by Talon p. s.
It was as if he’d never been there at all. Why hadn’t Pyotr mentioned he might come by to see him? It was something Pyotr would have discussed with him. Cliff after all was at work and had not officially come out yet. Pyotr never once seemed to be in a hurry to push him either. Everything done in strides. Sometimes those strides felt so slow Cliff could imagine a snail could gain the lead on them. He shook his head at himself—at his own thoughts. Chances are he was just letting him know he was offering a lift and he’d be parked around the corner or something waiting, no big deal.
He pushed off and headed for the stock room again, for the trachea kit they used at the start of their shift as well as a few more IV lines. He pushed open to the hall, but before turning into the supply room he heard Pyotr’s voice—and Sasha’s.
He shot passed the supply room, his steps quickened until he reached the break room and came to a full stop. Eyes snared on his lover standing squarely in front of Sasha. He felt the crushing pang in his chest. The feeling growing more intense when Sasha turned looking at him. Cliff didn’t even know what the look intended to say but he knew what his heart was saying; it was screaming that he’d just lost his lover to another before he’d had the chance to realize how much he actually felt.
“You need something Cliff?” Sasha asked, he almost sounded as if Cliff’s presence was interfering.
Bastard—Sasha already had two lovers, he was even married to them. Now he wanted Pyotr?
Panic hit. And he quickly turned, mind focused on his feet. He needed to get out of there—fast, but without running and tripping in his hast to flee. He cleared the hall, he could feel his panic boiling in him now. Pitched up from a storm of feelings caving in on him. He passed the ambulance truck and out the roll door of the garage. Bright sunlight hit his face and for a moment he didn’t feel like the world was caving in on him. He stopped, leaning back on the brick wall of the building, eyes squeezed as tight as he could force them. He pitched his head up into the sun and tried to get his breathing under control. His thoughts and his emotions were beyond his command. But he knew how to keep them silent, years of watching his baby sister grow sicker and weaker—face down in the hospital bed while the doctors drilled into his hip bones with the marrow tube drawing out the samples of his bone marrow, wide awake with no anesthesia to dull the excruciating pain… the day he came home from the hospital after Kimmi started chemo therapy again to find their parents had packed up everything and were gone—he survived all that—he could get through this.
“Cliff.”
Cliff tried to freeze at the sound of his name, but he couldn’t prevent the quiver that went to his lip. He refused to open his eyes. This time it was different, he’d gotten through all those other things cause he had to be strong for Kimmi. Here Pyotr was the strong one; Pyotr promised that when they were together the world didn’t have to be carried on his shoulders. When he was with Pyotr he was free and that freedom found love. He wouldn’t get through this as easily.
“Cliff.” Pyotr’s voice came directly in front of him now. “Look at me Cliff.” The command was tender.
Cliff took a deep breath and let it out slow and steady, then opened his eyes to see Pyotr standing just a few steps in front of him. Not too close that he would be in his personal space, but close enough he could see the concern on the man’s face. And the question.
“You came here to see Sasha?”
“Yes I did.”
Cliff closed his eyes again, but he didn’t drop his head. The only thing saving him right now was the warmth of the sun.
Pyotr watched him intently, watching the small twitches of muscle in the young man’s shoulders and his arms held straight at his sides, his palms flattened on the wall behind him as if hanging on so the sea of emotions could not wash him away. His face save the quiver in his lip was perfectly still, frozen in the sun light. The bright rays glistening off his hair making the gold color all the more brilliant. Even in his emotional turmoil his young lover was beautiful and dear, far more then he gave himself credit for.
“What is it you are feeling right now?” and then Pyotr saw it. Cliff would not have needed to answer the question for him to know what he was feeling; the pain was all over his face right now.
But Cliff answered anyways, “It hurts.”
“When you saw me talking with Sasha it made you hurt?” The questioned designed to get to the root of the problem.
A deep breath filled his chest strengthening him, “Yes.”
“Well at least it’s a healthy feeling.” He rocked back on his heels and shoved his hands into his pockets.
Cliff’s eyes shot open, “What is so damn healthy about pain?”
“Had it been jealousy we would of had a problem with it, but if you’re hurting because you saw me with another man and didn’t understand, then at least we both know now that you have deeper feelings for me—feelings I share with you.”
“Who is Sasha to you?” Cliff was through exposing his feelings and wanted the real answer, but before Pyotr could answer his question Sasha had stepped out discovering the two of them together.
“Pyotr what is this?”
Determined not to lose Pyotr without a fight Cliff grabbed his lover by the collar of his shirt yanked the taller man into him, his other arm shooting around his head and pulled Pyotr to his mouth and kissed him in front of Sasha and the whole world to see.
Pyotr felt his young lover’s tongue brush between his lips demanding entrance. A fun note clicked in his head. He knew what this was and decided that if this was what his young lover needed, he would allow it even if it were being wasted on his baby brother. Pyotr pulled his hands from his pockets and moved around Cliff’s waist then down over his hips and pulled him tight against his groin holding their bodies firmly pressed into each other seamlessly from cock to lip. He was all about stride, but by god when it was time nothing was allowed to be subtle or half ass and he took over their kiss. His tongue lathed deep into Cliff’s mouth swirling against his lover’s tongue and licked at him drawing him to probe deeper in his mouth. Lips cracked from each other only enough so both could suck in a breath then deepened again. Pyotr never let go of his young lover’s hips and Cliff didn’t let go of him til both were satisfied their claim on each other had been announced.
Pyotr pulled back and smiled when Cliff tried to follow his lips. “And how do you feel now?”
Cliff let his head fall back a bit looking up at his lover’s face and how he smiled at him. Warm and welcoming. “Comfortable.”
“That’s a healthy feeling too, draga. Look around you now. How does it feel to take your first step out?”
Cliff glanced around at the cars that drove by and the woman walking with a stroller on the sidewalk, but whatever he was thinking or feeling from the start came to a standstill when he glanced at Sasha standing there gawping at them, then looked back to Pyotr for an explanation.
“Sasha is my baby brother.” Pyotr grinned as if he’d just let the joke out.
Cliff dropped his head on the man’s chest, rocking it from side to side, “Now I feel silly.”
Pyotr reached up and stroked the thick golden strands of hair petting him then pushed his head to lift for him. He touched his face then slipped a finger under his chin. “My dear Draga, silly looks good on you too, right now.” And he completed the compliment with a soft kiss. “How much longer before you are finished here?”
“Just a few more things to put in the truck then paper work.”
“Good.” He gave him a peck on the forehead. “We will spend the evening at your place tonight. I will be there waiting for you when you get home.” Another chaste kiss and he stepped off right passed his brother.
“You?” Sasha gaped at his work partner.
Cliff’s smile quirked to one side then he turned on his heels and went back in to finish his work.
Sasha took off after his brother, “Wait!” he ran up catching up with him at the end of the building. “Cliff is your
lover? Cliff Patterson, as in I’m gonna be the next Dominus Cliff Patterson?”
Pyotr stopped and looked at him as he stepped up.
“You can’t be serious?” Sasha protested at him.
Pyotr looked over to the spot where his young lover had just kissed him for all to see, the youthful display that shouted he’s mine—and he smiled at it. A silly little display really, yet he had thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact his heart was swelling that his little lover needed to stake a public claim.
“What was that back there? And don’t think I didn’t over hear you call him Honey—you’d never use a Serbian pet name on a casual fuck.”
Pyotr’s hand shot out. Too fast for Sasha to react and shoved him hard against the brick wall. His fingers splayed out just hovering over the younger man’s chest asserting his dominance, that Sasha stay right where his brother put him. “Do not over step yourself. I may be a gentle handler, but those limits do not include you.”
“You can’t possibly be happy with Cliff?” Sasha kept still, but not his thoughts or his opinion of his brother’s poor choice for a lover.
“On the contrary, I find myself very happy with him. For once I do not need to fix someone’s head just so it’s possible to have a relationship with them. He is a grown man and very capable. And his body fits my desires perfectly—lean but enough muscle that he still feels like a man underneath me.”
“A lot of the people we pick up are bigger than the gurneys we carry them on.” Sasha quipped as if he’d said it a thousand times. But he knew what his brother meant; Pyotr would never sleep with someone who felt like a boy.
Pyotr forced a chuckled, “He said the very same thing.”
“But Pyotr—” Sasha still pleaded for him to reconsider, “he’s younger then I am.”
Pyotr rocked back on his heels. There was that. Cliff was twenty two years under him. A far stretch for lovers, yet neither seemed to feel it was worth getting in the way of them. “Yes. Yes he is and we have discussed it between ourselves, but we have decided that we are both very comfortable with it. Perhaps in ten years we may feel differently, but then such is a thing in all relationships. Some time down the road one or both partners may feel differently about each other. We will deal with it when the time comes.”
“But you’re investing in a relationship you know has an ending. Don’t do this to yourself.” Sasha half argued, half pleaded. Pyotr had a big heart he’d kept their entire family together at the cost of not having one of his own. Now that everyone was grown up his brother deserved a lover above them all, but one that he could take as his forever. Sasha just couldn’t bear watching his older brother get caught up in the revolving door of lovers.
“If I have ten years of happiness or maybe only one, it will be worth having, because everything else is right. Do you not say the same about your Isaiah?”
Sasha took a deep breath almost daring to bow up at his brother, but quickly relented back against the wall again, only allowing his breath to escape in a hard sigh. He was so protective of his boys it was hard not to react to Pyotr’s comment, but he knew better. He knew Pyotr had not said it to be threatening or derogatory. Only pointing out that some relationships came with conditions and as worrisome as those conditions may be their outcomes weren’t always predetermined either.
Pyotr was so much like their father in many ways but one—Pyotr was also just like their mother. He was the best of both all rolled into one body. He was strong willed and strong in his body. He was the one who always brought an end to the fights between him and the rest of their brothers and there had been plenty of those. He was even known to bring down a few street thugs in his time, dragging them down the middle of the street by their toes and sit on them in the most humiliating ways until they agreed to stop wrecking havoc on the neighborhood. Most of that was set loose on the Irish in the neighborhood. But Pyotr knew how to be gentle like their mother and when you hurt he knew how to make it better as if he had the box of band-aids for broken hearts. They’re sisters gave him a lot of practice for that.
Eight brothers and two sisters aside, Pyotr had never had his own family and Sasha could see how Cliff and Kimmi filled that need for him. Perhaps too well, because that was a part that was definitely predetermined.
“You know no matter what treatments Kimmi gets, she’s not going to live much longer.” And the flicker in his brother’s eyes told him everything. He was already locked into his little family—just add Pyotr and stir—and Pyotr was very aware it came with an expiration date.
Sasha felt an instant pain of guilt then. Pyotr deserved the world at his feet; that he should find something that fits his needs only to have it ripped away too soon. He didn’t want that to happen for his brother, who deserved so much more. He swallowed hard wishing he’d learn to keep his mouth shut.
Sasha dropped his head, his shoulders went with it. He stared at the ground and kicked at the rock on the side walk as if that might make him feel better. It didn’t when Pyotr walked away without another word.
“Fuck.” He muttered, hanging back in silence for a bit. Sasha pushed off the wall, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his uniform slacks. Only one thing he could do now.
Sasha found Cliff back in the ambulance truck putting the last few things in place. He stopped at the step just watching him. Cliff kept his back to him, but the tension in his shoulders indicated Cliff was aware he was there.
“I’m really not ready for a conversation on how this changes everything between us.” Cliff muttered not looking at him, his hand counting out the inventory and marking it down on the clip board on the gurney dressed in crisp clean sheets with a wool blanket folded over on the top and ready for the next person in need.
Sasha kept his hands buried and took in a deep breath and let it out trying to rid himself of some of the tension he’d created on himself. “How much do you know about my brother?”
Cliff stopped in mid-count, but still his eyes stayed down not meeting his, “If you’re about to tell me some head case story that’s suppose to make me want to stay away from him, don’t bother.”
“No. that’s not what I am about to tell you. I love Pyotr. He’s not just my brother, but my father too.”
Cliff shifted looking him dead in the eyes now.
“More father then our papa was. So when I tell you this, it is only because he deserves the best kind of love.” He took a deep breath and began, “Pyotr is the oldest of eleven children with nine boys and two girls. We were living in Belgrade, he was in the university there and top of the class. He would have been a doctor or a professor had we stayed and he would have worked for the government. In Serbia if you work for the government you’re rich, work for anyone else and you’re poor like everyone else.”
Cliff sat back on the medic bench and listened. He and Pyotr had talked about many things, but his past had not been one of them. In fact Pyotr had said little about himself. But strange how now as he listened to Sasha who never had a strong accent before changed—it deepened and the more he talked, the more he started to sound like Pyotr.
“Pyotr had the whole world laid out before him, but shit was getting bad everywhere around us. Yugoslavia was being dismantled through uprising started by the League of Communists of Serbia in 1989, when Milošević declared a decrease in power for several other republic sanctions. In 1990 the government declared complete media blackout. Freedom of speech was restricted. The Serbian Penal Code issued criminal sentences on anyone who ‘ridiculed’ the government and its leaders, resulting in many people being arrested who opposed Milošević and his government. Then there was the KLA—”
“The KLA?”
Sasha nodded of course Cliff wouldn’t know what that was. “KLA, Kosovo Liberation Army. There were two power forces fighting for control—there was no peace between the two. It was a war in our country, between its army and its police, between Yugoslavia and Kosovo, two conflicts running parallel and simultaneously long before NATO got involved and
declared it a war. People died every day. Sometimes for no reason. Gangs were popping up and they were as much trouble as anything else.” He took a deep breath, shifted then leaned against the door of the truck. He had been so young back then, but he did recall the time when soldiers barged into their home and dragged his Papa away in the middle of the night. When he returned the next day everything would change for them. “One night the police came and took my father away. The next day he was back and he and our mother gathered us all up, took us out of school. Next we went to the university and got Pyotr. They gave him all the money they could get out along with a nap sack of food, a few suitcases of clothes and placed us in a truck. For a day and half a night we rode til we got to some shipping port on the shores of Greece where we loaded up on a freighter heading here.” Sasha slid down now sitting on the ledge of the ambulance and stared out of the garage as the sun was dropping down in the sky and shining in on them with burnished orange tones. “I don’t know how they did it, but we were allowed in. And Pyotr from that point on was our father and our mother. He took care of us all. But at a sacrifice. Turned out Pyotr was gay, but he could not have a lover. Aside from immigration, children and family services was always watching him. Can you imagine what they would have thought—a grown gay man with eight little brothers? Suddenly bathing us would have been deemed a mortal sin. It wasn’t until we were all grown up and left the nest he could safely allow a relationship in his life, but by that time he was pretty much set in his ways. Accustomed to raising kids and it seemed he often found himself playing doctor rather than being the lover, to men with too much baggage.”
“So you’re saying I’m just another head case for him to mother over?” Cliff forced himself to look away.
“No. There’s nothing about you he needs to fix. He just sees you on the same level as him.” Sasha twisted looking squarely at him now. “You see Pyotr’s life was… put on hold because he was left with ten Kimmi’s to take care of. He relates with you, but that he gets to mother hen Kimmi at the same time makes him feel good. No—” he shook his head a moment, that was wrong, “—he feels much more.” Sasha stopped then his fingers wiping at his eyes, but Cliff wasn’t sure if it was just the sun or if there had been a threat of tears. Sasha got up and opened one of the organizer drawers in the ambulance and pulled out a bandage. “Will you do me a favor when you see him tonight?”
