Black John

by Amy Lane

  He hadn’t told Galen he was leaving yet. He’d only recently found a ticket.

  But then, he hadn’t really spoken to Galen since that last visit. Twenty-three texts didn’t count as “avoiding,” did they?

  You’re being a childish asshole, asshole. Yeah. His inner voice wasn’t pleased with him. Well, neither was the rest of the world—join the fucking tragic chorus, right?

  Suddenly, while he was folding his underwear and shoving them in his suitcase, his phone rang and buzzed at the same time while his computer e-mail chime went bananas.

  “What in the—”

  He pulled out his phone and saw six different numbers he didn’t recognize and about sixty different texts.

  His heart kicked into overdrive. Oh fuck. Dex. Kane. The baby. The business. Ethan. Oh God, what if Galen… what if Galen….

  “Hello?” He answered the first phone number that popped up, absolute terror washing his body.

  “Hold please,” said a surprised female voice, and abruptly all of the electronic chaos ceased.

  On the phone, Galen said, “Are we done being a pouting baby now? Can we have an adult conversation?”

  “You fucker! I thought you were dead!” He couldn’t control the trembling in his voice. Holy God. “Asshole!”

  “If you were so worried about me, why didn’t you answer my texts when you knew I was alive?” Galen asked accusingly.

  “Augh!” John sat down on the bed next to the suitcase and then sprawled backward, listening to his heart thunder in his ears. “How did you even do that?”

  “It’s rehab and we’re bored,” Galen said shortly. “You have no idea how easy that was to organize. But now that I have you on Mara’s phone—thank you, darlin’—you are planning to talk to me now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” John said weakly. “Sure. But do remember that the last guy I ditched in rehab got back to me when he was dead.”

  “You are not ditching me in rehab!” Galen snapped. “And don’t be melodramatic. What are you doing right now?”

  “What you told me to do. Packing.”

  Galen’s sucked-in breath sounded painful enough to pull John out of his pout a little. “You weren’t going to tell me?”

  “I was going to stop by on the way out of town!” John protested. “I’m not a total asshole!”

  “The hell you’re not! So you’re leaving?” Oh God. He sounded hurt.

  “You told me to!” John rolled over and buried his face in the pillow, letting out a frustrated groan. “God, I am so confused!”

  “No, no,” Galen said, the edge of hurt still in his voice. “I did. I told you to, and I’m glad… well, not glad you’re going. I’m glad you recognized that I was right. That’s always nice.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. It means I respect you, right?” Ooh, that felt nice.

  “Yes, John,” Galen replied, voice Death Valley dry. “You respect me. You’re doing what I asked. You’re going back to your life and making sure it’s still in place when I get out of rehab.”

  John let out a breath. “And what’s going to happen then?”

  “And then we will go from there,” Galen said firmly, but that was perfect because it was exactly what John thought.

  “See, this is a breakup!” John accused. “You’re sending me away because—”

  “This is not a breakup!” Galen protested.

  “It is—I’m going to the other side of the country, and you’re staying here!”

  “That’s only a breakup if you don’t have any faith, John! Are you telling me you don’t have faith?” His voice dropped, became intimate. “I thought you said what we were was special. Dancing-in-the-rain special. Am I wrong about that?”

  “Well if it’s not a breakup, what is it?” John asked, feeling suspicious.

  “A long-distance relationship, genius!”

  John wasn’t buying. “And the difference would be…?”

  “If you break up with someone, you may feel free to go out and get laid. If you are in a long-distance relationship, you may not feel free to get laid by anybody but your long-distance boyfriend, because if you do, there will be a bad-karma emergency airplane trip followed by killing with fire.”

  John still had misgivings, but he did have to laugh. “With fire?”

  “There will be death. And dismemberment. And I’m a lawyer—I’ll find a way to pin it on someone else. So just spare me the trouble and treat this as a real thing.”

  A long, pent-up exhale, and then an inhale. And then, finally, some acceptance. “Well, it’s not like I was getting laid before I met you. I may as well commit to not getting laid after.” He said it sourly, but inside, that thing Galen was talking about—the faith thing—that was starting to wake up a little. He could have that, couldn’t he? Faith?

  It was worth a shot.

  “That’s my little optimist,” Galen condescended. “You just keep thinking like that, and I’ll just get my shit together, and then we’ll get us together, and we’ll do just fine.”

  John sagged, exhausted from the bitterness of thinking they’d broken up, and then the fear, and now from the forgiveness. “You got any ideas when that’s going to be?” he asked, feeling lost. “Or how we’ll even do that?”

  “I’ve got a few,” Galen said, sounding irritated. “But it’s all part of that faith thing I was talking about.”

  And now John’s stomach was going wonky. “Do you… do you have any idea what you are asking from me?” he asked. He rubbed his abdomen. “Any? You claim you’ve been watching me this past month—exactly what part of my history is screaming to you that I am capable of this behavior?”

  Galen took on a wheedling sort of tone—the kind of thing that suggested he knew he was winning so he was just going to gentle John into the home stretch. “Oh come now, John. You pined after Tory for what? Twenty-five years? You pined after that Dex kid for nearly nine, right? So that’s thirty-four years of unrequited love, you hopeless fucking romantic. What do you think you can do when there’s an actual carrot at the end of the penis? It’s not unrequited this time, Chief—it’s completely requited. It’s over-requited. It’s returned in spades, you ungrateful asshole. I already love you more than you will ever love m—”

  “That’s bullshit!” John’s throat went raw with savagery, and he dug the palm of his hand into his left eye. “Don’t… don’t dick with me, Galen! Don’t… man, I can’t….” Oh hell. He’d already cried in front of Galen. Galen knew what a pussy he was.

  He sighed, rolling over to his side, going fetal while on the phone, and gave in to the hurricane force that was Galen Henderson.

  “You’d better not fuck this up,” he said. His whole body hurt from this conversation alone. “You’d better… if I’m going to trust you here… I’ve got one more batch of faith left. One. Like, it’s been my drug since I was a little kid, and I’ve been shaking without it, weaning myself off, since Dex and Tory and my own stupidity. I am on my last dose here, Galen. If you don’t fix me up in the end, the DTs are gonna fucking kill me.”

  “That was… a really awful blend of poetry and drug humor, John. C’mon. Do better.”

  “Don’t let me down,” John all but mewled. “Jesus, Galen. Don’t let me down.”

  When Galen spoke next, some of the bravado and all of the wheedling had drained from his voice. “Johnny—Johnny, I promise. I will be the best man I can be when we get together. It’ll be worth the wait.”

  It would be worth it without the wait.

  But John didn’t say it—Galen wouldn’t believe it. Whatever Galen wanted to prove, he wanted to do it without John.

  Maybe the promise that he wanted John at the end would be enough.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” John said, although he was pretty sure he couldn’t move. “I’ll… God, Galen. I’ve got to get off the….”

  “No,” Galen said softly. “Here, baby. I’ll talk to you until Mara’s battery runs out, okay? Let me tell you good stories. Galen sto
ries. Let me make you hopeful, okay? I grew up with hope. Let me tell you about that.”

  Galen did just that, and John lay on the bed and let that Georgia-boy voice wash over him. He heard about catching fireflies in the massive backyard that encompassed the whole block. He heard about Galen sneaking cigarettes underneath his porch, and then working for a month in a homeless shelter as penance.

  “I tell you, I did not want to so much as look at a cigarette after that.”

  He heard about Galen’s mother—from whom Galen had stolen the cigarettes—and how she’d gotten her law degree but had no patience with it at all and had devoted her life to her family.

  “She wanted a whole passel of brats, you know? But all she had was me, so she poured it all into me. Soccer, karate, trips to the zoo, trips to the theme park—she would take me out of school so we could spend a week in New York in the fall, and then sit with me while I made up my schoolwork.”

  He heard about Galen’s father, who was a mild workaholic but who managed to squash all of that for his wife and son.

  “So every year for my mother’s birthday, he would send me to his sister’s house and take my mother somewhere amazing. Like weekend in Paris amazing. I grew up and I thought that’s what love was—weekends in Paris or pretty gifts or trips out dancing. I feel so stupid now, you know?”

  John thought of his own parents and had nothing to say. “No. I have no idea why that’d make you feel stupid,” he mumbled. His suitcase still lay open, and he lay next to it, but he was going to have to set his phone alarm and just go to sleep. He was exhausted from the last-minute preparations to leave and from this conversation.

  “Because love is a lot more,” Galen said softly. “What I had with Taylor, that was weekends in Paris, but… but you? You’d probably take me to the beach for a hotdog, but you’d be funny and charming and surprising, even just by buying a stupid hat. And you’d never just leave me, even if we were breaking up. And you’d never do anything with your life that you weren’t passionate about. And if you fucked up, you’d make it right instead of just laughing and saying, ‘Oh yeah, sorry, my bad!’”

  John pushed himself up on his elbow, frowning. “So that was your ex?”

  “Yeah, John. That was my ex.”

  “Was he pretty?”

  Galen grunted. “Like a cover model.”

  “Well, it’s easy for that to fool you,” John said wisely.

  “You think so? You really fucking think so?”

  Galen was getting querulous, and John had been in a nice fugue-like state, and he didn’t want that to go away. He slid bonelessly back on the bed and said, “Tell me about the first boy you ever kissed.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t a girl?”

  “Because. Your mother loved you unconditionally, and your father was a liberal lawyer in Georgia. You don’t know what a lie is.”

  “Well, I became a lawyer, so that shows how wrong you are about that, and the honest-to-God truth is that I kissed one of each on the same night.”

  John took him at his word. During the next fifteen minutes, he heard the story of a cotillion and a young lady who was an old friend of the family—someone Galen still could contact if he felt so inclined—and of her cousin. He heard how the kiss with the young lady was stiff and awkward but the kiss with the cousin ended up in heated hand jobs in the shadows of his parents’ garden. And that was how young Galen had realized something of great importance about himself.

  It was a sweet story. John sort of loved that about Galen, that he had that sweetness, that innocence, at the core of his so-called sharkdom. Galen worked within the law—and probably within his own code of integrity, not that he’d admit he had one.

  But John knew. It was important to who he was.

  Galen was about to launch into another story when the beep of the purloined phone warned them both.

  “I’m going to lose you,” Galen said. “But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there around ten.”

  “Good. That’s good. I’ll be up and ready for you, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay. That’ll be nice.”

  “Night, John, I lo—”

  And the phone went dead. John set his phone for an alarm, figuring he’d get up in the morning and finish his packing.

  Then he kicked the suitcase off the bed, set his phone in the charger on the end table, and fell asleep on top of the covers with the light on. He woke up after an hour to kick off his clothes and turn the lights off. When he went back to sleep, he kept dreaming of Galen, eight years old with pale green eyes and knobby knees, running through the woods to catch fireflies.

  John wanted to warn him of the dangers of redheaded strangers in the dream, but Galen never got close enough for John to say it without screaming, so he kept quiet.

  He woke up thinking that maybe Galen knew already but had decided to be with John anyway.

  I Don’t Know Why You Say Good-bye

  JOHN ARRIVED promptly at ten and was relieved to see Galen sitting out front, arms crossed, taking in the sun.

  “You’re going to burn,” John cautioned as he walked across the parking lot.

  Galen rolled his eyes. “No, that would be you. I, on the other hand, am getting a lovely base tan. It almost makes me look human.”

  John realized he was right—it had been sort of creeping across his skin over the past month of PT and discussions in the sun. “You look wonderful,” he said, meaning it.

  Galen grinned at him, sort of a little kid’s smile. “You think so?” he said, eyes dancing. He pushed himself up stiffly and then leaned on the railing and John’s arm as they walked up the stairs. “Want to prove it?”

  “Prove that I think you look good?” John grinned, bemused. “How am I going to do that?”

  “First of all, how much time do you have?”

  John sighed. “About half an hour,” he said, hating that the last month and a half should be boiled down to that.

  “Awesome. I’ve got something I want to show you in my room.”

  “Okay….” More confused than ever, John continued in.

  Galen wrapped his hand around John’s bicep and used him as a cane. It wasn’t until John realized that that he realized Galen hadn’t been using the cane much in the past week. John wanted to say something—praise him, congratulate him, something—but instead he stopped and signed his name on the visitor log and smiled at the nurse who still apparently hated him. Then he and Galen made their way past the common room—stopping, of course, for a round of applause from most of the people there.

  John grimaced and bowed. “Thank you everybody,” he called, waving, and the applause got louder. Oh, awesome. He and Galen had their own cheering squad rooting for them.

  Galen laughed, grabbed his hand, and hauled him down the hallway into his room. He was wobbling a little by the time they got there, but still he reached behind John and closed and locked his door.

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to lock your do—”

  Galen kissed him, long and deep, plunging his tongue in hotly and claiming John’s mouth with lips, tongue, and teeth.

  John gasped, leaning back against the illegally locked door and gathering Galen into his arms, where he absolutely needed to be.

  “Walk me backwards,” Galen panted between kisses.

  John did so, carefully, grateful for the swimming and working out he’d been doing in the past month. He could probably carry Galen at this point, but why? Galen was proud that he could walk, proud of his aggression, and John—John needed him so damned bad.

  They got to the bed and Galen turned him around, still sweeping his open mouth with that demanding tongue. He pulled back long enough to demand, sotto voce, “Take off the pants.”

  John would have eaten his pants just to feel Galen’s hands on his skin.

  He dropped his cargo shorts to the floor, and Galen sat him down on the bed, the bare cotton of the comforter soothing and cool on John’s ass.
>
  “Lie back,” Galen told him, sitting down next to him and rubbing greedy skin-glutting hands under John’s shirt.

  “But I wanna—”

  “Tough. This is my good-bye blowjob and you need to let me give it. Now play with your nipples through your shirt—I like that.”

  John’s fingers were already on that, except he rucked up his shirt so it wasn’t in the way. In the meantime, Galen got busy, grasping John’s semi and squeezing, stroking upward to the head.

  John made some a sort of whiny growl, and Galen glared at him. “Which part of ‘no sex in rehab’ are you not getting?” He reached behind him for the pillow and threw it at John. “Use that!” he hissed.

  Then he opened his mouth and sucked John’s cock like a pro.

  John mashed the pillow against his face and groaned solidly, from the diaphragm, because Galen swallowed his erection in one thrust of his head. He squeezed the base with his lips and used suction to put pressure on the head and then slowly, exquisitely, pulled his head up while maintaining that suction. John started shaking all over from that alone.

  Galen lifted the edge of the pillow and moved so he could whisper in John’s ear while still stroking his cock. “It’s okay if you come sooner,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught.”

  John moaned. Oh, that was wicked, very wicked, because getting caught, pants down, knees spread, Galen sucking him off—that was the stuff porn fantasies were made of.

  While still stroking, Galen flicked his tongue over John’s cockhead, paying special attention to the taut cord of his frenulum and digging into the slit until John writhed, his knees falling farther apart.

  Galen used that opportunity to lick his fingers and slide them gently into John’s crease and into his sphincter, stretching gently.

  John planted both feet on the ground and arched his back, groaning again into the pillow. Oh God. That fast. That fast, and he was ready. His body was exploding, singing, with sex, and he couldn’t control it, not even a little. So hard, so fast, so unexpected, and Galen was stretching his asshole and fiddling with his balls and using his mouth and his tongue….