Braided Lives

by A. R. Moler

  Jesus God, listening to those little noises of pleasure made Danny want Peter inside him. He rose up on his hands and knees above his lover and stared down into Peter's eyes.

  "Fuck me?" he whispered. They had always stuck to mouths and hands before.

  Peter's gaze was intense, pupils blown wide. "If you've got stuff, hell yeah."

  Danny retrieved a condom and lube from his bedroom and paused halfway back to finish stripping. Peter had removed the rest of his own clothing by the time Danny got back.

  Putting supplies in Peter's hands, Danny knelt in front of the couch and bent forward. In a minute he felt a cool slick finger pressing into him, as Peter gripped his hip with the other hand. More fingers followed, carefully pushing and twisting. Danny rocked back a little, wanting more.

  "Now, unh, want you in me," begged Danny.

  Peter obliged and pushed himself in. Danny sucked in a breath, pressure and pleasure stealing coherent thought. Peter eased back and thrust again, coming close to nailing that one spot. Danny groaned. The rhythm may have started slow but in seconds accelerated to bodies smacking quickly together. Danny grabbed his own cock and stroked himself as Peter's thrusts began to slam into him with less and less control. He felt the wave of ecstasy building like an avalanche and it hit him hard. Vision blurred into starry grayness as the orgasm tore through his body. Just as the pulsing pleasure began to wane, he was hit by the crash of his lover's release. The echo-y sensation tore through him, washing waves of the rush all the way out to his fingers and toes.

  Spent and fighting for breath, Danny pillowed his face on one arm on the sofa cushion. Peter was draped along his back, arms looped loosely around Danny's body. Slowly he turned and sat on the carpet, his back against the couch. He pulled Peter forward into his lap, and they sat chest to chest, Peter's thighs straddled around Danny's hips. Peter's head drooped onto Danny's shoulder.

  "Damn, that was good," mumbled Peter.

  Danny traced gentle circles along Peter's spine, enjoying the drowsy after burn of Peter's mind brushing along his.

  "Mmm yeah… awesome," murmured Danny.

  ***

  "This is a Glock 9mm. It's dependable, seldom jams, and has no safety," said the range master.

  Jennifer Sebastiano stood in a bay on the firing range with a man named Danny Valentine. The man was more than six feet of blond muscle and looked like he belonged on a poster for "Vikings R Us." The lethal weapon in his hands had about the same aesthetics as a brick, a blocky hunk of metal made of mostly right angles.

  This was her first shooting lesson. She'd never fired a gun before, unless you wanted to count a BB gun in a cousin's backyard. Valentine laid the gun on the bench and picked up the other piece.

  "This is the magazine. It holds the bullets. It slides in the butt like this. Push it in until you feel it click," he said. "To remove it, push the button here and it will slide out. Now I want you to load it."

  Jennifer gazed at the open box of bullets in front of her. She picked up the magazine in her left hand and pulled out a bullet, trying to determine which end was supposed to go in which direction. Danny reached across her hand and twisted the bullet into the correct position.

  "Make them go uphill. Use your thumb to push it down."

  She struggled to press the round into the clip, the spring fighting her all the way. Good thing she had amazingly short fingernails, otherwise they'd probably be bending backward due to the pressure.

  "Load just five for now," he said.

  It took her another couple of minutes to do so. "Okay. Done," she said, holding up the clip.

  "Put it in."

  She did it, but it was an awkward maneuver, and definitely not as easy as he made it look. He showed her how to chamber the first round. One more thing that looked easy when he did it. She had a tough time getting a strong enough grip to pull the slide back. He mimed how she should hold it.

  "Aim and fire."

  She pulled the trigger and the recoil scared her almost as bad as the noise. "Holy shit! That was loud."

  "Again," he said.

  On the second shot, the spent casing tinked against her safety glasses as it flew out of the ejection port. That made her flinch.

  "It helps if you open your eyes when you squeeze the trigger," said Valentine from a few steps behind her.

  She laid the 9mm down on the bench in front of her and turned to face him, further irritated that she had to tilt her head back to see his face; the guy was damn near a foot taller than her.

  "I don't give a rat's ass if I hit the target or not!" she snapped at Valentine.

  "Well I do. I'm not expecting sniper level accuracy, but hitting the black part of the target would be helpful," he said calmly. "The object of this training is a make sure you have a reasonable chance of defending yourself if you're put in a life threatening situation."

  "I'm an artist! Short of cruising through some ghetto at midnight, I'm not very likely to be in any life threatening situations," she shouted.

  "You're a Division P agent, and you have absolutely no clue what you might get exposed to."

  "I'd have more luck stabbing somebody with a sharp pencil."

  "Hand to hand basics are part of the training, too." His tone was too damn controlled. She wanted to haul off and smack him. He smirked at her. Oh hell, she was broadcasting. She had no idea exactly what his Talent was, but in this place most everybody had some degree of telepathy or empathy. After all, that's why Division P employed them.

  "Let's try again. Pick up the weapon. Get a firm grip with your right hand and then add your left for support. No, no, don't stick your finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire," Valentine ordered. Jennifer growled in frustration. "Keep a grip on the gun, I'm going to adjust your stance."

  From behind, he stuck his foot between hers and nudged her feet further apart, then grabbed her hips and angled them slightly. His hands fell on her shoulder, thumbs against her spine. "Unscrunch your shoulders, try to relax and focus on just your hands. Don't yank on the trigger, try to squeeze it until the shot is almost a surprise."

  "Surprises the hell out of me. I keep expecting to drop the stupid thing when it jerks so hard," she said. His hands hadn't moved, they were still pushing down on her shoulders. She pulled the trigger and the heavy gun jumped in her hands again. The shot hit the edge of the black portion of the target, about where the shoulder of the silhouette was.

  "That's a little better," commented Valentine. "Try again." He reached forward and wrapped his hands around hers. They were much bigger. She flinched a little. Training in this place took "hands-on" to a whole new level.

  Psychically talented people were quite frequently pathologically shy of touch, or so the staff of Division P had told her. The extra sensory input could be so overwhelming. This tended to give the general public the impression that those people were cold, aloof and distant. In here, it was so incredibly different. There was full acknowledgement that touching was difficult, with the flip side being there was lots of intentional contact to help the psi learn better coping skills. Jennifer still hadn't decided how she felt about the whole concept.

  "Relax," Valentine murmured. "Aim. Squeeze." Yeah, and the loud report made her flinch again, only this time the solid wall of male fingers around her own buffered her motion. The hole in the target this time was a little closer to the middle of the outline.

  The shooting range lesson went on for another half hour. Jennifer got almost used to Valentine's poking and prodding of her body as he corrected her stance, her grip, her aim and basically every facet of her performance. Half the time he was practically pressed against her back, the other half he was three feet to one side, with that analytical look on his face.

  She used up two full boxes of bullets. In the span of that time she did manage to get so she was generally hitting the black silhouette of the target most of the time.

  "Am I done?" she asked pulling off the ear protection and safety glasses.

 
; "For today. You're improving some."

  "Yeah. I can hit a barn at ten paces. God, I still think this is an utter waste of my time," Jennifer replied.

  "You can think anything you like. It's part of the program. The longer Division P is in operation, the more widely varied the things we're called to do."

  Jennifer was heading for the door when he called after her. "I'll see you in a week or two for the hand to hand intro." She rolled her eyes as she left. Great, I'm going to get pounded into the floor by Thor the barbarian, she thought.

  ***

  Feisty, sarcastic, and uncoordinated. Danny Valentine decided all of the above applied to Ms. Jennifer Sebastiano as he watched her leave the shooting range. She was about average height, slightly round in that squishy "I don't exercise much" female way, with dark brown hair that probably fell all the way to her butt when it wasn't pulled back into a braid. She'd be wicked fun in an argument he'd bet. He could almost visualize her in a full on temper tantrum. She'd probably be the type to scream and throw things.

  ***

  All work and no play… yadda, yadda, yadda. The Virginia Beach Amphitheater held some fairly awesome concerts and Danny was a fan of Nickelback. He had bought some tickets to their concert for Peter and himself. It turned out to be moderately crowded, with something like twenty thousand people there.

  Danny walked back up the hill toward where Peter was lounging on the grass above the main reserved seating area. He'd decided to go to the concert on the cheap and bought lawn tickets instead of seats. Danny had to concentrate to put one foot in front of the other and he was sure anybody who saw him thought he was drunk off his ass. Yup, drunk as a skunk, 'cept not on beer, on the emotions of twenty thousand charged up people. It was a good concert and he was high as a kite.

  ***

  As the finale deafened the crowd and crackled the speakers, Peter watched Danny jumping up and down and pumping his fist in the air. There was something just plain off about the way the guy was behaving. When the music ended, Danny went staggering off in the direction of the crowd flow. Peter yelled after him, but Danny seemed oblivious. All Peter could really do was try to follow him.

  Five minutes later he found Danny halfway up a massive chain link fence hollering at a couple of women on the other side.

  "Fuck it, Danny! Get off the fence! You're going to get arrested!" Peter yelled at him. Danny gave him a bleary squint. One of the women on the other side was hiking up her shirt and flashing him her tits. Unh… yeah. Danny fumbled his way down and landed on his ass.

  Peter hauled him to his feet and slung one of Danny's arms over his shoulder, half-guiding, half dragging Danny in the direction of the gate to the parking lot.

  ***

  Danny's head was spinning and walking was a serious challenge. What the fuck? Why did he feel this way? Danny struggled to stay on his feet. When he stumbled, only Peter's grip kept him from taking a header straight into the gravel of the parking lot. There were just too many damn people and the sheer noise of so many minds was a blur of nauseating pain. He continued to shuffle along, trusting Peter to have some clue where they were going. Car. There was a car involved. People walking faster flowed around them. The motion made it harder to figure out where the hell he was putting his feet.

  ***

  Jesus God, there was the car. Peter finally saw it in the middle of a line of others. It figured they'd had to park in "outer Mongolia" for a concert this big. Right now his main concern was to get Danny back to the car and away from the main bulk of the crowd. At least it had thinned out some as they walked. Actually, staggered was a more appropriate term for Danny. Peter knew that people who saw them assumed Danny was trashed out of his mind. Whatever.

  Peter leaned Danny against the car and groped in his pocket for his keys. As he was about to unlock the door, Danny's hand clutched weakly at Peter's shirt.

  "Gonna puke," he slurred and fell to his hands and knees, vomiting in the grass. Peter hastily wrapped an arm around Danny's body and cupped a hand under his forehead. As hard as Danny's muscles were shaking, Peter could tell he was fighting against passing out. Once the puking had dwindled to gagging, Peter exerted his talent and shut the rest of the nausea down. He eased Danny back to sit against the car.

  "Try to breathe slow and easy," Peter said. He kept one hand curled against Danny's neck and the other hand he placed on Danny's chest. The man's pulse was thundering and his skin was slicked with sweat. Skull cracking head pain was beginning to flare and Peter intercepted that, too. They sat for a number of minutes with Peter not quite holding Danny up as he leaned on the car, until Danny's pulse had slowed to something closer to normal. Peter probably could have hurried things along a little, but that would have taken more focus than he was willing to give up sitting in the semi-dark parking lot of the amphitheater.

  "Let's get you in the car, and head for home, okay?" Peter said.

  Danny nodded, body still shaking slightly. Peter helped him to his feet and into the seat, tilting it back a little and buckling his partner in. Danny's hands went to his head. "Fucking God… it hurts."

  Peter clasped his hands gently against the sides of Danny's head. The pain had shot up again as soon as Peter had actively stopped suppressing it.

  "Once I manage to get us out of the parking lot and on the road, I'll block it for you, but you're going to have to tough it out for a few minutes."

  Danny grimaced and nodded, curling a little tighter in the seat.

  ***

  At the Division P complex outside of Suffolk Virginia, Danny half blindly followed Peter toward his quarters. Peter was damping down the freaking awful pain in his head, but he still felt near incoherent. It just didn't track. He had felt so insanely good, and then so insanely bad. There was a common word there. Insane. Man, he really did feel like he was losing it. This was worse than a hangover.

  "Lie down," Peter ordered and Danny stretched out on the bed.

  That actually helped a little, so he felt less like he was going to fall on his face. Peter settled onto the bed next to him and rubbed gentle fingers down the side of his chest

  "What the fuck is wrong with me?" asked Danny.

  "At a guess, ten thousand rowdy concert goers overwhelmed your empathic talents. One minute you're climbing the fence, literally. Five minutes later, you're barfing your guts up and about to pass out." Peter's hands traced lightly through Danny's hair and made soothing little circles on his temples.

  "Climbing the fence? I don't remember that."

  "Somehow, I'm not surprised. I think you were pretty out of it at that point."

  "God, I feel like shit. This is worse than last year when that thing happened at the airport with all the canceled flights. I nearly put my fist through a wall, but I least I remembered that."

  "Yeah but that was a few hundred people, and this was thousands. Open your eyes and follow my finger," said Peter.

  Danny pried open his eyes and tried to obey. His eyes didn't seem to want to focus in some spots. That was just so weird, and what he wanted most was to sleep.

  "Danny, stay awake for just a few more minutes. Hold out your hands and squeeze my fingers." Danny felt uncoordinated as he did this.

  "My fingers feel funky."

  "You're exhibiting seizure-like symptoms," Peter replied.

  "Huh? That's bad isn't it?"

  "I'm not sure. I'm going to be really overcautious and sit here with you for a few hours while you sleep. I think your nervous system tripped a few breakers."

  Danny decided this sounded bad but he couldn't get his head around how bad, or if Peter was protecting him from something worse.