Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/rural/lake-desolation/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
"Hi, Logan. I'm Jacob." I shock myself. I have not told a person my original name for, perhaps, forty years. I've been Stettler McKay since I was 22, when I submitted my first novel. Maria is... was the only person who called me Jacob or Jake. I turn back and find the boy staring at me, confused and terrified. I grab a bowl and pour soup (mainly broth) into it, then sit cross-legged in front of 'Logan'. He looks at the bowl with revulsion, but I prop him up and spoon it into him, bit by bit. The act of eating exhausts him, and I watch as he sleeps, finally peaceful. Tremors wrack him occasionally, but I think the worst is past. The question remains, though: Who or what have I brought into my otherwise-hermetic world?
***** Lake Desolation 2: Coming Clean
By Bear Pup
M/M; plot only
Logan wakes again near suppertime, wracked with bone-jarring chills. It's obvious that he is no threat to himself or me any longer, so I remove the restraints. I carry his emaciated frame into the bathroom and sit him on the commode. He looks at me in gratitude and humiliation. I let him take care of business while I fill the massive tub that Maria loves... loved with hot, sudsy water, and put all the bedding he'd been sleeping in to wash. I get him into the bath and he howls as the hot water hits his cold skin. Logan wants to object or even fight me off, but he has the strength of a starved kitten. I ignore him and begin to wash him.
I flash back in an almost-physical way to bathing my son. Joseph was 16 at the time and contracted something we'd never even heard. Over spring break of his sophomore year, he took a two-week, school-sponsored tour of Australia. He came back more excited and thrilled than we'd seen him in years, chattering about everything he'd seen. About a week after he got home, the headaches started. Quickly on the heels of that symptom came fevers, chills, sweats, diarrhoea and intense, widespread pain. By then samples had already been sent off to the CDC and a diagnosis had come back, Q Fever. He was likely exposed at (of all the bizarre things) a sheep-shearing competition the tour visited.
What we think of today as "The Internet" had not yet been invented (sorry Mr Gore and Mr Berners-Lee), but as a by-then-major author, I had significant library contacts. I had one run a MEDLINE search for everything ever written about Q Fever and C. burnetii. It told me what the doctors did: Antibiotics and time would likely bring my son back to me.
They were right, it took months of treatment before Joseph (never, ever 'Joe') was "really" back and another year before he was actually healthy. The lingering after-effects never went away completely. As a result, Joseph lost a year of school. Home schooling was virtually unknown and largely restricted to shadowy religious cults at the time, but Maria and I took turns teaching him everything we thought he might be missing.
My publisher sent me a reminder about a deadline that I ignored, then a second which I didn't. I sent back five offer-letters from rival houses with a note that said, "If, before the day my son is again healthy, I see your return address on an envelope that does not contain a royalty cheque or a statement and nothing else, you will never get another written word from me. Fuck deadlines, fuck my contract and fuck you. Thank You & Have a Nice Day, (s) Stettler McKay" I got two Christmas cards and nothing else before Joseph was back in school. I never felt guilty, but I also gave them three novels (one reached the NYT list) in the next 10 months. The episode was never mentioned again.
Logan is thinner and taller that our Joseph was. His ribs, knees and elbows are sharp and pronounced, where Joseph was always muscular and tended to fleshiness (which he hated). Logan also fought me in a way that Joseph never had, as I washed all of him. Joseph had practically died the first time I soaped his 'man parts', but I didn't care and he at least appreciated that I did it and not Maria.
I drain the water once when it becomes too cloudy for me to see. Between the chill-forced shakes and humiliated crying, Logan really says nothing. There is something else profoundly different, though. I notice Logan in a way that I never noticed Joseph. Another flashback comes from far, far earlier. I am suddenly 15 and at summer camp in a place called Camp Sinnemahoning in northern Pennsylvania.
I was an introvert and shy beyond words, and cursed my parent every single day I was there. I wasn't sure if I was blessed or cursed, but I was forced into a tent with only one other guy, Martin. He was outgoing, sports-inclined, a natural leader. Everything I feared and secretly longed to be. Two weeks of finding remote thickets and quiet corners in which to 'relieve the tension' snapped suddenly when Martin came back unexpectedly and caught me moments from orgasm. He came in, changed his shirt, heard me explode convulsively and walked out as if nothing was odd.
I skipped dinner -- do you KNOW what a sacrifice that was for a 15-year-old? -- and pretended to be asleep when Martin got back to the cabin. He shook me until I stopped pretending and asked, "What the hell is the problem, Jake?"
I stuttered and stammered and finally he told me to shut up and explained that he thought I didn't know what my cock was for and so made sure to relieve himself when I was asleep or out. Now that he "knew I was actually a guy," he'd stop pretending. Martin took me under his rather impressive wing for the rest of that stay. He wasn't shy about his dick (shorter but thicker than mine) and showed me about ten new ways to jack off. He pointed out guys who were 'obviously' playing with each other and others who were so freaked out by the idea that all they did was look and lust after other guys.
Like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales fell from my eyes. Sex was EVERYWHERE and not just okay, but positively essential. It was the first and last time I touched a cock sexually. Martin and I jacked each other off several times. I tasted (without letting him see) his cum and mine and decided... meh, take it or leave it. I even watched one guy (a Leader) blow another (a Junior) with Martin giving me a running commentary that had me shooting down the leg of my pants. Ah, to be young.
Back in the present, Logan is getting aroused by the sponge. I am not deliberately teasing him (I don't think that I am) but I find a tightness in my chinos that I'd not felt in, oh, 51 years. I find myself uniquely drawn to Logan's nipples. Like Maria, Logan has what I call 'fried egg' tits. A huge aureole and a tight, thick little nub in the centre. They're sensitive, too. When the sponge moves across them, his breath catches adorably. I might, perhaps, spend a tiny bit more time than strictly necessary there.
Moving south, my sponge encountered a LOT of young man. Logan blushes and turns his face to the wall. The water is murky enough that I can't really see what he's packing, but it's certainly a large calibre weapon. I make sure to wash it thoroughly, even though Logan is mortified. Nice, full balls below and they get the same very, very thorough treatment. I shake myself. What is this; am I entering a second childhood?
I lean Logan forward and work on his back. He's absolutely not pleased about anything that's happening, but neither was Joseph in a similar situation. Logan really squirms when I get to his ass. He is sensitive in addition to being very sore. After living rough for at least a while then suffering serious diarrhoea, it is expected. I am as gentle as I can, but he still hisses or whimpers a number of times and it bothers me that I'm hurting this poor kid.
I pull the plug and the grey water drains away. Logan has a look of frank horror on his face, but at least he's clean and the wracking chills have stopped. As I gather a couple of fluffy towels, I smile as I see why he is so wide-eyed. He is trying quite unsuccessfully to hide an extremely impressive erection behind shaking, small, thick hands.
I pretend not to notice or care as I pull him from the tub, prop him against the sink and begin to dry his body. He is emaciated, but the bone structure is both solid and impressive. He is shorter than me by at least eight inches. I was six-three but the doctors tell me I'm now more around six feet. Logan, then, is probably five-six or even a little less. I'd thought he was tanned, but I revise the opinion; he is at least partly Hispanic, especially when his crotch comes into view. A light dusting of black hair on his chest and legs, a nice treasure-trail, and a riotous explosion of hair in pits and crotch match his thick curls on his head.
He'll have massive shoulders and thick legs when he has a decent meal... or twenty. Right now, he looks a little like a body-builder who'd been steamrolled. Looked at side-on, he was hardly even there and his belly plunged in from this ribcage. If anything, that simply exaggerates his hefty, dark-coloured, meaty cock and rough, heavy-handing balls. He's uncut, something common when I was a lad and nearly unheard-of when Joseph grew up. I skin back the foreskin as I would my own and his breath shudders and gasps and I gently clean the smegma away. He starts to leak a little and my own breath catches. I wrench my eyes away from that tiny pearl of moisture and turn him to start on his back.
My hands start to shake as I work to dry that side of Logan. His shoulders are so wide for someone so short, and his ass, though shrunken, looks like it was stolen from a classical nude. I find a way to put my attention back to the job at hand and finish drying him, though I can barely breathe as I dry his crack. I'd laid out some sweats and wrestle him into them, rolling the legs and arms up comically. Throughout, he's watched me with simple fear, as if I were a bear, kindly right now but potentially lethal if he moves a muscle.
I take his shoulder and drag him to the table. Having a feeling of what he might need when he finally came out of it, I'm making chicken and rice, not a soup per se but close, with lots of lean chicken, little fat and only veggies for flavouring. It still has twenty minutes to bubble. I draw a big glass of water, knowing he must be badly dehydrated. He sips, then glugs the water. I refill it. I throw the washed clothes into the dryer then sit down across from him.
"Okay, Logan, you haven't said a word other than your name since I brought you in. You can talk, right?"
He nods, then blushes. "Yes, sir."
Interesting. 'Sir' and very polite, but he'd been hiding in my woods, starving and filthy, apparently minutes from killing himself.
"I don't want to know your last name. You're obviously terrified about something and, for a guy your age, that probably means the law." His expression proves me right. "Is your real, actual name Logan, son?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay, Logan, you were near dead when I brought you in and you're weak as a kitten. A few things you need to know. There are no weapons in this house, and no real money, and no drugs. Right now, those things don't matter cuz I can whoop you with a wet dishtowel.
"I mention 'no drugs' for a reason. Am I right that you just went through withdrawal?"
Logan's head drops and he nods. I see the glint of tears.
"Which drug. This might be important." Silence, but more tears. I refill his empty water then tire of waiting for an answer. "Logan!" He jumps as if shocked and looks at me, wide-eyed and breathing shallow and fast.
"M-Morphine."
"Anything else?"
"No, sir."
"How long were you hooked?"
"Since I was sixteen." Jesus. What a fucked up world.
"When was your last fix?"
"Thursday." I have to think for a minute. I don't watch TV and calendars don't mean much to me, but I am pretty sure it's Monday. That means I'd picked him up on Sunday so he'd already been in the early stages of withdrawal for at least 24 to 48 hours. Damn. No wonder he wanted to kill himself.
"Okay, Logan, that means that you are probably past the worst of it. You have about a week of aftershocks ahead of you -- and a lifetime of cravings. There is nothing in this cabin or within walking distance that can make that need, that itch go away." I make a mental note to get rid of the bottle of Cruzan at the earliest opportunity. It strikes me that I'd not had my daily tot(s) yesterday, and haven't even thought of it today. It's been another whole day without a teardrop, too. Interesting.
"Other than the addiction, any other health problem that I need to know about? Have you been tested for HIV?"
He shakes his bowed head then nods.
I sigh deeply. "Logan, look at me and talk to me. Does that mean you are or are not HIV positive?"
"I get tested, and I'm negative. I've never sh-shared... you know. I, I get pneumonia easy, but nothing else, sir."
"Sharing is not the only way to get infected, Logan, and you know it."
His head drops again. "That's not a problem, either." His voice is tiny and young.
"How old are you, Logan?"
"20 last August."
"And sexual transmission is not a problem because...?" Again the silences and the tears. "Logan!" It's nice to know that decades later I still have Dad Voice.
"I never... you know. Even for fix money, I never. Until Mom passed, I never needed the money, and after, well..." He is now weeping openly. I pat his shoulder which actually seems to make it worse. I move next to him and put my arms around his shoulders and let him settle. He claws into my shirt and cries for a long spell, then looks up, shame, self-loathing and fear clear in his face. "I'm sorry. I really am. I fucked up so bad. Wh-why didn't you just sh-shoot me?"
I cocked my head. "Because that would help no one. Everyone needs a chance, Logan, and I'm not sure you've ever had one." I stood and dished out a small bowl of the hot, rich, juicy rice with lots of chicken, meat and veggies. I set it in front of my new charge, who looks at it with greater fear than he'd looked at me. "Logan, I don't give a fuck if you want to or not, you WILL be eating this. Are we clear, son?"
Logan's molten-chocolate eyes look into mine. He picks up the teaspoon I've given him with a quaking hand and begins to messily get about half the mixture into himself. I settle into the dryer-warmed blankets, this time making less of a nest and more of a bed. "We'll work this out, son. But right now you need to sleep." I watch him snuggle a little into the covers before he's out like a light. I take my own bowl over to my laptop and start to write, not really thinking, letting the characters do the storytelling. It will be hours later when I realise, these are the first words I've written since Maria passed.
Let me know your thoughts, as always.
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Karl & Greg: 19 chapters .../incest/karl-and-greg/ Canvas Hell: 16 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 8 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 9 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Mud Lark Holler: 8 chapters .../rural/mud-lark-holler/ Off the Magic Carpet: 3 chapters .../military/off-the-magic-carpet/ Lake Desolation: 2 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/