Cinders Post #8

Notes: This particular post is more PWP than anything else, folks. *blushes* After the last couple parts being so dark, I felt like it was time for something light and easy and smexy.  We're nearing the end of the story, and all the heavy lifting is behind us, but here in particular I just wanted to have fun.  So enjoy!

Title: Cinders

Part Eight: Focused




*** 

People who only know a little bit about Asher tend to think he’s lazy.  Even the ones who know what he does for a living.  Part of the issue is that it’s clear he’s clever, and many people equate cleverness to success.  It’s so easy to take things at face value and look at him, unabashedly gorgeous, and figure that he’s doing what he does because it’s easy for him and he lacks ambition.  He must really lack ambition, because it wouldn’t be impossible for him to find someone to take care of him and set him up nice, even on his terms, if he was willing.  So, lazy.  Or perhaps, if they generously take into account the fact that he started supporting himself this way when he was fifteen, then damaged.  Mentally, emotionally damaged, and now he does what he does because of that.  Huh.  Poor kid.

There’s some truth in that.  For a while Asher did what he did because it was all he could think of, and all he thought he deserved.  But he’s been at this for years now, and it’s not that he doesn’t think there are other things to do.  Asher’s had dreams, he’s got goals.  If he was working just for himself he would be saving money for travelling, for moving on, for getting the fuck away from California.  He can do other things, might even go to school, but not here.  Especially not when he has other responsibilities.

Ty is both the best and the worst thing that ever happened to him.  The best, because Asher loves him.  He loved Ty when he first met him, kind of like a little-sibling kind of love, something he hadn’t felt since Cassie.  It took him off guard and opened him up to Ty like he hadn’t since he’d been on his own.  After living with him, after getting to know him, after taking care of him he started to fall in love.  Fell in love with him, and then it was too late to leave.  Ty has his own ideas about the future, about his life, and Asher has fallen in line with them despite himself.  Ty wants him there, at least for now, and Asher’s got to comply.  It’s the best of times, the worst of times.  Ty fucking owns Asher.  Asher just hopes to hell that Ty doesn’t know it.  He’d probably be horrified.

Anyway, the point is, Asher’s not lazy.  He’s got plenty to do, and when he’s working, either at the pool table or in the alley behind the bar, he’s dedicated.  Asher knows how to keep himself going all night, learned how to do it without resorting to drugs, and most of the time it involves having a very active imagination and good recall of past events.  He relives the moments he loves the most when he can, and imagines entirely new situations and conversations when he doesn’t want to tarnish the memories he treasures.

That’s how he spends a lot of the week leading up to the ball.  Asher is working his ass off, to put it lightly.  He’s up at dawn and down after dark, doing everything he’s normally tasked with as well as everything else his step family can think of.  The girls don’t approve of their mother’s deal, and that’s putting it lightly.  They’re pulling out all the stops between their inner bitches and their outer darlings, and the darlings are being totally subsumed. 

“The grate isn’t clean enough.”

“This water is practically freezing!”

“You’re tracking your filth into the house, piglet.  Go sweep it up.”

“Shine them.  With your tongue.”

The last one was pointedly ignored, taking almost more control than Asher possessed, but the other ones he had to do.  Those and a million other things.  The time passes faster when Asher lets his body do the work and lets his mind wander.

“Could you not lounge in front of me?”

“Wha?”  Not his best comeback, but then Asher had no idea where Ty was coming from.

“I’ve got finals in a week, man,” Ty said.  He was using his special pissy voice, the one he broke out when he was feeling put upon and frustrated and kind of wanted to pick a fight, but kind of wanted to be coddled too.  It was a fine line to figure out what to do when confronted with it.  Ignore it and Ty’s tone might devolve to Inconsolably Pissed Off, which was never fun and took a day to wear off, or worse, Vindictively Snipey, which tended to make Asher angry back and left them not speaking to each other for a week.  “How am I supposed to study for them when you’re watching Supernatural at piercing decibels in the living room?”

“Hey, it could be worse,” Asher offered.  “I could be watching Dancing With The Stars.  I know how irresistible sequins are to you.  You’d never get anything done.”

“Shut up.”  Ty pitched his pencil at Asher’s head.  Asher ducked the sharp end and looked theatrically offended.  “I’m not getting anything done now, asshole.”

“Well, then…” Asher indicated the other half of the couch.  “You should come over and sit down.  Stop studying for a while.  You’re going to do fine, you’ve just worked yourself into a stupor, man.”

Ty rolled his eyes and groaned, but he did put down the notebook and scoot away from the counter.  “I have to pass all of these,” he said disconsolately as he flopped down onto the couch.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’ve only got As in everything so far.”

“But the final is worth anywhere from twenty to forty percent of my overall grade,” Ty argued, crossing his arms over his middle.  It was something he only did when he was feeling vulnerable, and Asher hadn’t seen the gesture since Ty had started school.  “I could go from an A to a D in one day.”

“Maybe if you have an aneurysm or to take the final drunk,” Asher agreed.  “But you’re in perfect health and you hardly ever drink, so neither of those are probably going to happen.”  Ty sighed and it probably would have been fine if Asher had stopped there, but he didn’t.  “So stop PMS-ing, you giant freaking girl.”

“Girl?”  Ty lashed out with his stupidly long legs and caught Asher in the middle of his chest, knocking the breath out of him.  “You’re calling me a girl?  Who spends more time in the bathroom every morning that a tween going to her first Sadie Hawkins dance?”

“I don’t even know what that is!” Asher protested.  “And fucking stop it with the feet, man, you’re going to bruise the goods.”

“Poor baby,” Ty cooed, kicking him again, “is the little princess feeling delicate today?  Need some smelling salts?  Want me to loosen your corset?”

“I will put a corset around your balls if you don’t stop it with the feet, bitch,” Asher warned.

“Ooh, kinky,” Ty replied, and all of a sudden the mood completely changed.  Fraying tempers and tiredness seemed to melt away as both of their minds careened gleefully into the gutter.

“If you keep kicking me,” Asher said slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving Ty’s face as he set the remote aside—they had demolished two of them in the past three months, “I won’t let you come for hours.  Hours, Ty.  You can bat your big eyes all you want, I will have absolutely no mercy on you.”

“I don’t think I believe you,” Ty said a little breathlessly.  He wasn’t kicking anymore though, more like kneading, working his toes under Asher’s shirt and pressing them against his flat, tight stomach.  “You like it when I come.  You won’t make me wait.”

“Care to put me to the test?” Asher challenged him.  “Put your money where your mouth is?”

“I’ll put my mouth wherever you want it,” Ty replied, never stopping with his feet.  One went up while the other came down, pushing lightly against Asher’s erection.  Asher stopped its motion with one hand.

“Put it here, then.”

Given his former straight boy status, it was kind of amazing how much Ty loved giving blowjobs.  He got into it, like really into it, into giving them almost more than receiving them, at least with Asher.  He’d drop to his knees for Asher in a heartbeat, with nothing more than a raised eyebrow and a half smile to encourage him.  Now was no different.  Ty pulled his legs back and leaned forward, his eyes already hooded with anticipation.  He had Asher’s jeans open in a few seconds and went to town right after that, eager and greedy.  It was so much sensation so fast, almost too much, but that was part of what Asher loved about Ty.  There wasn’t much foreplay between them, not unless Asher initiated it, but there was an intensity to what Ty did that was undeniably hot.

“Ty,” Asher moaned, throwing his head back and cupping the back of his head.  Ty had made it abundantly clear as soon as he was over his shyness that he loved it when Asher fucked his mouth, and now that he was growing his hair out again, grabbing it was a compulsion Asher couldn’t resist.  He didn’t grip too tightly, just enough to make it clear who was in charge of the pace here, and Ty moaned happily around his cock.

“That’s it, Ty,” Asher said, letting out his inner porn star.  He didn’t usually talk when he fucked, but again, that was one of the things that got Ty going, so who was Asher to say no?  “Open up for me, give me your mouth.  This mouth is mine, bitch, and I’m gonna use you and come down your throat, and you’re gonna swallow all of it.”  It was almost always the same speech, something Asher had heard a hundred variations of over the years, but saying it to Ty, holding him like this, really made him feel it.  He had a pretty, perfect boy sucking his dick, the only person Asher had ever wanted for more than a night, and he was doing this because he wanted Asher.  Ty was moaning like a whore around the meat in his mouth and already rutting against the couch, because fuck, nothing said zero-to-horny like eighteen years old.  Asher had seen Ty with guys, and he was never like this with anyone else.  Only with him.

“Fuck, you feel so good,” Asher choked out, starting to thrust harder, feeling his dick hit the back of Ty’s throat.  When he was the one going down, Asher always slowed things at this point, kept control so he wouldn’t get hurt, but with him Ty didn’t even seem to care.  His eyes started watering and he gagged a little, but he was still moaning his happy moan, happy and desperate, and after a few more seconds Asher tightened his grip in Ty’s hair to just below the point of pain and arched off the couch as he came, hard.  Ty swallowed fast, his tongue licking over every inch of flesh it could get to so that nothing escaped.  Soon Asher relaxed his grip and pulled Ty back, ignoring his whine and tugging him up between his thighs.  He attached his lips to the pulse point on Ty’s neck and reveled in his sudden shudder, the helpless thrust of his trapped cock against Asher’s own, gradually softening with satisfaction.  Fuck, Ty had to be aching by now…

“Don’t even think about it, bitch,” he said languorously as he scraped his teeth down the taut tendons standing in stark relief beneath his mouth. “Hours, Ty.  I said hours, and I meant it.”  He wrapped his legs around Ty’s hips to hold him firmly in place, then went back to his neck, ignoring the pained grunt of frustrated lust in favor of the pure pleasure that holding Ty so close gave him.

Oh yeah.  He could keep this up for hours.