High Lonesome

by Tanya Chris

  “This is nice,” Tanner said. “It’s exactly how I imagined it.”

  It was a small room, crowded by a twin-sized bed and a single dresser, devoid of posters or memorabilia, not even a curtain at the window. Austere. That was what Tanner had imagined?

  “You have a nice view.” Tanner moved to stand in front of the wide window that was the only adornment he needed.

  The window faced the backside of the hut—farthest from the outhouses and sheltered from most of the traffic. It showcased not the tower of rock visible from the front but the gentle slope of the rising mountain, along which the track of a trail could still barely be discerned beneath the even coat of falling snow.

  He was tempted to move to the window too, to stand behind Tanner and wrap his arms around him and nuzzle into his neck, heat it with his breath, and watch the snow fall with him. It was the same urge that had made him pull Tanner into a hug earlier, and he was as baffled by it now as he’d been then.

  The kid was lost, no doubt, but it wasn’t his job to find him. The fact that he could relate to what Tanner was going through only meant he knew how little a role he could play in getting him through it. Tanner had battles to fight, but only he could fight them.

  “Here,” he said, throwing a pair of rain pants at Tanner rather than going over to cuddle him. “Put these on over your jeans.” They’d keep the cotton from getting wet and leeching all the warmth out of Tanner’s body. The shoes were a harder fix. No one accidentally left good hiking boots behind, but Tanner’s feet actually looked smaller than his own, despite the extra four or five inches Tanner had on him.

  He gave Tanner his second set of boots, knowing he’d regret it later when both pairs of his boots were wet, and two pairs of thick socks to fill the extra space. Too-big was better than too-small in terms of circulation, but it would lead to blisters and jammed toes if Tanner’s feet slid around with every step.

  “You’ll do,” he said when he’d swapped Tanner’s lighter jacket for his own. He always got too warm anyway. Tanner was the one with no meat on him. Kid was nothing but a collection of bones somehow managing to stay upright.

  Nice bones, though, arranged in all the right ways and covered in some very smooth skin. Joe found his hand creeping under Tanner’s jacket to brush at that skin as he zipped him up and straightened the layers for him. He was getting a little too comfortable touching this guy.

  Now they were both getting overheated, so he steered Tanner towards the door, relaxing as they cleared his bedroom. Having Tanner in there had been tempting, easy to forget that he was there to dress Tanner, not to undress him. Tanner’s sweet lips, those trusting looks he gifted Joe with—they fucked with his mind, lied to him about whether or not Tanner would be worth the trouble. Of course he wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

  “You got trekking poles?” he asked, grabbing his own from the rack by the door.

  “Upstairs.”

  He pushed his own poles into Tanner’s hands, too impatient to wait for him to run upstairs again. He didn’t need poles himself, even with a few inches laid down, and Tanner would struggle hard enough to keep up as it was.

  On the other side of the hut door, the snow was a fair amount thicker than it had been the last time he’d been outside, giving way in visible footprints beneath his feet. He led the way towards the trail that wound through the pass towards Muir. It was the flattest of the options leading out from Longline, the one where Tanner was least likely to hamper his pace, but even so he had to keep one ear tuned to the sound of footsteps behind him to ensure they didn’t fade too far back.

  Only the steady crunch of his own footsteps and the less-steady crunch of Tanner’s broke the muted white noise of snowflakes falling. Being alone out here, up high enough that civilization was a distant memory, nothing but white and silence surrounding him, was one of the perks of living at the hut.

  His mood improved with every step forward, soothed by the tranquil beauty. He found he didn’t even mind Tanner’s presence, silent as it was.

  Tanner didn’t say a word until they stopped at Joe’s favorite view—a panorama of the valley that opened up to the south through a gap between formations. Visibility was severely limited today, but the view still didn’t disappoint, as Tanner’s hushed “wow” confirmed.

  “Where you from?” Joe asked, feeling uncomfortably like he was trying to pick Tanner up the moment he said it.

  “San Diego.”

  “A sea level baby.” He’d heard Tanner’s shortness of breath in those two words alone—a mixture of the altitude and the effects of the drug, assuming he’d gauged which drug Tanner was on accurately. As though he wasn’t intimately familiar with the effects of heroin.

  Once Tanner had caught his breath, he’d turn them around rather than continue down the trail that was becoming harder and harder to pick out. He could take care of himself in low visibility, but he didn’t need the additional responsibility of dragging Tanner along behind him.

  “Where are you when you’re not here?” Tanner asked.

  “I’m always here.”

  “Always?”

  “I get one week leave every two months. I usually spend it at Ganymede. Sometimes I take a few days on the valley floor.”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “You’d be surprised what you can do.” He gave Tanner a significant look, though he wasn’t sure why he kept giving him hints that he knew his secret, like he was asking Tanner to confide in him.

  He didn’t want Tanner to confide in him, did he? There was a time he’d tried to do the sponsor thing, to pay forward what had been given to him, but it hadn’t worked out. He could barely keep himself clean. What did he have to pass on? Still, if Tanner asked him for help …

  Well, Tanner wasn’t going to ask him for help.

  “Let’s head back,” he said and his heart lurched at the grateful look Tanner gave him. He shouldn’t have dragged the kid out so far. They’d been walking more than an hour and it would take longer to get back, given how much deeper the snow was. The footprints leading back the way they’d come were rapidly filling in.

  By the time they made it back to the hut, he was seriously questioning his decision-making skills. Dragging a crashing addict out into a snowstorm had been a huge mistake. Tanner had kept trudging—Joe would give him that—but what if he hadn’t? Couldn’t count on a self-preservation instinct in someone who regularly injected himself with a substance that was killing him.

  Tanner nearly collapsed into the hut, needing help to remove his wet layers. The outer layers were wet from snow. The inner layers? Flop sweat. Or maybe just exertion. But no. Joe couldn’t help sniffing at Tanner’s skin as he uncovered it, recognizing the tang of sickness underlying the more attractive scent of man.

  Tanner staggered up the stairs, his feet dragging wearily behind him.

  “I’m going to make myself some lunch,” Joe called after him, even though he already knew Tanner wouldn’t want any.

  “I’ll probably lay down for a bit,” came the weary reply.

  He watched until he couldn’t see Tanner anymore, then went into the kitchen. He had the urge for tomato soup like he always did when he came in out of the snow, a harkening back to the days when he’d been a kid throwing snowballs and building forts. He’d come in, cold-nosed but warm-bodied, and his mother would peel off his outer layers the way he’d peeled off Tanner’s and serve him Campbell’s tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich cut diagonally with the crusts trimmed off.

  That was before he’d pissed off his whole family with his asshole, addict behavior. Now, when he called home, he didn’t hear unconditional love in his mother’s voice. When she asked how he was doing, it was always with the expectation that his answer would be negative, and her hesitation when he said he was doing well told him she only half believed it. That bond mothers were supposed to have with their children had stretched beyond its capacity to snap back. But tomato soup still gave him that same warm feeling of h
ome it once had.

  He didn’t open a can of soup, though. The sensible thing to do was to eat the fresh food first. Tomato soup would keep, power or no power, but the chicken, the eggs—those things had a limited shelf life. So he made a quick meal of found items out of the refrigerator and ate it standing up in the kitchen, looking out the tiny window over the sink at the rapidly-whitening landscape.

  He still needed to clean the dormitory, but he’d give Tanner some quiet and privacy. There was no rush, considering he wouldn’t be getting any new clientele this afternoon. He could get to it after dinner.

  Since he hadn’t unearthed any new books when he’d cleaned up the great room, he grabbed an old favorite from his bedroom and settled down in front of the stove with it and that cup of coffee he’d been promising himself.

  The book was a Western, an epic romance that was sort of a bromance too. Like most Westerns, it featured a taciturn loner, craggy-faced and sinewy-strong—the kind of guy he enjoyed being under—and his best friend/sidekick, who wasn’t a love interest but that didn’t stop Joe from imagining how it would play out if he was.

  This one also featured a fierce heroine, and the love scenes got him riled up no matter how many times he read them, but he mostly liked the parts where the hero did his own thing without either the sidekick or the heroine.

  It was set out on the plains, not on top of a mountain, but he drew his parallels anyway. It was lonely poetry, isolation porn. And when the on again/off again love story ended in tragedy, it confirmed his own bias. Nothing wrong with a good fuck, but love only let you down. Or you let them down so many times they gave up on you. Either way.

  He must have napped at some point, because he startled awake when Tanner’s feet on the staircase made it creak. His book rested on his chest and his coffee cup was empty. The swirling sky outside the window was still bright, but he knew from the angle of the sun that it must be getting on to late afternoon.

  He’d only managed to push himself a little further upright when Tanner came into the room dressed in nothing but a pair of dark blue boxer briefs and a clean white t-shirt, his auburn hair tousled from sleep. He came straight over to Joe and climbed onto his lap, his knees snugging into Joe’s thighs, pressing tightly to fit in the limited space.

  “I think we should do this,” Tanner said preemptively. His pupils were so constricted, Joe could hardly make them out—tiny dots of black in a sea of bottle green.

  “Do you?” He let the book drop over the side of the chair, then ran both of his hands up the thighs that squeezed him like a vise. He’d resisted the earlier come-on, but now that he had a lap full of man, he wasn’t sure he wanted to resist again.

  Tanner’s skin was hot and damp and it pebbled under his hands with goose bumps. He knew how it felt like this, freshly-dosed, when every touch was ecstasy, when all the world was right. Heroin addicts might not have the motivation to seek out sex often, but when they did? When they were freshly high? Nothing felt better, like every inch of skin was an erogenous zone containing as many pleasure receptors as the head of your cock.

  Tanner swayed towards him, bringing their chests close. A little whimper escaped him as Joe moved his hands up to Tanner’s arms and rocked him gently, bringing him forward and back and side to side, Tanner following his every direction. It was like a dance, how Joe could move him, so persuadable, so pliant. He couldn’t help leaning closer, sitting up straighter so that their chests bumped and his mouth brushed at the skin on Tanner’s neck.

  “Good?” he asked when Tanner shivered and goose bumps spread across his chest.

  “So good,” Tanner agreed. “Like, you don’t even know.”

  He knew. He continued stroking Tanner, licking up his neck and into his ear, letting his hands run up and down Tanner’s back beneath his shirt, keeping the two of them pressed together even as he encouraged Tanner to continue rocking. Their cocks were hard between them, his own harder than Tanner’s but he could feel the growing weight of Tanner’s erection pushing into him. Even better, he could hear the whimpers of encouragement and feel that hypnotized rocking of Tanner’s body against his.

  Tanner’s skin tasted like salt, but he didn’t smell sick, didn’t taste sick. He was high now, happy with it, his body singing along to the tune Joe played. Joe licked at his bottom lip and Tanner’s mouth fastened onto his with unexpected speed, as though he’d been waiting for it. Their tongues danced in each other’s mouths as all the while Tanner made those little whimpers of need.

  He thought maybe he shouldn’t, but he was so fucking turned on, like he was in Tanner’s body, knowing—remembering—how it felt to have that feverish flush, those trails of sensation rushing everywhere, how easy it was to surrender yourself, to be nothing but body.

  He was envious, he realized. He was fucking envious. He wanted to do Tanner, but he also wanted to be Tanner, to be high like Tanner.

  He pulled back on Tanner’s head, separating the clinging, pouty lips from his own. Tanner gave him a dazed look, swaying back into him even though the motion tugged at the hair Joe clenched in his fist, moaning when he felt the tug, because, yes, he remembered—even the pain felt good. Every point of contact flared with an irresistible intensity when the high was fresh.

  “I don’t want to fuck you,” he lied.

  “We don’t have to fuck,” Tanner said, missing his point. “We can do whatever you want. I want to be here with you, like this. Whatever you want.”

  He swayed forward again and this time Joe let him because the surge of his own lust made it too difficult to resist. Whatever he wanted. And he knew Tanner meant it, that Tanner would enjoy being pushed around, being maneuvered and manipulated, being used.

  He did want to fuck Tanner. That was the truth. He wanted to discard the layers that separated them and press his cool, dry flesh against Tanner’s warm, damp flesh and sink into him, wanted to be looking at those green eyes with their pinprick pupils and imagine himself in there, inside those eyes looking out on a world that was beautiful and bright, a world that loved him.

  He rose to his feet, managing to bring Tanner with him. Tanner laughed a clear, bright laugh and wrapped his legs around Joe’s waist.

  “You’re so strong.”

  “You weigh nothing,” he answered grumpily, because he knew why the man who was at least four inches taller than he was weighed less.

  “Mountain man,” Tanner said, undeterred by his tone. He nuzzled into Joe’s neck as Joe carried them towards his bedroom. “My mountain man.”

  “Not yours.”

  “Mine for now.”

  He dumped Tanner onto his bed, letting him bounce to convey his disapproval, but Tanner only giggled and stretched and gave him a scorching come-hither look from under his eyelashes.

  “What am I going to do with you?”

  “I told you. Whatever you want.”

  He hauled Tanner into a seated position and stripped off his t-shirt, then pushed him down and yanked off his boxers. Tanner stretched again, showing himself off in all his long-limbed glory. His cock was mostly hard, draping slightly to one side so that it brushed at the sharp edge of his hip bone. Above his concave stomach, his ribs projected sharply.

  “Heroin chic.”

  Tanner’s eyes flew open wide. He licked his plump bottom lip and eyed Joe nervously. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean you’re beautiful, sweet thing.” He’d let it go for now. He wanted to get laid, he decided, not stage an intervention. “But you knew that.” He leaned down and kissed Tanner, nipping at his lips until Tanner’s eyes became hooded again. Best to get this show on the road. He didn’t want Tanner nodding off halfway through it. Not good for the ego, that.

  He went over to his dresser and got out some supplies, then took his time shedding his own clothes, his eyes never leaving the temptation stretched out before him. Yes, Tanner was too thin, but he was also beautiful.

  With his dick safely encased in rubber, he crawled over Tanner’s bod
y, loving the way Tanner arched up into him like a pleasure-seeking missile, eagerly pressing himself into Joe in a formless, aimless way, as if all skin were equal. Joe slid down until he could get his mouth on Tanner’s cock and sucked, working it to full hardness as Tanner undulated against the crisp whiteness of his sheets.

  “Jesus, that’s good,” Tanner mumbled as he moved, up and back, side to side, like he couldn’t understand where the pleasure was coming from.

  “How long has it been since someone touched you?” He reached for the lube he’d let drop on the floor next to the bed.

  “Too long. Been even longer since …”

  “Since you got fucked?”

  He nodded, his eyes big.

  “I’m going to make this good for you,” he promised. “You take your time. There’s no hurry. I can fuck you a long time.” He pushed Tanner’s legs up so he could get his fingers into his ass. The pop of the top had Tanner’s gaze flying to the bottle in his hand.

  “You want this, right?”

  Tanner nodded and squirmed, wiggling himself deeper into the bed, fluttering his eyelashes closed. Joe inserted two fingers and Tanner sighed around them, his body completely loose, open in welcome of his fingers and then his cock.

  “That’s it,” he said, when he’d bottomed out. He checked out Tanner’s dick and found it flagging. “Come on, baby. Open your eyes. Let’s do this thing.”

  Tanner’s eyes opened with a complacent smile and the noises he made as Joe started fucking him were accepting, even eager, but Tanner would need more, he could tell. Without a push, his pleasure would never peak.

  He ratcheted Tanner’s legs higher, folding him in half so the sensation would keep him centered, and drove into him harder. Tanner felt good around him, warm and yielding, and as Tanner’s dick re-hardened the noises he made grew positively shameless—more like he was getting a really good deep-tissue massage than getting fucked. They were grateful, expressing orgasmic glee with every thrust, like Joe was hitting just the right spots, inside and out.