Boys of Two Cities

by Zack

  Mike perched on the bed. Gil came back from the window to take the only chair. The easy conversation in Denny’s, interrupted by the change of venue, took time to gather pace again. They were both visibly edgy at first. Mike went over and switched the TV onto a music channel and set the volume low. It helped fill in the gaps, and soon they were chatting about this and that, remembering hilarious times while filming in Paradise, the big club in London.

  Gil was sinking deeper into his old—and never gone away—feelings for Mike, happy to see some of the old color back in his friend’s cheeks. He suddenly had an overwhelming desire to run his hands over the new short-cut hair at the sides of his head.

  Eventually, Gil got around to a question that had been worrying him. “Did Rosen get his way, I mean, you know…?”

  “He did.” Mike replied unhappily. “He hurt me. He raped me in fact. But that was also the time I found out about the drugs and what he was up to. Still,” he said, brightening up, “he met his just end, and I think I may have played my part in that. After that awful scene at his place in Shepperton, I vowed to have revenge in any way I could, for me and for you.” He finished his drink and waved the empty glass at Gil. “I’m still fine to drive…if you want.”

  Gil swallowed the last of his gin, put the glass down on the small table. He stood up and saw the anxious look in Mike’s eyes, frightened that he might make for the door to leave. Mike stood too, unsteadily. Gil gazed at him, blinking slowly. “I think I’d better call my Mom and Dad.”

  Mike dared not breathe. An absurd vision crossed his inner eye of the naturalist David Attenborough whispering at the camera as he tried to coax some shy woodland creature from its cozy den. He felt if he said a single thing, it would break the fragile moment.

  Gil took two steps toward him. “I don’t think I can go…”

  He raised one arm and a second later they were in each other’s embrace. Gil crushed Mike’s hard body against him and they locked neck-to-neck, heads to shoulders. Mike was engulfed. His thoughts reeled with the gush of elation that made every nerve end tingle. For seconds he felt as though he were sinking through the floor.

  “Oh, Gil, oh…”

  “Hold me, Mike.”

  For minutes they stood swaying, hands squeezing, rubbing shoulders and arched backs. Gil scrubbed at the sides of Mike’s head, pulled at the lobes of his neat ears. Mike pushed Gil’s head up and their lips met in a kiss that immediately turned into tongue-lashing passion. Then, as if by mutual consent, they stood back from each other, breathing heavily. Gil stretched out a hand and gently traced the glinting lines of wetness trailing from Mike’s dark eyes. “You really do love me?”

  For an answer, Mike leaned up close and ever so gently tongued the tears welling in his friend’s beautiful gray eyes, the irises almost filling the orbs. He whispered, “I never stopped. Oh God, you don’t know how I’ve longed for this.”

  “What happened to your ear stud?” Gil rubbed the empty lobe.

  Mike smiled and reached into the bedside table drawer to pull out a small box. “It’s here. It was so much a part of us that when I knew what I had to do to keep Rosen off your back, I swore I’d never wear it again unless…if ever…I got you back again. Can I put it back in now?”

  Gil’s smile became expansive. “Yeah, put it in.”

  Mike lifted it out, unclipped the back and inserted the stud.

  “Here, let me.” Gil took the clasp from him and tenderly felt for the pin, then pressed the clip home. Then he kissed him on the mouth lingeringly. “I see you had the sense to get a double room.” He waved at the large bed, and laughed at Mike’s look of relief. “We have some catching up to do. Where’s the phone? I’d better sound a bit dizzy. What the hell am I saying? I am dizzy.”

  As he watched Gil talking to his mother, Mike thought he might actually combust spontaneously. He could still hardly believe that his quest might really be over.

  “They’re fine. I’m a big boy now, so I can stay up late, or even out all night,” Gil said as he replaced the phone in its cradle. “You’re giving me one of your funny looks.”

  Mike inclined his head. “Since you’ve been back, did you ever get it on with another guy, a blond kid, almost golden-haired?”

  Gil frowned a puzzled look. “Blond? Nope. You know I’m into black-haired guys with big packages wearing khaki safaris with cuffs. Blond guys just don’t do it for me, you bozo. Why?”

  “No one called…Danny?”

  Gil looked flummoxed, almost hurt. “I don’t know anyone by that name. What’s wrong?”

  Mike breathed out heavily, his heart racing. Then he waved a hand nonchalantly and shook his head. “Oh, nothing really. Just me being stupid. A dream I had, It was so…real, solid real. It must’ve been guilt mixed with a perverse need to punish myself, or something. It’s stuck with me to the point where I was convinced it really had happened. I even gave him a name.”

  Gil closed in. “I did have a few one-nighters, and I’ll admit to a couple of times with Jeff, but I guess I was always looking for you in the ones I met. Can I ask you something?” A sly look came into his eyes. “Does your shower work?”

  Mike grinned. “Was last time I used it.”

  They took their time undressing each other, renewing acquaintance with skin, downy body hair, mounding nipples, the taste of almost-forgotten skin. Then, naked and aroused, they tumbled into the tight space of the bathroom’s shower and spent half an hour under the streaming heat, soaping each other from top to toe.

  By the time the last swirl of water had gurgled down the drain, the shower had eased away the last vestiges of estrangement. For both boys it was as if the separation had never happened and it was with a feeling of intimate knowledge of their desires that they fell, still damp, onto the bed.

  For a few minutes they fought for supremacy, each desperate to have his way. In the end Mike gave in and let Gil go down on him as he sat straightening out Gil’s thatch of damp locks on the bobbing head. Then Gil grasped him under the thighs and tipped him back so he could get his tongue around those massive, packed balls and then down into the delightful cleft to run up it to Mike’s bunched spine. The last time he’d been there porn-star Steve had been acting as referee. The memory put power to the point of his probing tongue.

  Mike allowed a few seconds of tongue fuck before he reasserted himself. He forced his thighs down over Gil’s shoulders, then pulled at his long legs and moved him around into such a position that he could get between his legs and get his lips around that beloved American knob. Now they were really at it, sucking each other in adoration. Mike shifted himself further around so he could lick in between Gil’s hard nuts and his thighs, working his way down, licking the edges of Gil’s buns, ever more urgently reaching for his ass.

  Gil swallowed the pulsing head of Mike’s cock. He didn’t spend too much time on that, being eager to suck those big balls again, and then, as Mike was doing to him, tighter down into his asshole. For long minutes they rimmed mutually, the heat rising with every second. Gradually, they both relaxed back to a cock-heavy sixty-nine.

  Mike laved the length of Gil’s dick, which by now was slick with pre-cum. “Mmmmm, I’d almost forgotten how good your cock tastes when you’re drooling for it.” He flitted his tongue tip up and down, sucking in the exquisite juice, worshipping the shaft, nibbling at Gil’s foreskin and tonguing the cum slot and the bifurcation of the underside of the cock head lobes.

  Gil was doing much the same, enjoying lipping Mike’s broad helmet-shaped glans before going down the full fat length until his lips met the taut balls and all of Mike was inside his mouth and throat.

  “Oh, Gil, stop or you’ll make me bust my nuts and I don’t want to shoot yet.” They disengaged and sat in each other’s arms, panting happily, eyes glowing with lust and love. “Will you let me fuck you?”

  Gil nestled his head against Mike’s solid chest and chuckled quietly. “I should take my anger out on you by screwing your ass to
the bed.”

  “You can…”

  “No. Do me, Mike. I want you in me. Do me real hard.” Gil made to turn over onto his front, but Mike stopped him.

  “I want to see your face. I want to see it in your eyes.” Mike lifted Gil’s legs and splayed them either side as he knelt into position in the branch of the muscled thighs. Gil’s lovely cock reclined on his stomach, palpitating with anticipation. Mike’s erection was as hard as he could remember it ever being as he nudged the head to touch the waiting and saliva-lubed asshole. Gil wriggled deliciously and threw his arms back in abandon as Mike hauled his butt up into a mid-thigh position. Then, very gently at first, he eased his cock into the pucker. Gil’s head rocked from side to side as his lover penetrated deeper, but always his half-closed eyes came back to Mike’s pools of darkness to drink in the love he could see there.

  For Mike, the sight of Gil’s eyes glinting under the half-shield of his delicate pale eyelashes was enough to almost bring him off, and he had to struggle to restrain himself. He gripped Gil by the knees to increase leverage, and began fucking harder and faster. Gil snaked a hand down to jerk himself, but Mike waved him off. Since Ben, he had continued flexing exercises and, enveloped in love for the body he was so deep inside, he found it easy to bend forward and down, doubling himself up until his mouth sank around Gil’s cock.

  “Oooh… ggnn, oh, Mike.”

  Mike slurped on the stream of pre-cum bubbling from Gil’s piss slit and used it to grease the thumping cock shaft. He built the rhythm of fuck and suck until he was reaching more than halfway down Gil’s eight inches with his mouth, and his big balls slammed against the cleft between Gil’s ass cheeks as though he wanted them inside.

  Mike stopped sucking to give his neck a rest, its tendons corded rigid from the exertion. “Don’t dare cum on me now. I want this to last,” he panted.

  “Me too…ahhh…but I’m not sure…I can,” Gil gasped out. He felt every ribbed inch of Mike’s cock as it reamed his passage with a wonderful friction, that oh so familiar cock thet still managed to surprise as it slid in and out of him. Then he gave a deep-throated moan as Mike slammed against his prostate. His eyes flew wide open, gazing right into Mike’s—a vision embracing unbearable desire, all-encompassing love, and utter adoration that sealed their union as one being.

  “I love you…so much…aaww, yesss…love you…” Gil wheezed.

  “And I…worship you, my Gil, my always Gil…oh fuck, you’re so juicy and tight at the same…time.” With every grunted word, Mike thrust in deep, popping Gil’s prostate. He was boiling up to a nut-busting jism and suddenly there was no way of holding off. “Are… you ready for it…?”

  “Hhnn…yes.”

  Mike went into sex-love overdrive, forced his head down again, and took Gil’s pouring cock head back into his mouth, driven crazy by the savory taste on his tongue. In his orgasmic escalation, Gil heaved his lower back up off the bed to drive his straining cock deeper into his lover’s consuming mouth. “I’m cumming… oh, I am!”

  Cock-stuffed Mike only gurgled and fucked his heart out. Then he felt a distinct vibration surge up the shaft he sucked on and the first explosive taste of Gil’s jizz pushed his own balls over the top. Gil’s stuff inundated his working mouth and he swallowed convulsively as his own climax burst to flood his lover’s juiced insides with body-hot cum.

  Gil thrashed his head from side to side deliriously as he felt Mike’s seed pulse into him and his own creamy ejaculation filling his lover’s craving mouth at the same time. They both came and came. Time slowed into a haze of mutual orgasm. Mike gulped down the first of Gil’s copious delivery, but saved the rest, swirling it round his inner cheeks with his tongue.

  Finally, Mike made one last slow exquisite thrust into Gil and pulled out. He lowered Gil’s spasming legs and reached forward to lean over his heaving chest. Gil opened his screwed up eyes to see Mike’s adorable face looming above him. He parted his lips as Mike settled his creamed mouth to his partner’s and they met in a kiss fueled by Gil’s cum. They tongued, nipped, and kissed for minutes, savoring the maleness and shuddering thrill of each other.

  “Mmmm, you corn-fed American boys taste…” Mike looked up, searching for the right word. “Ambrosial.”

  Gil smiled lazily, content to be lying half under Mike, gazing up into his bright greeny-brown eyes with the amazing flecks of flashing viridian. Like a blind man discovering the shape of a person’s face, Gil traced fingers over Mike’s square jaw bones; wandered lightly across his rounded cheeks that should not work with the jawline, but did; the contours of his cute, surprisingly snub nose in close up; the finely arched eyebrows; and finally ran them through the clumped forelocks of his black hair, still damp from shower and sex.

  “You know what frightened me most?”

  Mike inclined his head encouragingly.

  “I began to lose your image. When I thought of you—every day—it was as though your face was fading from my memory. I could see it so clearly but at the same time it seemed to escape me.” He sighed happily, tracing again the shape of Mike’s head and face. “Why was that?”

  “Protecting yourself. You thought you’d never see me again.”

  This perplexed Gil. “Wasn’t it the same for you?”

  Mike shook his head. “No, never. You were always with me… down here,”—pointing at his groin—“and up here,”—tapping the side of his head—“and mostly right here”—brushing his chest.

  Gil recognized the words and gestures from Aberdare Gardens and, again, he was too choked with emotion, too filled up with love, to respond, other than to lean back in and renew the deep kiss, crushing Mike in his arms, as Mike dug his nails into Gil’s back.

  He lay relaxed on the hotel bed admiring the flex of toned muscles as Mike mixed another drink. The soft light in the room played highlights and shadows over his naked body and Gil relished the sight. The graceful S-curve of his back from the left-inclined shoulder blades, down to the right-inclined spine, and back again to the angle of his firm buns.

  Mike turned around, full glasses in his hands, saw Gil staring at him, and grinned sexily. “What?”

  “Just eatin you up… buddy. Just getting an eyeful of what… well, what I thought I’d never see again. No matter how I acted before, there’s no one else in the whole wide world I want to be with.”

  Mike handed him his glass and sat on the edge of the bed. He ruffled Gil’s flaxen hair fondly, lifting up a handful and letting it cascade through his fingers to fall back in place, and said softly, “Come back with me.”

  For a long moment Gil said nothing and was hesitant when he did. “I don’t know, Mike. I’m still working for a bit and…what’d I tell my Mom and Dad? What would they think?”

  “You could make up something, if you don’t want to tell them about us.”

  “I want to…I’m just not sure how. Telling Janice was tough enough.”

  Mike nodded his head. “I understand. Will’s always known about how I am, but I haven’t ever said anything to my mum and dad.”

  “Wouldn’t they think it strange, me turning up again?”

  “Not really. They’ve their own lives and, after all, movie people are a bit like gypsies, here one moment, there the next.”

  Gil took a swallow of his drink then sighed. “Don’t think I don’t wanna go back with you. I loved being in London, but I have to finish this Blade Runner thing…and then I have to think it over—what to tell everyone. Hey, why don’t you stay here?”

  Mike spread the fingers of his left hand and marked off the points. “One, you have no idea how hard it is to get a green card to work here; two our Union may be pretty much a closed shop, but nothing compared to yours—I know guys who have tried and failed; three, I’m a Londoner through and through—”

  “I’m a Los Angeleno.”

  “Yes, and also a Londoner…now.”

  “And what about Trevor?”

  “Oh fuck Trevor—no, I didn’t mean that!
Trev will be thrilled to see us back together again.” Mike leaned over and brushed his lips over Gil’s cheek. “You remember those groceries you bought that last day? I threw it all away. I couldn’t bear the thought of using any of it without you. Please come back, if not with me…soon as you can.”

  Gil stroked Mike’s face in appeasement. “Forget the groceries. Remember the good parts.”

  “Yeah. The best. But I thought you might like to know one thing. I fixed my parent’s gardener to do the work, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the backyard.” He emphasized the last word, imitating Gil’s way of saying it.

  ~ ~ ~

  The never-ending swish of traffic on Ventura Freeway was muted through the triple-glazed windows of the luxury Amarano suite. Only the occasional closer sounds of delivery trucks out on North Pass Avenue broke into the reverie. Telling the tale of his separation from the English lover of his youth had brought it all back again, painfully. Gil Graham ran a hand through the thick hatch of his hair, no longer as silky smooth as it had been some thirty years ago, but still recognizably a natural towheaded blond.

  The wreck of room service breakfast still lay on the table. Gil wondered whether the handsome young man seated opposite might even be feeling pangs of hunger for a late lunch.

  As Gil fell silent, Mike Benson stirred himself. “But it had a happy ending? Or did it? Did you go back with your Mike to London?”

  When Gil spoke, his words did not seem to address the questions. “It’s funny. When we were shooting those street scenes for Blade Runner, everything seemed to be chaotic. I never thought the end result would ever be worth the effort, and it went through dramas in editing and post-production, with the money men and the director wrangling over all sorts of things. Now look at it. A classic, whichever version you see.

  “Mike returned to London a few days later and I stayed on to finish my job. It was terrible. I snuck off for the day and went to the airport with him, dropped off the rental car, and took the shuttle to the terminal. We hung around, as you do, waiting for the flight to be called. As I remember it, we didn’t have much to say to each other. I guess we’d already said it all by then and the sense of coming loss was too much to bear. You get tongue-tied. And then the call came and we walked to the gate where only passengers can go through. And we hugged, not caring what anyone else might think. Perhaps they saw brothers parting. We both struggled to keep from crying… and then Mike broke away, swung his carry-on over his shoulder jauntily, and strode off through the barrier.”