The Bells of Times Square

by Amy Lane

  “I want you to see heaven tonight,” Nate interrupted. “I want you to see it with me.”

  Walter leaned his head against Nate’s shoulder and said nothing. It was enough.

  The water was cooler when Nate got in, and the water downstairs was probably not close to boiling, so his bath was more matter-of-fact and less sensual. He let Walter soap his hair, though, and rinse it off, shielding Nate’s eyes with his hand as he dumped water from a glass jelly jar.

  “You have thick hair and a big head,” Walter said, not sounding put out. “You look like you should be on a battlefield somewhere, you know? One of them Greek men, with a sword and a shield.” Walter’s hands stilled, and his next words were dreamy. “No one’d know you’re about as fierce as an oak tree.”

  “That’s an interesting comparison,” Nate acknowledged, his eyes sill closed. “An oak tree?”

  “Strong,” Walter murmured. “Not violent. Unruffled.”

  Nate laughed, then cleared his eyes with his hands and sat up. “Loud,” he said, smiling. “At least at first.”

  Walter shook his head and rocked back on his heels, the towel tied around his waist. “You warned me. You did. You said you were usually more reserved. And sure enough, the minute you recovered, you were closed like a clam.”

  “Yes, well, you’re the only person to see me any way but that,” Nate told him. With a heave, he stood up from the water and allowed it to sluice off him. “For a brief, shining moment, I was interesting, at the very least.”

  “Didn’t say you weren’t interesting,” Walter corrected. “Just said you weren’t loud. Would have made it easier if you’d stayed loud, because then I’d have known where we stood. You got all quiet and moony-eyed on me, and I was suddenly worried you didn’t like me too.”

  Nate remembered the sulks and the way Walter had started calling him “sir.” There was more to it than that, he knew, but yes, Nate’s reticence had been part of it.

  Walter checked his face in the resulting silence. “You’re still funny when you’re not loud,” he reassured. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  Nate shook his head, scattering water everywhere, and Walter laughed and hollered, “Not funny that way!”

  “Then stop talking about my defects as a companion and get me the other towel,” Nate complained good-naturedly, and Walter did so, grinning.

  “I take it all back about being an oak tree. You’re a big, happy dog, that’s what you are. Easy to be around, useful when you’re needed, and you can make a helluva mess.”

  Nate toweled off his hair roughly and then his chest. Walter had brought up their solitary comb from Nate’s flight kit, and his hair was slicked behind his ears, the curls all scraped to the back of his head. Nate did the same thing, but his own curls were springier, erupting over his head in tight ringlets. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and sighed.

  “If I’m lucky, it will fall out when I’m thirty. All of the unattractiveness, none of the upkeep.”

  “Shut up!” Walter slugged him in the arm like a schoolboy, and Nate grinned at him, knowing that the space in his front teeth was apparent.

  “You wouldn’t want to be seen with a bald man?”

  “You’re real handsome,” Walter said loyally. “You’re . . . you’re royal, like someone important. I like it.”

  Nate’s grin softened. “Good,” he said simply. “I like that you like it. I would like to see the two of us in a picture, dressed in our best suits.”

  Walter’s smile went dreamy. “Could I have a fedora? Those are . . . They’re like what a gentleman would wear. I’d like that.”

  Nate could picture Walter in a snap-brim newsboy’s hat for his youth, but yes. As an adult, as a gentleman, he’d get a fedora. “Of course,” he said. It was his fantasy; Walter could wear a fedora and a tie. “Your tie must be of green silk,” Nate told him. “And your suit can be dark gold.”

  Walter turned his head away, shy. “That sounds nice,” he said. “In London, they’ve got bars—Jimmy and I went, when we were on leave before we shipped out. The guys dance.”

  Nate wrapped his towel around his hips and pulled Walter to his body. All those years at school dances, escorting the daughters of his mother’s friends, and finally, finally, he got to dance with someone whose body he yearned for against his.

  “Hmm, hmm-hmm,” he sang playfully, and Walter tilted his head back and laughed. But he kept dancing.

  “What are you supposed to be singing?”

  “‘A String of Pearls,’” Nate replied, wiggling his hips. “Lots of trombone,” and bump and grind.

  Walter relaxed into it and started singing with him. “Bump-a-dum-dun, dun, dun-dun!” Nate executed a little twirl in the dim confines of the washroom. They finished the song together and stood, breathless, looking at each other.

  “What does the band play next?” Walter asked.

  Nate lowered his head, so they were very close, and breathed his next words softly in Walter’s ear. “‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.’”

  Walter laughed and rested his head against Nate’s shoulder, and they danced to that one too.

  When Nate had remembered as many words as possible, their feet stilled, and they stood in the closeness of the abandoned house, sweating slightly, skin pressed together, separated only by two thin bathing sheets that had seen better days.

  “What would we do then?” Walter’s eyes were big, limpid as lakes, and he looked amazed, in wonder at the moving lights and the sweetness of the orchestra, all of which were playing in their own minds.

  “I’d kiss you,” Nate said. He let go of Walter’s hand and hip, and raked his fingers through that clean, burnished hair, and stood, their lips close together, sharing breath in the encroaching darkness.

  “Then do it,” Walter said. “I need that—”

  His mouth was warm, wet, and responsive. Nate tasted and then fell, devoured, encircled by the haven of Walter’s body, and Walter pulled him into the kiss unmercifully.

  Walter broke off, took two steps for the hallway, and grasped the towel around Nate’s waist, urging him forward into another kiss. Nate cupped the sides of his neck now, his thumbs stroking along Walter’s jaw.

  And pulled him in again.

  And again and again. They kissed and stumbled down the hallway toward the bedroom, palms and fingers glutting on the delicious bare skin. Walter’s shoulders were a little rougher, some of the freckles raised from the sun, but his shoulder blades beneath were as satiny as Nate had imagined. When Nate splayed his thumb and forefinger at Walter’s throat, he could feel the rabbit pulse of Walter’s heart against his palm, and every harsh breath echoed like a hymn.

  For his part, Walter placed biting, nipping kisses around Nate’s chest, across his collarbone, down to his dark, plum-colored nipple.

  Nate tripped when Walter gave a hard suck, scraping the end between tongue and teeth.

  “God!” He knotted his fingers in Walter’s hair, not sure whether to pull him away or push him closer, but Walter was too wily to be trapped there for any reason. He extended his pointed tongue and swiped, slowly, to Nate’s other nipple, and this one he suckled and licked, long drugging strokes, up and down, the pressure of his lips maddening, while Nate massaged the hard curve of his scalp.

  “Walter . . . God, it feels so—”

  Walter leaned back, releasing the nipple with a pop, and then lunged upward, taking Nate’s mouth again, walking them backward until Walter bumped up against the bed and stopped.

  He fumbled, first with Nate’s towel and then with his own. They stood for a moment, hands rough on each other’s cheeks, and Nate kissed him, teeth nibbling at lips, nose bumping along Walter’s jaw, aggressive and needy.

  Walter gave back, nipping, suckling, their cocks inflated and gliding together. Nate’s ridge would catch on Walter’s, the contact gentle and rough and exquisite, Walter’s pubic hair a rasp against Nate’s dripping head.

  Walter broke the kiss, res
ting his forehead against Nate’s collarbone. “I want your mouth on me . . . Can you do that?”

  “Please,” Nate begged, and without ceremony sank to his knees on the bare boards of the floor.

  Walter’s penis was lovely, straight and flushed rosy with desire. Nate licked experimentally, pulling back on the shaft and exposing the head. Walter’s fingers massaged Nate’s scalp through his hair, and Nate licked again, tasting salt, and again, tasting more. Encouraged, he opened his mouth and sucked Walter’s flesh inside, keeping his hand wrapped firmly around the shaft.

  Oh, Walter, your skin is so soft. But his shaft was rigid, and Walter’s hips jerked as he tried valiantly not to drive his cock down Nate’s throat.

  Nate stroked his hand back and thrust his head down as far as he could go, gagging slightly on the liquid dripping against the back of his palate, and moved back to swallow.

  “Good,” Walter groaned. “So good. Do it again, Nate. Do it ag—”

  —ain.

  And again. And again.

  Nate’s own arousal throbbed between his legs, bobbing against his hairy thigh, smacking with each movement, but that was secondary to the taste, the texture, of Walter’s cock down his throat. He wanted more, craved more, and Walter wasn’t holding back. Groaning, he thrust hard, hips and thighs vibrating as he drove himself forward and back, giving Nate just enough time to swirl his tongue around the head before driving down for another swallow.

  “I’m gonna come!” Walter cried out, and Nate didn’t know it was a warning until he convulsed, shoved his cock far into the back of Nate’s throat and shot semen, in thick clots, against Nate’s tongue.

  Nate craved that too. He tried to swallow as Walter had, but the bitterness undid him, and he lost some around his mouth, down his chin. Still, he kept his mouth closed tightly, so Walter could spend himself completely. Nate wanted time, damn it. Let Walter come now; Nate was going to take him again, slowly, make him beg.

  He wanted to be needed in the worst of ways.

  Walter gasped, maybe Nate’s name, and then his knees gave and he sat down on the bed, hands knotted in Nate’s hair. He tugged, and Nate tilted his head back, unapologetic, only at the last moment swiping some of Walter’s seed from his chin with the back of his hand.

  Walter cupped his cheek and wiped the corner of his mouth with a rough thumb. “You’re good at that,” he panted, closing his eyes. With his flushed face and parted lips, he looked like an angel, and then he smiled with one corner of his mouth, and he looked decidedly unangelic.

  “It was my first time,” Nate said, licking around his mouth and preening. “I think I have a passion for the task.”

  Walter laughed, the sound edgy and hysterical. “That’s funny right there. That’s the guy who cracked wise while he was half-dead. And now you’re gonna—um—”

  Nate pushed up and kissed him, salt-bitterness and all, and Walter licked at his mouth hungrily. His hands bit into Nate’s shoulders, and he clung, still needy, still desperate, and Nate tried to eat him alive, devour him, suck his energy and his verve and his solid, grounded little body inside so Nate could be that alive.

  Walter pulled away, and Nate sought his mouth again, dazed.

  “Gimme a minute,” Walter half sobbed. “God, Nate. Gimme a minute. Need some grease, ’cause I need it. Need it bad.”

  “What?”

  Nate blinked his eyes hard, hoping to clear the passion from them, and saw Walter fumbling behind him, under their makeshift pillow. He came back with a little tube of surgical gel, and Nate widened his eyes.

  “What is that?”

  Walter squirted a dollop on his hand and shivered. “It’s cold,” he said and then destroyed Nate, leveled him, detonated lust and abandon in his stomach and his chest, when he reached behind himself and lifted a knee off the bed so Nate could see him pushing the gel into his sphincter, shuddering with the cold and the feeling as he did so. “Ahh . . . God! It’s so good, Nate. You gonna make it better?”

  Nate sat up on his knees on the bed and reached for Walter’s palm, warm and moist. He took some of the excess gel pooling in his palm while Walter’s fingers were inside of him, scissoring, stretching, pleasuring. His own hand was shaking as he spread the gel on his dripping cock until Walter’s hand joined it, lubricating and stroking at the same time. Nate closed his eyes and gasped, trying to get hold of himself before he came.

  He thought about white semen shooting across the short distance to paint Walter’s face and almost came anyway.

  Walter squeezed his base, and Nate forced himself to meet his eyes.

  “I need this,” Walter confessed roughly. “I need you. You’ll like it, Nate,” he said, pleading. “You just stick it in, and it’ll feel so good.” He rocked onto his back, hooking his thighs with his hands and spreading himself for Nate to see.

  Lewd, obscene, his swelling cock stretched across his stomach and his balls sagged toward his perineum.

  His pucker, loose, dilated just enough to let Nate not fear to break it, gaped at him.

  Nate leaned forward, kissed a stringy thigh covered with blond hair, and kissed up to the side of the knee. Walter made a strangled, keening noise.

  “Take me,” he begged. “Please. We only got so much time.”

  The world, caught for a moment in a jittery, greedy slice of frozen time just for Walter, suddenly started up again, steady as a ticking clock. “Yes,” he murmured. Carefully, he placed the head of his cock—oh, it had never looked so big, so painfully swollen, as it did when poised to breach Walter’s entrance—and prepared to push.

  Walter made a frantic sound and humped down on the bed, begging, obviously wanting Nate’s cock inside of him more than he wanted dignity or room to breathe.

  Nate closed his eyes and thrust, letting Walter’s yelp of pleasure/pain wash through him.

  “Yes. More!”

  Nate’s eyes snapped open, and he took in Walter, head back, mouth open, eyes closed, wanton and lovely, and pushed forward some more. Walter wanted this, craved it, and his erect cock, leaking pre-cum again, was a testament to his hedonism, to the pleasure he took, and that was enough for Nate.

  Walter’s asshole squeezed Nate’s cock in an embrace of moist heat and almost violent pressure.

  Nate had no choice but to surge in, allowing himself to be stroked outside as he stroked Walter from within. When he was as far inside as he could be, he stilled, the slickness and the pressure so great, he shook, sweat tracking from under his hair down the side of his face. He closed his eyes, not wanting to move. It was perfect here. Beautiful. Everywhere he’d wanted to be, everything he’d ever thought about joining two people was here, in this one terribly forbidden act.

  “Nate,” Walter breathed. “Please. Please, don’t just— You can’t just . . . God, Nate, I need you to . . . Please . . .” He was gibbering, and Nate opened his eyes to hear this self-sufficient man plead for him, Nathan Selig Meyer, who was not a Greek warrior on the battlefield or a shining Aryan lion. Just him. The quiet boy, the loner, and Walter needed him.

  “Yes,” Nate hissed, pulling back and thrusting forward. His voice shook, his body shook, and he had no choice about seeking Walter’s core again. He grabbed Walter’s thighs and hauled him forward, resting his calves across his chest, and thrust hard, desperately, while Walter fisted the sheets, twisting them in his fury.

  He moaned and pleaded breathlessly, and Nathan could do nothing for him, nothing but piston into him, fucking—a word that made his loins boil over with what it meant to be inside another human being.

  Walter’s cock flopped on his stomach, making its own slapping counterpoint to Nate’s frenzied thrusting. With a heave, Walter flattened his thighs against his chest, and Nate fell forward, catching his weight on his elbows. Walter was helpless to move, caught under Nate’s body, and Nate forced him to endure kisses, needy ones, on his face, on each eye, the end of his turned-up nose, the corner of his mouth. He kept moving, kept fucking, and Walter tilted his
head back, baring his throat and moaning in guttural bursts.

  He sounded feral, like a lynx or cougar, something that would hunt Nate and draw blood if he didn’t give him what he needed.

  “Look at me,” Nate gasped. He was still short-winded; he would have to either climax or collapse. “Look at me, tateleh, do you see?”

  Walter’s blue eyes opened reluctantly. “I see you,” he panted. “I see you. C’mon, Nate, let me . . .”

  Nate propped up, adjusted his angle, kept throwing his hips but not as hard, not as furious, slower, deeper, and the ripple that rocked Walter’s body was a glorious thing.

  Walter let one of his legs go and grabbed his cock with a desperate fist. Nate wanted to watch him, doing another forbidden thing, brazen and screaming, but his orgasm, like a surging hurricane or an epic wave, was charging his perineum, his sphincter, his balls, his stomach, his chest, his . . . oh God, my cock!

  He came, deep inside Walter’s body, and Walter kept working himself with the brutal slap of his fist against his balls as he stroked his own erection.

  Nate’s vision blacked. For a moment, he was truly afraid, because his breath panted in short bursts, and his chest ached, and Walter’s body had clenched him, like a finger trap from a joke store: the more Nate pulled, the harder Walter squeezed.

  Then Walter gave a small cry, a keen, and his semen erupted, blowing in spatters across his tight stomach, his narrow chest. His sphincter relaxed, and Nate pulled out, collapsing to his side, head on his outstretched arm.

  For a moment, the roar of their breathing was louder than guns, louder than airplane noise. For that moment, he was completely alone, and very much afraid.

  What have I done? This thing, this one taboo thing, for which there is no forgiveness, no way to atone. And for a man who does not love me back.

  Walter turned to him, blue eyes bright in the dark. He wiped his hand on the sheets and brought it up shakily to brush Nate’s cheek.

  “I hope there’s no Nazis outside,” he said frankly. “You were loud.”

  Nate smiled faintly, heart troubled. His body was assaulted by the most terrible languor, and he was truly afraid they would not be able to start their appointed task in the garage now that the dark had fallen fully.