Victor J. Banis

by Deadly Nightshade

  Tom tossed his gun to the floor.

  “Move out of the way,” Moira said. She motioned with the gun. Tom moved to his left, circling clockwise.

  She took Stanley’s arm and circled as well, to the right, keeping Stanley between her and Tom, until she was by the door. Then she gave him a shove in Tom’s direction and she was out the door, but as she ran she took a wild shot in Stanley’s direction. He gave a kind of yelp and dropped to the floor.

  Tom knelt over Stanley. There was blood on the side of his head and on the floor around it. For a minute, he thought Stanley might be dead, and something seemed to die inside his own chest, a painful death.

  Stanley opened his eyes, squinted up at him, and somehow managed to smile. “You came for me,” he said, his voice not much more than a whisper. “My hero.”

  “Yeah, well, it doesn’t look good on your record, letting your partner get killed. You okay? Because I think our little nightshade is getting away.” The high heels were clattering now down the steps.

  “Go get the bitch,” Stanley said. “I’m going to slap her head sideways.”

  Tom grinned and jumped up, went after her. He paused at the top of the stairs. She was in the atrium, almost to the fountain. Across the way, Jeremy Clark’s apartment door opened.

  “What’s…?” he started to say. He got a glimpse of Tom’s face, and slammed his door.

  “Moira,” Tom called. “Give it up.”

  She stopped cold, swung around, surprised to hear her own name. He took advantage of her pause, took a cautious step or two down, not wanting to startle her into running again.

  “Tanya,” she said. “It’s Tanya. My name is Tanya.”

  “Even if you got away,” he said, “we know who you are now. You think you can live on the run? Sooner or later, they’ll track you down.”

  “I should have killed you in the damned alley,” she said. She raised the gun, leveling it at him. Tom froze.

  “I should have killed you the first time you laid a hand on me.”

  Stanley had dragged himself to his feet and out of the apartment, leaning over the atrium wall. He saw her bring the gun up, saw that Tom had gone after her unarmed. Poop, he thought. Both the guns, his and Tom’s, were in the apartment behind him. Not enough time to go get one, and he wasn’t about to let that crazy bitch kill the man he loved.

  He scrambled up onto the stucco half-wall, balancing himself on his knees for a moment, cried, “Look, Mom,” and flung himself into space, arms wide, back arched.

  It might have been, at last, his perfect swan dive, if he’d had time to finish it, if the water were further away. But there wasn’t time, and no water except for the few gallons splashing in the fountain, just an astonished Moira looking up at him, eyes wide, disbelieving.

  He landed on top of her with a thud and a whoosh of breath and a tangle of limbs. The gun clattered somewhere off to the right. He heard something break, hoped for a minute it was her neck, and realized belatedly it was his arm.

  Oh, great, now I’m wounded and crippled, he thought. She’ll probably beat the crap out of me and Tom will believe I really am a wuss.

  She didn’t, though. She was out cold. Stanley lay atop her for a moment, trying to get his breath back, suddenly all too aware of how painful his arm was.

  Tom reached him, helped him to his feet. “What in the hell was that all about?” he demanded, his voice shaky. “You had both guns up there. Why didn’t you just shoot the bitch?”

  “I’m afraid of guns.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Except…”

  Stanley started to move his arms, realized the left one wouldn’t work. “I think it’s broken,” he said with an apologetic grin.

  “Hold tight. I’ll get the medics.” Tom would have turned away, but Stanley grabbed his sleeve with his good hand.

  “You came for me,” Stanley said. “You came after me, to rescue me.”

  “Well, Jesus, of course I came after you. You’re my partner, for Christ’s sake, that’s what partners do.

  Besides, you’re my…” Tom paused and looked at him hard. “You look, I don’t know, funny. You’re as white as a snowman’s ass.”

  “No, no, I’m okay, really, I’m fine now, now that you’re here,” Stanley said. “You started to say…?” He glanced down then at his arm and saw a shard of bone sticking out through the skin—and fainted dead away, falling into Tom’s ready arms.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  This time, Stanley’s arm was in a cast, and he was on medical leave. Tom had credited Stanley with solving the case, and the Captain had praised him in the squad room, and the other detectives had echoed the praise in not very enthusiastic tones. But Tom had looked genuinely proud of him, which had been the best part.

  Chris had been playing nurse. “You’re okay now?” he asked. “I’ve got to get to work.”

  “I’m fine,” Stanley said. He waved the cast. “At least it’s my left hand. It leaves the right one free.”

  Chris laughed and let himself out. Stanley took a swig of the beer Chris had left on the side table for him, and tried to think what to do with himself. He’d already looked at Some Like it Hot twice and Mildred Pierce three times, and he was bored with the soaps. He was not a good convalescent. He felt all at odds and ends.

  And he missed Tom. He hadn’t seen him in three days.

  On cue, the doorbell rang. He thought Chris must have forgotten something, and hurried to open it.

  He was surprised to find Tom standing outside. Tom grinned down at him, a smile both mischievous and something else, too, that Stanley couldn’t quite identify.

  “How are you doing?” Tom asked.

  “Well, you know.” Stanley raised the arm with the cast on it. “It’s kind of a nuisance. Jacking off, especially.”

  “I’ll bet.” There was an awkward kind of pause that seemed to Stanley to reverberate with some as yet unidentified possibility.

  “Got time for an old playmate?” Tom asked.

  “Playmate? As I recall, every time we play you get frosty as hell afterward. I ought to slam the door in your face. If you think you can just barge in here, with those to-die-for lips and Coca Cola eyes, and…”

  “Coca Cola eyes?” Tom laughed aloud. “Jesus, if that isn’t fag talk, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “And they’re not Coca Cola, they’re Pepsi.”

  “I hate Pepsi.”

  “Yeah, well, how do you feel about dick?”

  Stanley hesitated, looking him up and down. “As in the general or the specific?” he asked.

  “As in, I’ve got a nine inch boner in my pants. Nine and a half, actually.”

  Which ended the argument. It seemed odd to Stanley; Tom was usually so reticent about getting anything going between them, and here he was, the aggressor this time. Something about the situation was different.

  Okay, everything was different. He wasn’t altogether sure, but he thought he liked it—or would, if he weren’t a bit suspicious.

  “Come on in,” he said.

  Things went fast after that. The door hadn’t any more than closed behind him than Tom had grabbed him and was kissing him, hard. Stanley held on to him with his good arm and tried to keep the one in the cast out of the way.

  Which turned out to be not much of a problem. To his astonishment, Tom reached down and picked him up in his arms, carried him right through to the bed. Stanley almost wet his pants. He’d always dreamed of some big butch guy doing that, but he had never really imagined it would happen—and here was Tom, as big and as butch as anyone could dream of, laying him very gently on the bed, bending over him, stripping his clothes off, piece by piece.

  “Wow,” Stanley said, “what brought all this on?”

  “I want to make you happy,” Tom said. “I want this to be an experience you’ll remember.”

  Tom had him down to his bikinis now. “I can handle those,” Stanley said, pushing
Tom’s hand away from the elastic. He waved a hand in Tom’s general direction. “Your turn.”

  Tom stood up, looked shy for a moment. “I never actually put on a strip show for anyone before,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt.

  “You want music?”

  Tom grinned. “I can hum it,” he said, and hummed something totally unrecognizable—really, the man couldn’t carry a tune in a wooden bucket—while he peeled off shirt, pants, socks—fast, like he was shedding past sins, till he was down to his boxers—the ones with the little hearts on them that Stanley remembered.

  This time, he was definitely going to sniff them.

  “Ready?” Tom asked. He put his thumbs under the elastic and looked at Stanley, watching enthralled from the bed.

  Stanley glanced down at his erection, jutting ferociously upward. “What do you think?”

  Tom rather pointedly didn’t look at that, though. He peeled the shorts down, his own dick jumping out of them, dropped them to the floor and kicked them aside. He got on the bed, straddling Stanley, and looked at the arm in the cast.

  “Can you manage, with that?’ he asked.

  “Watch me.” Stanley took hold of him by his dick, tugged to bring Tom up where he could suck him. To his surprise, Tom held back.

  “I want you to fuck me,” he said, blurted out all of a sudden like, as if he was afraid if he said it slowly he wouldn’t get it said.

  Stanley shook his head and banged at his ear as if there might be water in it. “Something’s wrong with my hearing. I would have sworn you just asked me to fuck you.”

  “You’ll have to take it easy though, okay? I never did that before.”

  “I figured that,” Stanley said.

  “And stop licking your fucking chops.”

  “Maybe I should try licking something else?”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  Tom scooted up on the bed until he was straddling Stanley’s shoulders, his dick in front of Stanley’s face.

  “The pillow,” Stanley said.

  Tom put the pillow behind Stanley’s head, and Stanley took the big hard cock in his mouth, put his good hand on Tom’s hip and pulled him closer. Tom pushed forward, shoving it slowly down Stanley’s throat.

  He fucked his mouth like that for a moment, gently, taking his time. After a minute or two, he pulled out and sat back on his haunches.

  “So, the butt fucking thing,” he said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Totally. Well, unless you don’t want to. I mean, I kind of had the impression that was something you wanted to do, the way you chowed down on it. Something that would make you especially happy.”

  “Happy? Jesus, if I’m dead and imagining this, don’t wake me up.”

  Tom smiled. “You are a crazy fucker, you know that?” He paused, glanced down very briefly at Stanley’s cock. “Uh, so what do we do here, should I get on my belly, or… this is your show, you tell me.”

  “This thing…” Stanley lifted the cast off the bed. “I think it’s better if I just stay like this and you could maybe, you know, just kind of sit on it.” Tom looked a little doubtful. “Plus, it’ll be easier for you, this being your first time, you can kind of control everything. You know, how far, and how fast…”

  “Oh, sure, I get it,” Tom said. He moved back a little further, kind of positioned himself, and lowered himself toward Stanley’s dick. And paused again. “Lube?”

  “Right,” Stanley said, breathing hard. He stretched his hand toward the drawer of the nightstand.

  “I’ll get it,” Tom said. He leaned across and tugged the drawer open, found a jar of lube and dipped his fingers into it, reached behind himself. Stanley could tell from his little grimace that he’d never even had his fingers up there. Totally virgin. He half expected Tom to change his mind at this point, but Tom lowered himself again.

  “Uh, Tom, the condoms are in the drawer there, too,” he said.

  “Oh. Sure.” Tom leaned over again, got a condom, opened the package, and looked down at Stanley’s dick. “Maybe you’d better do it,” he said, putting the condom in Stanley’s hand.

  Stanley slipped it over his dick, noticing with some trepidation that Tom carefully avoided watching this part of it. But, he was essentially straight, wasn’t he? A dick up your ass, where you couldn’t see it, was one thing, admiring the dick before it went there was another. Though he did kind of wish Tom would admire his dick. It wasn’t in quite the same league, but it wasn’t too shabby, either, as many a guy had attested in the past. Oh, well, you couldn’t always have everything, could you?

  “Ready for take off,” he said.

  This time, Tom didn’t pause, but lowered himself slowly, cautiously, onto the tip of Stanley’s cock. For a second or two the muscles in his hole resisted the intrusion. Tom grunted and closed his eyes, twisting his face into a grimace again. Stanley thought for sure this was where he was going to change his mind, but he didn’t. He took a deep breath and settled down on it, taking it inside.

  It was like nothing Stanley had ever experienced before. Not just because it was so tight, although it was certainly that, he was sure he’d never been in one so tight before. But, this wasn’t just any virgin ass he was fucking, this was Tom Danzel’s virgin ass, the most beautiful ass in the world, attached to the most beautiful man, the man he loved. He could have shot his load with the first moment of entry, and had to will himself to hold off, savoring each little half inch or so as Tom settled lower on it. He wasn’t sure if the excitement that shot through him was more pleasure or terror that Tom would still change his mind, or equal parts both.

  Tom’s eyes were closed, his face contorted. It was evident he was finding this painful. And not a lot of fun. Stanley’s conscience gave him a nudge.

  “You want me to stop?” he asked.

  “I’m okay,” Tom said, and pushed down some more.

  Stanley sighed. Well, he’d been polite, but even Miss Manners could only ask so much of a guy. He lifted his hips, began to fuck upward.

  Tom froze in position, let Stanley take over. His face showed stoicism now more than pain, like he was resigned to whatever was happening, but Stanley couldn’t help noting that his big cock had gone flaccid.

  Stanley took it in his hand, began to stroke it, felt it respond and begin to swell, and at the same time, Tom’s hole relaxed a bit, allowed him easier access.

  “Bend down,” Stanley told him in a hoarse voice. “The more you bend over, the easier it gets.”

  Tom bent down obediently, nibbled at Stanley’s ear, kissed him. He was beginning to get used to it now, Stanley could tell. Still, he didn’t want to make this an endurance test. With any luck, this might just be the first of many heavenly experiences. He fucked faster now, but still cautiously, not going all the way, just moving the head in and out, coming close anyway, feeling his climax building.

  “I’m getting close,” he said, and Tom kissed him again, hard, and ground his butt around in a circle, like a pro, and took it nearly all the way to the balls, just as Stanley let fire. He groaned and Tom grunted with him, holding him tight, grinding his dick against Stanley’s belly, seemingly unaware that Stanley was drumming on one broad shoulder with his cast.

  They lay like that for a long moment, until Stanley’s latex clad dick had slipped out and flopped across his balls.

  “Whew,” was all Stanley could say.

  “Happy?” Tom asked. Stanley nodded, grinning foolishly. “Good,” Tom said. He swung his legs over, got off the bed, went into the bathroom. Stanley heard the water running. He slipped the condom off his dick, dropped it carefully into the wastebasket beside the nightstand.

  Now, what was that all about, he wondered. Experience told him that, once they’d got going, Tom had enjoyed it somewhat. Not a lot. Okay, not very much, really, but at least he had stopped hating it. But it was hard to imagine that he had done this for his own pleasure.

  So, he did it for mine, Stanley told himself. The kind
of thing you did for someone you loved?

  He shook his head. Dangerous thinking. Guys like Tom Danzel didn’t fall in love with guys like Stanley Korski, no matter how many times they took it up the butt, or whatever else they did.

  In the bathroom, the toilet flushed. Stanley’s dick was hard again, thinking about what they had done. He wondered if Tom’s strange mood would extend to a repeat.

  Tom came out of the bathroom, gave him a lopsided grin, and sprawled onto the bed beside him. “Feels funny,” he said. “All, I don’t know, hollow in there. Is that what a woman feels like afterward, do you suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Stanley said.

  “No, I guess not.” Tom reached for the bedside lamp and turned it off. They lay side by side, staring up, not speaking for a while.

  “You want me to, you know…” Stanley reached for Tom’s cock. It was soft again.

  “No, that’s okay,” Tom said. Stanley wondered if he had whacked off in the bathroom, but was afraid to ask.

  The headlights of the cars on the street shined through the Japanese plum tree outside the window. The shadows of leaves curtseyed, chased one another across the ceiling like little cartoon characters. A horn honked. In the kitchen, the refrigerator kicked in. Back in Iowa, there would have been gnats and crickets to listen to. Natural noises. Here, even the stars exploding light years away were noiseless.

  The atmosphere between them felt oddly formal. They’d had sexual relations four different times now, and it still felt like they were on a blind date that wasn’t going particularly well. Stanley wanted desperately to do something, and he hadn’t a clue what it was he should—or could—do.

  “So, tell me something, Stanley.” Tom’s voice was so unexpected, Stanley had gotten so used to the silence, that he actually started. “Where do you see this going?”

  “See what going? Us, you mean?”

  “Hmm. No. I was thinking more like, this whole police thing. Stanley Korski, homicide detective.”

  Where’s it going? Stanley thought. My police career? That’s what he’s got on his mind, after he just took my dick up his ass?