by Tanya Chris
Tanner’s combination of pliancy and responsiveness sparked a sense of ownership in him. This was his mission, his meaning—to fuck Tanner and do it well.
Tanner raised a hand, his movements slow and balletic in contrast to the frenzied motions of Joe’s lower half. He used it to trace the lower lines of Joe’s jaw.
“You’re magnificent.”
He would never label himself magnificent. He had an average-sized frame that carried a medically-approved amount of weight. He had the upper body strength that came from lifting and doing most of every day, with sturdy legs that no longer felt the hike from Ganymede to Longline, topped by a damn fine butt as a result of all those hikes, but Tanner wasn’t looking at his butt. Tanner was looking at his face, probably bunched and tight with the strain of his exertion and with trying to hold back his own pleasure until they could find Tanner’s.
It’s just a face, he thought, but he wanted Tanner to think he was magnificent, to look at him like he was a hero. He wanted to be Tanner’s hero. He moved Tanner’s hand down to his cock.
“Make yourself feel good. Come on.” He coaxed Tanner’s hand until it took over the motion, then put both hands on Tanner’s hips so he could drive even harder. Tanner moaned as his hand moved over his shaft, and his body began to buck under Joe’s.
“That’s it. Work yourself, baby. I want you to make yourself come. Can you do that for me?”
Tanner moaned a yes and his hand moved even faster, focusing on the tip now, squeezing as he dragged his fist over himself. He was so hot like this, wholly consumed in a daze of pleasure, his eyes squeezed tight to keep back the world, his limbs gyrating in an uncoordinated attempt to get closer.
“So hot.” Joe leaned over so their breath mingled, sucking down the bittersweet smell of Tanner’s sweat, egging him on by licking him, biting him. “With me,” Joe said. “You’re here with me. I’m fucking you and you’re going to come for me. Right now, baby, OK? Right now.”
Tanner’s syrupy reactions sharpened. His eyes flew open, focused squarely on Joe, and with a strangled moan he came all over his hand and stomach.
Joe’s shoulders slumped in relief. He’d promised Tanner he could fuck him for a long time, but he’d been too close to the edge himself, drawn forward by the unexpected emotion churning through him and the way Tanner’s ass felt so right around his cock.
But he’d held on. He’d given Tanner what he needed to get there, and now he could cross the finish line himself. In another few strokes, he was there, tumbling headlong into the oblivion of pleasure, everything he knew about summer snowstorms and heroin addicts sliding away for a few sweet moments.
He lowered himself down onto his forearms, careful not to crush Tanner’s fragile bones with his own weightier ones, and tapped their foreheads together. They were both sweaty and breathing heavily and Tanner was still making satisfied sounds beneath him.
“That felt so good,” Tanner murmured.
He grunted back, meaning yes but without the energy to say it. Tanner had mostly been lying there. He was the one who’d been doing all the work. But by the time he raised his head from where it had slipped onto the pillow next to Tanner’s, Tanner was asleep.
“Really, kid? I’m still inside you here.”
Tanner’s only answer was a whisper-soft snore, so he pulled out, laughing to himself quietly. No sense waking the kid up.
He used a clean corner of the towel he kept stashed under the bed for post-sex cleanup to swab at Tanner’s stomach, then removed the condom from his dick and tied a knot it and stashed it in the plastic medical waste container he kept in his top drawer.
Treating his semen like toxic waste was overkill, but it helped him feel better about certain decisions he routinely made. The weight of the box told him he’d need to empty it on his next trip down to the valley. Someone had gotten pretty lucky lately.
The box made him wonder about Tanner, about whether he’d left needles around where Joe or one of the other patrons could get stuck by them. He knew Tanner shot up rather than sniffed, because he’d seen the fresh circle of red dotting the line of marks that walked up and down his left arm, but maybe he hadn’t been shooting for long. Not if he could still use the veins in his left arm. Joe had gone long past that point before he’d gotten clean. Most of his scars weren’t noticeable now, just small spots of white, but they covered more than his arms.
He tucked the medical waste container away and turned back to the bed, wondering what he was supposed to do about the man lying in it. He’d never had anyone fall sleep in his bed before. It was too small for two grown adults, for one thing, and he was more the fuck-and-go type than the fuck-and-fall-asleep type for another.
Might as well let him rest, he decided. It was nowhere near late enough to go to sleep himself.
The sun had started to set. It cast an eerie glow over the haze of the storm. Only somewhere like Longline, where no artificial light polluted the sky, could you spot the light from a setting sun through snowfall as thick as this. It caught the snowflakes, highlighting them in gold and pink, like the sky was raining glitter.
He hadn’t bothered flicking on the light when he’d carried Tanner in and dumped him on his bed, and with night falling the room was twilighty and quiet aside from Tanner’s even breathing.
Now that he wasn’t balls-deep in Tanner’s ass, he knew he couldn’t be Tanner’s hero, couldn’t save him. He remembered enough of his own journey to know better than to think he and his magic dick could fuck Tanner clean. Tanner would have to want it himself—want it more than he’d ever wanted anything.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to regret fucking Tanner, even though Tanner would probably spend the rest of their enforced time together looking to him for comfort and affection. He could give Tanner comfort and affection for a few days, he decided. That he could do.
His musings were interrupted by the distant sound of a helicopter’s blades, instantly changing his mood from soft and satisfied to adrenalin-charged. In the mountains, helicopters meant rescues, even in good conditions. And under current conditions no one would bring a helicopter up here unless there was a major disaster.
The helicopter hadn’t been close, but it’d been closer to Longline than any other hut. He went to the shortwave radio and buzzed Susan in case his services were needed.
“No emergency that I’m aware of,” she told him. “It’s probably some dumbass weather copter trying to get pictures of the August blizzard to wow the townies.”
“There’s going to be an emergency if they crash into the side of a mountain doing it,” he grumbled. “Hey, speaking of emergencies, I should’ve called down earlier to let you know I’ve got your missing hiker.”
“Didn’t know I was missing one.”
“That AMC group didn’t report anyone missing? They made it down, I assume.”
“Oh yeah. They came in about an hour ago, but they didn’t say anything about missing anyone. Either their leader’s not as sharp as I thought she was or your guest doesn’t belong to them.”
“He said he did.”
“Maybe they knew he was sticking around. Anyway, I’m sure he’s safe with you. You have everything you need?”
“I’m good for now. If the lift’s still running tomorrow morning I’ll send you down a load of laundry.”
“Aw, Joe,” Susan said with a giggle. “Now I know why all the ladies come back down to Ganymede singing your praises. You really know your way to a girl’s heart.”
He disconnected the call, realizing he could no longer hear the distant beating of rotors. Either the copter had had the sense to retreat or there was a bird embedded in the side of a mountain. Either way, it didn’t have anything to do with him until it did. He had other things to worry about.
Chapter 4
Pyotr
Pyotr had never been so glad to see light in his life. At first he hadn’t been sure what was causing the faint glow on the horizon, or even if he was imagining it. He’d catc
h sight of it, then lose it again as the terrain under his feet rose and dipped.
Aside from that phantom glow and the illumination from his headlamp, the world around him was dark. The headlamp caught each snowflake as it danced, lazily and unpredictably, in front of his eyes. The multitudes of them drifting down, rising up, moving side to side in a twisted mass made him dizzy.
Once or twice he’d convinced himself that the headlamp wasn’t worth it, that that swirl of snowflakes only made navigation harder, that he’d move faster in the dark, but when he turned it off he found out otherwise.
He’d never known a dark like the one that surrounded him when he twisted the barrel on the headlamp until it shut off. The snowflakes disappeared, it was true, but so did the cliff to his right and the drop off of the slope to his left. With a sigh, he would twist it back on and start trudging again.
All he could see were snowflakes. All he could feel was the ache in his legs and the frightening lack of sensation in his feet. His small pack weighed twice as much as when he’d started, its weight increased by fatigue and the pile of snow that had no doubt accumulated on top of it.
Dropping into this snowstorm had been a monumentally stupid idea, but they’d all agreed it was crucial for him to get in and secure the payload before the other side wised up to the date change. If he didn’t show up tonight to meet the pigeon, as planned, they feared someone else would, and they’d lose their chance both to ID the pigeon and to secure the payload.
But now that he was slogging through a snowstorm, his feet heavy, his chest wet with sweat, his mind and body fatigued from the struggle—yeah, now he knew better. No one was making their way up here tomorrow to steal his booty out from under him. He could’ve waited until the storm passed. It would’ve been fine. Probably fine.
The warm splotch of yellow ahead of him finally expanded enough that he could feel certain it wasn’t a mirage, that something large and hopefully powered by electricity lay in front of him. The outline of a building began to take shape. He was going to live. It was the first time in at least an hour he’d been sure.
Monumentally stupid. Really.
The building he slogged towards had a wide veranda topped by a window that ran its length, from which the beckoning light silhouetted a row of tarp-covered masses. Hopefully this was Longline, his intended destination, but even if wasn’t, fuck it. He was stopping here for the night.
The last twenty yards felt like the longest leg of his journey, the few stairs up to the front door like more than he could handle. He tapped the toe of each boot against the surface of the deck, clearing the clumps of snow from the soles.
Snowshoes. Weren’t those a thing? They’d have been an improvement over wading through a foot of fucking snow. The snow had spilled over the tops of his boots and found its way inside, where it had melted. At first his feet had been cold and wet, but now they were only numb.
He raised his hand to knock, then pulled it back. If this was Longline, it was a hut—a sort of high-altitude inn—and people didn’t knock on doors to public spaces. He didn’t want to do anything that would mark him as out of place. He was supposed to be a hiker—a bedraggled one, no doubt—but hikers belonged here.
He twisted the handle and felt it turn. The door swung open and he stepped through it into a good-sized foyer lit mainly by spill from an even larger room beyond. A man appeared in the doorway that led to the better-lit room.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone tonight.”
“Wasn’t sure I’d make it.” Pyotr removed his gloves. His hands weren’t as bad off as his feet, but his fingers twinged at the warm air that washed over them, reacting like he’d dipped them in scalding water.
The man flipped a switch and light popped on overhead. The room he stood in was lined with cubbies and coat hooks. To his right stood a metal rack, on which two pairs of boots were drying. He’d add his own boots as soon as he found the strength to take them off.
“Let’s get you warm.” The man came over and helped Pyotr peel off his coat, as if he knew how leaden his arms were, then pressed him down onto a bench and knelt to unlace his boots.
Pyotr looked down at the man kneeling at his feet without the passion he’d normally feel in those circumstances. The guy was attractive in an outdoorsy, unkempt way, but now wasn’t the time to substitute some other activity for boot removal, not even in his own imagination. There was nothing this guy could be doing for him that would feel better than taking off his boots.
Beneath the snow-covered boots were the black socks he’d put on this morning before he’d learned he was going to be dropped by helicopter into a snowstorm. Below the black socks—now damp and looking like he’d been wearing them for a week—were two red and wrinkled feet.
The guy made a tsking sound when he uncovered them.
“You got something warm and dry in there?” he asked, gesturing to the pack he’d dropped at the door.
Pyotr looked back stupidly. Did he have dry socks? Probably. He had two changes of clothes. And no change of shoes. Fuck.
“All right, let’s worry about that later.” The man rose and went over to one of the cubbies and pulled out a pair of slippers so large and fuzzy they looked like the punchline to a joke no one had told. The cubbies were filled with slippers, he saw. That was so bizarre.
“We encourage people not to walk around in their boots,” the man said, kneeling again to slide the slippers on his feet. “Cuts down on how much sweeping I have to do. There.” He rose. “I don’t think they’re at the point of frostbite, but you were pushing it. Next time gaiters, right? I suppose you thought you wouldn’t need them in August.”
He nodded. He had no idea what gaiters were, but his gut told him he’d already compromised his cover by being surprised at that stash of slippers. Did people in high-altitude inns really use communal footwear?
At any rate, he was glad for the slippers. His feet tingled inside them, reawakening now that they were freed from the cold, wet restriction of his boots. Those boots should have been a half size bigger, in retrospect, and he should’ve worn them once or twice before slogging half a mile in a snowstorm in them.
Half a mile. It had sounded so straightforward when they’d conceived this idea of dropping him right on the mountain.
His helper was moving out of the foyer into the bigger room beyond it, looking back at him as though it were obvious he would follow. He spared a glance at his backpack, but his host didn’t seem to mind that it was dripping melted snow, so he left it.
“Sit by the stove,” the man told him. “You hungry?”
“I had dinner.” He dropped into a chair in front of a giant metal stove that threw off a welcoming heat.
How long ago had dinner been? He pulled up the sleeve of his fleece to check his watch. The face was covered in frost, cloudy and dark. Even when he scraped a thumb across it, he couldn’t get it to respond.
“Those smart watches don’t keep a charge very long in these kind of conditions,” his host said. “It’ll be fine once you charge it.”
Shit, he hadn’t thought to bring the charger. He fished his phone out of the breast pocket of the long-sleeved tee he wore beneath his fleece. He’d had the sense to keep it out of the snow and apparently that had kept it warm enough because it still had plenty of charge. No signal though.
“Have to go down to Ganymede to get a signal,” the other man said. “Not tonight, obviously.”
So that was that. Even if he’d been willing to walk back to the rendezvous point tonight, he couldn’t call for a pickup. He returned the phone to his shirt pocket. His pants were wet, so he shucked them, revealing the long underwear he wore beneath. The man took his pants from him.
“Someone out there worried about you?” he asked as he draped them on a line that ran over the stove. “I can use the shortwave to call over to one of the other huts.”
“No, no one’s expecting me anywhere.”
“In conditions like these, someone should know where yo
u are, be expecting you.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. He already knew he’d been monumentally stupid. Wasn’t that what he’d been telling himself for the last however-long?
“Where’d you come from?”
“I’m a through hiker, just going hut to hut.” He’d rehearsed that much, but he got the feeling this guy wasn’t buying it.
“And you’ve had dinner?” There was doubt evident in his voice.
Right. There was no way he could’ve eaten enough calories to compensate for how many he’d have burned if he’d been hiking through snow all day. His pack was woefully small, he now realized, for someone supposedly carrying everything he needed to be self-sufficient.
“I could eat something.” Truth was, even though he’d had a full dinner before getting on the copter, he was hungry. Now that he could feel his feet again, he could feel his stomach too.
His host smiled. “Kitchen’s closed, but I can make you a sandwich. I’ve got some bread that’s worth using up anyway.”
“A sandwich would be great. And something to drink? A shot maybe?”
The guy’s smile dimmed. “Let’s start with coffee. Alcohol sounds like a good remedy for hypothermia, but it really isn’t.”
Hypothermia be damned. He’d walked through hell and somehow lived. He’d like a drink. But he stayed in his chair without complaining, enjoying the heat and how good it felt to not move. Behind him were footsteps and the muted sounds of dishes clanking. A high-pitched whistle broke the quiet momentarily and then the man was back with a plate and a cup.
Pyotr thanked him with a smile and reached for the sandwich. “Peanut butter and jelly?”
“Don’t knock it. It’s got everything you need—fat, sugar, protein. All in one handy package. The coffee’s instant but it’s good instant. You need cream or sugar?”
He shook his head. American coffee still tasted like dirty water to him. It didn’t need further dilution.
The man left him, crossing over to a bar that backed against one side of the room. Behind the bar were bottles. Pyotr could make out a bottle of Smirnoff, which would do. His outsides were warming up, but his insides could still use a boost.