Prophet's Pass

by Chapman Brown

  “Think we’re gonna need it,” he attempted.

  Hunter glanced at him. “Huh?”

  “The fire.”

  “Oh. Yeah,” Hunter said. He frowned slightly and went back to sweeping the ash. Aiden watched the back of his blond head for a second, and the way his hands worked in the grate with no care for the black soot. He wondered if Hunter was lighting this fire because he needed something to do until word came about Stephanie.

  “Can I help?” he asked eventually.

  Hunter looked back at him, seemingly considering where Aiden could do the least damage. He nodded toward the pile of logs. “Pull the bark off the wet ones, or they’ll burn smoky.”

  Aiden got off the couch and came and sat on the floor, keeping the coffee table between them as a neutral zone.

  Hunter glanced at him, and Aiden couldn’t tell if he was amused or exasperated. “Mom’ll kill me if you get wood crud on the carpet.”

  “Oh,” Aiden said, feeling himself blush and hating it. He scooted to the smooth stone of the oversized hearth and reached for one of the logs. The bark was slimy and semifrozen as promised. Underneath, the wood was dry, red-yellow like Utah rock and sharp with the scent of pine. He was sure it came from here on the ranch. Someone had cut it last summer as a chore, maybe the governor. Maybe it had been Hunter. Aiden started flaking the bark off as best he could, building a pile in his lap. His mind wandered to Hunter swinging an axe. His shirt was off under the desert sun, tossed on the branch of a nearby tree. His back glistened with sweat. It ran down the strong plane of his chest, the hard lines of his abdomen, collected at the groove of his thigh, soaking the waist of his jeans….

  “What’s funny?” the real Hunter asked him.

  Aiden looked up in surprise. “Huh?”

  “You’re smiling.”

  Aiden stared for a second. Fortunately his thumb, still shucking bark, caught a splinter. “Ow, dammit.” He looked down at his handiwork and saw he’d mainly succeeded in coating his fingers with black mold.

  He lied. “It’s funny how crappy I am at this.”

  Hunter half smiled, half grimaced. He reached over and plucked the log from Aiden’s hands. “Like this,” he said, showing him to bring both his thumbs under the bark where the log had been split, levering up until it snapped off in large pieces.

  “Did they teach you that in the Air Force?”

  Aiden had been joking, but Hunter nodded. “SERE Training.”

  “SERE?”

  “Survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. If you go down in hostile territory and you need to light a fire, you strip any bark off the wood. Less chance of the enemy seeing your smoke.”

  He turned to Aiden expectantly as he waited for him to process the next log. Aiden copied Hunter’s technique and was surprised by how easily the bark shrugged off. They worked together for a few minutes until all the logs were stacked with military precision. Hunter lit the fire, and they sat with their backs to opposite couches, watching the rising flames. The logs crackled, casting orange light and flickering shadows on the high ceiling. Aiden wished they had some whiskey to go with it, but that might be disastrous. That might strip away the pretense of not meeting that night. Remind them of that tight corridor soaked in sex, remind them they were alone, with no one to answer to. No consequences. Hunter was looking at him, his face half cast in orange, masking his expression. His shirt had ridden up slightly where he sat against the bottom of the couch, the muscle and golden hair of his abdomen catching the firelight.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said.

  Aiden felt like he might have done almost anything in that moment. He remembered his hands.

  “Gonna wash up,” he said quickly, heading for the bathroom. After the amber glow of the fire, the harsh light above the mirror felt antiseptic. He scrubbed his hands and nails free of mold with the Jensens’ sickly pink soap and glared at his own reflection. Don’t even think about it. He turned off the faucet and counted the knots in the pine of the wallboard until he was sure he wouldn’t do anything stupid. When he went out again, Hunter was sitting neutrally on the couch, Lucy beside him, and Aiden wondered if he’d made that whole moment of tension up. Hunter flicked through his phone.

  “Anything?”

  “They got to Springdale.”

  “That’s good, right?” Aiden asked. At least she hadn’t had the baby en route. He didn’t imagine the rental company would be thrilled about that.

  “Yeah. She’s in the delivery suite.” Hunter scratched Lucy’s ears distractedly. “Just wish I’d been there. If I’d had my truck out….”

  “Snow’s not your fault.” Aiden sat on the opposite couch. Lucy looked up at Aiden and briefly seemed to consider her loyalties before deciding she was happy with her master. She settled her head on Hunter’s thigh with a contented sigh. Lucky girl.

  “Coming back stateside, my dad leaving office, I thought I could be around more for the family stuff.”

  “You want to be?”

  “Don’t you want to be around your family?” Hunter asked, vaguely accusatory.

  Aiden laughed. “No. I mean, don’t get me wrong. But my family is best taken in small doses.”

  “Siblings?”

  “No.”

  “Then your parents must miss you.”

  Aiden smiled his polite orphan smile. “My mom died when I was eleven.”

  Hunter looked wounded. “Sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay. I had aunts and uncles, cousins, all kinds of relatives.”

  “Where did you live?”

  “With my aunt Sheila a few years, then my other aunt when things got crowded. My cousin Rob almost went to juvie senior year, so I had to move in with my grandparents for a while. We made it work.”

  He could see a trace of hesitation on Hunter’s face at the mention of juvenile detention.

  “He was just being a dumb kid.”

  “Oh, sure,” Hunter said quickly.

  Aiden looked around the room. “They don’t live like this. But they’re good people.”

  “Sounds like it was hard.”

  Aiden shrugged. “I was happy, I guess. I got used to sitting back, watching everything happen around me. Probably made me a good journalist, but maybe I’d have liked some undivided attention now and again.”

  Hunter made a face, which seemed to suggest attention wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. When people paid attention, they might not like what they found.

  “What about your dad?” he asked quietly.

  “Took off when I was a kid. I guess he might be out there somewhere still. I don’t know.”

  “You never wanted to look him up?”

  “Why?” Aiden asked.

  “He’s your dad,” Hunter said, with the same declarative tone he might have said the sky is blue or the sea is wet.

  “After he went, my mom gave me a notebook and said write down all the things you want to say to your dad. Write down everything you feel in a letter, write down all the hurt and the happiness and everything else, and then you seal it up in an envelope.”

  “And he never wrote back?”

  Aiden smiled and shook his head. “I never sent it. It’s not the sending that’s important. It’s the writing. That’s when I started writing, and I guess I didn’t stop. My dad gave me life, and he gave me that. I don’t need anything else from him.”

  Hunter seemed to mull it over, though in his eyes, Aiden saw he didn’t really understand. He was LDS. If Aiden had learned one thing the last few days, it was that LDS meant family. Not that it meant the Jensen family was any less fucked up than anyone else’s. Maybe more. Aiden remembered the way Orson Jensen snapped at his son, the way he had Hunter’s photos up in his office, the way he’d positively radiated pride the night Hunter had come home. The airman. The model child. The exile. There were layers of complexity there, that was for certain.

  “Before I went on mission, I thought all families were like… us,” Hunter said, blushing slight
ly.

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Mexico City. Pretty rough neighborhood. Drugs. Crime. People used to come to the gospel meets just to get the food.”

  Aiden smiled. “That’s a Christian service at least.”

  “I guess. We wanted converts. The guys I was with were intense. They felt like they’d failed not coming back with any.”

  “Sounds like a tough place to send kids.”

  “We were eighteen.”

  “Kids,” Aiden said.

  “It was a hardship posting,” Hunter said. “But that’s what I expected, with my dad.”

  “Seems unfair.”

  Hunter air-quoted. “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”

  Aiden studied his face. Somehow, when he said it, it seemed more real than Orson and Sariah with their singsong prayers. “You believe that, don’t you?”

  Hunter looked at his with those blue, searching eyes. “What else would I believe?”

  Aiden shrugged. “I don’t know. Anything?”

  “What else are we here for if we don’t serve?”

  “Have fun. Have experiences. Fall in love. Do what any animal does: propagate.”

  Hunter snorted. “You gonna propagate?”

  The way he said it stung. Not because Aiden hadn’t heard a similar statement before—he had, and much worse—but because of the casual way Hunter dispensed his own poison. His hurt must have shown on his face.

  “No offense.”

  Aiden shrugged, even though it burned him a little deeper than it ought to have. “So you did your mission. And then you went to the Air Force Academy. Because you’re some kind of warrior monk.”

  “What?”

  “You’re gay and you think that’s your penance or something.”

  Hunter sat up. “I told you. I’m not—”

  “Gay? Come on.” Aiden’s heart was thudding in his ears. He’d said it. The word was like glass, a brittle pane between them that might shatter at any moment.

  Hunter just stared at him.

  “Okay,” Aiden said, conceding to the silence. He was a journalist; just because you asked a question didn’t mean you always got an answer.

  A log collapsed in the grate with a dull whoosh of sparks. Aiden’s head felt like he’d been drinking, but he hadn’t been so sober for years. Just when he was about to suggest they called it a night, Hunter stood up and started pulling on his coat.

  “Get your jacket,” he said.

  “What?”

  Hunter tossed his head to the window. “Snow’s stopped. But you’ll need your jacket.”

  Aiden went and retrieved his borrowed coat from the hook, wondering what was happening. He followed Hunter into the kitchen where he was busy cracking open the frozen-over french door to the deck. It gave, causing a small avalanche of snow to fall in with the cold night. After baking by the fire, Aiden’s face tingled at the sudden change in temperature.

  “Wait,” Hunter said, turning and going back into the house. He switched off the lights in the hall, the living room, and finally back in the kitchen, leaving them in total darkness.

  Aiden was disoriented by the surging black. What was Hunter doing? Uncertainty and arousal clenched in his belly. He took a tentative step forward but almost tripped on the snow-slicked door frame.

  “Shit!” he exclaimed before he managed to stabilize himself. Maybe this wasn’t so exciting after all. “I can’t see anything, Hunter.”

  Hunter was beside him, guiding his elbow. “This way,” he said. Aiden swore he heard him smile. “Pilot’s eyes.”

  He guided him out onto the deck. With the reflection off the snow, Aiden’s eyes adjusted a little, revealing a world in silvery monochrome. He could just make out Hunter ahead of him, pulling him forward. They stopped.

  “Put your hands here,” Hunter commanded. Aiden let him guide his wrist, until his fingers closed around cold, hard metal. It was a ladder, attached to the side of the house.

  “Are you serious?” Aiden asked. This seemed like a good way to slip and fall to his death.

  “It’s, like, five feet,” Hunter promised. Aiden felt him take his leg and guide his foot onto the rungs. “Straight up. I’m right behind you.”

  Against his better judgment, Aiden pulled himself up. It was easy enough to feel for the rungs in the dark once he got a sense of the spacing between them, though the cold metal bit into his hands. Eventually the ladder topped out on a flat portion of the roof. Aiden swept aside the snow as best he could and maneuvered himself onto the ledge. He sat and watched as Hunter’s shadowy form appeared up the ladder and settled beside him. His ass was getting wet.

  “Well?” Aiden asked.

  Hunter shushed him. “Look up.”

  Aiden did. The clouds had parted, revealing a spectacular expanse of stars. Each shimmering pinprick had a thousand neighbors, each place you fixed your eye seemed to blossom out a whole new constellation, until the whole sky was ablaze. A vast ballet of light and depth, the arch of the Milky Way rising over the silhouetted mountains. Aiden saw it wasn’t dark at all. It was teeming, pulsing with color, boundless and inscrutable. The roof, the canyon, the whole face of the Earth seemed to fall away until it was just him and Hunter there in the cold silence. Each second seemed alive, each one weighted with the knowledge that in all the billion years to come, in all the people and the places, there’d never be a moment quite like this again.

  They sat like that for a long time. Eventually, Aiden heard the rustle of Hunter’s jacket as he turned to look at him. “That’s why I joined the Air Force. Everything you do up there matters. It’s just you and the sky… nothing else, none of that stuff, is important.”

  Aiden could see the shine of his eyes, the curve of his jaw. He could see him somewhere in the dark skies over Afghanistan, the dull green glow of his instruments, the flash of his navigation lights, the endless stars. What did he think about in all those hours in the dark? What did he pray for?

  Aiden’s cold fingertips found the heat of Hunter’s hand.

  “Hunter….”

  The contact seemed to jolt him. “Come on,” Hunter said, sliding away from him and grabbing hold of the ladder. He started to climb down. “My mom would kill me if she knew we were up here in the snow.”

  “Our secret,” Aiden said.

  Hunter paused to look at him. “Deal.”

  Aiden watched him descend, disappearing in the dark.

  Chapter Eleven

  AIDEN WOKE up and the house was quiet. For a moment, he feared the Jensens would all be here again and the previous night with Hunter a passing accident, but something about the silence in the hall told him they were still alone. Aiden smiled sleepily at Hunter’s childhood airplane posters forming a squadron on the walls, poised in frozen acrobatics. The F-14. The Nighthawk. The F-16. The Thunderbolt. He thought about the previous evening: the big Utah sky and the crackling fire. He closed his eyes. Somewhere in the darkness, a voice told him, You like him. You’re falling for him. What the hell are you doing? Nothing provided an answer.

  He was hard with the morning. Idly his hand found its way down his stomach, under the waistband of his underwear. He stroked his shaft, his balls. He’d been so afraid of getting jizz on the sheets, he hadn’t jerked off in days. His heart thudded in his chest as he pulled out his cock, pumping it slowly through his hand, imagining it in someone, deep in someone, down to the hilt. He told himself it was Chris he was fucking, like it had been so many times before. Not Hunter. Not Hunter’s hard body on top of him, not Hunter’s legs interlocked with his, his tight virgin hole speared on Aiden’s dick, sinking onto him. He wanted to fuck him. Show him. Aiden tried to think of Jesse again, throating his cock in the shower, but Jesse’s face kept switching back to Hunter’s. Hunter naked, hard, wanting him. Hunter on his knees, his golden hair under Aiden’s hand, his mouth all Aiden’s, his ass, every beautiful part of him. Ai
den bit his lip, his cock wet under his fingers, his hand a piston as he jerked himself off, his mind flaunting all the ways it wanted Hunter in this room: in this bed, on that wall, on his back on the desk, blue eyes hungry for Aiden to fill him.

  Something clattered loudly against the door, making him jump out of his skin. Aiden dropped his dick like it was red hot, flinging the covers back over himself. The clattering was claws, a dog whining and scratching for entry. Lucy. “Fuck,” he breathed.

  Then there was a knock as well. Hunter. Fuck! “Hey, man?”

  “Yeah?” he called. He tried not to sound flustered even though his pulse was pounding in his ears, half with lust and half with the panic of near discovery. Hunter took that as his cue to open the door. Jesus! The dog bounded in excitedly and jumped up on the bed, standing uncomfortably on Aiden’s erection, licking his face. Aiden held her off ineffectually, more focused on making sure she didn’t rip the comforter off him. At least this gave Hunter some explanation for his blush even if the air must’ve reeked of sex.

  Hunter entered wearing running shorts and an Air Force hoodie. If he noticed anything unusual, he didn’t say anything. “Hey.”

  “Hey!”

  “Just needed some hiking shoes from my closet.”

  “Go for it!” Aiden said, somehow managing to hook his underwear back on under the sheets and free up a hand to grab Lucy and calm her down. The Labrador looked up at him adoringly, thumping her tail on the bed. Yeah, fuck you too, Aiden thought.

  Hunter was pulling out boxes. “Sorry they put you in here. Kind of embarrassing.”

  “It’s cute,” Aiden said.

  Hunter glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

  “Big Broncos fan.”

  “You’re messing. Hey, Lucy. Down now. Off the bed!”

  Lucy did as commanded, and Aiden had to move his legs again quickly to mask the obvious shape of his hard-on. Christ, he was hard. He could pull it out right now. He could put it in front of Hunter’s face and see what happened. But he didn’t.