High Lonesome

by Tanya Chris

  His own cock bobbed, begging for touch. He shifted his weight to his left forearm so he could snake his right arm under his body, wrap his hand around his shaft and coax out the orgasm that danced behind his balls.

  “Don’t,” Pyotr said. He slapped at Joe’s right shoulder, then slapped harder at his ass. “Not yet.”

  But he could tell Pyotr was racing towards his own orgasm. He could feel the pulse of Pyotr’s cock as he drove it deep and held it even deeper, yanking back on his hips as though he were trying to go somewhere. Joe’s cock throbbed in sympathy with Pyotr’s orgasm as his brain protested the sudden cessation of movement, but he kept quiet, trying to slow his breaths down with Pyotr’s.

  Pyotr pulled out and flopped onto his back, stretching his legs between Joe’s thighs. He gave him another slap on his ass.

  “Come here.”

  He rotated around, questioning when Pyotr beckoned him to the head of the bed.

  “You did good, hot stuff.” Pyotr wrapped an arm around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss, the first one they’d shared beyond that quick brush of lips upstairs. He sank into it, enjoying the wet intimacy even as his cock continued to throb.

  When the kiss didn’t seem to be leading anywhere, he sat up and peeled the condom from Pyotr’s softening dick and carried it over to his dresser and dropped it into the medical waste container, then turned back to the bed—his hard cock an unanswered question.

  Pyotr laughed. “I haven’t forgotten about you. Just needed to catch my breath before I gave you the attention you deserve. It’s your turn to be taken care of.” He sat up and pulled Joe in front of him and swallowed his cock—fast, without preamble.

  Sweet. He’d somehow not expected Pyotr to do anything for him at all. To fuck him, yes, but only as a means to his own end. But Pyotr guided him around to lay back on the bed without moving his mouth from his dick and added his hands to the sensual whirlwind he’d stirred up.

  He would never refer to Pyotr as a cocksucker, because that wasn’t how the game was played, but Pyotr was a damn good one nonetheless. He took Joe’s cock deeper down his throat than he’d managed himself when the tables had been turned and his hands were active and exactly the right amount of rough. They roamed, wet and firm, over his balls and back to the gaping hole he’d left lubed and ready.

  Pyotr shoved two fingers up his ass, and if Pyotr hadn’t gotten him onto the bed, he would’ve have hit the floor when Pyotr found his prostate and played it like a piano. It was too much. Too much stimulation.

  “I’m going to come,” he warned, but if he’d thought that would make Pyotr stop, he’d been wrong. If anything, Pyotr went harder, clearly intending to make him do exactly that.

  “Not in your mouth. Don’t.” He yanked at Pyotr’s head until Pyotr lifted it and turned annoyed eyes up at him. “Just use your hands to finish me.”

  “Okaaay.” Pyotr shrugged, but he used his right hand to pump his shaft while his left continued doing deliciously evil things inside his ass.

  Intellectually, he knew there wasn’t any real risk. The likelihood of oral transmission of HIV in healthy adults was extremely low, and he was safe. Perfectly safe. But he couldn’t relax enough to come in someone’s mouth.

  Now, with that concern out of the way, it didn’t take much for Pyotr to trigger his orgasm. He came hard, semen splashing everywhere—over Pyotr’s face and hand.

  “Shit,” he said, before Pyotr had even stopped pumping his shaft. “Let me get that.”

  He bounced up off the bed and found an antiseptic wipe in his toiletry kit and wiped down first Pyotr’s face and then his hands while Pyotr watched with unconcerned curiosity. He put the wipe into the medical waste box for good measure and then went to look for his shorts.

  “Come here,” Pyotr said. He’d scooted up the bed and sat with his back to the wall and his legs stretched comfortably out in front of him.

  “That bed’s too small for cuddling,” he protested, but Pyotr patted the space between his thighs, not accepting his excuse. He came over and sat tentatively on the side of the bed, sliding back until his back met Pyotr’s chest. Pyotr’s arms came around him and his chin dug into the side of his neck.

  “Mm, better.”

  “Didn’t take you for a cuddler.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “We’ve got clothes. And blankets.”

  “I’ve got you. That’ll work.”

  At first his body barely touched Pyotr’s in an attempt to levitate away the closeness, but Pyotr kept nuzzling into his neck and nipping at his ear. Pyotr’s lips were warm, his teeth sharp and predatory, his body solid and possessive, his soft cock snuggled up between his buttocks, as though—hard or soft—that was where it belonged.

  Another blast of wind rattled the window.

  “Sounds like the storm’s picking up,” he observed. “We may be holed up here another couple days.”

  “Not in a hurry for a change. Got a mess waiting for me back on the ground.”

  Pyotr and Tanner both had a mess to face, he realized, thinking that their problems shouldn’t have anything to do with him but feeling like they somehow did. All that stuff he’d been pushing down earlier crashed back into the forefront of his mind, despite Pyotr’s relaxed body behind him.

  Pyotr was an agent. Whether a double agent as he claimed or just a regular one, did it really matter? He made his living betraying someone or other, and he’d shown up at the hut with a gun and a plan to either steal American secrets for a foreign power or to get Tanner locked up for treason. Which, admittedly, Tanner might deserve.

  Either way, Pyotr wasn’t someone to trust, no matter how hard he fucked or how good his smooth, contoured chest felt against his back.

  “How old were you when you came to the United States?” he asked, his body still hovering somewhere between satisfied and uncomfortable.

  “Sixteen, nearly seventeen.”

  “With your family?”

  “No, they’re all back in Russia. I have no contact with them now. No, I came here to be a spy.”

  “For the U.S.?”

  “For Russia, or at least so the FSB thought when they sent me here. I was never that committed to Mother Russia, but my options were a few years in a stalag or emigrate to the United States. I hopped on that plane quick.”

  “I didn’t realize we were taking in Russian criminals.”

  “Not all Russian criminals. I was given asylum because I was gay.”

  “And what were you arrested for?”

  “Also being gay.”

  “That’s a crime in Russia?” he frowned. He’d read some stuff in the news lately but hadn’t been sure how much to believe.

  “Not to be gay, exactly, but homosexual acts. Once you’re known to be that way, the authorities can make your life as difficult as they want. I fucked around with the wrong kid and came to the attention of the wrong people, but then I got lucky. I was good looking and I had a fetish for all things American. I used to watch every American movie I could get from the bootleggers—the original versions, not the dubbed ones—so I could practice my American accent.”

  “The accent comes and goes.”

  “Doesn’t have to,” Pyotr said, sounding perfectly American in that moment. “But there was a reason for Tanner to know I was Russian and the accent always feels like acting, like I’m not being me. Pete the spy, instead of Pyotr the guy who still misses Russia even if it’s a fucked up place.”

  “So how does a kid arrested for being gay end up as a secret agent?”

  “Ah, that’s where I got lucky. Someone smarter than my fuck buddy’s angry uncle realized that hot gay boy plus American street smarts would make a good combination for blackmailing closeted politicians. I was given a fake American relative and an application for asylum and sent to Washington to seduce my way into state secrets.”

  “And did you?”

  Behind him, Pyotr shifted in a sort of full-body shrug. “There are a couple of dossiers th
at feature my ass, but I never passed on anything useful in the way of information. Not sure I feel sorry for those guys anyway. They were all a bunch of right-wing hypocrites. That line you hear about the ones screaming the loudest against ‘the gay lifestyle’ being the ones sucking the most cock isn’t far wrong.”

  “But now you’re on our side,” he prompted. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure he believed that.

  “I had no more interest in ending up in an American jail than I did a Russian one. I figured I was here now, and it was where I’d wanted to be all along, so it made sense to make sure I was playing for the right team. I turned myself in, offered to help—” there was another of those shrugs “—and here I am. I’ve been a double agent for ten years now. Mostly I feed false information to the Russians, sometimes some true stuff we don’t mind getting out so I continue to seem valuable to them. Occasionally I play middle man in a situation like this. For Tanner, I can be Russian. For Green Tea, I can be American.”

  “Green Tea?”

  “Our code name for the Russian agent Tanner’s supposed to be meeting. Kind of a joke.” Pyotr snorted, sounding awfully relaxed for a guy who was spilling state secrets. If he was a double agent, he didn’t seem like a very good one.

  “I’ve never talked about this before,” he said then, as if reading Joe’s mind. “Maybe you really did get me drunk.”

  He didn’t think so. Pyotr hadn’t fucked like a guy with whiskey dick. Pyotr kissed his neck again, then sighed.

  “I should sleep upstairs with Tanner. Keep an eye on him.”

  He shifted out of Pyotr’s way, wondering as he did why he felt disappointed. He hadn’t wanted to cuddle in the first place. Why did he mind that Pyotr was leaving him to return to Tanner?

  He listened to Pyotr’s steady steps on the stairs, questioning as the sound faded whether Pyotr was keeping an eye on Tanner to protect him or to make sure his quarry didn’t escape. Either way, he was concerned about what it meant for Tanner.

  Outside the window a crash sounded—thunder, which meant lightning, and then the sound of hail rattling. So it was going to be one of those storms, the kind where electrical currents raced through the air, much as they did in the hut.

  Chapter 9

  Tanner

  Tanner came to slowly, a dawning awareness that he felt seriously sick growing in his body. It was early, he could tell from the slice of light that drifted in through the window—a dark bluish light, no hint of actual sun yet.

  He felt awful. Dope sick and more somehow. More dope sick than usual and something else. Like his tongue was made of dog shit and there was nothing between his ears except pain.

  Hangover. He had a hangover. In addition to being dope sick. In addition to being extra special dope sick because he hadn’t shot up before going to sleep last night. And he should’ve. His body was telling him that he most definitely, definitely should’ve.

  The clothes he had on, which weren’t his pajamas but were the same clothes he’d been wearing to hike and eat and do everything for the last three days, were drenched in sweat, but despite the evidence of his sweat-soaked clothes he felt like he was freezing, like he’d never be warm again, like cold had penetrated all the way through his bones to gnaw at them with a relentless ache.

  His stomach roiled, shifting its contents both up and down so that he hardly knew if he was about to vomit or explode with violent diarrhea. The thought of making his way outside to the outhouse, of lowering his ass over that rotting hole and hearing his loose feces drop onto the fetid pile of other people’s feces, brought him even closer to losing it completely, right there in his bunk.

  He managed to raise himself into a sitting position, moving carefully because every jarring movement both hurt and triggered another wave of nausea, and slid his hand under his pillow to find his kit. He sat there, looking at the closed case, too sick to even go through the motions, never mind get himself down from the bunk to find some privacy. Pyotr knew anyway.

  All that shit from the night before came flashing back to him in a wave that made him almost as sick as the withdrawal—Pyotr being a CIA agent, him spilling the beans about his addiction, all that amaretto he’d drunk—why did they make alcohol that tasted like almonds?—then reaching for his kit as he crawled into bed and Joe telling him to just go to sleep.

  Fuck Joe, who’d known how he’d feel this morning, and fuck Pyotr. Since Pyotr knew he was a junkie, he could watch him shoot up. He was definitely too sick to find another place to do it.

  He looked over at Pyotr’s bunk and found him watching already, his eyes locked on the case he held. Pyotr raised his eyes and smiled, like they didn’t both know what he was about to do.

  “Good morning.”

  He gritted his teeth. There was no way he could have a conversation if that was what Pyotr thought was going to happen.

  Just do what you gotta do, he told himself, but somehow he couldn’t open the case, not with Pyotr watching, and he still couldn’t get himself out of the bunk. He was stuck, frozen by a hopeless inertia.

  “I gotta take a leak.” Pyotr stretched himself long as he rose out of his bunk, then shuffled into those fugly slippers he’d been walking around in and pulled a fleece on over his bare chest.

  Tanner was so hot. Or so cold. He couldn’t decide. So hot or so cold, but Pyotr looked just right, like a bare chest was good for sleeping and a fleece was good for walking around, like every temperature worked for him.

  His teeth hurt. They really hurt. Was it because he was clenching them? He raised his hand to his jaw and poked at it to see if it was clenched. It hurt. His jaw hurt. His finger hurt. Everything hurt.

  He was alone, he realized. Pyotr had left and this was his time, his chance to do this. A part of his brain said he’d never feel good again but another part knew that he held the one thing that would ensure that he most definitely would. All he had to do was mix the dose and slide it in and this misery would end. Heroin worked like lightning when you put it straight into your blood stream, like throwing a switch. From miserable to ecstatic in point five seconds.

  This was the switch. All he had to do was throw it.

  And be right back in this same place in a few hours. Not this bad, no. Not if he kept feeding the monster, giving it ever more, always more often. He could stave off this kind of pain, live on the edge of discomfort where his stomach hurt and his bones ached but it was bearable, and count down the minutes until the next time he could make it all go away. And each time, he’d cave a little earlier, use a little more. Whatever it took to not feel like this.

  Inside the case was what remained of his stash. Not enough. Enough for now, enough even for a nice high midday, but not enough for the dose after that. Hurt now or hurt later. Those were his only choices. Smaller doses more often or say fuck it, down it all now, finish the lot and let the pain come.

  How much worse than this could it get?

  He asked himself that question again. How much worse than this could it get? He hadn’t had a dose since they got back from hiking the previous afternoon. Two o’clock maybe. And what time was it now? Six a.m.? He was two thirds of the way through his first day of detox. The drinking last night, falling into a drunken stupor without shooting up—it’d given him a head start on this misery. Maybe that was why Joe had kept pushing the drinks on him.

  He pulled the needle from the case, fingering what should have been a sharp tip. Yesterday afternoon he’d felt like he was trying to open his veins with a melon baller. He couldn’t see the damage it’d done because he was wearing long sleeves, but he could feel it, a sharper ache layered on top of all the other pain.

  If he was going to shoot up, he needed to roll up his sleeve or take off his shirt, and that thought made him so tired he really didn’t think he could do it. And he needed water to mix with. Fuck, he hadn’t even brought water to bed with him, hadn’t planned at all. Fucking amaretto. Fucking Joe. What if detox wasn’t what he wanted?

  But what if it was?<
br />
  “What the fuck?” Pyotr’s voice jerked his attention away from the needle in his hand. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Pyotr didn’t wait for an answer, as if the answer wasn’t obvious. He pounded down the stairs, calling for Joe and making Tanner wince with every thudding step. Even if he wasn’t dope sick, was there no respect for a guy with a hangover?

  If he was going to do it, he should do it now. Joe would come up and … what? Make him stop? Maybe Joe would get him some water and help him take off his shirt. Joe would understand. Last night, while they’d been telling secrets, he’d learned Joe’s secret even though it hadn’t been said out loud. The way Joe had let him label himself an addict instead of doing it for him, the way he’d said the word heroin, like he was naming a long lost lover—Joe was no different from him. Joe would understand.

  Sure enough, Joe didn’t look either surprised or concerned when he appeared in the doorway. No, he did look concerned. Tanner squinted past the pain and tried to read the expression on Joe’s face. Concerned about him, he decided, not concerned about the needle.

  He sighed and went to scratch at his temple which felt like it was covered in dirty scales, forgetting about the needle in his hand until Pyotr lunged forward and grabbed his wrist.

  “He’s going to shoot up,” Pyotr said, turning to Joe angrily because Joe was just standing there by the door. Pyotr twisted the needle out of his hand, careful not to touch the tip of it. He wanted to laugh and tell him not to worry, that there was no way in hell he’d accidentally prick himself with that dull thing, but breathing hurt too much to consider talking.

  Pyotr dropped the needle into the case. He snapped the case shut and handed it to Joe, one hand still on his wrist as though there were some way for him to shoot up without the dope.