Walking Wounded

by Lee Rowan

  “My God, that was….” Kevin started to raise his head, then sighed and relaxed again. Another deep breath, and the tension left his body altogether. He’d gone to sleep! John grinned and buried his nose in the cowlick at the crown of Kevin’s head. Kev smelled so good. He always managed to smell good, even marinated in curry powder and Newcastle Brown Ale. It was ridiculous, but such a lovely thing to fall asleep this way.

  Chapter 3

  THE COMPOUND. Firefight. His men are trapped, enemies all around, and he can’t get to them, can’t even make himself heard over the thunder of automatic weapons. He feels the slug slam into him, his arm dropping uselessly to his side, numb for a little while and then throbbing. He stumbles, the side of his head slams into the wall, and he finds himself fading in and out of consciousness, lying dazed with his face against the cold concrete, waiting for the next bullet. The last one.

  Then the firing stops, and the quiet is worse. As his ears clear, he hears gasping, cursing, moans—and sirens in the distance. One ordeal is over, a worse one just beginning.

  He moves among the casualties like a sleepwalker. All his men. All his men, dead or dying. And off to one side, another body, not one of his squad. A tall man, slim, his wiry build and untidy dark hair terribly familiar.

  Heart in his mouth, he moves toward this body, kneels to turn it over.

  “Don’t bother with that,” someone orders from behind him. “It’s nothing important, just dead meat.”

  He reaches down anyway with his left arm and somehow levers the body over so he can meet the accusation in Johnny’s dead, unfocused eyes.

  Kevin jerked awake and found that same face an inch away from his own, long dark lashes resting like closed window shades against his skin. But they were lying on a hard-cushioned futon, not concrete, and John was merely sleeping—sleeping deeply and apparently comfortably despite the eleven stone draped across him.

  “Johnny?” Kevin asked tentatively. When he got no response apart from a slight snore, he extricated himself and got to his feet. John seemed to be profoundly unconscious, his arms limp as bags of sand when Kevin rearranged him in what looked like a more comfortable position.

  John was such a beautiful thing to look at asleep, his quicksilver energy at rest like a hummingbird perched on a wire. The sharp planes of his face were an arresting contrast to those lush, incredibly soft lips, and even though he was self-conscious about his nose, it was in perfect balance with the rest of his features. And his throat—what was it about that long clean curve that was so irresistible? Maybe it was knowing how sensitive it was, how Johnny trembled and gasped when Kevin kissed him there. Perhaps that was the answer; the landscape of his body was not only beautiful in itself, but a reminder of all the pleasure given and shared. It was arousing just to stand and drink in the sight, something he thought he’d never see again.

  But John must be getting cold by now, half-naked as he was, no matter how fine a sight he made. Kevin sighed and pulled the blue patchwork quilt off the high back of the futon and tucked it around his sleeping lover.

  He took a step back and nearly tripped over the dinner trays. Neat by nature as well as years of military discipline, he collected the clutter, saved what little was left of the food, and put it into the fridge.

  He had to smile. How could Johnny have said anything about making dinner? There was nothing in there but a pint of milk, a leg of roast chicken in barbecue sauce, half a bag of carrots, and something gruesome in a jar. He’d have to take Johnny out for breakfast. That would be lovely, just like old times. He consigned the rest of the rubbish to the bin, put the empty bottles into their carton, then washed the plates and set them to dry.

  All that, and John was still snug in the arms of Morpheus. I wonder if he always sleeps that soundly? Hope so. Kevin himself still could not sleep through the night. It had been worse immediately after the disaster, when he was hospitalized for the concussion and gunshot wound. Even after he was released, it had been nearly impossible for him to fall asleep. The pain pills had helped a little—and he’d needed them—but the sleep they induced was as satisfying as eating cardboard for bread, and it seemed they made the nightmares worse, like opening a door on hell. He’d stopped using the pills as soon as he could; he was not going to give away any more of himself, especially to something that would certainly rot what was left of his life.

  And what, exactly, was left of his life? He’d had a few weeks to think about that while his arm healed and his career crumbled. He flexed his right hand, trying to determine whether those two numb fingers were any better. The nerve would regenerate eventually, or so the physiotherapist said, but he couldn’t feel any difference yet.

  He glanced at the clock in the little galley kitchen. He’d arrived at ten minutes to eight; they’d eaten at about quarter past, been asleep by nine… and it was now going on eleven, and John was still dead to the world. A shower together would have been nice, but if Kevin left his underwear on any longer, he’d need industrial solvents to get himself out of them.

  Decision made, he did a quick reconnaissance and located the bath—a shower stall, really—and scrubbed himself clean. A freshly laundered pair of sweatpants hung from a towel hook; apparently this was John’s new uniform. Kevin decided he’d have to borrow them for the time being and rinse out his trousers later. At least he’d let himself hope enough to bring a change of socks and underwear.

  He padded back out to the living room and found the situation much as it had been, the only difference being that John had rolled onto his side. Kevin decided to give him another half hour and then roust him out. The double bed in the back room looked considerably more comfortable, and he really did not want to sleep alone tonight.

  He found himself studying John’s new home, trying to read it for information about its inhabitant. The main room, like the flat itself, was smallish but practical, separated from the kitchen area by a waist-level countertop. The living room floor was covered by a tract of generic beige carpet, and the kitchen had equally nondescript white vinyl tiles. A couple of good-sized windows filled most of the wall opposite the kitchen, and the sofa sat at the end nearer the door, facing a very small television. Only one object hung on a wall beside the door: a framed poster of a woodland scene that Johnny had bought from a street vendor not long after they’d first met. John had sworn it was a landscape of Middle-earth; the fellow selling it had no idea where the picture was taken but was happy to agree it might be Rivendell when he saw the £5 note offered without haggling.

  That picture was the only physical object Kevin remembered from John’s previous flat, apart from his bed and a chest of drawers, and its presence was indefinably reassuring. Whatever had driven John to the point of suicide, there was still that core of imagination that could send deep roots into an ancient forest of fantasy. When he’d eventually been nagged into reading the books, Kevin had pictured his lover first as Frodo, then later as Aragorn, though he’d never told him so. He’d enjoyed the films and wondered what John thought of them. He didn’t see a DVD player; when he cleared out his quarters, he could bring his over. Maybe they could make popcorn and have a Middle-earth marathon.

  Would Johnny let him stay on for a few days? Probably so. Despite all the time they’d been apart, their bodies hadn’t forgotten, and the one issue that had come between them no longer existed. But it would be unfair and unreasonable to ask for more than a few days. Even if they could recapture what they’d lost, he had to give Johnny time to decide whether he wanted to try.

  But this was a comfortable place, even though it was small. John had put long, low bookshelves along the whole wall beneath the windows. They looked like something he might have built himself, and, of course, there was his battered set of the Tolkien trilogy, now almost completely surrounded by popular and scholarly books on psychology. At the far corner of the room, between the television and the windows, sat a two-disc compact CD player, the kind Kevin had had at university, complete with headphones. An old b
ut comfortable-looking recliner stood beside it, a floor lamp next to that. The stack of textbooks and a bulging backpack revealed that John was taking three courses this term.

  Kevin settled into the chair and donned the headset. He pushed away the sudden pang of loss; he would never be wearing one of these on a mission again, coordinating his men on a life-and-death assignment. He was curious to hear what John had in the machine after all this time. Johnny always had an eclectic taste in music—the current interest could be anything from Debussy to Top 40 to Ladysmith Black Mambazo—though unless he had changed a lot, his current tunes would not be anything sung by men in cowboy hats or gangstas in baggy pants. John was intermittently musical, too. He would play a favorite disc until he’d memorized it—and until Kevin was ready to break it to pieces—then let the stereo gather dust for a week or two. It would have made more sense if John actually played an instrument, but he never had.

  The music that hit his ears was unexpected. A hard, driving beat, a woman’s husky voice accusing her lover of running to another out of fear. It was damned uncanny. Had John set this up for him to hear? He’d had time to do it, but it was completely unlike him. The singer was still accusing, asserting that she was the only one who would go through hell for this wandering wretch.

  And how would Johnny have known about that little misadventure? Coincidence. It had to be.

  Kevin chuckled when the song suggested the singer’s lover break in through a window and wait for her to come home. Yes, that sounded like a proper SAS courtship. He could have tried that approach too, if he’d wanted to scare Johnny into cardiac arrest.

  He found the CD case and belatedly recognized the artist as the American singer Melissa Etheridge. He vaguely remembered having read that she was a lesbian. Interesting how it changed things to imagine that she was singing to another woman rather than a man. Scanning the printed lyrics, he found one song—the one he was hearing now—making the discouraging statement that there were some bridges burned beyond repair. He hoped that was not a message—the warm welcome he’d been given made that unlikely.

  Kevin, old man, you have spent far too long in the cloak-and-dagger business. John Hanson bought music because he liked it. He would never have sought out a CD—a secondhand one at that, judging from the sticker—on the remote chance that an old lover whom he had not seen in years would drop by and scan it for obscure messages. The choice of music was, in all likelihood, due simply to the fact that John enjoyed it. It was interesting music, performed with skill. That was all he usually asked for.

  And then Kevin heard the chorus of that song, as Etheridge proclaimed that she would face fear and pain to identify demons of the past and dispel them, that the ordeal must be endured in order to heal. Yes, there was a message there, but it was not directed to anyone else, and he suddenly felt embarrassed at the uninvited glimpse into his lover’s soul. He hit the Stop button and switched to the other disc.

  It was a rich male voice this time, an operatic tenor, but not opera music. He found the case: Bocelli, Romanza, and most of the lyrics were in Italian, so Kevin simply leaned back to enjoy the music, passionate but somehow soothing, devoid of hidden meanings.

  He must have dozed. He jerked as fingers brushed his cheek but managed to bring himself awake before he did anything dangerous.

  “It’s midnight,” John said, leaning down to kiss him. “Ready for bed?”

  Johnny looked too sleepy to be generating double entendres, but the question was so loaded that Kevin just nodded. “I thought you might be out for the night.” He noticed that the futon had not been opened into a bed and decided to avoid ambiguity. “Given what we did after dinner, this is probably a stupid question, but where would you like me to sleep?”

  John blinked. “With me. Of course. Unless you’d rather not.” Standing there barefooted and sleepy, stained sweatpants sliding down his hips, he looked like a child who’d just lost his puppy. “Sorry, Kev, I only thought—”

  “No, no,” Kevin assured him, climbing out of the chair. “That’s fine.” He put his hands on John’s smooth shoulders, stroking him like a nervy colt. “I hoped that was what you meant. I only wanted to be sure. When I called earlier, I didn’t know if you’d even want to see me. It’s been a long time, and I thought you might’ve found someone else.”

  Johnny pulled him close, then, after a long embrace, eased back enough to look at him solemnly. “I don’t believe there will ever be anyone else,” he said. “Not like you, not for me.” He yawned. “Kev, I think we have to talk, but I’m ‘shagged out followin’ a prolonged squawk.’ Can we sleep on it?”

  Kevin blinked at the Monty Python quote, but recognized the good sense of John’s suggestion and was very grateful for such a sane, reasonable proposition. “Of course. Just throw a pillow over me if I get noisy. I’ve been having dreams….”

  John nodded. “I can imagine. There might be something we can do to help with that—no, not drugs, I’ll explain in the morning.” He slid a hand down to Kevin’s rump. “You didn’t waste any time getting into my pants!”

  Kevin fell back into their old banter without a second thought. “You want me out of ’em?”

  “In the morning. Right now I couldn’t keep my eyes open, no fault of yours.”

  With one of John’s arms serving as a pillow and the other wrapped around his shoulders, Kevin found he had no difficulty getting back to sleep.

  KEVIN WOKE sitting bolt upright, gasping, his heart pounding, wanting to scream his terror at the abyss of loneliness yawning before him. The details of the dream that woke him were gone. Only the panic remained. His hand went out instinctively; the touch of the warm body beside him helped, but he had to wait, to feel that naked chest move with an indrawn breath.

  When Johnny muttered and moved closer, the cold knot in his belly loosened. A dream. Just a dream. The room was quiet, moonlight spilling through the open window, nothing moving but the tracery of tree branches against the duvet.

  An army of lovers cannot fail? Maybe not. But I doubt if they rest easy.

  He settled back down and tried to sleep, but oblivion was a long time coming.

  Chapter 4

  “JOHNNY?”

  John thought he’d been having a beautiful dream until he swam up to awareness and realized there truly was a hand on his shoulder. “You’re really here,” he said, and opened his eyes.

  “Yes.” Kevin must have been up for a while already; he’d shaved, but wore only a pair of white briefs. “I made tea, it’s in the kitchen. What would you like to do?”

  “Persuade you to take those off,” John said, raising an eyebrow at the underwear.

  Kevin’s smile told him he’d got the answer right, and he smiled back, then found himself at a painfully awkward impasse. They had both been scrupulously careful when they’d been together, and honest with one another. Life and death were things neither of them took lightly. “Kev, I hate to ask… and as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t necessary—” Damn!

  “What?”

  He pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Hell of a question, I’m sorry, but—do we need condoms?”

  Kevin started to say something, then took a deep breath. “No. I didn’t need a transfusion, and they ran the whole battery of tests when I was patched up. You’ve been getting tested?”

  “No. No need.”

  “Seven years?”

  The incredulity in Kevin’s voice felt almost like an accusation, and John knew his face must have shown his embarrassment.

  “Johnny, I’m sorry—I only meant, how could you go that long without anybody falling in love with you? You’re so—” He shook his head helplessly.

  So totally fucked-up only a pervert would have wanted me, John finished mentally, and forced a smile. “I’m not outgoing like you are, Kev. I was never voted ‘most popular.’ And there just hasn’t been anyone worth the effort. How about you?”

  Kevin flushed. “Just one. After you, it was hard to find anyone who
measured up. But I took precautions. Without protection, she would never have—”

  “She?” He didn’t mean it to sound accusing either; he was just surprised.

  Kevin turned even redder, then shrugged. “Yes. Trying to see if it was something I could change, I suppose. It wasn’t.”

  John understood without having to think much about it. “You needed to fit in with the group.”

  “I—I suppose so.” He looked down, then took a step back, his voice and body tightening. “I’m sorry, Johnny. I didn’t mean to interfere with your life. I’ll leave, if you want. I’m sorry.”

  “No!” John was out of the bed, standing in the doorway before Kevin could get through it, terrified he’d just ruined everything. “No, it’s all right—I didn’t expect you’d been a monk, but I wanted to know if it was safe—or to give you the chance to protect yourself if you weren’t sure of me. I don’t want to use ’em unless we have to.”

  He could see the emotions shifting on Kevin’s face almost faster than he could name them; John had always loved the man’s openness, but it was clear that Kevin’s time with the SAS had made him much more guarded. That was reasonable; he’d had everything to lose from a careless word. While I have everything to lose if I don’t speak up.

  “Kev, it’s only me. I love you, I want you, I want you to stay—and I need to know what you want. This isn’t a debriefing.” Embarrassed at his own babbling, he gave Kev’s waistband a playful snap. “Though it could be.”

  Kevin sighed; his shoulders relaxed a little. “This wasn’t what I intended, Johnny.” He gave a pained half smile, went back to bed, and flopped down on the pillow. “I really hadn’t planned to be such a basket case.”