Wild Raspberries (13 page)

“Bad dream.” Saying it helped. Dream. Not real. Even if it had happened just like that, exactly like —

“Stay with me.” Dan shook his head, the dark, straight hair falling over his face. “Don’t make me slap your face or something.”

“You do and I’ll fucking slap back.”

Dan grinned, a quick twist of his mouth. “That’s better. Okay, no slapping.”

“No slapping,” Tyler agreed. “Can you get off me now?”

“What? Oh…” Dan glanced down as if he’d only just realized what he was sitting on. “Am I too heavy?”

“Right now, a kitten would be too much. Get
off
.” He couldn’t fucking breathe. Couldn’t move. Panic clawed at him, and his throat began to close up.

“I’m gone,” Dan said, sounding irritated. He moved to the side, and Tyler struggled up until he was sitting with his back against the headboard, a pillow wedged behind him.

“Sorry. I just… I don’t deal well with being held down when I’m like this.”

“’S’okay.” Dan pushed his pillow up and leaned back against the headboard, too, giving Tyler the illusion of not being watched, even though he could feel the sidelong glances Dan was sneaking. “I have dreams like that, too. They’re fucking scary, you know? It’s not real, it’s just a memory, but it still feels — fuck.” He shook his head. “It’s worse when it’s not something you’ve made up. I’d rather dream about ghosts with chainsaws coming after me than one of those guys who picked me up.”

Grateful that Dan understood, however imperfectly, Tyler nodded.

“So, what was it?”

Gratitude died a quick death. Tyler was damned if he was going to spill his guts in the middle of the night. “Really don’t want to talk about it.”

“You should.” Dan said it quietly enough, without much emphasis, but it felt like an order. “Tell it and it loses its power. Share it and it just sounds empty, hollow. That’s what my grandmother used to tell me when I woke up crying after my mom died.”

“No offense to her, but I’m not interested in —”

Dan’s hand slid into his and held on. “Just fucking tell me so we can both go back to sleep.”

“When you ask so politely…” Dan chuckled unrepentantly, and Tyler gave in, which was something he seemed to do a lot around Dan. “Okay. It’s — oh, God, it’s stupid. Two years ago now. More. My last assignment. I — I made a mess of it. Missed. Left my shot too late. Just fucked up.”

“You got caught?”

“What? No. If I had, his guards would’ve killed me on the spot. They weren’t the sort of people who called 911. No. I just had to — it got messy. People came running when they heard him screaming. A maid, a guard…”

“You didn’t, God, you didn’t shoot them, too, did you?” There was horror in Dan’s voice, and Tyler welcomed it. He wanted Dan shocked, disgusted. He deserved to be looked at that way.

“No. If they’d blocked the target — but they didn’t. They were running out of the house and the target was still in my sights — but he wouldn’t fucking die! I was shooting blind by then, just pulling the trigger over and over —” He swallowed and felt his throat convulse painfully. “One of his grandchildren came running up, wet from the pool, this little girl in a pink swimsuit with Barbie on it. I saw her. I saw her through my scope. I must have been fucking aiming at her, or I couldn’t have seen her —” He was crushing Dan’s hand. He could feel the pain as if it was his own hand being squeezed. He had to keep squeezing until he’d finished, or he’d fly apart, explode. “I blew the top of his head off and the blood got on her and she screamed and screamed — fuck.”

He was crying now. Tears he hadn’t shed at the time, or in the mandatory therapy sessions when they’d tried to glue him back together again. Tears that made his eyes sting, his nose run, his head ache. Tears that left his face a wet mess, salted with shame and regret.

Maybe he’d been waiting for a time when he could cry and have someone there to hold him, because when Dan turned and hugged him to his body in silence, gave Tyler’s face something to hide against, the tears came down like rain.

He was talking, too, broken, gasped words that were meant to be “sorry,” one word, repeated, because he was sorry for so many things. Sorry for being good at putting a slug of metal anywhere he wanted it to go, sorry for being good at following orders, sorry for feeling proud, those first few times, of what he’d done.

Cauterizing a wound. That’s what they’d called it. One bullet from him and so many lives saved, soldiers and civilians. He was a hero. And he’d believed them until the weight of the years he’d taken from people began to push down on him, until he couldn’t fucking
breathe
.

They’d killed people like that once. Pressing, it was called. Piling stones on them slowly, crushing the life out of them. Twenty-three stones for him. One more and he thought he would have put a bullet in his own head just to silence the sound of that little girl screaming.

God, he was so sorry. His commanding officer had called him tired, then broken, then weak, adding his own form of pressure when Tyler had insisted on leaving. They couldn’t stop him, not really. And he’d held it together well enough to avoid being locked away in a hospital somewhere, drugged into vacant silence.

It didn’t mean that he thought they’d really just let him walk away. He wasn’t hiding here in this lonely cabin, in this quiet place; they knew where he was. He was just telling them that he wasn’t a danger, wasn’t a risk. Keeping his head down.

And that was another reason Dan shouldn’t stick around; one day someone would decide that Tyler was a loose end that needed snipping off and send someone to do it. One day, he’d be picking raspberries and feel that itch on the back of his neck or watch the red light dance across his chest as someone lined up the muzzle of a rifle with his heart and blew out the light, all the lights, with one gentle, remorseless squeeze of their finger.

He stopped crying, the unfamiliar action exhausting and abruptly unsatisfying. It wasn’t what he wanted to do. It had been, and he’d done it, and now he wanted — God, what did he want?

A handful of tissues were pushed into his hand and he took them, used them, and tossed them away, not bothering to track where they landed. His head felt huge, light, a balloon head ready to be popped, and there was a scratchiness when he swallowed as if he was coming down with something.

“You look like crap,” Dan told him and wiped Tyler’s tears and snot off his shoulder with another tissue destined to hit the floor. “Feel better?”

“Define ‘better.’” His voice was unrecognizable, a rasped-out mutter.

Dan’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Has to help getting that all out in the open. Anything else you want to tell me while we’re doing this?”

Tyler reached over and picked up the bottle of water on the nightstand. When half of it was inside him, he tried talking again, relieved to discover he sounded normal now. “Maybe. I don’t know. Why do you want to listen?”

“Not sure.” Dan took the bottle from him and took a swallow without wiping the top first, something that Tyler would never have done, from force of habit. He supposed it made sense given the relationship they were in. “I like you and you’re fucked up, and I want to help, maybe. And maybe because I’m so fucking sick of secrets. You know all of mine, I swear it. You know what happened before I left home and why I don’t want to go back. Compared to yours, they’re nothing secrets — hell, they’re not even secrets — but still, I told you. And now you’ve told me yours, and that’s kind of cool that you did, even if they’re just —” Dan swept his hand up high. “You know? Huge?”

“Yeah.” God, he felt tired. “Huge.”

“So?” Dan prompted.

“What? Oh… Nothing much. Ex-sniper, nerve gone, probably on a hit list myself, days numbered.” Tears were worse than Pentothal. “You should probably head out, boy. Not the safest place you could be, you know.”

“Is that what you want me to do?”

“No. I want you to stay.” Yeah, forget the drugs; they should just make people cry and give them a shoulder to cry on and let the tape record all the truth between the tears. Fuck.

“Stay?” Dan’s eyes, as blue as the ocean he hadn’t seen yet, were hard to look away from. “Really?”

“Yes. No!” Tyler shook his head and tried to clear away the muzziness. “Not safe.”

“It’s been over two years,” Dan pointed out. “If they were going to… do something, why wait? The longer they leave it, the more chance of you shooting your mouth off. I think they’ve just forgotten about you.”

Obscurely annoyed by that idea, though he had to admit it was preferable to being the focus of attention, Tyler shrugged. “Could be. But staying — ah, forget it. You’ve got places to be.”

“I could hang around for a while,” Dan said with a nonchalance that didn’t fool Tyler for a second, because he could hear the eagerness underlying it. “No strings, right? I want to go, I go; you want me gone, you just say so.”

Tyler opened his mouth to protest, argue, something, and Dan added, “But you’re going to have to give me something to do at night beside read. What do I have to do to get some computer time?”

He had some ideas, but he wasn’t ever going to make Dan swap sex for favors. “I don’t know. You could just ask me nicely.”

Dan smiled and moved so that Tyler was holding him, naked and warm and hard in his arms, Dan’s mouth finding places to kiss on Tyler’s chest and throat. “Please,” Dan said, punctuating each word with a kiss, “can I play time-wasting, brain-rotting games on your kick-ass computer until my eyeballs bleed and my fingers are numb?”

Tyler lay back and pulled Dan on top of him. The kid was light as a feather now, wriggling down to kiss Tyler’s nipples, then squirming back up to plant a hard, stinging kiss on his mouth. “You can do whatever the hell you want, boy.”

Dan bit his shoulder. “Dan.”

“Whatever the hell you want… boy.”

Dan growled and bit him again, harder.

“Boy,” Tyler repeated. “Boy, boy, boy — ah, God, yes…”

Daniel kept biting him, bites that left Tyler’s skin marked and throbbing. If it was meant to teach him a lesson, Tyler planned on being a slow learner.

Is it supposed to be doing this?” Dan called out, his gaze fixed on the heaving, roiling mass in the heavy pan. Where the fuck was Tyler? He’d promised he’d walk Dan through this first batch.

“Doing what?” Now that Tyler wasn’t using the cane, he moved too quietly for Dan to always hear him, and the voice in his ear made him jump, even as the absentminded caress of the back of his neck got him jittery for another reason. The kind of reason that had him wanting to lean back against Tyler’s chest and tilt his head so that Tyler could give him one of those kisses that started slow and left him with a grinding ache of lust low down, tightening his balls as if Tyler’s hand was on them.

If Tyler didn’t fuck him soon, though, he was going to bend over the couch naked and stay there until the man got the message that, yes, he
was
ready and, no, he didn’t want to wait. It wasn’t that Tyler’s mouth on him, sweet and fierce and teasing, wasn’t good, because it was. Dan had spent the last week falling in love with Tyler’s mouth to the point where if he’d had the money, he’d have bought it flowers and candy. It was just that knowing how good Tyler could make him feel that way, or hell, just by lying there, all hard muscles and smooth skin and letting Dan rub off on him, well, he wanted to know what
that
would feel like, too.

Tyler had told him matter-of-factly that if Dan wanted to, he could fuck Tyler, and Dan came close the night before, his cock sliding back and forth along the crease of Tyler’s ass, skating on the massage oil he’d been using to work the knots out of Tyler’s shoulders. He’d done that, and made a good job of it, but they’d both known where it was going and when he’d poured the oil over Tyler’s ass, Tyler had just groaned, deep and low, and spread his legs wider, inviting something Dan wasn’t sure he had the balls to try. If he hurt Tyler…

The rocking thrusts and the way Tyler was moving had split Tyler’s ass until Dan’s cock was riding a tight channel of smooth, hot skin. All he had to do was reach over and grab a condom and he could have been balls-deep in Tyler a few minutes later.

He’d told himself that his hands were too slippery from the oil, but it was just an excuse; Tyler’s were clean and he would have done it for him, opening the package, rolling it down over Dan’s dick and making it feel like foreplay. And then Tyler had arched up, the muscles in his shoulders bunching, rippling as he raised his chest off the bed, and glanced back at Dan, his eyes wild and hungry. Dan had come, moments later, his hand fumbling for Tyler’s cock, his own writing dots and dashes on Tyler’s ass and back in spunk.

“Doing this,” Dan replied, waving at the jam with the wooden spoon he’d been using to stir it. “It’s spitting at me like it’s angry. Should I maybe turn the heat down?”

“Nope. Boil it for three minutes.” Tyler reached over and tapped a red mark on Dan’s hand where some scalding-hot jam had landed. “Got you good there, didn’t it? Put something on it when you’re done.”

“It’s fine.” Dan sniffed. “It smells good.”

All those berries and a small mountain of sugar and they’d turned to this red lava. He’d expected it to be more complicated than this, but Tyler had just shaken his head and told him to weigh the raspberries and add the same amount of sugar to the pan.

He’d missed out the part about the lethal splatters when it came to the boil.

“Tastes better. Wait until you try it on some of my bread.” Tyler moved away and began to empty the boiling water out of the glass jars waiting to be filled with jam.

“Ten, nine…” Dan counted down, waving the sticky spoon to the beat.

Tyler sniffed the air, his forehead wrinkling thoughtfully. “It smells done. Take it off.”

Dan moved the heavy pan off the burner and sighed in relief as the jam spat once more and then subsided sulkily. “What now?”

“I put it in these jars and you get to wash the pan before the jam sets on the bottom.”

“Why do I get all the fun jobs?” He just knew the raspberry seeds were going to be a bitch to scrub off.

Tyler patted his ass and then nudged him out of the way. “Because you don’t have stitches in your hand?”

“Anne took the stitches out two days ago. You’re going to have to start doing dishes again eventually, you know.”

“I hate doing dishes.” Tyler dipped up a small portion of jam and poured it into a jar with less mess than Dan anticipated. “And I get a kick out of taking advantage of you.”

Dan grinned and leaned back against the counter as Tyler worked. “I noticed. Do it some more.”

Tyler gave him an amused glance but didn’t reply. Dan had the feeling that Tyler knew exactly what this whole going slow, no rush deal was doing to him, and that he was enjoying Dan’s reaction. He didn’t like being this transparent, but it wasn’t like he had much choice. He could close his mouth on the begging, pleading words he wanted to say and he could — just — keep his arousal off his face, but the rest of his body gave him away every time.

Fuck, look at him now, half-hard just from that touch on the back of his neck and from watching Tyler move, his hands sure and steady, his attention focused.

Jam. The man was making jam and it was as sexy as a striptease. Dan got himself a glass of cold water and drank it with his back turned to Tyler. Tonight, he was going to get fucked. He’d just come right out with it and —

“I’m going out tonight. Think you can avoid burning the place down while I’m gone?”

“Huh?” He put the glass down and turned. Tyler was fitting tops to the jars, a dishcloth shielding his hand from their heat. “Out? Where?”

“How does ‘none of your business’ work as an answer?”

“Fuck you.” Dan felt hurt well up and ignored it in favor of getting angry. He hadn’t snapped the question at Tyler, he’d just asked it, and as the guy, to date, had zero social life it was reasonable for him to show some curiosity when that changed.

“I’ll take it that means not very.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Dan said, “but it’s called a fucking conversation, okay? If you say you’re going out, and I ask where, it’s not me being nosy, it’s me being interested. There’s a difference, and if you get your head out of your ass and look at me, not the fucking jam, you’ll see I’m pissed because of what you just said, not because you’re going off and leaving me to spend the night watching the trees grow or something equally fucking thrilling.”

“Stop swearing so much,” Tyler said. “And — yeah, okay. Sorry. I was out of line there.” He rubbed the side of his nose and then grimaced. “Fuck. Jam all over me…”

Dan snickered. “Yeah. There’s some on your chin, too.”

“Brat.” Tyler used the dishcloth on his face and then shrugged resignedly. “I’ll have to wash it off.” He glanced over at Dan. “I’m not used to it. Accounting for anything I do. But it’s not a secret; I’m going out for supper with Anne, that’s all. I’ll be back around eleven; we’ve booked a table at that new place in Bridge Falls.”

“Oh.” Daniel knew the restaurant Tyler meant; he’d read an article about it in the local newspaper while he’d been waiting for Tyler to get his stitches removed. It was upscale and fancy, set next to the modest waterfall in the neighboring town, with some cabins scattered about the grounds, tucked away in the trees and luxurious enough to tempt honeymooners.

He didn’t have the slightest inclination to go there himself, but he couldn’t help feeling that it would’ve been nice if Tyler had just once suggested that the two of them go and grab a pizza or see a movie. Dan didn’t mind staying in if that was what Tyler always did, although he was getting cabin fever, but if Tyler could go off to wine and dine people —
Anne
— then Dan didn’t see why —

“I can hear you thinking.” Tyler capped the last jar and walked over to him. “I take Anne out, or she takes me, every so often. It’s been a while, so when she was dealing with my hand, she suggested we tried the Rendezvous. It’s not a date, it’s just two friends spending time together.”

“Does she know? About you and why you came here?” One day, he’d learn to think before he opened his mouth. One day.

Tyler’s face darkened. “No,” he said tersely. “Boy —”

“Save it,” Dan muttered and pushed past him. “I’m not going to say anything; I told you I wouldn’t, and you can trust me, even if that seems like it’s a hard concept for you to get, you know?” He turned his hand on the door handle. “Like my name. It’s Dan. And last I looked, twenty was a man, not a fucking boy.”

He went out into the sunlight and headed for the woodpile. Chopping logs for the winter was destructive enough to appeal right then, and useful enough that he could enjoy it without guilt.

And he could pretend the logs were Tyler and he was knocking some sense into him.

***

By the time Anne arrived, Dan had worked himself into a sulk that even he had to admit was childish. Tyler had disappeared into his bedroom and shut the door, which Dan had learned meant that Tyler wanted some alone time and wouldn’t react well to being disturbed. That had left Dan with nothing to do but read. He was making some headway with a Tom Clancy he’d picked up because he’d seen the movie, when Tyler emerged, only to head straight for the bathroom with no more than a grunt of acknowledgement for Dan.

And from there, smelling clean, chin shaved, and his hair brushed, he’d gone back into his bedroom to dress, leaving Dan with an afterimage of a naked, damp Tyler lying in wait every time he closed his eyes.

Tyler looked good in a suit and tie. Too damn good. Dan stared at him, openly hostile, and Tyler grinned, his good humor restored. “What’s the matter? Didn’t think I owned anything but jeans?”

Dan looked away from the dazzling sight of Tyler in a charcoal suit, dark enough to look black, a cobalt blue shirt, and a silk tie that looked like a spill of moonlight. Too much class for anywhere in this town, but he supposed it was about right for a place where the starters cost as much as a meal. Fifteen bucks for a bowl of soup. Un-fucking-believable, but the article had included a menu and Dan doubted it’d been a typo given the rest of the prices. Dan yawned and turned a page, refusing to compliment Tyler because the man had a mirror and had to know he looked stunning. That was mostly because Tyler didn’t look at all dressed up, just relaxed and natural. “Can’t say as I gave it much thought. Don’t mind if I don’t wait up. And don’t bother waking me because I’m not in the mood.”

Tyler rolled his eyes. “That makes a first. You’re wearing me out.”

“Is that so?” He was all set to enlarge on that — once he’d got his teeth ungritted and his jaw unclenched — but Tyler moved away to peer out of the window at the sound of a car approaching, clearly losing interest in the spat they were having. He stayed there, his body shielded by the wall, until the engine had been turned off.

“Anne,” he said as the car door slammed. “Okay, be good and I guess you can use the computer, but if I find it clogged up with porn —”

“Bite me.” It’d just been that once, and, hell, that was what the net was
for
.

Anne came in, all smiles, directed as much at Dan as Tyler. He got to his feet, the manners he’d had drummed into him as a child not allowing him to be rude without cause. He was pissed as hell with Tyler, but Anne, from the little he’d seen of her, seemed nice.

She shook his hand and looked him over with a frankly professional assessment. “You look better; you’ve got more color in your cheeks. Tyler’s cooking must suit you.”

“I guess,” he mumbled.

Anne glanced at Tyler, who was standing patiently waiting, his face expressionless. “My, my,
my
.”

Dan couldn’t help laughing. Her throaty purr, overdone just enough to make it clear that she didn’t really want to drag Tyler off by his tie and ravish him, was the perfect icebreaker.

“I feel like Cinderella before the fairy godmother arrived,” she went on, with a rueful glance down.

“You look good,” Dan told her sincerely. Her short-sleeved dress was navy, scattered with white flowers, and if it didn’t scream expensive the way Tyler’s suit did, it still suited her. He tried not to be glad that it wasn’t a sexy dress by any standards and managed it, more or less. “Tyler’s just showing off.”

Tyler cleared his throat and managed to make it sound ominous. “Anne, you always look good. Dan, remember what I said and behave.” He held open the door and gestured Anne through it. “Shall we?”

Dan got an impish grin from Anne and a fulminating glare from Tyler, and then the door closed and he was left alone.

He blew out a long breath. Unless a stomach full of good food and a few glasses of wine mellowed him, Tyler was going to come home ripe and ready for a fight. That didn’t make him feel as uneasy as it had when he’d been waiting for his father to return and vent his anger over one of his shortcomings. It didn’t mean that there wasn’t just a tinge of apprehension mixed in with his amusement, and some regret, though. Tyler had looked uncomfortable with them both teasing him, and somehow Dan didn’t like that, not if this was a treat for Tyler, something he only got to do now and then.

“Fuck,” he said to the empty room, just to shatter the silence, and went to get himself a beer.

Two hours later, he was starting to get itchy and restless. The cabin without Tyler in it was a small, creaky, spooky place and even the computer wasn’t holding his interest. He’d skirted around the “no porn” prohibition as closely as he dared, which had gotten him buzzing, half-hard, and then, to calm himself down, he’d succumbed to a twinge of homesickness and called up the local newspaper of his hometown.

Look at that; nothing had happened since he’d left. Shit, sometimes he wondered how they managed to fill the pages. There was a search feature on the page and he typed in his own name. Getting a hit made his stomach clench with nerves, but it was just the graduation photo of his year, names all listed in alphabetical order. He stared at his photograph and barely recognized himself. Shy smile, nervous eyes, hair a lot shorter… He’d been standing next to Billy, the guy who was technically his best friend. Except Billy hadn’t been all that happy about the whole gay deal, and without actually saying it had backed off by degrees until by the time Luke showed up it’d been weeks since the two of them shared some sneaked beer as they fished, talking about anything and everything.