by Jerry Cole
"You will be," Asher said with absolute certainty, and when Daniel fixed him with a puzzled gaze, he shrugged. "No one ever really changes. People can change their behaviors. But the essential motivations behind them, the person they really are deep down, never changes. An alcoholic starts drinking because they're lonely and when they're drunk they are everyone's friend. But they realize those friendships don't mean anything and they're still lonely, so they join a support group and make friends there, and stop drinking. They changed their behavior, but not the person they are—someone lonely who can't connect with people spontaneously and needs the context of a bar or a group in order to socialize."
"I think you might be oversimplifying things a lot," Daniel said seriously and Asher laughed.
"Yeah, you're right," he agreed. "And I haven't known you that long. But I think I know some of the things that motivate you. I think they're good things. I think you'll still be a good person on the other side of this."
"Could I be someone you'd stay with?" Daniel blurted out before he could stop himself. "After this? Could I be the kind of person you'd want to be with?"
Asher looked surprised, then guilty, glancing away. It was answer enough for Daniel, who wasn't sure if it was a relief or a crushing blow.
"You know the kind of life I live," Asher tried to give Daniel an excuse that would hurt less. "Serious relationships don't really work with what I do. I wouldn't want to drag you into something like that."
"Yeah," Daniel said tonelessly, looking up at the sky.
"Hey."
Asher shifted, leaning over Daniel and planting a big, calloused hand in the snow beside his head.
"What we have right now," Asher stared down at him, brow furrowed with the ferocity of how badly he wanted Daniel to understand and be okay with this. "It isn't nothing. It isn't meaningless just because it can't last forever. You're important. This moment is important. Whatever happens later won't change that."
Daniel didn't answer, too unsure of his own feelings to know what he wanted or why he wanted it. He averted his eyes and remained silent. Asher sighed and sat back on his knees.
"Come on," he said, offering Daniel a hand. "Let's get you back inside before you freeze to death."
Daniel complied, though he still wasn't sure what to feel. He let Asher peel his wet clothes off to hang by the fire, and when the other man began pressing kisses to the still damp skin at the back of his neck, Daniel didn't resist. He threw himself into the act with passion instead, riding Asher's fingers as they thrust against each other. If this was to be all there was, he might as well make the most of it.
Chapter Sixteen
Morning came too soon. The storm that had stopped in the night had not returned and the sun was already beginning to melt the accumulated snow. The awkwardness of the night before melted as well, as Daniel forcibly put it out of his mind. The two men talked and laughed as they ate their breakfast and prepared for a final hike. He would be home soon, Daniel reminded himself. Back to showers and hot food and comfortable beds. He was looking forward to all of those things more than he could say. So why did he feel so reluctant to leave behind this dusty abandoned cabin?
He looked back with growing reluctance as Asher shut the door behind them, and the other man smiled, mussing Daniel's hair.
"Chin up, Danny," he said. "Let's get home, and when we're both in better shape, I'll take you camping out here again."
Daniel huffed with tired humor. "We could make it an annual thing," he suggested as they started walking, following the stream. "Once a year we jump in a river and get lost in the woods together."
"Sounds like a great time to me," Asher agreed. "I've always wanted to have sex on the very top of a mountain."
Daniel sputtered and Asher laughed, and together they started on their way down the mountain.
Asher had found a sturdy pine branch the day before and stripped it for Daniel to use as a walking stick. It helped a great deal with keeping the weight off of his ankle. They made decent progress, following the narrow stream down the forested slopes.
Daniel was happy to see the snow disappearing quickly as they descended, until soon it lingered only in shadowed patches. When the trees opened up into swaths of rocky grassland there was no snow at all. The stream quickly shed its skin of ice and rolled along in noisy excitement.
Once, as they were passing through a copse of cottonwood trees, a herd of elk burst through the brush ahead of them, crashing in a wild stampede through the trees and bounding away across the hill. Asher and Daniel threw themselves out of the way of the flying hooves, landing hard in the dirt with Asher's arm around Daniel protectively. They watched the elk leap with alien grace over bracken and briar, close enough to feel the heat radiating from their huge brown bodies. Their eyes, huge and dark, stared forward almost sightlessly, gazing into the future forest towards some animal need Daniel couldn't understand. Asher held him until the last of their eerie bugling cries had echoed into nothingness. Then they stood and carried on, in speechless awe of what they'd seen.
Daniel felt like his eyes were more open now, since the cabin. Before the river, he'd been too focused on his own misery to see anything but the most basic frame of nature's beauty, and only in the context of wishing for a situation where he could enjoy it more. Now he was witness to all the minutiae of forest life. The scamper of animals. The curious constructs of intertwining plant life. The play and pattern of light, soft as it touched on things it had graced the same for millions of years, compared to the confused way it fumbled on the explosion of human civilization, so recent and so strange. So ceaselessly self-referential and inward turned, unable to see even nature as anything but a reflection of their own virtues and fears. What a weird existence, Daniel thought. What a bizarre thing to be. As he thought this, he smiled at Asher, for once perfectly happy to be so far from normalcy.
Disaster, though expected, never arrived. The stream met the creek as Asher had hoped it would, and they turned to follow it east, both of them feeling optimistic for the first time since the river. The water, a deep jade green beside them, rolled on through increasingly cultivated land, open grassy places where Daniel was certain farms must have once existed, interrupted by bouts of dense, tangled forest. The fact that they would be out soon began to feel more real. Somehow it had seemed too strange without the drama of a rescue. But here they were, almost home. They hurried on, excitement pushing them to go faster than they really should have.
Asher, in his eagerness, put on his trail guide mask again, pointing out different bird and plant species they passed. He’d learned a lot in a few hours googling while in the airport on the way here.
"Look, that's a kestrel circling! And that's a three toed wood pecker! Did you know the American three toed woodpecker breeds farther north than any other American woodpecker? The only bird in the world that breeds higher up than them is the Eurasian three toed woodpecker, which used to be considered the same species. They're functionally identical except for mitochondrial differences, which is why they were split. I remembered that because I think it's dumb as shit."
Now that his trivia was no longer sprinkled with teasing insults, Daniel actually found it rather entertaining. His enthusiasm was contagious, and once in a while Daniel would chip in with something he remembered from the brochures.
"There's a mountain chickadee," Asher pointed out, gesturing towards a tiny gray and black bird, sunning itself on a branch with its feathers fluffed out to absorb as much warmth as possible. "They live in the park year round."
"I read they only need to eat about ten calories a day," Daniel added, pausing to watch the little bird. "Too bad we can't do that."
"Would have made this nightmare of a trip a lot easier," Asher laughed, then put an arm around Daniel with a wink. "And a lot more fun. Did you know a teaspoon of cum can be up to seven calories?"
"Oh my god." Daniel squirmed away, red in the face and laughing.
"Think about it!" Asher shouted, hurry
ing after him. "You could live on two blow jobs a day!"
Around noon, they stopped by the edge of the creek to eat. The MREs had, by now, rather lost their novelty, but Daniel's brush with starvation had been recent enough that he could continue to choke down MREs for a good while before he got sick of them. That didn't stop him from flicking cold, flaccid bits of spaghetti at Asher across their impromptu picnic spread. He cheered as one splattered perfectly against the side of the other man's cheek.
"Keep that up and I'm gonna pour this absurdly small bottle of tabasco down your throat," Asher threatened, grinning.
The next piece of spaghetti landed precisely on the bridge of his nose. "That's it!"
He tackled Daniel before the other man could do more than shriek, twisting off the cap of the hot sauce as Daniel laughed and struggled to get away, pushing at his chest and squirming. Asher pushed his fingers past Daniel's lips, forcing the smaller man's mouth open. Daniel felt an unexpected thrill at the sensation of Asher's finger pushing down his tongue, the weight of the other man pinning him down making his heart race. His temporary excitement was quickly forgotten as hot sauce poured down his throat. He howled in exaggerated pain and indignation at the burn while Asher laughed victoriously.
"If I'm going down," Daniel gasped, "you're going down with me!"
He grabbed Asher by the head and pulled him into a deep kiss, making certain to spread as much of the hot sauce as he could until Asher successfully pulled away, gasping and whining. Mouths and lungs burning, the two men rolled in the grass beside each other, tears stinging their eyes and wheezy laughter echoing through the valley until they could speak again.
"My tongue still feels numb," Asher complained later as they pushed through the thorny chaparral, Daniel using his stick to flatten the meanest looking snares so they could pass. "I might never taste again. What will you do if you've killed my sense of taste forever?"
"You already didn't have any taste," Daniel teased, smiling at the other man.
"Well that explains why I can't get enough of you," Asher teased back, and Daniel rolled his eyes. "I'm serious. I still can't feel anything—"
With a sigh, Daniel turned and kissed the other man hard, his tongue sliding wetly against Asher's. When he pulled away, Asher was staring down at him with undisguised desire, licking his lips.
"Oh. There it is."
Daniel chuckled and turned away to keep walking. Asher followed him, a glint in his eye that promised he would pin Daniel against a tree soon. A few steps later however, the tangle of briar and young trees gave way to an open meadow, rolling even in this late season with a riot of color, the red gold leaves of birch all the fierier against sweeps of aster and forget me not. A young elk, nosing the clover on the far end of the little clearing, startled and fled as Daniel and Asher stumbled out of the bracken. A hare, less wary, mottled brown and white as it grew its winter coat, froze and watched them.
Daniel stumbled out into the clearing, eyes wide, and looked back at Asher with a grin. He didn't need to say anything. He could see the wonder in Asher's eyes. The other man took two long strides towards him and pulled him close, kissing him tenderly in the warmth of the early afternoon sun that dappled the ethereal meadow.
They tumbled together into the sweet smelling grass, hands worshipping one another without any real goal, neither of them in any rush. There was a sense of mortality, a feeling that this might be their last opportunity, and a mutual desire to make it last if they could. They took their time, crushing the flowers beneath them and rolling in the fertile scent, their hands wandering over landscapes now well-known but not yet familiar and still full of secrets to discover. Asher's fingers slid over Daniel's ribs like the keys of a piano, playing him delicately. Daniel learned and relearned the shape of Asher's jaw and the sweet hollow of his throat with lips alone. Asher pulled Daniel over him to relish the reassuring weight of the smaller man's body pressed along the length of his own, and Daniel reversed them, tugging the tie out of Asher's hair so that it would tumble around him and he could hide within its curtains of gold.
When eventually clothes began to fall to the wayside, they were removed almost with reluctance, like unwrapping the last present on Christmas Day, knowing it signaled the approach of the end. Asher would remove nothing without covering every inch of skin he bared in kisses. Daniel drank in the sight of the other man like he was water in the desert, like oxygen, trying to memorize everything he saw, from the way the sun gleamed on Asher's skin, to the white aster clinging to his hair and scattered across the intricate darkness of his tattoos.
They bared each other completely and lay revealed to the glory of nature and each other, sun bathing their skin. Daniel was struck with a sudden shyness to be so exposed in the open light of day, but Asher refused to let him hide his face, tugging his hands away to shower him in kisses. Laying in a bed of forget me not and fragrant thyme, Daniel held his breath and counted every silvered kiss Asher pressed to his skin as the other man trailed his way down Daniel's trembling body towards the heat at his center. He dragged a burning tongue up the underside of Daniel's shaft and Daniel's hips rose to follow and prolong the delicious contact. Asher kissed the blushing head of Daniel's cock before he engulfed it. Daniel, shivering and overwhelmed by the sudden enveloping heat, sighed his name and clung to Asher’s hair like gravity had vanished and it were all that was holding him to the earth. Asher's mouth rose and fell over him in measured passes, deep and slow, a gradual escalation of pleasure that promised it would not be over for a very long time. Daniel shuddered and arched, bucking for more, but Asher's hand on his hip pinned him in place like a trapped butterfly while the other man took his time in devouring him.
Just as Daniel felt himself tipping over the edge of the world into glittering oblivion, Asher pulled away. Daniel, breathless and whining, looked up to protest, to see Asher bending to fetch something from their bag, sun highlighting the bow of his ribs as he stretched. He returned with a packet of petroleum jelly from the first aid kit.
"I made sure to bring this with us," he chuckled, opening it. "Just in case."
He squeezed a portion of the jelly on his fingers and, before Daniel had time to question what he was up to, he'd leaned down to swallow Daniel again while his fingers pressed into Daniel's entrance below. Eased by the slick lubricant, Daniel was surprised how much more quickly he adjusted to the sting of intrusion. There had been a certain illicit thrill to this even before but, now that he wasn't distracted by the discomfort, it was all the more pleasant, even pleasurable. It was a strange stimulation, embarrassing in how vulnerable it made him feel, the sensitivity different from anything he was used to. And then Asher curled his fingers just the right way and Daniel, caught off guard by the bolt of pleasure that shot through him, shouted in surprise, hips jerking upward into Asher's mouth as he nearly came.
Asher pulled away from him to chuckle and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. Daniel stared at him, flustered and only just beginning to put together what that must have been. Asher smiled at him and pressed that place again, admiring the way Daniel gasped and squirmed at the nearly electric waves of stimulation that rushed through him. His mouth found Daniel's cock again, but he went slower now, just keeping Daniel in edge while he added a third and then a fourth finger, stretching Daniel open, teasing that place inside him even as his tongue played against the underside of Daniel's head relentlessly. Daniel was soon barely aware of any discomfort, thinking of nothing but how desperately he needed to cum. Asher seemed to decide the time was about right as well. He'd been holding back, teasing, and now he dove in, engulfing Daniel until the other man's cock nudged the back of his throat.
Daniel choked on the sounds of desperate pleasure that welled up in him at the dual stimulation, shuddering and crying Asher's name as the other man pushed him so suddenly over the edge of orgasm that he felt like he was falling, tumbling head over heels into ecstasy, the same way he'd fallen into this relationship. Daniel tried to gasp a warni
ng to the other man, but Asher only swallowed Daniel more deeply, milking him of every last drop.
Asher pulled away slowly as Daniel caught his breath, aftershocks and tremors of ecstasy still running through him like he was lying on a live wire.
"You didn't," he shivered, "have to do that."
"I need the calories." Asher winked playfully and shifted to kneel over Asher, kissing him softly. Daniel blushed as he tasted himself, but his attention was quickly diverted by Asher's hand under his knees, lifting his legs.
"Do you think you can?" Asher asked, and Daniel shivered as he felt the press of a hot brand against his entrance. "It's alright if you're not ready."
"No, I can do it," Daniel said quickly, before his nerves could get the better of him. He spread his legs wider for the other man, scarlet to his ears. "I can do it."
Asher swallowed hard and Daniel could practically see the desperate excitement in his eyes as he spread the rest of the lubricant on himself. "Let me know if you need to stop," Asher fixed Daniel with a serious look. "The minute anything doesn't feel right, okay? I don't want to hurt you."
Daniel nodded, but he couldn't quite form words at the moment, his thoughts focused on Asher's thick tool, currently glistening with lubricant and aiming for a place very unused to such intrusions. He thought his heart might explode. As he felt the first stretch of Asher pushing forward, he closed his eyes tight and gripped the grass, holding his breath. Asher stopped at once, leaning down to kiss Daniel's scrunched, anxious lips.
"Relax," he murmured, soothing. "I can't do anything while you're that tense. You'll be okay, Danny. I promise."
Slowly, as Asher stroked Daniel's chest and whispered reassurances, Daniel calmed down. As the tension eased, Asher slid forward, slow and careful. It burned, but not intolerably so. And Daniel knew now what could exist beyond the discomfort if he held out. He took deep breaths, the scent of grass and of the man over him filling his senses. The feeling of being spread open and filled this way was overwhelming beyond anything he could define, drowning out even the sting of the stretch. There was something shamefully satisfying in it, the weight and fullness, that Daniel worried he might become hooked on.
