by Darien Cox
Tyler felt Tim stiffen inside him just before he came, and it sent an aftershock through his body. Tim’s hand fell away in the throes of orgasm, so Tyler gabbed his own cock, working the last of his release out while Tim moaned and bit his shoulder, shaking against Tyler’s body as he peaked.
The arm around Tyler’s chest loosened as the climax ebbed, then Tim’s cock slipped out as he rolled away, letting out a long, shuddering breath. Tyler turned over to look at him. The last time they fucked Tim had held him after, but this time he looked like all his muscles had stopped working, and Tyler laughed at the sight of him splayed out on his back, panting and sweating, eyes closed. “You gonna make it, Ranger Tim?”
“Not sure.” Tim didn’t open his eyes or move, other than the rising and falling of his chest as he caught his breath. “Let’s just say...damn.” He grinned. “You destroy me so well.”
Tyler chuckled, a flicker of embarrassment at having his sex-words directed back at him. Propping up on his elbow, his fingers trailed down Tim’s sweat-soaked stomach. “Then I guess we’ll end up destroying each other.”
“That’s fine. What an amazing way to go.”
Snuggling close, Tyler rested his head on Tim’s chest, hugging him with one arm.
Eventually, Tim caught his breath and returned the hug, squeezing Tyler tight. “You sure know how to host a sleepover.”
“Yeah?” Tyler chuckled. “I didn’t ruin it?”
“No way, baby. I’ll be right back.” He kissed Tyler’s cheek, then got out of bed and went to the bathroom.
Tyler grabbed a tee shirt and lazily cleaned himself up before falling onto his back again. He was staring at the ceiling, smiling when Tim returned and climbed in beside him. Pressing his nose into Tyler’s neck, he mumbled, “That smile mean you’re still with me?”
“I didn’t go anywhere. Mentally or physically.”
Tim pulled him in closer. “Good.”
“So this was okay then?”
Tim lifted his head and smirked down at him. “You really have to ask that?”
“I don’t mean the sex.” He snickered. “I mean the whole normal, sleepover thing.”
Sighing, Tim eased back down, nuzzling into his neck again. “I don’t want normal, Tyler. I just want you.”
Tyler considered if he should pretend to be offended by the statement. But ultimately decided it was the best answer he could have hoped for.
Chapter Twelve
Tim awoke from a nightmare about a pair of aliens chasing him through the woods. They were of the vintage variety, cheesy silver costumes and antennae on their heads, green faces. Ridiculous looking. Yet in the dream, he’d been terrified.
Sitting up in bed, he rubbed his eyes. Tyler was asleep in shadows beside him. The room was dark but for a small lamp on the desk across the room. He could see no windows so it was impossible to tell what time it was, but he could hear rain and the soft rumble of thunder. Checking his phone, he saw it was just after three in the morning. Sighing, he eased back down into the pillow.
Beside him, Tyler shifted and rolled onto his back. His hand crept over and held Tim’s.
“You awake?” Tim whispered.
“Yeah.” Tyler rubbed his nose with his other hand. “Told you, I don’t sleep much. Sounds like a spring thunderstorm out there.”
“Did that wake you or did I? Sorry. Had a dream.”
Tyler sat up, looking at Tim through puffy eyes. “Was it bad?”
“Shouldn’t have been. It was about these stupid aliens that looked like something from an old TV show. But they were chasing me and I was fucking terrified.”
“Oh, I know all about that. Waking up from dreams that should have been nothing but being scared to fucking death.” Tyler twisted and leaned over the edge of the mattress, digging through his bag on the floor. He then sat cross-legged with the sheet draped over his knees and began rolling a joint.
Tim sat up as well. “You planning to medicate me?”
“Couldn’t hurt.” He smiled at Tim. “You think the nightmare came from worrying about what’s going on? Up on the mountain? What happened yesterday?”
“I don’t know.” Tim rubbed his eyes “Maybe. Probably.”
“We got one of the drones that was stalking you. Those assholes as you call them, two of which are sleeping upstairs? They’re gonna figure this out. And my bet is they’ll do it quick, especially with Baz helping out. So try not to worry. You’ll have your life back.”
Tim’s stomach dropped as something occurred to him. He believed Tyler about the guys, that this weird scary problem would get resolved. But then Tyler wouldn’t be needed here in the village anymore. What would that mean for them? They’d grown so close so fast. But it was more than that. This wasn’t just a fling, this was...something. A big something for Tim. But huge as it was, he didn’t feel on solid footing enough to start asking about the future, and if they even had one. Solid footing? Ha. Felt more like quicksand, and any wrong move...
“What are you thinking about?”
Tim looked up to see Tyler scowling at him. “Nothing.”
“Nothing, huh? Your expression says otherwise.”
“I have a really good time with you, Tyler.”
Tyler stared at him, expression unreadable. “I have a good time with you too.”
“Do you think it’s more than just great sex?”
“You asked me that before. I said yes.”
“You’re right. I just...felt that thing again, so I had to say it.”
“I imagine it’s probably difficult to trust what I say.” Tyler shrugged. “Since I don’t say all that much.”
“Which is why I should be grateful for what you do say, and not try to push you further than you’re comfortable with.”
“Don’t worry about it. You had a bad dream. You’re feeling vulnerable, so you’re redirecting that into something else.”
“Oh, am I?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
Tim tried not to take it as a dismissal. “It was weird. I never have scary dreams.”
Tyler slid back and leaned against the pillows, then lit the joint and handed it to Tim. “This will help. I’m sure your dreams are out of the ordinary because your life’s been out of the ordinary lately. But if the nightmares continue, let me know. There are ways of controlling them.”
Tim took a puff then handed the joint back to Tyler. “You’re telling me you know how to control your dreams?”
He nodded. “I teach classes on mind-control at headquarters. Much of it focuses on controlling dreams. Lucid dreaming. You heard of it?”
“It’s like...being half awake while you dream or something?”
“Not exactly. It’s about training yourself to know when you’re dreaming. By creating a trigger. For me, it’s looking at my hands. Do that within the dream and you can manipulate it. Change it if it’s a bad one. Or simply force yourself to wake up if need be.”
“And you can do that?”
“Yes.”
“How did you learn?”
Tyler’s soft expression hardened a bit. “The Greys use a form of mind-control that taps into the same part of your brain that controls dreams. If you can learn to get control of your sleeping mind, that dream state, you can fight the mind-control. That’s what I figured out. That’s how I was able to fight back against them. And that’s why Ogden has me teach classes now.”
Tim went still. He accepted the joint from Tyler’s outstretched hand but stayed silent.
“You don’t have to do that,” Tyler said.
“Do what?”
“Go all wide-eyed and freaky when I talk about it. Unless it bothers you. If so, I won’t mention it again.”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that it’s huge, Tyler, and a source of pain for you so even though I’m dying to ask questions I’m also shitting myself because I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“I know.” Tyler shrugged, then took the joint back from Tim and pin
ched it off with his thumb and forefinger. “I figured that was it. But I’m the one putting this out there right now. And I trust you.”
“You do?” Tim smiled.
Laughing, Tyler nodded. “Yeah. That makes you happy?”
“Totally.”
“I only brought it up because of your nightmare. But you can ask what you want, within reason.”
Tim jumped in at the prompt, recognizing this was an important moment. Tyler was allowing him to step over one of his red lines. That trust was not to be taken lightly, so he reminded himself to proceed with caution, despite his blazing curiosity. “You’re saying at first you didn’t know it was happening? With the Greys?”
“Not at first. They have the ability to put you in a dream state to control you, but it’s more than that. They go deep. Almost like being under anesthesia it’s so powerful.”
“Shit. That must have been tough to break through.”
“Oh yes. Took a long time to get there. And a long time to even validate it was happening, because they can also screw with your memories. So even if you have a feeling something bad happened while you slept, you can’t pinpoint what it was exactly. They overlay it with false memories. The Greys are the ultimate mind-fuckers.”
“So how did you figure out finally that it was happening? That you were...being taken. Had you already been studying lucid dreaming?”
“No. I began studying it because of the Greys, I just didn’t know at first they were the ones causing my nightmares. Well, they didn’t start out as nightmares. They started as just normal dreams. Well, not normal but not menacing. Christ, I forgot how hard this is to explain. Haven’t talked about it in so long.”
Tim reached for the joint, and Tyler chuckled when he lit it up again, inhaling deeply.
“I think someone’s starting to like the SGW,” Tyler said.
Blowing a funnel of smoke out, Tim nodded, feeling that unique calm come over him, like the first day he smoked in preparation for seeing Baz. “I really want you to keep talking. I want to hear about the dreams. And I want us both calm for this conversation.” He handed the joint to Tyler. “Tell me.”
Tyler stared at Tim as he took a hit and blew it out. “You sure you want this in your head? You did just have nightmares about aliens after all.”
“You can’t have many people to talk to about it.”
“No. I don’t.”
“And you don’t mind? Talking about it?”
“With you? To a point I don’t mind. But to be blunt...this is some scary shit. I’ve been able to numb myself to it with work over the years. But you’re not...you’re...”
“I’m ignorant and naïve when it comes to this stuff,” Tim said. “You’re worried about me. You don’t have to be.”
“But I care about you,” Tyler said softly. “I have to live with this shit in my head but you shouldn’t have to.”
“Tyler...” He wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if this was the time. If saying it would make Tyler want to open up to him, or if it would make him shut down.
“What?” Tyler scowled as he pinched off what was left of the joint and set it aside. “Say what you were gonna say.”
“I want to respect your boundaries. But everything I learn about you makes me want to know more. Not because it’s weird or scary. This isn’t some perverse curiosity about the subject matter. I want to know because it’s part of you. And I’ve never felt this way about a person before, but I have this aching to get closer to you.”
He hadn’t managed to finish the sentence without heat flushing his face, but shit, at least he’d gotten the words out. He felt both brave and regretful as he awaited Tyler’s response.
His gamble seemed to have paid off, because Tyler visibly relaxed, easing back into the pillows. “I feel that way about you, you know. Want to know more about you.”
Tim laughed. “Sadly, there isn’t that much to know about me.”
“I bet there is,” Tyler said. “Maybe before I leave you can take me out in the village. Show me your version of it. What you love about this place.”
Tim smiled, but the before I leave was like a glass of ice-water thrown in his face. “Yeah, okay. We can make that happen. But I still want to hear about you. About the dreams and...everything. I really do. If you’re comfortable telling me.”
“Okay.” Stretching his arms over his head, Tyler sighed, then dropped his hands on his lap. “I was fifteen when the sleep problems started. Once a month or so I’d wake up terrified. Literally in a cold sweat, feeling like I’d been through something horrifying. But I’d have a perfect memory of my last dream before waking and it was always something benign. Bunch of cats I was playing with. Or walking through a pet shop looking at birds in cages. Nothing that should have caused that fear. Fear that made me vomit a few times.”
“Jesus,” Tim said before he could stop himself. “I’m sorry, continue.”
“I went to a sleep clinic but they couldn’t help me. Started doing my own research. That’s when I learned about lucid dreaming. I figured if I could learn to control my dreams, maybe I could fix this. If I could change one or two things within my mind while I was dreaming, maybe I could shift it in another direction, enough to stop waking up like that.”
“You learned to do it?”
“Yeah. Took a while, but I did. For a time, I didn’t have any nightmares. Well, I had a few but they felt...normal. None of that fear I’d experienced upon waking. Regular dreams too, I was able to manipulate them, change the storyline. Got good enough at it to wake myself up when I wanted, which was great. Then...” Cracking his knuckles, Tyler’s jaw tightened.
“Something happened,” Tim said.
“You could say that.” Tyler nodded. “I remember that night clearly. I remember the dream I was having. Lying in a field of grass, there were four kittens moving around my body. Just walking circles around me, occasionally stopping to sniff me or just play with me. I was laughing. Fucking laughing in the dream. Then I looked at my hands—my lucid dreaming trigger.”
Tim’s pulse quickened. “Did you wake yourself up?”
“Yes.”
Tim rested his palm on Tyler’s knee. “And?”
“I wasn’t at home in my bed. I was in a dimly lit room, on a table. Like a surgical suite, but weird. The walls and ceiling were strange, sloped and curved, odd writing and colored lights embedded everywhere. And it wasn’t four kittens moving around me. It was four Greys.”
“Fuck,” Tim whispered. “That must have been—”
“Terrifying, yeah, because I knew I was awake. I knew I wasn’t dreaming anymore. I tried to move but couldn’t. I’d broken their mind-control, but that part of your body that paralyzes you when you sleep? So you don’t get up and run around, say if you’re dreaming about running? That part was still intact. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. But I was aware.”
“Did they know? That you were awake?”
“Not that time. My eyes were open, and I was breathing really hard, but they just kept on with...what they were doing. They didn’t seem worried.”
There was no way Tim would ask him exactly what the Greys were doing. He could only try not to make this harder on Tyler. “You said they didn’t know you were awake that time. So things changed?”
“Yes. I gradually learned more control over my body during these episodes. But it happened slowly. I was abducted again over the next year, several times. It was awful. Painful and violating, the things they did to my body. But I didn’t want them to know I was aware. I used that time. Used the pain to wake my body up. To bring my body out of the dream state, along with my mind. Eventually I found I could move things. Fingers. Toes. But it wasn’t enough. Not yet.”
“But ultimately you got your body control back? Completely?”
“Yeah. But it got difficult to pretend, because they could manipulate that too. How much control I had over my physical body. Sometimes they walked me around their ship and showed me things, confi
dent I wouldn’t remember I guess. I must have shown too much reaction, because they realized eventually that I was awake, so they tried to soothe me.”
“Soothe you how?”
“Putting thoughts in my head. That everything was all right. That I wasn’t in danger. That they wouldn’t hurt me. That they only needed to study me because I was...perfect.” He shuddered.
Tim recalled that moment at his house, the intimate moment on the couch when he’d called Tyler perfect. And Tyler ordered him never to say that word. “But they did hurt you?” He winced, hating this, but wanting to know more.
“Well, once I was awake, yeah, I felt pain. See the dream state, that’s how they controlled the pain too. Like a drug. They thought I couldn’t feel anything. They didn’t know I’d been practicing. They didn’t know exactly how awake I was. They tried to overlay my thoughts with false images when they were done with me. Like the kittens. Birds and puppies and shit. I let them think it worked.”
“Tyler, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
“Please don’t pity me. Just let me finish.”
“Okay, I’m sor...I mean, go on.”
“I found a surgeon to remove the implants they’d put in me. I think up until that point, they’d believed they were successful in wiping my memory before they dropped me through the roof of my house back into my bed. But that last time, when they abducted me, that final time...”
“It’s okay.” Tim squeezed his knee. “You’re safe. Tell me what happened.”
“I was stupid. I thought they wouldn’t find me without the implants. And maybe they couldn’t, because I’d traveled to find that surgeon. Was gone a few weeks, with no problems. But of course they fucking knew where I lived, and eventually I had to go home. I had nowhere else to go. I’d taken off for weeks at a time before, so I wasn’t sure if my parents were even looking for me. But I didn’t wake them up when I got home late that night. Just went up to my room and went to sleep. Decided I’d deal with my parents in the morning. But I didn’t get to. Because I didn’t get to wake up in my bed the next morning.”