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Love’s Landscapes

Indian Summer - Information

Indian Summer

Author Bio

Love’s Landscapes

An M/M Romance series

INDIAN SUMMER

By D.C. Williams

Introduction

The story you are about to read celebrates love, sex and romance between men. It is a product of the Love’s Landscapes promotion sponsored by the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and is published as a gift to you.

What Is Love’s Landscapes?

The Goodreads M/M Romance Group invited members to choose a photo and pen a letter asking for a short M/M romance story inspired by the image; authors from the group were encouraged to select a letter and write an original tale. The result was an outpouring of creativity that shone a spotlight on the special bond between M/M romance writers and the people who love what these authors do.

A written description of the image that inspired this story is provided along with the original request letter. If you’d like to view the photo, please feel free to join the Goodreads M/M Romance Group and visit the discussion section: Love’s Landscapes.

No matter if you are a long-time devotee to M/M Romance, just new to the genre or fall somewhere in between, you are in for a delicious treat.

Words of Caution

This story may contain sexually explicit content and is intended for adult readers. It may contain content that is disagreeable or distressing to some readers. The M/M Romance Group strongly recommends that each reader review the General Information section before each story for story tags as well as for content warnings.

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved worldwide.
This eBook may be distributed freely in its entirety courtesy of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group. This eBook may not be sold, manipulated or reproduced in any format without the express written permission of the author.

Indian Summer, Copyright © 2014 D.C. Williams

Cover Design by Goodreads M/M Romance Group
Cover Photographs from Stock.XCHNG
and Public Domain Pictures.net
Tower-60, Arizona Sunrise, Sunrise 6-24-12 I
Northern Lights over Northern Canada by dyet
Spooky Sunset, Arizona Sunrise, Arizona Sunrise

This ebook is published by the M/M Romance Group and is not directly endorsed by or affiliated with Goodreads Inc.

M/M Romance Group Publication

INDIAN SUMMER

By D.C. Williams

Photo Description

An extremely buff and slightly grubby young man stands in the doorway of a workshed or cabin. A cooler and various odds and ends are visible. He’s stripped off his plaid shirt and jeans and looks slightly overheated and kind of aggravated.

Story Letter

Dear Author,

He was the closest thing I had to a brother. He was also my deepest, darkest, little secret. Those hunting trips up north? He may have been hunting deer, but all I was hunting for was a chance to get close to him. A freak storm and a tree through my truck might finally give me that chance.

Sincerely,

Liza

Story Info

Genre: contemporary

Tags: friends to lovers, bisexual, hunting trip, blue collar, outdoors-type, non-explicit sex

Word Count: 6,547

INDIAN SUMMER

By D.C. Williams

“The fuck? Why can’t you?”

Cody could hear the hurt in Wake’s voice. He couldn’t say, “Because I’m sick of eating my heart out over you, and it’s hopeless, it always will be, because you’re straight, and you think I am too, and you don’t ever want to know different.” Instead he said, “I’ll ask my boss again, see if I can work something out, get a couple of days at least.”

As if his boss had assumed anything other than Cody going hunting with Wake, same as they did every year the first week of December. It had been a thin story anyway, because Wake had to know that there wasn’t a giant pre-Christmas rush at the garage. The week before Thanksgiving they’d be kind of lively, since people were thinking about the long road trips to Grandma’s, but not three weeks before Christmas.

Since he’d been claiming he might not have the time, he could at least keep it to a long weekend, and maybe this’d be the year he’d just blurt out all his private business so his best friend could kick the shit out of him before telling him he never wanted to see him again, or maybe Cody’d keep it to himself some more so it could just kill him slowly instead. At least Wake had stopped using homophobic insults in casual conversation a couple of years ago. Cody had no idea if Wake had been smart enough to realize that they were pissing him off, or if the other man had gotten religion of some kind. Like the kind who wouldn’t have sex with you or would fire your ass if you kept using that kind of language. Much more of that crap and Cody would have gone off. Next stop— the emergency room and twenty-odd years of friendship down the drain.

Not even friendship, he and Wake were family, close as brothers. Family sometimes turned their backs on you though, especially if you were queer. Cody mostly confined his queerness to the kind of bar he didn’t tell the guys he worked with that he went to, but he’d talked to other gay men enough to know how cold those who used to love you sometimes could be.

So Cody kept his mouth shut, and it made it easier that the best job Wake could get was a hundred miles away. They only saw each other a couple of times a month when Wake came to visit his parents and that annual hunting trip was the only real time they spent alone together anymore. If Cody ever found someone it might be a problem, but since he knew he was hung up on Wake anyway, that probably wasn’t going to happen. He got laid enough to keep from going crazy, and was glad that he was done with pretending to be interested in women. Cody had gotten married at twenty-one, and divorced at twenty-two when his wife found his porn stash. She hadn’t actually been as mad as she might have been, but she had sworn that she would come and cut off his balls if he dated another woman, and he’d decided to believe her. He knew he was never going to be with Wake, but at least it gave him an excuse to have the kind of sex he wanted.

Mrs. Zakrewski, Wake’s mom, asked him when he was getting married again, but he could tease his way out of that easily, and as far as he knew the rest of the family thought he’d been burned enough that he wasn’t in any hurry. Cody turned up at the Z’s every Sunday for dinner, but didn’t see his own dad more than a couple of times a year and wasn’t too worried about what the man thought, since he wasn’t usually sober enough to make much sense anyway.

****

A week later, Cody was pulling up to Wake’s apartment in his old F-150, the backseat of the cab stuffed with sleeping bags and groceries, his grandfather’s Remington 870 carefully wrapped in oil cloth, since he didn’t have a gun rack and Cody had long since noticed that most guys who had one in their trucks were kind of tools. He loved that old gun, and it said something about his dad that he’d passed it on to Cody instead of selling it for drinking money. He’d given it to him to keep when Cody was sixteen and he hadn’t gotten that bad yet, but having that gun reminded Cody that there was still a human being somewhere inside the shambling wreck his father had become. He was pretty sure his grandfather had bought it in the fifties right around the time his father was born.

Wake had a Mossberg he’d bought the year they were out of high school. He could have brought one of his dad’s guns as well, since Mr. Z didn’t go with them anymore, but neither of them was all that serious about hunting anyway. Cody thought they’d gotten a deer once since it had just become the two of them. Mrs. Z liked to have the venison, but field dressing the deer was a horrible gross mess, and the butcher wasn’t free.

The day was overcast, but it wasn’t that cold for December, and Wake just had a denim jacket on over a hoodie as he slung his gear in back. They pulled into a WaWa to fill up and grab some coffee, and headed up to the tiny ramshackle cabin adjoining state lands that Wake’s father and uncle owned.

Cody and Wake had been inseparable since kindergarten, but they’d never needed to talk much. Not when he spent every afternoon at Wake’s house when they were little, not when they were riding their bikes all over the neighborhood, not when they were teenagers, not when they first started getting out and working, and certainly not when they were grown men who knew each other inside out. Except for that little detail about who Cody liked to fuck, of course.

Now, they sat companionably in the front seat of the battered old truck while Cody drove upstate and they listened to the CD Wake slid into the player. Wake still burned them himself, and this particular one had Steve Earle, some of David Alan Coe’s less PC moments, and the Civil Wars, plus some crap Cody didn’t recognize and Ray LaMontagne’s For the Summer, which he kind of liked himself, but wouldn’t have talked about.

It was mid-afternoon when they got to the cabin, and they got busy sweeping it out, since no one had been up there since the summer and it wasn’t exactly airtight. Mr. Z and his brother used to talk about improving the place in various ways, but it was just a big, bare room with a couple of metal frame cots with thin mattresses to put your sleeping bags on, an old Formica top table with mismatched chairs, and a permanently damp couch with a couple of easy chairs. There was running water and a toilet, but no water heater, so the water was only cold, and the service had to be turned on and off every night so the pipes didn’t freeze. No electricity, so no fridge, a propane stove to cook on and a fireplace for heat.

“Do you want to go out?” asked Wake as Cody put groceries away and evicted a daddy longlegs from the cabinet.

“Not really. I’m fine if we just chill and drink. I got two thirties the last time I was in Maryland, so we should be good for the weekend.”

“We could always hit the beer store, if we run low. Pennsylvania rules are stupid, but there’s one not too far.” Wake walked over to his backpack and pulled out a small bottle of Jack. “I know you’re not much for the hard stuff, but I brought this, too.”

“Maybe if it gets cold, but I think the forecast is kind of warm. Supposed to rain tomorrow night, though.” Cody was sure he didn’t have a problem, but he knew he liked to drink, and he didn’t want to have a problem either, so he mostly stuck to beer, and only when the occasion warranted it.

“At least it’s not snow.”

“There’s that.”

Wake laid a fire and lit it while Cody fried bacon and eggs and threw some bread in the pan to crisp it up a little since there was no toaster, due to the lack of electricity and while there was a contraption in the storage closet that allegedly toasted bread over an open fire, he didn’t think anyone had used it since Mr. Z’s dad had died. This place had been in Wake’s family since the fifties at least, and there were some weird things in that closet.

Wake had dug out the lanterns and filled them and lit them as the shadows grew long and they ate an early supper. They had thrown an old blanket on the couch, and after they finished eating, the two men settled down on it to drink beer and watch the fire glow. Cody loved this, the companionable silence, the way they just worked together, doing what needed to be done without words. He guessed Wake loved it too, but probably not the same way, where he ached all the time for it to be for real, every day, for a reality where Cody could stretch his arm all the way out and let it fall on Wake’s shoulders, pull him close.

Cody had been fourteen or fifteen, that awful year after his grandfather had died, and his mother was really sick, when he’d become aware that his feelings for Wake were more than brotherly. Cody had always spent a lot of time at Wake’s house, since Mrs. Z had offered to let him spend afternoons there because she was home, and his mom didn’t love sending him to the afterschool care. Sometimes it was hard for someone to come get him on time, and Mrs. Z didn’t care how long he stayed. If he was there at suppertime she’d put another plate on the table, and she liked having another boy in the house after all those girls in the family. That year he slept over a lot because his mom was in and out of the hospital, and his dad could still hold it together when he needed to, but days they kept his mom overnight his father would come home after visiting hours and drink until he passed out.

Cody guessed he was a little slow on the uptake, but before he knew what it was he used to lie awake at night and listen to Wake breathe. He’d find all kinds of excuses to touch Wake, until the night they were watching TV, up in Wake’s room, and he suddenly had the urge to reach out and stroke Wake’s hair, letting his hand glide down to the other boy’s neck.

Wake, of course, leapt up and yelled, “Butthole, what are you doing? That is totally gay. Like faggot gay!”

Cody had covered, carrying on that he’d done it because Wake loved it, but he knew two things; he wanted to touch Wake that way, and he wasn’t supposed to. As he got a little older, he realized it might always be Wake, but it wasn’t only Wake. He liked male bodies, and he liked the things two men could do together.

It worked well enough with girls that he could pretend. He knew he was a fucking coward, but he was glad he wasn’t one of the guys like Ken Bridges or Jay Castello who couldn’t hide it. Senior year, Ken had become Kenni with an “i”. He wore nail polish and made no bones about his ambition to move to L.A. and become a hairdresser to the stars right after he finished beauty college. Cody ambushed him one day after school. After a couple of awkward moments Cody made it clear that he wasn’t there to beat the guy up. He was still amazed that Kenni had kissed him instead of punching him.

Kenni wasn’t Wake, but kissing him was good, and Cody loved the way their bodies fit together. They hooked up a few times, but Cody was still dating girls and Kenni didn’t seem to expect him to do anything different. Girls were okay. Cody had sex with them when it was expected and it felt good, and he knew something was lacking, but even after they graduated and he didn’t see Kenni any more, there were ways to get that missing piece every now and then, even if it still wasn’t Wake.

And never would be Wake. The temptation to reach across the old sofa was almost overwhelming. Cody got up to pee and throw beer cans in the bin.

“I miss this,” said Wake. “I like having a job, but I wish we lived closer.”

“Yeah, man,” said Cody. He grabbed some fresh beers out of the cooler, and sat down again after he visited the toilet. Why was he complaining anyway? He had this, and his right hand or another lonely, horny guy could take care of the rest of it easily enough.

****

Not too long after that, Wake banked the fire while Cody went to turn the water off, and they went to bed. They were up at five, in and out of the freezing shower in record time, and Wake poured out cereal while Cody dealt with the coffee boiler on the stove. They were dressed and out, orange vests on, guns loaded with buckshot, as dawn started to warm the sky.

Cody might not really care if they got a deer. He might not really care if they saw a deer, but this he loved. Walking through the woods with Wake as the frost melted and the world woke up? Oh, yes. He couldn’t believe he had almost skipped it.

Eight hours later, sandwiches gone, kind of footsore, and without a single clear shot all day, his enthusiasm was waning a little. Wake thought he had seen something, and then some turkeys flew out from behind a log. They should be in season, but the buckshot would have made a mess out of a bird anyway, so neither of them tried for a shot.

For December it was almost hot, low sixties at least, which wasn’t tropical, but warm for their gear, and not what you’d expect in central Pennsylvania this late in the year, and the air was oddly heavy.

“Let’s call it a day,” said Wake.

Cody agreed. The deer might wake up from their naps feeling frisky around sunset, but shooting anything at dusk was tricky, and Mr. Z always claimed that was when most hunting accidents happened.

****

There were a couple of ribeyes in the small cooler with the milk and the cold packs, and the other stuff that should be kept reasonably cold. Cody pulled them out as soon as they got back to the cabin.

“I don’t know about you,” he called to Wake, “but I’m hungry. Those sandwiches were a while ago.”

“Tell me about it. Let me get the fire back up, if you don’t mind cooking.”

“Nah.” He usually did, and Wake could burn water anyway. “Potatoes good?”

“Sure.”

Cody put some butter and a little corn oil in one pan and just a pat of butter in the other. When the pan with the oil was hot, he opened a can of sliced potatoes, drained them, and poured them into the pan. After they’d been on for a minute or two he put the steaks in.

A few minutes later they were settled on the couch with their food and some cold Yuengling. “Damn,” said Wake, “if you weren’t a guy, I’d marry you.”

Cody thought about telling him that the state was kind of getting over that.

“Did your wife cook like that?”

Cody shook his head, “Nah.”

“No wonder you’re still single.”

“So are you.”

“Well, I had the sense not to get married in the first place.”

Cody shook his head. “Have you ever even slept with the same girl twice?”

“Of course, man, I just don’t make a habit of it. Might if one of them cooked like this, though.”

“Yeah, well enjoy it, because I don’t have any more steaks ’cause I didn’t want to try to keep them in the cooler past tonight. What would be involved in getting electric service out here?”

“Too much, according to my uncle. It would be nice to have a fridge and some real lights, though.”

“It would. You know, they make fridges that run off a propane cylinder.”

“Yeah, my dad looked into it once. They’re like three times as much as the regular ones and go through gas even faster than a water heater would.” There was a long pause as Wake took a slug of beer. “My uncle’s been talking to my dad about selling.”

“Crap.”

“Yeah. He’s got a point, though. He doesn’t really hunt anymore; neither does my dad. His daughter uses this place for a week or two in the summer, and we’re here for a few days every year.”

“Could he rent it?”

“I guess, but probably not for much, and that’s a headache sometimes. It does suck though. I always thought I’d bring my kids here.”

“You have to have some first.”

“There is that, and since I haven’t been in any big hurry to get married, I don’t know if that’s happening.”

“Yeah.”

Cody had left a pot of water on the stove to heat for the dishes, and the two men washed and dried companionably, turned off the water, had a couple more beers, and went to bed after banking the fire and putting out the lanterns. As he drifted off, Cody became aware of the sound of rain on the roof.

****

It was still full dark when Cody was jerked out of sleep by a crash. It took him a minute to remember where he was and make sense of the lightning flashing through the window.

“Code?” Wake called from the other cot.

“Yeah. Was that just thunder?”

“Maybe?”

He could hear the wind, and the cabin rumbled. “That was thunder.”

Then there was another crash that made the floor shake, and Wake said, “And I don’t think that was. Fuck, are we safe here?”

“It’s your cabin. You know better than I do. How’s that green roof stuff in a storm?”

“How should I know? Okay, I think. We’ve only replaced it a couple of times since my grandfather built the place, so it can’t be too bad.” Another crash reverberated through the room.

“Fuck. Was that a tree?”

“Maybe. I’m sure not checking. Where could we go?”

“Probably nowhere. My truck’s not going to be safer than in here, and I’m not trying to drive on a dirt road in this.”

“You’re right. I know what would give us a little protection if a tree comes through, though.”

“What?”

“Under the table. We’ll pull the mattresses and our sleeping bags under there, and maybe we can sleep a little, and even if we don’t, it should protect our heads.”

“Good idea.”

The two men set up the makeshift bed, and as an afterthought wrapped their weapons in the blanket off the couch and put them under one of the cots.

It was cozy under the table. They weren’t actually touching, but Cody was hyperaware of Wake’s breathing. Despite the storm, he could actually feel the other man’s heartbeat. He dozed fitfully and then slept.

****

Cody awoke to light flooding in the thankfully still-intact window. He pulled his clothes on quickly, leaving Wake still asleep, went to the door, and opened it. It didn’t seem too bad. Lots of branches down, the air still and surprisingly warm. There must have been a warm front behind the storm, and the sun shone down.

Cody walked down the steps, and around the corner of the cabin, and stopped. Oh, fuck! There was a gigantic old-growth maple across his truck, and a couple of other big trees on the dirt road in front of it. They were barricaded in. His truck was probably totalled, and there was no way to clear any of this mess without a chain saw.

“Wake, we have a problem!” he yelled. Wake appeared next to him, still wearing his T-shirt and sweats.

“Oh, fuck, yes we do. Let me grab my phone and call my uncle. Have him bring a chain saw and give us a ride.”

Wake disappeared and reappeared, holding his phone to his ear and scowling. “No fucking service. Try yours.”

Nothing. “Crap, mine is dead too. There must be a tower down. Ideas?”

“Well, the cabin is fine, at least. We could try to clear some of this by hand, and see if our cells start working again. Or we could hike out to the main road.”

“How far do you think?”

“Couple of miles, but there’s no telling what else is down, and for all I know the main road is closed off at the turn-off for here.”

“Fuck.”

“Why don’t we see what we can get cleared and stay until tomorrow morning, then hike out if we don’t have cell service?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I’ll go get dressed.”

****

It was even warmer than yesterday. Cody would have thought that a storm like that would have brought a cold front with it, but someone seemed to have forgotten to tell the weather it was December. If there hadn’t been crap down everywhere it would have been a beautiful Indian summer day.

Trying to clear anything was hot, messy work too. Cody was sweating, and he was full of itchy things. Pine needles, dirt, little bits of bark, a few leftover scratchy brown leaves. Then he slipped in the mud and Wake laughed at him.

“The fuck’s your problem?” Cody roared at him.

“You look hysterical.” Wake was laughing so hard he was gasping for breath. “Wet and mad and muddy.”

“I fucking give up,” Cody muttered, and went to the door of the cabin to strip off his jeans and plaid shirt. He was down to his briefs in a minute, but there was still mud in weird places.

“Damn,” said Wake. “You really do work out, don’t you?”

“Not too much else to do, and I like to look good.”

“That you do. Trying to clear this isn’t doing much good, is it?”

“No. We should have just walked out this morning. Now we’re tired and I’m filthy.”

Wake laughed again. “Well, if we started walking now we’d be real popular with you like that. Get picked up by some cougar or a van full of fags.”

Cody had enough. Wake had certainly said worse things, although not recently, but that was the last fucking straw. “I am a fag!” he yelled.

Wake’s face fell.

Cody waited for the fist.

“Sorry, I forgot you didn’t like it when I said that. I meant fag-fags, not you.”

“I am a fag-fag!” He took a deep breath. “You know?”

“Of course I know. That’s not something I’m gonna talk about.”

“No,” said Cody, “guess not.”

“Oh, crap, you didn’t know I knew?”

“Not a clue.”

“Oh fuck, sorry, I should have said something.”

“I could have come out and told you, but I didn’t know if that was just your mouth or you really had a problem with it. Frankly, I thought you might beat me up.”

“Cody McCullough, you’re my brother. How you could ever think I’d hit you, especially over something like that?” Wake just stared at him and said, “Oh fuck, you really thought I might.”

Cody nodded. “I know a guy, his actual brother put him in the hospital.”

“Oh, fuck… I guess, but no, I ain’t like that. At all. Not just with you.”

“You talk like that.”

“Everybody does.”

Cody stared him down. “Maybe everybody doesn’t.”

“They do at my job, but I knew you didn’t like it, so I tried to watch my mouth. That slipped out. I know you’re gay. I’ve known it for years, and I don’t have any problem with it.”

Cody relaxed fractionally. “Not gonna panic that I’m lusting after you?”

“Fuck, no, man, there wasn’t a lot of room under that table last night, and did I look like I was having any issues?”

“No, you didn’t. What if I said I was lusting after you?”

Wake laughed. “Nice try. I know you got a fella.”

“Actually I don’t.”

“Really?”

“Really. Can we go in and sit and have a couple of beers? The doorway of the cabin is not where I want to have this conversation.”

“Sure. Are you going to put on clothes?”

“No, I’m hot and I’m itchy and I should probably take a shower, but I don’t feel like it right now, as long as you aren’t going to freak out if I’m in my underwear.”

“Nope.”

Cody crossed to the cooler and grabbed a beer for each of them. They might as well drink it before it got skunky, because they weren’t exactly in a position to go get more ice, and the ice that they did have wasn’t lasting as well as it usually did.

Wake was shimmying out of his jeans.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“If you get to hang out in your underwear, so do I. I may not be muddy, but you’re not the only one who’s hot and itchy. I’m not going to get offended if you sprout a woody.”

Cody handed a can to Wake, popped the top, and drank the whole thing down. This whole trip was just too fucking weird.

“If you don’t have a guy, why were you trying to weasel out of this trip?”

“Complicated.”

“Which always translates into pussy, or in your case, dick.”

“Kind of.” Cody let himself look at Wake. Not as ripped as Cody, but nice abs and thighs. Nice package, too. His little friend down there was trying to wake up and take an interest. “You sure you’re not freaked, bro? We keep drinking, and you keep sprawling on the couch like that, and I’m going to get hard. It’s like if you were hanging out with a girl in her underwear. It’s just natural.”

“We keep drinking and I may get hard, too. It’s not a thing, Cody. I know you’re out of my league, and I’m not your type, and it’s not like anything has to happen, but I’m not freaked.”

Cody finished his second beer and grabbed another for himself and for Wake, who also appeared to be out.

“I’m not gay.”

Cody was about to say, “Duh,” when Wake continued.

“I’m maybe not completely straight either.” Now Wake was empty again in about thirty seconds flat and Cody needed to catch up. “I’ve hooked up a couple of times, and I um, kind of had a little thing with Kenni Bridges senior year.”

Cody spluttered beer all over the couch. “What! No fucking way!” A couple of comments Kenni had made sort of fell into place. “No wonder he looked so fucking smug all the time.”

“You too?”

“Yeah,” said Cody, realizing they had both been fucking Kenni when they could maybe have been fucking each other. Or possibly both fucking Kenni at the same time, which was an unbelievably hot thought.

“Trust Kenni not to say anything,” Wake sighed, and got up to grab more beer. He handed one to Cody and said, “But, oh man, he was something else. Hot like a girl, but with that huge fucking dick, and that mouth…” Cody was suddenly rock-hard, and he noticed Wake was kind of tenting as he continued; “Now I’m kind of wishing we had hit that at the same time.”

Cody groaned.

“Damn, that’s a nice bulge in your pants. You like that idea, don’t you?”

“Well my dick likes that idea. The rest of me is completely fucking confused. I will admit that I’ve never asked how you feel about gay people, but you come across like a complete homophobe most of the time. Now you’re telling me you’re maybe kind of bi, and you know I’m gay, and now you’re talking dirty about Kenni who I’ve barely thought about in years. Although yes, he was fucking hot, and at seventeen he could suck a marble through a straw.”

“Well, you figure he’s gotta be making some guy pretty happy by now.”

Cody laughed. He looked over at Wake sprawled on that sofa in his briefs, semi-hard, half in the bag, and just looking at him that way he always did, like he’d follow Cody into hell and expected Cody to do the same. “Probably. I was squirrelly about the trip because it was getting too fucking hard to keep that much of myself from you.”

“Cody, you don’t ever have to keep any part of yourself from me. I shoulda said something, but really how could you think I’d have an attitude? I never even gave Jay or Kenni much of a hard time.”

“I touched you the one time, when I slept over, just your neck, not anything big, and you kind of freaked out.”

“What? That’s what had you worried? I’d completely forgotten about it until now. I mean I was, what, fourteen or fifteen, and kind of worried that it wasn’t always only girls that got me going. Once I was a little older, I just figured I was oversexed, and you know, whatever gets your dick hard. We were kids, Cody, and you might have been up for a little exploration, but you know I’m not your type.”

“That’s the second time you’ve said that. Why?”

“Because we’re both the guy, Cody. If either of us was even a little, you know, not feminine exactly, but like that, we’d be together.”

“Oh.” Never mind Wake’s complete lack of political correctness, the raw note in his voice on the last part of that sentence said everything.

****

“It’s not always like that, you know,” Cody said quietly, “where one guy’s kind of the guy and one guy’s the girl. Actually, it’s usually not really like that. I bottom every now and then, and, you know, yeah, I’m a typical guy, but I think you’re thinking all the men I go for are like Kenni, and a lot of the time it’s guys like you and me.”

Cody was never going to be sure which of them actually made the first move, but suddenly Wake was on his side of the sofa, and his hands were sliding up and down Wake’s chest, tangling in his hair, and Wake was kissing him like there was no need for air ever again.

Somehow they made it from the ratty couch to the nest under the table. At first Cody tried to be gentle, because he didn’t know exactly how much experience Wake had, but he figured it wasn’t a lot, and might not be all that recent. Then it became obvious that Wake wanted Cody as badly as Cody wanted Wake, and he didn’t need or want gentle, and every moment was better than Cody’s best fantasy ever had been.

Cody had no condoms or lube with him, and while he might not care about the condom, not with Wake, he wasn’t quite ready to take him dry, or even on spit. Wake sort of half rose, his erect cock plastered against his belly, and he sort of crab-walked over to his bag, “I know I got some lotion in here,” he said. “Will you let me, you know, without?”

“Yes. I don’t usually, but this…”

“It’s different,” said Wake, “we get to love each other this way too.”

“Yeah,” replied Cody, parting his legs as Wake scooched back to the makeshift bed, prize in hand.

****

They made love, drifted off, made love some more, and then finally got up sometime just after dark, took the world’s fastest shower, put on sweats, and ate bacon and eggs. Cody couldn’t stop grinning, and Wake kept shooting him little sideways looks. “This isn’t…” Wake started.

“No,” said Cody. “Real deal.”

Wake nodded.

They sat on the couch in front of the fire with some more beer, and it was better than it ever had been before because they got to touch each other, Wake half lying against Cody’s chest. Wake had his phone on the arm of the couch, and it suddenly went off.

Wake sat up and picked up his phone. “Hey, Uncle Al… Yeah, we’re still stuck here… Cabin’s fine but there’s trees in the road, and one went into Cody’s truck… Might be totaled, definitely needs a tow and we could use a chainsaw too… Yeah, we’re okay… Better than okay, actually.” He smiled at Cody. “We’re fine for tonight, Uncle Al, don’t even worry about trying to get to us… Yeah, food and beer and company, got a nice fire going… I’ll see you in the morning.”

Wake turned to Cody. “You heard that. Al’ll be here in the morning with the cavalry, so we don’t have to hike out, so I don’t have to worry about anybody in any cars getting ideas about you.” Wake swallowed. “Because you’re mine.”

“Yeah,” Cody agreed, “and you’re mine, and I think we need to go to bed and put good use to the time before your uncle gets here.”

****

They awoke to Wake’s ringtone, and the beautiful music of chainsaws in the distance. Wake grabbed his phone. “Hey, Uncle Al… yeah, I think I can hear you. About half a mile?… Do you want us to walk out towards you or stay here?… Good. Yeah, we’ll be ready to go. Did you call the tow?… That makes sense… You trust Braden with a saw?… Okay. See you in a few.” He turned to Cody. “That was my uncle.”

“Duh.”

“He and his daughter are working on a tree across the road, about a half mile up. He’s making her kid walk towards us with the small saw.” Cody summoned up a mental image of a little boy who should have been duct taped to the nearest surface at a family Fourth of July a few years earlier.

“Is that a good idea?”

“He’s almost fifteen, and I guess Al trusts him not to accidentally cut anything off between here and there.”

Cody shrugged and said, “Let’s put these mattresses back on the cots, because that’s going to look a little weird.”

“Well, the under the table part is hard to explain, but the other…” Wake looked at him hard. “I’m not making a big announcement, but we are what we are. My parents aren’t going to be a big deal, and if anyone else is, it’s them, not us.”

“Okay.”

“I’m thinking we can figure something out so we can, uh…”

“Be together?”

“Yeah. Maybe we can figure something else out, but half of a hundred miles is fifty. That’s what, less’n an hour in the car? I could do that back and forth every day if I had to.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They got dressed, had their gear packed up, and were outside the cabin just as the skinny teenager strolled up, an electric garden saw dangling from his hand.

“Hey, Wake,” he called. “Grandpa says it’s charged to the battery pack, but I don’t know how much sawing we’ll get done with this. My mom keeps hogging the big chainsaw.”

Wake rolled his eyes lightly, smiled at Cody, and said, “Hey, let’s do this.”

The End

Author Bio

D.C. Williams is a funny little middle-aged woman who lives in Pennsylvania with one spouse and one child and writes romance novels you wouldn’t expect.

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