Title: That Kind of Morning

Author/pseudonym: Caroline Crane

Fandom: Dead Man on Campus

Paring: Josh/Cooper

Rating: NC17

Status: complete

Archive: yes to list archives

Series/Sequel: Part five of my Sorrow Series. This one follows "Head Held High". Earlier parts can be found at my website.

That Kind of Morning
by Caroline Crane

You know those days when everything starts out kind of…off, and no matter what you do things just keep going wrong? Yeah. Well this was that kind of morning.

I should have known the night before how things were gonna turn out; should've seen it coming or at least expected something to go wrong. Even the air in the house felt weird when we got home from the bowling alley, like some weird electrical charge that wasn't there when we left. At the time I told myself it was just Josh's mood and the guilt trip I'd laid on him making us both a little edgy.

We didn't talk much once we got in the house; Sarah was already in her room by the time we got upstairs and I guess his mom must have turned in early. Either way it was way too quiet when we walked in, and neither of us wanted to break the silence by saying a bunch of stuff that probably wouldn't come out right anyway.

I followed him up to his room, waited until he closed the door and turned back to me before I said anything. Even then I wasn't really sure what to say, how to make things right between us or if that was even possible. I knew it wasn't gonna happen that night; not all of it, anyway, we had too much to talk about and judging by the way he was looking at me he wasn't really in the mood to talk.

It took me by surprise when he reached out and pulled me toward him, mainly because I didn't think he'd risk having sex in his mom's house. We'd kissed, yeah, and we'd both slept in his bed the night before but we hadn't done anything. Except for that afternoon in the car we'd barely even touched, really, so I was surprised when he started unbuttoning my shirt.

"You sure you wanna do this here?" I could have kicked myself for asking, because the last thing I wanted him to do was remember where we were and stop. I didn't want to make things any worse than they already were, though, and if he was doing this to prove something to me I wanted him to know he didn't have to.

"Positive," he whispered against my mouth, and the next thing I knew his tongue was in my mouth and we were moving toward the bed.

After that I pretty much stopped thinking and let my body take over. I couldn't remember the last time I wanted something so much, but he seemed pretty intent on taking his time and for once I was willing to let him take the lead. Part of it was me feeling bad for laying a guilt trip on him on the day of his dad's funeral, but part of it was that I needed to know he wanted me. Selfish again; I wasn't proud of it or anything but if he needed to run the show this time at least we were both getting something out of it.

By the time he finally got me out of my clothes I was pretty sure he wouldn't have to do more than touch me before I lost it, but I wanted it to be good for him more than I wanted to get off so I pushed him back a little and started on his clothes. He wasn't anywhere near as patient with his own clothes as he was with mine, so it wasn't long before he pulled me back toward him and opened his mouth against my neck.

Focusing on getting him undressed helped take the edge off a little, but as soon as he started sucking on my skin I was right back to desperate. "Josh, please," I said, more of a moan that started with his name and ended with me begging for him, but I couldn't control it right then even if I'd wanted to. I just hoped the walls in his house weren't as thin as they looked, because I wasn't sure Josh was really thinking about consequences.

Finally the suction on my neck let up and he pulled back a little, his face flushed and this look in his eyes that would have made me come on the spot if I hadn't wanted so bad to do it while he was inside me.

"Turn around," he said, and I leaned forward for a hard kiss before I did what he wanted.

We didn't do it this way that often; Josh was pretty much exclusively into bottoming and when I wanted him to fuck me I always had to ask. So I wasn't sure what made this time different, but I wasn't about to stop and ask. At that point I would have done pretty much anything he wanted, but the fact that we both wanted the same thing didn't really surprise me all that much. Somehow we just knew without having to talk about it, it had been that way since we started sleeping together and I was never more thankful for it than when he took hold of my hips and slid inside me.

I heard a sharp gasp and I knew the sound came from me, but I didn't recognize my own voice as he pulled me back against his chest and buried himself as far inside me as he could. We just stayed that way while I listened to his heart beating against my back, his breathing uneven against my neck as he waited for me to adjust to being filled up so suddenly. He knew from long experience that when I wanted him to fuck me I just wanted him to do it already and screw any prep work, not that I minded a little foreplay but by the time we got to this point I was usually so hard that I couldn't take him being careful. Still, it had been awhile and I wasn't really expecting it to happen so fast, so it took me a couple seconds before I pulled forward a little and then thrust back against him as hard as I could.

My head fell back against his shoulder when his arms tightened around my waist, and he paused long enough to kiss the side of my face before he pulled out and then slammed back into me again. The first time we did this he seemed almost like he was afraid of hurting me and I had to coax him into moving faster, taking me as hard as I wanted it. Even after that I usually had to set the pace myself, but this time I wasn't sure if I'd even survive the pace he'd set. Every time he slammed into me it was a little more wild than the last stroke, almost brutal and I knew I was gonna feel it in the morning. I knew I was gonna be hard all day tomorrow just from thinking about this every time I sat down, and the part of my brain that wasn't just trying to hold on and enjoy the ride was busy working out how to get Josh to do this a lot more often.

I turned my head a little and caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye, his face red from straining and his eyes squeezed shut. The sight of him out of control like that made the burn at the pit of my stomach tighten, and before I could even ask he reached down and closed a hand around my dick. Like he could read my mind – and maybe he could, or at least he could tell by the sounds coming out of my throat how close I was. It didn't really matter how he knew what I needed, because his hand was moving in time with the rest of him and the combined assault was way too much for me to take. I came about thirty seconds later, and he anticipated the shout that I never would have been able to hold back and twisted enough to cover my mouth with his. He swallowed the sound of his name when he kissed me, his body flush against mine as he rode out the last shock waves of my orgasm.

When I could breathe on my own again he pulled his mouth off mine and went right back to slamming into me, even harder than before. I didn't even think that was possible, but he eased me down onto the mattress so just my knees were holding me up and suddenly I wasn't sure if I'd be able to walk tomorrow. Screw a little burn when I sat down, this was like nothing I'd ever felt before. He hit my prostate with every stroke and even though I'd already come once I was still hard. In a way I was sorry I couldn't see him – couldn't watch him while he was this out of control. Part of me had a feeling that if I could see him it would ruin the experience for at least one of us, though, so I rested my forehead against my forearms and clamped down hard on him the next time he thrust forward.

The strangled moan that got me would have made me laugh under normal circumstances, but I could hear the desperation in his voice and it made my stomach lurch. When he slammed into me again I squeezed as hard as I could, coming for the second time as he tensed against me and finally let go. Either I blacked out for a minute or time took on a whole new meaning, but when I came back to myself he was pulling the covers over us and wrapping his arms around me. If I'd had the strength to open my eyes and see the mess I'd left all over his comforter I probably would have gotten up and at least tried to clean it up, but I was pretty light-headed and Josh felt way too warm and solid for me to even think about getting up.

I must have fallen asleep not long after that, because when I opened my eyes again Josh was still plastered to my back but the room was a lot lighter. The house was still quiet so I figured it was still early, but the thought of getting up and cleaning up a little made my whole body groan in protest. For one thing I was pretty sure the second I tried to move I'd regret it, and for another it felt way too good to be draped in the one person in the world I could count on. It scared me how much I loved him, but not enough to want to get up and risk letting him wake up alone.

So I was still lying there drifting in and out of sleep when I heard the groan of old wood and metal and blinked my eyes back open. The first thing I thought was that it was my fault, that I should have made myself get up and clean up the mess last night. I should have at least picked up the clothes that were strewn from the door to the bed, maybe turned the comforter over and turned Josh over so he wasn't lying half on top of me with his face pressed into the back of my neck. Yeah, that would have been the smart thing to do, because staring back at Josh's mom first thing in the morning definitely wasn't something I would have volunteered for.

And it turned out that she looked a lot like Josh when she blushed, but before I got a chance to think too hard about that she shut the door real fast. I wasn't sure what to make of her reaction; partly because she didn't really react, but mostly because I knew this was the worst way she could have figured it out. If Josh had called her from school and told her the great news about how in love he was, for instance, she probably would have taken it a lot better. Even catching us kissing would have been better than walking in on us in bed together with the evidence of what we'd been doing all over the place. The room reeked of sex so even if I'd cleaned up it probably still would have been obvious, but the fact was that now she knew and there was nothing I could do but tell Josh and brace myself for his reaction.

I turned over slowly, trying not to wake him up before I was ready to deal with him. This crazy part of me kept hoping that he'd tighten his grip on me as soon as I started moving, maybe press a kiss to the back of my neck and whisper, "Is she gone?" I knew it would never happen that way, that Josh would never be so calm about his mother walking in on us, but it would have been really cool if just this once he'd surprised me. When I turned to face him he was still asleep, though, and I didn't want to wake him up because as soon as I did it would be over. While he was still asleep he looked so calm, so much like the Josh I'd woken up next to practically every morning for a year. I knew as soon as I told him the truth he'd panic, and maybe it was selfish but I really didn't want to watch that.

Way too soon his eyes fluttered open, and he blinked as he tried to focus on me. For a minute he must have forgotten that we weren't back in our apartment, because he yawned and pulled me even closer to mumble something I didn't catch against my neck. A lump rose in my throat and it took everything in me to pull back, dropping my gaze to the mattress so I wouldn't have to see the confusion in his eyes. "Your…Jesus. Your mom just walked in here, Josh."

Okay, maybe not the gentlest way to break it to him, but no matter how I said it I was going to get the same look of panic and Josh pulling away from me. Which is pretty much exactly what happened, only it took a lot less time than I thought it would for me to start feeling cold without him pressed up against me. "Shit," he muttered as he climbed over me and pulled his boxers back on.

For a minute I just sat there and watched him panic, almost like I was watching from just outside my body. Like if I tried hard enough to pretend that I was just watching a movie it wouldn't hurt me to watch Josh close in on himself. He pulled his jeans on over his boxers before he turned back to me, guilt flashing in his eyes when he finally looked at me. "Coop, I…"

I shook my head when he started talking, knowing that if I couldn't shut him up things were going to get worse a lot faster than they had to. I couldn't listen to him justify being ashamed of me – of us – all over again. I was tired of it, after less than two days I was tired of being patient and trying to tell myself that things would be fine as soon as we got back to school. "Don't say it," I said. I probably sounded like I was begging but I didn't care. "Damn it, Josh, she knows already. Maybe this wasn't the way you wanted her to find out but you knew last night that this could happen. If you were so worried about it why didn't you just tell me to go home when I got here?"

"I wanted you here." His voice was low and wounded, and if it wasn't for the accusation in his eyes I might have felt bad for being mad at him. I mean in a way I knew it was true, he wanted me around or he wouldn't have let me stay. Josh didn't do things just so I wouldn't feel neglected, not unless he had another reason to do them. As boyfriends went I knew I was pretty high-maintenance, but that was why we worked so well. Josh didn't give in to me all the time, and even though I was always testing the limits he never let me push him harder than he could push back. "I wanted you with me, Coop. I just wanted to tell her the right way. Not like this."

I didn't bother to point out that at least part of him must have wanted to get caught. He knew what he was doing last night when he starting taking my clothes off, and I sure as hell wasn't going to take the blame this time.

"So it was a lousy way to find out her kid's gay. Is it really gonna make a difference? Maybe Sarah's right, maybe she'll just be happy to know that you're happy." God, I hated begging him when it counted. When it was over something like blowing off homework to go out with the guys or getting him to try something new in bed I didn't care, pride wasn't something I usually lost a whole lot of sleep over. This was different, though; this was all new territory for me, scary and serious and suddenly my whole future was riding on whether or not Josh was strong enough to deal with his mother's reaction to the truth. "If you were gonna tell her eventually what's the big deal?"

"I just told you," he said, and I could tell I was starting to push a little more than he was ready to deal with. Making Josh lose his temper wasn't hard, he was wound pretty tight most of the time so it didn't take much to get under his skin. He didn't really have a right to be mad at me over this, though, at least not the way I saw it. If he loved me as much as he said he did he should want his mother to know, even if she couldn't handle it.

"Look, I need to deal with this." He paused and glanced over at the door with this look on his face that made my stomach feel like I was hanging upside down on a rollercoaster. I stood up fast, wincing at the burn I'd forgotten to brace myself for. When I caught my breath again I started looking for my clothes, avoiding his gaze while I got dressed.

"So deal with it," I said, not bothering to look up while I buttoned my pants and picked up my shirt. "I've tried to understand where you're coming from, Josh, but this is way too fucked up. If you can't even tell your own mom…" I stopped talking when the lump rose in my throat again, closing my eyes against the sudden urge to cry. That was happening way too often lately, and I was getting a little sick of practically falling apart every time he looked at me.

When I finished buttoning my shirt I looked over at him, guilt making my gut twist again for a second before his eyes narrowed. "Like you're always so up front about everything," he said, and if I wasn't practically shaking I would have laughed at the righteous indignation routine. "So what'd Flushels say when you told him you were fucking your roommate?"

"He said it just figured that I'd find a way to screw up even my love life," I answered, raising my eyebrows as I watched his jaw drop a little. Guess he wasn't expecting me to tell dear old Dad the truth about us, but the fact was my parents had known about Josh practically before Josh did. "And I didn't tell him I was fucking you. I told him I was in love with you."

"Cooper." I had my back to him by the time he said my name, but I didn't bother to turn around and look at him. I already knew exactly how he was looking at me, those big wounded puppy eyes even bigger than usual and his face flushed. The truth was I couldn't look at him again or I'd lose it and take it all back, tell him it was okay that he was ashamed of our relationship and that I'd do whatever he wanted to make things right. I knew I was that weak when it came to Josh, but I couldn't take it if he told me that he needed me to go home so he could deal with this alone.

"Just deal with your family, Josh," I said. I picked up my bag from the floor near the foot of the bed, tossing the few things that had actually made it out of the bag back in before I closed it.

"Cooper, please don't leave," he said, and God, I didn't want to. I wanted to turn right back around and let him tell me that he loved me, that everything would be okay because he loved me as much as I loved him. "Come on, don't leave like this."

If he hadn't said 'like this' I might have stayed, might have dropped my bag and kissed him like my life depended on it. The ache in my chest made me wonder if maybe my life did depend on it just a little bit, but I couldn't take the fact that he wanted me to go; he just didn't want me to be mad about it. "Whatever, Josh. I gotta put in an appearance at home anyway." I turned around and looked at him then, but it didn't make me feel any better. It was obvious from the way his eyes were shining that I'd hurt him, maybe not as much as he'd hurt me but it was what I'd been trying to do. It didn't feel as good as I expected it to, though; mostly I just felt tired, sore all over like I'd run a marathon or something. I let out a laugh that sounded way too forced, flashing a bitter smile at him when he crossed his arms over his chest. "Guess I should have listened to you and stayed at school, huh?"

I didn't wait for an answer, I already knew what it was and I really didn't need to hear him say it. Instead I pulled the door open and headed down the stairs, stopping long enough to pull my coat on before I let myself out of the house. I heard him following me, but he didn't say anything until I was halfway to the sidewalk. "Cooper, please." Just like that, like that was going to explain everything.

I just shook my head and dug the keys to the rental car out of my pocket, turning long enough to register the sight of him standing on the front porch in bare feet with nothing but a pair of jeans on. He had to be freezing; it was maybe 20 degrees outside and I was cold in all my clothes and a wool coat, but he stood there watching me like he couldn't even feel it. I wanted to walk back up the steps of that old, faded front porch with its peeling paint and years of weather damage. I wanted to put my arms around him and take him back inside before he caught pneumonia or something, but I knew I couldn't.

"Tell your mom thanks. And tell Sarah I said bye." I turned around again and forced myself to cross the street and get in my car, starting the engine and pulling away without looking back. I didn't have to; I knew all I was going to see all the way to New York was Josh standing on his front porch in the freezing cold, telling himself he didn't want me to go even though I could see the relief in his eyes.

The End