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No Remedy for Love Ch. 01

By: podga



Oh, Jesus God, the pain! 

I woke up whimpering and, in a momentary state of vodka-induced amnesia, rolled over towards Thomas for comfort, but he wasn't there. Or, more precisely, I wasn't there. I don't mean that in a need-a-ghost-whisperer-to-point-me-towards-the-light kind of way (though given my hangover, I wouldn't have minded being temporarily dead, or, at the very least, deeply unconscious). No, it was simply that at the age of 47, and after over 20 years of, for want of a better term, marriage, Thomas and I had split up, and I had moved out of our house, leaving him behind.

I tried not to miss Thomas too much, but some times it was harder than others. On the infrequent times I'd tied one on in the past, he'd been there to soothe my fevered brow in the morning; he'd bring me orange juice, aspirin and bananas in bed, and then he'd help me shower (and get certain parts of me very, very clean). Now I'd have to drag my carcass out of bed all by myself, and I was pretty sure there was neither OJ nor anything even vaguely resembling fresh fruit among the Chinese delivery leftovers in my fridge. Although not normally a religious man, I uttered a short prayer for aspirin in the medicine cabinet, and painfully made the slow transition from prone to sitting on the edge of the bed. 

It was then that I noticed the smell of coffee. And a fine smell it was, too, so fine that it took me a couple of moments to remember that I no longer had a programmable coffee machine (Thomas had kept that, fairly arguing that I would never use the programming function anyway). Given that your average burglar wouldn't make himself a nice cup of coffee prior to departing with my brand new 50-inch TV screen, I must have brought someone home with me. I racked my dehydrated brain for memories of the previous night: decided to take advantage of my freedom and go to a club rather than watch NCIS re-runs, checked internet for gay clubs since Thomas and I hadn't been to one in the 21st century, went to club, got ignored, ordered drink, got ignored some more, ordered more drinks, noticed cute and way-too-young-for-me twink staring and stared back, got called "Daddy"... and after that a deep dark void until this morning. Jesus, that was kind of worrying. I'd been drinking a fair amount in the past two months, more than I should, probably, but never so much as to have a complete black-out before.

Whoever was in the kitchen, we hadn't done anything extreme together. I was still wearing last night's jeans, and there were no tell-tale aches or sticky spots. My mouth tasted like something had died in it and I couldn't exclude a blow job; after all, the guy must have followed me home and stayed over for some reason other than to hear me snore. I slowly stood up, feeling shakier than I'd anticipated, and shuffled to the bathroom. I was curious about my guest, but I didn't want to face him without having first taken a piss and brushed my teeth. 

I finally made my way to the living room to find him sitting on one of the stools at the bar that demarcated the kitchen area, his back to me. He'd been reading something on his iPhone, but he must have heard me, because he turned around. Definitely not the young twink I remembered from the club last night. This guy was my age, short dark brown hair starting to silver at the temples, a lean six feet tall. The way the light reflected off his reading glasses obscured his eyes, but I didn't have to see them to know that they were the color of whiskey.

"Tommy, what the hell are you doing here?" I croaked.

He didn't answer immediately, just ducked his head a little so he could look at me over his reading glasses, dark brows lowered in a frown, long fingers tapping the counter as he considered me. I wasn't exactly happy to see him, but I couldn't really say that he was unwelcome either. If I ignored the all too familiar disapproving expression, that was.

Hard to believe now, but there had been a time when I could do no wrong in Thomas' eyes. Not only during those giddy final weeks freshman year, when we'd seemed to spend more time in bed than out of it, but for years and years afterwards. We'd been best friends, lovers, soul mates, two halves of one whole. Nobody that knew us those first years thought we'd last, but we did, proving them all wrong.

No, actually that wasn't true, just part of the lore we'd later created for ourselves, what made us feel better during tough times and got us through them. The truth was that it had never occurred to anybody to wonder if we'd last, simply because nobody had known about us. Not during college, not during the couple of years we'd been continents apart, while I'd worked for a now-defunct brokerage in New York and Thomas had joined the Peace Corps, not during graduate school, where we both got our MBAs (Thomas specializing in managing not-for-profit organizations and I in finance) nor the first five years after that, when we'd still been young and broke enough that being merely roommates sounded plausible. After we finally came out, not only as gay but as a couple, Thomas' parents never spoke to him again. I don't give a shit, Thomas would say, his eyes overly bright, and I'd pretend to believe him and remind him that we were together against all odds, that nobody ever thought we'd last.

"Scott. I'd say you're looking well, but that would be an exaggeration," Thomas said dryly, his mouth curling up in that smirk that I used to find sexy as all get-out and that at this moment just made me want to plant a fist in it.

I ignored him and went to the sink to pour myself a glass of water, gulped it down, then leaned against the counter and looked at him, the bar between us. Even though it had only been two months since I'd last seen him, he seemed older, the lines between his brows and bracketing his mouth deeper, his eyes tired.

"Right back atcha," I drawled.

"You called me," he finally answered my first question. "Last night. Some story about having met an illegitimate son you didn't know about."

I gaped at him in disbelief. "You're shitting me." It sounded like my attempt at humor, especially when I'm tanked, but I wouldn't have called Thomas to share the joke. Would I?

His smirk turned more sincere, and now it made me want to plant my lips on it, so instead I reached for a mug and poured myself a cup of coffee.

"You do know the term 'daddy' doesn't actually denote a familial relationship, especially when uttered in a gay dance club, don't you?"

"I drunk-dialed you, shared a stupid joke and then begged for sex," I made a wild guess. Unfortunately that last part sounded like me, as well.

"'Beg' is a weak word."

"Shit." 

Too shaken by both last night's excess and today's revelations, I teetered to the couch and sank down on it. Still, Thomas hadn't been drunk last night, I didn't think, and he was here, so what did that say? I pondered for a while, my brain evidently unequal to the task of seeking logical solutions, as all I could think was that he was where I really wanted him, here, with me. 

"Why are you here?" I repeated weakly, staring into my coffee.

"I shouldn't be," he finally sighed, but he made no move to leave and we just sat there, he on the bar stool, me on the couch with my back to him, just sat there and listened to the silence.

*******************

Part of what makes life both wonderful and horrible is how unpredictable it is. I can't remember what I was thinking of in September of 1981, sitting in the back seat of my family's 15-year-old Jeep Wagoneer and looking through the window at the dorm, where I was to spend my freshman year. Probably how I was finally on my way towards my version of world domination. Certainly not that I was about three minutes from meeting the love of my life.

My dad helped me carry my beaten-up trunk (actually his, from his army days) up to my assigned room, my mom following behind us with my boom box and pillow. I scowled at the Detroit Lions dry-erase board fixed to the door -- that was definitely coming down -- and wondered whether I could simply walk in, seeing as it was my room too, or needed to knock first. My dorm etiquette quandary was solved by the door being swung open by a skinny kid in a T-shirt apparently held together by safety pins, tighter-than-tight black jeans and Doc Martens. My conservative working-class parents and I gaped at him.

"Hey, I knew I heard someone out here. You're Scott, right? I'm Thomas," he said, killing my fervent hope that this wasn't my roommate. I shook his extended hand automatically, inwardly cringing at the short bright red Mohawk and small silver hoop through one nostril and wondering what sort of a pretentious dickhead called himself Thomas and not Tom.

Our room wasn't very big and the sturdy double closet and dresser combos looked like they'd survived generations of students since the beginning of time. There was a sleeping bag on the bare mattress of one of the two beds, and a suitcase lying open on the floor, clothes (what wasn't black was dark gray, I noted) spilling out of it untidily.

"Figured I'd wait for you before picking sides," Thomas said, a shy smile lighting up his narrow face. My general impression of punks so far had been that they were surly and only liked their own kind, but Thomas seemed friendly enough.

"Yeah, thanks," I responded gruffly. A bar of early afternoon sunlight was falling across the unoccupied bed, and I figured it might be nice to lie in the warm sun and study, so I pointed towards it. "I guess I'll just take this side, if it's okay."

"Sure," he agreed, then flopped sideways onto his now official bed, propping his shoulders against the wall and resting one boot on the mattress. I saw my mom flinch at that. Thy shoe soles shall never make contact with furniture was the 11th Commandment in my home.

It was a long trip back home, so my parents didn't linger long and I walked them back to the car, where Mom hugged me and my pop half-squeezed, half-patted my shoulder.

"You can ask to change rooms," Mom whispered to me, as if Thomas could somehow overhear her.

"I know, mom. Don't worry, he seems fine," I reassured her, not sure I meant it.

But he was. Despite our agreeing on almost nothing, from our football teams to our music to our politics, despite the fact that I'd grown up in Bethlehem, PA and had never been outside of the state until college, while Thomas had followed his General Motors executive dad across several countries and continents, Thomas and I got along well enough.

Part of it was probably that I didn't really see that much of him. I was on an academic and athletic scholarship, and what little time I didn't spend in classes, the swimming pool, library carrels or dining hall, where I worked, I slept. Other than classes, Thomas didn't seem to move from his bed much (he never got sheets and continued to sleep in his sleeping bag) reading Goethe and Proust in the original and listening to his Sony Walkman. Sometimes he'd hum along to the music under his breath, but overall he was pretty quiet.

Still, we spent enough time together, watching his small TV, discussing campus events and courses, that I found that we shared a sense of humor and that he cared more about things than he tried to let on. A lot of our interactions were composed of the same types of insults and putdowns that I'd exchanged with my friends back home; despite his upbringing and love of literature, Thomas delighted in the same scatological humor my buddies in high school had, and I felt comfortable with him. When he got rid of the Mohawk a few weeks into the term, I almost missed it.

From time to time I'd become aware that he was staring at me, and it made my gut coil in a warm and slightly nauseating way I didn't quite understand or want to acknowledge. Some mornings, as I lay in bed dreading the alarm clock that would start me off on my day, I'd look across the room at his sleeping face and listen to his snuffling snore, and it made me oddly content.

"What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" Thomas asked me one Sunday evening.

I paused sorting through my laundry and realized it was less than a week away. We'd agreed with my parents that there wasn't enough money for me to go home and that we'd see each other over Christmas break anyway, so I'd tried not to think too much about it.

"Just hanging out here."

"You want to come spend it with me?"

"I thought your parents are in Thailand."

"They are. I figured I'd go to New York. It's only a four-hour bus ride."

He didn't elaborate on what he'd do there, and somehow I doubted that it would be visiting the Empire State Building or Coney Island.

"No, man, I think I'll just stay put, get ahead on a couple of my papers."

"If you're worried about money, you don't have to be. It'll be on me," he said.

"I'm not worried about money," I quickly retorted, my ears burning. 

Of course, that was exactly what I was worried about, not that I'd ever admit it to Thomas. I turned away and started to strip my bed. Suddenly Thomas was standing next to me, his hand on my arm, pulling me around to face him. I'd always thought of myself as being much bigger than him, and was surprised to find that we were exactly the same height, both just a hair over six feet. I was more bulked up, but it occurred to me that if it weren't for my swimming, we'd have pretty similar bodies. I instinctively inflated my chest a little, trying to look larger, as if I needed to defend myself against him.

"You work too hard. A couple of days' break won't hurt you."

I swallowed, a loud gulp that I thought he surely must have heard.

"Scott? Come on, it'll be fun," he insisted, and I found myself nodding.

He smiled, squeezed my bicep in approval, and went back to his book, leaving me to my weekly chores.

Despite the fact that I knew Thomas' family was wealthy, it didn't quite sink it until that weekend, when I saw him spending money like it was going out of style. Later on I realized that he was actually fairly frugal; I'd been dazzled by a combination of my own upbringing in a family that had to scrimp and save for the basics and the glamor of New York, where even eating in a Chinese restaurant or going to the movies somehow seemed more expensive than it actually was. He drew the line at Coney Island, but he stood beside me for the 45-minute wait and we went up to the observation deck of the Empire State Building together. It was there, looking across the city, a landscape composed of the excitement of skyscrapers and the serenity of Central Park that I decided I wanted to live in New York after I graduated.

We had sex for the first time during that trip. We were both a little drunk, but I think I'd have done it even if I were stone cold sober. I wasn't a virgin, but I'd never been with a guy before, though I'd known for years that I wasn't indifferent to my own sex. Like a lot of other things I couldn't have, the car I'd like to have bought, the vacations I'd liked to have taken, I'd put my attraction out of my mind, and tried to be satisfied with what I had and what was expected of me.

When Thomas leaned against me and slung an arm around my shoulders in the slow, creaky elevator on our way up to our room, I started to make a joke about people that couldn't hold their liquor, but I froze when he leaned his forehead against the side of my head and nuzzled my ear. We both stood there, neither of us breathing or moving a muscle, both waiting for the other to make the next move. Finally, I slid my hand around his waist under his jacket and pulled him a little closer, and he sighed and kissed my neck.

"Is this okay?" he whispered.

"Yes," I choked out, my heart hammering painfully in my chest, and I felt him nod. We stood like that until the cab came to a halt, his breath warm and moist against my ear and neck. He stepped away from me to open the door and we smiled self-consciously at each other. I followed him down the hallway, my dick hard, the phrase 'this is it' repeating itself in my head, although I didn't know what 'it' really entailed - other than from derogatory terms that indicated what fits where - and oblique references in books by James Baldwin and Christopher Isherwood, or even if I wanted 'it'

When I closed the door behind us, I suddenly realized that it was a pretty big leap to conclude from an awkward hug and kiss in the elevator that Thomas wanted sex. Maybe he was simply drunk and had no interest in taking matters further. I leaned my shoulders against the door, my hands clasped tightly on the doorknob behind me and simply looked at him. He shrugged his jacket off and tossed it on a chair, then thrust his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched up to his ears, and stared back at me, his whiskey-colored eyes wide and uncertain. The foot or so distance between us seemed both too close and way too far.

"Have you ever... uh, you know," I asked. "With a guy, I mean," I added, then barely resisted the urge to thump by head back against the door and, with any luck, knock myself unconscious for being such a dweeb.

"Yeah," he said. "You?"

I shook my head.

"Do you want to?"

I really did, but sort of didn't. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever I decided, it felt like I'd either be crossing a boundary or shutting a door I'd only just discovered. This wasn't the way I operated; I liked to take my time, think things through and at the moment I was incapable of doing so.

"I don't know," I said finally, hoping he'd decide for me one way or another.

He sighed slightly, then turned away from me and pulled off his sweatshirt. He was withdrawing. The stab of disappointment surprised me, but at the same time my body sagged back and my eyes closed in relief. I opened them again when I felt his palms, cool on my burning cheeks, and his lips on mine. My hands came up instinctively to push him away, but the moment I made contact with his bare shoulders, I was diverted by the feel of his skin, and of the muscles and bones beneath it. I flattened my palms and slid them down and around, feeling the hair-roughened planes of his chest first, then the smooth skin of his sides and back.

I'd had a couple of girlfriends in high school, and kissing them had always been a means to an end, part of a series of actions that girls expected and that eventually led to mutual masturbation, and the last summer before college, to sex. I expected Thomas to quickly move on, after all it's not like we loved each other or anything (and I hadn't really thought kissing was part of what guys did between themselves anyway), but he didn't. He continued to cup my face in his hands and to kiss and nuzzle me, the feel of his chapped lips and rough stubble unfamiliar and alien to me. But exciting, God, so exciting. For the first time in my life, I felt like I'd be happy to kiss someone forever. He touched the divot above my upper lip with the tip of his tongue, which tickled and made me smile.

"Take off your coat, stay a while," he murmured, pushing it off my shoulders. I had to let go of him so that I could take it off. Ι let it drop to the ground behind me, then figured I might as well take my pullover off, as well. Thomas pressed his bare chest and stomach against mine, and we both moaned. He kissed me again, and it was harder and wetter now, his tongue in my mouth, searching out mine. 

I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about how men come together, but I had expected quick and dirty, not slow and, well, tender. He had a way of touching me with his whole body, curving into me and wrapping around me, as if he couldn't get enough of me but was also trying to protect me from something. No one had held me like that and a small part of my brain that so far had been resistant to what was happening told me I didn't like it, but my body clearly disagreed. I found myself pulling his groin against mine, wanting more pressure, more heat.


No Remedy for Love Ch. 01



Thomas' fingers drifted down to my waistband and paused at the button-fly. He looked at me, as if waiting for permission and I nodded slightly. He smiled, his lips dark red, and deftly unbuttoned me and then lowered the zipper of his own jeans and pushed them down to his thighs. I had already noticed Thomas' tendency to go commando, and today had been no exception. For the first time I allowed myself a real look, rather than sneaking a peek. Until now I'd never really thought of dicks in terms of being attractive, beautiful, appetizing, luscious. His definitely was, standing up against his belly, the helmet thick and moist-looking. I touched it curiously with a fingertip, tracing a drop of pre-cum, then a vein leading along the stalk to the nest of dark curls. Thomas hissed in reaction, then cupped my hand with his own and wrapped my fingers around his cock. I let him guide me for a few strokes, learning his rhythm, then took over. He pressed his forehead into my neck, so I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the rising tension in his body, the way his hips were starting to jerk, and I stroked him more firmly.

"Yeah," he gasped softly, and then he spurted, his cum warm and slick on my belly, hand and wrist.

I wasn't sure what came next, but it seemed only fair that he return the favor. I caught his hand, which had been resting on my hip, and tried to bring it to my cock. Thomas raised his head and smiled at me, then dropped to his knees in front of me and took me in his mouth. I later found out that Thomas was a talented cocksucker, but not that first time. That first time, I was on my way to shooting the moment I realized why he was kneeling in front of me, and it was all over for me on the first downstroke. It happened so fast it never even occurred to me to warn him, but he didn't seem to mind.

He stood up again and tried to kiss me, but I turned away from the smell of my cum on his breath. He stepped back and I saw his face harden. I wasn't sure I wanted to ever do this again, but I didn't want to be a jerk about it, either.

"Thomas, it's... I'm..." I floundered, waving my hand between us, hoping he'd understand what I didn't myself.

"It's late," he said in a clipped voice, then turned away from me. Still leaning against the door, I watched him as he sat on his bed, unlaced and pulled off his Doc Martens and then shoved his jeans off with a quiet ferocity. I realized my own pants and boxers were still hanging halfway down my thighs, and I pulled them back up and buttoned them.

"I just..." I tried again, as he got into bed, but I still didn't know what to say, or even feel, for that matter.

"It's okay, Scott," he said. "Let's just get some sleep."

Easy for him to say. I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The cum on my belly itched as it dried, and I wiped it off with a wet washcloth, then decided to take a shower. By the time I returned, he'd turned off the light, so I crawled into my bed and lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling.

My pop had always instilled a simple rule in me: never do anything that I'd be ashamed of him or Mom knowing about. There were some things I'd done that I knew they wouldn't exactly be proud of (like masturbating with Katie Kozlinski in my room when we were supposed to be studying for our SATs), but this was different. Though he'd never imposed his views on me and he wasn't strident about it, my dad was a staunch Catholic and while my faith wouldn't move an anthill, let alone a mountain, I knew being gay, or even bisexual, wasn't something he'd accept. I wasn't sure I accepted it either. Finding guys attractive, okay, not good, but acting on it? And not only that, but with my roommate, a guy I had to face every day for the rest of the term? Unimaginably worse. I tried not to let myself think of how much I'd liked what we'd done, not only the blow job -- my first -- but the kissing, even his sperm on my skin.

And then suddenly I was opening my eyes to daylight. Thomas was already dressed, lying on his bed and eating his breakfast of choice (Coke and M&Ms). When he saw I was awake, he asked me I felt like going to the Guggenheim and, eager for a return of normalcy between us, I acquiesced, even though I knew I wouldn't enjoy it. As it turned out, I did, like I enjoyed most of things Thomas ever introduced me to.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 02



I have no sense of direction. Thomas once joked that I could get turned around driving down a dead end street with no turnoffs. But even I know that once you realize you're going the wrong way, you need to retrace your steps back to where you were really sure you were on the right track.

It's not that simple with relationships. What if the problems between Thomas and me didn't lie in the recent past, in what had occurred directly before my decision to move out (or his decision to cause me to move out, depending on which way I looked at it), but in our beginnings, even in who we were in the first place? What if, like Columbus, we'd set off on the wrong journey and had landed, without realizing it, on a completely different continent neither of us had ever intended to discover?

"When are you going to come get the rest of your stuff?" Thomas asked me, interrupting my philosophical ruminations and jerking me back to the present.

I shrugged. I wondered whether his and my definitions of 'my' stuff were even the same. The painting he'd chosen for our bedroom but I'd paid for, was that his or mine? What about the cheesy refrigerator magnets we'd bought in places across the world, each one picked by one of us not because we knew the other would like it, but because we knew he'd hate it and half of the fun would be negotiating the sexual favors that would lead to its proud display?

"I don't exactly have much space here," I pointed out.

I recognized the sounds of his frustration, the heavy sigh and the finger-tapping. At one point in time I'd have done pretty much anything to avoid his being angry at me, not because the emotion itself bothered me so much – I'd had enough faith in both of us and in the strength of what existed between us – but because I couldn't stand the sound of it, all those sighs and taps and too-quiet clicks of doors shutting between us. I'd always wished he'd just yell at me (or whomever, it wasn't always or only me that irritated him) and get it over with, but he hadn't been brought up that way. Open displays of any kind of emotion – even of the simple affection that might lead parents to call their son Tom instead of always Thomas – hadn't been part of his upbringing; in fact they'd been actively discouraged.

"I guess I can come over later today with some boxes, pack it all up," I said, relenting. "If that's okay with you."

He didn't respond, but the tapping stopped. I twisted around on the couch so I could look at him over its back. He was polishing his reading glasses on his shirt and didn't raise his head. 

"I don't know if you want to be there. It's probably best, in case..." I had to stop and clear my throat. In case what? In case I forgot something of mine or accidentally tried to pack something of his? In case he stopped me, and told me that none of all this was necessary, that we'd both made a mistake, and that we should just go back to right before things had fallen apart and take it from there?

Just because nobody has ever seen a pig fly doesn't mean it's never happened, right? I mean, surely at least one pig has been in an airplane somewhere in the world since the Wright brothers took to the skies.

********************

I didn't see much of Thomas between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. Despite the fact that I'd chosen my side of the room with some half-baked idea of studying on my bed in a bar of sunlight, I'd discovered the first week that if I lay on my bed I fell asleep within seconds and the second week that I didn't have enough will-power in the world to stop that from happening. So I'd moved my studying to an uncomfortable chair in the library carrells and end-of-term papers and tests pretty much kept me nailed there. I only returned to our room to sleep and by that time Thomas was either asleep himself or out somewhere. I told myself that we weren't avoiding one another, but had to admit that we were when I came back to our room after my last test to pack for home and realized that his ditty bag wasn't in its usual place on his dresser and that he'd already left. For where, I had no idea.

I arrived back on campus late in the afternoon of January 2nd. I dropped my stuff off just inside the door of our room, then rushed to the dining hall to work my shift. It was pretty quiet, just a couple of varsity teams and even they weren't quite as boisterous as usual. I was wiping down the salad bar for the zillionth time, when I became aware of somebody waiting beside me, and I turned around to face him.

"Hey, Scott. Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year."

Thomas had a skiing tan: sunburned nose and cheeks with pale patches on his forehead and around his eyes and on the temples, where his cap and goggles had covered his skin. He still had his post-Mohawk buzz, but he'd grown out the last of the red dye. He'd replaced the ring in his nostril with a small stud and, except for his Doc Martens, I'd never seen him dressed liked that before, in threadbare blue jeans that were surely too thin for the minus zero degree weather outside and a dark blue LL Bean Norwegian sweater that looked brand spanking new. He looked like a preppy skinhead, if such a thing existed.

"Your parents?" I nodded at the sweater, trying not to smile. I knew Thomas held a pretty low opinion of LL Bean clothes and those who wore them. "What's next, duck boots?" 

"My grandfather," he said with a scowl, but then he smiled and I realized that I'd missed him like crazy, and that it was completely irrational to feel that way, but that I didn't care. Suddenly it bothered me that he was seeing me in the stupid white paper hat and ugly polyester shirt I had to wear for work.

"When's your shift up?" he asked me and I checked my watch.

"Another half hour."

He slid his eyes left and right, then leaned forward in an exaggerated caricature of someone imparting a state secret he shouldn't be. "I smuggled in beer," he whispered in my ear. His breath tickled and I shivered.

"What, here?" I asked worriedly. Bringing beer into the dining hall meant an automatic suspension, if caught.

"No. Back at the room. We can ring in the new year and term in style."

"With beer?" I asked sceptically, and he grinned.

"Imported Belgian Trappist beer. Trust me, you've never had anything like it." 

About an hour later I found out that you didn't drink Belgian Trappist beer, at least not the one Thomas had brought, out of a bottle. That you couldn't pour it too quickly and that you needed to leave the last bit in the bottle, because of the yeast. He'd been right, this was ringing in the New Year in style. We sat on the carpet across from each other, backs braced against our respective beds and toasted one another with the weird glasses he'd also brought back especially for the occasion. 

Thomas told me with an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm that he'd been to Aspen with his mother's parents for a week, and that he'd then met up with his parents in Detroit for a couple of days. I told him about my own holidays, purposely making them sound even more boring than they'd actually been, and still could see that he was sure I'd had a better time. We were on our third bottle each – and Belgian Trappist beers pack the kick of a mule – when Thomas dropped his head back onto his bed and stretched his long legs out, until his crossed bare feet lay next to my left hip. One of his hands was curled loosely around his glass, which balanced on his flat stomach, and the other lay palm up on the carpet.

"It's good to be back," he mumbled fuzzily, and I grunted in agreement. He raised his head and smiled at me lazily, his lids at half mast. "Is your schedule as crazy this term?"

"I guess so. Not classes so much, but swimming. I'll be busy. You?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. There's some off-campus stuff I might be interested in. We'll see."

He looked embarrassed and it intrigued me.

"Off-campus? Like what?"

He cleared his throat. "Ah. You know. Volunteer work. That kind of thing. I don't know. It's just a thought." He took a drink and let his head drop back again, breaking eye contact.

I leaned my head back as well, staring up at the ceiling. I felt his feet bump against my hip as he adjusted his position slightly, and I dropped my hand on his bare ankle.

"Your feet are cold," I said. I flexed my fingers, massaging the fine bones and tendons.

"Are they?" he asked. "I'm not really feeling them right now. Or my cheeks."

I rubbed the top of his foot to warm it, then let my hand slide under the cuff of his jeans to his shin. I caressed the fine hairs there with my fingertips and his leg jerked.

"I can feel that." 

I stopped moving, but left my hand on his shin and continued to stare resolutely at the ceiling and at the scuff marks that all seemed to be gently spinning. Thomas pulled his legs and feet out of reach, and my hand dropped to the floor. I closed my eyes, but now it felt like I was spinning.

"Scott?"

I heard him move, and then he was straddling my lap, his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs stroking along either side of my neck. My eyes still closed, I placed my palms on his thighs, then slid them upward to his hips. Holding onto him like that made the spinning stop. We'd closed the door, because of the beer, but we hadn't locked it and I knew that anybody that barged in wouldn't mistake our position for anything other than what it was, yet I didn't push Thomas off of me.

"Scott?" he whispered again, and I wondered how I could hear him over the rush of blood in my ears. I opened my eyes reluctantly and met his.

"What?"

He bent his head slowly and brushed his lips softly against mine. I didn't respond, but I still didn't push him away, either.

"You want this, right?" he asked, still so close I could feel his breath on my lips, and I raised my head so that he could kiss me again, but he drew back.

"You need to say you want this. And that you won't be a dick afterward."

"Okay." My voice sounded foreign to my ears, like it was somebody else speaking.

"You need to say it," he repeated insistently and shook me a little by the shoulders.

Or what, I wanted to ask him, because the dark flush along his cheekbones and the boner he was grinding into my lower belly were sufficient evidence that he'd give me what I wanted even if I said nothing at all. I didn't want to make any promises to him, even though he was asking for hardly anything at all. Certainly a hell of a lot less than any of the girls I'd ever been with.

"I want this. And I'll try not to be a dick afterward."

He narrowed his eyes in thought, then shrugged. "Good enough," he muttered, and bent down to kiss me again.

Like the first time between us, I mostly remained passive and let things happen. Part of it was that I didn't know what I was doing (though I later realized that Thomas' prior experience wasn't as extensive as his nonchalant tone had implied when I'd asked him in New York). Part of it, though, was that I liked not having to plan it out, not having to think whether I should first touch this in order to then nibble on that. Everything was up to him, and as long as I was enjoying it, I was willing to follow wherever he led. 

He slipped both hands under my clothes and stroked my stomach, murmuring something into my mouth and I arched up against him, pulling his hips more firmly against me.

"Wait a second," he gasped. "Wait."

He pushed up off of me and went to lock the door, then turned off the overhead light. I heard him curse and the sound of the bottles I'd lined up falling over, then he tripped over my stretched-out legs and landed awkwardly half on me and half on my bed. I twisted around and lifted him fully onto the bed, then crawled up on top of him and trapped his wrists against the mattress, as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. I couldn't see much even when they did, just the dark outline of his head against my pillow. I tried to kiss his mouth, but my lips landed on his cheek and I lingered there, tracing his light stubble with my tongue, tasting his skin, then moved lower, to a tender spot right below his ear, that made him squirm and buck up against me. He twisted and pushed me off of him, squeezing me against the wall, pressing his whole body into mine, and I let him, even though I could have easily held him down.

Suddenly he seemed to stop.

"I want this," I told him again, worried that he'd changed his mind.

"Yeah, me too," he assured me, and then his hands were under my shirt and on the bare skin of my stomach again, reaching up to stroke around my nipples. Nobody had ever done that to me and I couldn't believe how good it felt, especially when he pinched them lightly, then scraped them with his thumbs. Eventually I had to grab his wrists and pull his hands away, because I didn't want to come in my pants. He twisted them free, then his fingers curled around around my waistband. I felt it give as he unbuttoned the fly, then his hand was digging into my shorts and wrapping itself around my dick.

"Oh, Jesus," I gasped and jerked away from the sensation, which caused my ass to slam hard against the wall and he laughed. I thought he might be making fun of me, but then he kissed me, his aim better in the dark than mine, and any protest I was about to make was forgotten as his tongue licked and coiled against mine. He continued to jerk me off, grasping me firmly but not too tightly, his thumb brushing over the head of my cock every third or fourth stroke, It was enough to bring me right to the edge, but not enough to push me over.

"Thomas..." I mumbled, not wanting to beg, yet needing to come so badly that I was prepared to do so.

"I want to fuck you," Thomas said suddenly. "Can I?"

I hadn't realized I was still moving my hips in counterpoint to his stroking until I froze at his words.

"Wh- what?" I stuttered. This wasn't right. I was bigger, stronger, the athlete. He was majoring in French literature, for Christ's sake. How could he think I'd let him do that to me? "No! No way!"

"Okay," he said, letting me go suddenly, and I was about to snarl at him for stopping when both his hands wrapped around me once more. Only this time he was also holding his own cock and pressing it against mine. For the third time I grabbed his wrists in order to push him away, but something – maybe the added lubrication of his precum, maybe the way his breath was quickening, maybe simply how good it felt when I managed to ignore the voice in my head screaming 'too gay, too gay' – stopped me, and I finally cupped his hands in mine and followed his motion, feeling the tendons and muscles in his wrists flex as he stroked, the smooth skin of his cock against mine, his damp forehead pressed against the side of my neck. "Okay. Okay," he repeated breathlessly, as if he was trying to reassure me, and I let the sensation build again, build and build, until his warm spurts set me off as well, our semen pooling in our cupped hands.

He didn't cuddle or kiss me afterward, just rolled onto his back, which gave me a little bit of space to move away from the wall. I was still fully dressed and sweating heavily. I wiped my palms against my jeans. I could smell spunk, and beer, and Thomas' shampoo on my pillow, and I thought I might throw up, but that would have probably qualified as being a dick afterward, so I swallowed hard and stayed put and tried to settle my breathing.

"It's hot in here," he commented suddenly. He raised himself, dragged off the sweater he was still wearing, dropped it onto the floor and lay back down. I wished he'd move back to his own bed. Then I wondered if he wanted to go a second round, and I thought that maybe I'd be okay with that. Cautiously I reached forward and laid my palm on his belly. His T-shirt was damp and I smoothed the material against his flat abs. Touching him like this was soothing, and I was starting to feel a little better, not so much like I wanted to jump out of my own skin anymore.

"You don't really like this, do you?" Thomas observed. His tone wasn't accusatory or defensive, but wry, as if he already knew the answer and it was all he could expect of me.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "I don't dislike it. It's just that..." He waited quietly as I tried to formulate my thoughts. "It feels good, better than with girls. Just not... afterward. When I start thinking about it."

His belly moved up and down under my palm as he breathed. He was probably going to accuse me of being a hypocrite. I knew I would have, if I were him.

"I've never been with a girl," he said finally. "I can't imagine I'd ever want to."

There didn't seem to be much I could say to that and anyway, my mind was on a different path.

"Have you ever been... you know."

He didn't pretend not to understand me. "Yeah. But I prefer the other way around."

I could understand that. Other than his dubious major and the fact that he seemed to like kissing me – and not girls – Thomas wasn't in the least effeminate. And it stood to reason that only effeminate guys would like being fucked. Guys like Thomas, like me, we might like other guys sometimes, but only if we fucked them.

Of course, it wasn't very long before I learned that I didn't understand much of anything at all.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 03



The first time I returned to Bethlehem from college, that Christmas break so long ago, I'd felt that familiar as my parents' house was, it was no longer my home, that I'd really only be a visitor from then on out, because my future lay elsewhere. I should have felt even more of an outsider on my way to Garden City, but for some reason I didn't. Despite everything, despite the reason I was there, the moment I set eyes on the small well-maintained colonial Thomas and I had called home for 18 years, something inside me relaxed.

Thomas' 1968 Camaro was in the driveway. It was a piece of junk and the neighborhood association had complained about it on several occasions, but Thomas loved it and refused to hide it in the garage. Even though neither he nor I knew all that much about cars, we'd always planned on restoring it, a project that had never even got started, while I was there. Yet now I could see that some work had been done on it; the trunk was no long lop-sided, and the driver's door had been replaced. Even this clear sign that Thomas was moving on without me wasn't enough to upset me.

I still had a key, but I rang the doorbell and waited a little bit before letting myself in the front door. Thomas came down the stairs, wearing a T-shirt and pair of cargo shorts. I hadn't really noticed it this morning, but his normally pale skin was tan, as if he'd been on vacation. It startled me, this sudden realization that shouldn't have been so sudden that not only did I no longer know what Thomas was up to, I didn't even have the right to know.

"Hey, Scott," he said.

"Hey."

He smiled tentatively, standing a couple of steps above me, so that I had to look up.

"Did you find boxes? Because I realized there were still some left in the attic, from when we moved in, if you didn't."

We'd moved into our house in 1993 and hadn't gotten around to repairing the roof until three years later, so I had to wonder what shape those boxes were in. Heck, we'd probably used them to stop up the leaks.

"Yeah, I stopped by the Shurgard in Hempstead and picked some up. Once I see what's left, I guess I'll rent storage space there. Depending."

Thomas nodded and came down the last two stairs, then sort of sidled around me and towards the kitchen.

"Would you like something to drink?"

I stood in the hallway, and reality finally managed to catch up with me. I wondered what kind of self-delusional state I'd been in until a second ago that this place, where I had to ring the doorbell before coming in, where I was being offered a drink by a man, who avoided even the most casual and accidental contact between us, could still feel welcoming. Like home.

"Uh, no. Thanks. I'm fine."

The decor reflected Thomas' taste more than mine. Or, at least, that extra edge that had also made me a little more adventurous in my choices and turned the house into something uniquely ours. If it had been left strictly up to me, it would have looked like we were setting up model rooms in a furniture store ("...and this is our might-as-well-be-straight eye for the queer guys living room..."). 

"I'm going out to get the boxes," I called to Thomas, and when I returned from the car, I carried them into the living room. I assembled one, then stood and looked around me, not knowing where to start.

Thomas walked in and despite the fact that I'd refused a drink, handed me a can of root beer and then sat on the sofa, one leg folded underneath him, his arm along the back. He clearly intended to help via supervision and delegation, which was pretty much par for the course where any kind of housework was concerned. At first I tried to ignore him, but after staring helplessly at the large bookcase standing against one wall, I had to turn to him.

"I have no idea where to begin," I confessed. "What's mine?"

He looked puzzled, then stood up himself and walked over to the bookcase. He ran his finger along the spines of our dog-eared travel books on one shelf, hesitated over a couple, then moved on. He switched to another shelf, where we kept the coffee table books we'd been given over the years.

"This is yours," he said finally, pulling out the National Geographic book with the famous picture of the Afghan girl on the cover.

I shook my head.

"No, it's not. Jen and Michael gave it to both of us for Christmas, six or seven years ago. You don't remember?"

He bent his head and looked at the book, as if it could somehow offer a clue.

"Oh. Yeah, right."

He started to put it back, then changed his mind and held it cradled against his chest while he continued scanning the shelves. I concentrated on the nape of his neck. How many times had I snuck up on him and kissed him right there, right at his hairline, on that vulnerable spot where his skin was so smooth? Depending on what he was doing or where we were, he'd either reach back and pull my head forward to kiss me or, more often than not, he'd just softly bump his head back against mine. I took a surreptitious step back, just in case I reached for him.

"They're all going to be like that, aren't they?" he asked, then looked at me, his eyes wide, as if realizing for the first time that nothing in our living room belonged to him or to me, that everything belonged to us, or, more accurately, to some past version of us that no longer existed.

I nodded.

He squared his shoulders.

"Still. It's not fair that I keep everything, simply because I got the house."

"I don't see why not. Like I said this morning, it's not as if I have much room. It would be a shame to take books just to put them in storage."

"No, you should take some stuff, as well. I don't want... I mean, I want you to..."

He was getting flustered; his tan didn't hide the bright color burning along his cheekbones. 

His tan. 

I hadn't known he'd been on vacation. Maybe he hadn't gone alone. Maybe he needed to get rid of the books that had belonged to him and me, because he wanted room for the books that would belong to him and someone else. Someone not me. But surely he hadn't moved on after only two months, had he? I wasn't ready for dating, heck, as last night had made evident I wasn't even ready for casual screwing, and he'd already moved on?

"Do you need the room?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

He blinked at me.

"Need the room? No. What do you mean?"

I knew Thomas well enough that I knew what I said next would anger him. Yet I said it anyway, because I was suddenly blindingly angry myself, and I needed to share it.

"I thought you might have somebody else moving in. The guy you went on vacation with, maybe."

"Vacation? What the hell are you talking about? I haven't been on vacation." He was still puzzled, but I could see dawning comprehension in the way his eyes were starting to blaze. "So we're back to that, are we? The fact that I can't keep it in my pants?"

"Well, you couldn't, could you?" I asked reasonably. Wasn't that why I'd left? When I'd found out? When he'd let me find out, for some reason no longer bothering to hide it?

"Fuck you, Scott. I don't owe you an explanation. Not any more. You're the one who moved out."

"You didn't give me much of a choice."

He ground his teeth. We'd covered this ground, over and over again, in the weeks before I'd left. Until a minute ago, I didn't really think I wanted to go over it again, but apparently I did.

"I wasn't on vacation. I was on an on-site visit in Haiti for work. See?" He raised his T-shirt and his midriff was pale. "There's nobody moving in. Nobody I—"

"You said you don't owe me an explanation," I interrupted hastily. In any case, it wasn't really explanations I wanted from him. I wanted him to tell me that he loved me. And I wanted to be able to believe him when he told me. And neither of those two things were likely anymore. He'd never said to me, not once, and until he'd cheated on me, I'd never thought the words were important but maybe if I'd heard them, maybe if I'd had them to hang onto...

"I don't," he said quietly. "I don't owe you anything."

"I know," I agreed, because he didn't. Anything I'd given him, I'd given him voluntarily, not as part of a quid pro quo. And really, for a lot of years he'd given me a lot back. Maybe everything he was capable of and more than I could have ever imagined.

We both sighed simultaneously, and I couldn't help rolling my eyes. I saw that small smirk I loved, and I wasn't so angry anymore.

"Okay, let's share. Unless it's something obvious, like those stupid Jerry Lewis movies of yours, we can flip a coin." I'd given him those movies, years ago, figuring that if the French like Jerry Lewis, then so must a French major. We hadn't had a working VCR for several years, yet Thomas hadn't thrown the tapes away; he hadn't even stuck them in the attic, along with the rest of the stuff we no longer used but couldn't quite bring ourselves to get rid of.

He agreed to flipping a coin and we left the rest to luck. And luck seemed to be mostly on my side, in that I won all the original Star Trek box set, not to mention all of the Arrested Development DVDs (which Thomas insisted needed to be treated separately, since they'd been purchased separately).

By the time I left maybe we were friends, or at least friendlier than we'd been. And there was no doubt in my mind that having my favorite DVDs and my pride intact couldn't compensate for not having Thomas.

********************

It was inevitable that, since Thomas knew what he wanted and I only had some half-baked and untested ideas about what I thought I didn't, he would prevail. It didn't happen immediately or all at once and it was more me pulling than Thomas pushing, or so it felt at the time. The only thing that Thomas ever required was that I expressly ask for it and that I not be a dick afterward. In essence it meant that I initiated sexual encounters between us and he ended them. And afterward, everything was more or less back to normal until the next time.

Neither of us commented on the fact that the intervals between encounters were getting shorter and that we were doing a little bit more each time. I didn't want to acknowledge it, and I was happy that he didn't either. Whenever I wasn't with him, when I was in class or at swim practice or working in the dining hall, I would concentrate fiercely on the moment. There was always something new to memorize, another lap to swim, more shredded cheese to sweep off the carpet around the salad bar; life went on. And then I'd get back to my room, and Thomas would be there, and my world would shift on its axis.

This term he was more preppy rocker than punk and he'd even replaced his sleeping bag with normal sheets and a quilt. He claimed that the transformation was because he was volunteering at an adult literacy program and needed to dress up for it, although I couldn't see what that had to do with the quilt and told him so.

"The bag was starting to stink," Thomas finally confessed sulkily.

"Well, yeah," I agreed. "Maybe now you'll stay on your side of the room more."

"Yep. Nothing like the smell of Bounce to keep me in my place."

"I use Bounce too," I pointed out. "Come smell."

Thomas had been lying on his bed, reading something German, and he closed the book, keeping one finger between the pages as a bookmark. He looked across the room at me and smiled.

"I've got a test."

It wasn't exactly a no.

"The test is tomorrow?"

"Uh huh. I need to study."

"This won't take long." I cupped my crotch suggestively.

"Blow me," Thomas dismissed me.

"Okay, be that way." I sighed. "I have the breakfast shift tomorrow anyway, so it's better I turned in."

"No, really. Blow me."

I looked at him and he narrowed his eyes challengingly, and I realized that he was speaking literally. I could also see that he didn't believe I'd do it. We were already well into March, and the closest my mouth had come to his dick was his collarbone.

"I don't know how," I said stupidly and he started laughing. He stopped when I sat on the bed next to him and reached over to unbuckle his belt. Never let it be said that I back down from a challenge. "You won't enjoy it," I warned and he laughed again.

"You're kidding, right?"

I unbuttoned his waistband, lowered his zipper and then grabbed his jeans and jerked them down his thighs. As usual, Thomas wore no underwear.

"No," I said, then took a deep breath and bent over him.

"Hey," he whispered, his fingertips stroking my cheek. "Are you sure?"

I'd jerked him off if not hundreds, then dozens of times. I'd seen his cock hard, soft and at every stage in between. I knew it well, so why did it suddenly seem so large, given that he was still only in an in-between stage?

"Yeah," I said. "No. Maybe."

"Okay, so long as you're sure," he grinned, and petted my cheek.

I grasped his cock and stroked it a couple of times and Thomas let out a little groan. The scent of his arousal grew stronger. I lowered my head further and tentatively licked the head. He smelled and tasted about like I'd expected him to, not that differently from me (I'd long since stopped turning away when Thomas kissed me after a blow job) and not unpleasant, but that had never really been my problem. I knew it made absolutely no sense, that I was no more or less gay if I sucked him off rather than just letting him suck me off, but still this seemed like the final frontier, like after this I would be firmly and irreversibly admitting that I was gay. I certainly couldn't see myself enjoying it so much that I'd come myself, like Thomas had a couple of times.

I looked up at him, but his face was expressionless, although his fingers continued to lie gently against my face, tracing my eyebrow and my ear. I licked the head again, right at the slit, and he hissed in reaction. He'd made me feel good so many times; surely I could return the favor once, couldn't I? Without it meaning anything more than that?

I wrapped my lips around him. I wasn't sure what to do with my tongue, or how hard I should suck or where to put my hands. Thomas rolled his hips, and I backed off in a hurry.

"Don't," I instructed, and he huffed another small laugh.

"It's not rocket science, man. Just suck on it."

So I did, and found that it was pretty simple, after all. After a while I got fancier, swirling my tongue around the head, stroking him with my fist in tandem with my mouth. It was probably the worst blow job ever, but I could hear his sounds, and feel the increasing tension in his thighs, as he struggled to keep still for me. Improbably he seemed to be enjoying what I was doing, and I felt a surge of sudden happiness that I could do this for him.

"Scott," he said in a strained voice, and his fingers clenched in my hair. Until that moment, I'd planned on pulling away, but now I found I didn't really need to, or even want to. He filled my mouth, and it wasn't the greatest taste, but it was Thomas' pleasure, and I knew then that I'd do it again, as often as he let me.

I crawled up his body, and he wrapped his arms around me. He still had that way of hugging me that I'd noticed from the very first time, like he wanted to climb into my skin and cover me all at once, like he couldn't bear for one square inch of us to not be touching.

"You were right," he muttered into my ear.

"Yeah?" I asked, concentrating more on rubbing myself off against his thigh than on what I might have been right about.

"Yeah. I didn't enjoy that."

"Gee, that's too bad." I grit my teeth, right on the edge, and Thomas pushed his thigh more firmly against me.

"Maybe with a little more practice, though..."

"Or – ah, fuck! - private tutoring..."

I buried my face into his shoulder and hunched against him. He shushed me, and I bit my lips, trying to keep quiet while I came. Afterward I sagged into him, too lazy to move, until he squirmed out from underneath me and rolled us both onto our sides. It occurred to me that being in his bed meant that, for the first time, it was up to me when things would end between us, unless he kicked me out. After all, I hadn't made him promise not to be a dick afterward. I closed my eyes and nuzzled into the pillow.

"Hey. Don't fall asleep here," he said softly.

"Just for a few minutes," I wheedled, and he shook my shoulder.

"I still need to study."

"Go ahead, I'm not stopping you."

He was quiet for a while.

"You're really going to stay here?" he asked finally.

"Just for a few minutes," I reiterated. "I'm too lazy to move."

"A few minutes," he agreed.

After a bit, I felt him shifting as he pulled his pants up and sat up against the headboard, then heard him flip through the pages of his book. I wriggled a little closer, so that my forehead touched his hip, and relaxed. Just for a few minutes.

I woke up to his fingers brushing lightly though my hair, then again what felt much later, when he leaned over me to turn off the light and squirm down so that he was lying next to me.

The next morning I kissed him for the first time without its leading to sex, just because he was there, warm in my arms, and I wanted to. He smiled at me sleepily, murmured something I didn't quite hear but thought was probably "go away" and turned over.

"What the hell are you so happy for?" my friend, co-worker and teammate Kevin growled at me as we filled the coffee filters. "Did you finally get laid?"

"Nope, I'm still a virgin," I told him cheerfully.

"Yeah, right," he scoffed.

The thing was, I had no idea what the hell I was so happy about. I knew things with Thomas were coming to a turning point – assuming they hadn't already – and I'd more or less made my decision about which way I was going to go. I knew it wasn't going to be simple and that there'd be repercussions I couldn't even begin to imagine, and those I could imagine were bad enough.

The only explanation I could find was Thomas himself. He made me happy and that's all there was to it. It was maybe the first time in my life I consciously realized that truth, but it wasn't the last, not by a long shot.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 04



A month had gone by since I'd been out to Garden City to pick up my stuff, and I still couldn't find a good excuse to contact Thomas. Maybe a not-so-good excuse would have worked equally well, just as it had last time, but somehow I doubted it. We needed a chance to spend some time together in a neutral environment, and I just couldn't figure out how to set that up. I even considered asking Kevin for help – our friends knew we'd split, though not the details – but Thomas would have been immediately suspicious. They liked each other and got along, but Kevin was always solidly on my side, even when I was being a horse's ass, so there was no way he'd suddenly take it on himself to invite Thomas out for a beer and wings. Anyway, after the unfortunate "daddy" incident, I'd been staying off the demon rum, and calling Thomas stone cold sober was becoming a more frightening proposition every day that passed.

Then, one afternoon, he called me. I was in the middle of dealing with a cluster fuck at work, and I snatched my phone from where it was hiding under a stack of papers, and snapped my name. I heard background noise on the other end, but nobody spoke.

"Hello?" I said impatiently, getting ready to check caller ID.

"Scott. Hi."

"Thomas?"

"Yeah. Hi."

"Hi." I took a deep breath, and swiveled my chair, so that my back was to my co-workers. "What's up?"

"This doesn't sound like a good time," he stalled.

"No. No, it's fine. How are you?"

"Fine. You?"

"Yeah, okay. Fine."

I could hear a rapid double clicking sound, which I recognized as him playing with a ball point pen. It had taken me less than a month to learn to hide my own pens from him in college, because he ruined so many of them with his nervous habit.

"Still there?" I asked after another longish pause, trying to gently prod him into saying whatever he'd called to say, because the suspense was starting to kill me.

"Listen, I need to ask you for a favor."

"Okay," I said, trying to keep him talking after he paused again.

"You can say no."

"Okay," I repeated and he sighed.

"It's really stupid."

"Thomas. What?"

"I received a summons. From Detroit."

I was confused for a second, wondering when he'd been in Detroit and what he might have done to get in trouble there, when I realized he wasn't talking about a court summons. Both my parents and his mother had passed away, but his father was still alive.

"Your father?"

"Yeah. He wants to see me."

"Wow." As far as I knew, his father and he hadn't spoken in close to twenty years. They'd barely even looked at one other, when Thomas and I had flown to Detroit for his mother's funeral over five years ago. I'd never understood why Thomas had gone then, given the way they'd both treated him after he came out to them (not that they'd been model parents up to that point), or why he seemed to be considering the trip now.

"I don't want to go alone."

"What does he want?"

"I don't know, but he says he wants to talk to me. He's 88 years old," he added in an apparent non-sequitur.

The clicking had picked up speed.

"I can't believe you're thinking of going," I told him, even though I could. When I came out to them, my parents continued to love me, even if they could never totally accept what they perceived as my choice, and they'd always been kind to Thomas, as well, but if they hadn't? I didn't know if I could have turned my back on a last chance to maybe make amends, however unlikely that possibility might have seemed.

"Will you come with me? Please?" he asked, his voice thickening at the end. He took a deep breath to steady himself. "You can say no."

"Of course, Tommy. Of course I'll come. Just tell me when."

"Thank you." The clicking had stopped. "Next Friday, if you can take off? We can fly up Thursday evening or Friday morning, come back on Saturday or Sunday, depending on how things go."

"Yes, that's fine."

"Okay. I'll book the tickets and send you the details. And Scott, thank you again. Really. Just... Thank you."

After we hung up, I stared at the phone for a long time.

********************

The swim season ended in mid-May, about four weeks before the end of the spring term, suddenly leaving me with the luxury of time to kill and nothing, except for finals, to worry about. I'd even already lined up my summer job working for UPS, like the previous year. The hours sucked, but the pay was good, and hefting boxes helped keep me in shape. Thomas was planning on backpacking through Europe with a couple of his friends.

"It really costs next to nothing," he told me in an effort to convince me to tag along. "You'd probably spend less money there than here. And I could float you a loan, it'd be no big deal."

We were sitting next to each other sideways across my bed, our shoulders propped against the wall, sharing a joint and listening to Bruce Springsteen, whom I loved and Thomas only barely tolerated. He leaned against me, and held the joint to my lips. I took a deep drag, then held the smoke in my lungs as long as possible.

"You know I can't, man. I have to work," I said after exhaling.

"Yeah," he said glumly. "I know."

Despite the open window, it was hot in our room. I was in my boxers and Thomas had appropriated a pair of my shorts. I liked how our bodies looked together. Thomas was thinner than me, his shoulders just as wide, but bonier. I shaved for swimming, but I wasn't very hairy to begin with, and what hair I did have was so blond and fine that it was barely visible, even in my crotch. Thomas' chest, belly, arms and legs were covered with a light dusting of dark hair. I loved how his skin felt against mine, how the hairs tickled my fingertips and palms. I turned towards him, slung my leg across his, and reached for the joint.

"Hey," he protested, holding it out of reach. He wrapped his other arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple affectionately. "You always smell of chlorine," he observed. "Or frying oil. Sometimes both."

"Fuck you," I cleverly retorted, and kissed his chin. I licked a small drop of sweat from under his jaw and then sleepily settled my head against his shoulder. Over the past few weeks, we'd grown closer. We each had our own set of friends and we didn't really spend more time together during the day, but at night, once we shut (and now locked) our door, we often cuddled together to watch TV or read. We kissed more and most nights we slept squeezed together in either one or the other's bed, generally, but not always, moving from the bed with the wet spot.

"Hey, Scott?"

"Hmmm?"

"Are we ever going to do it? You and me?"

I was feeling relaxed and at peace with the world, partly due to the pot and partly due to the warmth of Thomas' skin, and Bruce was singing about proving it all night, and suddenly the thought of Thomas and me fucking seemed as inevitable and as welcome as the sun rising. 

"Yeah, I guess we will."

"When?"

I listened to his heart beating strongly under my ear. I laid my palm on his cotton-covered crotch and felt it lengthen and grow, and the beat of his heart grew faster. He carefully reached out and placed the joint in the jar cap we used as an ashtray, then pushed me until I was lying flat on my back with him on top of me. I raised my knees and spread my legs and we made out and ground against each other for a while, starting slow but the urgency quickly growing.

"Say it," he whispered.

"I want this. And I won't be a dick afterward."

He kissed me, then got up and rummaged for something in his ditty bag. He stripped both of us, then lay on top of me again.

"It'll be good, Scott. I promise, it'll be good."

I ran my palms up and down his back. His skin was smooth and slick with perspiration, and I dug my fingers in to better feel the play of muscles under it. I was dizzy from the joint, the heat, his smell, my own arousal at his words. I'd had a lot of time to think about it, about what it would feel like. I was nervous, and unbelievably turned on at the same time Either way, I didn't have enough spit in my mouth to talk.

When he raised himself and pulled on my shoulder in order to turn me onto my stomach, I didn't resist. He kissed along my shoulders, then lower, down my spine and finally, stunningly, the top of my crack. He'd never done that before. I writhed under his lips, then startled away from his hands on my butt.

"Tommy," I moaned, and he hesitated.

"What? You want me to stop?"

I shook my head, then pressed my face and fists into my pillow. I felt his lips and tongue at the top of my crack again and I bit off another moan.

"Get up on your knees," he told me, and his hands lifted my hips, and, as usual, I did as he said, arching my back and opening myself to him. Something cool dripped against my hole, causing me to whimper and jerk forward, and I heard him shushing me, one hand tugging on my hip to bring me back into position.

I didn't know anything about stretching, didn't even know why it might be necessary, and if anybody had ever done it for Thomas, he'd forgotten. He pushed his cock against my hole and I tried to relax and let him in as instructed, but I had no idea what muscles would accomplish that feat. He forced himself in inch by slow, burning inch and I ground my teeth against the pain I hadn't known to expect.

"Okay?" he gasped after a while. I was sure he'd pulled a switch and jammed most of a baseball bat up my ass, and I blindly reached back to find out that I only had the head of his cock in me.

"I don't think so," I mumbled.

He rubbed my back.

"You need to relax, Scott."

"I'm trying," I snapped, any good feelings, whether physical or emotional, long dissipated.

He didn't offer to pull out, probably guessing that I'd take him up on it in an instant. Instead, he pushed further in with slow pulses, rubbing my back all the time, then reaching under me and stroking my belly and cock. When he kissed the back of my neck, I realized that he must be all the way in to reach that far. I tried to concentrate on something beside the hot poker up my ass, and became aware of the slight tickle of his pubic hairs, of his chest pressed against my back so that I felt every beat of his heart, every breath. I spread my knees and shifted my weight, trying to ease the pain. I knew what had to follow and I didn't want it, I didn't want any of it. My dick remained resolutely soft, despite the attention Thomas was giving it.

"Fucking hell, this hurts," I gritted out, every muscled in my body clenched.

"Relax," Thomas whispered again, his breath warm and damp against my neck. "Please. It'll be okay, I swear." He sounded as if he was closer to tears than I was.

Either I was getting tired and naturally relaxed or I unknowingly finally located the right muscles, because suddenly the pain receded. It still burned, especially at my stretched ring, but I could handle it. I reached back and caressed Thomas' flank reassuringly, then carefully rocked my ass against him. His breath caught, and his hand tightened on my cock, which was also showing slow signs of revival, though not actual interest in the proceedings. His hips rolled against me, one slow, gentle pulse, and yeah, that was okay. I rocked back again, and then we were moving against each other, finding a rhythm that gave us both pleasure. I heard his breathing speed up, his whispered 'yes, oh, yes,' and I pulled him into me. He hung on tightly as he came, then slowly pulled out, and I collapsed onto my stomach. He stayed kneeling between my legs, until I twisted around, grabbed his arm and pulled him down next to me.

"I guess we won't be doing that again," he preempted me, once his breathing had settled.

I rolled onto my side, then hurriedly back onto my belly when I felt his sperm start to leak out of me. Given the body parts involved, there didn't seem to be that many ways one could do this, but...

"Are you sure we did it right?" I asked.

He shrugged tensely. "I think so. It didn't hurt when I tried it. Maybe a little at first, but not really. Actually if felt pretty good."

"But you prefer fucking to being fucked."

He sighed and pillowed his head on one folded arm. "Yeah, but not because it hurt or I hated it. It's just... well, it's like lemon pie and cherry pie. They're both good, I just prefer cherry pie."

"Cherry pie," I repeated, fighting to keep a straight face, and he shrugged again.

"Yeah."

"What's a blow job, then? Spinach?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? A blow job, giving or getting, is... well, it's a bacon mushroom cheeseburger. The best."

I laughed then, and he laughed with me, his body softening against mine.

"Hey, Thomas? I feel like a bacon mushroom cheeseburger right now."

He made a gagging sound. "Please tell me you're not one of those people that likes to use stupid codewords for sex. If you want me to suck you off, just say so."

"No, I have the munchies. Really."

He reached out and stroked my back from my shoulder to the dip above my butt, his face uncharacteristically serious.

"Thank you, Scott. For trying it. I'm really sorry I hurt you."

I blushed and shrugged, and found that I liked being a generous and brave guy, Thomas' generous and brave guy (sort of), even if completely unintentionally. 

We didn't try anal sex for the rest of the term, but got bolder with oral, to the point where Thomas rimmed me and I actually returned the favor. Several times.

There was no question that we would continue being roommates sophomore year. About a week into fall term, Thomas confessed that he'd learned a thing or two in Europe. I wasn't sure I liked the fact that he'd been fucking someone else, but it was hard to be jealous of some Klaus guy in Germany, whose last name Thomas claimed he didn't even know, and I sure as hell couldn't stay mad when Thomas applied his newly learned skills on me. 

Let's just say that although I'd never had much of a sweet tooth and merely appreciated cherry pie, I very quickly came to crave lemon pie.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 05



Thomas and I had arranged to meet at JFK Thursday after work, in order to catch a late evening flight to Detroit. I had been making good time, but as Elaine famously said on Seinfeld, no one's ever beaten the Van Wyck. After advancing about two sub-compact-sized car lengths in twenty minutes, I became paranoid that I wouldn't make it and that Thomas would think I'd blown him off and never speak to me again.

I still had him on speed-dial.

"Hey, I got started late and now I'm stuck on the Van Wyck," he said breathlessly the moment he picked up, not giving me a chance to speak. I craned my neck to look in case the Camaro was among the cars basically parked around me.

"Yeah, me too," I said. "That's what I was calling to tell you."

"We're not going to make it, are we?"

"Let's just get there. We can change flights if we need to."

"It's not like I really want to go anyway," Thomas mumbled despondently.

"Buck up, little soldier, and chortle," I quoted. He obligingly made that fake sound we both imagined chortling was, and I laughed. "Hey, it looks like we're finally moving a bit. See you there."

"Great," Thomas said listlessly and hung up.

I arrived first and figured that if Thomas showed up in the next ten minutes we could still board. I made sure the gate knew we were almost there (and Thomas having booked business and already checked us in certainly helped) and he made it with one minute to spare. I watched him run towards me, long legs covering ground effortlessly, a leather duffel bumping against his hip. God, how I'd missed just being able to look at him. Not counting my trip to Garden City to pick up my stuff, this was the longest we'd ever been apart from each other since we first met, except for summer vacations in college and the roughly two years Thomas had spent in the Peace Corps. 

I don't know how it is these days with so many ways to communicate, but in the mid-80s being in the Peace Corps meant you were completely out of touch for months on end. Most of the letters he sent me reached me after he came back (and for the most part they resembled exceptionally well-written newspaper articles rather than personal letters, but he did write to me and that's what counted) and only six of mine ever caught up with him, although I dutifully wrote him about every five to six weeks. We'd thought we were awfully mature at graduation; we both had things to do and places to be and it wasn't like we'd ever seriously figured on a long-term future together. Afterward I realized that we'd simply been young and unbelievably arrogant, that we placed so little value on what we had together, that we assumed that finding love (though we never called it that) and friendship (that we admitted to) was easy, even commonplace, instead of something rare to be cherished and protected at all costs.

"Thanks again for doing this," Thomas said after we settled in our seats.

"I'm happy to help if I can," I assured him. "You know that."

He looked at me sharply, and I blushed. My intentions must have been all too obvious, especially to someone, who knew me so well and for so many years. And my timing couldn't have been worse; my very presence on the plane was proof that Thomas had bigger things worrying him. Surprisingly, he reached out and squeezed my hand. It was only for a second, but I could swear I still felt the warmth of his palm hours later.

I'd been wondering about the hotel rooms. The whole trip was on Thomas, he wouldn't hear of my covering any part of it since I was only in Detroit at his request, and I wondered if he'd booked a double or two single rooms. At the death of his mother he'd come into a lot of money – that's why he'd kept the house, he'd paid off our mortgage years ago, overriding my objections and stating that it was stupid to pay interest when we didn't need to – and he could easily afford the singles, but I didn't like what that implied about where things stood between us, that we couldn't even share a room as friends anymore. On the other hand, he wouldn't have booked a double without checking with me first, I didn't think. Of course he wouldn't, I repeated firmly to myself, determinedly quashing my irrational disappointment.

As I found out, Thomas had opted for a compromise, two interconnecting singles, so that we each had our own space and either of us could shut and bolt the door between us, but there was still a tacit acknowledgment of our history.

It had been a full day, and we were both tired. I hung up my jacket and pulled off my tie, then lay back on my bed, my legs hanging off the end with my feet on the floor, and I listened to Thomas' quiet voice in the other room as he spoke on the phone, presumably to his father. After a while, he knocked on the door frame between our rooms and pushed the door, which had been ajar, fully open.

"I've arranged to meet my father at this breakfast place in the Ren Cen at eight tomorrow. I tried to make it later, but he's always been an early riser, and I didn't feel like adding sloth to all my other sins."

"Okay. Do you want me there with you?"

He nodded, then wandered into my room and started re-arranging the brochures and leaflets on the small desk, lining up the edges, then placing them by size, then back into their original positions. I sat up and reached for his wrist, pulling him down to sit beside me. He slumped over with his elbows on his knees, and I rubbed his back in a circular motion I knew relaxed him. I didn't ask what was wrong, because it was pretty obvious, but I also didn't know what to say that might make him feel better and I could think of anything to break the silence between us.

"I haven't told my father we're not together anymore," Thomas said.

"It's none of his business either way," I assured him, trying to ignore the jolt of hope I felt at his words.

"No, but..." He sighed and leaned into me a little, though I doubt he was aware of having done so. "I don't want him to know I failed at this."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that he hadn't, but the truth was he had. We both had.

"We stayed together longer than a lot of couples and maybe against worse odds," I said instead. "That counts for something. Though since we're both men, probably not with Robert."

He laughed. "You're right. He'd have been a lot happier if we'd never met."

"Probably."

"I wouldn't have been, though," Thomas said in a low voice. "When we separated, right before, I said a lot of stuff I didn't mean and not enough of what I should have. You know that, right?"

"Yeah."

He laughed again, a quiet huff. "My strong and silent Scott. Always so polite, from the first second I saw you, when you shook my hand, even though you looked about ready to puke at the thought of sharing a room with me."

"Not you specifically. Any guy with a Mohawk and nose ring. And I wasn't that obvious."

"You were extremely obvious. There you were, with the prettiest blue eyes I'd ever seen in my life, and you couldn't stand the sight of me."

I didn't object to the description, particularly the "pretty'' bit, like I usually had in the past. "Well, you were an ugly skinny thing, weren't you? But I eventually got used to you."

He grinned, then took a deep breath, straightened his back and clapped his palms against his knees. Obviously the trip down memory lane was over.

"I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? Seven thirty? That should give us plenty of time."

I nodded and watched him as he left the room. He carefully pulled the door back to its original position, so that it remained partially open.

********************

Thomas called me from Frankfurt airport at 3:30 in the morning in order to tell me that he was about to catch a connecting flight to New York and to ask me if I could come pick him up and if he could stay with me for a few days. It was the first time I'd heard his voice in two years. After we hung up, I was too restless to fall asleep again and I spent the next few hours cleaning the apartment. When the time turned almost decent, I tracked down Kevin at his girlfriend's place, waking them both up, and asked him if I could borrow his car, which he agreed to provided I'd also fill the tank, then left a voice message at the office claiming a family emergency. I set off way too early, which left me cooling my heels in the arrivals area of JFK for almost two hours. Time had never passed so slowly.

And then he was standing in front of me, smiling broadly, his brown hair grown out from the buzz cut, so that for the first time I realized it was wavy and not straight like I'd always assumed. He smelled a little funny, a combination of cheap dispenser soap, not-quite-clean clothes and airplane, but that didn't stop me from flinging my arms around him and hugging him to me. He hugged me back and kissed my cheek, then we stepped away from each other, both smiling like fools.

We managed to stuff his backpack into the trunk of Kevin's tiny Civic and drove back to Hell's Kitchen, where Kevin and I rented a 3-room railroad apartment. At some point there might have been an internal hallway connecting the rooms, but a renovation and the addition of a kitchen and bathroom meant that we had to either walk through one room to get to the next, or had to exit the apartment at one end and walk back in at the other. Still, the price was right, and Kevin and I had taken the end rooms for ourselves and left the middle room as a sort of living/dining room, so we both had our privacy and could come and go as we pleased. I figured Thomas could have his choice of my room or the couch in the middle room; Kevin stayed at his girlfriend's place so often he basically lived there and wouldn't care either way.

"This is nice," Thomas said after I gave him the brief tour. I looked at him to check if he was being sarcastic, but he appeared very serious, and I wondered what kind of places he'd stayed at for the past couple of years. 

The first thing he asked for was to take a shower and I showed him where everything was, then went to the kitchen to fix us some sandwiches and took them through to the middle room along with a couple of beers. When he finally emerged about half an hour later, a towel wrapped around his hips, I goggled. During college there had been no other word for Thomas than skinny. He was still thin, I don't suppose food had been that plentiful, but his shoulders, chest, arms and thighs had all filled in with lean muscle, and his abs were ripped. I'd always liked his body, but now he was breath-taking.

"Here, this is for you." He placed a bracelet woven with colorful beads on the table in front of me. I noticed he was wearing one that was similar.

"What is it?"

"A friendship bracelet. They make 'em in a lot of the villages and sell 'em to tourists, but these two," he also indicated the one he was wearing, "were a gift from the kids at the last school I taught."

I tried to put it around my right wrist, but I couldn't manage the fastening with my left hand, so Thomas leaned over to help me. I stared at his profile, then raised my free left hand and pushed his hair behind his ear, something I could have never done before due to its length.

"I missed you, Tommy," I said gruffly, and he looked at me and smiled.

"Well, I'm here now. And before long, you'll be wishing you could get rid of me."

"That's true, especially if you continue taking half-hour showers."

"And wait until you see how much I eat these days. Don't worry, I'll start looking for a place in a couple of days."

He sat down across from me, picked up his beer and toasted me before drinking.

"I'm going to have to re-teach you all about beer, aren't I?" he asked, making a face after the first swallow.

"Are you going to be around long enough to do so? You know what a slow learner I am."

"I hope so. There's a couple of NGOs based here in New York that might be looking for people. I figure I can work for a year or two, get some more experience and also study for the GMATs."

"You're thinking of business school?" I asked surprised. "Joining the oppressive and abusive capitalist system? Indulging in filthy lucre at the expense of the poor?"

Thomas snorted. "I wasn't that bad, was I?"

"Worse."

"Yeah, well, I have to tell you that what I saw didn't exactly help change my mind about geopolitics or multinational corporations. On the other hand, you have to know the system in order to use its power for good."

"Well said, Uncle Ben."

Thomas grinned. "And if I read lowbrow comic books like you, I'm sure I'd know exactly what you're referring to, Petey."

After lunch, Thomas lay on the couch in front of the TV and basically didn't move for the next 48 hours, except for bathroom breaks. He slept more than he watched the boob tube, but he did plenty of that, too, conclusively proving that bad sitcoms are instantly addictive. Finally, Kevin and I had to forcibly throw him into the shower and then some clothes and drag him over to a Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood that made a mean burrito and even meaner margaritas. After our mini reunion, Kevin went back to his girlfriend's and I half-carried Thomas back to the apartment.

"Tha' was fun," Thomas slurred as we entered via my bedroom. He shook my supporting arm off, and took three unsteady steps towards the mattress on the floor, where he collapsed face down.

"Yeah," I agreed. "You're not going to throw up, are you?"

He rolled over onto his side so he could look at me.

"No. Can I stay here?"

"You know you can."

"Will you stay with me?"

I toed off my sneakers and dropped down next to him.

"Yeah. We only make people we don't like sleep on the couch."

He smiled, then reached for my wrist and held it up to study the bracelet he'd given me.

"I didn't think you'd wear this."

"Why not? I like it."

"I thought you'd say it's too gay."

"Well, it is too gay."

"I thought you'd go back to women once I left. Did you?"

"No."

"Are you out?"

"No."

"So you're not dating guys either?" 

"Sometimes."

"Anybody serious?"

"No."

Still holding onto my wrist, he raised my hand to his cheek. I cupped it.

"I was waiting for you to come back," I told him, and it was the truth, even though I'd only consciously known it when I heard his voice at 3:30 in the morning three days ago.

"I'm glad," he told me, and closed his eyes. "I don't know what I would have done otherwise."

I moved closer to him and pulled him against me. I knew he was too drunk for us to do anything, too drunk to even censor himself (whether against letting me know the truth about his feelings for me or against a meaningless and maudlin response to what must have sounded like a meaningless and maudlin statement), but I still craved his touch and warmth. He was already three quarters asleep and he mumbled a protest at being moved, then wrapped himself around me, muttered my name, and went boneless.

In the morning he didn't show any sign of remembering what either of us had discussed the night before. I woke up to him pulling my jeans off. He was already naked and gloriously hard, and if he had a hangover, it didn't seem to be slowing him down.

"Morning," I mumbled, raising my hips obligingly to help him.

"Yeah, yeah, enough sweet talk," he growled and moved forward to pull off my T-shirt, as well, and toss it aside. Then he remained kneeling by my chest, staring at me, his eyes wide.

"What?" I asked self-consciously.

He reached out and stroked my pec. "You've changed."

I still swam and remained in good shape for a guy, who spent ten to twelve-hour days sitting at a desk, but was nowhere near as big as I'd been in college, and I'd stopped shaving. Thomas trailed his fingers through my sparse chest hair, then along my treasure trail. "You're all fuzzy, like a peach," he grinned.

"Oh, jeez," I muttered, rolling my eyes, and he laughed, then stretched out on top of me, lifting my arms and pressing my wrists to the mattress over my head. "Aww, and look at that, more peach fuzz." He nuzzled my armpit, then licked me there. "You're so fucking sexy."

I twisted my wrists against his grip, trying to release myself, but then Thomas raised his head and our mouths met, and I forgot about struggling. Thomas' kisses were as sweet and exciting as I remembered them. I wrapped my legs around him and hooked my ankles together in order to cradle his hips and keep him locked to me. After a while he lifted himself a little and looked down at me.

"Say it," he instructed, his voice husky, and I almost came right there and then.

"I want you. And I won't be a dick afterward."

He caught the slight change in the phrase I'd dutifully recited all those times in college, the replacement of 'this' with 'you' and his eyes narrowed, then he grinned. "Good enough."

He let go of my wrists, and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling him down on me and burying my head into the curve of his shoulder, meatier than I remembered, but still as sensitive if the way he writhed against me when I licked and nibbled there was anything to go by.

"There's no way in hell I'm going to last long enough to come in you," Thomas panted in my ear, then bit my earlobe.

"Next time then," I said, and rocked my hips up, rubbing my cock against his. We both moaned, and I did it again, over and over, until we both came. I let my legs fall open, but Thomas continued to grind against me, our cocks moving along slick, warm skin, until we both came again.

"Missed this," Thomas said, holding my face cupped in his hands, his whiskey-colored eyes bright. "Missed you, too," he smirked, his eyes sliding shyly away from mine a second later.

"You asshole," I told him and kissed him soundly, and if I hadn't had to get up and go to work, we would have started all over again.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 06



Robert was already sitting a table when we arrived. He was most decidedly not happy to see me, and he made that very clear from the first instant he saw us.

"This table only seats two," he said by way of greeting his son in person for the first time in years.

"Well, let's move to another one, then," Thomas said, turning away from him to look for the hostess.

"This is between you and me," Robert said. "He has no place here."

"Thomas-" I started to intervene, because in a way Robert was right and I wasn't going to stand in the way of a reconciliation or let Robert use me as an excuse for anything, but Thomas shook his head at me and turned back to his father.

"Look, I'm here because you have something you want to say to me. So either say it or don't; I don't really give a shit. But Scott stays."

"Fine," Robert ground out.

We spent an awkward two or three minutes waiting silently for the hostess to re-seat us and then trying to decide how to sit around three sides of a square table, since any arrangement put somebody either next to and/or across from someone they didn't want. We finally ended up with Thomas sitting across his father and me on his right. At least whenever I looked up from my plate, I could see the tasteful breakfast buffet setup, rather than somebody glaring at me. But I didn't look up from my plate a whole lot during the entire excruciating meal. Which didn't last long enough for me to even get through my first cup of coffee.

When Thomas flung his napkin on the table and stood up to leave, I trailed after him, neither of us saying goodbye to Robert.

"What the fuck was that?" Thomas repeated wildly two or three times in the elevator, running his fingers through his hair and almost pulling on it, while two women unfortunate enough to be sharing the ride down with us tried not to stare openly and cowered against the wall as far away from him as possible.

"It's okay," I murmured, putting my hand on his arm in an effort to calm him down, but he almost flung it off, causing the women to exchange open looks of alarm.

"No, it's not fucking okay! Senile old bastard."

The doors slid open on the ground floor and all four of us made our escape. The Ren Cen is a confusing circular hub and we got a little lost trying to find the exit (and obviously I was no help, given my sense of direction). Thomas grew more and more frustrated, and he stalked by the exit we wanted twice before finally noticing it.

"Fucking asshole," Thomas continued his rant as we stood waiting for a cab. "But it's not his fault. It's mine. As if I didn't fucking know better."

Despite the situation, I was fascinated and almost amused by his reaction. I had never, ever seen Thomas express anger so openly before, not even during our final weeks together, and now it was almost like watching a mediocre actor, the gestures and actions all just a little bit off, not because the emotion wasn't genuine, but because Thomas had always been taught to repress everything and simply had no practice in throwing a temper tantrum.

He threw himself into the cab, crossed his arms and glared ahead of him, lips pressed into a thin white line, so it was left up to me to give the name of our hotel. On the plane yesterday, he'd mentioned perhaps visiting the Motown Museum or the Detroit Institute of Arts after finishing up with his father, but somehow I didn't think this was the right time to check if he still felt like doing something. 

During the short drive back I sat next to Thomas feeling absolutely useless and brooding on the meeting. It had gone much as I'd expected it to, though I'd fervently hoped otherwise and, in my wildest imaginings, couldn't have anticipated Robert's gall. He had magnanimously decided to give Thomas one last chance, provided Thomas changed his ways. He acknowledged that Thomas perhaps couldn't overcome his "unnatural tendencies" or might "continue making sick choices." However, Thomas was his only child, and he would prefer that his assets (much diminished after GM's Chapter 11 reorganization, he explained in a brief but heartfelt aside, glaring at me as I was somehow to blame for that, as well) remain within the family. Therefore, Robert was prepared to consider not leaving everything to his alma mater (which, had Thomas only attended it, might have made a real man out of him), provided Thomas agreed to immediately move back to the house in Grosse Pointe, where Robert could monitor him, and... 

I didn't get to hear the rest, because that's when Thomas, who hadn't said a single word since we'd sat down, got up and walked out. And even though I'd witnessed the entire thing, I still couldn't quite believe it. I'd thought I'd understood the environment Thomas had grown up in, but now that I'd finally met his father, I realized that I'd really had no idea.

I didn't think I could have helped Thomas work through this even if we had still been together, let alone now, unless it was to show him how to throw a real hissy fit, including punching the wall, thus breaking the two middle knuckles of his right hand, and then drinking himself into a stupor. Not that I'd ever done that myself, nor walked around with a cast for the following four weeks.

"Do you want to do anything later?" I asked him once we'd reached our hotel, finally deciding that if I can't help him, I might, at least, distract him. My door came first as we walked down the hallway from the elevator, and instead of going to his own door, he followed me into my room. He stood at the desk and started re-arranging the brochures again.

"No. We might as well see if there's an earlier flight back home that we can catch. I'm sorry I ruined your weekend." 

He sounded so defeated. I preferred the anger.

"You didn't, Tommy. I wish I could have helped."

He sighed. "I was a fool to expect more, right? What, that he'd change his mind about us after all these years?" He laughed, a small bitter sound. "I did, though. I thought, I don't know, that he maybe had a near-death experience or something, and that maybe he realized he had some regrets or that he should make amends. Fucking idiot."

I knew the last was addressed at himself, not Robert.

"I'd have felt the same way. Don't beat yourself up about it."

He turned around to face me.

"How could he even think I'd leave you after all these years?" he almost yelled at me. 

"But Thomas..." I floundered for a response.

He went white as a sheet, when he realized what he'd said. He turned on his heel and walked through the connecting door between our rooms. This time he closed it firmly behind him, though I didn't hear him slide the bolt.

I followed him and reached out for the door knob, even put my hand on it, but in the end I didn't know if I could turn it.

********************

About three months after Thomas arrived in New York, Kevin decided to move in permanently with his girlfriend. I took it for granted that Thomas would want to move in with me; he'd found and was living in an apartment in Alphabet City, but hated both it and his roommate. So I was surprised when he refused.

"Why the hell not? I thought you can move on at any point." There was no contract, since Thomas was subletting illegally and paying his roommate rent under the table.

"I can. I just don't think it's a good idea, our living together."

"But why?" I whined, and hated myself for it.

He flushed and shrugged. He wouldn't meet my eyes.

"Thomas, come on. What's the problem? We're close to the subway, the heating works, the water pressure's great. Not to mention the other benefits."

I saw his mouth lift slightly at that, a ghost of a smile, but he still wouldn't look at me.

"What?" I asked again.

"I just think we'd be making a mistake."

"Why?"

"What are we going to do, Scott? Live together in Hell's Kitchen forever, because there's no better alternative?"

Yes, was my automatic response, but I didn't say that. "Who said anything about forever? I'm planning on moving to the Upper East Side the moment I make my first million. Fifth Avenue penthouse, right across from the Park."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Thomas said dryly.

"You can move in with me there, too. Saving the world might be emotionally rewarding, but it sure doesn't put money in your pocket."

"I do okay," Thomas answered nonchalantly. And of course I knew he had the security blanket of his family's money. At one point, I believed that Thomas wouldn't have been so committed to volunteerism and working for NGOs and not-for-profit organizations for shit money, if he'd grown up in the same financial conditions as me. Then one day he'd said as much himself (though he hadn't used my family or me as the reference point) and I became ashamed of my thoughts, even though he'd basically agreed with them, because to concentrate on the fact that Thomas didn't have to worry about living in squalor unless he wanted to was to ignore just how much he really did care, the difficult and often heart-breaking conditions he worked in, and how beautiful his idealism made him.

"Thomas, come on. I'd really like you to think about it. Seriously."

He looked at me then.

"Why?"

"Well, because. I told you." A winning and coherent argument, if I'd ever uttered one. 

Strangely enough, it didn't seem to convince Thomas. But how could I tell him the real reasons? That I didn't want us to be apart, even though we saw each other two to three times a week. That I wanted to find him there when I returned home, and watch TV and share meals with him. That I wanted us to be able to sleep together and not have to worry about who might hear us or walk in on us. That I wanted us to wake up together. That, as far as I could understand it, I wanted what Kevin and his girlfriend had, even though most of my friends scoffed at that type of lifestyle. These were the late eighties, when Big Swinging Dicks ruled Wall Street and greed was good and right, when you worked hard and partied harder. And there I was, in the middle of everything, on my way up, and I was dreaming of domesticity. With Thomas. Some things you just don't admit to, especially if you're a guy barely 25 years old and life hasn't knocked you on your ass yet.

"Please, Thomas. I just... Please. At least think about it. I can't afford the apartment on my own. I don't want to have to move or to put up an ad just to end up with some deadbeat weirdo roommate."

We'd been wandering through the Village and were now seated on a bench on Washington Square, watching some kids breakdancing and freezing our asses off.

Thomas bumped my shoulder with his. "Aw, that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"Hmm? What?"

"Well, you implied I'm not a deadbeat weirdo."

"I think you inferred that."

"No, I'm pretty sure you implied it."

"Whatever. Stop fishing for compliments. Will you think about it?"

"Jeez, you just don't let up when you want something, do you?" he grumbled.

"No." That didn't mean I was necessarily honest about the reasons I wanted it.

He got up and I followed him as he made his way to the subway.

"You heading back?" I asked.

"No. I figured I'd come over and check out my new room."

"Yeah?" I grinned.

"Probably easier than you pestering me to death," he shrugged, then leaned over and added in a low voice: "But I might need some more convincing. I wouldn't like to live in an apartment, where there's a crack in the kitchen sink or where the bathroom door is lopsided and sticks."

Thomas had stayed with us for two and a half weeks, and he'd been in and out of the apartment at least once a week since then. He knew it well.

"Everything's in tip-top shape," I assured him straight-faced.

"We'll see," he muttered darkly.

Half an hour later, I was prostituting myself for the price of one cracked kitchen sink, one sticky bathroom door and one non-existent closet rod, because Kevin had removed it and taken it with him, the cheap bastard.

"But I can buy you another closet rod," I assured Thomas, even as I was hurriedly stripping.

"Nope. The way I figure it, you owe me one back rub, three blow jobs, and sixty-two and a half hours, where I can have my way with you any way I like."

"That seems rather steep."

"Starting right now. Take off everything except for your socks."

I was ahead of him by two socks, and momentarily wondered if he actually expected me to put them on again. "You're not serious."

He folded his arms across his chest and looked stern. "I am so."

"There's no way in hell I'm putting just my socks on. Jesus." I glared at him. What the fuck?

"But they do it in porn movies and it really turns me on," he pouted, his voice wavering, then lost it, laughing so hard he was almost crying. "Oh, God, your face..." he gasped when he could finally talk, and that started him off again.

I could slug him, or I could take advantage of the fact that he was flopping around like a fish and in no condition to put up a fight to get rid of his clothes. I opted for the second. Socks included.

"Asshole," I muttered, once I held him lying naked and giggling in my arms. "Weirdo deadbeat asshole."

He linked his hands behind my neck and made valiant, though unsuccessful, efforts to get his mouth in the right shape to kiss me.

"Ah, shut up. It isn't that funny," I growled.

Apparently it was, so I decided diversion was required. I flipped him onto his back, then kneeled over his chest facing his feet, grabbed his thighs and pulled his hips up towards me. He was soft, but I wasn't interested in his dick at that precise moment anyway. Well, I was, but I had other priorities and a man has to occasionally choose. I bent forward and mouthed his balls.

"Awwww, fuck," he whispered and I felt his hands clutch at my hips. It didn't sound like he was laughing any more.

I licked the wrinkled skin, then tugged at first one orb and then the other with my lips. Thomas was still whispering curses behind my back; we'd learned to make love quietly in the dorms, and we never lost the habit. As always, I took my queues elsewhere: from the way his cock stiffened and started leaking, from the musky smell of his arousal, from the whispered exclamations and stifled moans, from the way he touched me, always going for that full body contact, raising his shoulders and head so that he could kiss my back, spreading and folding his legs in an attempt to hug my sides. No matter how we started out, I never stayed in control with Thomas, even the few times I was topping. I was always led by his pleasure, so attentive to it that I lost myself in it.

"I want you to sit on my face," he gasped, and my gut clenched at the words and at the way his hands tugged at my hips. I crawled backward until my knees were tucked in his armpits, then lowered myself, my heart thudding, while he slowly palmed my ass and spread it. "Sweet," he muttered, rubbing one thumb lightly against my hole. Then his tongue was there, wet, strong, lapping at me, pushing into me, and his lips, and I fell forward on my elbows, burying my face in his crotch, frenziedly licking his belly, the nest of curls at the root of his cock. I heard his guttural groan, felt it against me, and I nuzzled his cock. He arched his hips up, and I took him in my mouth, took him so deep I gagged, then again. And again.

I had to stop when he jammed three fingers into me, the burn and pleasure too much for me. "Jesus, Tommy," I mumbled into the downy skin of his stomach, then rested my sweating forehead against his thigh and rocked with the motion of his fingers, my cock dripping on his chest every time he hit my prostate. "Oh, Jesus."

He knew me so well. He could it make it last for hours, holding me right on the edge, or he could bring me off in two seconds flat, he could be gentle or he could be rough, and I never knew what he'd choose, but somehow it was always what I wanted, what I needed. This time it was rough and hard, and when he bumped his hips upward, I knew he wanted my mouth on him again, and I let him fuck my face, just as he was fucking my ass, so turned on that I wished we could last for hours even though I didn't think I could take another minute. I came first, spurting on his chest and stomach, and he followed me a split second later.

It took a while for me to untangle myself from Thomas and lie down next to him, flat on my back, still gasping for breath. He propped himself on one elbow and brushed my hair off my forehead.

"Five blow jobs and ninety-eight hours of fucking left to go," he announced, and I was pretty sure there was something off about the math there, but hell, he was going to move in, so I was willing to pay the increasing price.

If I really had to.

But no socks.



No Remedy for Love Ch. 07



The thing is, I cheated on Thomas first.

I guess I could successfully defend the position that as long as there was no sex, no exchange of bodily fluids or tongue action, not even the slightest contact of lips, then it wasn't really cheating.

I also guess I could claim that my actions weren't fully thought out, that I didn't work out the whys and wherefores until later, when two broken knuckles and a cast kept me from my daily swim and I ended up clocking endless miles on a stationary bike instead. That I didn't fully comprehend that Thomas would feel more threatened by my theoretically platonic friendship with Luke than he would have if I'd just fucked him a couple of times and maybe got him out of my system. That, when Thomas and I finally confronted each other, I didn't think I was being dishonest with my holier-than-thou attitude, my claims of simply mentoring a young man, of having no interest in him despite his admittedly good looks, of Thomas being paranoid and accusing me of things that I wouldn't do, because he actually had.

But I'd acted consciously. The frequent casual references to things Luke had said or done at work (talking about clients or projects, true, but there was his name popping up all over the place), the last minute calls that I wouldn't be catching the 6:39 from Penn Station, but hoped to make the 7:33 (even though there was another train in between) because Luke and I needed to beat a deadline, even my joining the corporate baseball team, when I hadn't been interested for the past twenty years (I never said that Luke had invited me to join, but I had mentioned, probably more than once, that Luke had played in the minor leagues until he blew out his shoulder, so it wouldn't have been that difficult for a smart guy like Thomas to figure out). And I'd known full well that my actions were indefensible, otherwise I wouldn't have felt so resentful at the mere thought that I might have to explain myself to Thomas, even though it ended up being more a case of me forcing explanations on him that he hadn't actually asked for. 

The truth was, I wanted Luke. I wanted him like crazy and for a long time. Great body, dirty-blond thick hair, brown eyes, a smile his parents must have paid a fortune for, and a genuinely nice guy to boot, who wouldn't want him? And the only reason I didn't start something with him despite his evident reciprocal interest and the constant mild flirtation when we were alone together, was that he was out of bounds because of his junior status to me in the firm. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it wasn't the fear that I'd be flushing my relationship with Thomas down the toilet or that Thomas might conceivably be hurt; no, it was that I'd be risking a potential partnership and the money that would accompany it. Because twenty years ago, I had lucked into perhaps the one Wall Street firm, which stood by its published code of ethics, and inter-office relationships were a strict no-no, punishable by separation.

Of course, I had plenty of excuses for myself. That things at home had been strained for quite a while. That Thomas and I weren't getting along, that we could no longer ignore the differences between us that hadn't seemed so important or significant, when we were younger. That neither of us was happy anymore. And yes, things weren't great. 

At least in the past we'd had sex and our mutual hunger for each other to help patch over the rough spots, but in our mid-forties the urgency and heat weren't as effective a panacea to our problems as before. Sometimes, when things were particularly tense between us, it was all we could do to share the same house, let alone the same bed.

Spinning and spinning on that fucking bike until I thought my legs would drop off, it occurred to me that we'd got trapped in a vicious, though not uncommon, circle: Thomas was depressed and anxious about his company losing necessary funding and sponsors as the economic crisis deepened. I might have been more sympathetic, but that same crisis was creating opportunities for my firm; I was working all hours of the day and was exhausted. When we were together at home, completely out of sync emotionally, we'd snap at each other over the stupidest things; who left the coffee maker on that morning, why I hadn't remembered he needed shampoo when I stopped by the supermarket, why he took my suit to the dry cleaners when I wanted to wear it the next day. If there were no real excuses to fight, we'd invent them. Then Thomas would grow silent and withdrawn, when the one thing I needed was for him was to finally – finally – tell me in so many words that I was important to him, because the acts of love I'd relied on until that point were becoming conspicuous in their absence. In reaction, I'd grow hectoring and condescending, too raw and vulnerable to ask him what the hell was going on, finally denying him even the simple "love you" I used to say every morning when we'd go our separate ways from Penn Station. 

So things were already a mess. And then, naturally, me being me, I had to compound the problems. I started thinking about how I was closer to fifty than forty, and wondering if I'd ever feel that bright spark of passion and enthusiasm for anything ever again, or if the most I could hope for going forward was a slow dogged pace (as if I'd ever moved at any other speed). My times in the pool had been growing steadily worse and my recovery times longer; my body was starting to let me down, and I fruitlessly sucked my stomach in, looking for my long-gone six-pack. 

For the first time, I was faced with the specter of my own mortality. But there Luke was, looking at me as if I was greatest thing since sliced bread, and it made me feel fucking great, and it didn't take too long to become what I'd always mocked in the past, a middle-aged man hankering after a pretty young thing in an effort to bolster his ego.

For a solid year, I had my head stuck so far up my ass that I never really looked at Thomas. Whether he was there or not felt almost irrelevant. Sometimes we'd drop into the old routines, cuddling together on the couch to watch TV after sharing a pizza, and I'd feel at peace, wonder what the hell I was doing, and determine to pull myself together and fix things between us. But those moments of grace were brief. Mostly I just felt trapped, and Thomas was the convenient scapegoat for my building dissatisfaction.

And through it all, I kept on shoving Luke in Thomas' face, and if you'd asked me why, I couldn't tell you.

I never asked, but Thomas must have been going through some of the same mid-life crisis shit that I was, plus he bore the added burden of waiting for the other shoe to drop, probably since I'd first asked him to move in with me in our old apartment in Hell's Kitchen. In his experience, love rarely lasted and he believed that the vast majority of people remained together because of outside pressures, convenience and/or because they were too cowardly to strike out on their own. "Better the devil you know than the wide blue sea," he'd blithely mix his idioms, leaving no doubt regarding his outlook on life. And in our case there was nothing physical to hold us together. No joint assets, unless we counted our photo albums, DVD, CD and book collections (and with the advent of all things digital, those were now building up in our individual laptops rather than on our shared shelves), no joint tax declarations, no piece of paper that we'd have to go to court to overturn. Even our bank accounts were separate, at first at my insistence, because I was uncomfortable at the disparity between us and didn't want him supporting me, and later because it never occurred to us to rethink that initial decision. He must have always been wondering if I was going to take off at some point, and that last year, given our situation and my behavior, he probably figured he had his answer.

Would we have split if things had just bumped along as they had been, if Thomas hadn't also given me an excuse? That was a question I still couldn't answer.

I discovered he was having an affair when his iPhone beeped with an incoming message one morning. I cast an automatic glance at it, not really interested, but the words "meet" and "babe" jumped out at me before the screen went dark. I knew his PIN code (my birthday) and I had no compunction about accessing his files. As far as I could tell, he hadn't erased a single message between himself and a guy called Ivor (Ivor, for God's sake, he sounded like an IKEA couch). It later struck me that while every one of Ivor's notes was liberally sprinkled with misspellings, nauseating terms of endearment and kissy-face emoticons (which, as far as I was concerned was adding insult to injury, Thomas cheating on me with an obvious airhead), Thomas' notes were stark and business-like, simply issuing invitations or confirming meeting details. Then again, Thomas had never been one to wear his emotions on his sleeve.

Thomas wandered into the kitchen after his morning shower and found me sitting there, his iPhone in my hands, reading. He sat heavily across from me, folded his hands on the table, and met my eyes. He knew me. He knew I knew his PIN, he knew I occasionally answered his phone, when I saw it was a mutual friend calling, just as he answered mine. It would have taken half a second to erase the string of daily messages starting almost two months ago. Barring that, he could have been more careful with his phone. 

He'd wanted to get caught.

"You're having an affair," I stated the obvious after reading the last message, and at that moment I was perfectly willing to believe him if he denied it, all evidence to the contrary. In fact I prayed he'd do so.

"So are you," he responded instead, his voice calm enough, but his eyes burning.

It would have been nice if things finally coming to a head had brought along an epiphany for either of us. Instead, we hunkered down into our positions (mine that I wasn't having an affair and that I could and would not accept his cheating on me, his that casual sex on the side was meaningless and the least of our problems) and our insecurities, we reached back for all the perceived injustices and sins and sore points of years past, and we just made things worse and worse.

The day after I moved out, I arrived at work three hours late and with red eyes. Luke was waiting for me, so that we could go over some research together. And suddenly, he was simply an ordinary young man, one I liked well enough but who really wasn't that special. My one epiphany, even though it was too little and way too late.

Now, standing in a hotel room in Detroit, a closed door between us, I couldn't even remember half the things we'd said to each other over the following few weeks before I finally moved out, or how we let ourselves get to that point. Even if I could forgive and trust him, would he ever forgive and trust me, after everything I'd done? 

And yet, his vehement reaction to his father wanting to split us up, the way he'd forgotten we were no longer together, if only for a second and under severe emotional strain, gave me hope. And that hope kept my hand glued to the door knob, even if it didn't give me quite enough courage to turn it.

********************

We moved into our house in Garden City on Thomas' thirtieth birthday. The preceding weeks had been a series of arguments about what to pack and what to throw away, resolved either by coin or sex (though Thomas shamelessly cheated and stealthily got rid of a number of things that I'd won or earned fair and square, later claiming unfortunate accidents and/or loss of memory). 

We thought of hiring a professional moving company, but the down payment and all the fees on the house had wiped us both out. Unfortunately there was no way in hell we could do it all on our own and getting our friends to help meant coming out, because chances were low to non-existent that anyone would believe that one of us had a double bed (we'd long progressed from the mattress on the floor) and the other slept on an air mattress.

"We might as well gird our loins and admit it," Thomas declared. "I'm sure most of them are speculating about what's between us anyway."

How many Rubicons did I need to cross in my life? Kissing a man, blowing him, taking it up the ass from him, living with him. Maybe I'd made more of a big deal of everything than it merited, but coming out really was the mother of big deals as far as I was concerned, because for the first time it involved more people than just Thomas and me. How did I tell Kevin, a guy who'd paraded naked in front of me thousands of times (and was I supposed to lie if he asked me if I'd ever sneaked a less-than-innocent look at his package or ass)? Forget Kevin, what if my parents found out? And how could they possibly not, now that I'd be living in a nice house with plenty of room and had run out of excuses to avoid inviting them to New York? And the guys at work? One thing about playing straight, I'd heard with my own ears all the stuff they'd be saying behind my back from now on.

"Oh, God," I whispered, flopping down onto the couch before my knees gave way.

Thomas came over to me, straddled my lap, and kissed me. "Buck up, little soldier, and chortle," he said.

I didn't even have it in me to make the chortle sound or respond to his kiss.

"I'll tell my parents if you tell yours," he promised, and that was big, because I knew I got along with my parents a hell of a lot better than he did with his. Then again, that meant I had more to lose.

"Oh, God," I groaned, more emphatically this time.

"We can tell Kevin first, see how it goes."

"Oh, fuck."

"Pour some margaritas into him first, loosen him up. Worse comes to worst, he'll be too drunk to chase after us and beat us up."

After some more deliberation and strategizing, getting Kevin drunk prior to The Announcement remained the best plan we came up with, and we set it in motion a couple of days before the move. It almost ended ignominiously, when I pulled ahead with a strong lead in the margarita-downing front, but Thomas noticed and took my glass from me.

"Tell him now," he hissed. I tried to ignore him and recover my drink, but Kevin had heard and was curious.

"Tell me what?"

"Nothing," I said at the same time that Thomas said, "We're moving in together."

Kevin looked at us confused. "Well, I know that," he finally decided to address Thomas. "Remember, dumbass? I'm part of the slave labor."

"No. We're moving in. Together." Despite the fact that he'd actually scripted The Announcement for me to deliver, Thomas wasn't doing a very credible job. I made grabby-hands at my glass again, and this time Thomas let me have it. I took a deep gulp, and watched Kevin's face as he continued to look from one to the other, a puzzled half-smile on his face, obviously waiting for the punch line to a joke he didn't quite get yet.

"We're together," I croaked finally, to help move things along. "Thomas and me."

My best friend's mouth dropped open and he gaped at us.

"You mean... together?" he asked hesitantly, obviously worried that he might offend us by having inferred from our cryptic statements that we may be gay. "Together together?"

I nodded.

"Jesus," he muttered and buried his face in his drink. After a couple of fortifying gulps, he looked up suspiciously, as if expecting us to yell "psych!" and his features sagged again when he realized we were very serious about being together together.

He didn't run away screaming or denounce us. He did drink most of another pitcher of margaritas (or maybe that was me), manfully struggled to maintain a casual conversation to which he kept on losing the thread (or maybe that was me), then awkwardly said goodnight and staggered off.

"I think that went pretty well," Thomas commented placidly once it was the two of us, and I raised a shaking finger to the waitress for another margarita.

I didn't expect Kevin to show up on Saturday (after Thursday's debacle, I set my foot down and said that the other guys could think or speculate what they wanted, as long as I didn't have to make The Announcement), but he did, his wife in tow.

"I told Lisa," he whispered to me as we carried a heavy dresser down the stairs. I was on the lower end, moving backward, and, therefore, the very definition of a captive audience. "She told me that she assumed I already knew."

"Huh," I grunted, too out of breath to say anything more.

"When I said I had no idea, she said she couldn't believe I could be so blind. Then I said that I couldn't believe you hadn't told me long before this," Kevin huffed.

We set the dresser down on the landing to take a breather.

"It's not the easiest thing in the world to say," I managed, trying to meet his eyes.

He chewed on that for a while. "No, I guess not," he finally agreed.

"You and me, we're still good?"

Kevin. Mostly he was crass and goofy and the thickest-skinned son of a bitch on God's green earth, but he always came through when it counted. "Yeah, man. You're my kid's godfather," he said, as if that settled everything, and picked up his end of the dresser again.

By the close of that sunny and crisp fall day, our friends all knew for sure. Thomas had been right, speculation had been rife, and those uncomfortable with the possibilities had already retreated to a safe distance without our even noticing, and weren't among the small group helping us and later sharing a meal and Thomas' birthday cake with us. 

"So now we're officially gay and together together," Thomas grinned as he walked naked out of the bathroom and crawled into bed to lie on his side next to me. We didn't have blinds or curtains yet, so we hadn't turned on any lights in our new bedroom to avoid giving neighbors a free show, but the full moon was bright enough that I could clearly see him. "It's sort of a relief, you know?"

"We haven't told our parents yet," I reminded him.

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at me.

"Even if they don't approve, what does it matter? We're adults. We don't need them."

"We don't need them, but it matters, Thomas. You know it does."

He bent his head and kissed me.

"Well, we're not going to be telling anybody else tonight, so relax and let's move onto more important things. What did you get me for my birthday?"

"Uhmm, let's see now. A house?"

"A house?"

I slid my arm under him and pulled him down to lie on top of me. He settled comfortably, his arms crossed on my chest and his chin resting on them, smiling at me.

"Uh huh. With a 30-year mortgage that you're 50% responsible for. It's the gift that keeps on giving."

I stroked his back from his shoulders down to his back and tickled at the soft fine hairs at the base of his spine, causing him to squirm his groin against mine.

"That's mighty generous of you."

"It is, isn't it? I have no idea how you're going to match it when my thirtieth comes along." I raised my head and kissed the bridge of his nose.

"I've already picked out a Parker pen and pencil set for you and put it on lay-away."

He reached up to run his fingers through my hair and kissed my neck and the hollow between my collar bones.

"I had plans for our first night in our new house, but I think I'm too tired," I warned him.

"You're just angling for a blow job, aren't you?"

I wrapped my arms high around his waist and squeezed him against me.

"No, really. This is nice, right?"

He hummed in agreement and relaxed against me, tucking his head under my chin.

"Hey, Thomas?"

"Hmmm?"

"You will be around for the next 30 years to pay your share of the mortgage, right?"

"Or until you move into your Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking Central Park, whichever come last," he said firmly.

Even though we'd just bought a house together, that night was the first and only time we actually mentioned out loud the prospect of a long-term future together, and it felt enough for both of us.




No Remedy for Love Ch. 07



I fell asleep like that, with him lying on top of me. And the following morning we got up and got on with our lives together, just like we'd done every day since Thomas opened that dorm door over a decade ago. 



No Remedy for Love Ch. 08



I'd just about made up my mind to open the door, when it opened for me.

"Oh, hey," Thomas exclaimed, obviously not expecting me to be lurking on the other side.

"Uh, I was just about to knock," I lied.

"I called the airline. No seats available until tomorrow afternoon. They said we could try going to the airport in case there are any no-shows, but I don't like our chances on a Friday afternoon."

"No," I agreed, still trying to regain my mental balance. Thomas had obviously got himself back in control and was acting as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The new ordinary, that is, the one where we were polite acquaintances.

"Unless you want to try?" he raised his eyebrows at me, sensing my hesitation but attributing the wrong reason. "This can't be fun for you. I shouldn't have dragged you here."

"You didn't exactly drag me. I wanted to help. Not that I did."

He opened his mouth to say something, probably some polite protest and reassurance, but I held up my hand.

"Thomas, listen, I... I've got to tell you something, and now probably isn't the time, but I don't know when might be better," I babbled.

"Okay," he said cautiously.

I went and sat down at the foot of the bed. Thomas walked to his favorite spot in front of the desk, but instead of fooling around with the brochures, this time he pulled out the chair, turned it around and sat so that he was facing me. He seemed relaxed, but his hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, his knuckles and the tips of his fingernails white.

I looked down at my own hands and realized I was mirroring his position.

"I was wrong. To blame you for everything."

He shifted in his chair.

"I'm not interested in post-mortems."

"I need to apologize, Tommy," I bulldozed on. "I lied to you, and let you carry the weight for both your and my failures, and that just wasn't right. Not after all these years. Not ever, really."

"Lied to me? About what? Having an affair with Luke?"

"No. But about the fact that it made a difference that I hadn't."

He shifted again, restless. I could tell he really didn't want to be here and that I didn't have much longer to make my case. I wanted to rush ahead and tell him that I'd made an enormous mistake and to beg him to take me back, but I thought that was premature. I needed to apologize first, tell him how deeply sorry I was and somehow convince him of my sincerity. This wasn't something we could gloss over and pretend never happened, not if we were ever to have a real chance at being together again. Assuming he wanted that.

"I went... crazy for a while, I guess. I don't have any real excuse for it, either, just... I don't know, getting older and panicking about it."

I chanced a quick look at him; he'd leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and was carefully observing me.

"Is that what it was?" he asked sceptically.

"You haven't felt it? The sense that you're running out of time to get things done, that even if you had the time, you no longer have the drive? The need to prove to yourself that you've still got it?"

He shook his head. "I think my expectations out of my life have always been a lot more realistic than yours, Scott. This trip being the obvious exception," he added ruefully.

"That's not true. You wouldn't be doing what you do if you expected as little as I do. You're an idealist."

"No. I do what I do because I know exactly what kind of limited difference I can make. I don't expect to change the world, so I don't get discouraged when I don't. You, on the other hand, think that everything has to be and is within your control, that if you only try hard enough, you'll achieve every single stupid unrealistic goal you've ever set up for yourself."

"I don't think that at all!" I retorted, stung at his assessment of me. This wasn't going the way I'd anticipated. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I wanted to apologize, not start another fight. And I couldn't convince him of my sincerity if I didn't at least pretend to listen to him with an open mind.

"No? I know that you know they're unrealistic, but at the end of the day, you can't help yourself. You know you'll never own that penthouse on Fifth Avenue, you probably even know that it makes no real difference whether you will or not, but it still bothers you that you won't, because that was the goal. You knock yourself out at the gym, and even though you know you look damned good for your age -- you look damned good for a guy ten years younger, for that matter -- you still beat yourself up because deep down you think that you should look like the athlete you once were."

"You make me sound pathetic." It was a real effort not to squirm. Pathetically.

He sighed. "No. Not pathetic. You just need to adjust your dreams once in a while. I'm not necessarily saying settle for less than you really want, just try and figure out if it's still the same stuff you wanted when you were fresh out of school."

I tried to massage the aching tension out of my hands.

"Why did you never tell me all this before?" When it might have made some difference.

"You wouldn't have listened. I doubt you'll actually listen now. You're a bonehead." He smiled as he said it, not as if he was joking, but almost as if my boneheadedness were something he liked about me.

"Yeah, well that's just part of my charm," I joked weakly and was gratified to hear his soft laugh. "I'm so sorry, Tommy," I added seriously. "I just want you to know that after I met you, I never really looked at anybody else, not seriously. Luke was just a stupid crush, a symptom of other stuff."

"Scott, I wasn't the one, who moved out, remember?" His eyes belied his casual tone.

"What do I have to apologize for then? Moving out?"

He shrugged. "Nothing. We just ran our course, I guess."

"We just ran our course?" I repeated incredulously. "You're not that cynical. We were together for over a quarter of a century."

"Long course," he deadpanned.

"That's all it was to you?" I asked painfully. 

It hadn't seemed that way. On the other hand, he did leave his phone, where I could get to it. The only thing he couldn't have known was whether I'd actually see the messages, but maybe that was his version of flipping a coin, leaving it to luck, because he didn't really care enough one way or another.

"You know it wasn't," he conceded quietly.

"How?" I challenged. "How do I know that? You never even once told me—" and then I shut up, but I'd already said too much.

"Told you what?" he asked. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Forget it." I didn't know anything about French literature, but surely it included the concept of telling someone you love them, even assuming that Thomas had never come across it anywhere else in his life. Even assuming I hadn't told him every single day of our lives together, until those last months.

"That you're my life? Something like that?" Was he telling me or just looking for an example of what I meant, trying to understand the crazy man sitting across from him?

"Scott." He had to repeat my name twice more before I'd look at him again. "You are my life." His voice was devoid of any drama or emotion; he was simply stating a fact, and I stared raptly at him. He smiled crookedly. "You really mean I have to say it? You don't know it?"

"I... Well, yeah, it would have been nice." He was speaking in the presence tense, though. Why was he speaking in the present tense? "Am I?"

He closed his eyes, shook his head and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "You idiot" and then looked at me again. "Things weren't good before, but it tore me apart when you left. For a while, I felt like somebody had literally beaten me up. Every bone in my body hurt. My skin hurt."

"But I... You... I mean..."

He ignored my stuttering.

"I've always wondered, you know. Whether, along with all those other dreams of yours, you also dreamed about marriage and children, and for the life of me I can't remember if we ever discussed it in college, and I was always too much of a coward to ask you later. Because I didn't want to risk reminding you."

"I was hardly likely to suddenly turn straight," I protested.

"No, I know that. But maybe you'd blame me for, ah, making the obstacles to that dream obvious." He swallowed. "And this past year... well, it was obvious you weren't happy being with me. You kept on saying that you weren't having an affair, but you were. At least that's what it felt like to me." He looked down at his hands, then up at me again. "Are you really saying a few words to you about my feelings would have made any difference?"

I wanted to tell him they would have, but I was no longer certain. And after all, what kind of difference had my casual daily avowals of love made, coinciding as they did towards the end with my crush on Luke? I knew Thomas had loved me. Deep down, I knew it, just as I loved him, but for a while there I just didn't care.

"Back in high school, I dreamed of marrying Mary Ann Schroeder. She was a couple of years ahead of me, a cheerleader and Prom Queen and she looked like Jane Seymour. Her father bought a new Cadillac Eldorado every three years," I said instead.

"I'm guessing she was a bit out of your league. I'll bet a girl like her probably went for bad boys rather than boy scouts."

"Didn't even know I was alive. You're probably right that some things sort of nag at me, even though I know they shouldn't. But Thomas, you were never second best, not to Mary Ann, not to anybody. I never just settled for you. On occasion I might have been stupid, and bone-headed and a fucking idiot, and you can feel free to stop me anytime by the way—"

"There's no 'might have been' about it," he offered helpfully. "You were."

"...but I love you. I really do. And I am so, so sorry I fucked up and let you think otherwise." I spread my hands in a helpless gesture.

"It wasn't only your fault. I know I tend to be insensitive about certain things. That thing with Ivor -- and I broke it off the day you found out -- it was mostly revenge and what part wasn't revenge was trying to prove to myself that I didn't care what you did, thought or felt. If you were going to do your thing, I was going to do mine." He gave a jerky little laugh. "Not very mature of me, I know."

"We were both dicks. College kids would have handled matters better than we did," I observed.

"Not if those college kids were us," he said ruefully.

"I don't know. I think we did okay back then," I said softly, and his smile grew tender. "I was trying to figure out a way to approach you again, when you called me about this trip. I didn't think I stood much of a chance after you told me to move my stuff out."

He went red. "You called me from that club at one in the morning and I thought you were pretending to be drunk. You know, just to get me there without losing face. So I got out of bed, dressed, got a speeding ticket driving to Manhattan, and then it took me fucking forever to find a place to park, and when I finally found you, you were so drunk I was worried I might have to take you to the emergency room. And the next day, you just kept on asking me what I was doing there. I felt... I don't know, stupid, self-deluded." He shrugged, his mouth quirking a little. "I believe the word for my behavior at certain times is passive-aggressive."

I can't remember who'd started it, or when, but we had this thing where, out of the blue, one of us pretended to be a guest and/or contestant or judge in shows ranging from Survivor to Jerry Springer to American Idol (the last being the worst because neither of us could carry a tune to save our lives) and the other had to follow along. It didn't mean we were less sincere; in fact, sometimes it was the only way we could say certain things. I could recognize a Dr. Phil guest when I heard one.

"We have to start communicating better," I intoned, then caught his eye, and we both grinned. 

And then we started laughing, crazy with relief that this dark thing, whatever had caused it, was moving behind us, that we still loved each other, that we knew we'd have at least another twenty-five years together ahead of us even if sometimes we couldn't communicate worth a damn, because that's simply who Thomas and I are.

"I should send Robert a thank-you note," I said thoughtlessly, and his face changed, but just as I was about to apologize for, once again, being a dick, he burst out laughing again, a loud, joyful sound, and it felt like my heart would burst with happiness.

********************

I woke up slowly, Thomas' familiar snuffling snore in my ears. I poked his shoulder, and, responding to the training of many years, he mumbled a protest, rolled onto his stomach and buried his head in the pillow, never really waking up. I gently ran my fingers through his hair, trying to comb it into some semblance of order, but I already knew it was a lost cause. There was the tiniest thinning spot right at his crown (though from the fuss he made about it every morning you'd think he had a bald spot the size of Central Park) and I kissed him there.

"Stop kissing my bald spot," he grumbled into his pillow. 

I moved to his nape and inhaled against his smooth skin there. I'd never tire of his smell and I'd always recognize it, no matter how many times he changed his brand of shampoo and shower gel. He hummed happily and turned more fully onto his belly, spreading his arms and legs.

"Do we have time?" he asked.

"Couple of hours."

He stretched and flexed his arms and legs in an enormous yawn, shuddering from its force, and then relaxed again. "It sounds like you'd better hurry then." I could hear the smile in his voice.

I pushed the covers back so that I see all of him, his broad shoulders, narrow waist, taut buns and long lean legs. I skimmed my fingertips over his back from his nape to the small of his back, barely touching him, and he broke out in goosebumps. I waited for them to subside, then did the same thing again, and he breathed out a curse.

"Maybe you'd better give me directions, so that I don't waste time fumbling around," I suggested. I let my fingers drift further down, tickling along his crack down to between his spread thighs, softly stroking his bunched up balls and the tip of his dick that was peeking out from beneath them. He arched his back and stuck his ass in the air, making himself available to me.

"You want me to rim you?" I breathed into his ear, then licked it wetly. "You want me to suck your balls and rim you while I jerk you off?"

"Yes," he groaned. "Yes, yes."

I sat on my heels between his legs and pulled his hips further up, so that he was propped on his knees, his chest still flat on the bed, his arms still spread out. His cock hung heavy and already full, and I wrapped my fingers around it.

"God, Tommy, you're so hot," I told him, my thumb gently rubbing against his small pink hole, making it flex open and close. "How can you still be so hot?"

"Good clean living," he gasped, lying shamelessly. "Now shut up and eat me."

I buried my face in his crack. After all our years together I knew how he liked it best, how wet, how deep, at what point he wanted my fingers in him, the exact amount of pressure he craved on his prostate. I sometimes missed the fumbling love-making of our first times, when we'd accidentally stumble onto some new delight, but I loved the certainty we had now, the way we could just place ourselves in the hands of one another and let ourselves fly. Thomas spread his legs as wide as he could, rocking back into me. We never did get comfortable with having noisy sex, and he smothered his sounds in his pillow. I'd been alternating stroking him and my own dick, but finally I had to concentrate on him, because otherwise I was afraid I'd shoot.

"Don't let me come," he gasped. "Keep doing that, but don't let me come. I want to fuck you."

The only way to stop him from coming was to jerk down on his balls, and I had to do it a couple of times when I knew he was close, wincing at his grunts. It was a technique I hated myself, but Thomas liked that flash of pain.

Finally, I wrapped my arm around his chest and raised him upright to lean back against my chest, both of us still kneeling, my hard-on rubbing into his cleft. I kissed the side of his neck and he reached up to cup the back of my head. I continued stroking his dick, but more softly now.

"I want you" I whispered into his ear, and he twisted around to face me and push me onto my back. He lay on top of me and I hugged his hips with my thighs.

"Lube?" he asked, because sometimes I didn't want it. I shook my head and sucked on my fingers, staring into his blazing eyes as he watched me. His face, throat and chest were flushed with arousal, his nipples small stiff peaks. I nuzzled and bit them as I stretched myself. I doubted I could last much longer.

He pushed into me, bumping against my prostate with the first stroke. He withdrew and did it again, a fast shallow stroke that quickly pushed me over the edge.

"Fuck, you're beautiful," he muttered as I jerked and moaned helplessly beneath him. He kissed me hungrily as he continued to thrust, slower and deeper now, in the rhythm he preferred. I linked my hands behind his neck and remained pliant until he came with a deep sigh. He pulled out of me, then laid his full weight on top of me, resting his head next to mine on the pillow.

"Still good with the time?" he asked after an indeterminate while. 

I'd been drifting contently, and jerked back to awareness, looking at the clock.

"Yeah. We'd better start moving though."

He peeled himself off of me, got up and laughed. "My legs are still shaky."

"That's because I'm very, very, very good and I rock your world," I modestly informed him.

He dropped to his knees, rested his elbows on the side of the bed and bent over me, his face suddenly serious.

"You are. And you do. Are you sure about this?"

I smiled. "Positive. You?"

He nodded, then smirked. "As long as you say it."

"It?"

"You know."

"I don't think it applies. There won't be an afterward."

"You can modify it. Maybe 'And I'll never be a dick.'"

"I'll try to never be a dick," I suggested, and got the standard Yoda response about there being no try, only do.

I narrowed my eyes in thought. "Fine. 'And I'll never be a dick.' I guess that will work."

And so, a little later, here we are, standing in our garden in front of our friends and a minister on a beautiful late July afternoon. I face him, clasping both his hands against my chest, and promise to love him for the rest of our lives and to never again be a dick. There's a shocked gasp and chuckle from the audience at the profanity, and Thomas' eyebrows climb up to his hairline, because he wasn't really expecting me to say it, but then he smiles his beautiful smile, his whiskey-colored eyes dancing, and he promises me the exact same things.