Noah lit the cigarette with both hands shaking and took a drag and felt guilty about it the way he felt guilty about most things lately, which was to say thoroughly and without much hope of stopping.
The back of the old feed store smelled like dust and rust and the particular sweetness of old grain that never fully left a building no matter how long it had been empty. Stacks of pallets blocked the view from the road. The sun was nearly down, the sky going dark purple over the tree line, and Noah stood in the shadow of it all and smoked and tried not to think about the youth group Bible study he was supposed to be preparing for.
He heard boots on gravel.
Sawyer came around the corner of the building with a cigarette already going, flannel shirt open over a tank top gone damp with the last of the day’s work, tattoos running up both forearms and disappearing under the fabric and reappearing at his collar and climbing his neck. He was twelve years older than Noah and built like the work had made him that way on purpose and he stopped when he saw Noah and looked at him with something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Didn’t expect to see the assistant pastor out here sinning,” he said.
Noah took another drag. “I needed some air.”
Sawyer stepped closer. He was taller by a significant margin and broader through the shoulders and he looked Noah over the way he always looked him over, slow and unhurried, like he was taking inventory.
“They all warned you about me,” Sawyer said. “Half the congregation probably.”
“They did.”
“And here you are.”
Noah looked at him. The ink on his neck, the cigarette between his fingers, the dark easy way he stood like the ground was exactly where he expected it to be.
“Maybe I wanted to be corrupted,” Noah said. “Just a little.”
Sawyer reached over and took the cigarette out of his hand. Dropped both of them in the dirt and put his boot over them. Then he grabbed the front of Noah’s button-down and pulled him forward and kissed him.
Noah made a sound into his mouth and grabbed his shoulders and held on. Sawyer tasted like smoke and something underneath that was just him, warm and real and male, and his hands came around and gripped Noah’s ass through his slacks and pulled him flush and Noah felt how hard he already was and his brain went quiet for the first time all week.
Sawyer walked him back against the feed store wall without breaking the kiss. The wood was rough through Noah’s shirt and warm at his back from the day’s sun. Sawyer got his shirt open button by button and pushed it off his shoulders and then his mouth moved down Noah’s neck, his collarbone, biting soft and then less soft, and Noah tipped his head back against the wall and looked up at the first stars coming out hard and white in the darkening sky above the tree line.
Sawyer’s mouth found his nipple and sucked and Noah said his name out loud and then covered his mouth with the back of his hand.
Sawyer looked up at him. “Don’t do that,” he said. “I want to hear you.”
He went back down. Noah stopped covering his mouth.
Sawyer dropped to his knees in the dirt without ceremony and got Noah’s slacks and underwear down in one motion and Noah’s cock swung up hard and leaking and Sawyer looked at it for a half second and then took him into his mouth all the way down, slow, and Noah’s knees buckled and he got both hands flat on the wall behind him to stay up.
He sucked him with his full attention, no hurry to it, long strokes that dragged over everything and left Noah making sounds he would think about later in the context of his professional responsibilities. Sawyer’s beard rasped against his thighs. His hands were on Noah’s hips, not controlling, just resting, like he was exactly where he wanted to be and wasn’t going anywhere.
Noah felt it building and said, voice wrecked, “Sawyer, I’m gonna.”
Sawyer pulled off. Stood up. Got his own belt open and shoved his jeans down and his cock was thick and heavy and already slick at the head and Noah looked at it and felt his mouth go dry.
Sawyer stroked himself once and looked at Noah. “Turn around.”
Noah turned around and put his palms on the wall. Sawyer spit into his hand and worked a thick finger inside him, then two, slow and thorough, his mouth moving on the back of Noah’s neck while he did it, and Noah pressed back onto his hand and said please without meaning to say it out loud.
“Please what,” Sawyer said against his neck.
“Please,” Noah said again, which wasn’t an answer but was all he had.
Sawyer lined himself up and pushed in slow, giving him every inch with patience, and Noah’s fingers curled against the wood and he breathed through the stretch of it, the fullness, the fact of Sawyer deep inside him pressed chest to back against the wall behind the feed store on a Saturday night when he was supposed to be writing a lesson plan about the book of James.
Sawyer held still for a moment with his lips against Noah’s temple.
Then he started to move.
He fucked him with long deep strokes that built gradually, his hands on Noah’s hips, his mouth on the back of his neck and his shoulder, and Noah stopped thinking about anything at all except the drag and press of him and the way each thrust nudged something that made his eyes lose focus. The sound of it was loud in the quiet behind the building. Noah stopped trying to be quiet about his own part in it.
Sawyer reached around and wrapped his hand around Noah’s cock and stroked him in time and Noah’s forehead dropped against the wall boards and he said Sawyer’s name twice, three times, the way you say something when it’s the only word you have left.
He came hard against the wall, his whole body clenching around Sawyer, cock pulsing in his fist, a broken sound coming out of him that scattered a bird from somewhere in the pallets. Sawyer fucked him through it and then buried himself deep and came with a low groan that Noah felt all the way through his chest, pulsing in long slow waves.
They stayed like that. Sawyer’s weight on his back, both of them breathing.
After a while Sawyer pulled out slow and turned Noah around by the shoulder. He found an old shop rag on the edge of a pallet and cleaned them both up without making it into anything, just taking care of it. Then he sat down on a wooden crate and looked up at Noah and put his hands on his hips and pulled him forward.
Noah straddled his lap and sank down onto him slow, both of them exhaling at the same time, and Sawyer’s hands moved up his back and held him and they stayed still for a moment, foreheads together, breathing the same air.
They moved together slowly this time. No urgency. Sawyer’s hands learned his back, his ribs, the sharp lines of his shoulders. Noah moved his hips in a long rolling motion and felt Sawyer thick and deep inside him and the night air cool on his bare skin and Sawyer’s mouth warm on his collarbone.
“You’re full of surprises, Pastor,” Sawyer said against his skin.
Noah laughed, short and breathless. “Pretty sure this isn’t in the job description.”
Sawyer’s hands tightened on him. “You can quit anytime.”
Noah rolled his hips and felt Sawyer’s breath catch. “I’m good,” he said.
They went slow and deep until Noah came again between their bodies, untouched, his face buried in Sawyer’s neck, and Sawyer followed a minute later with his hands gripping Noah’s hips and his forehead pressed to his shoulder, saying his name once, quiet, like it was something he’d been holding onto.
Afterward Sawyer held him without making a thing of it, one hand moving in slow circles on his back while their breathing came down. The night had gone fully dark and cool and somewhere out on the road a truck passed and was gone.
Sawyer helped him find his shirt and worked the buttons for him, his big tattooed hands moving up from the bottom with surprising patience, and Noah watched his face while he did it.
“You’re going to be back here,” Sawyer said. Not a question.
Noah looked at him. The ink, the jaw, the dark eyes that had been watching him across town for months.
“Yeah,” he said. “I am.”
Sawyer kissed him once more, unhurried, his thumb at Noah’s jaw. Then he stepped back and lit a new cigarette and leaned against the wall and watched Noah go.
Noah walked back toward the church in the dark with his shirt buttoned wrong by one and didn’t notice until he was halfway there and stopped and fixed it under a streetlight and stood for a moment in the yellow glow of it, the night quiet around him, the sermon notes still unwritten, his body still warm in places that would take a while to forget.
He stood there a moment longer than he needed to.
Then he went inside.
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