Wasted Life

Not much to say about this one. Have a look. I suspect this chapter will be therapeutic for Law.

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NOTE: Check out my other stories in the Sci-fi / Fantasy Section Crown Vic to a Parallel World From Whence I Came Stolen Love

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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik

23 An Embrace Between Friends

I stared at Walt until the match in my hand burned my fingers. I dropped it to the floor. It extinguished itself on the way down. I tried to refuse Walt's offer. "I can't."

Walt argued very gently with me. "Yes, you can." He said in a soft voice full of understanding. "Don't worry, it doesn't mean anything. You need this and I've missed it. No strings, no expectations. Just an embrace between two old friends."

My body ignored my better judgement and moved automatically. It got up from my chair and crossed to where Walt waited for it. He pulled me against him. He wrapped me in his strong arms and pulled me into his body. He leaned his forehead against mine just to the side of the tender spot. I felt his heat and breathed his scent. His robust presence and the protection of his strength banished my cares. My whole world shrank until it existed only in him.

"Law." He breathed my name as a question over my face.

"Yeah."

"Would you kiss me?"

I tilted my head back, a little to the side, and leaned into him to bring my mouth to his. We kissed. Our lips parted and I tasted his salty mouth. With that, the last of my senses to surrender to him. We lingered in the doorway, to savor each other, to remember the pleasure we once shared. `My God, I missed you.' I thought because I was unable to say it aloud.

Walt broke our kiss. As he did, he ended a moment I could have lived the rest of my life within. "Are you ready?" He asked tenderly, like it was my first time.

"Yeah." I said and abandoned my will to whatever he had planned. Walt led us into my room and shut and locked the door.

That late night or early morning, Walt guided us both. We moved like we had during the dance we shared so many years before. He used his athletic strength and natural grace to move us smoothly from one pleasure to the next. My body became an instrument in the hands of a virtuoso. Our music was a concerto of passion that rose steadily to a shattering climax and tender denouement. What he'd given me, transcended `sex.' It was a glorious religious experience, the worship of all the possibilities of the male body.

When we first entered the room, Walt had me sit on my pull-down bed while he removed his robe. He draped the robe over his arm and eyed the narrow bathroom door with suspicion. "I'll need a minute to get ready. Can I use your bathroom?"

I knew what that meant. Walt had decided to give himself to me and he needed to clean up. He'd decided to bottom because he thoughts that's what I needed. A part of me was excited by the prospect of fucking Walt, but that part was the horny, adolescent part. The rest of me didn't seem to have the energy. The rest of me was too worn down by anger and sadness and the passage of lonely time.

I summoned what remained of my strength to tell Walt what I wanted, what I desperately needed. "I'll clean up." I sighed to the dimness of my wreck of a bedroom.

Walt tried to refuse. He seemed to believe that his offer to bottom was a kindness, a treatment for my misery. "I don't mind." He said and stopped his words in a way that made it sound like he'd left something unsaid.

I forced myself to speak in the silence he'd left me. "Please," I begged, "let me. I want it."

Walt crouched down in front of me. He cupped my right cheek in the warm palm of his strong hand. He lifted my head enough that our eyes met. "This is for you." He explained. "Whatever you want out of the time we're about to spend together, you can have. No judgement. If you want to receive, that's fine. You go get ready. I'll wait for you."

I forced myself to stand, and I went into the bathroom. I shed my suit and tossed it over the bar that held the curtain in front of my shower stall. I dumped my underclothes onto the dirty floor. I looked for and found the thin, rubber hose I used to clean myself for sex and fastened one end of it to the sink faucet. I turned the water on at a slow trickle and set the temperature. When it flowed the way that I wanted it to, I took the flowing end into the shower stall with me.

I spit on my hand and applied the spit to my anus, then I tried to get the flowing hose inside of me without washing the spit away. The task took me two tries to achieve while using hands that acted like they were made from cold clay. As the water did its work, I stared at the smutty yellow and white tiles of my shower stall and wondered why I was doing what I was doing.

Why didn't I just accept his offer?' I asked myself. I always choose to top when the choice is offered. I've walked away from sex when I was asked to bottom. Why did I insist he top me? Why am I the one here with the hose up his ass?'

I had no answer for those questions. I had no answer except for a very small voice, deep inside of my soul, that told me what I needed most was to give myself to Walt. I didn't often listen to that voice, but that particular night or early morning, I felt I had to listen to it. I felt that I had to do what it said.

I finished my cleaning and expelled the water. I tossed the coil of hose into the sink and took a quick shower to wash off the sweat of the day. I dried myself and paused on my way out of the bathroom to scrutinize my reflection in the mirror. "Look at you." I said aloud to the reflection that I hated. "You look like shit."

I shrugged my shoulders and let them hang. I opened the door between the bathroom and the bedroom and stepped from one to the next. Walt stood from the bed to greet me. In my absence he'd stripped to his skin. His robe and pajamas were neatly folded and stacked on the seat of my rose-colored upholstered chair. I was glad that he was still there, waiting for me. If I'd walked into the bedroom to find him gone, that wouldn't have surprised me in the least.

As soon as I had that thought, I dismissed it. Had the man waiting for me been anyone else, it would have been possible for them to abandon me in that bitterly sad, desperate moment. For Walt to do that would have been impossible. The callousness it would have taken for him to walk out on me wasn't built into Walt. He was too kind. I should have remembered to trust him.

I loitered in front of the bathroom door, my eyes on the debris-covered floor. I didn't seem to have enough force of will to do anything. Walt had offered to have sex with me. I had just about begged him to top me. Even with all of that decided, and as familiar as we were with each other, I couldn't seem to find the will to step forward, into his arms.

Walt came to me again, just like he always did. He moved from where he was to where I held myself apart from him. He crossed the floor, using his feet to shove aside dirty clothes and other cast offs so he wouldn't step on anything. When Walt reached me, he took both of my hands in his and wordlessly led me to stand near the bed. He released my hands and moved in front of me to grip my shoulders. "Are you ready?" He asked.

"Yeah." I said.

"Do you have any lubricant?" Walt asked.

I pointed at the nightstand.

Walt went to look where I pointed. He opened the deep drawer of my nightstand and rummaged around. He found a can of Mrs. Tucker's shortening. Walt examined the can with a dubious scowl on his face. He pried the lid from the top and took a careful sniff of the contents. A grimace of revulsion squeezed his face, and he snapped the lid shut again. "It's gone bad." He muttered at the can.

I tried to remember how long that can had been in my nightstand, but I couldn't easily recall the last time I'd even used it. "I haven't had sex in a while." I admitted to Walt. "No one has been here, not in a long while."

Walt lifted his shoulders in a shallow shrug. He set the can on the floor and moved away from it. "It's fine. We'll improvise." He said.

Walt moved back to me, close enough that I could feel his heat. "How do you want it?" He asked. I heaved a sigh and answered Walt at the end of it. "Any way you want to give it to me."

Walt looked at me along his eyes like my answer didn't make sense to him. I thought about what I'd said and realized how flippant it sounded. I gathered my strength and raised my face to Walt's gaze, so I could clarify my answer. "Look, I just can't right now."

"Can't?" Walt asked.

"Right, I just fucking can't. I can't think or feel or decide or anything. Just fuck me." I stepped into Walt's body and lowered my head to rest on his chest. His fur tickled my face and tugged at the scruff on my cheeks. "I just need to feel you inside me. I need to feel the weight of your body on top of mine. I need..." I lowered my voice because I knew I was about to say something that would lay my inner self bare. "I need some physical contact to remind me that there's more to life than pain and misery and death. Don't ask me any questions. Just tell me what to do. Please."

To my relief, Walt did as I asked. With his next words he took control of the session. "Lay on the bed, face up, legs apart, knees bent."

I lifted my head from his chest and did as he asked. Walt climbed onto the bed and knelt between my legs. He took my pillow and put it under my lower back to raise my ass for easier access. He spit in his hand and used his fingers to work the slick fluid into my hole.

I laid back and closed my eyes to allow myself to focus on the sensations. The feelings from my ass weren't all pleasure. There was some pain mixed in. Without the cushion of the silky shortening, the roughness of Walt's thick fingers scratched the delicate flesh of my hole.

Walt's job, the work he did in the kitchen left his hands dry and calloused. The spit he was using as lubricant wasn't thick enough to protect me from the coarseness of his skin. I didn't object to the pain because at least the pain was real. The jagged sensation of Walt's fingers was viscerally real. Those feelings connected me to Walt. As much as I didn't enjoy the pain, I enjoyed Walt's touch. I needed it.

Walt seemed to realize that he was hurting me because his technique was different than usual. Instead of opening me roughly, the way I'd asked him to in the past, Walt took his time. He opened me with gentle care; care like one might use to coax a nervous puppy out of the safety of the whelping box.

My cock inflated while Walt worked on my hole. I felt myself start to leak. I felt the fluid pool in my foreskin. I felt the heat of Walt's breath as his mouth moved close to my sex. I felt his soft lips on the flesh that hooded the head of my cock. I felt his wet tongue tease the sensitive skin.

Walt used his lips to unsheathe the head of my cock and he used his tongue to taste the salty fluid that leaked from it. He swirled his tongue around my cock and sucked hard. I heard myself gasp and whimper in response. Walt breached my hole with a careful finger and stretched the rim while he swallowed my cock. The combined stimulation made me moan and clutch at the sheets. I gave myself over to the pleasure.

Walt sucked on me and worked my hole until he got the tips of three of his fingers inside. Once my hole easily accepted the fingers, Walt removed them. He took his mouth from my cock and used it on my hole. He screwed his tongue inside me to slick my insides and to make my eyes roll back in my head. I heard harsh noises in the room. They sounded like the cries of some foam rubber monster from a horror film. I realized with some surprise that the noises were my moaning cries of pleasure.

Walt took his mouth from my ass and shifted on the bed. I assumed he was getting in position to fuck me. I took a few deep breaths and tried to calm myself to prepare for the violation. I left my eyes closed as Walt lined up and rubbed the slick head of his cock around my entrance. When he thought I was ready, he pressed into me.

My hole burned to protest the violation, but Walt was patient and worked himself into me an inch at a time. Before long, his hips crushed against my ass, and he was fully buried in my guts. Walt shifted his weight on his knees, and the motion sent fluttering ripples of pleasure through my body. He leaned forward on his hips and laid the whole weight of his upper body on top of mine.

Walt's furry belly trapped my throbbing cock between us as his solid weight crushed me into the mattress. I felt his breath on my face and opened my eyes to look into the pale blue of his. "How's that?" He asked.

"Perfect." I admitted as I spoke his breath back at him. I wrapped my arms around Walt's body and flattened my hands on his broad back. I tensed my biceps to pull him against me even harder.

I felt myself wish that I could live the rest of my life in that moment, safely pinned under Walt's body as his heat and his sex and his kind selflessness made everything alright. The small voice inside me affirmed the pleasure I felt from being with Walt.

Another voice, a louder one, spoke in opposition. `You don't get to have this.' It reminded me. I tried to ignore the louder voice, or at least set its message aside so I could enjoy my pleasure while it lasted. I craned my head up and reached out with my tongue to lick Walt's full lips. He licked back and we kissed like lost lovers reunited.

Walt rolled his hips to fuck me, the angle of our union perfect for his cock to brush against the magic spot inside me. I uttered a cry of pleasure into his face and tightened my grip around his back. Walt rolled his hips and fucked me without ever lifting his weight from my body. He drew his thick length out and pushed it back in with an exquisite slowness like his cock was the piston rod of the locomotive of a funeral train.

In spite of the slowness, the sensations were almost overwhelming. My eyelids fluttered and my breath came in ragged gasps. My hole enjoyed the long, slow strokes while my leaking cock found pleasure in the tight friction between Walt's furry belly and my scarred one.

When I wasn't crying out, Walt kissed me with his searching tongue. When I did cry out, Walt smirked in pride at the pleasure he was fucking into me. Walt fucked me and I held him for so long, my arms burned from their exertion as the sweat of passion dripped from Walt's face onto mine. "Close." He grunted.

"I don't ever want this to end." I said and then was surprised that I'd said it.

I guessed Walt needed to finish because he upped his pace to my moaning delight. I watched as Walt's climax took him. His mouth opened wide, his eyes closed, and he cried out with the intense pleasure of his orgasm. I felt his cock throb and pump inside me, shot after shot of Walt's cream filled my body. He pounded his fists on the mattress as the last intense wave of pleasure went through him, then he collapsed on top of me, his energy spent.

I unclenched my arms from around his body and rubbed my hands along his back. I kissed the side of his flushed face while he took long, deep breaths through his mouth to recover. He shivered several times as aftershocks went through him, the sensations made more intense because his sensitive cock was still inside my body.

Walt rested on top of me until his breathing steadied. He shifted his weight and grinned in my face. "You're still so hard." He said. "I feel you throbbing between us. How..." he said, then shook his head. "Never mind."

I suspected that Walt was going to ask me how I wanted him to get me off, then he remembered my plea from the beginning of the session and decided to decide for me. He pushed himself off me and rocked back on his hips. He pulled his shrinking cock from my ass and pointed to my scarred belly.

My whole lower half was smeared with the slick juice that leaked from my cock. I noticed that Walt's belly fur was matted with the same juice. I pointed at him and was amazed at how much I'd leaked. Walt rubbed his fur down and smeared his hand over my belly to gather the juice into his palm. He added his spit to the palm of his hand and wrapped it around my cock.

Walt's grip was firm, commanding. He tugged at my hardness like he wanted to test how well it was attached to me, then he started to stroke. He stroked me just to the limits of the sheath of skin over my cock. He didn't let his hand slide back and forth over the skin because he knew that would hurt me. The stroking he gave me was delicious pleasure with no pain.

Walt looked into my eyes as he jerked me. I stared back at him and let the pleasure take me. Soon I was gripping the sheets as my climax approached. I felt the pleasure swell from my core and grow, increasing inside me like a spreading fire.

My body tightened and I cried out in pleasure as Walt stroked me right through a shattering orgasm. The cum shot across my body to paint me with streaks of milky white that clung to the uneven geography that was the no-man's-land of my torso. Walt held my cock even after I stopped pumping. He teased it as I recovered from my climax. When I could breathe normally, he leaned down to kiss me again.

Walt found a towel to clean me up, then got in bed with me. He turned onto his side to face me. He reached over my body and almost rolled on top of me as he did. He reached to fish in my nightstand. The drawer yielded a cigar and box of matches. Walt trimmed the end with his teeth, then lit it carefully by roasting the end in the flame of three matches until it glowed. He drew on it just enough for a tip of cool ash to establish itself on the ember. He passed it to me.

I accepted the erotic dessert to the sexual feast we'd just finished. Walt returned to his side, propped himself on his elbow, and used his free hand to trace the scars of my torso with gentle fingers.

I wanted to thank my old friend, my only friend, for what he'd given me. I wanted to, but I was afraid of too much tenderness. Walt had said the session wouldn't mean anything, but I didn't know how it was possible for something that beautiful to be without meaning. I thanked Walt, but I added some teasing to blunt the thanks. "Thanks, Walt...for the cigar."

I heard Walt's voice smirk when he answered me. "Right, no comment on the other thing?"

"What other thing?" I asked in the impossible attempt to pretend that I didn't know what he was talking about. "Oh, that. Average I'd say."

"You're impossible." Walt laughed. I laughed too.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked in his `afterglow tone,' so named because it was a loving honeyed tone he only used after sex.

I didn't want to. I didn't even want to think about it. Walt had lifted my mood and I didn't want it to come crashing down again. Still, he'd asked a pertinent question and I felt that I owed him a real answer. I tried to explain the situation as I understood it. "This kid, this Preston, he deserves more than he got. Came into this world queer, mother died, father disowned him. He tried to make his own way and was murdered for his efforts. Something is right in front of me and I'm missing it. It's killing me because he reminds me of...of someone else."

I didn't want to expose the story about David. I'd never told Walt anything about him, or about that time in my life. He knew a little about Peter. I'd told Walt just enough about Peter to explain the scars that I wore, but I'd always kept David just for me.

Walt was too perceptive to be satisfied by a vague reference like the one I'd given him. "That David you mentioned? Who was he? Why is he important?"

I didn't want to say, but I didn't think I had any choice. As much as Walt had promised the sex wouldn't mean anything, it had. In the aftermath of what we'd shared, I couldn't help but tell Walt anything he wanted to know.

"Before we met, there were only two men I cared for. I had lots of casual sex, and sex I paid for. In the twenties, if I wasn't working, I was looking for anything warm in pants to lay down with. It meant nothing, but it was fun, and I had the stamina for it. The first man cared for, was Peter."

Walt's hand came to rest amongst the worst of the damage on my torso. His hand spread itself over my soft belly. His palm centered over the place my navel used to be. The scars were so thick there, I could barely feel the weight of Walt's hand through the rubbery flesh. The coarse callouses of his hand made no impression on my scars.

The butchers in the military hospital had told me that the splinters of Peter's shattered pelvis had ripped open my insides. His blood and flesh contaminated my own. My waste from my perforated intestines added to the contamination. They'd had to gut me like a fish to clean the mess out of me. Even with what they claimed were their best efforts, I had suffered from festering infection and blood poisoning. They'd always told me I was `lucky to be alive.' My life since that time had done little to bear them out.

I didn't know why Walt's hand came to rest in that spot during our tender moments. His hand always found its way to the most unnatural part of my horrifically scarred and unnatural body. It was like his kindness was drawn to my carnage. I wondered if that's why he stayed around me, like a missionary among the heathens. Walt seemed to sense how little I could feel of his touch. The fingers of his hand kneaded my flesh to remind me that he was there.

I savored his touch and his presence and tried to go on with my story. "I never told Peter I loved him. I tried to tell him what I was, because I convinced myself he was like me, like us. He rejected me. I think he was scared. I don't think he understood. I don't blame him. How could I? He was so helpless and innocent. I tried to protect him, to save him, but there wasn't anything I could do. Peter was the first man I saw destroyed for the sin of being where he didn't belong. I had to watch the violence of the war break his gentle spirit until a shell shattered his body."

I took a deep breath and felt my insides lurch as I approached dangerous ground. Walt felt the lurch and asked about it. "What just happened? I felt your muscles clench."

I drew on the cigar that I'd forgotten about. I did it to give myself time to think, time to figure out how to explain my stomach trouble to Walt. That was something else I'd never completely exposed to my friend and onetime lover. I had to draw on the cigar several times because it had almost gone out. I knocked the ash off the end of it over the side of the bed. I shifted it to my left hand and put my right on top of Walt's hand that rested on my stomach. I pressed down until I could feel his hand through my scars.

"That cramp you felt is part of what Peter gave me. I only ever told you about what you could see, about the visible scars. The other half, the half I hid from you is what I feel. Strong emotion, stress or grief, and my insides spasm. Sometimes they only do it a little but sometimes it's enough to bring me to my knees. The doctors say it's in my head. Fuck them."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Walt asked. There was no accusation in his tone. His question was merely a request for information.

"I was afraid you'd think I was nuts." I admitted. "Plus...plus the pain, it's part of Peter and that time of my life. Peter was kind to me when I was badly in need of kindness. The pain I live with keeps him alive inside me. It reminds me of someone who treated me like a real person, instead of...instead of what I am. It's the only way I have to pay him for what he gave me. Do you think that's crazy?" I asked and studied the ember on my cigar so I wouldn't have to look at Walt when he answered.

Walt craned his head and kissed my cheek. "You're not crazy. I don't think your friend would want you to hurt for him, but if that's how you want it, that's how it is."

"Thanks, Walt." I said and the spasm relaxed. I drew on my cigar and got ready to walk in the minefield that was David. "The second man was David. He was an Iowa farm boy, an earthbound angel, disowned for what he was, for what we are. He came to the city to find work. He found it, but the evil of the city found him.

"He was beaten by four men who hated what they didn't understand. I gave him money and sent him away. He didn't understand why I did it. I did it because I couldn't watch the malevolence of the city taint his perfect purity. I knew he was queer, and he knew I was. I never asked for his sex and he never offered, except once."

I had to pause for another deep breath and to swallow the lump in my throat. "On the train platform, the last time I saw him, he asked me to go with him to start a farm. Could you see me on a farm? If the horse wouldn't pull the plow, I'd probably punch his face."

Walt chuckled at my self-deprecating joke. I heaved a sad sigh. "I hope his life has been good. I never heard from him again. I loved him, but I sent him away because I knew I couldn't protect him. I couldn't protect him from the evil of the city because...because I'm part of it. I'm part of the city. I'm part of the evil that would have destroyed him if he stayed.

"The difference between the two, between Peter and David, the surgeons had to carve Peter out of my body, and they did what they could to repair the damage. I carved David from my life, but I didn't know how to stitch up the hole. This boy is like David. He even looks like David. He's a little like me when I was very young, before my father's hate set me on this path. If I can find the man who killed him, if I can see that man punished, it will be like giving him back his purity."

I finished my story and waited while a pregnant silence blanketed the room. The quiet was so complete; I could almost hear Walt as he concentrated in the dark. "You're asking a lot of yourself." He said after a while. "I don't know if it's possible to give this boy his purity back. You don't really know that he is pure. You only know what his sister told you about him. As for the wound left from David, maybe closing that hole isn't something you can do on your own. I can tell you, because I've known you a long time, that you're not part of the evil. Living with it doesn't make you part of it."

I disagreed with Walt and used an example that he'd given me to prove my point. "Says the guy that called me an animal."

"Why did that bother you so much?" Walt asked me. "You looked like you wanted to kill me when I called you that."

I took my hand from the back of Walt's so I could look at it in the dark. I couldn't really see it, just its shadow, but I could picture it. I could picture the thick fingers and big palms. I could picture the meaty fists my hands would become when I was angry. I knew the violence those fists were capable of. I hated those hands and the damage they did. I hated them, but I appreciated them as tools that kept others away from me.

I told Walt about them, about what my hands could do. "They started calling me that in the war. They called me that because of the way I fought. They said I fought like a cornered animal. I fought constantly back then, and I never lost. I earned the name again when I was on the force. Both times I wore it like a badge because if I was an animal, I couldn't be a fag."

Walty drew a logical, but incorrect conclusion from my story. "So, it was a label you liked."

"I hated it, but it was useful. It was even more useful when I was a cop. I'd started living in the open then because I told myself I wasn't going to hide what I was from anyone. I told myself I wasn't going to be ashamed. The fights I won and the nickname I earned kept anyone from fucking with me. I knew what they thought of me, the other cops and detectives. I knew that most of them hated to have a fag on their team. I told myself I didn't care. Their opinion never mattered. It hurt to find out that you saw me that way."

Walt gripped at my flesh with his hand. He kneaded it like he wanted to push his feelings through the scars. "But I don't, really. It was just the heat of the moment."

"I know that, but I was in that moment too. It was good you left the way you did."

Walt made a statement that he tried to sound sure of, but I knew was a question. "You wouldn't have hit me."

I covered my face with my free hand to hide my shame from Walt. "I don't know, Walt. I just don't know."

Walt rolled onto his back and settled against me. The motion seemed to set the whole of the conversation aside, like we'd talked enough for one night. "Shut your mind off and get some sleep. Tomorrow is a new day."

I dropped my hand and looked toward the dark shape that was Walt. "If that's supposed to be comforting...never mind. Good night, Walt and...and thanks."

I stubbed out what was left of my half-forgotten cigar. I mashed the ember on the side of the nightstand and dropped the butt to the floor. I shut my eyes to sleep. Walt slept almost immediately. I could tell when his body stilled, and his breathing slowed.

The sleep of the innocent.' I thought as I remembered a small piece of something I'd heard my mother say. The word innocent' stuck in my mind. It occurred to me as I thought of that word that Walt had as much in common with the people I'd seen in the bars earlier, as day has in common with night. That was an interesting and compelling thought, but I was too tired to reason out what it meant. I took some small comfort in the fact that I knew at least one queer man who wasn't an emotional cripple, or a drug addict, or both.

I tried to sleep, but my mind churned despite its exhaustion. It wouldn't let me rest. I resorted to a trick I'd learned during one of my stints as Walt's domestic partner. I focused on the soft, even sound of his breathing and counted his breaths like one would count sheep. `In and out, in and out, in and out, in and out...' I mentally repeated as I listened. Sleep found me in minutes.