Braided Lives

by A. R. Moler

  Peter braced one hand on the wall, letting himself thrust into the obliging tightness of Danny's hand. He let his psychic shielding fall open, eager to feel the other man's mind sliding against his own.

  He could tell Danny's pleasure was equal to his own, as his partner's shields were melting away too. As their soap-slicked bodies ground together, Danny bent his head forward to nip at Peter's ear, the corner of his jaw, down the side of his neck. Peter could hear Danny's harsh, uneven breathing at the side of his face. Riding the crest of the tension, Peter's fingers clawed at the tile as he splattered semen on the shower wall and over Danny's fingers. Danny's own release was seconds later as he pressed Peter's body flat to the wall with his own. Peter felt both the warm spurting surge against his back and the toe curling spasm of pleasure that washed out from Danny's mind.

  Danny's arm was still wound tightly around Peter's body and it was just about all that kept him upright for the next couple of minutes as he struggled to catch his breath. Eventually he turned within the circle of Danny's embrace to face him. He kissed Danny, a deep open-mouthed thank you, then he fished the soap up from where it had fallen on the floor and began to wash Danny. There was something entrancing about the solid presence of Danny's mind in his as his hands traced pecs and abs and quads and glutes. Jesus, the man could pass as the model for some Teutonic god.

  Exhaustion was catching up again fast. Peter faltered in his exploration of that gorgeous body, his own wanting to fall into sleep while he stood in the comforting heat of the shower.

  "You're almost out on your feet," Danny said as he reached back to turn off the water.

  "Sorry," Peter apologized thickly.

  "Don't be. Come on, let's go to bed. You need the rest."

  Danny helped him dry off and guided him out into the main room. Peter sank onto one of the beds, too tired to hunt for skivvies in his duffle bag.

  "I know the bed's not very big. Do you want company?" Danny asked.

  Peter nodded and scooted over against the wall that flanked the bed. The same sort of feelings that had made him almost unconsciously reach out to Danny out in the field were still present. He'd spent hours holding Jonas Nightengale in the land of the living. On some primal level he needed the comforting touch of someone who wasn't on the verge of dying.

  Snuggled together in the narrow bed, Danny whispered, "You and me, is this some kind of stress response thing?"

  "I don't know," replied Peter. "Does it matter?"

  "No."

  ***

  "Where's Vithoulkas?" asked Rayden as Danny sat down at a table with the remainder of his men in the base mess hall to eat breakfast.

  "Still sleeping. He was wiped out after what he did for Jonas yesterday," Danny replied. All of his team received basic information on the Talents of their colleagues when they went through training. They also were taught awareness of some of the special vulnerabilities of various psi as well. "You hear anything more about Jonas?"

  "I checked with the hospital. He's still in ICU, but he's fairly stable," said Claydon.

  "Good. I talked to Bottman an hour ago. He's working on arrangements to airlift him to Landstahl in Germany in a couple of days. Then hopefully, fingers crossed and all that, he'll be flown back to headquarters in a week or so, for recovery and rehab," Danny told them.

  "I'm guessing we're not hanging around that long," speculated Tabano.

  "No, you're right. Barring a downturn for Jonas or some problem on the flight end of things, the rest of us are leaving at 2200."

  ***

  The Division P team, minus Jonas, left Kosovo that night, and made it as far as LRMC in Germany with the intention of catching a MAC flight back to the states. The weather, however, had different ideas and the flight was postponed until the following day.

  Hanging out in one of the biergartens near the base, Danny and Peter grabbed dinner and a beer.

  "Last time I got a flight canceled on me while on assignment, I got stuck in O'Hare with about four hundred amazingly pissed off people. It was creepy weird, too," said Danny.

  "Why? Did they riot or something?"

  "No, no, I saw a couple of pushing and shoving matches but nothing that major. It was a 'me' thing."

  "What do you mean?" asked Peter. Something about Danny's tone worried him a little.

  "Maybe it was all the people, and me being really tired, I don't know. I had exactly one beer so I wasn't even close to drunk. It was overwhelming. For a little while I was so mad I couldn't even think straight. I finally walked down to the far end of the concourse where there weren't many people and punched a wall. Damn near broke my hand, but the pain sort of reset my shield stuff. I hadn't had my empathic stuff get that far out of control since I was a teenager. The weirdest part is that I don't really even remember walking down the corridor. The whole rest of the day had this weird hazy quality to it, like my brain was only hitting on half the cylinders."

  "How long ago was this?" asked Peter.

  "Uh, about four months ago."

  "I wish you'd come to me to have me look at your hand. Maybe I would have had a clue about the rest of it, too."

  "It's kind of embarrassing in a stupid way. Getting so wound up I punched something. Anyway, I just bruised the crap out of my hand. It was no big deal."

  "Maybe." Peter was unconvinced. He and Stephen Benford had spent the last couple of years cataloging and analyzing the unusual set of symptoms and side effects that often accompanied psi traits. He had a gut level suspicion that Danny's episode hinted at a something different. He just had no idea what.

  Chapter 2

  May

  The calendar on Danny Valentine's computer said it was a new month. Maybe this was a good thing, because in some ways the last one had been crazy, both good crazy and bad crazy. Jonas Nightengale was now back at the Division P complex, rehabbing from his serious injury. The other three men from the mission had returned to their normal jobs, and Espeleta had spent a week in counseling with Stephen Benford. Then there was Peter.

  After all the events in Kosovo, a sort of "friends with benefits" relationship had developed. Danny's schedule was frequently frantic and sometimes involved travel, but when he was home at the complex, they'd occasionally hook up.

  Speaking of busy, Danny noticed that a new recruit to Division P was arriving in a couple of days. Her name was Jennifer Sebastiano. Her "day job" was a bit odd, he thought. Most of Division P's recruits came from military backgrounds or the many government agencies. This woman taught art at a community college part-time and spent the rest of her time as a forensic artist. Not the "sculpt a face on a skull" type, but the kind that came up with sketches of suspects. She did freelance work for numerous police departments in the DC/Baltimore metro area. Sebastiano had a reputation for being able to get usable information from even severely traumatized victims. She had been suggested as a candidate for Division P after her work on a particularly brutal case that captured the attention of the FBI, where Division P had several people permanently placed.

  Ah, he kind of understood. According to interview notes, she was essentially a visual telepath who saw images of what people thought rather than heard or sensed from them as many other telepaths did.

  Sebastiano also apparently did occasional gallery shows. He had thumbed through some snapshots of her paintings. Dark. Dark and seriously disturbing. Notes in the file from her interview with the Division P shrink, Stephen Benford, indicated the images were based on the memories of victims and not internally generated. Still, putting those images on canvas meant she had to experience them in some way.

  Once Sebastiano arrived and was assigned quarters, she would get the usual overview and a tentative training schedule that covered everything from focus skills and work on honing a psychic's specific talents to more strictly applied in-the-field skills, like hand to hand combat and small arms qualifications. Danny was the person primarily responsible for those last two tasks.

  He had a meeting, a conferenc
e call and a heap of paperwork on the slate for the next few days. Danny made a note on his Outlook that he needed to track down Sebastiano sometime after her arrival and get things going on his end of responsibilities.

  ***

  Was this going to be one of the most uniquely awesome experiences of her life or an episode in hell akin to boot camp? Not that she'd ever actually been to boot camp. Jennifer Sebastiano opened the door to the room she'd been assigned. She was anticipating something bare and functional, reminiscent of a dorm room. It was far better than she'd expected, somewhere between an upscale hotel set-up and an apartment. She dropped her purse on the tan sofa and spent a couple of minutes looking around. It was a one bedroom apartment. There was a fully furnished den, decorated in neutral colors of brown, navy and cream, with a modest efficiency style kitchenette tucked in the corner, a reasonably ample bathroom, and a decent sized bedroom with a double bed in it. Wow, living here for the next ten weeks might not be so bad.

  Getting into the complex had been a little like going through airport security. The armed guards at the gate, the checking of both her driver's license and car registration, and the thumbprint scan had been a little creepy. They had told her that this first time entry process to Division P headquarters was the most extensive and that later entries would be simpler.

  The rest of her luggage was still in her car. She guessed she'd better bring it in. Later in the day she was supposed to meet a Ms. Sumiko Pierce for some kind of overview and introduction thing.

  ***

  Drinking from the fire hose, oh yeah, that just about described it. The quantity of information Jennifer had been presented with was vast. There was everything from the standard W-4's, I-9's and benefits package details, to lists of which staff member oversaw which parts of training and assignments and health care. There was also what seemed like a ream of pages on exactly what training she was supposed to receive and some of the desired outcomes. She was issued a three-inch binder for all this, but was told that due to security reasons, she would only be allowed to keep the binder while she was in the complex. Christ Almighty, this was reminiscent of grad school -- well except for the implication of "if you tell any unauthorized people about us, we'll have to kill you." Okay, realistically, it wasn't quite that extreme, but at times it gave that impression.

  Blissfully, Sumiko Pearce, the woman in charge of the training schedule, was patient and had a sense of humor. According to what she told Jennifer, Sumiko functioned as a recruiter for Division P and also did a piece of the in house administration and training. She seldom did any actual field work anymore since her accident. Jennifer had gazed sympathetically at the woman in the wheelchair.

  As they were drawing to the end of the information session, a thin man with sandy brown hair poked his head into the small conference room that Jennifer and Sumiko were using.

  "Hey Miko, I was expecting to see you this afternoon for a checkup and rehab session," he said.

  "I was told you got sucked into a meeting with some of the Navy Intelligence people this afternoon," Sumiko countered.

  "I did, but it was only for an hour. My part just involved safety protocols for our people. Can you come by after dinner?"

  "Yeah, I can do that. Oh, by the way, this is Jennifer Sebastiano. She's a newbie. I'm sure you'll see her around over the next few weeks. Jennifer, meet the infamous Peter Vithoulkas, the medical miracle man," quipped Sumiko.

  "Hi, nice to meet you. If I see you tomorrow and don't have the slightest idea what your name is, don't be offended. I suck at names, and I think I've been introduced to about forty people today," said Jennifer.

  Peter grinned. "The first week is kind of chaotic. It gets better. See you later, Sumiko." He departed with a wave.

  "So what makes him the medical miracle man?" asked Jennifer.

  "He's a healer. The best Division P has ever found. Healers are statistically the rarest of all psi talents, and of those that have it, most are mediocre at best. He's probably the only reason I can even stand. After my car accident, the surgeons bolted and screwed my broken pelvis back together along with the broken hip and cracked femur. But I also have some serious damage to my sciatic nerve cluster. He's been working for months on healing my nerve damage. It's slow going, but it's getting better about a tenth of a percent at a time. I was originally told I would never be able to stand, much less walk. Now I can do both. Granted, more than a dozen steps and the pain starts to crank and I begin to lose coordination, but it's getting there."

  "Wow," said Jennifer, not sure what else to say.

  "If you ever get seriously injured, he is the man you want taking care of you."

  ***

  When Danny walked into the infirmary, Peter was slouched on a stool. A coffee cup sat perched on the edge of the desk and Peter was slowing typing something into a file.

  "Whatever it is you're working on, you look absolutely under-enthused," said Danny.

  Peter looked up and gave him a tired smile. "Just patient files."

  "You know, I bet you could get one of the nurses to transcribe for you."

  "It's not that sort of files. It's my personal impressions and thoughts on the healing I do. I'm forever trying to fine tune my stuff. It helps me analyze what works and what doesn't," replied Peter.

  "You look tired too." Danny put his hands on Peter's shoulders and tipped him back far enough to place an upside down kiss on Peter's forehead. As he eased Peter back to upright, he said, "I have beer in my fridge."

  "Mmm, sounds tempting."

  Danny threaded his fingers through Peter's short hair, gently digging into his scalp. He could tell Peter was wound tight despite that fact he pushing toward dead tired. Danny leaned down further and whispered in Peter's ear. "I might blow you."

  That elicited a chuckle from Peter. "That's the best offer I've had all day."

  ***

  Danny had barely settled on the sofa in his quarters when Peter pushed him back flat along the cushions. Peter was a bundle of thin wiry muscle that, at the moment, nearly vibrated with tension as he squirmed on top of Danny, ravaging his mouth with hard kisses. Peter's body was a comfortable weight on Danny's, and the hard grind of Peter's crotch against his own was swiftly sending arousal signals to his prick.

  He could feel the heat of Peter's lust flickering at the edges of his shields and eagerly opened them to bask in the intensity of the primal emotion. The assault turned into a wrestling match as shirts were yanked open and belts unbuckled. Peter's teeth were nipping at his collar bone, fingers teasing one nipple. Danny bucked beneath Peter and they both went sliding off the edge of the sofa, hitting the floor with a thud that left Danny gasping for a moment.

  "You okay?" asked Peter, sprawled at a crazy angle on top of him.

  Danny made a snort of laughter. "Yeah, fine." Danny wormed a hand down inside the back of Peter's jeans to knead his fingers into the curve of his partner's ass. Peter groaned and then sucked at the skin along Danny's ribs. Danny wrapped both arms around Peter's body pulling them back into some kind of alignment and flipped them both over. Lying with some of his weight braced on his elbows as his hands cupped Peter's head, Danny's hips pushed Peter's thighs apart.

  Danny delivered a hungry kiss to Peter's open mouth and then began to work his way down the man's throat to his chest, leaving a damp trail of little bites and licks. Peter moaned and writhed beneath him. Shoving Peter's jeans and briefs down around his thighs, Danny ran his tongue in a long, broad stroke up the underside of Peter's hard and leaking cock. The skin was flushed deep rosy pink and glossy as near transparent liquid seeped from the slit. Danny licked across the tip and curled his fingers firmly around the hot length. Peter began making little gasps and groans as Danny jacked him slowly.