Seafoam and Salt Water Taffy

Second guessing had never been his thing, but as Duncan pulled up in front of the house his boys shared, he found himself doing just that. For heaven’s sake, they weren’t even close to the living together stage yet and here he was about to propose a ten-day Caribbean cruise to the two men who made his day brighter even when it was only through text messaging.

​

Spending time together was like Christmas and his birthday had been wrapped in sticky toffy pudding and topped with melted butter crunch ice cream, which was his absolute favorite dessert. That’s what he needed to focus on right now, the joy and thrill of finally getting a taste of what he’d always wanted. Coupled with his thoughtful contingency plan of adjacent rooms, which he hoped would ease any of the reluctance they might feel about going on the cruise with him, everything should play out positively. The last thing he ever wanted was to make either of them uncomfortable in any way, but when he’d heard about the kink cruise, he’d been unable to resist the urge to surprise them with reservations, even if they later decided it would be best to cancel them.

 

Just a few weeks ago, as they’d sat around Ember and Rusty’s living room, Duncan feeding them decadent slices of chocolate cake, Rusty had mentioned having three weeks of vacation he needed to use up before the factory he worked for took it away. It was a shitty practice, reeking of privilege and inequity, but their contracts left them no choice in the matter.

 

Rusty had lamented his lack of ideas, explaining that the reason he hadn’t taken any time off since being hired on there was because he’d have been bored as hell sitting around without anything to do. Since Ember worked for and with other members of his family at the reptile sanctuary they ran, he was forever covering shifts for those with sick children or vacation plans to the same type of family fun destinations they’d always loved visiting as a kid. That Ember hadn’t a clue about what he’d like to do or where he’d like to go if he was the one who was supposed to make the plans had left him and Rusty laughing about what failures they were at adulting.

 

Of course, Duncan had sought to assure them that they were nothing of the sort, but both had laughed and then reminded him that they’d taken to having their groceries delivered because they either forgot to stop at the store after making a list, forgot to make a list, forgot the list at home, or forgot to give any thought to what they might want to cook, giving them little to go on when they stepped into the store. According to them, each shopping trip resulted in a hodge podge collection of things that didn’t necessarily go together. Duncan had to admit that there was both whimsey and inventiveness to the meals they cobbled together, though he had drawn the line at mustard sardines in pasta with alfredo sauce and insisted on taking them out for dinner. He’d said it in the gentlest way possible when they’d told him about what they’d come up with after realizing that they were out of both canned clams and canned chicken. When asked why they weren’t using the chicken breasts or thighs he knew they’d purchased when they’d gone grocery shopping together, Rusty had informed him that they’d both forgotten to put the frozen pack in the fridge the night before so it could thaw.

 

They needed a keeper, something he was more than willing to be once they all agreed the time was right.

 

Now two faces framed by sunny yellow and green curtains watched him through the window and even from here there was no mistaking the anxious expressions on their handsome faces.

 

Now that wouldn’t do.

 

He could only imagine what they were thinking and hated giving them any reason to feel concerned. Satchel in hand, he exited the car and wasn’t surprised to see the door open before he reached it. Ember stood there with his three-foot boa constrictor, Boo, draped over his shoulders as he fed his bearded dragon, Bump, who’s full name was Bump-in-the-Night,  a cricket. His smile was hesitant though and his green eyes wary as they stared out at him from a tanned face lightly sprinkled with freckles.

 

At thirty, Ember was the youngest little Duncan had ever entered a relationship with, a fact that baffled some of the other Daddies he knew. As a university professor, Duncan had never been interested in boys the ages of his students, the whole idea making him feel creepy and extremely uncomfortable.  It was one of several reasons he’d insisted upon seeing Ember’s ID before the first time they’d played together. In fact, when the boy had crawled over to him followed by a scowling Rusty in full Dalmatian pup gear, his immediate response had been to dismiss him and kindly suggest that he find someone else to play with.

 

Rusty, on the other hand, had growled, his eyes narrowing to slits of fury when Ember had ducked his head and started to scoot away. Duncan later came to understand that Rusty had growled because he’d assumed Duncan was rejecting Ember for being non-verbal the way some of the others at the club had done.

 

“Hey Ember, how are you, Boo and Bump today?”

 

Ember signed that they’d had a wonderful time with the fourth-grade classes that had visited the sanctuary that afternoon and that all but a handful had pet Boo by the end of the demonstration about the role snakes played in the environment and ecosystem. Some of the additional information they’d shared with their young visitors had been about all the things that could be learned by studying reptiles. By the time he’d finished signing, Ember was smiling the bright smile he was almost never without. Teaching young people to respect snakes and other reptiles without having to fear them was only part of what Ember did at the sanctuary. They milked poisonous snakes for their venom to create anti-venom. They rescued and cared for ones legally and illegally purchased as exotic pets and later surrendered because either people didn’t know how to care for them, or the animals got too big to be safe. Sometimes they taught classes and held workshops on setting up habitats and general care of reptilian and amphibious pets, and at others they manned booths at local events, passing out literature and selling t-shirts and stuffed creations to generate more funds to keep the sanctuary operational.

 

Many times, those rescues came after a near tragedy had taken place. Duncan knew it saddened Ember as much as when the neglected ones came in, or the ones who’d been harmed by well-meaning but uninformed humans who did all the wrong things when it came to caring for them.

The empathy his boy had for the animals he helped care for meant that sometimes he couldn’t stop thinking about ways to prevent the harm some of them experienced. From the posters he created and sent out to as many pet stores as he could convince to display them, to the classes he helped organize, he was constantly searching for ways to educate people about the amazing creatures he loved. He always insisted on taking Boo, who he’d raised from a hatchling, so those in attendance could have a positive experience with a snake, something to maybe help them set aside prejudices formed due to the villainous ones in animated movies and horror flicks.

 

Duncan had learned the hard way, on their very first dinner and a movie night, that Ember detested movies like Lake Placid and Anaconda, two of the three movies Duncan had chosen out of the misguided assumption that Ember would love them because he loved reptiles, the third being Croc. He’d never considered that a love of reptiles meant that Ember loved them too much to want to see them portrayed that way.

 

Duncan was so busy studying him as he fed Bump a cricket, that he forgot they were standing in an open doorway until Rusty spoke up.

 

“Unless you’re hoping to trap some extra bugs for The Brady Bunch, you might wanna close the damn door. There’s a swarm of gnats in the kitchen congregating around the Kool-Aid pitcher like they’re planning to go for a swim.”

 

Ember backed up enough to let him in, all while signing to Rusty about unleashing The Kraken and allowing him to deal with them. Duncan wasn’t sure he’d survive another encounter with the dive-bombing amphibian after the last time the seven pound Goliath Frog had landed in his lap on a very sensitive area.

 

“And wind up with Kool-Aid puddles all over the counter?” Rusty replied. “No thank you. One little spill and it takes three scrubs before the stickiness goes away and a fourth to deter the ants. I’d rather make fresh Kool-Aid.”

 

“Or you could remember to buy a pitcher with a lid,” Ember signed. “Or at least put it back in the refrigerator.”

 

Rusty grumbled at that as he returned to the kitchen, but seconds later Duncan heard the refrigerator door open and close. Their banter came

so naturally, even when they used different means of communicating. Ember wasn’t deaf, he could hear perfectly, but he’d been born mute and relied on sign language and a text to speech device to communicate.

 

Upon meeting him and Rusty, Duncan had never been so grateful for the intensive sign language classes he’d taken during his college days after befriending a deaf classmate in his English Literature course and discovering they shared the same major and career tract.

 

Now, some twenty-eight years later, they’d obtained their master's degrees and doctorates together, and taught at the same university. Both Dominants, Theo was drawn more to pets, specifically the ballet bunny he’d fallen for fifteen years before and been in a relationship with ever since. Duncan, on the other hand, had struggled because he’d always wanted both a little and a pet.

 

There were times when he felt greedy for that, but he’d refused to settle for less than the dynamic that most appealed to him.

 

Now he accepted a hug from his pet when Rusty joined them in the living room, while several feet away Bump still happily crunched away on the crickets Ember offered him.

 

"It's not working, is it?" Rusty asked bluntly.

 

The question startled him, while Ember glanced away from Boo to fix Duncan with sad eyes already beginning to shimmer with tears. 

 

“Excuse me?" Duncan said as he stepped away from Rusty so he could take a seat beside Ember on the couch, combing his fingers through Ember’s hair to soothe him. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

 

On the coffee table in front of them was an open carton with a single cricket hopping around desperate to avoid Ember’s fingers when he reached for it. Rusty blew out a breath, still standing where Duncan had left him in the entryway, his piercing gaze meeting Duncan’s before glancing away as he began to speak.

 

"Us. That's what you were sitting outside for so long trying to figure out how to say, right? That we don't fit like you'd hoped. Is it me? Am I too much? It's okay, others have said the same thing. I'm used to it."

 

"Let me stop you right there before you upset me further than you already have!" Duncan declared as he rose from the couch and closed the distance between them.

 

He framed Rusty’s face with his hands and brushed a lock of hair off his forehead before leaning in to claim his lips. There was a stiffness there that had never been in any other kiss they’d shared, but when he swiped the tip of his tongue over Rusty’s lips, they parted and let Duncan in. When slow and tender didn’t get Rusty to relax the rest of the way, Duncan upped the ante, kissing with the kind of ferociousness he usually reserved for when he had Rusty or Ember pinned to the bed.

 

Rough.

 

Possessive.

 

Branding himself on them so the feeling remained even when they were apart. A reminder that he wasn’t some mild mannered professor come to take them out to dinner and the theater. That tie he occasionally wore when he stood in front of his students made for a damn good restraint in a pinch and was easily able to be wound around naughty cocks as a reminder to behave.

 

"I love your personality exactly as it is, which includes your Dominant side. I have a bit of a voyeur in me that loves to watch you with Ember. It’s beautiful when he submits to us both, but with you, there's something magnificently tender and primal there that is so uninhibited that I can’t tear my eyes away from the scene as it plays out. When I watch him strip the bottom pieces of your gear off after you've growled the command at him to undress you and ride you, it gets me so hard all I want is to stroke myself off while listening to your mingling moans. As for why I was in

the car for so long, it’s because I was worried about how you’re going to react to the surprise I have for you.”

 

"Surprise?" Ember signed. 

 

"Yes. A Kink Cruise to be specific, where we can indulge in every naughty little fantasy we've talked about and maybe even a few we haven't discussed yet. 

 

"Whoa," Rusty breathed. 

 

"Do you remember my colleague and friend Dr. Robertson and his pet, Christian, that I introduced you to at the Picnic in the Park fundraiser? They're going and when he told me about it, I couldn't resist reserving a pair of side-by-side staterooms for us. I didn't want to presume that you'd want to share a room with me or even that you'd agree to go, but I hope you'll accompany me. The reservations are simple to cancel if you're not interested or hate the ocean or the thought of spending ten days island hopping around the Caribbean, so please don't feel like you have to say yes. I know vacationing together might seem like a big leap after just five months together, but I was inspired to at least discuss it with you after how much we enjoyed watching and talking about the Treasures of the Caribbean and Shipwrecks of the Caribbean documentaries last week. It seems like I've finally discovered my spontaneous side.”

 

“Oh my god is that where we’d be cruising to?” Ember signed.

 

“Yes. The cruise has stops scheduled in St. Marten, St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, and Curacao,” Duncan explained.

 

Ember began rapidly signing, meaning both Rusty and Duncan focused on him to see what his thoughts were about the trip. 

 

"I don't know if I'd want us to have separate rooms," Ember signed. "If we're together, don't you want us to really be together?”

 

"The suggestion of two cabins was more for your comfort since we're only a month into sleepover weekends," Duncan explained. 

 

The moment he finished speaking, Ember began signing again. "When is it? How long? My cousin Starla can take care of Boo, Bacca, The Kraken and The Brady Bunch for us. I don't want to do any pickup play though, or watch, so I guess we would need separate rooms if you’re planning to do that. I know we've agreed to leave things vaguely open, but I don't want anyone besides the two of you. It's okay if you want to play with others still, though I don’t want to know about it. I'd be jealous and bratty and that isn't how I want to be with you."

 

"I don't think you could ever be bratty," Duncan replied, while Rusty started snickering. 

 

"That's because you've never seen him jealous before," Rusty said. "I made the mistake of kissing a guy one night not long after we’d talked about picking up a third ..."

 

He was interrupted by more rapid signing from Ember. "It wasn't just some guy, it was Conner Greenlow and he's an asshole!"

 

“I’m sorry,” Rusty said. “You know that I didn’t know he was the guy who’d called you the ‘r’ slur.”

 

Ember’s eyes narrowed at that, and it only took a half second for Duncan to realize what word was being referred to.

 

“That is a terrible word and one of several that I wish could be stricken not just from the English language, but all of them,” Duncan said. “It has no place in conversation or literature, not when the impact on a reader can equate to a kick in the gut.”

 

“I dealt with him as soon as Ember told me,” Rusty said, only for Ember to slide an arm around him and curl against his side.

 

No words were needed between them for Duncan to know that it had long since been forgiven.

 

“I want to go. I want to see the Caribbean and spend time in the water with the two of you,” Ember signed, blushing a little.

 

“And just what are you thinking of doing with us in the water?” Duncan asked.

 

“Ticking another box off my wish list.”

 

“Well, I’d say that’s a good enough reason for me to go out and get a new array of swimwear,” Duncan replied.

 

“Speedos,” Ember signed.

 

“Really…why them and not board shorts?” Duncan asked, though he was certain he already knew the answer.

 

Sure enough, Ember signed back, “More skin.”

 

“That’s my vote too,” Rusty said.

 

“Does that mean you’ll both be wearing them too?” Duncan asked.

 

“I think that can be arranged,” Ember signed.

 

“Then Speedos it is.” Duncan said. “Though I can say from experience that a few pairs of boardies will be necessary for wandering around in, tank tops too if we’re planning on popping into shops and indoor locations on the islands.”

 

“Okay, I guess we can pack them too,” Rusty said.

 

“Now there’s just one more thing that needs a bit of clarity,” Duncan said.  “I want to be sure I’m understanding things correctly in that you are both saying that you would like to close the open part of our agreement, because I would readily welcome that. I have not been with anyone since a week after we met, and that date ended politely at the door well before ten. Had it not been arranged before our meeting it never would have happened. I’ve always viewed the making of a date as a promise and thus avoided breaking them unless there was an emergency. Meeting you two left me with no desire to be with anyone but you. I truly believe that you are the pair I’ve been waiting for since I first realized that I longed to have both a boy and a pet in my life.”

 

“We haven’t been with anyone else either,” Rusty said, his voice sounding a bit choked up. “We’ve always longed for someone who wanted us both equally because we’ve known since we were teenagers that we were a package deal. Thank you for respecting that and never trying to divide us.”

 

Duncan held them tight and kissed the tops of their heads. “I could see it the moment you approached me in the playroom. I’m proud to make our relationship exclusive and be able to call you mine without anyone having cause to challenge it. I’ll call and cancel the second cabin and start shopping for Speedos…and a few surprises for my boys too.”

 

“Yey, I love surprises,” Ember signed with no less enthusiasm than if he had used words.

How others couldn’t see that, or how expressive he was, especially when his eyes lit up, Duncan still didn’t understand, but their loss was a treasure Duncan vowed to never take for granted. He’d do everything in his power to make this first vacation together one of laughter, naughtiness, and memories, and hope that there would be many, many more in the years to come.