Title: The Other Side of Sorrow

Author/pseudonym: Caroline Crane

Fandom: Dead Man on Campus

Paring: Josh/Cooper

Rating: NC17

Status: complete

Archive: yes to list archives

Series/Sequel: Part three of six (barring any unforeseen complications)

The Other Side of Sorrow
by Caroline Crane

The funeral was weird. Not that I have a lot of experience at these things, but I think this one qualified as weird even as far as funerals go. For one thing the only people there were me, Josh, his mom and sister, and the priest. You’d think his dad would have had some friends or something, but if he did none of them bothered to show up for the service. I always thought there was some kind of service in the funeral home, too, but we just went straight to the cemetery and listened to the priest say some stuff and then it was over. The guys from the funeral home carried the casket and they just lowered it into the ground and that was that, we got back in the car and went back to Josh’s mom’s house like it was no big deal.

For once I kept my mouth shut, it seemed like the thing to do considering. Besides, I wasn’t really sure if I’d give away anything if I started talking and I didn’t want to add to Josh’s problems. It still bugged me that he hadn’t told his mom about us after a year, but I managed not to bring it up. Even the night before when we were lying in his bed I didn’t say anything about it, I could tell he already felt bad enough and I didn’t want to keep reminding him that he’d let me down. At least not until we got through the next couple days, and I knew eventually I was going to have to go home. The last thing I wanted to do was start a fight with him before I had to go to my parents’ house and deal with Flushels for the rest of break.

So I just held onto him and watched him sleep, didn’t get much sleep myself but it didn’t really matter. I wasn’t the one that had to be strong for his mother and his sister, at least I assume that’s what Josh was doing. I still hadn’t seen him cry, not once since he found out his dad died. I mean I don’t know that much about these things but that couldn’t be good for him, I could tell he was more upset about it than he was letting on. Still, not much I could say about it in front of his mom so I just sat at the kitchen table with him and watched her make lunch.

It was weird listening to them make small talk about school and what they were going to do with the rest of Josh’s break, like the whole morning never even happened. Seemed like that was just the way they did things, though, because I hadn’t heard any of them actually talk to each other about Mr. Miller since I showed up at Josh’s door. He’d talked to me about it, sure, but even his little sister hadn’t said much. Maybe it was just because they didn’t really know the guy, but it seemed like they’d at least want to talk about it. Not that my family’s real big on the whole communication thing either but if somebody died my parents’ house would be crawling with relatives for days. Not that that’s necessarily a good thing, but it’s the way my family works.

After we finished lunch that same silence just sort of fell over everyone again, I mean I’ve heard people describe the air being thick before but it always made me think of our dorm room after the bong had been going for awhile. Sitting in Josh’s mom’s kitchen listening to all three of them not talking, though, I finally got what that expression really meant. So I was more than happy to go along with Josh when he stood up and told his mom that he was gonna show me around town, maybe swing by the old high school and drop in on a couple friends. I wasn’t sure how bad I wanted to meet any of his friends from high school but if it meant getting out of that house for awhile I was willing to risk it.

"I hope this is okay with you," he said once we were in my car. "I just needed to get out of there for awhile."

"Yeah, whatever you want, Josh," I told him, gripping the steering wheel with both hands so I wouldn’t reach over and touch him. That was the hardest part of the whole weird situation, remembering to keep my hands off him around his family. "Where do you want to go?"

"There’s this state park like half an hour from here," he answered, looking over at me and giving me this little smile. Like I was gonna say no to him anyway, but especially not when he was looking at me like that. "I just want to get away from here for awhile, you know."

I nodded and turned the key, pointing the car in the direction of the state road that led out of town. Part of me was relieved just to get him alone for awhile, I was glad we weren’t really going to play Old Home Days with his high school and his friends but at that point I would have done whatever he wanted. I was just glad he chose finding someplace to be alone instead of introducing me to people he used to know as his "roommate Cooper". I hated that, he didn’t do it very often but every once in awhile I’d hear him call me his roommate and it made me crazy. Maybe it was stupid of me to overreact to a simple word but considering he’d been keeping the truth about us from his family I was starting to wonder.

We stopped just outside of town to fill the gas tank and pick up some drinks, but when we got back on the road he reached over and took my free hand. It’s funny how the simplest things from Josh can make me forget everything that’s got me all keyed up, but when he closed his hand around mine without a word and rested our hands against his thigh I felt better about the whole situation. Maybe that’s why he did it, I wasn’t about to ask though because it didn’t matter. I mean it’s not like he hasn’t held my hand a thousand times before but that day it felt different, maybe it was because of the funeral or the way his family was acting like there was nothing wrong but it felt like he needed me. I hate to admit it but that felt really good, usually it’s me needing Josh around more than he ever needs me so it was kind of nice to feel that way for once.

After that I started to relax and notice the scene passing by the car window, it snowed more overnight than I realized and the pastures outside of town were a sea of white. Every once in awhile there were random animal tracks, rabbits or something I guess, but otherwise the whole scene was untouched. The sky was gray like it was thinking about snowing again and it seemed later than 2:00, I knew it’d be dark before I was ready to go back but I figured I’d worry about that later. Right then I had Josh next to me, he was still being quiet but it wasn’t making me want to crawl out of my skin the way it was in his mom’s house. He was staring out the window on his side of the car, watching the world go by and probably remembering all the times he’d driven down that road growing up. In a way it was kind of cool to see where Josh grew up, the reason I was there was a drag but I kind of got a kick out of seeing his hometown.

When we finally got to the park he was talking about it was deserted, which was just fine by me because I really needed a break from pretending we were just friends. I pulled in next to a group of picnic tables, it was cold out but there were enough trees that the snow hadn’t really covered the picnic tables so we got out and brushed off the top of one of them. I sat down on the top of the table next to him and reached in my pocket for my rolling papers and my stash, he didn’t say anything so I figured that meant he felt the need to relax a little. I didn’t get high that much anymore and I tried to keep it away from Josh because I knew it kinda bothered him, but every once in awhile when he was really stressed he’d let me roll him a joint and zone out for awhile.

I finished rolling it and dug my lighter out of my other pocket, lighting it and taking a hit before I passed it to him. He took a hit without saying anything, which meant he was more stressed than I realized. It killed me to see him that way but I was glad at least he let me stay so he wouldn’t have to deal with it by himself. I pushed myself back on the top of the picnic table and swung one of my legs around him so my chest was pressed against his back, taking the joint from him as he leaned back against me. "You wanna talk about it?" I asked, keeping my voice low as I lit the joint again.

"This all must seem really weird to you," he said, taking the joint I held out to him.

I shook my head and waited until I couldn’t hold the smoke in my lungs anymore before I answered him. "No," I said after I exhaled. "I mean okay, a little I guess. It’s just that there was nobody there. Don’t you have any aunts or uncles or anything?"

"Nope," he answered. "My dad was raised by his grandparents, I guess his mother flaked when he was a baby and they never knew who his dad was. Anyway his grandparents died before he even met my mom. My mom’s an only child too, my grandpa died a few years back. My grandma’s still alive but she’s in a nursing home in Indianapolis. We go visit her at Christmas, it’s pretty depressing though."

I bit my lip to stop myself from agreeing with him, because I knew he wasn’t talking about his lack of family being depressing. I should have known all this stuff about him already, though, and I was starting to feel pretty guilty for finding out about it now. We’d been living together for almost a year and a half, after all, what the hell had we been talking about all that time? He already knew my dad, well sort of, anyway, but other than that we’d never really talked about our families. "Man, you should come to my house for Christmas sometime. It’s wall to wall people. I have like a thousand cousins."

He passed me the joint again and leaned back a little further, his hair brushing my cheek as he turned his face into my neck. "When I was a kid I used to wish I had cousins. Actually I always wanted a brother, but I just got the one sister. Then I got to Daleman and met you and it was kinda like having that, you know?"

I laughed and blew the rest of the smoke out of my lungs before I turned toward him and brushed my lips against his. "You know that’s kind of a sick thought, considering."

"Yeah, I guess you’re right," he said, smiling as he sat up a little and leaned in to kiss me. I shoved that whole ‘brothers’ thing as far back in my mind as it would go as I kissed him back, my free hand gripping him around the waist as he pressed his body hard against mine. It was cold out but with Josh draped all over me and the pot seeping into my system I couldn’t feel the bite in the air anymore. "Okay," he said when he pulled away to catch his breath, "so maybe the whole ‘brothers’ analogy was a bad one. It’s just that when I was a kid I didn’t have my dad around much, you know? So I always kinda wished there was someone there besides my mom and my sister. Not that I don’t love them, but it would have been nice to have another guy around. Then I met you and I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel so much like something’s missing anymore. You can laugh now."

The sad part was he was right, normally I would have laughed at him for saying something like that. Not that I don’t love that he’s so crazy about me, because he knows how crazy I am about him. But I’m just not the kind of guy that usually lets that mushy romantic stuff slide without some kind of comment, I mean he just makes it so easy. Besides, he loves my sense of humor, even when I’m making fun of him. This time, though, I didn’t have it in me to kick him while he was down. Instead I tucked the burned-out end of the joint we’d been sharing back into my pocket along with my lighter and pressed my mouth to his ear. "Back seat?" I breathed, grinning when I felt the shiver rock his body.

He nodded and stood up, pulling me with him toward the car and climbing into the back seat. I took my coat off and tossed it in the front before I climbed in after him, straddling his lap as I worked on getting his coat off. "You know I’m kinda glad you never listen to me," he said as he leaned forward and let me push his coat off his shoulders. "I mean if you’d actually listened to me and stayed at school I’d probably be over at the bowling alley hanging out with the stoners that didn’t go to college."

"As opposed to us respectable, educated stoners," I added, laughing at the look he shot me. "Well it’s true, Josh. Face it, you’re sleeping with one of those guys you looked down on in high school. It doesn’t bother me, as long as it’s not keeping you awake at night."

"You’re not a stoner, Cooper," he said, his expression turning serious as he reached up and ran his hands through my hair. "Yeah, you like to pretend you don’t care about anything but I know better. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a place like this, though. I mean those guys at the bowling alley never had a choice, that was just the way it was for them. You had a choice, maybe it was because of who your dad is but you still had one."

I stopped working on getting him out of his clothes and stared at him, trying to figure out what he was saying exactly. He’d said stuff about my rich dad before and I always let it roll off because I knew he grew up without a lot, but I never really stopped to think about how much he really did without until I saw his mom’s house. Part of me knew he was right, I always had a choice but my parents never cared much what I did so I took the easy way out. I liked getting high, and I didn’t like getting all serious and thinking about the future. Not until I met Josh, and I still didn’t think about the future that much. I mean whenever I did I saw Josh in it, but we’d never actually talked about that.

"Do you think about the future, Josh?"

He frowned at me for a second and pulled his hands away from my neck. "Yeah, of course. I think about the future all the time."

"I know you think about your career and grad school and stuff like that," I said, trying my best to keep it light. I wasn’t even sure why I’d asked him the question in the first place, but suddenly I needed to know. "I mean do you ever think about me and you. Like is this just a college thing, like a phase or whatever?"

"Cooper, we live together," he said, like that was supposed to explain exactly how he felt. As though the fact that we were roommates wasn’t completely random in the first place. "You know I take that stuff seriously."

"Good. You know, just checking," I said, hoping the smile I flashed him looked as casual as I was going for. I felt him tense under me but he let me kiss him anyway, then his hands started wandering again and we both let the subject drop. I pulled my mouth away from his and trailed my lips down the outside of his throat, pausing to kiss the spot just below his ear that always made him whimper. True to form, he let out a low, breathy moan and pressed his hips into me. I reached between us and opened his pants, sliding my hand under the waistband of his boxers and easing him out of the constricting material. The hot flesh in my hand twitched as I stroked him, taking my time as I used my mouth to touch all the places that made him lose control. It took me a long time to memorize them all, but after almost a year together I knew his body almost better than I knew my own.

He groaned and bucked his hips against me when I ran my tongue along his collarbone, and I grinned and pulled away from his throat to fuse our lips together again. I know I slept around a lot before I got to college, and even the first few months we lived together. So I’ve kissed a lot of people, maybe not as many as Josh thinks but what he doesn’t know is that none of them ever came close to what it was like to kiss him. Kissing him was like a whole different level of pleasure, I swear I could kiss him for days and never get sick of it. From the first time I took a shot and pressed my lips to his I couldn’t get enough, it was like even breathing was secondary as long as I could taste Josh on my tongue and feel his hands on me while we kissed.

So I could have kept kissing him but he had other ideas, and finally he pulled his lips away from mine and gasped, "Cooper, please…"

Getting Josh to actually say out loud what he wanted would take an act of God, I mean you’d think once the guy’s had my dick in his mouth he’d lose some of his inhibitions but most of them were still pretty much rock-solid. I always thought it was kind of cute, though, and anyway I always knew what he wanted before he even asked. It was just this thing between us, neither of us ever brought it up but we both just knew what we were thinking most of the time. At least when it came to sex, although I could pretty much read his mind about a lot of other things I usually played dumb. I’ve got nothing against nonverbal communication, though, especially when he was breathing heavy and panting my name in that low voice.

I moved a little further back on the seat, wishing I’d splurged with Flushels’ credit card and rented the luxury model as I bent over on the cramped seat and closed my mouth around him. He groaned and his hips jerked, pushing him further into my mouth. That was all the encouragement I needed, and I trailed my tongue along the base before I pulled off almost all the way and then swallowed him again. His hands found their way to my hair, his fingers pressing into my skull as he closed his eyes and let himself get lost in the wave of pleasure building in the pit of his stomach. I could tell he was close already so I slowed down, wanting to make it last as long as possible.

His fingers tightened in my hair and he started talking then, it was rare to hear him lose it that completely but it’s still the biggest turn-on I’ve ever heard. He kept up a low murmur as I moved my lips and tongue over him, one hand stroking his thigh through his pants and the other gripping the base as my mouth slid over the hard flesh between my lips. It wasn’t so much what he said as it was that he was so turned on he couldn’t stop himself from talking, and it made me speed up in spite of my determination to make it last. Maybe that was why he started talking, if I’d ever thought to ask him I might have just to see him blush. I wasn’t planning on stopping for conversation at that point, though, and before long he tensed and threw his head back, moaning my name as he came. I swallowed around him and kept up my strokes until he collapsed back against the door, breathing heavy and letting his hands fall away from my hair.

I tucked him back in and zipped him up again just in case anybody happened to pass by, besides it was pretty cold outside and eventually we were gonna start feeling the temperature again. When he caught his breath he pushed me back against the seat and covered my mouth with his, pushing his tongue past my lips and practically sucking my tongue out of my mouth as his hands found my zipper and went to work. When I first got to him he had practically no experience, but he was a quick learner and after all the time we’d been sleeping together he knew exactly how to touch me to draw all my nerve endings right to the surface. Sometimes it was so intense that it was almost painful, he could get me so hard so fast that it was a miracle I didn’t lose it when he slid his hand in my pants.

He knew that too, though, so he clamped his fist around the base of my erection and squeezed until the worst of the urgency faded. When he felt me relax under him he started stroking slowly, his tongue still memorizing my mouth as his thumb slid over my head and sent shivers straight up my spine. I loved the way his hands felt on me, so I wouldn’t even have minded if he’d kept stroking but then he slid back on the seat and pulled his mouth off mine to lean over my lap. "Fuck, Josh," I hissed when his mouth closed around me, gritting my teeth to keep from bucking too hard against him. I heard a low chuckle escape his throat right before the vibrations hit me, and I groaned and clamped my eyes shut because I knew if I watched him I’d lose it before he even started.

Then he started moving and I dug my fingers into the upholstery, concentrating my few working brain cells on not thrusting into him and breaking his nose or something. It’d be fun trying to explain that to his mom, how his face had accidentally collided with my pelvic bone and busted. As soon as he hollowed his cheeks and started sucking my brain cells went on strike, though, and I thrust up once and came hard. I was still trembling and trying to catch my breath when he zipped me back up and pulled me into him, wrapping his arms around me and pressing his lips to my sweat-soaked forehead. "You know the whole junior executive look really works for you," he said, his fingers trailing down the white work shirt I’d been wearing since that morning.

When I looked over at him and caught the gleam in his eyes I almost wished I hadn’t ditched my jacket and tie as soon as we got back to his mom’s house, but then again there was always later. "Yeah? I have a pretty extensive collection of ties, you know. Part of the whole Frederickson corporate image."

"You mean you’ve been holding out on me?" he asked, giving me his best disappointed expression.

I laughed and leaned forward, taking my time with kissing him before I answered. "You could accuse me of a lot of things, but ‘holding out’ isn’t one of them. Besides, if I’d known you were into playing dress-up I would have been all over that a long time ago. You've gotta tell me these things, Josh."

"Sorry," he murmured against my skin as his mouth closed around my earlobe. "I’ll try to remember that." He pulled back and looked down at me, his expression suddenly turning serious. "I do think about you and me, you know. I mean after college. I know things have been a little weird since you got here but it doesn’t change the way I feel."

"Yeah, I know." I hated lying to him but I knew he was looking for me to understand where he was coming from, and the last thing he needed was an argument about whether or not he loved me enough. Maybe he just hadn’t found the right time to tell his mom about us, I just assumed he told her the summer after our freshman year but things between us were still kind of new then and I know he was still getting used to the idea that I could be serious about anything, let alone him. Besides, he spent more time with me than he did with his family, and that had to count for something.

"I love you, Cooper," he said, fixing me with that lost puppy look of his that always made my knees weak. I couldn’t not love him when he looked at me that way, I was a goner from that first night when he made me go get him a pair of pants so he could flirt badly with a girl. I waited a long time for him to give in to the way he felt about me, so I could wait a little while longer for him to tell his family about us.

"I love you too," I finally answered, reaching up to touch his cheek as I leaned forward and kissed him again. When I pulled back he let out a sigh and that sadness crept back into his expression, I knew it wasn’t about me but I wished I could erase it all the same. "Josh, you know whatever you want, you just have to tell me. I’ll do anything for you."

"Yeah, I know," he said, grinning and chasing a little of the sadness out of his eyes. It wasn’t much but it was better than nothing. "I guess we should go home before my mom starts calling around looking for us. I want to check on Sarah too and make sure she’s okay, she’s a strong kid but I think she’s holding it together for Mom more than anything."

I nodded and pulled away from him slowly, hating the fact that I had to move out of his warmth. I knew it was only for another day or so and then I’d have to go put in an appearance at home anyway, but I hated that I couldn’t just touch him when I wanted to just because we were in his hometown. I was used to being able to pounce on him whenever I felt like it, at school everybody pretty much ignored us. This was all new and in a way it was too real, like the first glimpse of what our lives would be like if we managed somehow to hang in there for the long haul. I must have winced at that thought because he caught my hand and stopped me from getting out of the car. "What’s wrong?" he asked, and I could have kicked myself for making him worry about me when he’d just buried his dad.

"Nothing," I answered as casually as I could. "Just cold, it’s freezing in here. Let’s go."

He nodded and followed me out of the back seat, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. He didn’t push it, though, and for once I was grateful that he didn’t want to argue with me when he knew I was covering. Usually I did it just to get a rise out of him, but there was no way I was going to start talking about the future and current views on homosexuality. Maybe when we got back to school I’d bring it up, after all it obviously bothered him or he would have told his mom about us by now. I put my coat back on and slid into the driver’s seat, starting the engine and backing out of the parking lot. As soon as we were back on the road he reached for my hand again, and I smiled and tried not to think about when he’d let go.

The End