Snowed In: M/M Mpreg Alpha Male Romance

by Aiden Bates

  They’d been best friends at school for a reason, Kevin followed Alex around like a star-struck little brother, he thought Alex was everything he wanted to be (in a way, he was right; Kevin still wishes he was more like Alex, taking this drive that Alex must have made alone many times, next to Alex’s young former lover). He literally followed Alex into his own line of work, that’s why it was such a blow to him when Alex showed up unshaven and unemployed at his house: what had happened to his hero?

  So of course Alex found the best place to live through the end. Of course he came to Glenn and Kevin under the guise of a bum so he could start outfitting it ASAP, long before anyone would ever believe his story about the coming disaster, because that’s how long it would take to do it right. For all the supplies Kevin sent his friends out for, none of it was really sustainable in any of the places he imagined they’d go. He was bullshitting his friends, he was playing for time, he was second fiddle to Alexander the Greatest, again, still and forever. It breaks his heart that things turned out like this.

  The end of the world is one thing, that’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to politicians and government egos, the little guys and civilians can’t control any of that. But why, why, didn’t Alex come to Kevin with this. Why didn’t he ask for help, why didn’t he tell the one person who could have, and who would have, believe him? Was he waiting until the disaster was closer? Was he waiting to finish the goddamn guest garage first? What was his logic? Did he have any logic at all after finding out what was happening, or did it rattle him so badly that no matter what he did, or how hard he worked to live, eventually he just couldn’t take the hopelessness of it all, the futility of ever trying to build anything when someone or something would eventually come to tear it all down. Arrogant Alex. Poor Alex.

  “It’ll be the first possible right turn on this road,” Clarkie says, consulting the map. The GPS can’t lead them here because this place is not a place to go anymore, at least in the normal operation of things. They’ve gotten off the interstate and are on a road paved, but dense with trees on either side, like a hallway. Kevin starts watching for any break in them where he can turn.

  “Why didn’t Alex lead me here?” Kevin mumbles when he finally finds the turn, he can’t stop wondering. Why didn’t that asshole even leave a note?

  “Who’s to say he didn’t? His death is the only thing that brought you all together, you know. His death is the only reason any of us might be saved.”

  “Clarkie …” Kevin begins, and then sighs, trying to cool his temper. He doesn’t need to light into this kid, but he wants to, he wants to flog somebody for all of this, and Clarkie’s the only one who’s here. Kevin pulls up to a door in the side of the mountain, overgrown with weeds and plants except where Alex has cleared it for use. This place would have made a good meth lab if someone else had found it. Kevin hopes it makes a good home for his family, but first he wants to explain something to Clarkie.

  Kevin gets out of the car, glares at a couple of NO TRESSPASSING and CONDEMNED: UNSAFE signs, wondering if Alex put them there or the county, then he walks over to where Clarkie is gawking around at the scenery, and pushes him against the car. Not hard, just straightening his shoulders against the car so the kid will pay attention. He needs to be disabused of his little fantasy, or maybe he doesn’t need to be, but Kevin’s misery demands some company right now.

  “Don’t go thinking Alex is some big hero for what he did,” Kevin says. He’s probably hurting himself far more than Clarkie right now; Kevin’s hero really is dead, he’s gone. “He could have come to me with this information. I could have believed him, I could have helped him convince our friends, he wasn’t saving us when he killed himself, he was giving up completely.”

  “There’s no way all of you would have dropped your lives and come out here if it hadn’t been for his funeral! He forced you to all be here when it mattered the most!”

  Kevin shakes his head and doesn’t break eye contact with Clarkie even though he can feel his eyes start to water with tears.

  “We could have faked his death, Clarkie,” Kevin whispers. “You think Alex wasn’t smart enough to trick us all into one place like this? He was smarter than me, and I could throw a fake funeral easily. Alex would have, should have … he could have sat through his own funeral just for the thrill of hearing himself remembered so fondly. In his happier days he would have liked that.”

  “Like Tom Sawyer,” Clarkie says, his voice cracking a little bit. Kevin stops holding his shoulders back and starts squeezing them in comfort. This kid was in an English class about five minutes ago, wasn’t he? What babies everyone under twenty-five appears to be now, what sweethearts he and his friends must have been when they too were such giant infants themselves, when they all first met.

  “Yeah, just like Tom Sawyer,” Kevin agrees, forcing his face to smile, which helps him feel a little better, just physiologically. Clarkie smiles back at him, and Kevin pulls him forward and puts an arm around his shoulder to lead him to this secret door of Alex’s. There’s a lock on the door, and a keypad, and Kevin is just about to lose the sanity he just regained looking at these impossible blocks when Clarkie turns over the map and shoves it under Kevin’s nose. There’s a key taped to the back, under a long set of numbers. Alex must not have given up on Clarkie at least. This must be his goodbye note. Kevin touches the numbers in Alex’s handwriting with his fingers, and then types them into the keypad. Clarkie turns the key in the lock, and they step inside.

  No overhead lighting in here, but there are a couple of standing, battery-powered lamps. Kevin and Clarkie both pick one up and carry them forward like torches. Talk about returning to the Stone Age, Kevin feels like they’re walking into an unknown cave with newly discovered fire. Fucking Alex … he thought of everything.

  The front room, the one that is under dirt and not built into the bedrock of the mountain, that room is empty. The next door is some kind of protective metal, something to insulate their inner sanctum from the outside air. Speaking of air, as Kevin explores the rooms in what used to be an office of some sort, he finds stuff for air filtration, a room outfitted with grow-lights and soil, a room with bikes to run generators for those lights when all their batteries die, rooms with beds, rooms with food stored floor-to-ceiling, a room with medical supplies, basically enough to give surviving the old college try. Kevin walks through this place with his mouth agape, and he leaves this place after making a list of anything he can think of to fill the gaps wondering again: why didn’t Alex stay with them?

  He doesn’t ask Clarkie, and he doesn’t talk about it with Glenn that night either, because he’s pretty sure he knows that he’ll never have that answer. For all the strange happenings that have surrounded Alex’s death, the death itself is the same as any other suicide: it’s a mystery to the survivors, painful and pointless and beyond their understanding. Kevin just has to learn to live with that.

  Friday night, when everyone arrives back at the home base, after dinner is eaten and cleared, Kevin gives them the good news: “Alex found the perfect place. I think we should call it Alexandria.” Everyone agrees, and Kevin leaves them to pore over the map and blueprints, and to flip through the pictures he took with his phone of the interior. He tells them all to make a list if they can think of any last minute supplies they’ve not gotten already, and then to direct all their questions to Clarkie, because Kevin needs a break. Everyone flocks to the table and Clarkie, everyone except for Greg.

  When Kevin turns the corner to head upstairs, Greg is standing in front of him, arms crossed in his nice slacks and a thin, long-sleeved shirt (he always did start getting cold earlier in the year than anyone else did). He’s leaning against the wall, blocking the stair, and he tips his head to consider Kevin, then smiles.

  “We all agreed to try this thing between you and me before heading underground,” Greg says.

  “We did.”

  “We also thought we’d do it when Glenn was away with the kid
s, but that won’t be until tomorrow, and we won’t have time for this tomorrow.”

  Kevin sighs again, the deepest one yet today, and he leans an arm against the wall too so that he and Greg are at the same angle.

  “That’s true,” Kevin says.

  “That means we should do this tonight then, like now, while everyone else is busy and distracted. It’ll only take a minute, right?”

  Kevin smirks now; is Greg teasing him about his stamina in the sack? Greg smirks back at him: he is.

  Kevin leans in closer, then stops, leans closer, then stops again, in case Greg doesn’t want to be kissed, but Greg doesn’t move. With the next lean-in their lips connect. It’s a bit like kissing one’s cousin or something, just does not compute romantically, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still a nice thing to do.

  “Let’s go up to your room,” Kevin says, and Greg turns to lead the way while Kevin starts conjuring up every filthy thing he can think of that will turn him on: Glenn sucking his cock, or what it would feel like to fuck him in public somewhere, out in the open, a perverse little fantasy that, unlike Jeff, he would never actually do. Kevin takes longer to follow Greg into his room, to give them both a window of time to prepare. When he steps in, Greg is naked, propped on his elbows, face towards the pillows, with lube by his hip. He’s ready. Kevin locks the door.

  Kevin stands behind him and strips. Greg has a very pretty body, and with his face turned away Kevin can almost trick himself into forgetting who this is, and just think of it like a sexy dream, some faceless stranger you get to fuck outside of your marriage because he isn’t real and you can’t control your dreams. He can do this.

  Kevin is hard enough to get started. He climbs onto the mattress, slicks himself and Greg with lube, getting a unique thrill in parting his cheeks and getting to look at his asshole—the most hidden place on a man, and here Kevin is looking at Greg’s, while Greg will never see his. That gives him a manly feeling of pride and control, enough to penetrate Greg without hesitation. Greg sucks in his breath.

  “Oh my god, I can’t believe this,” Greg says softly.

  Kevin lowers himself into Greg, and his body onto Greg’s back, kissing his neck and whispering to him, “I want you to like it. Tell me what you like.”

  Kevin starts to pump his hips, and Greg reaches back a hand to cup Kevin’s face and tell him one of his most private secrets.

  “Pull my hair,” he says. “Mess it up and pull on it hard.”

  Kevin smiles, and nods so Greg knows he’s been understood. For as carefully in place as Greg keeps his hair throughout his days, it must be quite a thing for him to have it yanked and mussed up during sex. Kevin does what Greg’s suggests, reaches up with his right hand, drags his nails up the back of Greg’s neck to the top of his crown, then makes a fist. Greg moans, and raises his hips up against Kevin’s thrusts so he can reach beneath himself and start to jerk off. They’re almost done.

  “Close,” Kevin informs Greg as his thrusts quicken.

  “Me too,” Greg pants into his pillow. “Go for it, don’t wait for me.”

  Kevin doesn’t have to wait. Greg crests first, and when he does, the abrupt way he seizes and pauses lets Kevin know what’s happened. He’s just had an orgasm while Kevin’s cock is burrowed inside of his guts. That’s some hot knowledge to have, and it puts Kevin over the edge too. He starts to cum and presses himself as closely as possible to Greg as he rides it out, so this seed gets planted where it’s needed, where it’s desperately wanted.

  Kevin lets his breath even out and then says to Greg, “I’ll stay here a bit, just to, you know.” The spell is broken and they’re back to being buddies in a particularly awkward situation.

  “Sure,” Greg says. “Thanks.”

  Kevin smiles. “You’re welcome. Is this the weirdest thing you’ve ever done?”

  “Nope,” Greg says, talking forward to the headboard, as if one of them has merely caught a thread on the other’s watch and is waiting for it to release, no more than that. “But I tried acid in grad school, so it’s a high bar for weird in my life. You?”

  “Nah, not the weirdest. Conversations with my sons are the weirdest things in my life.”

  Kids, now they’re both thinking about kids, and Kevin doesn’t know how he knows, but he can tell Greg is smiling.

  “This is so worth it,” Kevin says, then starts to withdraw from Greg’s body. “It doesn’t matter how awkward this gets, it’s worth it. You know it, I know it, Glenn knows it.”

  Greg stays where he is and nods. Kevin stands up, wipes himself with some tissue from the bedside table, and then gets dressed.

  “You want to stay there for a while, don’t you?” he asks when the only thing left for him to do is leave.

  “Yep,” Greg says. Kevin unfolds a blanket laid across the foot of the bed and puts it over Greg. “Thanks, you’re a prince,” Greg says, close to laughing.

  Kevin is about to get a fit of the giggles too. “No problem, buddy. Next time, try doing a handstand and holding it for a while, that ought to work.”

  Greg snorts. “Fuck off with you,” he says, grinning and finally looking at Kevin now that they’re both separated and covered up again.

  “See you tomorrow,” Kevin says as he leaves. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

  15. Glenn Collects the Kids

  Friday night is a strange one, the last one Glenn and Kevin will spend in their own bed, their own house, ever again. It’s even stranger when after they shower and settle in bed, Kevin says he has something to tell Glenn.

  “So … that thing with Greg. Me with Greg, that happened.” It’s no confession, because of course this was Glenn’s idea in the first place, but he thought it would happen tomorrow, when Glenn picks up the kids. He was actually dreading that car ride tomorrow, knowing his mind would be in two places at once, worrying about what he would say to the kids, and imagining what was happening between Kevin and Greg. Now that pending discomfort is weirdly lifted, gone. However, now he just feels weird knowing it happened when he was unaware.

  “When?” Glenn asks. He nestles deeper into his bed—he loves this bed, and clean sheets, and pillow talk, and how much of what he’s used to will he have to live without after tomorrow? It’s already starting; this is not a conversation he ever imagined he and Kevin would have.

  “Just after dinner, when you were all looking at Alex’s maps. Greg suggested we get it out of the way, in case tomorrow gets away from all of us, and I agreed. This really is the last even semi-normal day, isn’t it? Tomorrow we start a weird, new world, and we promised Greg that we’d start this before going underground. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  Kevin, nestled in his pillow and facing Glenn, reaches across to hold his hand. Glenn trusts that they picked the right time, when it wouldn’t have to be everyone’s business that they had such a peculiar arrangement. Glenn squeezes Kevin’s hand to let him feel that too.

  “So, how was it? Are you okay? Did Greg seem okay, happy? I don’t remember seeing him after dinner at all.”

  “Yeah, he stayed in his room, wanted to let it … set, I guess.” Glenn smirks, closes his eyes to try and control himself, and comes out of it rolling his eyes. “I know!” Kevin goes on. “I know, I swear, we could hardly take it seriously ourselves. It’s not that I’m blind to other men being attractive, it’s not that I couldn’t imagine being with other men if I’d never met you, but not Greg, you know? Sam, easy, yes, he’s an actor, a lot of people I’m sure could fall for him; Alex, he could have had me if he wanted me. I met him before I met you and I always thought he was perfect, and goddamn it if he hasn’t bested me again with this old mining place—he’s still impressive even when he’s gone; Jeff’s such an opportunist all it would take is one sad night and too much to drink to make that happen, but Greg? It’s happened and it still seems pretty unlikely. He’s like the opposite of my type, it doesn’t matter how gorgeous he is, I couldn’t even look him in the eye for a few minutes
there.”

  “It’s not because he isn’t your type,” Glenn tells him, “it’s because you’re both the same type, you’ve got too much in common.”

  “Rams butting heads, you mean?” Kevin says.

  “Yeah, and I’m the ewe, sure, but all this work is for the sake of our lambs, right? You don’t regret it, do you? Does Greg?”

  “I’m good, but I’ve got everything I want and need already, so it doesn’t hurt me to be generous or whatever you call this. I don’t know about Greg. Right now he’s still alone, with no guarantees. I left him in his room alone, and came back down to the rest of you, but Greg stayed. You should probably touch base with him tomorrow, maybe take him with you everywhere, stick with him, just in case. He seems like he’s right on the edge and could go either way: hope or hysteria.”

  Glenn nods. So Kevin can feel that too, Glenn’s not just projecting or something. Greg’s in a very precarious place; he’s no Alex, but he’s on a dangerous edge and hardly has anyone to relate to about it, only Glenn can even get close. The thing with Alex … he made decisions and he never looked back—that’s how he left his job and how he left this world. Greg wouldn’t do it like that, but if he loses hope he might just give up, let himself sit in the way of danger and passively accept the end. He did that with his own career in leaving public defending, and Glenn doesn’t want to see him do it now, when it counts so much that they all make it through this one last upheaval.

  Kevin kisses Glenn then reaches across him to turn off the lamp on the bedside table. He stays close to Glenn’s side of the bed, cuddling him.

  “Sleep with me now, worry about Greg in the morning when you can do something about it,” Kevin whispers.

  That’s good advice, so Glenn takes it. If he dreams he doesn’t remember any of it by the time he wakes up. It’s like his eyelids give him darkness, then time jumps, and it is time to work again.

  The house is in an uncomfortable hurry, it feels like going on a vacation that starts with a terribly early flight. You want to get on with it all—it’s a good thing, but you’re all looking at a long journey that starts tired and in the dark, everyone moving past each other like strangers so they won’t start snapping at one another. Nobody eats breakfast in the house, they all just take their last list of chores and go. Final supplies to purchase, Kevin’s going for a moving van, Glenn’s going to get their children and will lie to them until they’re locked inside their new home. Greg’s coming with him. Glenn catches his eye and shakes the car keys at him, and Greg follows. They get into the car just as the sun’s coming up. They don’t start talking until Glenn pulls into a drive-thru to get them coffee and breakfast. Greg orders the kind of cheesy, salty breakfast burrito that he would never touch on any other day of his life, but it’s not like he needs to watch his figure anymore. That’s just one more small things changing along with the rest of his life, but still it’s the small things that breaks Glenn’s heart the most. Oh well.