Dreamspinner Press Years One & Two Greatest Hits

by J. M. Colail

“Do they have moose here?”

  “I think so.”

  The road got busier and busier the closer they got to the campgrounds and visitor’s areas of the park. D sat up straight so he could see better. They saw moose, all right. They sat in a half-hour traffic jam caused by people slowing down to look at a large moose sauntering along the side of the road. D whipped out a camera and snapped photos. “You’re such a tourist,” Jack laughed.

  “Fuckin’ moose, Jack! Look at that sucker! He’s huge!” He pointed, grinning like a child, looking back at Jack with his face full of open wonder.

  Jack smiled, watching D, a lump rising in his throat.

  THEY PULLED up to the Stanley just before seven, the sun low amidst the peaks. D whistled. “Nice place,” he said, looking up at the hotel’s impressive white façade.

  A valet hurried up to take the car keys, and a bellhop appeared out of nowhere and took their overnight bags. Jack looked around as they entered the lobby, a cavernous wood-clad space that made Jack feel like he ought to be wearing something from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog. They went to the reception desk. As usual, Jack smiled his way up to the clerk while D lurked behind, his sunglasses still on his face, looking generally impenetrable. “Good evening, gentlemen,” the clerk said. Jack’s gaydar went haywire.

  “Hello. I have a reservation. It’s under Francisco.”

  “Let’s see…. Oh yes, sir, you have reserved one of our suites for tonight only, is that right?” he said, his eyes flicking past Jack to D.

  “That’s right, yes.”

  “Welcome to the Stanley,” the clerk—his nametag said Charles—said, his lip curling slightly. Jack had been through this a million times with clerks, waiters, and other service employees. It was that slight loosening of the inflection that said Clearly you two are a gay couple; we won’t mention it but it’s obvious, so I’m just going to flirt openly with you because that’s what’s expected. Jack barely noticed anymore, but it made D uncomfortable. Charles processed Jack’s credit card, then slid their room key across the desk. “Please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more pleasant,” he said.

  D stepped forward and grabbed the key off the counter before Jack could even open his mouth. “Thanks,” he said, the word sounding like a death sentence. Charles’ flirty eyes went a bit cautious. Jack just shrugged, smiling ruefully, and followed D to the stairs, the bellhop trailing them.

  Their suite faced the back of the hotel. Its large windows looked out onto a spectacular view of the surrounding peaks. Jack tipped the bellhop and they were alone again. “Nice view,” he said.

  “Don’t care ’bout the view,” D said, turning from the window and pulling Jack into his arms.

  Jack grinned and returned D’s urgent kisses. “Don’t you even want to shower first? I’m all travel-grimy.”

  D walked them over to the bed. “Smell mighty fine ta me,” he said, nuzzling his face into the crook of Jack’s neck.

  Jack had no further objections. D grabbed the hem of Jack’s T-shirt and yanked it off over his head, then pushed him back onto the bed. Jack propped up on his elbows and just watched while D unbuckled Jack’s belt and pulled his jeans off, focusing on his task with a determined single-mindedness that Jack found utterly charming. I am going to get this man undressed as quickly and efficiently as possible, just watch me.

  Once he had Jack naked, D clambered up on the bed and knelt over him, looking down at his body. “Mm,” he said. “Lemme lookit you,” he breathed, his hands going to Jack’s belly, petting the skin, stroking the hair that thickened south. Jack lay beneath D’s roaming hands, gazing up at his face and seeing there D’s desire for him, its brash directness still a novelty. Since his return D had become a good deal more comfortable with letting that desire show, and with expressing his appreciation for Jack’s body. The body itself had changed a little too. Jack was slimmer and more toned than he had been when they’d parted, which D had noticed the first day he’d returned.

  “You been workin’ out, doc?” he’d asked, his hands stroking the firm muscles of Jack’s chest.

  “Exercise is great for sexual frustration,” Jack had said.

  Jack reached up and pulled D down into his arms, arching up to meet his mouth. D stretched out and wound them together, the heady sensation of D’s clothed body up against Jack’s nude one speeding their breath. D dug a hand beneath Jack to grip his ass while Jack massaged D’s groin through his jeans. “Get these off,” he muttered in D’s ear, and within a few moments D was coming back into his arms, gloriously naked.

  “God, you feel good,” Jack breathed. D was sucking on his neck and writhing against his body in a way that let Jack know he’d been thinking about doing this to him all day. “Where’s the lube?”

  “Oh, you want it, huh?” D growled against Jack’s skin.

  “Yeah,” Jack said, anything else he might have added lost into D’s mouth. D slid off the bed and went to his suitcase, pulling the lube from a pocket on the side. Jack sat up as D returned, reaching out to yank him close, crushing their mouths together as he pulled them both back on the bed. His blood was pounding through his body, rising to the skin, heating and flushing him all over. Too impatient to take time, he pulled D between his legs and arched his hips against him. He felt D slick himself quickly and then he was pressing deep and entering Jack’s body, his eyes closing, sucking in a hissing breath while Jack watched his face. This was his favorite part, seeing the guardedness fall away from D’s features, watching as the sensation of being inside Jack overwhelmed the face he wore around all day and shattered it, revealing the naked need and vulnerability beneath. Knowing that it was him who could make D feel like that, himself and nobody else, not for D’s whole life, was intoxicating.

  D leaned close for a kiss, but Jack stopped him. He didn’t feel like kissing. He didn’t want to make love, not right now. He didn’t want to exchange deep, tender caresses during a long, slow coupling. He wanted to get fucked, by the only man he’d ever been to bed with who could do it right. Right now, Jack just wanted D to drill him through this mattress until he couldn’t walk. And he could let D see that. It was okay. D would still respect him afterward. He’d still love him. He might not say it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it.

  Jack was just starting to spiral upward when D suddenly pulled out and seized Jack’s waist, flipping him over as easily as one might a pancake on a slick skillet. He didn’t pull Jack to his knees but just tilted his hips up, then entered him again, propping himself over Jack’s back, the whole bed jouncing with his thrusts, pressing Jack’s body into the mattress on each downswing. “That what you want?” he hissed, his mouth near Jack’s ear, swiveling his hips down and forward and making Jack see stars.

  “Yeah,” Jack could only gasp, his hands clutching the edge of the mattress. He arched his back, laying himself bare to be flayed raw, D’s skin hot and damp against his, drops of his sweat falling onto Jack’s back.

  “Goddamn,” D groaned, holding tight for a moment, buried deep and straining together, before going at him again, rearing and bucking like he was riding a bronc. Jack cried out, strangled through the filter of his arousal, everything else going away, nothing but the heat, the breath, the sweat and the sex. “Goddamn, ya kill me,” D said, nearly unintelligible. “So fuckin’ fine.”

  “D,” Jack gasped. “God… yeah….” He didn’t even get to finish the sentence before he tipped over and yelled out his release, the warm wetness blooming between his stomach and the hotel’s bedspread.

  D’s arm was around Jack’s neck now, holding him up and close. “Aw darlin’….” He felt D go rigid and thrust deep. a lump rising in Jack’s throat at the intimacy of this act, a sometimes terrible intimacy, frightening in its strength.

  D sagged onto Jack’s back, arms wrapped around him, still inside him but softening now. They were both breathing like they’d run a mile. Jack pushed up, D’s weight heavy on him, and they turned over to their bac
ks, D slipping out, their limbs tangled together. “Jesus Christ,” Jack gasped. D could only grunt incoherently. They just laid there for a few minutes while their heart rates returned to normal. “I don’t get it,” Jack finally said.

  “Whut?”

  “How the hell you learned to fuck like that when I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with.”

  D chuckled. “Must be a natural.” He sighed and propped up on one elbow to look down at Jack. “Or could be I jus’ got a real good inspiration,” he said, running his hand across Jack’s chest.

  Jack arched an eyebrow. “You don’t have to use smooth lines on me, you know. You got me already.”

  D smiled, a slow smile like spreading sweet syrup. “Yeah, I do.”

  For a few dopey moments, Jack could only smile back. The rumbling of his stomach jerked him back to the present. “Food. Need food.”

  “I ain’t leavin’ this room.”

  “Room service?”

  “Now yer talkin’.”

  JACK WOKE up with a start, swallowing a gasp. He stared into the dim room, the sunrise just touching the window with pale gray light, listening to his heart pound. He turned his head and saw D sleeping, turned on his side facing away. There had been a time when the slightest movement or noise would have woken him instantly, but he’d relaxed a lot in the two months since his return.

  Jack let out a breath, rubbing one hand across his face. It’d been a few weeks since he’d had the nightmare, the one he’d started having not long after D’s return. Nightmares in which D went on killing rampages, shooting, stabbing, chasing. Shadowy figures fell under his hail of bullets. In his dreams, Jack shouted for him to stop, but D didn’t listen.

  You didn’t have to be Freud to figure out what it meant. D might think he was sparing Jack the details, but the not-knowing was much worse. His imagination conjured scenarios that probably far outstripped the reality.

  At first, Jack hadn’t argued too much with D’s refusal to tell him what he’d done to secure Jack’s safety. “It’s done, you’re safe, that’s all that matters,” D kept saying. Jack found this somewhat insulting, actually. Did D think he was too sensitive to handle it? Did he think Jack couldn’t be trusted with it?

  No. It wasn’t either of those things. It had to be that D had done something—possibly several somethings—he didn’t think Jack would approve of. He swore he hadn’t killed anyone, and Jack was pretty sure he believed him, but that still left a lot of unsavory space to fill in the realm of things Jack might not approve of.

  He’d been surprised, and irritated, at D’s initial refusal, but in the euphoria of having him back and just not wanting to spoil it, he’d let it go. He’d brought the subject up again about a week later, and gotten the same song-and-dance. He’d let it go again. He knew D, and he thought if he didn’t press the matter, D would come around to telling him the whole truth on his own, but the more he pressed the issue, the more persistent D’s resistance became.

  I’ve got to let him start feeling secure in this relationship. He probably thinks that whatever it is will drive me away, and if he tells me, he’ll lose me. When he starts believing that I won’t leave him, no matter what, he’ll tell me.

  That little voice that insisted on asking what Jack would do if D had done something so awful that Jack actually couldn’t stay with him because of it was under a gag order most of the time, so it had taken to expressing its doubts via Jack’s nightmares.

  He lay there, unable to sleep, until D stirred at six a.m. on the nose. He rolled over, stretching, and tossed an arm across Jack’s chest, grumbling sleepy nothings. Jack sighed, letting his arm fall around D’s shoulders.

  D turned his head into Jack’s chest and began kissing the bed-warm skin His hand was laying sleepy strokes down Jack’s side, growing bolder as he woke up. Jack laid his hand on D’s head, his fingers tangling in the sandy curls. D loved morning sex. It was his favorite time to “get mushy,” as he called it. The drowsiness seemed to strip him of his residual macho-man inhibitions and let him do things like kiss his way down the center of Jack’s chest, as he was doing at the moment. Jack sighed and let his eyes fall closed, grateful just to be ministered to right now.

  D slid further and further down in the bed, pushing the covers back with him until they were both bare-ass exposed in the dim morning light. He settled between Jack’s legs and lifted them up by the knees, hooking them over his shoulders and wrapping his arms around Jack’s thighs, trapping Jack in place as he lowered his head and sucked him deep. Jack hissed, his hips wanting to thrust but unable to do so because D had him pinned. “Oh Jesus…,” he breathed, clutching the sides of his pillow, yanking up on it until it threatened to swallow his face.

  “Careful there,” D said, lifting his head. “Don’t wanna suffocate yerself.”

  Jack wrapped his arms around his pillow-encased head, growling in frustration. “Don’t stop,” he groaned.

  D murmured something Jack didn’t quite hear and was back at it, with a vengeance. Jack’s eyes rolled back in his head and he wondered if he had any blood left in his skull. He came with a surprised grunt, spilling into D’s mouth, his torso rising off the bed with the force of it. D rose up over him, smirking and wiping his mouth. “Was that my wake-up call?” Jack said, weakly.

  “Predictable joke, doc,” D said, starting to lower himself onto Jack.

  “Nope,” Jack said, stopping him. “Your turn,” he said, motioning for D to keep crawling until he was kneeling over Jack’s face. He stroked him a few times, then reached around and gripped D’s ass, bringing him down to his mouth. He heard D groan above him, his hands braced on the wall, and relaxed as best he could as D began taking short strokes into his mouth. He knew it wouldn’t take long and it didn’t; D never had much staying power in the morning. Within a minute he was blasting his orgasm into Jack’s throat and sagging in a heap at his side.

  “Christ,” he gasped, pulling Jack tight to his side. “You gotta be the king a fuckin’ blow jobs.” He paused. “Not that I got much basis for comparison.”

  “So how do you know I don’t give sucky blow jobs?” Jack said. D made a face. “Uh, no pun intended.”

  “Ain’t possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause if they get any better’n that, nobody’d live through ’em.”

  Jack laughed. “And you say you’re no good at sweet talk.”

  They just lay there for a few minutes, not speaking, lying in a tangled heap of naked limbs. D’s hand left slow strokes up and down Jack’s upper arm while Jack’s finger traced meaningless patterns on the taut skin of D’s flank.

  I need to know what he did.

  D stirred, stretching like a cat. “Well, c’mon, Jack. Wanna get on the road by eight we best get our asses in gear, huh?”

  AFTER SHOWERING and dressing, Jack and D headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Jack was quiet, working out in his mind how to reintroduce the subject. He couldn’t believe he’d let it go this long. To be fair to himself, the two months since D’s return had been something of a whirlwind, and D had been gone for part of it. He’d had to take two separate weeklong trips away from Portland to wrap up the loose threads of his old life, collect some things from storage, dispose of some stockpiles he’d left around the country, close up some financial accounts and undergo some debriefings with the Bureau. Jack had been studying a lot, reading the back issues of his medical journals that he’d let slide, and prevailing upon the surgeons at the local hospital to let him observe some surgeries. You didn’t just step right back into the delicate procedures that were his specialty after more than a year away without some preparation.

  All this on top of the many logistical preparations to be made for the trip to Baltimore followed by the move to Columbus had taken up a lot of time, and suddenly two months had gone by and they were leaving, and not another peep had been uttered by either of them about what had happened during their long separation.

  D was l
ooking at him as they stepped off the elevator and handed their overnight bags to the porter. “What’s wrong?”

  Jack shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Ya got that look.”

  “What look?”

  “Somethin’s on yer mind.”

  “Nothing’s on my mind.”

  D sighed. “Have it yer way.”

  They walked silently to the restaurant, were seated and poured coffee, and sat there waiting to place their orders. “All right, there’s something on my mind,” Jack said.

  “Told ya there was.”

  “Yes, you were right. Bully for you.”

  “What is it?”

  Jack sighed, holding D’s gaze across the table. “You’re really never going to tell me? Not ever?”

  D had to have been thinking on this subject too, or else he suspected what was troubling Jack, because he didn’t need to ask for clarification. “We been over this, Jack.”

  “So we’ll go over it again.”

  “I told you. I took care a things. You don’t gotta worry about it no more.”

  “How? How did you take care of things?” Jack asked, leaning forward.

  “I took care a things,” D repeated, his jaw starting to tighten.

  “Do you not get that what I’m imagining is probably way worse than anything you did?”

  “I told ya I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “I believe you. But there’s plenty that could have happened without you killing anyone.”

  D fixed him with a hard stare. “Don’tcha trust me, Jack?”

  Jack sat back. “Oh, no. No, you don’t. You do not get to make this my fault that I just don’t trust you enough. I trust you. But I can’t go on not knowing, I need you to tell me how you did this.”

  “It don’t concern you,” D snapped, and seemed to immediately realize his mistake. He shrank a bit in his chair and looked away, picking up his water glass.

  Jack felt his whole face go stony. “It doesn’t concern me? No, wait… it doesn’t concern me?”