Heart and Soul - Chapter 28: Chapter 28

The bus took the team back to school, after they showered quickly.
This trip was much rowdier than the one before. As soon as they got to school, Carter's teammates scattered to their cars. Carter and Joey slipped inside Seth's black BMW, with Mel and Jenna following in Jenna's red Mercedes.
They drove out to the coast, where they were meeting for that night's party, since there were no parents out of town. A few kids were already dispersing across the beach, congregating slightly in a few small clusters around whoever held the alcohol.
Carter caught sight of Mike's car, with Bella and Luca standing by. He and Seth walked up to them, while Joey darted off to meet the girls.
"Awesome game, C-man," Luca shouted.
Carter smiled. "Didn't Frankie and Mike come with you?" He asked, concluding after a quick glance around no other Santoro was in sight.
"Mike went straight home and left us the car. Frankie came back on Reggie's bike," Bella said.
"But they definitely saw you killing it on the field," Luca guaranteed.
Bella rolled her eyes. Carter's gaze fell on her Rolling Stones top for a second. That was Seth's favorite band, his mind registered as an afterthought. He didn't quite make much of that note, though.
"It wasn't just him on the field. There was a whole fucking team," she argued.
"Yeah, but he's the quarterback," Luca proclaimed, as though that statement alone barely required any further clarification. "That golden arm won us the game. Their new guy didn't stand a chance."
"It looked to me we wouldn't have won shit without our defense," Bella retorted.
"Is that a compliment?" Seth asked.
Bella smiled slyly. "If you feel the need to take it as one," she mused.
"Bella's right," Carter finally said. "A win is always a team effort."
She rolled her eyes. "How humble of you," she delivered dryly.
Carter pursed his lips. There would never be a way to have a fully civil interaction with his stepsister. It simply couldn't be done. He turned to his more favorable stepbrother instead.
"Have you seen Jessica?" He asked Luca. "Think she was looking for you."
Luca's eyes widened slightly and he scratched the back of his neck abashedly. "Yeah... If you see her again, can you tell her you haven't seen me?"
Carter's eyebrows drew in. "Why?"
Luca shrugged. "Just do that. Brother's favor," he shot back, already starting to walk away to join a group of basketball JV kids.
Joey, Mel and Jenna joined in at that point, dragging them along to the sand. Joey and Jenna had already helped themselves to a bottle of vodka, which Jenna had probably brought with her. Smirnoff, because she was "just so fucking tired of that Grey Goose shit."
"Doesn't all vodka taste the same?" Bella asked, voicing the thoughts Carter would never mention out loud around his friends. Joey and Jenna were particularly sensitive regarding the topic.
As the two took it upon themselves to make a case for their respective favorite brand of vodka, Carter and Mel sat down with a group of football players and cheerleaders. In the distance, Scott Meyers and Bobby Gonzalez's voices could be heard indistinctly. Carter smiled politely as one of Mel's teammates told him about something that had happened in the girls locker room before the game.
When he glanced back to Joey and Jenna, he found them bickering about a new topic. Bella appeared to have managed to escape from their fervent vodka debate. Good for her, Carter thought despite their differences.
In the meantime, Seth also seemed to have taken off somewhere else. Which wasn't off character for him, at all. He always tended to be somewhere else doing something else at parties.
Over an hour, almost two, had passed when Carter finally got up. He had already accepted a few drinks at that point, but he could still make his way through the sand. Finally, after looking around twice, he spotted Johnny in the back, where the least amount of people gathered. When their eyes met, Carter had the impression the other boy's eyes had already been on him for a while.
"Hey," Johnny said smoothly when Carter finally approached him.
"Hey," Carter said through an easy grin.
Johnny's eyes took in the full image of him and the corners of his lips twitched up into a smile. "Someone's been drinking, I see. Again," he mused.
Carter laughed. "Walk with me," he simply said.
Johnny's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly, but his feet moved nonetheless. They walked side by side along the sand, parallel to the ocean and away from the disorderly crowd of students. Neither one said anything, listening as their peers' voices faded behind them the farther they walked.
"Did you enjoy the game?" Carter asked, when the party was nothing more than background rustle.
Johnny eyed him shrewdly. "Yeah. You were great, champ."
Carter rolled his eyes with a little laugh. "I wasn't fishing for compliments," he said. "Just know school events aren't really your thing."
Johnny turned his head to look at him. "Yeah," he muttered. "I had a good motivation, though."
"Your sister," Carter said, nodding in understanding.
Johnny snorted. "Not my sister."
Carter's eyes zeroed in on Johnny's little suggestive smile and he found himself grinning like a fool. He chanced a quick glance around to realize they were mostly isolated in the dark beach. Feeling bold for an encouraging second, Carter stopped walking and caught Johnny's chin in his fingers, tilting his face up so he could connect their lips in a quick, chaste kiss.
Johnny stared after him in stunned silence as Carter started walking again. Biting back a giddy smile, he sped up to catch up to Carter, whose chest bubbled with thrilling warmth when he met the look in Johnny's eyes.
When the distance was enough to muffle the sounds of the party almost completely and they couldn't really see anyone around, they stopped. Carter sat down on the sand, staring out at the sea, and Johnny joined him.
While Johnny faced the ocean, watching it reflect the moonlight from the nearly starless sky, Carter turned his head to stare at him. After a few comfortable seconds of silence—maybe more than seconds—Johnny turned to face him with a smile.
"Do I have something on my face?"
Carter grinned. "Yes," he said, just before leaning in to close the short distance between them and land a tender kiss on his cheek.
Johnny ducked his head, looking almost... bashful. Carter relished in the sight, in the knowledge it had been him who'd provoked that effect. Johnny always looked so cool and collected, certain of his words and sure of his actions. This flustered side of him felt like a precious discovery he needed to see more of.
With a sigh that quickly melted into a pained groan, Carter fell back to lie on the sand.
"You okay there?" Johnny asked, looking down over his shoulder at Carter.
Carter chuckled. "A little sore," he answered. "Their QB might've still been a little green, but their linemen were huge."
Johnny hummed. "I saw. You took some rough hits."
"I always do," Carter remarked. "But usually seventeen and eighteen-year-olds aren't that big."
Johnny adjusted a bit so he could have a better angle to give Carter a serious look. "Should you get that checked out?"
Carter shrugged, extending his arms out over his head and feeling the sand on the palms of his hands. "Not really," he said. "Just some bruises."
Johnny sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. His eyes swept over the length of Carter's stretched out body.
"I could check it out for you," he murmured with a little smile. His fingers touched the hem of Carter's t-shirt and the stretched out boy beneath him lifted his head up to see.
A now-familiar heat started blossoming in Carter's stomach as Johnny's hand dove beneath the fabric and started trailing up, all the way to Carter's chest, pulling his t-shirt up on the way.
Johnny's eyebrows shot up in surprise and he removed his hand, glancing up at Carter's face.
"Jesus, those actually look bad," he breathed with a final look at the darkening bruises across Carter's ribs.
Carter laughed, letting his head fall back down on the sand. "Thanks, and here I thought the moment was taking a different direction," he joked.
He rubbed a hand down his face, freezing when he felt Johnny's touch back on his stomach. He peeled his hand away as he felt warm lips kiss just above his belly button, propping up onto his elbows. His abs flexed slightly with the action and Johnny smiled, kissing up the middle line of his six pack. A moan escaped Carter's mouth when Johnny looked up at his face through dark eyelashes, bringing his tongue out to paint a wet trail up to his chest.
"Shit," he breathed as Johnny left open-mouthed kisses across the contour of his left ribs, and Carter's body sprawled back down on the sand.
One of Johnny's hands found Carter's side, just above the hip, and rested there. His mouth connected with his neck, sucking supple skin between his teeth and Carter gasped open-mouthed.
He had been touched before. He had felt lust and desire in other occasions, with other people. But with Johnny it seemed a single look, a soft touch, a simple smile was enough to set him on fire. Carter knew the kind of heat intimacy could ignite, but he had never known it to be so delightfully flammable.
The first kiss he shared with Johnny had been a strange experience. And every time after that had felt like chancing a deeper dive into the promising unknown. But when Johnny's lips found his that time, Carter's body responded automatically. Not unlike it did on the football field, where he knew what to do, where he could trust his basic instincts without thinking. It was a freeing sensation he had never experienced with anything else.
Until Johnny.
Carter grabbed Johnny's face with gentle hands. Electricity shot down his spine, ecstatic and exhilarating, when Johnny swung one leg over him to straddle Carter, without ever breaking the fervent kiss.
Lips, tongues and teeth clashed messily and Carter let one hand trail down Johnny's side to rest at his hip, leaving the other on the side of his face. Johnny responded to the touch with a moan and a slight press of his hips downward. Carter gasped at the pressure, tilting his head back.
Johnny took the opportunity to kiss bellow his jaw and mouth all the way to his ear. He rolled his hips on top of Carter's, taking his ear lobe between his teeth.
"Oh, God," Carter sighed and Johnny kissed the breath out of him.
Johnny's hand gripped his bicep, feeling the curves of muscle there, and Carter moved his hand from Johnny's hip to his waist, bending his arm to give Johnny something more to feel. Johnny mewled contently into the kiss and that sound traveled straight to Carter's groin.
Carter's hand moved, of its own accord, around Johnny's waist, down his back and then a little further down, gripping onto the firm globe of muscle. Johnny smiled, sucking Carter's bottom lip into his mouth with bruising force.
Carter was made of heat at that point. He would undoubtedly have combusted into the air, if they hadn't heard giggling from the distance. Johnny shot out of Carter's lap, sitting at his side, in the same place he had been before they had started their... well...
Carter sat up slowly, groaning in pain at the strain on his stiff muscles. He saw a couple, a boy and a girl who had strayed away from the party, run hand in hand in giggles, their bare feet on the wet sand by the sea. They seemed too entranced with each other to notice Carter and Johnny sitting a little farther up and they skipped right past them. Probably drunk in a little more than just teen love.
Carter ran a hand through his hair, shaking the grains of sand from the back of his head. He was still hot, and breathless, and flushed.
Johnny shot him a sideways glance. "Need a cold dive in the ocean, champ?" He teased.
Carter groaned, ducking his head. "The water wouldn't be cold enough," he mumbled.
Johnny laughed. Carter watched him reach inside his pocket for his phone and his eyes eyes nearly popped off their sockets when he saw the time.
"Shit, it's almost one," he hissed, shooting up onto his feet and shaking the sand off his clothes.
"It's not that late," Carter muttered reluctantly.
He didn't want to go. Most importantly, he really didn't want Johnny to go. He wanted both of them to stay. Possibly indefinitely.
Johnny shot him a pointed look. "I told Lydia we were leaving at midnight. Next time you ask me to a party, maybe don't take so long to look for me."
Carter bit his lip, sheepishly. He hadn't wanted to look too eager, or desperate, when they got to the party. But after spending time with Johnny, he realized that he had been stupid. He should have looked for Johnny as soon as they got there, and made the most of every second, and then begged for the other boy to stay a little longer after that too.
Unwillingly, he got up and shook himself off. They walked in comfortable silence back toward the crowd. Lydia was already waiting for Johnny when they got to the parking area. Luca, Bella and Seth were with her, surprisingly.
"There they are," Bella declared dryly, being the first to spot them and drawing the others' attention to them.
"Sorry," Johnny said, looking at Lydia specifically. "Lost track of time."
"We noticed," Lydia mused noncommittally.
"Are we going?" Luca asked, readily.
Carter raised his eyebrows. "You mean home? Who are you, and what have you done with Luca Santoro?"
Bella rolled her eyes at her younger brother. "He's a new changed kid," she stated.
"Also, he's running from Jessica," Lydia added.
"She's just so clingy," Luca huffed.
"Because you shoved your tongue down her throat," Lydia shot back with an eye roll.
Bella winced. "Gross. I don't want to hear that."
"Don't be a prude," Luca said.
Bella glared. "I'm not a prude for not wanting to hear about my little brother's love life."
"Is it really love life?" Lydia mused.
"Of course," Seth answered naturally, to surprise them all a little bit. He smiled neutrally. "Freshmen love life. Awkward and short-lived."