Chameleon 18
Chameleon
By Mickey S
If you are under age, or live in an area where reading stories that include sex between males is illegal, or if you're not into this type of story, please leave. This is a fictional story and all characters and events are a figment of the author's imagination. My thanks to Tim and Drew for all of their help. The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at NJMcMick@yahoo.com.
Chapter 18
Livy called just after lunch Monday as I was getting ready to go back to the fields.
"Consider this my RSVP to your invitation to come out to the farm for Labor Day weekend."
"Um, I don't recall inviting you."
"Oh, that's right, you didn't! But just because you were rude doesn't mean it's right for me to be rude as well."
"You know you're always welcome here, girl. Not being able to spend time with you is the worst thing about my leaving the city. But what brings this on?"
"Nothing really. I'm just missing you. We've talked on the phone about a dozen times since that day you and Declan came into the city for your stuff, but that's not the same as seeing your ugly puss."
"Okay, then, this weekend it is. Will Sandy be staying here with you?"
"No, although I'm sure we'll get together over the weekend, especially if you invite her, not that I'm telling you what to do."
"You're so subtle in your hints. How about Saturday night? This is a busy time on the farm so I wasn't planning a big holiday cookout like we did for the Fourth of July."
"Anything you decide would be fine. I know you're working 'round the clock and don't want to make extra work for you."
"How do you feel about horses? Declan and I go riding Saturday afternoons. We could make it a foursome."
"I don't know how Sandy feels about that, but unless you're talking about a hansom cab ride I think we'll pass. I'm sure we can find something else to amuse us for the afternoon."
"Okay, then that'll be couples time for both of us. But we'll do a nice dinner at the house that night."
Wednesday night my dinner out with Declan was quieter than usual. He seemed a little preoccupied. When I questioned him he blamed it on work. For myself, I was exhausted. Because Livy was coming for the weekend I was working extra hard to get as much done as I could. I suggested that Declan spend Friday night as well as Saturday at the farm, since I wouldn't be doing any work Saturday morning anyway, but he was content to stick with our original plans, saying I would probably appreciate some alone time with Livy. I hadn't thought of it that way, but when I did I wasn't too disappointed.
Livy arrived Friday afternoon as I was starting to milk the cows. She turned down my offer for her to grab an udder, preferring to watch and talk. She mostly talked about the city, people and places we both knew, and her recent photo shoots. I told her all about the previous weekend with Declan, leaving out the juicy details, of course. We talked on the phone a couple of times a week so there wasn't much going on in either of our lives the other didn't know about, but it was somehow better going over it all in person.
After I'd taken care of the cows and put away the milk we went to the house, where Livy greeted Dad with a big hug. He seemed embarrassed but didn't push her away. The two of them got along better than I would have imagined. I think Dad liked her brashness. Over a simple supper of grilled chicken, baked potatoes and salad, they did most of the talking. I was almost jealous of the way Dad listened to every word of her tales of life in the city.
Later, after we'd cleaned up, Dad went into the living room to watch TV and Livy and I took our after dinner drinks to the porch. For a while I thought she must have talked herself out over supper because she was uncharacteristically quiet.
"Sandy has suggested I move in with her," she blurted out all of a sudden.
"You're kidding! You've only known each other two months. You dykes sure move fast."
"Believe me, even for me, this is fast. But things have been really good between us and it's tough only seeing each other on weekends."
"So you're seriously considering it?"
"Considering, yes, but I just don't know. I've had three live-in girlfriends, but they all moved into my apartment. That made it easy on me when things turned sour. They moved out and I went on with my life. But for me to be the one moving, I don't know."
"Plus, you're such a city girl. I can't imagine you being happy living in a small town like Newton."
"It would be a huge change. I love the city and would miss it terribly."
"Since she's the one pushing living together, why doesn't she offer to move into the city?"
"Her job is out here. Mine, with a little arranging, can be anywhere I am. So I'm the one who would have to move."
"It sounds to me like you don't like the idea, yet you're still thinking about it. What gives?"
"I know it's only been a short time, but I love her. I want to be with her, more than just weekends."
I'd heard Livy profess love for a woman before, many times in fact, but there was something in her voice that was different this time. Even so, knowing her track record I thought it was dangerous for her to uproot her entire life after so short a time.
"How do you know she's the one? You've loved lots of women in the time I've known you. What makes her different?"
"I can't put my finger on it. It's lots of things that don't seem like much individually, but they add up to something huge. It's more a feeling they trigger, not a rational decision. For example, how would you describe your feelings for Declan?"
"That's different. We're just dating. I don't love him."
"You don't? Have you ever listened to yourself when you talk about him?"
I thought about what she said. Sure, I loved being with Declan, every minute. When he wasn't around I thought about him all the time. A hundred times a day something would pop into my head and my first thought would be, 'I can't wait to tell Declan,' or 'I wonder what Declan will say about this?' I looked forward to our dates and missed him the minute he was gone. And now the sex. Damn, that was good. I'd had plenty of it in my life, and all kinds, but nothing came close to what being with Declan was like. But love him? I hadn't allowed myself to think like that. I'd never loved anyone, not in a romantic way, and my mind just wasn't set to think along those lines.
"I hate to admit it, but I really don't know what love is. You're the expert on that."
"There's no such thing as an expert on love. But like I was saying, you can't just think things over and decide you're in love. You have to follow your heart and feel it."
That was a big help. I hadn't had much luck following my heart when it came to the rest of my life - where to live, how to live, what to do, who to be - and now in the most important thing, love, I was supposed to trust my feelings?
"Forget it, I'm a lost cause. Besides, we were talking about you."
"You're not a lost cause, Silas. You just have to let yourself feel. But you're right, we were talking about me and my love life. And though you may not be the right one to ask for advice, you're all I've got."
"Would waiting a while longer hurt things any? Not that I'm not advocating procrastination, but if this is really true love I don't think it will go anywhere if you take your time to decide what to do."
"I suppose not. After all, even if I decide to move out here it wouldn't happen overnight. I'd have to find someone to sublet my apartment in the city, rearrange my whole professional life to work less in the city and more on my own out here, and make plans with you and Declan to come move my personal stuff."
"Sublet?"
"Of course. I said I was in love, not an idiot. With my romantic history do you think I'd be stupid enough to give up a wonderful rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side before I was absolutely sure it would work? Subletting will give me a year to see how things turn out."
"You've obviously given it some thought."
"Yeah." She paused and took a sip of her drink. "I'm gonna do it, Silas, It's just that I'm a little scared and need your support."
Damn! Livy scared? That had never happened before.
"Whatever you decide to do, you know I'll support you. I'll always be there for you."
That night I lay in bed and thought about love. Was that what I felt toward Declan? I sure liked him a hell of a lot. And I was drawn to him in every way, not quite to the point of obsession, but he was on my mind most of the time. Maybe that was love. No maybe about it, I suddenly realized. Once I let down my guard and was honest with myself, I knew it was love. I was nuts about him.
But how did he feel? He wasn't even gay, he was just bi. I knew he liked me a lot, but love? The odds were against it.
I was surprised and more than a little disappointed when Declan showed up after lunch the next day without Thelma and Louise.
"Where are the dogs? Aren't you spending the night?"
"Don't look so down, Silas. Of course I'm staying over, if you want me to, that is. We'll pick them up on the way back after our ride."
"You mean you're actually going to let me see your house?"
"What do you mean?" The look on his face didn't go with the casual, innocent question. He looked uncomfortable, confirming my suspicion that he'd been avoiding taking me to his place.
"Never mind."
Livy and Sandy, in true lesbian fashion, were going to a baseball game, the season finale of a minor league team that played its home games at a ball park between Sussex and Newton. They'd left before Declan arrived, so Dad would have been home alone taking care of the dogs. He'd done it the week before and didn't mind, but it made more sense for them to stay at Declan's place until we picked them up later. I hadn't been able to convince him of that the week before, however.
As he drove to the stables, Declan's preoccupied mood of Wednesday night was still with him. I asked him about it as we rode the horses into the state park.
"It looks like this park is turning into our confessional, and this time it's my turn."
Uh-oh, that didn't sound good.
"What are you talking about.?"
"I knew I'd have to come clean with you at some point and it looks like I've put it off as long as I could." He hesitated, putting whatever it was off a few seconds longer, then took a deep breath. "I knew about your escort career before you told me."
"You, too? But how?"
"That day when Sam had his second attack and I found all of those racy pictures of you scattered around the living room after the ambulance took him away. One of them was a printout from the Dream Dates website. I had no idea what it was but it intrigued me. I slipped it into your father's file before you saw it and looked it up later."
"Damn, it looks like I didn't succeed in keeping my secret from anyone. I might as well have sent a press release to the local paper when I came home. You seem to have handled the news okay, though."
"Actually, I didn't. I was appalled, to tell the truth. I was pretty hung up on you by that point. In high school, I was very attracted to you even though I didn't know you well. You were so sweet, so innocent, but so real. When I got to know you again this spring, you were still the same guy. I was impressed that all of those years in the city hadn't changed you. You were the guy I'd always thought you were. And then to find out you were a, well, prostitute. I was horrified. It was like you'd been leading me on, pretending to be something you weren't."
"I didn't mean to. I didn't tell anyone back here about my job."
"I know, you had no idea what my feelings were for you so you weren't deliberately misleading me, but that's what it felt like. It hurt. You must have noticed how I was avoiding you after that."
I'd been mostly focused on Dad's condition and making arrangements to get rid of Teddy, but I had noticed that Declan was keeping his distance and wondered about it.
"So what changed your mind? You came around after a while."
Declan was quiet for a long time, looking straight ahead as if in a trance. Finally, he spoke.
"Okay, here comes the real confession. Please don't hate me."
"Hate you? What are you talking about?"
"I've felt so guilty about this. Here I was, thinking you'd deceived me, but I really deceived you. You see, I hired you. Remember the guy whose townhouse you went to in Hamburg?"
I thought back to that date, the closeted athletic guy in the ski mask, his perfect ass and the amazing rimming experience we'd shared. That had been Declan, the object of my fantasies for so many years, and I hadn't even known.
My head was spinning and I felt sick to my stomach. I dug my heels into the horse's sides, spurring her on ahead of Declan. I needed a minute to think, to recover from the shock. The minute turned into several, as I was unable to control the various emotions that were swirling through me. Declan stayed silent behind me for a while but finally called out.
"Hold up, Silas. Let's walk a while and talk."
I didn't feel like talking to him but I stopped and dismounted. He also got down from his horse and we walked, leading the horses.
"Why, Declan? How could you have used me like that, lied to me, deceived me?"
"I didn't mean to, although I wasn't really concerned about that at first. The website gave me a pretty good idea what it was all about, so I knew it was an escort business, but when I called them they didn't want to give me any specific information over the phone. I guess they have to be careful in a business like that. By pretending to be a potential customer, I got an appointment to see them and find out more. Later that led to the idea of actually hiring you. I was running on a combination of anger and lust. Like I said, I was mad at you, feeling like you had lied to me."
"It was a pretty cold, cruel thing to do to a friend."
"I know, originally I had intended to just act like a potential client to get information about you. I meant what I said before about finding the whole concept of paying for sex humiliating. But my attitude was also something like, 'If he wants to be a whore, I'll treat him like a whore.' At least until I got into the city and talked to that woman at the agency. She was so unlike what I was expecting, so sweet and sympathetic, I found myself opening up to her. In fact, she took me to lunch and we talked about you for an hour. She thinks the world of you, you know."
"Yeah, Karen can be a real sweetheart. So she was in on this? I'll kill the bitch."
"Don't be mad at her. She thought she was playing cupid. She came up with the idea of pretending that I'd asked for other escorts to throw you off. I think her fantasy was that once we were in bed I'd pull off the mask and we'd live happily ever after. But my feelings were still too conflicted and I didn't want to admit who I was. And, while the sexual experience was incredible, you were a real revelation also. As much as it could have been a very impersonal anonymous sex act, you were so tender, so caring, so human. You weren't the cold sex machine I expected. Even in that limited interaction, you were Silas, the guy I'd always thought I'd known. That really threw me."
"I'm just me, Declan. Even though on the surface when I was working I was always playing a role, one that someone else thought up, it was still me underneath. I'm not a machine. It hurts so much that you could have thought I was."
Without any warning, tears began running down my face. Was that what everyone thought of me, that I was some kind of inhuman iceman, no feelings, just a body with a hard dick and a couple of accommodating holes?
Declan grabbed my shoulders, pulled me toward him and hugged me, holding me tight against him.
"Oh god, I'm so sorry, Silas. I can't even claim my motives were good, because they weren't. I was so mixed up and part of me wanted to hurt you. But the end result was good. I learned so much about you and realized how much I cared for who you really were."
My emotional flare-up ended quickly and I pulled away from him, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
"Better watch it, somebody might come along and see us hugging."
"I don't care about that. I love you, Silas. I was an idiot and I hurt you and I'm sorry. Now how can I make it up to you?"
"You love me?" I asked in disbelief.
"Yeah, I do. I guess I've known for a while, but after last weekend I've just wanted to shout it all week. I was planning a more romantic setting to tell you, but you have to know. I'm crazy head-over-heels in love with you, and we've just got to get past this and make things right again between us."
He loved me! Damn! Just last night I'd decided there was no way he loved me. After my revelation the night before, the realization of my feelings for him, and now his admission of love, this was the perfect time for me to tell him the feeling was reciprocal. But I couldn't do it. For one, my emotions were still churning inside. The tears may have stopped but I was a mess. Besides, saying 'me too' would sound so trite, so forced.
So instead I kissed him, effectively ending our conversation, at least for a moment.
We stopped at Declan's house on the way back to the farm to pick up the dogs. Although I'd only been there once, it felt very familiar. It had only been six weeks or so, after all. I still wasn't feeling right about what Declan had done, but after his profession of love I pushed those feelings aside.
"I wasn't exactly paying attention to the décor the last time I was here - some hot guy was parading around naked - but you've made some changes."
"Well, aside from having a neighbor take the dogs for the afternoon, I stripped the place of anything personal that might have given me away."
"You did a lot of stripping that day."
"So did you, as I recall."
"Those were my orders, and I was very good at following orders."
"Hmm, we'll have to explore more along those lines some day."
"We could do some exploring right now if you'd like. Livy and Sandy might not be back for a while. The game could have gone into extra innings."
"I'm glad you seem to have forgiven me, but let's wait till tonight. I want to give you your fantasy. What we did here before was pretty much it even though we weren't aware of it at the time. I think when we do it again it might be better to try somewhere else."
"I see your point. Let's get back to the farm so I can continue to pretend that didn't happen."
It turned out there were no extra innings and Livy and Sandy were back before us. They were sitting on the front porch sipping iced tea with Dad. After greeting them I left Declan with them and went to the barn to take care of the cows.
I was pleasantly surprised to find supper under way when I came back. Declan had a fire going in the grill and the others had set the dining room table, prepared a salad and shucked several ears of sweet corn. Since I'd made potato salad and cole slaw earlier there wasn't much to do other than throw the steaks on the grill and boil the corn.
The conversation over dinner was mostly about Livy's plans to move out from the city. She was really going through with it. Watching her with Sandy made me think that maybe it wasn't a mistake. There was something about the way they fed off each other's energy. I hadn't had much of a chance to observe them together the day I'd moved out of the city. It was only a lunch we all shared, and I was pretty focused on Declan and moving at the time.
Dad surprised me by foregoing his usual evening of television and sat in the kitchen while we all cleaned up after the meal. I'd never thought of Dad as especially social, but now I realized how lonely he must have been the past twelve years all by himself on the farm. Even the conversation of two gay couples was preferable to being alone with the boob tube. We all had after dinner drinks on the porch. Dad retired early, as expected, and the four of us didn't stay up much longer. We all claimed to be tired but I was sure Livy and Sandy weren't going upstairs to sleep any more than Declan and I were.
"You were pretty quiet all evening," Declan said as I closed the bedroom door behind me. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I guess my mind kept drifting back to our conversation this afternoon, but I think I'm okay with it. It was all such a surprise." Especially the admission of love that he ended with.
"Then you're ready for your fantasy? You're not going to be disappointed that we've done it before?"
"I hope we'll be doing lots of the same acts over and over again and I'm sure we won't get bored with them. Besides, making love can never be exactly the same twice even if it does involve the same sexual act."
"I can't imagine ever being bored with you, Silas."
"While we've only started actually having sex, I've been fantasizing about you for nearly fifteen years and I'm hotter for you than ever."
Declan had been slowly, very slowly, undressing as we talked. It wasn't exactly a strip tease without music but it was close. From his grin I was sure he was aware of how distracting he was.
"Enough talking, Declan. Time to make my fantasy reality."
And we did. We repeated the scene we'd had at his house several weeks before, starting out the same, with him naked, facedown on the bed. No ski mask this time, though, and we were both somewhat more vocal. Not as loud as we'd like to have been, but with Livy and Sandy just down the hall we still had to hold back a bit.
After several minutes of rimming he was begging me to fuck him in between whimpering. I was always good at following instructions, so after sheathing my rod, I entered him from the rear. After several minutes of pounding him, loving the feeling of my hips slamming against his hot butt cheeks, I pulled out and had him roll over. I wanted to finish up in a position where I could see his beautiful eyes. Later, after earthshaking orgasms, we lay side by side, catching our breath.
"So, was it as good as you fantasized?"
"Better, because it was real. And in my fantasy it was all about me, how I wanted it and enjoyed it. The fact that it was mutual enjoyment made it infinitely better. And, before you ask, while I loved the experience at your place, this was tons better because this time I knew who you were."
"And, as you said, it wasn't exactly the same. We weren't following a script this time."
"Yeah, who knew I was so good at ad-libbing? By the way, I seem to remember you had dark eyes that day."
"You never heard of tinted contact lenses?"
"You really went all out to hide." A horrible thought occurred to me. "Please don't tell me you wear blue-tinted lenses all the time?"
"Don't worry, they're clear. This deep blue color is all mine."
We were quiet for a few minutes, enjoying a little cuddling. Declan surprised me with his next question.
"Not that I'm trying to get rid of her, but do you know what time Livy is leaving Monday?"
"She hasn't said anything about that. Why?"
"Well, my parents are having a big family cookout Monday afternoon and I thought that would be a good way for everyone to meet you. And vice versa."
"You mean it? You're ready to come out to them?"
"Not quite. I've been debating how to go about that and I'm still not sure when I'll do it. But I think it might go over better with them if they've met you first. You know, if they've already met you and like you, they'll be more likely to accept it."
"I thought you said they would love you and accept you no matter what. Now you're making it sound like it all depends on if they like me."
"No, not at all. I'm sure it will all be fine in any case. But if they know you, it will be even better. Please don't feel like there's any pressure on you to make it work."
"That's good, because I'm not good in that kind of social situation in the best of circumstances."
"Don't worry about it. Just be yourself and I'm sure they'll love you as much as I do. Well, maybe not quite that much, but enough."
He'd said it again. He loved me. And once again I let the chance to say it back slip by, but not by conscious decision. I was nervous about the prospect of meeting Declan's family, but thrilled with what it meant. This was a huge step forward in our relationship.
"I'll talk to Livy in the morning. It's a long weekend and I don't think she'll mind ending her visit with me a few hours early, especially for a reason as good as this one. Besides, she can go to Sandy's place if she doesn't want to go back to the city."
A few minutes later Declan's rhythmic breathing told me he'd fallen asleep. I was too nervous. I had to keep reminding myself of how good meeting his folks was, not how stressful it would be. Watching my beautiful Declan sleep helped calm me down. I finally felt drowsy enough to fall asleep myself. Just before I did, I whispered in his ear, "I love you, too, Declan."
TBC