Picture Perfect

"Are you sure you want me to be here for this?"

He was sprawled across the bed in a posture that was an obvious attempt to look casual and careless, but I knew Aleksi well enough by now--he was posing for me, and delighting in being looked at. I couldn't help but look and appreciate. He was blissfully naked, with his white-blonde hair spilling around his pillow in gleaming cascades. Icy blue eyes fixed on me dreamily as he asked the question.

"Of course," I replied, leaning down to kiss the gentle jut of his hipbone before sitting cross-legged in the middle of his enormous bed and unlocking my phone. "I could use the moral support."

"Baby--I am here for you," he promised, rolling closer to me and dropping his pretty head onto my lap.

"Just keep your mouth to yourself while you're down there," I said with a smirk. "That'd make things really awkward."

"I'll be good as gold," he promised, settling onto his back so that he was gazing directly up at me, his face upside down from my view.

"I'm calling now." I stroked his soft hair with one hand and selected "Mom" in my contact list with the other. It rang twice.

"Jason!" she sang out jubilantly, not even bothering to say, "Hello." For whatever reason, that unmitigated joy I knew she would feel when she saw my name pop up on her call display somehow made me reluctant to call her, but really, a large part of the reason why she was always so thrilled to hear from me was because it happened so seldom.

"Hi mom. How's it going?"

"Oh, it's going very well, honey, just lovely! You know, I had brunch with your grandmum this past weekend--did you know your cousin Lisa is expecting again? Oh, and your Uncle Bill is retiring finally--there'll be a party, I'm sure. I'll keep you apprised!"

I listened to her ramble on about family things for a while and inserted a polite reply here and there to show her I was listening. Finally, she got down to the inevitable.

"And how are things with you, sweetheart? How's Angela?"

I smirked, knowing she had always despised my girlfriend and would be relieved to hear that relationship had expired. I smiled down at Aleksi and continued to stroke his hair. "Actually... that's over. We broke up."

"Ohh...!" she said in an "I'm-so-relieved-but-trying-to-sound-sympathetic" tone. "I'm sorry. You were together a long time."

"You don't need to be sorry," I chuckled, tracing the delicate lines of Aleksi's snowy eyebrows with the tip of my finger. "She was terrible for me, and I know it. I was glad to see her go, honestly. And you're allowed to be glad too. I'm really very okay."

She sighed and released a light chuckle. "It's hard for a mom to see her boy making poor choices. I'm glad you made the right one."

"Me too," I replied, my heart beginning to thud. "I, uh... I'm making some other choices too these days. Right ones. I promise." I stroked Aleksi's cheek, and he grinned dreamily, pressing, catlike, into my touch.

"Oh--what's going on?"

"Um, I know this is probably going to seem really sudden, but it isn't just... some rebound thing. It's... really real. Like... incredible." I took in a deep breath, locking my eyes on his. "I'm with someone new... and we're moving in together."

Aleksi's smile then was utterly blissful, making my heart pound.

She hesitated before replying. "Well... I feel like I should be the voice of reason and tell you to be careful about rushing into something... but I can hear in your voice that this is something different. You sound so happy!"

"I am--really happy, mom. This is just... beyond amazing."

Aleksi squirmed gleefully in my lap, kissed the tip of his index finger, and reached up to press it to my lips. I sucked his finger into my mouth briefly, making him gasp.

"So, are you going to tell me about this amazing new girlfriend of yours?"

"Well... actually... I, um...." I paused to take a breath, and hated how it trembled in my chest. Aleksi took my free hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Mom... I have a boyfriend."

There followed what seemed like the longest ten seconds of my life. I kept my eyes locked on Aleksi's, losing myself in that frosty blue, barely even aware of whether or not I was breathing until my mother spoke again.

"You're not pulling my leg or anything... are you, honey?" she asked, her tone careful and curious. "That's not really the kind of joking I understand."

I wrapped my fist around the lower half of my phone and leaned closer to Aleksi. "She thinks I'm joking!" I whispered.

"Send her a photo," he whispered back, and grinned widely. "Not a cheeky one."

I uncovered the phone. "Mom... I'm serious. I know it's probably a bit of a shock. But believe me... no one was as surprised as I was! I'm gonna text you a pic, okay? One sec."

I quickly navigated to my phone's photo library and scrolled through dozens of recent snaps. Most of them were of Aleksi, though I hardly had the eye for photography that he was gifted with. I found one that I had taken of both of us together that was admittedly pretty cute. We were wearing clothes, at least, and he had his arms wrapped affectionately around my neck. I texted it to her.

"Sent--did you get it?"

"Hold on--if I go to the text, will I lose you?"

I stifled a chuckle. "No, mom. You can go to different apps on your phone while you talk--it won't drop the call."

There was another pause, longer than the previous one. I stroked Aleksi's chin. Even his razor stubble seemed uncommonly soft.

"Jason, you're really serious!" she finally exclaimed into the phone.

"Yes. Very. So... what do you think? His name's Aleksi."

"Well, he's very...." she began, and trailed off with a slightly giddy chuckle. "Am I allowed to say 'pretty'?"

I laughed and made a kissing gesture at Aleksi, who returned it promptly. "Absolutely. He knows he's pretty. I certainly agree."

"Oh, honey--you're so priceless!" She laughed again. "I'm sorry, this is all so... well, I never would have seen this coming, that's for sure." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Have you always been... um... inclined towards boys...? Was this something in you that I just... missed?"

"No, never," I answered honestly. "Never crossed my mind. Aleksi just... happened. I completely fell in love. I... wasn't sure how to deal with it at first. But I realized... gender wasn't a barrier. I'm totally in love."

I was lost in Aleksi's dreamy smile for several long moments, and barely noticed my mother's follow-up questions. I managed to get my brain back in gear, and told her about how I knew Aleksi, giving her a heavily sanitized version of how we had initially grown close. I left out the spontaneous, desperate fucking that had basically kicked things off, but told her about how I'd washed his shirt, and she found that little story quaint and precious. I told her about coming to his defence in the face of the bullies at the boardwalk market, and left out the fucking aspect of that one as well. Once again she was charmed. She sounded close to tears, and called me a prince. When I opined that Aleksi was the prince, she was gleeful all over again.

She asked if she was allowed to tell people, and I told her to please go ahead, if she thought they could handle it. Grandmum could, perhaps, be left in the dark for the time being--she wasn't likely to understand. Then, after some enthusiastic but vague promises of meeting on some nonspecific future occasion, I managed to end the phone call.

"Baby," Aleksi purred, turning himself over and sliding up to reach my mouth with his, kissing me with slow relish. "You were so very brave!"

"Brave? Really?" I quirked an eyebrow skeptically. It seemed a slight to my boyfriend to accept the idea that I'd have to be brave to tell people about him.

"You just came out to your mum. That takes some men... a very long time. Years." He stroked my cheeks and beamed at me adoringly. "I'm so very proud of you. My prince."

"Careful, you'll give me an ego," I chuckled, grabbing his barely-there love handles and giving him a playful shake. He giggled and tackled me, rolling us both around the sizeable bed.

"All right, you should put some clothes on," I finally chuckled. "Angela's probably going to be here soon."

"Sure you want me in clothes?" he teased, splaying himself out on the bed and writhing showily. "I thought you wanted to rub me in her face, yes?"

"I don't want to rub your cock in her face!" I guffawed, cupping his package playfully. "This is all mine!"

"I'll put on a little something," he said with a sultry pout, sliding his legs through a pair of white boxer briefs.

I was already in a pair of slightly grubby khakis and a plain sleeveless undershirt--my Moving Day ensemble. "I'm gonna keep hauling crap up the stairs till she gets here. You wanna help me or no?"

He pouted and examined his fingernails, continuing to lounge on the bed, practically blending into the white sheets. "I'm not so good with heavy lifting."

I started to frown at him for his unwillingness to pitch in, but it turned helplessly to a smirk. "You just gonna sit here looking pretty then?"

He looked up with heart-wrenchingly innocent eyes. "That is just what you want me for, yes?"

I bent down to kiss his forehead. He was incorrigible, but so adorable. I knew I was doomed, and in the most delicious way. "Yes, cutie. If I find a bag of marshmallows or a sheet of paper I need help with, I'll call you down, how's that?"

The corners of his mouth curled up into a darling smile. "Pleased to serve, my sweet doll."

"You're the doll!" I laughed, unable to resist allowing my moving plans to be delayed by his charms. I arched over him, pressing his arms above his head and then petting his strikingly pale hair. "All cute and posable, always ripe for cuddles."

"Ripe as a sweet plum, baby... for cuddles and fucks," he purred, pressing against my stroking hands.

"Cuddles and fucks!" I repeated, tickling him and sending him into paroxysms of giggles. "Cuddles and fucks! I wasn't thinking of that kind of doll!" I stopped my tickling and finally settled beside him, tracing the delicate lines of his cheekbones and jaw with my fingers. The beauty in him still overwhelmed me. I'd never appreciated beauty on this level before. "You look like you're made of porcelain. My pretty doll."

"Yes, baby," he sighed fondly. "Always your very own toy."

I kissed him a while, sucking his plump bottom lip into my mouth. The way he gasped and writhed whenever I nibbled at that lip always excited me. I bucked against him a little as I began to harden and explored his smooth, boyish chest with my clumsy, callused fingers.

"Sweetheart," he giggled, pushing at my shoulder a little. "I like what you're starting, but you have company soon, yes?"

"Yes... yes," I sighed, rolling over to catch my breath a little and allow my body to calm.

"Sweetheart," he said again, pressing a soft kiss against my forehead. "You be a good boy and go move boxes. I'll make you some iced tea--the real kind. I even have fresh lemon--yes?"

"Sounds great! Lots of sugar, hm?"

"As you please!"

After a few warm kisses, we went our separate ways--Aleksi to the kitchen, while I descended two flights of stairs to the dank, dismal basement suite I was relieved to be liberated from. Aleksi's place was beautifully furnished and lacked for nothing, so I had already sold off almost all of my crappy furniture as well as a great deal of sundries, most of which were thrift store junk when I'd obtained them. I was mainly down to boxes and a few odds and ends, and at this point I was sure I could move everything remaining on my own. I started making trips up and down the stairs, ensuring that the box I'd whimsically labelled "Ange's Leftover Shit" was one of the first to be moved. I shuffled it among my own boxes to make it appear haphazard, feeling a perhaps insidious sense of glee at the thought of having to take her upstairs to 'conveniently' stumble across Aleksi, my new roommate-and-much-more, whom she had once shamelessly flirted with back when he'd just been that weird guy upstairs we'd called Artsy McLonghair. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

I was stuffing my clothes haphazardly into a big plastic hamper in preparation for hauling them up to the third floor suite when the buzzer sounded. I grinned to myself and leaped up the basement stairs two at a time. It took me a few seconds to force my face into a semblance of seriousness before I pulled open the front door to greet my former long-term girlfriend.

"Hey," I said as neutrally as possible, briefly looking her up and down. It was difficult not to laugh. Angela had always been kind of a trashy dresser, but she seemed to be milking it today, with short shorts that barely covered her ass cheeks and a t-shirt that looked as if it had been stolen from a ten-year-old's closet. A retina-burning shade of candy pink, it read "ANGEL" across the chest in white scripty lettering that was bedazzled with glittery flotsam. The word was stretched out by the swell of her breasts, which also threatened to spill out at the scooped neckline, granting a tasteless irony to the slogan.

"Hey," she replied, flaring her nostrils for a moment as she gave me an equally appraising look, clearly not impressed by my grungy clothes. "So, got something for me?"

"It's probably downstairs--c'mon," I replied, biting my lip at the wild goose chase I was initiating. The moment I saw the painfully impractical spike-heeled sandals on her feet I knew I had to make her clatter up and down both stairwells.

She tossed her head, pursed her lips, and then pooched them out a little. It was her "Look-At-My-Sexy-Mouth" expression--I knew it well, and once again had to suppress a laugh. She was clearly on a campaign to make me jealous, to make me regret losing her. She walked ahead of me to the basement stairwell entrance, strutting like a runway model and glancing back to make sure I was following. Or that I was looking. Of course I was looking--her desperation was fascinating. Her outfit and her posture were screaming, "Take a good look at what you're missing!"

"So how've you been?" I asked, trailing behind her as she made her slow, meticulous progress down the stairs in shoes she couldn't properly walk in.

"Really great," she said with exaggerated enthusiasm. "My life has taken a serious upturn lately."

"Hey, mine too!" I replied, finally letting my grin show. "I think it's awesome we're both in a better place now. I'm happy for you, Ange."

She gave a short, skeptical chuckle at this and finally reached the bottom floor. She looked around at the nearly-barren suite. "Weird--I've never seen it empty like this," she marvelled.

"C'mon," I urged, gesturing her to follow. "The last of my boxes are in the bedroom. Your stuff should be there."

She clip-clopped after me, entering the small bedroom where I began making a show of looking in each of the half dozen boxes scattered around.

"Oh... the bed's gone," she remarked.

"Yeah...? So's almost everything else. Remember how I'm moving?" I snorted. I straightened and began to turn back toward her. "Yunno, I think I may have..."

I trailed off. She'd taken off her tiny t-shirt and was working at removing her push-up bra, the same blinding shade of pink as the shirt.

"Don't you at least have some pillows or a blanket or something?" she asked.

"What. The. Fuck?" I breathed, morbidly fascinated by her disrobing.

She paused and furrowed her brow. "Omigod," she whispered. "Wasn't this supposed to be a booty call...?"

"Where the hell did you get that idea?" I wondered, picking up her shirt and tossing it in her direction.

"Omigod," she moaned as she scrambled back into her clothes. "Are you just trying to humiliate me or something? You were sending me some pretty strong signals, asshole!"

"Signals!" I exclaimed, once again finding it hard not to laugh. "Was it the 'hey' or the 'how've you been' that sounded like seduction to you? Maybe my sexy outfit--I know the undershirt with the coffee stain on it always gets your motor running."

"Oh, come on Jason!" she hissed, carefully combing her fingers through her hair. "Inviting me over here, out of the blue...?"

I pulled out my phone and opened up our recent text messages. "Right, I see it now--when I typed 'I'm packing up to move', that does sound a hell of a lot like, 'I desperately miss your body', and 'if you want your stuff you'd better pick it up soon' was clearly 'I've got a boner for you--please come fuck me'!" I grinned at her. "You want me to follow any future communications with 'by the way, that wasn't a double entendre'?"

"I don't need to take this bullshit from you," she huffed, placing a hand on her hip and hiking her purse up on her opposite shoulder. "Just give me my things so I can get the fuck out of here for the last fucking time!"

"Sure thing, Ange!" I replied, continuing to grin. "It's not here though--my bad! I must have moved it already."

She tossed her hands up into the air in a "Lord help me!" gesture. "What the fuck? Do you have a moving van outside? I didn't see one."

I flashed her as innocent a look as I could manage. "Oh, didn't I tell you? I'm moving up to the top floor suite. We just have to head upstairs."

She heaved a grievous sigh and turned to clatter back to the stairs. Once again I followed after her as she made careful progress in her spike heels.

We reached the main floor landing she moved aside to let me take the lead. I smiled and started up the second stairwell.

"Doesn't what's-his-face McLonghair live up there?" she finally asked.

I licked my lips. "His name's Aleksi."

"So... he's moving out then?"

"Nope," I replied, feeling pleasant tingles travel up and down my spine as I closed the distance to the upstairs suite--home. Aleksi was my home now. It was still such a delicious novelty. "We're moving in together."

"What, suddenly you're all buddy-buddy with the freaky artist guy?" she snickered.

I reached the top of the stairs and turned around. She was only halfway up. "He's not 'freaky'," I said. "And yeah, we have gotten pretty damn tight. So don't be a bitch, okay?"

Her carefully plucked eyebrows went up. "Wow--touchy!" She smirked. "Don't worry. I'll be nice to your new BFF."

I waited for her to finish her painstaking ascent and led her inside the suite. I glanced back to watch her reaction as she entered, and I knew she was experiencing the same dizzying sense of unreality that I had when I first visited the third floor. It seemed impossible that this airy, sprawling, elegant space could exist in the same building as the cramped, drippy basement cave we had shared for so long.

I noticed her eyes widen as she discovered the nude photos on the walls. She quickly averted her eyes and grabbed my sleeve. "Is this some kind of porno den?" she gasped.

I snorted and shook my head. "No, Ange--it's called 'art'. Grow up."

I heard clattering and running water from inside--Aleksi was busy in the kitchen. "Doll, you decent?" I called out loudly.

The water shut off. "When I have to be," he called back, giggling charmingly. "Who are we expecting?"

"Angela's just picking up a box."

"Does she care if I'm not wearing trousers?"

I smirked and glanced across at Angela. I could feel warmth in my cheeks at the pure thrill of the situation. "Do you care if my boyfriend's got pants on?"

Angela pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and gave me the most condescending glare I had ever seen--and I had seen a lot of condescending glares from her. "Oh, that's real cute," she snarled. "Ha ha, I turned you gay--is that your lame little joke?"

"I asked you not to be a bitch," I said as gently as possible. "Aleksi and I are in a relationship, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Handle this however you need to after you leave, but I'm in love with a guy, I'm moving in with a guy, and all I want from you right now is to be a grown-up and come get your box of shit."