Millstone & Roche, Chapter Five
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All Rights Reserved © 2020, Rick Haydn Horst Formerly known as Rick Heathen
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Thank you for delving into this work; I hope you enjoy it.
Hanging the Chimney Hook: a Millstone & Roche Investigation, By Rick Haydn Horst
Chapter Five
"I wish you could stay inside of me all the time," said Max in his deep, masculine baritone.
When we returned from breakfast with Winter, he said he needed his Thoroughbred inside him to thoroughly breed him. With his cum all over his chest, legs over my shoulders, and ass in the air, I had my horse meat planted balls-deep in that soft, tight, wet spot between those golden, fur-covered, granite man-cakes. I just laid there letting it soak while catching my breath, having worked up a sweat, transporting him to heaven and back, breeding him twice in a row. Every slap of my pelvis on his upturned ray of sunshine told me I had the most sexually perfect man for me. I had no idea anyone could take my full length and still beg for me to slam-fuck him; it boggled my mind.
"I wish I could stay inside you too; there's no place I'd rather be, but..."
"I know," he said. "There's someplace we must go. A job's a job, right?"
I nodded and repositioned myself, so I could pull free without him spilling; he never wanted to lose any of it. If he couldn't have me inside him, he would keep my loads safe and warm within his body where he felt they all belonged. I retrieved the butt-plug he brought with him from the bathroom. I leaned over him where he waited for me, and I inspected his mancunt.
"How does it look?" he asked.
"In my opinion, it needs a few more loads, but that will have to wait." I pushed the plug into him until it seated itself. He squeezed it, and only then had he lain flat. I stretched my body atop him and kissed him. "Are you happy here? Are you happy with us?"
He smiled that handsome crooked smile of his. "I'm glad you asked."
"Uh-oh."
"No. No uh-ohs," he said. "I've just started this chapter of my life, and I hope it's the longest one because I have with me the most exciting and amazing man I've ever met. You and I have known one another for a couple of months now, right?"
I nodded. "And you spent an awful lot of your precious off-time with me at the hospital, even giving me sponge baths when it wasn't your job as an RN."
"Yes, and we talked more than we had sex. I hope you realize that I began falling in love with you from day one, even when Sawyer wouldn't let just anyone see your face, including me. As far as I'm concerned, you and I have nothing but smooth sailing. But your recent experimenting has surprised me, so how are you with us?"
"I haven't a clue what love feels like," I said. "This is new, and if I haven't felt love, it's really close because I have never wanted to swallow anyone's cum until last night, nor have I felt willing to suck dick until I met you,"--I pressed my forehead to his--"my beautiful Golden Bear. I hope you realize how special to me you are."
We kissed for another minute, but we had to shower and get to the tailor before noon. Once again, Max hadn't complained when he bumped his head in the shower, trying to wash his legs and feet. He tended not to complain, so I had to observe and notice his needs while anticipating potential problems. I decided to make a new apartment a higher priority. In the meantime, I figured we could at least check on the gym memberships. I wouldn't want either of us to start losing muscle, especially Max, since he worked so hard to obtain his.
We found The Village in the old part of the city, where many higher-end merchants had their stores. Franklin had no luxury department stores; it hadn't needed them. Instead, they had many streets of individual specialty shops that sold things like cellphones or women's lingerie, another that sold men's under-gear, several that catered to leather men, several to the goths, etc. They contained them all in a thriving pedestrian zone. We had parked in one of the nearby garages and walked to The Village.
I hadn't realized it at the time, but I grew up in a highly repressed world. My feelings for Max, the experiences I had with him, the new shift in the understanding of myself (like my identity as Howard Millstone, as a man, and my sexuality) suddenly felt frightening when faced with the prospect that the public-at-large might see me as something that I had yet to fully accept in myself. The leftover emotions from the repression of my younger days started the instant we left the garage. A well-dressed, young gay couple passed us, their arm around one another looking so happy. I wanted to be happy like that, but the idea that my beautiful Golden Bear would even seek to just hold my hand in public terrified me. I felt no shame of him, or of us, but, at that moment, I justified that irrational fear, thinking I just needed time to let the dust settle from having my world upended, to let my mind grow accustomed to the new "Me," until I could think of it without the quotes. But that wasn't really the problem.
My Golden Bear, however, had an astute, clinical mind, and when the couple passed us, he asked me, "How do you feel about that?" I think I inadvertently prompted him by my facial expression.
"Confused," I said. "Have I disappointed you?"
"Of course not, it's understandable. I know that you can't spell Us without U; it's not all about me. Let's see if we can find this place." He pulled his cellphone from his pocket and checked the map. "We take a right."
We took the right, walking side by side, the two of us filling most of the sidewalk, and we could still see that gay couple far ahead of us. "How do you feel about them?" I asked.
"Well, let me tell you, you're not alone," he said. "Public displays of affection have their difficulties for some people, even for me."
"But you told me you came out when you were fourteen."
"Yes, but it's nothing to do with how long someone accepts themselves. Both before and afterward, depending on who they are, where they're from, who their family is, and what influences exist around them, many people (including myself) have gotten the clear message that some people don't want to see that. We've all heard the horror stories, seen the news, and we know that people get hurt, sometimes when they least expect it. I'm sure you've seen the occasional couple on the sidewalks of New York holding hands, or something more, like that couple right there. It takes guts to do that, and I admire them, even here; because no matter where you go, you take your fears with you, and if they can do that here and be happy, that means there's hope for people like you and me."
We found the entrance to The Village up the block and across the street. Along with many stores, we saw several bars like O'Callaghan's Irish Pub, The Three Cocks cruise bar, Chains bondage bar, In the Buff naturist pub, and the leather bar called the Ramrod. Wilson's Tailoring sat four streets over on Druesbury Lane between Morton's Cobblery, the purveyor of custom shoes, and a place called Ye Old Time Shop. If their window display indicated anything, they had every kind of timepiece imaginable.
We saw five headless torso mannequins in the tailor's window, each one had the most attractive suit I had ever seen, and the quality of them looked more impressive than the tailor I had back in New York. Mister Wilson seemed to have a singular talent for his craft.
A man left the shop just as Max went in before me, the scent of new cloth washed over us, and the tiny, dangling entry bells chimed when we opened the door, so we waited inside. A slender man of shorter than average height with salt and pepper hair emerged from the back room. He wore periwinkle blue trousers and vest over a shirt so faintly blue it looked almost white. When he saw us, he gave us a broad smile and, after our initial hello, when he began talking, we hadn't a chance to say much.
"Well, I wondered when you would get here." He held out his hand, and we shook it. "I'm Taylor Wilson, also known as Taylor the tailor. Please, do call me Taylor. You are exactly as Winter described you, Misters Roche and Millstone."--he tapped his head--"Mind like a steel trap, you know. I never forget anyone, even if they're only described over the phone. I am so looking forward to making these suits. They are going to be just marvelous. Now, if whichever one of you I will measure first would just pop their clothes onto the table and stand on the platform in front of the mirrors here, we'll get this party started, as they say."
"You want us to remove our clothing?" I asked.
"Indeed, I do, sir."
"All of it?"
"Yes."
I turned to Max to ask him about it, but he had already removed his shirt. "Oh...well...whither thou goest, I will go," I whispered and began unbuttoning my shirt.
Taylor had the platform, half surrounded by mirrors, located directly behind the wall that separated the display window from the shop. Once Max had removed his clothes, he stood on the foot-high platform, well-lit by task lighting, and the tailor stood back to give him a good viewing.
Someone should immortalize Max's body on the cover of a gay bear magazine. The golden hairs covering him shined and shimmered in the light, and the sight of my beautiful Golden Bear induced a rather poorly timed chubby.
"May I ask why you must see us naked?"
"It's for visualization purposes," said Taylor. "I don't just make suits, I can design them for each individual, and I must see the foundation that I'm working with. Trust me, I'm a professional; I vow to refrain from merely ogling your genitals."
I said under my breath, "With me, you're gonna break that vow." I had waited to remove my pants, willing myself into flaccidity, not an easy feat when seeing Max looking so astonishingly handsome.
"Mr. Roche," said Taylor, his hands up framing Max like a cameraman, "you have that classic beefy bodybuilder shape that cries for me to accentuate it."
"So, what sort of thing should I expect?" asked Max.
"Formal wear as yet undetermined," he said. "I have Winter's requested color palette--white with metallic gold. She worried that I might produce something that might clash, so she texted me a photo of her dress. She didn't provide any other details, so she left the design entirely to me." He moved his hands before him at arm's length as though he touched a suit that had yet to exist from his mind. "Could you turn around for me, please?" He did so. "Ah, yes, that's it. That settles it. I know what I must make!" He pulled out his tape measure, pencil, and pad. "Let's get you measured."
As he measured Max, a young man in his early 20s came into the shop. Taylor told him that he would be with him momentarily, but he might prefer to return after lunch as Max and I were ahead of him, and it would take some time. The man stated that he merely browsed the shop. And he could have; there were several more suited mannequins inside, many bolts of fabric to inspect, and an assortment of silk ties, handkerchiefs, and braces on display. However, he just stood near me, staring at Max on the platform, and one could hardly blame him, but something odd struck me about him. I couldn't tell if it came from his expression when I glanced at him as he entered the shop or what, but he stood a little too deep into my personal space, and he lingered a little too long for someone who merely sought to browse the shop. We both stood there watching Taylor measure Max, and when the young man began to speak to me in a low voice, he hadn't turned my direction.
"What happened to Tommy-Boy was a shame," he said, almost as if he had mentioned the weather in passing. The instant he said it, he had my attention, my guard went up, and I stepped back from him.
"Yes...wasn't it?"
"It was a shame," he repeated, finally turning to me, "but it wasn't murder; the police said so. Why not just leave it at that?" His voice sounded flat but not monotone.
"Word gets around fast in Franklin," I said. "Fortunately for you, I'm not on that case. Who are you?"
"Someone who knows otherwise." He tipped his head toward Max. "That sure is a handsome husband you got there."
Just then, I suddenly had an odd sensation of a kind of clarity, something I think my mind was searching for since we left New York, something to focus on and pinpoint, and it hadn't found it until that moment. Regardless of what the man said, he struck me as menacing. "Are you threatening us?" I whispered. "Because that would be a mistake."
"I only made an observation." His eyes turned from me to the shop around him. "On second thought, I don't care for this place. See ya around, Millstone." He turned and left.
"Who was that man?" Max held up his hand, shielding his eyes from the lighting as he stepped down from the platform.
If we hadn't needed to get the measuring done for our job with Winter, we would have left immediately. "I think he might be a problem. We should discuss it in the car," I said, shucking my pants, and as expected, Taylor broke his vow when I stood upon the platform.
"Mr. Millstone!" he exclaimed and suddenly got flustered.
"Yes, I know," I said, "you'd think my father was Seabiscuit. I hate to ask you to hit the gas on your creative process, but Max and I have someplace to go."
"Yes, of course. But...aah...two questions. I will need to take a couple of extra measurements of you, not merely out of curiosity, mind you. It...aah...has to do with the trouser leg. Would you mind if I measured you for the fit?"
I glanced at Max, who stood at the edge of the platform with a hand over his smirk trying not to laugh, and then back to Taylor. "This better be the best damn suit I've ever worn."
"And it will be, I assure you," he said.
I gave a deep sigh. "Fine. And the second question?"
"Does the gentleman dress left or right?" asked Taylor.
"What does that mean?"
"In your slacks," said Max, "which side of your pants will you carry your third leg."
"Oh! When necessary, it's the right."
As Taylor measured me from the neck down, Max stood naked in front of me, giving me the eye and playing on my desire for him. Of course, it resulted in the semi-erection he wanted of me by the time Taylor got around to my inseam. He couldn't speak except to gasp and exclaim, "My god!"
"You're a naughty man, Max," I said.
"What if you should get an erection while wearing the pants?" he asked. "Taylor needed to know the full extent of your, aah...expansion."
"Well, now my expansion needs draining before it will fit in my pants."
Taylor piped up, "Well, I'd be-"
"Don't even think about it," I said to him as he knelt at my feet. My beautiful Golden Bear hadn't once taken his eyes off me, "Besides, my dance card's Max'ed out from now on."
When the man who came into the shop made the veiled threat (and I felt certain it was), the possibility of something happening to Max changed me in an instant. The fear and ambivalence vanished when I realized my priorities, and it forced me to make up my mind about me. As Taylor measured my growing erection (not out of curiosity, he assured me), Max gave me a simple smile that I reflected, and I knew what I must do to protect him.
"Thank you for allowing that, Mr. Millstone," said Taylor. "You are truly a remarkable man."
"Don't mention it," I said, "...to anyone."
"You have my word."
"Do you need to visualize, or have we finished?" I asked as Max stepped onto the platform.
"I know the suit you need, so we've concluded the preliminaries," said Taylor as Max reached out for my cock. "If you would like, you're welcome to...oh, never mind."
Max had shoved my cockhead into his mouth and started blowing me right there; neither of us cared who saw or who would walk into the shop. I needed Max, Max needed me, and if we let him see, Taylor wouldn't complain. He stood out of view, but he watched us.
Max and I knew we couldn't take the time to linger in the ecstasy. I needed to cum, and we needed to go. He worked my schlong with both hands, and slurping sounds dominated the shop as he grappled to get at the treasure hidden within me. He slid his lips down the shaft over and over, coaxing the juices to the surface, to fill his belly in a way that few men could. He knew what would set me off, and as the building pleasure began to overwhelm me, I had leaned back as I stood there, pelvis out, my face to the ceiling and my arms dangling behind. At the moment of release, I had become a conduit with a single purpose, to feed the nectar of the gods to the man I loved; my entire being centered around my rigid pipe, draining the raw stuff of life into my beautiful Golden Bear who drank and drank, like guzzling honey from a hive.
When the flow subsided, Max followed me down as the intensity of the experience dropped me panting to my knees. He licked at the remnants, cleaned my cock, and made me presentable again. I had pulled his face to mine, kissing him deeply with a passion less restrained by years of sexual inhibitions that hadn't belonged in Franklin. They had begun melting away, replaced by a greater understanding of what it meant to live a life free of the outside world.
"Are you okay?" Max asked me, handing me my pants.
I nodded. "We should go."
Taylor appeared from the side, his face the picture of awe. "I've never seen anything so magnificent in my life," he said. "You're both welcome in my shop any time. Have you anything else I can make for you? A suit, perhaps?"
We took the time to order suits like the ones in the front window as we dressed. We thanked Taylor for his indulgence, but he acted as though we had bestowed a privilege upon him, and he thanked us.
When Max and I left, we stood in the middle of the cobblestone street for a moment, with shopping pedestrians passing us in both directions, and as I gazed upon my beautiful man, I continued to see him in that new light. My epiphany was real, and the change inside of me, something solid and enduring.
"That strange man said something that had you worried," he said. "What was it?"
"What he said hadn't worried me as much as how he said it, but mostly what he left unsaid. And for as much as I think he could be a problem for us, I should thank him for one thing. Will you do me the honor of holding my hand on the way back to the car?"
"That man must have not-said something pretty big," he said, staring at the hand I offered him.
"Let's just say he had me quickly accepting that I'm gay, and he made me realize my priorities. I don't want to live my life in fear. This will probably feel uncomfortable at first, but I suspect that the hardest part is taking the first step, and we'll learn to enjoy it. So, would you care to hold my hand?"
He looked down at my open palm. "You're okay with being gay?"
"I can't be gay with you in private, but ambivalent about it in my mind, in my language, or in public. I never could tolerate hypocrisy, especially in myself."
He gazed at my hand again. "Okay, if you can find the courage to do it, then I can too."
He clasped my hand with his, and we began our first, extremely awkward, openly gay trek in public as a couple. I wanted to tell him how much I loved him, but I preferred a better locale than in front of the Ermine & Mink drag pub across the street from our tailor.
No one seemed to care that we held one another's hand. And apparently, I wasn't the only one thinking how surreal it felt. It seems silly now to worry over such a small thing, but neither of us had held the hand of a man in public. On our way out, Max stared at our clasped hands three or four times by the point we reached the right turn out of the pedestrian zone. We could see the garage in the distance, a little more than a block away.
"What's on your mind?" I asked.
"I just keep wondering if it's really happening," he said in his sexy deep baritone. "Am I actually walking down the street with you holding my hand, or am I dreaming?"
I stopped walking and held fast to his hand. "Is it an unwelcome dream if it is?"
He stepped closer and held my hand to his chest. "No. Never."
I kissed him. "If you're sleeping, we're both having the same wonderful dream. Let's see where it takes us." We continued, and by the time we entered the garage, the private number on my phone rang. It was our cop friend and my first cousin once removed, Albert. I put the call on speaker. "Hey, Al. I'm glad you called, if you had given me a couple of minutes, I would have called you. What's up?"
"I spoke to my brother Thomas last night," he said. "We got to chatting, and the subject of you came up."
"Oh? And with what lurid details has he confided in you?" Max and I climbed into the roadster.
"No, nothing lurid, far from it. He couldn't tell me everything, but when I mentioned Tommy Two-Weeks and what happened with Edgerton, whom Thomas knows well, he told me flat out, if you thought something sounded suspicious, I should take it seriously, so I have. This morning I made a request of a friend of mine at the city morgue to perform the autopsy on Tommy, against Edgerton's wishes and our policies. The hot water I'm in with Edgerton was set to boil until the results came back a few minutes ago. The evidence suggests that Tommy had quite a bit of alcohol in his system and either had some very rough sex or was raped sometime before he took his life, which could be significant, but without his testimony saying it wasn't consensual, there's not much we can do, and his death still appears to be suicide."
"There's nothing that can be done?" asked Max.
"Tommy's family could sue the guy he dated that night in a wrongful death suit, but that's a civil matter."
"I don't remember hearing how Tommy topped himself," I said. "What method did he use?"
"He hanged himself in his closet."
"Was there anything unusual about the scene?"
"The report says that his roommate Glenn Scarborough found Tommy hanging in his closet about 10:00 a.m. He wore no shoes and had rubbed butter on the floor in front of him. It looks like he slid down the wall to five inches above the floor. He had his feet straight out in front, and the heal marks in the butter showed that he struggled a little. And get this, his hands were bound behind his back using a Chinese finger trap on his middle fingers. It had a few of Tommy's partially smudged prints on it, but that could have happened when he struggled to remove it at the last second."
"A Chinese finger trap," I said, repeating him.
"That sounds like an odd thing to use," said Max.
I spoke to Max. "If the trap is new, it's hard enough to get out of those when you can see it, let alone behind your back as your body panics from oxygen deprivation. It also has the benefit of allowing you to trap yourself without assistance. Hey, Al, can you buy one of those in Franklin?"
"I've never seen anyplace here that might sell an item like that. I have a photo of it in my hand. I shouldn't do this, but..."
I received a text with a cell photo of the photograph. "Okay, what you've got there is an anomaly." I showed the photo to Max.
"What do you mean?" asked Albert.
"I've been to Chinatown; all the Chinese finger traps I've seen come in two colors, harlequin-like. Search online if you want to see what I mean. This one is pure white, so I think it's homemade. I would start there. Ask Glenn what he knows about it. Check Tommy's things for books on origami and signs of attempts to make one of these; it would require a bit of practice. If you don't find one, I would check his internet history for videos about it, his bank account for online purchases for books on origami, check the library and local book shops to see if he checked-out or purchased a book on it. While you're at it, do the same for James Malor."
"Millstone, you know that I don't work for you, right?" asked Albert.
"That's alright, Al," I said, "I don't work for me either. I work for the truth, and to know the truth, we need facts. I don't like the idea of assuming he killed himself. The scene you describe could just as easily be a setup."
"I have something to say," said Max.
He had my attention. "Go ahead."
"I don't think he killed himself."
"Why would you think that?" asked Albert.
"When I first became a nurse," said Max, "I had my residency in behavioral health. And from everything I've heard about Tommy, he sounded like a survivor; even if he wanted to curl up and die for a time at any point in all his difficulty, he didn't; he found a way to survive whatever he was going through. Now we have a potential rape and this odd, homemade finger trap. So, take my knowledge for what it's worth, but I think you'll discover he didn't kill himself."
"There's one more thing I should add to this," I said. "While Max and I were getting measured for suits at Wilson's Tailoring, a man with dark, shoulder-length hair, pulled back into a ponytail, slender but fit, came into the shop and warned me off this case, he said that the police decided that Tommy had died of suicide and that I should leave it at that. From his words, he implied that he would harm us if I didn't leave it alone. Might that have been James Malor?"
"No," Albert said, "unless he wore a wig, Malor has shorter red hair. This changes things. What was the guy wearing?"
"Dark shirt, dark jeans, boots, I think. What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking we fell for somebody's setup. Let me talk to Edgerton, and I'll get back to you."
"One last thing," I said. "I have a license for concealed carry, but I need to buy a handgun."
"That's probably a good idea at this point," said Albert. "Try the shop on South 3rd Street. They're good."
When the call ended, Max said, "So, that's what he said to you."
I nodded. "Does that scare you?"
"Not while I'm with you."
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