Chariots on the Highway

by Limor Moyal

  Dan knew he was right. He also got the impression that Tom was ready and knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

  He called Shai and told him it was time, and that they were welcome to come by.

  The meeting was charged. A lot of tears fell. The intense emotions could be physically felt in the room. Dan felt something like a thrust of pain and sorrow while they relived the battle, each recounting it from his own point of view.

  Dan froze when the moment he feared most came, when Tom asked Shai, “What’s going on with Eran? Why isn’t he with you?”

  Dark faces and loud silence were his answer. He responded with a bitter shout, “NO!!! It's not possible? I left him at the shack so he wouldn’t get into harm’s way! How? Why?” Again, tears filled his eyes and Dan approached him. But he stopped him with a hand gesture, he needed space to let it sink in. “Do you want me to wait outside, Tom?” asked Dan.

  “No! Just give me a minute… Fuck… Eran… I can’t believe Eran is…” tears, again. The others choked back tears themselves. They had been at the funeral and had already accepted it. Eran was everybody’s friend, and everyone loved him, but he’d been Tom’s closest friend on the team.

  “How did it happen?” he asked Shai.

  “Even though you decided that he’d stay in the shack, he decided, apparently, to advance toward your direction. No one knows and as it seems we’ll never know what drove him to make that decision. He went into the village lightly armed and the bastards turned him into hamburger! The only comfort I can offer you is that he had fifty bullet holes in him before the real celebration started. he didn’t suffer, Tom, of that I can assure you. And the decision he made, stupid as it may be, only proves he was a good, loyal friend, and a damn good soldier,” Shai summarized. Eitan, who had been close to both of them during the fight, and witnessed the conversations that took place before the goodbye, added, “Tom, I think that his actions proved without a shadow of a doubt how much he loved you. I'm glad you were able to tell us about yourself before the fight, I think you know now that you're accepted and loved and that you can trust your friends,” he said. Tom remembered Eran’s words before the battle, when he claimed that he’d take a bullet for Tom, even if he was banging Woody Allen. He smiled bitterly at the memory, “I'll miss that fucker!”

  Many visitors came and went. A few reporters tried to get into the room but Dan blocked them. The IDF Spokesperson forbade Tom from talking to the press, not that Tom had any interest. The hit and the battle were all over the news in Israel, and got huge media coverage, which naturally started rumors spreading across the country that a lone soldier from Texas was the one to take out Abu-Mustafa and save what was left of his team.

  The IDF Spokesperson made an effort to cover up the story’s details. After all, someone along the chain of command had fucked up, something had gone wrong in the decision making process. The fact that they had gone into something that looked like an ambush hadn’t prevented the execution of the mission. It wasn’t clear who was responsible for the mess.

  Giora personally came, with his wife, to visit Tom. He told him about the IDF commander in chief and the Minister of Defense’s decision to bestow The Medal of Bravery upon Tom. It was one of the highest awards in the IDF, a medal saved for fighters that show courage under fire and take heroic actions while risking their own lives. Tom got a personal promise from Giora that the IDF would not stop, and would keep investigating the reasons that brought the operation to its unfortunate end. Dan, who was present in the meeting with Giora, was proud of him. But Tom didn’t understand why he deserved an award, “Anyone would have done that! I don’t understand why they’re wasting a medal on me,” he told Dan with a completely innocent look, and Dan smiled at him with admiration.

  On the 11th day in the hospital, at 08:00, Tom was impatient, and nagged the medical staff, to give him the long-wished for release form, “How long does it take to write ‘bye!’ on a piece of paper? I don’t get it!” he told Dan.

  At 10:00 they arrived at Pituach.

  Tom insisted that a wheelchair was for cripples, and refused to use one; he insisted on crutches only.

  His thigh was bandaged and in a cast, and he was told not to put any pressure on the leg. His shoulder was still aching from the surgery, and, as a result, he had to bear his whole weight on his left side to move with the crutches. He insisted Dan not help him, not even on the stairs.

  Dan called him, “stubborn baby!”, and Tom called him “Nagger”, and after the exhausting trip to the bedroom at the agonizing speed of 60 feet an hour, Tom made it to the shower, sweating and breathing heavily.

  “Going through rehab with you isn’t going to be a picnic, Texas. I can see that already,” smiled Dan.

  “No rehab! Give me a week and I can run a marathon!” Tom smiled and winked at him.

  “Every marathon runner, Texas, starts by walking. What do you think about focusing on that as a start?” suggested Dan while undressing, and seeing Tom’s pupils dilating.

  “I don’t think walking is what I feel like doing right now, Dan” answered Tom with a hungry look.

  Dan carefully took his clothes off, and wrapped Tom’s bandaged areas with plastic wrapping paper that he’d prepared in advance, and they went into the shower.

  It was a short shower. Tom refused to sit on a plastic chair, “Do you really think I'm going to sit on a chair in the shower? What am I, a geriatric case?” and so Dan quickly soaped them both, while Tom worked on stabilizing himself.

  Dan dried him up and put him into bed. He carefully laid beside him and started kissing him. Only then did he understand how much he’d missed him, their intimacy, their togetherness as a couple, how much he needed Tom’s body and his smell and how much he wanted to feel him.

  “I've missed you so much, baby. Feeling you close, feeling your skin, tasting you. I love you.” Tom hugged him and kissed his neck and chin. Smelling him and rubbing against the whiskers.

  “What do you want, Tommy? How do you want me? Whatever you want, it’s yours!” whispered Dan, breathing heavily from the sensation and excitement.

  “I want you inside me!” Tom answered and Dan almost came just from hearing that sentence.

  “I'm scared to hurt you, enough things have penetrated your body recently. Haven’t you had enough pain for the year?”

  Dan held him carefully, afraid he’d accidentally touch one of the bandaged wounds.

  He kissed him and ran his hand over Tom’s crotch, Tom's cock was soft, almost shrunk.

  “Dan, I'm sorry, it’s probably the medicine… Maybe if you give me a few minutes.”

  Dan distracted him with a kiss, laid beside him and hugged him. When he was near his ear he whispered, “Tommy, I don’t want sex now, and it’s okay that you don’t want it either. You went through a severe injury. You have a long rehabilitation period ahead of you, and not an easy one.

  Despite the fact that you think you’re ‘Superman’, and you’ve managed to convince the hospital’s staff that you’re okay, I know you well enough to know that you’re not. You don’t always have to be perfect. You don’t have to satisfy the entire world. You don’t have to take responsibility for everything that doesn’t work just because you were around when something failed. And you don’t need to prove anything to me now. I love you even when you’re weak, Tommy, I love you even when you’re wounded. I just want to love you, and take care of you, hug you and help you gain your strength. Sex will come later. Okay, Tommy?”

  Tom wiped away a tear he tried to hide from Dan. It wasn’t easy for him, being in this situation. But it was much more than just failing to perform, “Dan, I'm handicapped now. I'm fucked up, and I'm not as whole as I was. I have ugly scars on the outside, and even uglier scars on the inside. Eran was killed and my parents don’t love me, and I'm aching… and now I can’t get it up either,” he said and wiped away another tear, “I feel like shit, Dan. I feel like I'm worthless,” he cried, and Dan held him tight and let him get it all ou
t.

  When Tom calmed down a little bit, Dan covered both of them up and whispered, “Every scar you have just makes you more beautiful, Tommy, on the outside and the inside too. And I love you with all the scars. And I'm not leaving you. I'm here with you, Tommy. You are not worthless, you are perfection, and you worth everything to me.”

  Tom’s recovery was quicker than Dan had anticipated. He was impatient and rushed his body to heal quickly. He ate healthy food, trained for hours on end on his walk with the crutches. He strengthen his upper body by working with weights.

  The fact that he was young and fit didn’t hurt either, and a month after the injury, he said goodbye to the cast and crutches.

  During the rehabilitation time at home, they fell into a calm domestic. They learned to live together on a daily basis, and not on a weekend basis, as they had done up until then.

  Slowly but surely, the intimacy, and the sex, returned to their relationship and they were enjoying exploring and learning about each other.

  They discovered new things every time, each revealing his body’s secrets. Their passion only grew, and they couldn’t get enough of each other.

  They were both men that were used to satisfying others, and they both loved each other so much, that their shared life was based on never-ending mutual giving. While respecting the need of the other for some freedom and space. The shared life under these conditions amplified their feelings toward each other, and the more days that passed, the more they dove into a pleasant and relaxing routine.

  Tom signed up for a Master’s Degree in physics, just as he’d dreamed. He got a full scholarship thanks to a Jewish American fund supporting lone soldiers. He was discharged from the IDF immediately after the injury and got disability benefits that upset him, “But I'm not disabled!” he told Dan.

  “But you’ll never run a marathon either, or lift heavy weights, not to mention your destroyed spleen!” Dan answered him, ending the discussion.

  Tom spent his days studying, preparing himself for university, he brushed up on his math and read a lot of material ahead of time.

  Dan returned to full time work. During Tom’s hospitalization and rehabilitation period, he was absent from GreenTech a lot. But Sharron heroically kept everything together, and he rewarded her with a fat bonus and a generous pay raise.

  Dan’s sexuality didn’t bring up too many out of the ordinary responses.

  In GreenTech, the rumor that the injured soldier from the hit in Lebanon was the reason Dan was absent raised a few eyebrows. Rumors started spreading in the company’s hallways, and Sharron asked Dan what to do about it. His answer was concise, “If someone asks you, confirm! I'm not going to make a fuss about it. First of all, because I hate drama, but also, and mainly, because there’s nothing to make a fuss about. Who I love and who I’m sleeping with isn’t that interesting. If there’s anything I've learned in life, Sharron, it’s that people react to you the same way you react to yourself. If I don’t make a big fuss about it, being embarrassed, or ashamed, making an effort to hide it, or flaunt it, there’s no reason that this news will excite anyone for more than the three seconds in which he hears it. It’s a story with no juice!”

  Sharron understood and went by this principle, and other than a few odd looks, he didn’t feel any difference in his employees behavior toward him. There were a few men on the board that made sure to keep their distance when standing next to him, maybe from embarrassment.

  But if anything, he was glad; he liked his personal space, and other than Tom he didn’t really want anyone close enough to smell his cologne.

  26 Marijuana in Abarbanel

  On Thursday, Dan told Tom he’d be getting home late because of a meeting with a client coming from Russia, and that he shouldn’t expect him sooner than 8pm.

  He returned home to find Tom in the dining room, there was a bottle of beer next to him, a pile of books, and a dimmed laptop light illuminating his tired face.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” said Dan with a huge smile, and threw his bag on the table. Tom looked at him with a tired smile, “Do you know what happened to the last guy that called me ‘gorgeous’?” asked Tom.

  “You fucked him?” Dan answered with a question.

  “God, the things that come out of your mouth, Dan! And no, he’d wish, but he was too feminine, not my type!” smilingly answered Tom, and Dan put his hands on his shoulder and leaned over to kiss his head. He lingered to fill his lungs with Tom’s shampoo smell, a smell that had become like oxygen to him.

  “No femininity … in that case, I should probably throw away all my shirts from purple on up,” said Dan.

  “Is there an ‘up’ from purple?” asked Tom.

  “Fuchsia pink,” answered Dan, and they both laughed.

  “What are you doing there, ‘Einstein’?” asked Dan while looking at the open book and the screen, where math equations laced with Latin letters looked back at him.

  Tom sighed and leaned backwards to his chair, “If I were Einstein, I wouldn’t be in this situation right now,” he said.

  “And what situation is that?” asked Dan.

  “The situation in which I feel like my brain is sweating and screaming ‘That’s it!’, that if I don’t get a bigger hard disk, he’s striking!” explained Tom.

  “I know the feeling, Tommy. How do you feel about…” he asked with an enticing voice, while gently rubbing Tom’s shoulders, “We do something that will help your brain unwind a little bit?”

  “You know I never say no to a ride with you, babe!” Tom answered and turned his head for a kiss. Dan kissed him back, then stopped and said, “I meant something to loosen up your brain, not other organs.”

  “Are you sure? Because now it seems like there’s another organ that needs loosening up,” whispered Tom.

  “We’ll take care of it too, I promise, but let’s start from the head. Wait here for a second,” said Dan, and quickly went upstairs.

  Tom was curious as to what Dan was bringing and took the chance to adjust himself in his pants.

  Dan came downstairs with a smile and a rectangular box wrapped with brown paper.

  He put it on the table and Tom saw his name written on it.

  “Is this for me?” Tom asked with wonder.

  “It says ‘Tom’! Your brain really is regressing tonight, isn’t it?” said Dan with a smile full of affection and Tom rolled his eyes.

  “It’s not from me, though”, explained Dan, “Flora left it for you, and I've waited for the right time to give it to you,” Tom, who guessed what was in the box, and how it related to his tired brain, smiled. A full kind of smile. The one that melted Dan into a pulsing puddle.

  Tom tore the paper, and revealed a chess box made from black & white marble, it was obvious that the special board was hand-crafted. He opened the box and found the chess pawns packed in a white organza bag.

  There was also a nylon bag full of green leaves, and another bag with papers and a rolling machine. Next to all of these, there was a letter. Tom opened it and read it aloud.

  My dear Tom…

  As promised, I left you my stash. I'm sorry we didn’t get the chance to smoke up together, but that only means there’s more for you.

  This chess box, I bought on one of my trips to India, in a market next to the Taj Mahal. I've always loved chess. You choose a partner and embark on a mental battle with him. I had many wins and losses on this board, but every game I started, I started by choice, and now it’s yours.

  This weed I bought from a certified dealer in Abarbanel hospital, in Bat-Yam. I don’t know whose idea it was to sell medical marijuana to cancer patients from a psychiatric hospital. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but trust me, it’s totally real!

  Anyway, I suggest you use both of my gifts. You’re guaranteed big pleasure from both.

  My advice: Don’t use the marijuana before the chess. Chances are it’ll end with you losing. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure this loss will bother you much less afte
r a few good hits.

  Love and kisses,

  From my royal suite in heaven

  Flora

  P.S.

  Give Dan a hit, too. It’s less harmful than whiskey!

  They both laughed, relishing Flora’s surprising visit for a moment, she was there, in between the words, inside the box.

  Dan could hear her voice in his mind, speaking to Tom and saying those words in her laughing voice.

  “I miss her!” said Dan.

  “I know, me too. Let’s roll one and smoke up to her memory. I'll make the joint, you get us something to munch on, and pick the music. We’ll smoke outside on the deck!” Tom stopped for a moment and looked at Dan, who wasn’t really moving or sharing Tom’s enthusiasm, “You’re smoking with me!?” he said determined.

  “I don’t know, Tommy, I want to… I haven’t smoked in years,” said Dan.

  “So what’s with the hesitation, Jedi?” wondered Tom.

  “What if things spill out? What if I say something I'm not supposed to say? Or that you say things you’re not supposed to say?” Dan tried to explain himself.

  “Now, you’re definitely smoking with me! If you’re keeping things, they absolutely need to be said. And you don’t have to worry about me, I'm an open book!” said Tom and started working on his joint.

  “It’s not that I'm keeping things from you. Maybe I keep them from me,” Dan insisted on trying to explain exactly what bothered him, when he didn’t really know himself.

  “All the more reason, if you’re keeping stuff from yourself, and it comes out, we can deal with it together. Stop holding back and being in control all the time. It amazes me that you’re such a strong, mighty person, and the only thing in the world that scares you is yourself!” said Tom.