Chapter Text
The smell of something delicious from the kitchen greeted Junho just inside the front door. Whatever was cooking was heavy with garlic, and probably the opening steps of the sort of gourmet meal that Rose Marie enjoyed cooking. He hoped it would be something spicy. She’d been in an American South mood, lately, and her specialties included some very spicy seafood dishes.
When he bent to untie the comfortably worn sneakers that he wore to his job at the shelter, he saw that the children’s shoes were missing from the shoe cabinet, and he tried not to hope too hard for some adult time. 'Tried' was the operative word. Even though Junho was getting past the age where he was constantly horny, he still profoundly enjoyed adult time and the emotional intimacy that came with it. Adult time could be hard to come by with a teenager and a grade-schooler in the house.
Stepping up from the foyer into the living space meant stepping into the kitchen. The big window over the sink looked out over the sidewalk and across their little strip of lawn onto their quiet street. The window was open, letting in the early summer smell of freshly cut grass. The late afternoon sunlight slanting in made Rose Marie’s hair shimmer like it was on fire, even though she’d pulled it back out of her face into a sensible clip while she worked. It wasn’t a large kitchen, it wasn’t a large house, but it was more than he’d ever hoped to have.
Junho took a long moment to appreciate Rose Marie in the light, the way her loose purple top clung to the small of her back as she absent-mindedly reached out a delicate hand to grab a vegetable out of a bowl and position it on the cutting board in front of her.
“What’s for dinner?” Junho was always careful to announce his presence, particularly when there was a lot of noise in the kitchen. His stocking feet wouldn’t make enough noise on the polished wood of the floor to alert her that someone would be coming up behind her.
The little jerk of her shoulders filled his chest with rage every time. But so many things filled him with rage or broke his heart that he couldn’t let the negative emotions stay too long. There were plenty of good things that filled him with joy and contentment, and holding onto the negative emotions would leave less space for them. He acknowledged the anger and let it pass through him before he crossed the kitchen.
Rose Marie stepped a little to the side and gestured to the counter in front of her. Her voice still surprised him with its low, rich huskiness despite the years. “Salad. I’m trying a roasted garlic dressing. And there’s gumbo simmering in the back, there, so I hope you came home with an appetite.”
There was indeed a very large pot on a back burner of the stove. The roasting garlic wasn’t the only source of the deliciously spicy aroma. And Rose Marie had been slicing paper-thin rings off the end of a carrot. There was a strainer in one side of the sink, its mix of spinach and arugula and torn lettuce glistening with water. Other green-salad items were piled in a nearby bowl, waiting their turns for the cutting board. None of them were tomatoes.
Junho touched Rose Marie’s hip, and when she put down the knife, he slid in behind her and nuzzled his face into her pulled-back hair. Even with the smell of cooking heavy in the air, the citrus zing of her shampoo ticked his nose. She leaned back into his embrace, and he wrapped his arms around her, threading his hands over her stomach. A different sensation of warmth spread through his chest at the subtle roundness to it.
And the warmth spread lower, making him profoundly aware of the way the curves of her body fit against his. He let his hand wander a little lower.
“I should probably give the gumbo a stir.” Even as she said it, she leaned back into his embrace.
“You’re setting us up for a rough night.” He wasn’t talking about her gentle denial of his horniness.
“She will eat the salad. She should at least try the gumbo before we let her have just the plain rice. It’s important for her to try new things.” Rose Marie’s voice had the hint of steel that even Junho knew better than to argue with.
He couldn’t help but tease her, though. “Carrots and all?”
Rose Marie did the cutest chuff of a sigh through her front teeth and nose. “She can pick out the carrots. But the rest, she’s going to eat.”
Junho brushed his lips against Rose Marie’s ear, and he felt her shiver. The sensation of warmth grew into an awareness of how turned on he was getting, the familiar tightening, the sensation of not quite having as much room in his pants as he’d had before. He tried not to sound like a horny teenager. “When’s dinner?”
“I told David to bring them home at 6:30.” Rose Marie pressed back against him, then she pulled away. “But I am cooking.”
“Are you going up to the hospital tonight?”
“Mhm.”
“You really shouldn’t been on your feet for so long.”
Rose Marie’s warmth also had more than a dash of humoring him in it. “I’m pregnant, not disabled. I love you, Junho, but if you keep hovering, I’m going to get the fly swatter.”
Junho took a deep breath and reminded himself that Rose Marie knew more about the human body than he did, and much more about her body in particular. “Okay.”
The way that Rose Marie bumped him away with her butt sent a pleasant jolt through his pelvis. “I have to stir this before something burns. Al’s in the living room.”
“You aren’t interchangeable to me, you know.”
Rose Marie’s chuckle was low, warm, and teasing. “I’m not sure that your dick agrees.”
“I meant in my heart,” Junho protested. But he knew the weakness of his position.
“I know.” Rose Marie’s voice stayed warm, but there was an additional hint of firmness there. “Still. Go pester Al. I'm busy.”
Junho kissed the side of Rose Marie’s neck one more time, just so that she knew that he wasn’t abandoning her. But he made himself pull away, his hands sliding from her body reluctantly.
If the kids weren’t getting home until 6:30 and the gumbo was on a slow simmer, that gave him an hour until dinner. Maybe a little more.
The children’s side of the living room, the side visible from the kitchen, was empty. He’d expected as much. He hadn’t expected it to be in a complete shambles. As he moved from the tile-floored kitchen area, he kicked down the corner of the rug under the play table that had folded up on itself, then he bent to pick up toys and several crayons to put them up where Tofu wouldn’t be able to eat them. He picked up the scattered toys as slowly and seductively as possible, twisting and stretching in ways that would pull his clothing’s fabric tight against his muscles.
When he finally lifted his eyes to the other side of the living room, Alhaadi was pretending that he hadn’t been watching. The TV was off and a book was in one of his hands, the wide splay of his fingers holding the pages open. His reading glasses were low on his nose, but his dark eyes were the particular kind of unfocused that they got when he was paying attention to everything all at once.
“If we aren’t careful, Tofu is going to eat something a dog shouldn’t and need an expensive surgery.” Junho twisted to put another one of Aera’s dolls on the play table.
Alhaadi lowered his book and looked at Junho more directly over the black rims of his reading glasses. “I would have picked them up before they got home.”
“They should do it themselves.”
Alhaadi’s shoulders lifted and fell. He wouldn’t disagree with Junho, but he was completely incapable of providing parental discipline, as if all the will to discipline anyone at all ever again had been excised from his soul with a scalpel. Knowing him, that was probably accurate.
It stood out to Junho that Rose Marie was the disciplinary parent, Alhaadi was the easy-going parent, and he was… what? The parent in the middle? He wondered which kind of parent Alhaadi or Rose Marie thought of him as.
It didn’t matter. The floor was clear, and he grinned at Alhaadi. “It’s good that I did it, then, because I have other plans for you before dinner.”
“Do you.” Alhaadi kept the amusement out of his low, slow, and steady voice, but it was easy to read in his eyes.
Junho went to the couch, pushed Alhaadi’s book aside, and did his best to straddle the big man. Wide as the sectional was, Alhaadi took up the whole thing, and he had to shift to give Junho a place to put his knee. When he bent down to kiss Alhaadi, he pressed their lips together hard.
There was a moment where, perhaps startled by Junho’s immediate intensity, Alhaadi hesitated before he kissed back. Then his hands came up to settle in the vicinity of Junho’s waist and hips, his fingers subtly rubbing the fabric of Junho’s shirt back and forth against the small of his back, squeezing him tight without restraining him.
When Junho came up for air, Alhaadi carefully removed his askew reading glasses and set them behind him on the end table, followed by the dropped book. “You’re incorrigible.”
It was one of Rose Marie’s phrases, coming out of Alhaadi’s mouth, like they were teaming up on him. It didn’t bother Junho. He liked the way they had settled into the comfortable borrowing of mannerisms that good friends did. It was one of the things that brought him joy.
“I am.” The warmth that Junho had lost on his brief stop to clean up the kids’ side of the living room was back, along with a familiar awareness of his own heaviness. He pushed up Alhaadi’s shirt as best he could while the man was lying on it, rubbing his fingers over the smooth muscle of Alhaadi’s stomach, working them under the line his comfortable house pants made against his smooth brown skin.
When the pants proved too difficult, Junho instead pushed the other man’s shirt up higher, stroking one of his flat, dark nipples with the side of his thumb.
Alhaadi’s slowly indrawn breath told Junho how much he liked it. Then a clatter of metal from the kitchen made them both jump, and Alhaadi spoke in the mildest of tones. “The kids could come home. What would they say?”
“Ew, gross?” Junho did his best to approximate Aera. And then David, complete with his well-practiced eyeroll. “Get a room.”
Alhaadi’s voice was low, warm, amused. And interested. “Do you want to get a room?”
“I do.” Junho swung himself off of Alhaadi, adjusted his jeans for a little more room, and then held his hand down.
Alhaadi clasped wrists with him and Junho thought that he would allow himself to be pulled up. Instead, the beautiful man pulled Junho’s knuckles to his mouth and kissed the backs of his fingers. He spoke in his childhood language, the words warm and liquid and suiting his voice in a way that English never had. “I love you.”
Junho grinned and responded in the same language, like he always did. “I know.”
Alhaadi let Junho pull him up, then, and continued to let Junho pull him down the short hallway that led past the kids’ rooms and to the room that Alhaadi and Junho shared.
The room was perfectly reflective of Alhaadi, furnished with a neatly made bed with blue covers and an empty-topped dresser. On the nightstand at his side of the bed, a clip-on reading lamp guarded an entire pile of books. The floor, carpeted in a soft, patterned brown, was bare of anything except for a fluffy white dog bed in the corner by the door. Even Junho’s clothes had been escorted promptly to the hamper.
The room smelled like dog and the specific masculine deodorant that Alhaadi liked to use. It was as unlike the lacy, feminine room that Junho shared with Rose Marie as it was possible for a room to be, and yet both rooms were perfect.
They were barely through the door when Junho backed Alhaadi against the wall. Not that he could have physically forced him, Alhaadi was still strong as a bear, but the big man didn’t put up a fight. His lips were ready when Junho lifted his chin, and while he didn’t kiss Junho back as aggressively and hungrily as Junho kissed him, it wasn’t from a lack of interest. It was just how he was, slow and measured.
Junho pressed himself against Alhaadi’s leg, and Alhaadi shifted to give Junho a better surface to grind against. He breathed out hard through his nose after Junho worked a hand up under his shirt and started playing with his nipples again.
Junho brought his other hand to the front of Alhaadi’s soft pants. This time, there wouldn’t be kilos of weight to keep him from getting the pants out of his way.
“Wait,” Alhaadi said when Junho started to kiss down his throat, and Junho stopped automatically. His immediate obedience to the man's suggestions didn’t bring the flush of shame to his neck the way that it would have even a couple of years ago.
The man’s fingers moved across the wall, patting until his hand hit the doorknob. He finished closing the door, and after his fingers checked the lock, he twisted it from vertical to horizontal. “Okay.”
Permission granted, Junho shoved up Alhaadi’s shirt so that he could kiss along the planes of his chest. Even though Alhaadi tried to pull his shirt up and off, Junho couldn’t stop even for a moment. He tracked his fingers and tongue over the lines of muscle and sucked on the man’s tight nipple.
Alhaadi groaned and his fingers ran through Junho’s hair, not gripping or controlling, but just massaging his scalp slowly back and forth. Junho kissed down his stomach, appreciating the contrast of the softness over the hard muscles, then fumbled at the tie of Alhaadi’s pants like he was a horny teenager.
He could feel Alhaadi’s suppressed chuckle in the flexing of his abs.
“What?” Junho’s offense was all play.
“I’d think you would be an expert at this by now.”
Junho blew a breath out through his teeth and slid his hand under the waistband of the pants and Alhaadi’s boxers, stretching the elastic, sliding them down just far enough to pull his cock out. He wasn’t hard yet, but Junho wasn’t the only person getting turned on. He dropped to his knees and gently licked the tip of Alhaadi’s cock, then swirled his tongue around the head in a circle. That time, the flex of Alhaadi’s abs wasn’t from humor.
His wide thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxers and pushed them down off his hips. He couldn’t step his legs out, not with his boxers barely down to his knees, his pants around his ankles, and Junho holding his most intimate parts in his hand and mouth.
It’s what he deserves for laughing at me, Junho thought, and pulled Alhaadi further into his mouth.
The fingers in Junho’s hair flexed and released. The soft noise through his nose was as close to a groan as Alhaadi ever gave. He didn’t lengthen as Junho sucked his cock, he never did, but he did grow thicker and harder. He still kept himself hairless, and when Junho caressed the velvet smoothness of his balls, Alhaadi breathed out on his particular pleasure-noise.
That was when Junho really went to work. He took Alhaadi’s cock deep down his throat, humming his own pleasure and enthusiasm so that the vibration would travel into the core of his lover’s being, stroking with one hand and fondling with the other until Alhaadi was as hard as a rock. As hard as Junho wanted him to be.
Alhaadi didn’t suggest anything. He didn’t ask for anything. He let Junho do to him what he wanted to, and made the softest and most profoundly arousing noises of pleasure while Junho did. It had taken many times of him telling Junho that the only thing that he wanted was what Junho wanted for Junho to believe that he actually meant it.
When Alhaadi was breathing as heavily as Junho was, he finally let him go so that he could step out of his pants. His request for clarification was low and throaty. “In bed?”
“Here.” Junho ran his hands up the insides of Alhaadi’s thighs, then sat back. “I want your hand around me.”
“Okay.” It wasn’t just an agreement, it was a promise.
The lube was in the top drawer of the dresser under their underwear, away from where curious little hands might find it. While Alhaadi retrieved it, Junho got back to his feet and skimmed out of his own pants. It was a relief. He was throbbing, achingly hard, and he actively had to resist the urge to touch himself.
After he undressed the rest of the way, he turned to the wall, kicked Alhaadi’s pants out of the way, leaned his arms against the wall, and stepped his feet out. His hard cock shifted with his movements, the skin tugging pleasantly. And taking up the position sent a warm tightening of anticipation racing through his body. It was all he could do to not touch himself. But he wouldn’t, that was the challenge.
Instead, his ears honed in on every move Alhaadi made. The wooden slide of the drawer. The shuffling of a hand inside. The small plastic noise of the snap-top being opened. Alhaadi’s soft indrawn breath as he applied lube to himself – Junho could imagine the look on his face, the way his cock would look as he rubbed it to glistening, more slippery than Junho’s saliva could make it. Hinges would have been required for Junho’s ears to more closely followed to the soft sound of Alhaadi’s feet shifting on the carpet as he got behind him, and the skin all across his body tightened again in anticipation.
But Alhaadi didn’t just slide into him and fuck him hard, like Junho thought that he wanted. Instead, his hands parted Junho’s ass and a slick finger circled his asshole, sending pleasure-electric tingles spreading outward like ripples spreading on still water. Junho flexed despite himself, throbbed once hard, and then groaned.
“Open.” Alhaadi’s voice was so low that it could have been a whisper.
The fingertip circled again, and Junho made himself breathe out and relax. The finger slid into him, and Junho breathed out on a pleased groan.
“Two?”
Of course he wanted more. “Yes.”
The second of Alhaadi’s fingers pressed more slowly into him. It didn’t enter as easily, stretching Junho open as Alhaadi pulsed small presses out and then back in. Junho couldn’t help but flex his hips with the sensation, and his cock throbbed its need. He denied himself, letting the tension build.
Alhaadi knew what he was doing to Junho. Junho could sense the pleasure radiating off him in waves at each of Junho's encouraging moans. He tried to stay open but sometimes he flexed into the sensation.
Then, Alhaadi’s fingers curled, twisted, and massaged softly.
Junho’s world went white with pleasure. His abs spasmed, his cock throbbed so hard that he thought he might have accidentally cum, and what had been a subtle rippling warmth turned into a jolt of lightning-fire pleasure that shocked along his nerve endings. The noise he made that time was not a moan, it was a noise of pure animal need.
Junho pressed back into Alhaadi, but his fingers didn’t rub a second time, not right away. He asked, “Again?”
It was so tempting, but. “No. I want you to fuck me.”
“As you wish.” Alhaadi’s warm, broad lips pressed against the back of Junho’s shoulder, then slid to the side of his neck, spreading their own pleasure and warmth. Junho shivered, and the shiver made him aware all over again of Alhaadi’s fingers stretching him and the throbbing heavy heat between his legs.
The withdrawal of his fingers left Junho achingly, impossibly empty, but it was a transient state. He willed himself to stay open as Ahlaadi changed position behind him. He arched his back, invitingly making himself more available, and the hot head of Alhaadi’s cock slid along his tailbone. And then it pressed against him. Asking him to open.
Alhaadi was a large man with a beautifully proportioned cock. Junho had never taken anyone else so large in his life, not even during the times he’d rather have forgotten. Even relaxing as much as he possibly could, being as open as he possibly could, the way that Alhaadi stretched him and filled him could be uncomfortable. Not painful, exactly. Just not comfortable.
But then the head of Alhaadi’s cock stroked over the spot his fingers had stroked a few moments earlier, and Junho forgot what discomfort was. He pressed back, wanting, needing, but Alhaadi didn’t keep moving. He waited, even though Junho tried to rock against him.
“Fuck me,” he half begged, half demanded.
Alhaadi’s voice was low, slow, and musical, full of depth and promise. “I will. Be patient.”
I don’t want to be patient, Junho wanted to say, but before he could form the words, Alhaadi had pulled out.
Well, almost all the way out, and only long enough for him to press in again, filling Junho, rubbing over the spot, making his abs clench and his cock leap. Junho’s eyes tried to roll all the way back, as if he wanted to watch himself being fucked.
By the time Alhaadi was mostly inside him, Junho’s cock throbbed so hard with the rubs against his sweet spot that he thought he might cum before he could even be touched. His fingernails etched sharp crescents in his palms, and it was all he could do not to pull an arm off the wall and touch himself.
He had the discipline not to. Barely. And he held onto that discipline only because it would be so much better if he did.
It was worth it when Alhaadi wrapped his own strong hand around Junho’s aching cock, stroking as he thrust. Junho knew that he cried out, he heard the echo of it off the wall, but it sounded like the noise came from somewhere else and far away.
Junho’s world became a timeless, formless place of pure pleasure. It wasn’t just the heat in his cock, it was the heat under his skin, spreading up through his stomach and out through his body like it wanted to burn him alive. He could feel himself approaching the precipice over which he storm lay and he gasped out a single word. It was in Korean, but Alhaadi wouldn’t need him to translate.
“Hard.”
Alhaadi’s body slammed solidly against him, into him, and his cock was rocked hard in the embrace on Alhaadi’s hand. It was only two or three times before Junho’s world dissolved into a storm of electric fire. The pleasure was so intense that it was almost but not quite pain, searing his nerve endings, pulsing not with the even waves of sharper pleasure, but a slower counterpoint to them.
When Junho came back to his body, he was gasping, shuddering, and covered in sweat. He was still against the wall, but Alhaadi’s sticky hand on his stomach was the main thing keeping him upright. That was how long it took for Junho to orient himself, and it took another moment to register how empty he felt. His balls were empty, his lover had pulled out, and he had been too out of his head to notice.
Between heaving pants, Junho choked out a question. “… You?”
Did you finish? Did you enjoy yourself?
Alhaadi’s chin nuzzled into Junho’s hair. Junho’s body gave a twitch and involuntary shudder when lips caressed his earlobe. “I’m content.”
It didn’t answer the question. Except that it did.
Alhaadi helped Junho over to the bed. His skin felt almost too sensitive to touch, like the soft fuzz of hair on his body had been scorched to ash, but Alhaadi handled him carefully, laying Junho's shaky body out on his back, then curling up next to him on his side. His hand pressed against Junho’s stomach and released, a gentle hug. Junho periodically opened his eyes while he caught his breath, and Alhaadi’s expression was indeed content.
They lay together like that for a while. Minutes? Hours? It was good that it didn’t matter because Junho hadn’t quite regained his grasp on time.
“I don’t deserve you.” Alhaadi’s low comment was the start to one of their most frequent post-coital… what? Discussions? Arguments? Convincing Alhaadi that he was needed and loved was the least Junho could do, but he needed a few minutes to be able to find and shape the reassuring words that Alhaadi needed more than sex.
He had just drawn in a breath to speak when the slamming of a door reverberated through the entire house.
“Paaaaaaaaa!” The excited shriek of a young child grew louder with each passing moment, and the equally excited barking of a medium-sized dog trailed behind it. A small body slammed against the door and tried to work the knob. Junho tensed, but Alhaadi chuckled and whispered, “I locked it.”
At least one of them had sense.
“Pa!” The little fist banged on the door with a force more suited to a much older child. “Pa, dad, come see my bug! It's a grasshopper!”
“In a minute, sweetheart,” Junho said.
“But I want you to see her now!”
Alhaadi responded before Junho could, calm and matter-of-fact. “Dad and pa are having adult time.”
They had all agreed to be honest with the children about their relationships, and adult time wasn’t behind closed doors because it was shameful, it was behind closed doors because it was private.
“Kissing! Gross!” The pounding feet dashed off, sounding much heavier than Aera actually weighed, like she had a specific gravity all her own. The excited barking retreated behind her.
Alhaadi’s lips pressed into Junho’s hair, even though his scalp was still damp with sweat. “We should clean up.”
“Mmmm,” Junho agreed reluctantly.
He didn’t want to move, but it would be unfair to leave Rose Marie alone with both the cooking and the kid-watching duties. David was wonderfully kind and attentive to Aera when he was in big-brother mode, but the moment he got home, he switched back into being a teenager. He was probably already neck-deep in his phone and sinking farther.
Junho rolled out of bed, took a moment to steady himself on his feet, then offered his hand down to Alhaadi. The big man didn’t need Junho to steady him, but they clasped hands, and he allowed Junho to pull him up.
It was Junho’s turn to kiss his knuckles. “I love you.”
Alhaadi’s smile was small and a little melancholy, but he did smile, and that warmed Junho’s heart right through. He responded in he same language, his accent thick, but in the slow, calm, and sincere way that was profoundly him. “I know.”