by Jeff Mann
“You sure?” Lucas raised an eyebrow. “It might be private.”
“I’m sure. Go on.”
“Okay. It’s real short. It says, ‘Brice, I’m so sorry. Sorry for everything. I hope you’re recovering. I hope you’re happy. Z.’ That’s it.”
“Ghosts, ghosts. We all got ghosts.” Brice stood up and drained his mimosa. “I’m gonna take a nap on the couch in the great room. Wake me in a couple of hours, okay? If the rain’s stopped, let’s drive out to the state forest and take a walk. I’m still feeling weak, but exercise might help. Maybe you can teach me a few more wildflowers.”
“THAT WAS GREAT COCONUT CAKE,” BRICE SAID, pulling his T-shirt over his head and shucking off his camo shorts.
Lucas flipped on the bedside lamp and opened the window to the breeze and the shush of night rain. “Well, Uncle Phil figured, since we missed my birthday cake before….”
“Right. Cake redux. Plus filet mignon, baked potato, and broccoli with hollandaise sauce? He went all out. I’m liking this ‘welcome-home’ diet, though I may have to buy larger pants. My belly’s getting prodigious.”
“Bullshit. You lost weight during those weeks in the hospital, and you know it. You may have to press that furball belly up against me here in a minute.” Lucas sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his hiking boots. “So, would you do me a coupla favors?”
“Sure. Name ‘em.”
“Tomorrow, would you give me some guitar lessons? I used to pluck on Daddy’s banjo when I was a kid, and I wasn’t too bad. I think I’d like to learn to play guitar so you and I could play together.”
Brice peeled off his underwear and climbed into bed. “That would be fun. If my damn hands behave.”
“They’re better, aren’t they?”
“Some. So’s my head, though my vision isn’t back to normal. But I’m feeling a lot better all over now that I’m back home. That little hike in the woods today was a good idea. Now that the weather’s nice, let’s get outside more.”
“We will.” Lucas stood to peel off his black T-shirt and climb out of his ratty black jeans. “I’m gonna spend time in the garden tomorrow, and you can help me if you want. But speaking of getting out, that’s my second favor. How about we drive up to Morgantown in the next week or so and check the place out? If I go to school up there, I’d like to know my way around. You can show me the places where you used to live and hang out, and we can stay at Uncle Phil’s place on Cheat Lake. I e-mailed Travis, and he said he’d love to have us over for dinner. He has an apartment in some woodsy neighborhood called South Park.”
“Lucky kid.” Brice stretched out, folded his arms behind his head, and closed his eyes. “When I was a student, I always wanted to live there. Sure, Lucas. We’ll do that.”
“Good. So how tired are you?”
“Ah, not terribly tired.” Brice shrugged. “The nap today helped. My head hurts hardly at all.”
“Good. Keep your eyes closed, okay?”
Brice smiled. “Okay. What you up to?”
“A little surprise. Be right back.”
Brice listened to the sound of Lucas descending the stairs. Brice listened to the rain outside, pattering down among the forest trees. Brice listened to his own breath—a few breaths among the finite number allotted him—and sent up yet another prayer, full of a survivor’s thankfulness.
A loud pop resounded downstairs. In another minute, Lucas’ feet ascended the steps. “Don’t look yet,” he said.
The sound of water in the bathroom commenced and continued for a few minutes. The toilet flushed. Footsteps crossed the room, and a finger traced the upper edge of Brice’s beard.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Open your eyes.”
Brice did so. He grinned with concupiscent delight. “Ohhhh, man.”
Lucas was standing by the bed wearing nothing but his black ball cap, silver neck chains, knotwork thumb ring, and the black jockstrap Brice had given him for his birthday. He held a tray upon which sat an opened bottle of champagne, two glasses, and a tiny box.
“Yet more champagne?” said Brice, looking not at the bottle but at Lucas’s well-packed jock.
“You bet.” Lucas sat the tray on the bedside table, poured out champagne, and handed Brice a flute. “I thought it was high time you and I had a welcome-home celebration of our very own.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
Lucas sat beside Brice on the edge of the bed. They clinked drinks and sipped.
“I have something for you,” Lucas said, picking up the tiny box.
“Another welcome-home gift?”
“More than that. Open it.”
“Okay. Hmm? Well, I’ll be….” He plucked the gift out. It was a chunky ring, with a silver setting resembling palm fronds that framed a big oval of polished hematite.
“Some folks might say our rings should match, but I saw this in a Charleston jewelry store and thought you’d like it. Hematite’s supposed to be healing and grounding, and it’s good for relationships. At least that’s what the Internet says. Folks used to believe that it grew where warriors’ blood was spilled. Since you’re my warrior,” Lucas added, patting Brice’s scarred forearm, “I figured it’d be appropriate.”
“And since I got my blood spilled a few weeks back? I love it.” Brice slipped it on his right forefinger. “Butch. Substantial.”
“Like you. It means…. It’s a commitment ring, Brice. You don’t remember what I told you in the middle of that brawl, do you?”
“I…I remember them surrounding us. I remember I punched some of them. I remember being angry and terrified all at once. What happened after I got hit in the head, I only know about ‘cause you’ve told me.”
“Okay, let me refresh your memory. The fight started when the two big ones attacked us. You punched the driver, and I cut the bald guy with my keys. You remember that?”
“Maybe. Sort of. The memory’s fractured. It’s just a bunch of scattered sensations.”
“Then you and I stood back to back, ready for the next onslaught, and you said to me, ‘I love you.’ Do you remember what I said then?”
Brice sat up. “I…I don’t. I…. No, wait. Oh, my God. I do. I do. You said….”
Lucas nodded. “I said ‘I love you too.’”
“How could I have forgotten that?” Brice rubbed his forehead. “My God.”
“How? A blow to the head with a baseball bat? I think that’s a pretty good excuse. I didn’t just say it in the heat of the moment, Brice. I been wanting to say it for weeks. I think I knew I loved you when you played me that song, ‘Redneck Angel.’ And then I almost lost you. I sat by your bedside, regretting I hadn’t told you before, regretting how I’d let my hang-ups get between us. I’d study your handsome, sleeping face and hold your hand and pray you’d wake. My big ole sleeping beauty….”
Brice chuckled. “Beauty? More like a sleeping beast. Or bear.”
“A beautiful snoozing bear, yeah,” Lucas said, caressing the fur around Brice’s navel. “Anyway, I promised myself that as soon as we had some time alone, I was gonna tell you how I feel. So here we are. I love you, Brice. I’m sorry I waited so goddamn long to say it. I’ve only known you for a few months, but you were dead-on when you said we met at the right time in our lives. I want a future with you.”
“Really? You’re serious? You’re sure?”
“Hell, yes, I’m sure. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life.”
“Lucas, lover, you got it!” Smiling happily, Brice shifted around to sit beside Lucas. He hugged him hard, kissed him, and lifted his glass in a toast.
“When it’s right, it’s right. Here’s to us. Two brawling, ornery country boys who waded through a lot of crap to find one another.”
“Well said.” Lucas gulped from his glass. “So drink up, ‘cause you have one more surprise. You remember what I promised before we got to the Ramp Supper at Helvetia? A certain long-awaited prize?”
“That I do remember. Oh,
yes. Your rosebud, I think you put it.” Brice reached over and stroked the base of Lucas’s spine.
“Exactly. Well, if you’re feeling up to it, tonight’s the night.” Lucas bent forward and brushed Brice’s bearded mouth with his own. “I’m so ready and so randy. It’s been so long since we made love. Nearly a month, with you in the hospital. I been wanting you so bad. Thinking about you on top of me. Inside me. I’ve even….”
Lucas ran his fingers over Brice’s chest and squeezed his pecs. “While you were in the coma, I used to go back to my motel room near the hospital—Uncle Phil paid for it; I’d stay there when visiting hours were over—and I’d lie in bed and alternate between crying, scared shitless that you’d never wake up, and jacking off, thinking about sucking your cock and taking your dick up my butt. I even, uh, broke myself in again with that dildo I brought to Blackwater Falls.”
“Really? God, that’s hot.” Brice gulped his glass empty. Reaching over, he took Lucas’s right nipple between his fingers and tugged.
“Umm, yeah. My nips need some rough use. So you’re up for it?” Lucas slipped his hand between Brice’s legs and grasped the tumescence there. “Feels like you are. Up. Very up.”
“God, yes. My hands may still shake and my scar may still throb, but my dick seems to be working fine.”
“I think you’re right. Let’s conduct a lil’ test.”
Lucas dropped to his knees. Grasping Brice’s balls in one hand, he took Brice’s cock into his mouth. “Mmmm, yaahh,” he mumbled in audible relief. “Mmmmmm, yaaaahhh.”
Grunting, Brice gripped Lucas’s head with both hands. Gently, Lucas gnawed the cockhead, then began a soft sucking.
“Ohh-h-h-h, yes,” Brice sighed. “I’ve missed how that feels.”
Lucas bobbed tighter, harder, and faster. When Brice’s thighs began to tense, he pulled off, grinning. “I’ve missed how that tastes. Good to know you’re ready to go, since I just spent time in the bathroom cleaning myself out and lubing myself up.”
Brice’s eyes gleamed. “Ohhhh, sweet. Really? You’re already lubed?”
“Check for yourself,” Lucas said, getting to his feet. He straddled Brice’s lap, facing him.
Again they kissed, Lucas pinching Brice’s nipples as Brice cupped Lucas’s buttocks and slipped a finger between them. Sighing, he fondled the fuzzy crevice and found the lubed-up hole.
“Go on,” Lucas whispered, biting Brice’s lower lip. “Get inside me.”
“God, you’re hot. God, you turn me on. God, I love you,” Brice said, pushing his finger up Lucas’s hole and moving it and out. Lucas nodded, stiffened, and groaned.
“Feel good?” Brice muttered against Lucas’s cheek.
“Jesus, yes.” Lucas leaned against Brice. “Deeper. Hit my…yeah, there. There. Uhhhhh.”
Brice took Lucas’s hard-on in his free hand and stroked it. Lucas wrapped his arms around Brice’s neck and pressed his lips against Brice’s bald head. Riding Brice’s finger, Lucas gasped, bucked, and writhed.
“Yeah, deeper. Two fingers now, okay? Put ‘em in me. Hell, yes, Daddy, finger my hole. Get in there deep. Get me good and open for you. Get me ready to get plowed. I want you to pound me into tomorrow.”
“I love your sexy talk,” Brice said. He finger-fucked and jacked Lucas till the bearded boy was sweating and trembling.
“God, I need your dick. Oh, man, I need your dick,” Lucas moaned, nuzzling Brice’s cheek. “Are you ready to put your dick in me?”
Brice chuckled, working in a third finger. “You know the answer to that. I’ve been ready to fuck you since the day we met. Feels like you’re ready too.”
“Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I’m soooo ready,” Lucas muttered, his ass-ring pulsing about Brice’s bunched fingers. “How you wanna fuck me, Daddy?”
“Sweetest question I’ve ever heard.” Brice rubbed preseminal juice over the head of Lucas’s prick. “We’ll start with…you on your knees. We’ll finish with you on your back. I wanna see your face when you come.”
“And I wanna see your face when you come. Okay, let’s do this.”
Lucas slipped off Brice’s fingers and scrambled off the big man’s lap. He positioned himself on the edge of the bed, his elbows on the mattress and his pale butt in the air.
“Put it in me. Put it in me, man,” Lucas begged, gazing back at Brice. “I need it bad. So damn bad. Put it in me and screw me stupid.”
Brice stood by the bed on wobbly legs. He looked down over the naked and kneeling youth, full of wonder, gratitude, and awe. I could have died. But I survived. And now I’m being given this most splendid of gifts. With shaking hands, he caressed Lucas’s buttocks. He bent and kissed them. He ran his bearded chin over the fuzzy crevice between them. He reached between Lucas’s thighs and tugged on his erection.
“What you wanting for?” Lucas moaned. “Put it in me, man.”
“Just taking the moment in. Where’s the condoms?”
“Forget the condoms. We’re both clean.”
“No condom? You sure?”
“I’m sure.” Lucas nodded, brow pressed against the bed. “Do it! Don’t make me beg.”
“Why not?” Brice said, working lube-slick fingers inside Lucas again.
“Brice!”
“You’re begging now?” Brice pushed in and out.
“I’m begging!” Lucas looked back at Brice again, face flushed. “Fuck me!”
Brice slid his fingers out. He positioned his cockhead against Lucas’s little hole, took a deep breath, and pushed. There were only a few seconds of resistance before Lucas’s tightness opened and took him in.
Lucas whimpered and shook. He pushed back onto Brice till the bigger man’s cock was completely inside him.
“Ohhhhh, yes,” Brice gasped.
“Mmmmmmm, yeah,” Lucas grunted, rocking back and forth. “Give it to me.”
Brice began a slow thrusting. Lucas bucked back against him, jacking himself and panting.
“Harder, man. Rougher. Faster. I can take it. Plow me. Fuck me hard.”
Brice obliged, slamming into the boy and pounding his ass. Weak his big body still might have been, but within minutes he was tensing with imminent climax.
“Damn, you’re so sweet. So hot. So tight. I’m almost there.”
“Me too,” Lucas gasped, fisting his dick. “After all these weeks wanting you, wanting this, I’m about to shoot.”
“Not yet.” Pulling out, Brice wiped sweat from the furry cleft between his pecs. “On your back, boy,” he ordered. “Legs in the air.”
Lucas flipped over. He grinned up at Brice, raised his legs, and grabbed his ankles. He rolled back, exposing his taint. “Finally got me where you want me, huh?”
“You’re damn right.” Brice knelt before Lucas, pressed his shoulders against the boy’s legs, and worked his cock back inside. He pushed forward, bending his lover double, until Lucas’s knees were level with his ears. Kissing deeply, the two men rocked together, Brice thrusting wildly in and out, Lucas jacking himself just as wildly. Their eyes locked. Both grinned in rapture and in triumph.
“We…did…it. We’re here,” Brice gasped.
“We sure are,” Lucas said, crossing his ankles behind Brice’s neck.
“I’m gonna….”
“Me too!”
With ecstatic shouts, both men came, Lucas only a few seconds before Brice.
Brice slumped atop his lover, panting. He heaved a hoarse laugh. Lucas laughed too, squeezing Brice’s butt. Brice rolled off him, wiping sweat from Lucas’s temple, and gathered the boy into his arms.
“That was everything I’d hoped for,” Brice said quietly. “Everything I’ve been waiting for.”
“Me too,” Lucas sighed. “Everything.”
They lay there together for a long time, stroking one another’s bare chests, playing with one another’s limp dicks, and listening to the rain.
Lucas ran a finger over the sealed wound marring Brice’s forearm.
“Gues
s we’re both scarred now, huh?”
Brice touched Lucas’s ribs. “That seems right. But now all the scars are worth it.”
Lucas flipped off the light, rolled onto his side, laid his head on Brice’s shoulder, and plucked at the hair between his pecs. “I love the sound of the rain. Good for the garden. Tomorrow, I’m gonna put in squash and melons. Wanna help?”
“Sure,” Brice said. “We’ll plant and harvest together.”
“I DON’T KNOW IF COUNTRY WEEKLY WILL EVEN run this,” Larry Johnson said, in between sips of cappuccino. “You used to be a big story, especially right after the gay-bashing, but now….”
“2004 has more interesting tales to tell, huh? No more cover stories for me?”
“I suspect part of you is relieved.”
The two men sat in a shadowy corner of The Black Bear, a coffee shop in Morgantown, West Virginia. Around them, university students hunched over small tables, tapping on laptops or listening to their headphones.
“Part of me’s glad to be out of the spotlight. It almost killed me.”
Brice poked his scone with his fork. He looked out the big plate glass window into the April afternoon. City traffic crawled up Spruce Street. In the distance, the hills were green.
“Another part of me—that neurotic brat of a starved ego I carry inside—will miss the attention, the affirmation, the fame. I got an early taste of all that just down the block, at the Last Resort, a coffeehouse where I used to play in college. Guess I got addicted. The sound of applause is a hard thing to give up.”
“Well, I’ll nudge the magazine to carry the story. It might help you raise money for your retreat.”
“Please do. We need it bad. Our budget’s shoestring.”
“I’ll do my best.” Larry pulled out his small recorder. “So tell me about all that’s happened since we last talked, since you came out of that coma.”
Brice took a big bite of scone and chewed, his mind ranging back over the preceding six years.
“Well, so…it took me a good long while to get over that attack. My head hurt and my hands shook and my vision was screwed up for nine months. Lucas and I both still have nightmares, to be honest. We’re cautious to the point of paranoia every time we leave the house. I don’t think that’s likely to change. Don’t put this in the story, but…I’ve been on and off antidepressants ever since.”