by J. M. Snyder
“Should be in tomorrow,” Trin tells him. He stares openly at the gunner’s naked flesh, the dark hollows where his jeans pucker away from his narrow hips. His chest and back are so light, a contrast to his sunburnt arms and face, and a thin dusting of fine hair covers his body. Once golden but greying now, it shimmers when he moves, a nimbus surrounding him that Trin wants to lick down. “Some guy at one of the inposts had a jalopy for sale and Blain wanted to take a look at it before he shelled out the money for another hunk of junk.”
Gerrick nods, a distracted look on his face like he doesn’t know what Trin’s going on about and he doesn’t much care, either.
Trin feels the need to fill the silence between them so he keeps talking. “Blain told me he only ran with you once,” he says, scuffing his shoe on a loose nail in the floor. He watches his foot like it belongs to someone else, an anxious boy who’s finally alone with the man of his dreams and won’t shut up. Blain again, ugh. “I know you don’t remember this, but a few years back? I was like fifteen at the time, so it’d have to be six years ago now. Jeez, I didn’t think it’s been that long—”
A soft rush of material, the slap of metal against wood, and Trin looks up to see Gerrick’s pants on the ground around his ankles. Long legs, strong, covered in that greying hair that looks like so much fuzz from here.
“We were in the wasteland,” Trin manages. His throat works around the words but they don’t want to come out. Muscled thighs, thick, Trin wants to wrap his hands around them and try to touch his fingers together. He wants to feel their strength press against the sides of his head as he kisses down soft, trembling skin in search of the hard length that he knows hangs between them. “Our truck stalled out on the run and it was hot…”
With a faint smile, Gerrick hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs and slides them down, too. Whatever heat lingers in Trin’s memory is nothing compared to the sudden rise in temperature as the gunner stands, naked, and runs his hands over his body. Trin watches, mesmerized, as those fingers dance over places he aches to touch.
“Devlars,” he whispers. What’s he going on about again? He hears a dry click in his throat when he swallows. “Holy Mary.”
Cold light spills through the open window, splashing the gunner’s legs, his chest, his groin. Like quicksilver he moves through the shadows as he crosses the room, already hard, hungry. Trin’s body yearns for Gerrick’s.
“Go on,” the gunner prompts. “It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”
Trin’s fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt in his haste to undo them. Watching him, Gerrick sinks to the pallet and scoots back until he leans against the wall. There’s a jar of petroleum jelly close enough beside Trin’s bed to be embarrassing, but Gerrick says nothing as he unscrews the lid and scoops out a generous gelatinous dollop. Then he crosses his right ankle over his left knee and begins to slather his erection with the petroleum. Darkness pools in the space between his legs where his hand works, so inviting. Trin wants to dip his fingers into those shadows to see what he can find in their depths. His shirt slips off his shoulders almost negligently as his hands start to unbutton his jeans on their own.
Gerrick…in his pallet, for the love of Christ. As he shucks off his pants Trin doesn’t blink, doesn’t dare take his gaze away from the gunner, just in case this is some trick of his imagination. He’s dreamed the guy into being, how else can he explain it? In the faint moonlight, the gunner’s hair looks silvery and his eyes reflect the stars. Trin steps out of his jeans, kicks them away, tugs off his underwear so fast that the damn briefs twist behind his thighs and he curses as he struggles to get them off.
On his pallet, Gerrick watches with his barely-there grin, the one that flusters Trin’s fingers and stirs his blood. Once his clothes are piled by his feet on the floor, the gunner pats the pallet beside him. “Come here, kid,” he says softly.
Trin corrects him. “It’s Trin.”
“Trin,” Gerrick amends. The look in his eyes says he’s humoring the boy, anything to get that naked body next to his. At the side of the pallet, Trin kneels down, his hands on his thighs because this close to the gunner he’s afraid to touch the man. I’ve been with men before, he tells himself, but never this one.
Gerrick uncrosses his legs and sets both feet on the pallet, knees in the air. “Up here,” he says, patting the tight drum of his abdomen.
Trin stands, gawkish beside the reclining gunner, as awkward as if this were his first time with another. As if he’s never been naked before…he wants to say he’s not usually this bad. But then Gerrick’s hand finds his ankle, the rough skin cool and slick from the petroleum jelly, and Trin doesn’t want to ruin the moment with idle words. Strong fingers lift his leg over Gerrick’s midsection to set his foot down on the opposite side so that he straddles the gunner. Those large hands are on either ankle now, and together they move up his legs, over the downy hair of his shins, up to his knees. They leave a trail of stickiness in their wake. “Down, boy,” Gerrick laughs.
Trin falls to sit on the gunner’s knees. When Gerrick opens his legs, Trin slides down his thighs onto a stiff hardness that pokes at him, but one of the gunner’s strong hands guides the lubricated cock inside him. As the gunner thrusts up into him, Trin lays his head on Gerrick’s shoulder. Those hands grip his ass, spread him wide, hold him down as Gerrick takes him, a rough fuck that fills him with starshine and dreams. Deeper the gunner drives into him, moaning in his ear “Yes” and “Yes” and “Oh God, yes.”
Through the sweat and sand Trin clings to the gunner. This is what he’s been waiting for, he tells himself, this man beneath him, in him. These hands clenched in him, these lips brushing heated kisses over his cheek and neck, Gerrick. Their coupling is hot and tight and fast, a wild ride that both thrills and terrifies him at the same time. It’s everything Trin’s always thought sex should be.
Gerrick.
* * * *
In the morning Trin wakes to soft grumbles, and the pallet shifts beneath him as Gerrick rises. Rolling over into the warmth that the gunner leaves behind, Trin just barely opens his eyes to watch Gerrick stand. With a loud yawn the gunner stretches awake, his knuckles almost scraping the low ceiling overhead, his buttocks clenched as tight as fists. Trin’s heart swells in his chest. He loves this man.
Bright sunlight streams through the open window, dappling Gerrick’s nude body and catching in his golden hair. At that lithe nakedness, Trin’s lust stirs anew—he could use a recap of the night before. Beneath the blankets one hand trails up his inner thigh to press against his balls and he shifts on the pallet, but Gerrick doesn’t seem to notice. Unaware that he’s awake, the gunner stumbles around the pallet towards the window, and Trin turns his head to follow him with his gaze. He wonders if Gerrick would be gentle this time, slow and loving in the early dawn, or if they could burn away the start of the day with another bout of hot rutting.
Leaning down on the window sill, Gerrick stares out into the morning. Not much of a view, Trin knows—rusting heaps of junked vehicles, scrawny cats slinking through the lot, a chain-link fence along the palisade that circles the outpost to keep devlars at bay. But from where Trin lies in his sheets, the view is damn fine. Gerrick may be older than Blain but there’s little fat on his body and his muscles are well defined, sculpted and firm. His ass is flat and tight, his stomach taut, his nipples like nuggets in the fuzzy hair that covers his upper chest.
Give me this, Trin thinks suddenly. This intimacy between them, this peaceful awakening, this quiet moment of unabashedness, the two of them naked, each alone in his own thoughts but together. No words, just emotions, the way they were last night. Give me this every morning for the rest of my life.
Gerrick bends down for his briefs, still on the floor where he left them last night. As he steps into them, he glances at the pallet and finds Trin looking back. “It’s too early for you to be up, kid,” he says. Tugging the briefs up, he snaps the elastic band at his waist and starts
to shake the sand from his pants and shirt. “Get back to sleep.”
Trin stretches his arms above his head, knocking his hands against the wall at the head of the pallet. “I’m all slept out,” he murmurs with a smile. “Time to get up.”
“A boy after my own heart,” Gerrick laughs. He squats down and begins to rummage through his pockets, emptying the contents into a small pile on the floor at his feet. “Trin, isn’t it? Did you get a chance to look over my shocks yet?”
“Yesterday.” Trin doesn’t want to talk about the shocks. He doesn’t want to think beyond getting out of these sheets and more than anything right now, he wants to get Gerrick back in them. Propping his head up on one hand, he frowns at the gunner. He hates the way he sounds when he asks, “You don’t have to go right yet, do you?”
Gerrick doesn’t reply. Instead he gathers up all of the items from his pockets—a battered wallet, a handful of change, spent casings and live bullets and gunpowder stored in the small twists of torn paper the gunners carry—and wraps everything into a handkerchief that was tied onto one of the belt loops of his jeans. Trin resists the urge to press him for an answer. He watches the way the gunner’s muscles move beneath his skin and doesn’t say a word.
When someone knocks on their door, Trin lets his eyes slip shut. Before Gerrick can call out to the visitor, the door opens and Trin knows it’s Aissa without even having to look. He’s told her a million times not to burst into his room—she thinks because she knocks, it’s alright. “Knock and wait,” he’s said. “What if I’m in the middle of something and don’t want you barging in?”
With a scornful laugh, she said, “Oh please, Trini. It’s not like you’re jerking off.”
“I could’ve been,” he muttered.
Just like he and Gerrick could be getting busy; she doesn’t know what’s going down on the other side of a closed door. He has half a mind to throw off his feign of sleep and sit up in the pallet, ream her out about that knocking shit.
But Gerrick’s voice is colder than anything Trin could pull off. “I didn’t invite you in,” he says. He speaks softly, as if he doesn’t want to wake Trin, even though he’s not asleep.
“It’s not your room,” Aissa replies, already bristling. She makes no effort to lower her voice. Trin suspects that she knows he’s up.
Opening his eyes into cat-like slits, Trin watches Gerrick stand, his clothes in hand. The legs of his pants dangle from his arms, doing little to cover his briefs and bare thighs.
Aissa whistles, a sexy sound that makes Trin blush. “Damn, you’re a piece of work. No wonder Trin goes on about you so.”
“You came to tell me that?” Gerrick looks her over with a disgusted grimace. “You’re not my type.”
Aissa laughs. “I’m with Blain,” she tells him, brushing him off with her typical brusque behavior. “I didn’t say I wanted to fuck you, man.”
If her crass words surprise him, Gerrick doesn’t show it. He tosses his clothes to the pallet, where they land on the blankets covering Trin’s legs. “What did you want?” he asks.
Something heavy hits the floor and Trin almost jerks around, sure she’s fallen or maybe Gerrick knocked her down, but then she says, “I brought your bags. Don’t thank me or nothing. Is Trin up?”
“Does he look like he is?” Gerrick counters.
How could I sleep through this? Trin wonders, but he keeps quiet.
Minutes pass, long and strained, and finally the gunner asks, “Well?”
Trin doesn’t have to see Aissa to know she’s pissed. He can practically feel the ire radiating from her like heat from the sun. She’s probably turning different responses over in her head, playing out what she could say, how the gunner would answer, anything that will one-up him. For as long as Trin has known her, she’s always had to have the last say. She has to win. Finally, in clipped tones, she declares, “You’re an ass, you know that?”
Before Gerrick can reply, she turns on her heel and leaves, slamming the door behind her so hard that the latch doesn’t catch. It strikes the jamb and then Trin hears the hinges squeal as the door eases back open. That’s one of her tricks, storming off.
Cautiously, Trin turns, an apology already on his lips. “Sorry about her. She’s wicked sometimes.”
With a short, humorless laugh, Gerrick says, “She’s a nosy bitch.” Stepping over the pallet, he kneels by his bags and takes one of the ties in his hand. “Look at this. She’s gone through them. If something’s missing—”
“She wouldn’t take anything,” Trin assures him. He sits up and pulls his knees to his chest, gathering the blanket around his ankles like a long skirt. Gerrick begins to root through the bags, first the small belt pack full of bullets and money, then the saddlebags with his razors and soap and matches, then the large haversacks.
There are two of them and Gerrick dumps their contents out on the pallet to make sure nothing has been stolen. Trin watches him go through jeans and shirts, briefs, socks, a coverless paperback held together with rubber bands, a handful of tarnished badges that look like throwing stars, two sheathed hunting knives, more bullets, little sacks of gunpowder, condoms. As Gerrick spreads it all out across the sheets, Trin asks, “Well? Is it all there?”
Gerrick grunts. “Tell her to stay the fuck out of here,” he growls, shoving his things back into the bags. “Least ‘til I roll out. Can you do that for me, kid?”
“Sure,” Trin says, a little too quickly. His thoughts are a blur. Did the gunner just say he’s staying with him until he leaves? Staying here, in this room, sleeping with him?
He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot. In here. This pallet, his. He’ll nail the damn door shut if he has to, anything Gerrick wants.
* * * *
Aissa finds him after lunch. He’s in the garage, the hoods of both run-gun trucks open like cavernous mouths of hungry gators while he leans back in the creaky chair by his workbench, feet kicked up on the table. “You’re hard at work,” she says, tossing a lukewarm can of soda into his lap. Sitting up, Trin winces when the can strikes his crotch, and Aissa laughs. “And I do mean hard. Jeez Trini, didn’t you get enough last night? I could hear you guys all the way down the hall.”
“Bullshit,” Trin mutters. The room she shares with Blain isn’t but a few doors down from his, certainly not what he’d call down the hall. He pops the can open, chugs down half of it—the garage is sweltering and even the hot soda tastes good on his throat. “I’m taking a break.”
She doesn’t look like she buys that. “Uh-huh.” Knocking his feet off of the workbench, she hops up in their place and opens the other can she carries. With a nod at the trucks, she wants to know, “When do you need these done by?”
Trin shrugs. “Whenever.” He doesn’t want to think about fixing the trucks right now, because once the shocks are replaced and the hoses patched and the engines purr like bobcats, Gerrick will be gone. It’s been almost twenty years since the gunner rolled through Arens—how long until he comes back this way again? How many more times will Trin have to mess around with someone who isn’t Gerrick just so he can hear of the gunner’s latest exploits? After last night, he doesn’t think he can get with anyone else, he doesn’t want to. The man is everything he imagined he’d be, wild and passionate and sexy, and it might be selfish but Trin doesn’t want to give that up, not just yet. Not ever. At his age, he still believes he might get what he wants out of this world. Look at Aissa, she’s with Blain. How hard can it be to hang onto Gerrick for a while? There’s no reason to rush through this.
So he lingered in his pallet long after Gerrick dressed and left, and when he finally made his way downstairs, the gunner had already eaten and gone out.
“Went to see the tumbler,” one of the chore girls told him when he asked. “Your brother’s back. He wants to know why you’re not hunkered down over those trucks. He’s in the common.”
Because Trin didn’t have an answer for him, and because he was a l
ittle worried that Blain would have something sarcastic to say about Gerrick in his room, he ducked out the back. He locked himself in the garage and tore out the engine of one of the trucks. Steel parts still gleam around the floor like instruments on a dentist’s tray. Trin has no intention of putting them back together today. Or tomorrow, for that matter.
He found three good shocks in the drawers of his workbench and promptly threw them away. Stood on the stoop behind the garage, just pitched those babies out into the junkyard, not knowing where they landed. He’ll get more, he knows he will, when Blain takes a run inland or if that bounder by the jukebox last night has anything worthwhile in his bag to sell, but it’ll take time. Trin wants it to take forever.
Aissa kicks the arm of his chair with one booted foot. From the way she looks at him, Trin suspects she saw him outside tossing the shocks away earlier. She won’t say anything about it though, because it’s something she would do herself. Lord knows he’s learned from the best. “I’m taking my time,” he tells her before she can ask.
Her slow grin lights up her eyes and he knows she knows he’s full of shit. “Did you come here for something in particular? Or just to bother me?”
She kicks again, this time hitting his knee instead of the chair. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she warns, “just cause you got lucky last night. Did he tell you I stopped by this morning?” Trin shakes his head—Gerrick didn’t have to tell him but if he mentions that he was awake when she came into his room, she’ll get mad.
Flipping her hair off her shoulder, Aissa rolls her eyes. “I don’t know what you see in him. Sure, he has a nice ass for a guy his age but he’s nothing all that great to look at.”
“I think so,” Trin pouts. When she kicks out again, he slaps her foot away. “Shut up, Iss. I don’t go around asking why you think Blain’s all that. And don’t tell me either. I don’t want to know.”
