M A R A N A T H A
   
   
    © Osfer, January 2005
   
   
    All rights reserved.
   
    May only be distributed for free.
   
    May not be altered in any way.
   
    Contains material of an erotic and homosexual nature which may be illegal to read in your country, state, province or region.
   
    The author takes no responsibility for transgressions on the part of the reader
   
    Comments welcome at osfer.kesh@gmail.com.
   

Available on paperback in 2005

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    ~ Enjoy. ~
     

   Chapter XI – As Told By Owen Zelazny
   
   

Owen Zelazny, reborn as the rock star Luke McCall? Wouldn’t that make for a beautiful story. I could shuck my old name entirely and take the globe by storm, I could spend my millions on having that goddamn metal thing over my sheath removed and discrete doctors would take care of my little microbe infestation and none would be the wiser.
    Hardly.
    Some of the older or more post-modern country music fans among you may have recognized the name McCall from the seventies, when a small-time advertising firm invented the character C. W. McCall, a fictional truck driver who proved so popular that the three guys who invented him brought out a couple of LP’s of ‘his’ songs and none other than Sam Peckinpah made a movie out of one of his most famous songs, called Convoy.
    Malloy, bizarre out-of-the-box thinker that he is, made the connection shortly after procuring papers for me under the name Luke McCall and tentatively suggested I maybe ‘get into music’. After staring blankly at him for some time, he shrugged and dropped the matter but not two days later I heard Will and William, the punker cats next door, talking to each other as I passed them on the stairs, and they were talking about starting a band.
    They had their arms full of groceries; they were hosting a dinner party for the band they’d just put together, which I learned when I helped them open their door and bring their stuff inside. I’d always been good friends with Double Bill, as they’re collectively called, so it was hard for me not to be too familiar with them. They didn’t think too much of me in return, which offended and flattered me, since Luke didn’t quite compare to the friend they’d lost when Owen disappeared.
    So I left them to it and heard their guests arriving while I was doing my weekly preening – fresh dye job, careful full-body shampooing, even more careful full-body steel comb brushing, claw clipping, fur trimming, some exercises… People forget, sometimes, what an effort it takes to be a pretty-boy. I was just taking my third shower of the day – a cold shower, because Butterfly may be a groovy, laid-back landlord but he’s every bit as laid-back about keeping the fucking boiler in working order– when at once there came a tapping, as of someone loudly rapping on my chamber door.
    I had been singing, for no other reason than to drown out the loud voices coming from next-door, which I thought at first was jubilant conversation but which soon turned into a shouting match. I can’t stand that sort of thing, and singing was the natural way to drown it out, just like I’d done as a kid when my folks were having their marital problems. And like those times, in my efforts not to hear what was happening, I’d favor raucous volume over melody and that, it seems caught Double Bill’s attention.
    The screaming match I heard from next door was apparently the neonatal band breaking up even before they’d thought of a name due to their lead singer’s A) ego, B) apparent alcoholism and C) pederastic tendencies. They had kicked him out, thoughtfully escorting him through the hall, down the stairs and out the door so as not to let him cause any damage to the building which Butterfly would not only fail to notice but also neglect to fix and on their way back, you guessed it, they heard me sing.
    I can carry a fair tune, I’m happy to say, but what I was doing wasn’t singing as much as it was roaring at that point, yet it impressed them. I was singing a song from one of those pretend bands, you know, the one from that funny movie. British, it was, because it was Malloy who’d clued me in on it and he was very proud to have produced it In his country, till I recognized one of the actors as the guy who does most of the voices in the Simpsons, and he was so crestfallen. Anyway, I was on one of their songs, pitching up the tempo half-again and banging my soapy sponge against the cracked-and-fixed-with-duct-tape divider of my shower stall. My door was open, they found out, and Double Bill and their three remaining band members, drunk on cheap booze and home-made food, piled into my bathroom and asked my little old balls-naked me if I wanted to be the vocalist in their new punk band.
    And so it was.
    My utter lack of musical experience was matched only by theirs, and so was my enthusiasm. I helped Double Bill plead with Butterfly to be allowed to use the attic, dilapidated as it was, as a rehearsal space and helped lug heavy equipment up the rickety ladder while Will put down some crude electric cabling that wasn’t too much of a fire hazard. Will’s a law-school drop-out and has applied and been rejected for a job as a fireman twelve times in the years I’ve known him, so all of us walk over his dodgy cabling with extreme trepidation.
   
    Fast-forward a few weeks. Couple of gigs at the Crosshairs, Double Bill’s favorite haunt, where we play accelerated, juiced-up covers of country and folk songs. William described it as postmodern reclamation of outdated genres through musical violence, but since none of the band are really skilled musicians, the songs we play are really simple and it all ends up being about how forcefully we play. The band started off as the Deep Fried Underpants but after the original singer left Will & William sat down to think of a new title for the band, which became… No, I’m not going to say it. I’m actually kind of embarrassed.
    Speaking of being bare-assed…
    I’m walking off stage, talking with William and Rod, the bassist, a rather wiry-looking fox who likes dressing in tight white clothes, primarily about why I was so late for the gig. I don’t tell them about the little episode with Patrick and the Muz Ozul stag, not that they’d be too shocked, but telling them that I overslept somehow feels more appropriate. Part of me doesn’t want people liking Luke McCall too much, lest they end up liking him more than Owen. Call me silly, but this really does matter to me.
    As usual after we get off stage I leave the guys to pack up the instruments and other gear while I make my way backstage. It’s pretty quiet at this time, because all the go-go boys and pole dancers are all in the club itself and the shift change isn’t for another half an hour. Bare concrete corridors lead all the way around the back of the building, props rooms, emergency liquor supplies, replacement electrical components, the joints boys’ and girls’ dressing room, which nobody ever causes a fuss about ‘cuz all the boys are queer and all the girls are bitches. As I walk I start tugging off my tank top, still damp with sweat from my exertions on stage and hang it over a nail hammered into one unmarked door before I open it and step into the dark, quiet space inside.
    A hand grabs me and lips are pressed to mine. I feel strength in the grasp on my bicep, the urgency of the male who pulls me toward him and as I open my mouth to him, the clack of fangs, so whoever this is is a predator. I wonder who it is?
    Now, while I’m sure you feel no surprise at the news that I’m intimately kissing with a perfect stranger, the situation is this. Our first gig was a bit of a disaster, with some of Will’s wiring failing, and so to appease the manager I gave him some head. He so liked this that he asked if I’d mind doing it again sometime and naturally I said I didn’t. After the next blowjob he gave me twenty bucks and a proposition: he’d give the B— I mean, our band a weekly gig and give me, personally, fifty bucks after every show if, after every show, I’d go to this supply closet, close the door, and have sex with whoever was inside.
    Soon, the male I’m kissing tires of it and awkwardly tries to unbutton my pants. I help him, quickly, suckling on his tongue and expose the leather jockstrap I wear to keep my sheath-trap hidden and my tailhole readily available. Then he breaks the kiss and with a heavy hand he pushes the top of my head down in a none-too-subtle sign that he wants me to suck him. Like I said before, I’m pretty good recognizing cocks so as soon as I get my lips around him I’m sure I’ll figure out who it is.
    I’ve engaged in deals like this before. When I was still Owen I’d go to the Dive once a month to fuck whoever the management told me to; that was a managerial incentive. The employee of the month doesn’t get his face in a stupid frame, he gets an hour for free with Owen Zelazny, and I imagine this ain’t likely to be much different.
    I stagger out of my pants and kick them toward the door and, naked, I land on my knees. My hands go out to pull down the dude’s zipper, but his fly’s already open and my fingers wrap around a nice, fat, straining shaft. This guy needs to get off, so right after whispering ‘nice’ under my breath, because the guy’s really got a nice tool, I open wide and dive down, plunging his glans down my throat before I even seal my lips around it, swallowing so deep my lips brush against the rim of his sheath. I hollow my cheeks and suck hard, and I mean hard, until I feel him gripping my hair as his body tries to figure out if it wants me to stop or it wants more. Yeah, I’m that good, people.
    “Easy,” says a familiar voice, much lower and softer than I usually hear it and immediately I slow my suckling and look up, though in this total darkness I of course can’t see a damn thing. My ears prick up, too and I cant my head, dragging my tongue over his thick, pulsing shaft, causing him to shiver. Then I open my mouth as wide as I can and, with his cockhead still lodged in my throat, I gurgle a word.
    “Hang?” I ask, which means ‘Hank’ in cocksucker-speak. He hisses at me, as if afraid somebody outside the door might hear us, which causes me to giggle – which, those of you who’ve ever had their dick sucked might imagine, is a hazardous ting. Choking and sputtering around my throatful I slowly manage to calm myself, bringing a hand up to fondle the big tiger’s balls and let him know I’m only joking. By the feel of his dick he doesn’t think it’s that funny, and could use the reassurance. “Haub ge ipe?” I ask, cocksucker-speak for ‘how’s the wife’, which he absolutely doesn’t appreciate and that large hand that pushed me down to roughly now grabs the back of my head and forcefully pulls me forward, silencing me in my absolute favourite way.
    His musky, warm pole thrusts into my mouth and jabs down my throat, rubbing the sensitive lining so deliciously and leaving a trail of precum which causes a prickling sensation I’ve only ever felt one other time, and that was some fucking expensive champagne. I turn my head from side to side, since it’s the screw-motion, rather than the in-out motion, that offers the most stimulation. The slightly sweaty member slides in and out of my warm, available mouth, occasionally pulling free of my throat and treating me to the pleasure of having a cock to actually suckle on, to nurse on it and cherish the sensation of drawing spurts of precum from it.
    I resist the hand on the back of my head, if only to savor that sensation a little longer. The delicious, familiar ache in my jaw from stretching wide enough to accommodate Hank’s prick, the dryness of my lips from being rubbed over his thickly veined surface, especially as his barbs begin to make themselves known. His balls are warm, and though I have to dig my hands awkwardly into his fly to cup them, it’s worth it for the loud purring the large tiger emits as I hold them, softly massaging, finally acceding to the rhythm of his hips and settling down for some good old-fashioned headbobbing.
    God, I could do this for hours.
    And very often have.
    I may have told you before, but I love making people happy, and while getting fucked is great and doesn’t take a whole lot of effort, actually getting down on your knees and getting somebody to just sit or stand or lie still and let you do everything for them to make them feel good is more satisfying than I can describe. To taste that outpouring of salt semen or to feel it stinging my throat, warming my belly after just a couple of strong surges, mixed with that outpouring of groaned pleasure from the dude… It makes me feel so good.
    Not, I’ll wager, as it’s making Hank feel. Both his hands are resting heavily on my head without pushing and while his ass is tensed enough to stretch his slacks, his hips are still and all he’s doing is standing there, no doubt with his eyes closed, listening to my slurping and suckling and feeling me pump my mouth, my hot, fuckable mouth up and down his prick.
    I shift on my knees to get some circulation going and to avoid sneezing, which would really disappoint both of us if I did it right now. I’m keeping him on the edge, carefully sensing when his nuts tighten up and then slowing my strokes just a fraction, or pausing for half a second so his ejaculation instincts have to reboot.
    I’ll admit, I’m being selfish. It’s been a good two weeks or more since I’ve had a dick to suck on, everybody who’s hired my services wanted under my tail and, dammit, I’ve been starved for cock. So I’m going to make this one last. Occasionally I even pull off, slobbering up and down the sides of his fat tigercock, lapping my tongue doggishly as I run my lips along the surface before engulfing the cooling member in the heat of my mouth again, rewarding Hank for that momentary torment by swallowing him balls-deep again, and oh, how he purrs and groans and whimpers.
    Music to my ears. And like all music, it has to end and I like to end with a bang. I feel him approaching climax again and no doubt he expects me to force it to subside again, but not this time. This time I speed up, bumping my nose painfully against his belt buckle, but I don’t care, I’m going for it, folding my ears as if the added aerodynamics could help me suck him better and grip his hips with both hands, clinging to his strong thighs, listening to him pant and even when that first splash hits the roof of my mouth I don’t stop pumping, I swallow the sticky, salty cream along with the rod that’s squirting it, letting each spurt land where it may, drooling down my throat or splattering against my teeth, tongue, it doesn’t matter.
    I love every second of it. The sound of his rapture, the satisfaction of it, the taste of his sperm or the incredible throb of his member, all of it I feel a pang of sadness that its already over, it hasn’t been more than half an hour yet, but even that is masked by the warmth in my belly from his sticky, thick load and the deep satisfaction of having brought another male, even one who’s as impatient and disregardful of me as Hank and finally, when he spurts no more, I slow completely and simply hold his still-hard penis in my mouth, warm and comfortable.
    “Damn, kid,” he whispers in the dark, petting my head as if I were a dog. “They old me you were good, but… damn.”
    I like a bit of praise now and then. Maybe you’ve noticed.
    By way of reward I slowly slip his cock out of my mouth and set to licking it, careful, obviously, not to overstimulate. The glans is off limits and so is the very base, but the middle of the shaft, that’s fine and causes the tiger to breathe more deeply as if the stress of yet another evening’s work is melting off him.
    I never expected Hank to come to the back room, to be honest. Despite being the stage manager and being responsible for the ‘entertainment’, he never ever had himself a sneaky bit of fun with any of the boys or girls. He’s got a wife and two daughters, I know that from the banter, so I guess he loves ‘em a whole lot.
    “You’re still hard,” I whisper. I could speak aloud, but I get the distinct vibe that Hank feels a little… dirty, doing this, especially with me, and doesn’t want to feel like it’s anything other than sneaky quickie sex. “You wanna fuck me?”
    By the rustling of his clothes, I hear he’s shaking his head and I can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe he just wants to get out of here, pretend nothing happened. But no. He’s still here, still leaking precum against my lips, which I lap up patiently, savoring the taste of another man’s juices after having gone without for so long. I kinda feel like a vampire, from one of those books by… What’s her name. She writes about really gay vampires. Anyway, that’s what I feel like.
    “Again?” Hank asks softly, his tone and manner worlds apart from his usual violent shouting and as he rolls his hips softly forward as if to slide his dick back in my warm mouth without my knowing, I realize what’s up. Hank’s wife won’t suck his dick.
    That’s why he’s so skittish now, or one of the reasons why. If anybody found out that poor Hank was daily desperate for head he’d never again be able to muster the terrified respect he extracts from all the Crosshairs’ employees and he would no longer be able to serve as stage manager, and I reckon that’s got him mighty nervous.
    He’s noticed how long I’ve delayed and probably figures I have an inkling. I can hear the big tiger’s breathing quickening and then his hands go for his fly, to zip himself up and get out of here, but I bat his hands away with more strength than you’d expect from an eighteen-year-old punk, and kiss him on the cock, silencing his breathing on the spot. “As many times as ya like, big guy,” I reassure him and a sigh issues from his lips that has more to do with relief than with the fact that my skilled lips are sliding back down around his shaft and I go down on him for the second time, but much slower this time, to let him savor it a bit more.
   
    His fingers actually rake through my hair. It’s not an affectionate gesture, as such, but it’s acknowledgement, something I wouldn’t have expected from a confirmed heterosexual like Hank. I guess he wants to apologize for barking at me when I came in late, which was, truly, far more extreme than his usual tirades. Hey, maybe he’d known he’d get to be in the Back Room later that night and he was worried I wasn’t going to show up and that he wouldn’t get the blowjob he’d so looked forward to. That in turn woulda made him feel guilty about wanting to get his dick sucked, and that…
    Never mind. It don’t matter why he’s here, or what he wants. I’m a professional, and despite all that’s happened, I still love my work. I love the throb of a man’s cock the first time I slip my tongue along it, the intake of breath when I take the whole length into my mouth, my snug, warm mouth after teasing it for a minute. I love the way I can make a man tense and relax simply by tensing or relaxing myself and I love feeling a man cum in me, to feel such a powerful orgasm inside me, to know I’ve given somebody such pleasure.
    “This is… this is really nice,” the big tiger groans softly and there’s a hint, obviously, of guilt in his voice. He’s ashamed that he’s breaking his role as my superior, he’s afraid I might use this against him sometime when he needs to assert authority and he’s maybe ashamed of the idea that this, my mouth bobbing gently but deeply up and down his erection, is much nicer than having sex with his own wife. “But… I’ve got to get back to work.” Slight misery in his voice. Nice.
    I nod dot him, which makes him shiver with the sensation of his cockhead slipping, twice, down my throat, where it is s well-received and welcome. Slowly I pull off and Hank lets out a sigh of acceptance, but before he can withdraw his hips to start tucking himself away again I grab his balls. “We can finish this tomorrow, if you like,” I say. There’s no particular benevolence to my idea, no generosity in my tone, and why should there be? Giving head’s a small effort on my part.
    “That… I’d like that,” says Hank, almost coldly, and finally pulls his hips back so he can tuck his bits away and once he has himself zipped up, he turns on the light. I’m still kneeling on the ground, butt-nekkid, and you know what Hank does, confused horn-dog that he is? He actually closes his eyes and turns around as if he walked in on his daughter getting dressed, flushing red where his fur is white enough to see the blushing. “Oh, hey,” he says as if trying to fill the seconds it takes me to stand up, brush myself down, and start pulling my pants on again. “Somebody left this for you.”
    From his back pocket he pulls a small envelope, sealed, and holds it out to me without looking. “It’s cool, bro, I’m decent,” I inform him, trying not to sound too casual with him as I button up and accept the envelope, tearing it open on the spot and emptying the contents into my hand.
    Four small ivory tiles, like Mahjongg tiles, except they have letters on them and with a chuckle I realize that they’re just plastic Scrabble tiles, two vowels and two consonants. I pocket them quickly, shaking my head. “Weird fans, huh?” I say and give Hank a nod, which he as expected doesn’t return. I open the door of the supply room and head out into the hallway, taking up the tank top I’d left on the hook on the door. I expect Hank will be coming out of the room soon, not wanting people to know he was the lucky guy who got to spend some time in the Back Room and so he’d better move PDQ if he doesn’t want to bump into the second shift of dancers, who should be coming in shortly.
    I say a few polite greetings, ducking my head into the dressing-room to collect my longcoat, the room now full of a dozen or so naked males and females, all exhausted, getting undressed and scrubbing make-up from their faces and breast and bellies, stripping out of their tight, uncomfortable costumes and putting on their cheap, ragged jeans and sweaters to get a few hours of sleep at home before they start their shifts as waiters and receptionists and whatever it is these beautiful young men and women do for their nine to five jobs.
    After that I’m out the door, giving the bouncers each a kiss on the cheek just to cheer them up and get them scandalously smart-talking each other about which of them I find more attractive, a game they continue as I walk out of the alley and wrap my coat around myself, warmed from the load in my belly and chilled by the wind, warmed by the comforting normalcy of the tired business of sex, lust music and life that goes on in the Crosshairs, and chilled by the four little Scrabble tiles I have in my pocket.
   
    “The minstrel boy to the war has come, in he ranks of the South you’ll find him,” I say into the receiver of the only un-smashed phone booth for blocks around, located right under a streetlamp and then I slam the receiver back down and slump against the phone with clenched fists as if I can do something about it all.
    Malloy’s fucking voicemail. Our goddamned code using his infinite supply of fucking folk songs. It’s a wonder I even remembered it, when we were talking about it I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to him because I figured that if trouble ever found me I’d be dead before I could tell Malloy about it. And now he isn’t even picking up his phone!
    I back out of the booth and feel cool drizzle on my face. In the distance there’s a thunderclap, but I’m not worried about it starting to rain, it’s too far away. I wish it would rain.
    South, I said in the song so the safe location in the north of the city is where I need to go. I should have mabe said west because the eastern location is easier to reach, but I think I can be excused for being a little confused right now.
    I feel drunk. Not full-on drunk, but the way you feel when you’ve had way too much and you’ve thrown up and everythig and you want to sleep, but you can’t and you just sit at home and try not to think about how you’re feeling.
    “Hey, do I know you?” a voice asks? I look around quickly and don’t see anybody and then I realise that of course I do see somebody. A bum, lying at the mouth of an alley I’m just passing, his brown blanket so perfectly blending with the muted brown colour the pavement absorbs from the dreadful yellow street-lights.
    “Sorry, pops, you got me confused,” I tell him. Not in that hurried, disdainful, trying-to-pretend-you-didn’t-hear way that pepole use when they don’t want to be bothered by a poor person in case they’re crazy or dangerous.
    The bum chuckles and rolls over, snuggling up a little more under his blanket. “You mean mistaken, son. And I’m pretty sure I ain’t. You done a paintjob on your fur, I see, but under lights like these I see ya clear as day,” he continues. I sniff the air quickly, but there’s no scent of alcohol on him. He’s a big guy, under that blanket, with big boots and a warm coat and a hunter’s cap on his head that throws a shadow over his face. Maybe a bear or something.
    I shrug my shoulders and turn away, but he grabs my ankle. I turn back with a snarl. “Listen, pops, this ain’t the night ta be botherin’ me!” I’m shocked, myself, at how loud my voice is. “I’m… I’m sorry,” I say and I hunker down, running my fingers through my now spikey hair. I sigh and look at him, and then I notice the marking on his face. He’s a badger, and now I’m this close to him I catch his scent. “Holloway?”
    He nods to me, and suddenly I feel very, very cold and in danger, and the feeling of danger mixes with the fear I was feeling already and they sharpen each other. My heart hasn’t even had the chance to beat more than twice at its accellerated rate before the badger yawns, his lips smiling. “Don’t worry, kid. You showed an old bum a ood time couple months ago and asked no more’n a coat that was too ugly even fer me. I’ll keep yer secret he way I keep my own.”
    “You have secrets?” I ask, and I don’t know why exactly, but I feel really good. I sit down on the ground and I see shadows of people moving, walking around me and the bum in wide circles, but my heart’s calming down simply from being connected to somebody who knows me as Owen. I feel a pang of something in my stomach and I hug my abdomen suddenly.
    The badger nods. “Everybody does, kid, you know how it is. Sergeant Holloway becomes a vagrant, and the cute piece of tail that walked into Bricktown, balls-bare, with a weird thing around his sheath turns into… Well, what are ya now, kid?” he asks, shifting into a sitting position against the wall. I sit a little closer to him, leaning against him and actually enjoying the warmth of his body, despite the powerful, unwashed smell.
    I smirk at him, rubbing the swirling discolored patterns around my eye. “I’m a singer,” I say and we both start laughing. “No, no, really. I’m not bad, actually,” I inform him and, nodding, he takes my word for it, holding up his hands in surrender.
    “Well kid,” he says, “I wasn’t a very good sergeant.”
    There’s a silence, then and a few more people walk past. Drunks, staggering out of one of the dark drinking holes around here, men and women laughing in high-pitched voices, all of them, and none of them see me or the old badger. I look at him for a little while and think. Here’s a guy I’ve known for, maybe, half an hour in total. I let him fuck me in exchange for a raincoat, which I needed at the time, and he’d have given it to me for free, except I don’t do sex for free. Owen didn’t, anyway.
    Owen didn’t.
    “Holloway,” I say and stand up again, cricking my neck and extending my hand to the badger lying on the pavement. “You wanna come into the alley with me?”
    The old guy smiles so broadly at this and his face contorts in a wealth of different emotions. Hopefulness, mistrust, bitterness, humor, lust and disdain all at once. One of these wins out, though and with a groan he reaches up to clasp my hand. I lean back hard to help pull him up off the ground, the already portly badger weighed down by his heavy winter clothes and whatever supplies and valuables he’s got hidden in his pockets.
    Clutching his blanket he staggers up to his feet and slaps a beefy arm acoss my shoulders. “You know, I knew a private that looked like you look now once. It wasn’t weird, back then, for fags to get stomped on and I guess it ain’t weird now either. Either ya keep quiet, ya put up with the beatings, or you drop out, simple as that. This guy was a putter-upper. He was a little shorter’n you, little more muscular, too,” the badger explains, hugging my shoulders, folding his blanket over one arm as we walk, slowly, into the alley, with its wet cardboard boxes and overflowing dustbines.
    “Was he as good a cocksucker as me?” I joke and I realise i feel closer to Holloway, now, than I do to anybody, even Malloy. He’s the only one who knows who I am, but even he’s been… distant. Like he’s trying to help me out of a sense of personal defeat and pride, rather than actually helping his friend. Holloway’s just honest, living from one moment to the next, keeping a comfortable distance from his past and enjoying whatever life throws at him. Like me, for instance. A handsome young wolf with no gag reflex.
    “I don’t even know how good a cocksucker you are, kiddo, just that you’ve got a really sweet ass. If you’re offering, it’s that ass that I’d like to try again,” he says casually and I nod to him, actually kissing him on the cheek, so terribly grateful to be near somebody I can be honest with.
    I shrug off my coat and toss it onto a garbage bin. “It’s yours, man. You don’t mind a stand-up fuck, do you? It’s too cold for missionary, tonight,” I tell him, walking up to one of the least grimy wall and unbutton my pants, tugging them down just enough to expose my ass. Wordlessly the big guy steps up behind me, spreading the blanket out and draping it across his own shoulders. “I got a question, bud, and don’t mind not gettin’ an answer. You fucked anybody since you did me last?”
    There’s that familiar sound again, a zipper being undone, stuttering and awkwardly, no doubt the zipper’s rusty. “Not a soul,” says the badger, nudging the tip of his plump but surprisingly stiff member under my tail and into the snug ring hidden there, which has seen a lot of visitors lately.
    He’s cautious as he enters me and there really isn’t any reason for him to be so I shove my hips back and take him all into me, tight, warm and comfy… “Share your blanket?” I ask, finally feeling the chill in the air now that the shock of what was in the envelope’s starting to wear off.
    Holloway leans closer to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and lets the thick horse blanket fall over me as well, creating a comfortable little hutch as we both share a nice, intimate, almost anonymous stand-up fuck.
    Intimate, is that the right word? I’m just doing it for the warmth and the comfort and the ego-boost of giving somebody pleasure like this, feeling so sexy. He’s just doing it to get his balls emptied, maybe he’s imagining that wolf private he mentioned so briefly, maybe that’s who he’s imagining as he nibbles on my arched neck. So we’re both having sex with ourselves, together, and we couldn’t be farther apart. It feels intimate, still.
    “The new color suits you,” he says conversationally, panting into my ear and I suspect he’s making small-talk to mask his inability to get off in any timely fashion, so I start rolling my hips back in counter-point to his thrusts. Not just pushing, but tilting, turning it upward to let his shaft slide up my ass at a different angle, stimulating him more… It sounds cold when I describe it like that, but if anybody’s ever done it for you, you’ll know how much of a difference it makes. It’s called the ‘bunny hop’ and, appropriately, I learned it from Cannit, the hare.
    “Jesus,” Holloway groans and chuckles, hugging his bulky, pudgy farame more tightly to my back, humping me with a bit more excitement. “That feels damn nice,” he adds as if it’s something to be embarassed about and fucks me a little harder, pressing me against the cold, wet bricks, pushing his thickly-dressed body against mine and his fat prick up my ass. Outside the alley people still walk by and all they’d have to do is turn their head and they’d see me getting boned by a bum, no doubt thinking that I was just some street urchin selling his ass to make enough money to pay for an immunisation treatment to kill the bugs he no doubt picked up from selling his ass in the first place.
    “Holloway,” I whisper in a soft voice and he leans his snout closer to my ear. “Have you ever had to hide so deeply that you felt like you were invisible?” He doesn’t slow his motions, but his hands move from my hips to my bare, cold stomach, rubbing it swiftly to warm me up, kissing me on the crook of the neck and shoulder, and nods. “I don’t like it,” I say to him and then I let out a long, soft groan.
    I feel him cumming in me, but it isn’t that which makes me feel as warm as I now feel. It’s as if simply saying it makes it less bad and I gratefully accept Holloway’s simple silence just as I accept his load inside me and the way he hugs me from behind tells me he’s grateful to me, too, for my warm, tight ass and whatever else he feels I’m giving him.
    People pass us by and they don’t look into our alley, and I wonder what they’d think if they did look. A portly old wino, standing up against a thoroughly cute guy, both of them panting in the wake of his orgasm. “You feel scared, son,” Holloway says and I chuckle, not because he’s right but because he’s just shy of being right. When he said it, fear wasn’t on my mind, you see. But it quickly returns, and with it the light twitching of my abdomen that I can never really keep under control and which he has no trouble feeling, with his hands so greedily groping my washboard tummy.
    He says no more than that, then pulling his limpening prick out of me with a polite cough and as I tug my pants back on and he goes to zip up his fly. I think about sucking it clean for him, but God knows how long it’s been since he’s washed it and despite all my prowess as a cockserver there are still some standards of hygiene I cling to. I button back up and tug my coat on, shivering more when I’ve got the woolen longcoat wrapped about me than before, because the garment took up the night’s chill in the time it was laid aside. I give the old badger a kiss on the cheek and a smile, and without another word I walk out of the alley.
    And that would have been that, except as he lays himself down to go back to sleep, Holloway calls out to me. “Hey kid,” he yells and two people across the street stop walking, unsure whether he’s talking to them, and then quickly press on. “I owe ya for the ride, so here it is. Somebody once told me, and I know for sure you’ve heard this corny oldy before, so don’t smirk, he said ‘Don’t get mad, get even.’ And that’s good advice, it really is, but I got somethin’ that’ll work better for you, I think. Don’t get scared, kiddo… get serious.”
    My heart stops fluttering and with a calm I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of, I nod and turn away, heading for the uptown safehouse, careful to take the biggest and best-lit streets, being very conspicuous in walking so as to attract the least notice, you know how that goes. As I walk I rub a hand over my abdomen – as always, showing a smile in satisfaction as I feel my abdominals – and feel no twitching there. I don’t feel out of breath, in fact, I can find no physical symptoms of anxiety at all and it then occurs to me that I’m truly not scared, now, and that this is mighty peculiar indeed.
    I turn the corner into MacMillan street, which is fairly busy even at this hour, despite the shops all being closed. In the heart of summer it’d probably be getting light already, but the people walking about are nighthawks, not early birds, looking like they went to a movie, then out clubbing, then a drink and only now are heading back home, taking the scenic route along the nice shops. Jewelry stores with Swarovski crystal compete with liquor stores with fine malt brandies, a high tech, whiz-bang computer place sits kitty-corner from a fashion shop infinitely more stylish than the threads I pillage from the Haberdash when I can afford it.
    I hop the fence covering the mouth of the alley between a halal butcher and a little place that’s full of antique furniture, but you know how those shops are. The owners are all sixty-somethings who want to collect and catalogue the beautiful things they love so much and to be able to say ‘I’m in antiques’ at their bridge meetings. The last thing they want to do is sell these things.
    Also, when I say ‘hop the fence’ I mean ‘clamber up a fence with straight bars twice my height quick enough and quiet enough so’s nobody notices me.’ Just so you know Malloy ain’t the only guy with a little prowess when it comes to getting’ to places I ain’t been invited.
    This place, though? A door at the end of this alley, which belongs to nobody but which everybody thinks belongs to somebody else, fitted with a lock so old an’ fucked up that it can’t be opened ‘less you jigger it just so, something – if ya’ll allow me to add to my rep as a breaker-inner – I discovered all on my lonesome. That door leads to a house, and a real nice one, too. Weird thing is, though, it don’t look like it’s been occupied for a while and what’s weirder still, it ain’t been looted, neither.
    Don’t you think that’s bizarre? A house full of pretty nice stuff, old furniture and pictures, couple leather books and even letters! They were a pretty big find when we discovered them, I tell ya. This’d been our first crash pad, me an’ Malloy, when we came to Maranatha and it felt like providence, especially cuz half the letters was signed by some dude named Standish Mark Malloy, at least, that’s what the squiggly writing looked to be sayin’, and all of ‘em was dated seventeen-somethin’.
    You should have seen us when we saw those. Two pups – well, one wolfpup and one dog too old to get this childishly excited about a find like this – frolicking through the house, turning up the collars of our coats and pretending to be fine eighteenth-century gentlemen. Malloy would flip up his shirt and half-open the coat collar and walk through the house with his hands steepled as if he were a pastor or somethin’, and he’d find me, a hedonistic, rich merchant’s son, and have me kneel before him to receive a few coppers and a benediction, or I’d be a choirboy and he’d be a sailor, just back from a trip to the Old Country. Those games were so much fun, and Malloy, sweetheart that he is deep down, never forgot to add a little money to the playing out of respect to my budding professionalism.
    And that bed… They say people were shorter back in those days, but whoever owned this house wasn’t one of ‘em. The bed was perfect, although it smelled a bit funky ‘till we treated it with a creative mix of lemon juice and vinegar and some other things that we discovered, through experimentation, could wrench the stench from the old curtains, clothes and furniture. It was soft, and didn’t make no noise on account of the springs being so well-oiled they were still greasy when we found ‘em.
    We didn’t stay there long, though. First thing we did was find some other place to crash so’s The Old House, as we so imaginatively called it, would stay secret. And it did, and so me an’ Malloy decided that it’d make a good hideout. I grab the latch. Lift, nudge sideways, wiggle twice, shoulder the door, lower it, pull sharply, turn the latch and then simply let it fall open.
    A steep stairway, tightly curved so that whoever owned this would have had to hoist his furniture in through the windows. Never step on the third-from-the-top stair, it’s close to buckling and could take the entire staircase down and we got no idea what’s kept in the basement. Hoisting myself over the Doomsday Stair with one hand on the wall, whose paper long ago peeled, and the other on a still splendidly red-lacquered handrail, I reach the door at the top of the stairs and enter the room.
    It’s a number of rooms, actually, but the owner of this house had it built contrary to the sensibilities of the time and had it designed with a remarkable openness so that you can see into all of them from any other, primarily on account of there being no doors to hamper vision. Why he didn’t just leave out the wall s as well is a mystery to both Malloy and me, but neither of us can deny the simple childish pleasure in playing hide and seek, naked as innocence, darting through the rooms and over the furniture, finally to land, pinned, on the bed and to, well, you know what Malloy and I do from time to time.
    Speaking of whom, just as I’m opening the door and step into the small but spacious, orderly yet labyrinthine house I see one of the alley-facing windows on the opposite side being opened from the outside and a sleek black figure positively oozes into the room, silently shutting the window.
    “Hey, you just getting in? Sorry I’m so late I was… occupied,” Malloy says, sealing the latch on the windows, whose glass isn’t smooth entirely but varies in thickness, showing its age. “Did you know Alice has a girlfriend?” he says, coming toward me.
    I curl my lip at him. “Jesus, Malloy, get with the program,” I snarl and give him a quick hug and a kiss, which has strangely become our familiar greeting these last few weeks. “We’ve got a serious– that is, I’ve got a serious– Alice has a girlfriend?” All worry and thought drips out of my mind like Ben & Jerry’s out of a sieve on a hot day, as I picture the beautiful, effeminate young lionboy, so popular with the older men who hire him, with a girlfriend. A girl, who’d likely stand a very good chance of being more masculine than him, although, no, his stature and manner can be quite masculine when he ain’t thinking.
    Amazing, simply amazing how a bombshell like this can completely, what’s the word, relativate things. That’s what I mean, I think. Like, I’m still worried about the Scrabble tiles in my pocket and Malloy shares that worry when I hand them to him but at the same time the powerful implications of those little things are pushed from the number one spot on our priorities list simply by the realization that there are still other things going on, things which are also important.
    I sit myself down on the couch, or sofa or chaise longue or whatever it’s called and Malloy seats himself next to me, pulling me across his lap. He’s warm, warm through the ridiculously thin short-sleeved black silk shirt he still wears even in the cold winter we’re having. My hand raises up and I cup his neck from behind, a casual, familiar gesture that somehow, in its simple affection, feels more intimate than his dick up my ass or his cum in my mouth and it makes us both strangely uncomfortable, so I stop, and simply lie in his lap, thinking.
    “This isn’t so bad, then,” I say and I don’t even know for sure what I mean, but Malloy gets me.
    “It don’t matter overmuch how all this plays out if Alice is all right. And Nezzy, and Mrs. Ackerby and Double Bill and Mark and everybody else,” he muses. There’s… I don’t know, there’s pain in his voice and I sense he’s deeply unhappy and I guess it’s got to do with him pining after Alice so I don’t mention it. “N, E, O, W,” Malloy reads out as he checks the tiles again. “How much will you bet these are for a guy called Weno?” he jokes, but our laughter isn’t as hollow as it might have been.
    I shake my head nonetheless. “It was addressed to me, dropped off with the Crosshairs’ stage manager.”
    “Hank?”
    I nod. “That’s the one. Somebody knows Luke McCall is Owen Zelazny, Malloy, and I sure as fuck didn’t tell anybody.” I pause and I feel very small, lying on his lap, though I feel the pressure of that sheath I sucked more than any other in my life and always, up until the disaster some weeks ago, for money. “What’s she like?” I ask.
    Malloy doesn’t even flinch as he shifts trains of thought to Alice’s girlfriend. “Remember that batch of heroin hookers that got set free last year? That police raid?” he asks, lightly toying with my navel. I stare up at him in amazement.
    “She’s one of them?”
    “No, they were all Vietnamese,” Malloy assures me with a grin, leaning down to kiss my nose, “She volunteered as a social assistant to help them acclimatize to local customs. She dropped out of high school to continue that work – she’s working part-time at the Regency drug clinic. I don’t know how they met, but I saw them coming out of a movie theater, holding hands and all that,” the dobermann says with a wistful chuckle.
    I smile. “That is the sweetest thing ever. Have you talked to him about It, yet? Has he been thinking about quitting? Malloy, we’ve got to get him out of my line of work,” I say, a cascade of concern and planning as if, in some bizarre way, Malloy and I were Alice’s fathers. “Things are changing, aren’t they,” I say softly. Again, I’m not really sure what I mean, but I see something akin to understanding in Malloy’s eyes and while we don’t embrace, we try to get a little closer to each other.
    “You know I love you, right?”
    I nod. “Of course.”
    “And Alice, too? And Nezzy?”
    I nod again. “Of course,” I say again and he seems terribly, terribly relieved to I turn my head and kiss that flat, shirt-clad stomach of his, so finely rippled, so hard and I feel the muscles twitch like mine do when I’m scared, so I kiss him again.
    Then Malloy does something which anybody else might take the greatest offense at, but which I’ll never stop being grateful for. That arrogant, sexy fucking horndog reaches into his shirt pocket and withdraws a rolled-up wad of twenties, four or five of ‘em, and tosses the money onto the ornate little table whose lacquered mahogany surface has received a number of value-diminishing scratches and cigarette burns and coffee stains since we moved into the Old House.
    It’s that casual act of paying me for sex – paying me, and very naturally demanding sex, showing respect for my professionalism and testing it at once, that reminder of what my life used to be like and how much we both want it back, that more than any of the words remind me that Malloy is truly my best friend, and just as he expressed his love in a curious way, so I express mine.
    Two seconds flat and his zipper’s down and my mouth is where he likes it the most, both of us groaning, perhaps more at the memory of a better life than at the sensations. His cock flexes between my lips, throbbing to life as I skin his sheath back, swallowing and slurping hungrily on it and I remember that while it may have been a while since I had a dick to suck, until I had Hank earlier, it’s been forever since I got to blow my buddy Malloy.
    He’s writhing on the couch, much more affected by the blowjob I’m giving him than usual and I have to put some considerable pressure on his chest to pin him in place – as much as you can pin down a firmly-muscled dobermann like him. A good, solid grip on his balls does the trick though, and he lies back, arms splayed out over the couch’s backrest, eyes cracked open just a fraction to watch me work.
    I work with relish. I don’t just savour the act, the taste and feel of a nice, big cock in my mouth, the way my throat tingles when a little precum dribbles down it, I savor my friend, Malloy, and he me, and I’m reminded again that it’s because we love each other so deeply and because we have such good sex that we can never be lovers, but who gives a fuck? Honestly, who cares?
    Up and down my muzzle moves, my skilled, deep, warm muzzle, lips sealed around his throbbing member, sliding it along the gulley of my tongue and then into my throat, swallowing hard around it and corkscrewing my head for extra stimulation, loving the feel of that tapered cockhead sliding down my gullet. I tell you, I suck on that thick, long doggydick like it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, moaning like a bitch, which I don’t often do, my face scrunched up like I’m in pain, the way it gets when you get something you truly, deeply need.
    And Malloy’s no different. He groans, his fingers run through my spiked hair, he wheezes his breaths through clenched teeth and his steel-hard erection shows all the signs of a male who’s so far gone that he can’t even cum just yet. I push the issue, bobbing my head faster, gripping him by the base and by the balls and devoting all my art to this, to getting him off but keeping him on the edge, building and building the orgasm I need to taste so badly.
    My head’s swimming as I lay sprawled on that couch, fully clothed as Malloy is, the sexual act no more than a kiss in an intimate spot – a deep, French kiss, but a kiss nonetheless. I imagine myself an apprentice boy, pleasing the master he respects so much, or a servant who brings a noble guest a meal and some pleasure, and I imagine myself when I was fifteen and Malloy was twenty-two and, not a day after our first, furtive fuck, I tried cocksucking for the first time and realized I loved it, as I love it now.
    Warm semen, a saltiness so familiar to me now, floods my mouth but I pay it no heed. I swallow as much as I need to to keep breathing, the electrifying milk only heightening my awareness of the taste of Malloy’s meat and for his part, I think he barely notices the climax either, it’s just one crescendo in a symphony of lust and even as it tapers off, the flow of cum, I keep sucking and he keeps bucking, and before we know it our clothes are all over the place and furniture is overturned and we’re on the bed, sweating like dogs, and fucking, and fucking till the sun comes up.
     

    To be continued.

Available on paperback in 2005

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