feels nice," John whispered over his shoulder. He recalled giving Frank a massage that led to him rubbing himself like Frank was doing now.

"You ain't felt nothin' yet," Frank chuckled. "That toy Lily got us is fuckin' insane."

"We don't have time for that this morning," Lily chided. "Don't you boys have a workout to do? I can't have my men getting flabby on me."

Just then Frank's alarm app went off, making him roll over to silence it. "I need to pee anyway," he grumbled.

John sat up and stretched, then looked back at Lily with a surge of emotions he couldn't name.

"What?" she asked as she reached out to touch his back.

"I'm really happy," John said with a sense of surprise. "Nothing's like I imagined it would be, but it doesn't matter. Not anymore."

Her eyes got misty as she sat up to give John a tight embrace. "Thank you so much for everything."

John didn't really understand what she was thanking him for, but he hugged and kissed her anyway.

As good as his word, York helped John move into one of the spare offices when he arrived at work. It felt a little strange at first, but after working for a couple of hours he settled in. The former occupant had taken all of their personal effects after the layoff, but the drawers and cabinets were full of items that had had no meaning to John as he threw them away.

He was brainstorming about things they needed to plan for after Lily started generating interest when she stopped at his doorway.

"I'm next door, by the way. York set me up as well. He kept giving me funny looks," Lily said with a knowing grin. "I forgot to ask you how it went last night."

"Fine by the end," John said. "York will probably get the nerve to ask you some very personal questions at some point. He's kinda like a puppy with boundary issues, though. He doesn't mean anything by it."

"I'll keep that in mind." Lily checked her phone. "Emma and I are going out for lunch again." Her smile grew tense.

"You okay?" John knew she was scared of getting close, but it still confused him. She seemed fine sleeping with random people, which John couldn't let himself do very easily. Her near panic when they asked her to stay with them was hard for him to understand, but her reaction to having sex without a condom was even more confusing.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm gonna be fine. I just need a little time."

"Sweetheart, you take all the time you need." John's words made her face flush as she stood there. She looked around behind her back, then stepped in and closed the door.

John rolled his chair back as she came to sit on his lap. She kissed him softly for a long moment, then hugged him tight. "No one's ever called me that before and meant it."

"You are my sweetheart."

"Don't wash this shirt. I want it when I leave on Sunday." She ran her hands up to the collar as she stared in his eyes.

"I like this shirt," John chuckled.

"I need this shirt," she said and kissed him again. "I'll give it back this time. I promise."

"You know it's fine," he said just as her phone beeped.

"Emma's here." She hopped up off his lap and left the door open on her way out. "I'll see you after lunch," her voice sang after she disappeared.

John smiled at her lingering perfume, then tried to get back to brainstorming. If they managed to get something solid done on schedule, they'd need to think about how to license and deliver the product. Since it had to index whatever large data set the customer owned, they would need to hire some field engineers and begin training them on the process as soon as possible.

Frank was out of money and everyone was working for free, so John considered loaning some of his savings to the company. Frank said he could keep the lights and Internet on for a couple of months, but they needed to spend money to make money.

It was thinking about money that reminded him that his return flight was still scheduled for Sunday. "Shit," he muttered and pulled up the airline website.

"Problem?" Frank asked as he walked by the office doorway.

"Naw, just forgot to change the flight back to San Diego on Sunday." John entered his confirmation number and waited for the website to look him up.

Frank watched with a curious expression and smiling to himself. "When are you gonna change it to?"

John clicked the button to cancel and put the credit in his frequent flyer account. "I just cancelled it."

Frank took a deep breath and nodded. "Wanna go home for lunch?"

"I need to drop off the clothes to be dry cleaned somewhere. I promised Lily I'd get the barbeque sauce off of her skirt so she could wear it on her business trip."

"I gotta place I use for dry cleaning," Frank smiled. "Come on I'll take you."

When they swung by to pick up the clothes, Frank checked the pantry and refrigerator. The dry cleaner was next to the market, so after they dropped off the clothes Frank led them in to get groceries.

John watched Frank select meat and produce, offering opinions when needed, but he couldn't help reflecting on the domestic nature of their task. His mind wandered as he pushed the cart while Frank shopped.

There was one girl he'd dated for a year and they played house for a bit, but never lived together full time. It had felt like playing, not like real life. Watching Frank's hands as he examined an avocado made John's stomach feel tight. He realized this suddenly didn't feel like playing.

Frank looked up as he bagged the avocado and put it in the cart. "You okay?"

John licked his lips and nodded. "Yeah."

"You look a little pale." Frank stepped closer and felt his forehead with the back of his hand. The tingle where their skin touched forced John to gasp. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure," John whispered as he looked into Frank's worried eyes. "Nothing wrong, just ... thinking."

"You think too much," Frank said seriously, then smiled at his friend.

"This is real. It hit me just now." John felt the emotion in his throat.

"Yeah," Frank whispered. "It hit me yesterday with Roger. That's why I had to have you."

"That must be why I want you right now."

Frank studied John's face and nodded. "Let's go home."

Frank left the bags of groceries sat on the steel table in the kitchen when John dragged him by his hand to the section couch in the living room. They stripped quickly leaving clothes piled on the floor before John pushed Frank into a corner of the couch.

John felt ravenous as he took Frank's cock into his mouth, pushing his knees apart to stroke the soft sack under Frank's shaft. There were suddenly fingers in his hair, moving with his head as he drew back each time to suck hard at the bulbous tip.

"I love your mouth," Frank murmured.

I want you! John felt Frank's hips begin to move in time with the fast pace. He held his breath and swallowed the tip deep into his throat, fighting the sensation of choking with his force of will. Frank gasped when John kept swallowing nothing, until suddenly there was something to swallow as Frank gripped John's hair into his fists.

"Holy fuck!" Frank held his head there until John's vision began to dim, then he suddenly released him, bending to kiss his lips and cheeks as he gasped for air. "It's never been like that."

Still panting, John felt Frank pushing him back on the couch. Letting himself fall over, he gave himself over to Frank's control. "You have no idea what you do to me," Frank whispered.

"I bet I do," John said as Frank moved his fist up the hard shaft, milking drops of precum to smooth out the motions.

"No." Frank was staring at John's cock from inches away. "I've always been the fucker. I've always been the one in control, who ends things when they get complicated. I have spent the last fifteen years clawing my way to the top so I could prove something to the world and to myself."

John saw the emotion in Frank's eyes and touched his hair. Waiting while Frank visibly struggled to speak, John felt his heart warm. He began to understand what his friend wanted to say.

"I never let go of anything before," Frank whispered. "I've never trusted anyone enough to really try." He kept stroking John's shaft while staring at the leaking tip. "And I never thought of anyone's pleasure but my own."

Frank looked up then and stared into John's eyes, his hand still stroking his cock. "You don't know it, not really, but you saved me. You gave me another chance. I look at your body now I want nothing more than to make you happy. I've never looked at another man's cock before and wanted to feel it inside me."

John felt worry at his words and the manic moment. "You don't have toâ€""

"Shh," Frank stopped him. "You've turned my life upside down. You gave me hope when I all had left were ashes. You and Lily are like..." His voice broke but his eyes cleared. "You both make me feel like I've already won even though I've lost everything."

John felt his heart race as Frank smiled. "I know that feeling."

"I'm going to stop talking now. I just want you to know what this means to me every time I do it." He lowered his head to take John's cock into his mouth.

The heat made him gasp. The wet tongue pressed against the sensitive underside of his shaft as he took it all. In and out, Frank sucked, until John was dizzy and had to shut his eyes.

Fingers pressed and pulled, squeezing extra pleasure from his flesh. One finger in particular, covered in the slippery mix of saliva and precum, began to slip down between his cheeks.

"Oh fuck," John muttered has he scooted down to open himself to Frank's passion.

All it took was a bit of pressure, a forbidden touch, for John's orgasm to rush through him. Starting with the intruding finger, it charged up into Frank's mouth, overflowing and spilling out as John writhed on the couch.

After the moment passed, Frank pulled himself up to lay next to John on the couch. "I don't have much left to give you, John, but whatever I have, for however long you want it ... I'm yours."

John's afternoon passed in daze. He couldn't keep the grin off his lips for anything. Lily came back from lunch looking wrung out, but when she saw his grin she chuckled at him before going into her office.

He managed to organize a long list of things they needed to discuss and put a calendar entry for Monday morning with an agenda for everyone to consider. The six shareholders had important decisions to make as Lily prepared to take the prototype into the wild.

Some of the items were purely mundane. They needed Roger to put together a general non-disclosure agreement and begin working on software licensing terms. Decisions about banking and cash flow needed to be made, even without salaries, because John wanted to start looking at future staff requirements. Frank couldn't continue to pay for the lease and utilities forever, but John thought he could float them on his savings until they started making money if they were careful.

John called a quick meeting at the end of the day to give everyone a chance to update the team on their status. Lily became the informal secretary, updating the ticket system and taking the minutes to send around in a post-meeting email.

Raj and Soon Li intended to work over the weekend since their controls were the heart of the new scalable data system. Frank had configured test data using each of the possible back-ends for them to use on their private cloud stack. Nathan and York had forked the prototype code to begin a refactor they expected to take a week to enable some of the features Lily and the others had suggested. At the end of the brief meeting, everyone's mood was upbeat and hopeful.

Lily and John followed Frank out to his car. She was less talkative than she usually was, but the faint smile on her face was reassuring. John sat up front for a change while Lily took the back seat.

"What's on the agenda for this evening?" she asked.

"I have to learn the songs for tomorrow," John said.

"I'm going to cook dinner for us if you don't mind." Frank had the same kind of faint smile on his face.

"I've got some work to catch up on. Mind if we just hang out and watch a movie or something?" Lily put her chin over he seat backs and looked between the two men.

"Actually, that sounds like the perfect evening." John smiled to himself while a sense of shared joy soaked through his bones.

Each of them went their own ways for a while. John practiced with his guitar upstairs on the bed while Frank cooked and Lily worked. He was pleased to find his fingers remembered what to do as he listened to the songs in his ear-buds and worked through ideas for how to contribute. Lily eventually came to use the bathroom and then joined him on the bed.

"That sounds beautiful," she said, only hearing the guitar parts.

"Thanks." He stopped the music and put the guitar aside to pull her close. "How was lunch today with Emma?"

Lily touched his shirt with her fingertips. "Good." Her tone was light, but he could tell she had more to say and waited. "She's really good at figuring things out."

"Tell me about it," John said, recalling her insight into their relationship.

"She gave me some exercises to do."

John knew she wasn't talking about working out. "Can I help?"

"Yeah," she whispered. "Both of you can." She looked up at him, but could only meet his eyes for a few seconds at a time. "I'll explain later."

"Take your time, Lil. We've got all the time in the world."

She grinned up at him. "You're right."

"Let's go see how Frank's doing with dinner."

As soon as they entered the kitchen, Frank put them to work setting the kitchen table and getting out some beer from the refrigerator. His gas oven had a grill top as well as burners where long strips of meat sizzling. In a cast iron skillet, he had browned onions and peppers warming. The table was already set with shredded cheese, sour cream, and guacamole.

"It smells wonderful," Lily purred as she finished setting the table.

Frank pulled the meat off the grill and placed it on a cutting board. He cut it in sections, then turned to cut strips across the grain of the meat. After piling the strips into a serving platter, he grabbed a bowl of corn chips he'd been munching on and joined them at the table.

"Steak fajitas are one of my favorite meals," Frank said as he tipped his beer bottle back for a long pull.

John got a flour tortilla and loaded it up with everything. The first bite was so tender and flavorful that he talked with his mouth full. "Son of a bitch! How did you get the meat so tender?"

"Before we left after lunch I dropped the meat in a bowl with lime juice, beer, and fresh garlic."

"You guys came home for lunch?" Lily asked with a glint in her eye. "What did you have?"