Table of Contents

Love is an Open Road

Nick of Time – Information

Nick of Time

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Epilogue

Author Bio

Love is an Open Road

An M/M Romance series

NICK OF TIME

By Jay D. Clark

Introduction

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

What Is Love is an Open Road?

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 is an Open Road.

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.

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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.

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Nick of Time, Copyright © 2015 Jay D. Clark

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M/M Romance Group Publication

NICK OF TIME

By Jay D. Clark

Photo Description

The first photo, in sepia tone, depicts a well-dressed man of a past era holding an open book in one hand and his own sizeable erection through his suit pants with the other, revealing himself to be a player, flirting with the camera. The second photo shows a young man in chauffeur’s suit leaning on a vintage car from the nineteen fifties.

Story Letter

Dear Author,

Four years of college landed me a job of driving “the car of the day” for a guy (or gal) who invented [insert stupid, absurd invention here] and made a ton of money. Bored waiting for my boss outside a party, I wandered through to an old-fashioned smoking or gentleman’s room. There were cool, old-timey photos, including this guy, whoa!

Tell me how this sausage man joins me, or I go back in time to him?

Sincerely,

Kym

Story Info

Genre: science fiction

Tags: time travel/loops, multiple lives, war, gay resistance fighters, m/m/m ménage, age gap, telepathy, tattoos, public activity

Content Warnings: wartime violence, hate crimes, retribution, dubious consent, and references to off-page rape, torture, and mutilation

Word Count: 42,536

NICK OF TIME

By Jay D. Clark

Chapter One

Blindfolded, with his powerful arms trussed up behind him as he sat on the training room mat, Nick waited for his training master, Lance, to finish tying the knots of the ropes binding his hands together. Every day Lance tied him up with a fresh set of knots, and every day Lance timed his escape from them. Nick patiently listened, smelled, felt every hint and clue, his mind analyzing the puzzle of his bonds. Every action by Lance was a clue; at least it was to him.

Solving puzzles was a primary focus of his lifelong training, even during daily combat training. But for every puzzle solved, Nick’s usual reward was just another, more challenging puzzle. Even his homeschooling, high school in a private academy, and university training at nearby Berkeley had focused on puzzles: mathematical, scientific, humanistic, and athletic. With college graduation recently behind him, the daily combat training with Lance went on. Knowing that the still-studly nonagenarian Chase in his wheelchair was just behind the two-way mirror that spanned one entire wall of the training room just motivated him to do his very best.

Being gay himself, Nick relished being raised by two gay men much older than himself. The two of them were the biggest puzzles in his life and the focus of his natural affinity for men. They sometimes let him flirt, but never let him cross the lines he sometimes wanted to cross with them. When rebuffed, he let it go for a while, having plenty of guys his own age to date and have sex with. Most guys on the mansion’s all-male staff were about his age, twenty-two.

Staying focused, Nick danced isolated muscles on his torso in an effort to distract Lance, to make the older man slip up somehow. He knew the lean, muscular training master loved his tight, powerful pecs and washboard abs, so he rippled each pec and each row of abs in turn as he waited for Lance to finish tying him up. A catch in Lance’s breath, a little extra tug on a particular knot told him that his trainer had noticed, and liked, the dancing of his muscles.

Middle-aged Lance and elderly Chase were like his parents, but never called themselves that. They were simply Lance and Chase from his earliest memories to the present moment as he sat waiting for the signal to begin working the knots to free himself. They gave him childhood baths, read him bedtime stories, helped him understand what it meant to be gay, worried over his first dates with other teenage gay guys, and helped him grow up, just with their own unique, unrelenting focus on Nick’s inherent ability to solve puzzles. He knew they worshipped him, wanted him, loved him, but only touched him as a parent might, or in hand-to-hand combat on the training floor. They even let him tell them how badly he wanted to be with both of them sexually, and still never let him. They were two knots yet to be untied.

An electronic horn sounded to signal that Nick should start. It meant that Chase, in his wheelchair behind the glass wall, had grown impatient more than that Lance was done or had stepped back, which he hadn’t. Nick turned his blindfolded face to the glass wall, grinned for the old man with the oxygen tube behind the glass, and nodded his chin. Ninety-three, a veteran of the Second World War, and a self-made millionaire, Chase was far more than an adoptive “grandparent” or “great-grandparent” to him. Just knowing Chase was there, watching, made Nick want to do his best. By the way Lance stepped back, Nick knew the last knots had been left undone, and Lance would not be satisfied by his escape.

Nick wiggled this muscle and then that one in his hands and wrists, each wiggle making a little more room for him to move the next time. He was careful to make each move as seemingly random as possible. He listened to where Lance was, whether behind or in front. He knew if he was too obvious that Lance would step up and retighten his bonds, so he had to be discreet, random, and misdirecting. Years of practice helped him know when his wrists were loose enough in his restraints to take more aggressive action. He used fingertips to pick at the knots, his goal just to move and loosen, not really untie. That would come later, or never. Defeating the knots only required making room to move.

Even though Nick had big hands and thick, sinuous wrists, he knew from long hours of training how to twist and contort them at will. It took him only a few minutes to defeat his bonds and wriggle free of them. He kept his efforts as small and tight as possible until he had his feet and hands free. Only then did he unveil his steel-blue eyes from the blindfold or run fingers through his straw-blond hair as he tossed the blindfold aside; he knew doing so would be the signal for Lance to attack him with the combat lesson of the day.

Lance struck first, as always, and struck hard, getting Nick right in the same abs he had used to distract the older man while freeing himself. The blow would have winded a less prepared combatant, but Nick knew how to steel his abs against that tactic. He rolled away and got to his feet to face his mentor and attacker. Nick grinned at the lean, muscular man with the shaven head and piercing, golden-brown eyes. Nick’s grin faded as he noted the look on Lance’s face: emotionless, hardened, resolute. Nick knew the look and the other tell that went with it, the twitching dance of Lance’s left pectoral muscle and the unique tattoo on it.

That pink, yellow, and orange Star of David twitching on Lance’s chest meant that this was not just practice; this was a test, perhaps the test, his final exam as it were. Chase had a matching tattoo on his left pec, and both of his adoptive parents treated their tattoos with respect, almost to the point of reverence. Both men could make their tats dance apart from all other muscle movement on their powerful frames, making the movement a conscious communication. At that moment, seeing the six-point star tattoo dance meant Lance would judge and evaluate his every move, and there would be no quarter offered or given until one of them yielded in defeat.

Lance shifted from punching low to punching high. It was to be bare-knuckle street boxing between them. Nick blocked Lance’s series of jabs, then countered with an upper cut of his own, timed to slide right between his master’s own blows at him. He caught the side of Lance’s jaw, propelling the older man back, and then he guarded himself, but not before Lance came back with a wide swing that pierced his defenses and clocked him on the right cheekbone. Nick felt the skin tear, blood gushed and got into his eye. He blinked, squinted through the pink blur of blood and tears, and thrust his fist up to catch Lance under the jaw, momentarily dazing him. The colorful Star of David stood still on Lance’s powerful chest.

Lance pulled back, guard up, and then plunged forward, still a little dazed, but unwilling to let Nick ease up on him. Nick had no choice but to strike his mentor for all he was worth, momentarily thankful when Lance deflected the blow, but not so much when the follow-up strike sent him reeling backward. Nick spun and regained his balance before Lance could follow through with the secondary attack he attempted half a second later. Lance had drawn first blood, and if Nick did not want to flunk the test, he knew next blood had to be his.

They were a good ten minutes into the no-holds-barred spar when Lance finally made a small mistake that allowed Nick to punch him in the mouth and draw blood. Their faces, arms, and bare torsos were slick with their own sweat, breathing hard, and feeling the heart-pounding wariness of the moment. Sweat made them both look as if they had pissed their gym shorts, making their hairy legs almost iridescent. Lance’s shaved head ran with sweat; Nick’s straw-blond hair darkened, soaked and dripping wet. The punch to Lance’s mouth dazed him, and this time Nick did not ease up, not one little bit. When the Blushing Star moved again, it moved with Lance’s failing struggle to keep Nick controlled and at bay.

Nick followed up the momentary advantage by grappling Lance, and taking him down to the mat. The forty-seven-year-old MMA master recovered enough to switch and roll his much younger pupil onto his back, but Nick countered him, raising one knee under Lance’s throat and bringing the other leg over to headlock him. Lance struggled and struck at Nick to free himself, but Nick just squeezed Lance’s bull neck all the harder. Lance’s face turned red as he struggled to breathe.

“Aufgaben?” Nick asked him in German, following up with the same inquiry in French, “Soumettre?”

Nick did not want to knock him out, and asked in English, “Yield?”

Lance struggled to shake his head, and gasped, “Schwanz lutschen!”

“Suck your cock?” Nick repeated in English. “Mon plaisir!”

Nick squeezed Lance into unconsciousness, laid him out on the mat, and slowly stripped off his own shorts and sport briefs, and then did the same to his unconscious fight master. Nick hesitated momentarily before laying his hand to Lance’s long, limp member. Lance’s cock felt as comfortable in his hand as he always knew it would, but he was crossing a long-forbidden line, just to do that much with it. Nick contented himself by gently stroking it and watching Lance’s face for signs of consciousness.

The man had been Nick’s coach and personal trainer from his earliest memories, almost more a father figure than just the man who taught him to fight, to conquer his own mind and body. But from the moment that Nick knew he liked men that way, only two men ever occupied his sexual fantasies, and Lance Carter was one of them. The other was even older, nearly twice Lance’s age, as Lance was now only slightly more than twice Nick’s age. But Nick would not let himself think about, much less lust over Chase Chevalier while he had the long-forbidden, slowly hardening cock of Lance Carter in hand.

Three things occurred almost simultaneously: Lance took a deep breath, his golden-brown eyes fluttered open, and his cock got fully erect in Nick’s hand. Lance gave him a stern look. “There are things you need to know before either of us ever cross that line, son.”

“You crossed that line first,” Nick told him. “When you told me ‘Schwanz lutschen’ instead of yielding. I’m taking you at your word. And you never break your word, do you?”

Nick felt the cock in his grasp get even harder and sensed a quickening in Lance’s breathing and heart rate. His British accent faded just a hint as he answered. “Then claim your prize, boy, if that is what you want. But if you love me, and respect me as you claim, you’ll wait.”

“Goddamn you. You know that guilt shit works on me every time,” Nick told him, neither acting on his intense desire nor quite turning loose of Lance’s erection. All of his pent-up emotions churned inside him. He was the late-term abortion baby that lived, saved from oblivion in the nick of time, given to two gay men to raise as their own. No one had cared if he lived or died, except them. Yet, he not only loved them, he lusted after them. “You guys don’t claim me as your son, and you won’t have me as your lover. I love both of you, and I want more.”

Lance nodded. “I know. Chase knows, too. There’s a good reason for why you feel the way you do about us, and we’ll happily share that with you, at the right moment. Just not yet.”

Nick gently gripped Lance’s erection in his big, long-fingered hand. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way about me that I feel about you. This says you do.”

Lance nodded again. “Both of us do. That’s why we never adopted you. I know you hate being told to wait. I hate telling you to wait. The waiting is almost, but not quite, over.”

“Goddamn you,” Nick relented with a deep, frustrated sigh, letting Lance’s cock slip from his grasp. “I’ll wait because I love you as much as I want you.”

“That’s exactly why Chase and I wait along with you,” Lance assured him. “We love you as much as we want you. Thanks for feeling me up. I loved it, but I’ll kick your ass if you do it again before our waiting time is over.”

“You’ll try to kick my ass,” Nick taunted him. “I won that round. I’m nearly your equal.”

Lance moved with blurring speed, and Nick found himself held fast, his neck caught between Lance’s powerful, veiny arms. “Almost is not there yet. If you don’t yield, it’ll be you taking the nap and waking up somewhere nasty.”

“Waking up in my arms was nasty?”

Lance let out a sigh and relaxed his hold, but kept his arms and hands on Nick. “Touching you, being with you is never that. It’s what I live for. You are what I live for, what Chase lives for.”

“Then just take me, have me, or let me have you,” Nick told him, rubbing himself against the arms holding him fast. “Is it because Chase is watching us through the glass that you won’t?”

Lance grinned. “Chase would love to see us do it. I still help him get off when he wants me to. It’s a nasty, broken record, but once the waiting is over, you’ll understand. You really will.”

“Then, the two of you are still lovers?” Nick tried, and failed, to keep the hurt out of his voice.

“The three of us are still lovers,” Lance assured him. “But this is not our time and place to love as gay men love one another. It’s still when and where Chase and I love you as parents do.”

“Chase is running out of time, and I am running out of patience.”

“Yes, and no.” Lance both agreed and disagreed with him. “We never run out of time, not the three of us. But yes, you are running out of patience. You get to as the child in this part of our relationship. Someday, the shoe will be on the other foot, and you’ll have to be the patient one.”

“Goddamn you,” Nick retorted, grinning and shaking his head. “You’re baiting me with clues. You know how much I love and hate puzzles, all at the same time.”

“Just remember that I’m the one into games, BDSM games, when the waiting is all over,” Lance teased him. “Combat and hot sex are fun to mix together.”

Nick nodded. “I’ve had little glimpses of that side of you. I never knew what the little scenes in my head meant until I was old enough to know I like boys, not girls. Those glimpses come when I get those strange stomachaches and that all-stretched-out feeling inside me. When the alarms go off and the two of you get strange visitors.”

“Every time the alarm sounds and the visitors come?”

“Every time I get sick is right before the alarms go off,” Nick told him. “In fact, I’m getting that sick feeling now, right now.”

Lance grimaced. Nick felt the older man’s body tense and saw his penis go flaccid. He nodded. “You’re feeling like you want to vomit, too.”

Lance nodded. “I’m fighting the same feelings as you.”

“Why do you and I get sick when the visitors come, but Chase never does?”

Lance shook his head. “Some visitors affect him, too.”

Nick studied the older man’s face. “Why do you two try so hard to keep me from seeing them?”

Lance gave him a sharp look. “Try? ‘Try’ implies that we failed and you saw them, anyway.”

“Just because I solve parts of a puzzle doesn’t mean I’m ready to share,” Nick said with a snort.

He unwound himself from Lance’s arms and sat up. He looked at Lance, made a decision, and stood up before Lance could react to him doing so. Nick strode to the glass wall and tapped the mirrored glass at about waist height. Touch pads lit up beneath the glass where he touched it in a typical key code configuration. Seams appeared in the glass, marking a door frame. A section of glass that same size pulled back and slid to one side. Over his shoulder, Nick remarked, “I now know how the door codes rotate, by the way.”

Lance nodded silently, got to his feet, and stepped toward the doorway as Nick stepped through.

The soft, persistent alarms that usually followed the feelings of intense nausea had not gone off, but Nick saw little flashes of memory in his mind, along with snippets of conversations he knew he had never had. As he entered the long, narrow darkened room on the other side of the two-way mirrored wall, he saw three hunky young visitors surrounding the wheelchair that contained the old man Nick knew as Chase. The dim lighting concealed much of their features, and none of the young visitors would look directly at Nick. They kept their movements small, arms close to their frames, but Nick still got what he felt was a sense of each of them.

What little light there was lit up Chase more than his visitors. He sat straight and proud, his chest bare, the single star tattoo standing out on his smooth, pale, muscular chest. His abs were still tight; his green eyes still sparkled in the stark, limited lighting. His once-dark hair was more silver than brown, and his face was wrinkled with age, but not his torso or his powerful arms. For all of being ninety-three, Chase was still more of a stud than most younger men would ever be.

The look on Chase’s face puzzled Nick. It was neither inviting nor dismissing, but mostly intensely curious. The elderly man that was like a great-grandfather to Nick, and yet was someone Nick found himself lusting over, often gave him those intense, curious looks. He was always watching and waiting for some sign to come from Nick, and not knowing what Chase was waiting for both tormented and intrigued the puzzle solver in Nick.

As Lance entered the doorway behind him, Nick noticed one of the guys near Chase gasp and draw breath the same way Lance and he did when the visitors came from time to time. They sometimes came as one, two, or three men, some older, some younger. Neither Lance nor Chase ever introduced any of them to Nick, but every visitor wanted to see Nick from a distance. What Nick got from his occasional glimpses of them, he never shared with Chase or Lance.

Nick suddenly turned, looked at Lance, and left just as quickly, Lance stepping aside to let him. Lance lingered for a moment and then followed. Nick glared at Lance. “Are you going to reset the code randomizer on the door?”

“How much would that slow you down?”

“At this point, a minute, maybe two,” Nick told him, his voice even and emotionless. He did not brag about or puff up any of his abilities around Lance. Lance was pretty patient with him, but not above slapping the back of his head if and when Nick displeased or disappointed Lance.

“The waiting time is almost over,” Lance observed. “Letting you pick your own clues won’t hurt anything at this point.”

Nick looked his mentor over. Lance was holding his own against the same sensation that gripped Nick, made his head hurt and his stomach churn. Nick moved swiftly, sliding an arm around the small of his trainer’s back, pulling them together while he planted his mouth on Lance’s mouth and shoved his tongue inside it. Lance responded to their first kiss in kind, and for the briefest moment, Nick felt the nausea ease. Nick pulled away from the kiss he initiated just as abruptly as he got it going. “While I practice shooting before breakfast, you’re going to tell me the story of Les Anges De La Sang, the Blood Angels. Only, I want the full adult version of the story. And every time you lie or leave something out, I get to kiss you.”

“I haven’t told you that gay bedtime story since— forever!”

“Since I was thirteen, to be precise, and got a boner in the middle of the story,” Nick told him. “I was in bed, under the covers, and you sat beside me, your big, gentle hand on my chest, telling me about La Nuit De Sang Et D’espoir, the Night of Blood and Hope. As you gave me a bit more detail about how very sexy the stage costumes of the three angels were, I got a hard-on, and you noticed it. And it threw you off of telling me the more graphic version of the story. You shortened the telling, shortened tucking me in, and never told me the story again.”

Lance looked so torn, vulnerable, and almost lost at that moment, and then the steel returned to his golden-brown eyes. “When it’s your turn to raise a boy like your son, and he gets a boner for you, you let me know how all that turns out for you. My job, the job I was willing to sacrifice everything for, was to be your dad and not your lover. You still need me that way, more than you know.”

“You set the rules, leaving the door open on the nature of our relationship,” Nick chided him, putting a hand on Lance’s powerful chest. “You let me touch you however I felt like, even today. You could have fought me, tried to put me in my place. That door is still open, and at some point, I’m going to step through.”

“What should I have done differently? Let you call me Dad instead of Lance?”

“I’m a smart kid, a smart man,” Nick told him. “You raised me with love. You taught me to love. I knew without having the privilege of that word that you were all of that to me, but there’s more. And you always hold back, always play the truth tight to that perfect chest of yours.”

“You know if you keep talking to me like this—”

“You’ll have to fight me to keep yourself from fucking me, right?”

Lance nodded. “That’s exactly right.”

“Every time you’ve ever pinned me, put your full weight on me from that first boner of mine for you,” Nick told him. “That’s exactly what I’ve wanted from you. I’m always the top with guys my age, when I date, because I want you to be the first to top me, to fuck me. I fucked my first boy that year, as soon as I turned fourteen. One of the gardening boys. He and I were on the same after-school swim team. I fucked him in a bathroom stall at the pool. I was so raw, so unsure, but he knew exactly what to do, so that I felt like a stud with him.”

Lance nodded. “He told us all about it later.”

“That’s the reason I’m friendly with the guys you have working here, but never become real friends with any of them,” Nick told him. “They all spy on me for you guys, even when I leave one of them begging me to fuck him again.”

“You resent them for it? Resent us?”

“Where do the boys come from that work here, live here? There are kids as young as thirteen and guys as old as me. They go to school, college, and then they’re gone. They’re all gay, like me, like Chase and you, and they keep this place running for the three of us and those mysterious visitors of yours. You guys nurture them, raise them, care for them, and never fuck any of them.”

“You’ve certainly done your best to stand in for Chase and me on that one. Are there any of them you haven’t fucked?”

Nick leaned in and planted his mouth on Lance’s and gave him a long, leisurely kiss with plenty of tongue. Once again the nausea he knew they both felt faded until he pulled back. “That was for lying. You know exactly who I’ve fucked around here and how often. I never fucked anyone more than four years older or four years younger than me, just as you taught me to do. When you’re ready, I want to break that rule with you.”

Lance grinned at him. “I should lie to you more often. The boys are all rescued boys. But I think you already knew that.”

“Hustlers? Cock-suck boys off the street? All of them, or just some of them?”

“I was a cock-suck boy on the street when I was thirteen until a rich man took me off the streets and raised me like his son, just the way I’ve raised you. Except you’ve been mine since the day of your birth. You’ve never had a life on the streets like me or a lot of them.”

“Did you fuck him when you were twenty-two and graduating from college?”

“No, I didn’t. I got angry when he admitted to being gay, and I left. I was not ready to admit I was gay, too, and that I wanted him as much as you want me,” Lance told Nick, looking as open and vulnerable as Nick had ever seen him. “I was gone for years. He died before I ever could have him that way, let him have me that way.”

“How? How did he die?”

“He was an inventor, and a project of his blew up in the lab and killed him,” Lance said, looking away. “But his invention saved a lot of guys like us, and still does. I make sure of that, so does Chase, so do all the guys here that work for us.”

“So, that’s how I die, isn’t it?”

Lance stared at him. “What? I was talking about the guy I named you for.”

Nick grabbed him, pulled him close, and kissed him fiercely. Lance melted into him, both of them getting hard almost immediately. Nick broke off the kiss, and put him at arm’s length. “That was another lie. You named me for him because I am him. All of the lies, all of the half-truths are because somehow, either you traveled through time, or I did, so that you could be my dad the way I will someday be yours. That’s the invention that kills me. My time-travel machine, isn’t it?”

“Schwanz lutschen!”

“Someday I will. I’ll suck your cock and let you fuck me,” Nick told him. “But right now, we’re going to go shoot those guns, and you are going to tell me about the Blood Angels, and you get to guess how much of that story I know is actually about us.”

****

Chapter Two

Nick and Lance slipped on jeans and boots to go outside. Lance wore very simple jeans, but his boots were custom made, sliding on easy and fitting snug and comfortable. Nick’s jeans were as snug as his boots and nowhere near as comfortable, but he liked how they fit across his ass and against his manhood. Nick looked up from fastening his jeans and regarded Lance for a moment. “Chase and you are both circumcised, but you guys left me uncut. So, I’m not Jewish like you two, or what?”

Lance looked unhappy, but said, “I was born Jewish, although Bristol was not a very hospitable place to be a Jew, or gay, when I was born. I couldn’t hide being a Jew, but I could hide being gay, or at least I thought I could. My father caught me giving a guy a blow job, beat me up and made me homeless, then and there. He was the local rabbi.”

Nick didn’t say anything. He just walked out into the sunshine, enjoying the coolness of the air natural to Berkeley. The gun range on the estate was up the hill from the house, sheltered in a natural ravine where a creek ran during the rainy part of the year. Hiking up to it was a matter of a few minutes. By the time they arrived, the nausea Nick felt completely left him.

A low, wide building in the same architectural style as the mansion sat across the mouth of the ravine. The side facing the ravine was open, separated by posts and pony walls into shooting stalls. Targets were set on posts, but some hung from moving cables. Most of the targets depicted the silhouette of a man, some a man and a boy. A guy about Nick’s age was inside on duty, and one slightly younger guy was in the far left booth that Nick preferred. Both guys— shirtless, fit, and good-looking— nodded at Lance and Nick, the brunet going back to shooting. The serious, almost grim expression on his face suggested he was not happy with his shooting score that day.

The raven-haired hunk went to the gun locker and got out the customary Thompson submachine guns that Lance always had Nick train with. They were modernized replicas that could squeeze off a shot at a time or fire in bursts. The range master gave them shoulder harnesses for the guns. Nick grinned at the dark-haired, creamy-skinned hottie. “Gonna help me put the harness on, Jayson?”

Jayson glanced at Lance and nodded after getting a nod from Nick’s mentor. When he stepped forward to help, Nick pulled him close and kissed him. Nick told him, “I’m kissing guys as punishment today. That one was for not calling me back after we fucked the other day.”

Jayson smiled and kissed him back. “That’s for not looking me up to fuck me again, anyway.”

Nick smoothed a hand down Jayson’s muscular front. “That goes both ways.”

“No it doesn’t,” Jayson disagreed. “I work for you guys. I owe you everything. It’s not my place to make the first move.”

“You work for Lance and Chase,” Nick countered, kissing him again. “You and I went to high school and college together. I’m just another kid off the street, like you.”

Jayson’s eyes went wide. “No, you’re not. You’re one of—”

“Them?” Nick supplied the word with a nod at Lance. “Not yet, I’m not.”

The brunet at the far left had stopped firing his weapon and was just looking at them. He still had his ear protection on and obviously had the volume turned up on the earphones within the muffs. Nick looked at him. “So, Enrique, are you done? If you are, I’d like to take that slot, if not, I can wait until you finish.”

Enrique put the safety on his rifle and tilted it up and away. “I can move over.”

“No, you can’t. You can finish. I can wait.”

“No, my pattern’s off. I may as well be done, Nick. By the way, I’ll be eighteen in a week.”

“Happy birthday a week early.”

“That’ll depend on what you give me for my eighteenth birthday,” Enrique told him, looking him up and down. “I’ll be legal to you, you know. The four-year rule won’t matter.”

“You always top, at least that’s what they say about you,” Nick said.

“I want my first top to be you,” Enrique explained. “I’ve wanted you since the first time I realized you weren’t—”

“I’m not the Nick that rescued you, brought you here to this time, this place?”

Both Enrique and Jayson stared at Lance, who just nodded at them.

“Does that mean if I ask, they have to answer?” Nick asked Lance.

“Within reason, but since you’re giving out kisses for lies, I’d lie a lot if I were them,” Lance teased him. “It looks like today is the day that the waiting ends. We’ll see.”

Nick responded by turning Jayson loose, stepping to Lance, putting a hand to his chest, and leaning in to kiss him. Lance accepted the kiss, sharing tongue back. “As good as always, but that’s all you’re getting from me, even if these are not fatherly kisses.”

“Is always another tease or an admission that I’m right about who I really am?”

“One of the two. Deciding is on you, puzzle boy.”

“Enrique, dime sobre los tres angeles de la sangre y como te rescaron,” Nick invited the hot Spaniard. “The Blood Angels did rescue you and bring you here, didn’t they?”

“Yes, they rescued me, brought me here.”

“Then, tell me the story.”

“We don’t talk of such things here, and it’s not a teen night at the club,” Enrique told him. “Not in English, not in español.”

Lance looked at Nick. “I think it’ll be a teen night after all, Enrique. Nick, would you be my date to the club tonight. One last father-son evening before that line gets erased between us?”

Nick nodded. “No limits on the terms of our date?”

“That’ll depend entirely on the date,” Lance evaded, letting Nick touch him, but not touching Nick back. “You may find that you have other plans. We’ll see.”

“So, while we’re waiting for Enrique to finish shooting, can you tell me about the Four Ds?”

“Forties? I’m in them, forty-seven, pushing forty-eight.”

“Another lie,” Nick said, kissing him. “You just wanted me to kiss you.”

Lance grinned. “Perhaps I did.”

Nick looked at Enrique, then peered into the range’s sighting scope that greatly enlarged targets and bullet holes from a safe distance. “Think of the larger target as some asshole you are saving the smaller target from. Pretend you’re one of the Blood Angels, here to rescue that gay boy from his persecutor. You’ll miss the small target and get the big target instead.”

Jayson looked at Enrique. “See? I told you it was no disrespect to pretend you are one of them.”

Nick smiled at them, then glanced at Lance and saw the older man watching him intently. Lance said, “I think you should tell me the story of the Blood Angels, along with the details you know, or think you know.”

Nick grinned at him. “Whoever scores higher out here gets to drive to the club tonight. We can negotiate who tells who the story of the Blood Angels en route.”

****

Nick took longer than he expected deciding what to wear to the club. He knew he was pampered, spoiled by the sheer volume of expensive clothes in his walk-in closet. He usually dressed down, but the club was the place to dress up. And a real date with Lance was a reason to look perfect.

He finally chose an embroidered see-through shirt to wear with his customary powder-blue tuxedo and coordinating bow tie. It was decidedly gay and fashionable all at the same time. He knew his torso under that shirt would catch and hold Lance’s golden-brown eyes. Final inspection in the mirror made Nick frown. The shirt set off his lean muscles underneath, the tuxedo brought out the pale blue of his eyes, but the bow tie was a distraction from both his face and the abs peeking through the lace below. Nick decided to see if Chase had a bow tie of similar color, but just a notch less bright.

Stepping into the wide, high-ceilinged hallway of the mansion’s upper level, Nick nodded at a couple of casually shirtless teens cleaning and straightening things. “Tonight’s a teen night at the club. You should be getting ready to go.”

“Older teens,” the younger of the two corrected Nick. “Sixteen and up. I’m fourteen. He’s fifteen.”

“They’re still serving alcohol, and no ID means no getting in,” the older teen added, “let alone drinking.”

“Or hooking up with anyone,” the younger kid said.

“Another night, perhaps.” Nick nodded to them. Both returned the gesture.

As Nick stepped toward the doors to Chase’s private sitting room, he felt the familiar nausea come back, but as he stepped directly to the doors, it faded some. He abruptly turned and went to the doors opposite Chase’s, feeling the twisting in his guts all the more fiercely. Nick hesitated only a second or two and then opened the door to step in. He saw no one, but the feeling he might get sick to his stomach any moment intensified with each step deeper into the room.

Nick heard the shower running in the large bathroom of the suite and stepped in to see a guy, like the exact mirror image of himself, behind the glass shower door, eyes closed, water pounding down on him. It was a little vain to watch water course over that body, but Nick liked that body and worked hard to make it what it was. Without opening his eyes or looking, Nick’s visual twin said, “It’s fucking hard enough to be around the Nick who lives here, without another of us just showing up from whatever fucking time line you came from. So, what the fuck are you doing up here when the rest of us are all downstairs in the ballroom?”

“Where’s your Lance and your Chase?” Nick asked, playing along with his wet, naked double.

The naked Nick in the shower glanced at the Nick in the tuxedo, tapped his left pec, and said, while soaping and washing his man parts, “See? No Blushing Star. I don’t have my own Lance and Chase yet, not ones our age to call my own. You get the tattoo after you go back in time and claim them, not before. That means you don’t have a Blushing Star, either, do you?”

Tuxedo Nick shook his head, still playing along with the Nick in the shower, who said, “But the claimed ones will still fuck a prejump Nick like us, if you’re nice… real nice. So, find someplace else to be, someone else to fuck, and get the fuck out of here.”

“Well, Nick Jr., I fucking live here, in this time line,” Nick told the guy in the shower. “So, if you don’t want to share, you get out.”

Nick Jr. promptly aimed his pale-blue eyes at Nick. “Shit. Chase said— Fuck! I’ve fucked up.”

Nick grinned at his doppelganger. “Get out of the shower, Junior. Towel off, and talk to me. If you are me, and don’t just look like me, you know I know more about all this than I let on.”

Nick Jr. nodded and complied, accepting a towel from Nick as he got out. Their fingertips touched in the process of handing off the towel. Nick’s hand felt electrocuted, painful and tingling, and yet almost sexually pleasurable. The look on Nick Jr.’s face assured him that his doppelganger had also felt it as intensely, both the pleasure and the pain.

“So, that’s how Doppelganger Dimensional Disruption Disorder, the Four Ds, feel up close and personal,” Nick remarked. “Can I touch you again, on purpose this time?”

Nick Jr. nodded. “Touching other Nicks is the fun part. The Four Ds, not so much.”

Nick put both hands on his doppelganger, his pale-blue eyes popping from the experience of feeling his hands on the smooth flesh and feeling phantom hands on his flesh in the same places. He saw his reaction mirrored in Nick Jr.’s face. “This is not new to you, Junior. Is it?”

“Do you have to call me Junior or Nick Jr.? We’re the same age, you know.”

Nick looked his doppelganger over critically, and shrugged. “If you say so, but my pecs are bigger. I have more of a treasure trail between my navel and pubes than you do. You remind me of me fresh out of high school, Junior.”

“So, what do I call you? Nick Sr.?” Nick Jr. scoffed at the idea.

“I’m one hundred percent prime Nick Lehrer, because this is my time line, so call me Prime.”

“And if I don’t?” Nick Jr. challenged.

Nick Prime moved swiftly and without warning, pulling Nick Jr.’s towel loose and using it to pin and then bind the doppelganger’s big, powerful arms together with his slightly greater strength and size. “I hurt you, and then I fuck you until you say ‘Nick Prime,’ just to get me to fuck you some more.”

Nick Jr. grinned at Nick Prime and then freed himself with a bit of effort, to Nick Prime’s surprise. “The Four Ds do that to us, rob us of some of our stamina next to one another. I’ll call you Prime, but only because you’re hot, and I like you.”

“And you want me to fuck you, Junior. Don’t you?”

“I do want you to fuck me, and for me to fuck you back, Prime,” Nick Jr. agreed.

Nick impulsively grabbed his other self by his manhood and felt the same touch on his penis and balls inside his clothing. “Wow. That’s interesting. Have you ever fucked another Nick?”

His doppelganger nodded. “It’s fun, a lot of fun. But you need to wait until you fuck a Lance or Chase who’s young, like we are. Fucking yourself too soon can fuck everything else up forever.”

“But kissing you won’t damage me that way?”

Even as Nick Jr. shook his head, Nick Prime leaned in on him and planted his mouth on his doppelganger’s mouth, both instantly knowing exactly how much tongue to share. They both broke it off at exactly the same moment, each licking his lips with the same satisfaction. Nick Prime gently smacked Nick Jr.’s cheek. “You kiss like I did straight out of high school, Junior, but I like you, and if you’re breaking rules by being here, it won’t be me that rats you out.”

Nick Jr. looked Nick Prime over appreciatively. “If you were looking for a better bow tie for that tux, I have one. For the record, I like you, too. You’re a smart-ass with a very nice ass.”

Nick Prime let Nick Jr. remove his bow tie, get the replacement, and tie it for him. “The Chase and Lance I arrived with will be at the club when you get there. Act surprised for both our sakes. Playing dumb comes easy for us, but so does being dumb, sometimes. This time, don’t be.”

“I’ll keep my mouth shut about this if we get to fuck sometime after I fuck both of them,” Nick Prime assured him. “We both know you’ll accept those terms.”

“Yes, we do, don’t we?” Nick Jr. agreed, putting the finishing touches on the bow tie and hands on Nick to check him over like a living mirror. Nick Prime looked himself over in the mirror and nodded. “Not bad for the aborted baby that lived, either one of us.”

Nick Jr. nodded. “I read about you before coming here. I went full term in my time line. ‘Mommie Dearest’ tried to renege on handing me over to Lance and Chase. She wanted more money. The story varies in every time line, but the bottom line is that she didn’t want us, but Lance and Chase did. She was just the baby factory for us, nothing more.”

Nick Prime nodded and slid his hand down around Nick Jr.’s waist, resting his open palm on his doppelganger’s tight ass cheek. “The baby factory did good work. She obviously fucked the right guy to make us this damned hot. You know anything about our sperm donor?”

Nick Jr. nodded, his smooth, almost whiskerless face pinkening at the thought. “That bastard is why you were almost aborted, and my father Chase died when I was fourteen. The sperm donor was a Holy Roller preacher, son of a televangelist who got a girl in the church choir knocked up. We were born only because she didn’t want an abortion, but finding out we’d be adopted by gay men made her rethink her options. Both she and the sperm donor thought we’d be better off dead than gay. She found out after I was born in my time line and before you were born in yours.”

“How did the sperm donor figure into our dad Chase dying in your time line?”

“The bastard had me kidnapped on the way home from school as a ‘Christian intervention,’ but they did not count on time-traveling gay avenging angels,” Nick Jr. explained. “My dad Chase insisted on being part of my rescue. The bastards had guns; he got shot and died in my arms. I watched my dad Lance and a bunch of Blood Angels mow them all down, the sperm donor last, but there was no time to save my dad Chase. The time jump device is set to exclude jumping dead people through time. I was covered in his blood, which was all of him that went the short jump through time with me. His body had to be recovered the old-fashioned way.”

“That’s why being with my dad Chase means so much to you,” Nick Prime said, not sure what else to say. “I can share. My Chase has heart enough to love us both.”

“Kiss me again, and you’re gone, Cinderfella,” Nick Jr. chided Prime rather than dwell on the gloom of the past, his past. “Just remember that our dad Lance loves us like a son, and that your date with Dad won’t get you laid by him, but there will be a young Chase and a young Lance at the club more than willing to be your firsts. I’ve sampled both, and they’re good fucks.”

Nick grinned at his doppelganger. “Don’t we always figure things out by talking to ourselves?”

They came together and kissed slowly, leisurely, and very thoroughly. When they parted lips, Nick Prime said, “Gollum.”

Nick Jr. said, “My precious.”

Nick Prime left his doppelganger to go over to Chase’s suite and see him before leaving to spend the evening with Lance. When he entered the sitting room, Chase was there, but he was not alone. A young stud in sparkling red high heels, a sexy blue see-through thong, and fluffy white angel wings of L’ange écarlate was standing before Chase, who wore an oxygen tube and sat in his wheelchair, singing “Muss I Denn,” or “Wooden Heart” in German.

Nick looked at his older parent with his green eyes, creamy skin, and mostly gray hair and then at the singer with equally green eyes, creamy skin, but dark-brown hair. The singer’s face was all glammed up in stage makeup, glitter sparkled on his torso, and he had a Blushing Star of David on his left pec with zero-zero-five in the pale-orange center of the star: Chase number five?

Nick knew the words, could have sung it himself, but he stood transfixed and just watched and listened. The sexy young singer had the same tonal qualities in his voice as old recordings from that era, but he was there, alive and very much in the flesh. Nick found himself instantly wanting to fuck the gorgeous, tight ass that went with that voice as he had never wanted to fuck any hot guy before, or ever would again. Even with his face dolled up in makeup, Nick knew the boyish looks of the singer would be just as perfect all on their own. When the song finished, Chase smiled for the hot young singer and said to Nick, his deep French accent broken into chunks by the shortness of his breath with the regulator, “The Blood Angels… will be singing… tonight at the club… And as I will… not be going… our lovely… soloist came… to give me my… own preview… What do you think?”

“I think he sounds as sweet as the original on the old recordings.”

Nick took that moment to compare the young hunk to the very old, yet still very studly nonagenarian. Both men shared the same basic characteristics in face and form, the old man still as easy on the eyes as the younger one. But Chase Five had a magical effect on Nick that the older one did not. It was more than the fact that Chase Five had rich-brown, almost black hair or that his face was wrinkle-free. Nick also knew what he had been really waiting for all the time he had spent lusting over the men who has raised him like a son. The urge to take Chase Five and fuck him then and there had him rock hard, hard enough for his penis to hurt, but in a good way, a really good way. He could wait, bide his time, but just not too long. That bare bubble butt, the bulging thong pouch, and that face all had him transfixed.

“I won’t keep you two,” Nick told them, stepping forward to kiss the older Chase on the cheek. He offered the hot young singer his hand. When they clasped hands, Nick felt his erection ooze. He wanted to put his mouth to that perfect mouth in the most urgent way, but he restrained himself. “I look forward to listening to you sing tonight at the club. Thank you.”

The look Chase gave him as they parted company for the evening told Nick that Chase knew that he knew. The younger version of Chase knew it, too, obviously wanting more of Nick than just a handshake. The bulge in the singer’s blue lace thong wanted out in the worst way, and Nick wanted to let it out. Nick would have to see if he could let it out very shortly, indeed.

“Good night. I’ll tell you all about my adventures at the club in the morning.”

Nick left with his cock still very hard in his pants and a sure knowledge of want he wanted. As he descended the grand staircase toward the receiving hall and main entrance, Nick felt the same nausea as he had just passing Nick Jr.’s door moments before, which meant that yet another Nick was in the mansion. In addition to the nausea, he felt a sudden migraine-level headache hit him as the Four Ds sensation dramatically increased. Instead of walking away from the disturbing sensations, he walked into the mansion’s ballroom and saw four more copies of himself along with various copies of young Chase and presumably young Lance. They all appeared affected by the Four Ds but were able to ignore them enough to visit and enjoy one another’s company. Seeing so many of them in one place answered a question puzzling Nick all day, why no alarms went off before he felt the Four Ds the first time. With so many trickling in, alarms would have been sounding all day. But the answer to that question only raised more questions.

Nick wandered into the postmodern ballroom as if he owned it, which technically he did, in part, along with Chase and Lance, but he stayed confident, diffident toward the five other Nicks, five Chases, and five Lances. Most were shirtless and in jeans, some barefoot, some in shoes or boots. One of the Lances was garbed in the sparkling red shoes, blue lace thong, and fluffy white angel wings of the Blood Angels. His face was made up, with glitter all over it and his torso. He had a Blushing Star on his left pec that proclaimed him number zero-zero-eight.

Nick strode directly to that copy of Lance, put hands on his arms where it would not smear any glitter and pulled him into a firm, tongue-filled kiss. Before the Lance could say anything or otherwise appreciate the gesture, Nick told him, “I’m looking forward to your full performance tonight, before and after you go onstage. See you at the club.”

The other four Lances all grinned at Nick, as pleased as the one Nick had kissed. Nick turned and left the ballroom, the whole room coming to total silence as he strode out. Shortly, everyone would know that the waiting time was over, if they didn’t know it already.

****

Chapter Three

Lance was waiting for Nick beside the 1937 Duesenberg. He pretended to ignore Lance’s lingering, appreciative gaze as he descended the front steps of the mansion. He stepped to Lance, put a hand to the front of Lance’s tuxedo, and kissed him. The look that Lance gave him told him that Lance somehow knew he had just kissed a younger version of the man who raised him.

“We’re not taking out the thirty-nine Rolls Phantom III?” Nick asked, deciding to play coy.

“The Duesy has the bigger engine and I want to open her up on the road into the city,” Lance told him, his golden-brown eyes all over him like a special treat, all ready to enjoy. “I like how that old straight-eight engine purrs for me. I’m driving, by the way.”

“I’ll let you drive as long as I get to work the stick shift right next to you,” Nick teased him, stepping up to put hands on Lance’s manhood as they kissed in front of the old, long-bodied touring car. “I want your full attention on me when we get to the club. There’ll be a lot of hunky bodies and pretty faces there on a night like this. And we know how you like to look.”

“You want to play with my manhood while I keep a nearly four-ton touring car on the road without power steering, and while I tell you an adult version of your favorite childhood bedtime story?” Lance’s eyes betrayed how much he liked the idea of Nick teasing him as he drove.

“You got it,” Nick agreed, eyeing Lance in his darker blue tux and tailored, fitted shirt beneath. “Or you could let me drive, manhandle me, and still tell the story. You do have choices.”

“I’ve seen you drive the Duesy. I want us both to live to see the inside of the club,” Lance chided him, before kissing him. Nick let himself be kissed, gently pampered by it. “But if you work it too much, I will slap your hand away. Don’t think I won’t.”

Lance opened the front passenger door for Nick, who got in and slid over the wide, leather bench seat to the center. As soon as Lance got in on the driver’s side, Nick had hands on Lance’s crotch, feeling his big penis through the tuxedo slacks. “All good to go.”

Lance gave Nick a gentle grimace, started the car up, put it in gear, and drove out. The electronic gates recognized the vehicle by radar signal, infrared signature, and computerized camera input. The gates opened for the old car to speed out and then closed behind it. As he put the car into high gear and sped toward the new Bay Bridge into San Francisco from Berkeley, Lance started telling the story. “During the Nazi occupation of Paris, many of the old live theaters and clubs still had shows, but only for the Germans and their French collaborators, not ordinary Parisians, and certainly not for gay men like us. Some gay men were still allowed to perform onstage, but many were sent off to the death camps, with those hated pink triangles on their prisoner uniforms. German officers liked their cocks sucked like everyone else, and they put a large number of the boys of Paris to the task of sucking German cock whenever the Nazis felt like it. Boys who resisted or fought it got pink triangles and were sent off to die as homosexuals, whether or not they really were. The boys who submitted and sucked German cock lived and were even pampered until the officers tired of them. Then, they were shipped off to die and new boys were procured.

“Gay stage reviews with good-looking guys, like us, had been the rage of Paris before the war, and the Germans let a few of those acts continue. One such act was known as L’ange écarlate, the Scarlet Angel. The hunky young man in the ruby high heels and angel wings was the rage, even for the Nazis, who loved to hear him sing. It was not his dark hair, green eyes or milky skin that appealed to the Nazis; it was his angelic voice that kept the Scarlet Angel or L’ange écarlate from earning a pink star along with many other gay stage performers.”

“You know you don’t have to translate the French for me anymore, when you tell the story,” Nick chided Lance, gripping his cock through his tuxedo slacks.

“I did that, do that, for dramatic effect, not your reticence in learning French as a boy,” Lance countered. “And if you keep working my cock that fiercely, I’m going to have to oblige you to stop as I see fit. I won’t be gentle.”

“If I promise to not take you over the edge, can I work you to that edge?”

Lance shook his head once, let out an acquiescent sigh, and then went on as Nick continued to work his manhood. “As it turned out the gay singer and dancer who performed onstage as L’ange écarlate was, in fact, a Nazi collaborator who traded in other gays for special treatment, which included staying alive, getting fucked by Nazi officers, and receiving better food, like fresh butter and eggs. The Allies sent in two black operations officers, one British, one American, to hunt down and silence collaborators. L’ange écarlate was on their list to silence.

“The two were secretly gay, and a couple, so of course, they had to see L’ange écarlate live onstage. They confronted him in his apartment, fucked him, threatened to kill him, and gave him a chance to redeem himself. They joined him onstage as the three Scarlet Angels, singing backup to his angelic voice and dancing with him in high heels, see-through G-strings, and angel wings. They used the act to help them get to and eliminate targets assigned to them by British Intelligence, such as the Cardinal of Paris. But they also felt growing angst and sympathy for all the gay boys of the city forced to suck German cock before they got pink triangles and one-way tickets to death camps. When the Scarlet Angels had a larger than normal Nazi audience with boys forced to suck cock through it, the angels gave the Nazis a deadly surprise of their own. Then, they led the cock-suck boys to freedom as teen fighters in the European resistance.”

“How did they really manage to kill all those Nazis with Thompson submachine guns and not kill or wound a single kid down on his knees in front of a German officer?” Nick suddenly interrupted the story, recalling from his own waking dream, details that should not, could not have existed in 1943. Laser-guided submachine guns that shot relatively low-impact rounds? Impossible, but the dream felt like real memory. “Was there something special or different about the machine guns?”

Lance did not immediately answer. The flash of passing under a street lamp revealed real concern in his golden-brown eyes. “The guns had been altered, yes, but the accuracy of the young men shooting is what ultimately spared those boys and killed only the Nazi bastards themselves. They killed all the Nazis, turned the cock-suck boys over to a resistance cell made up of gay men like themselves, and disappeared taking the collaborator turned folk hero with them.”

Nick gently kneaded Lance’s cock and said, “Thank you for telling it to me again, with some of the adult details added in. You know the Blood Angels are singing and dancing at the club. Hearing their story will just make listening to them sing the old songs all the more special.”

“It’ll be a Cole Porter kind of night to be sure, where ‘Anything Goes,’” Lance agreed, keeping the heavy old car steady with one strong hand, so that he could explore Nick’s crotch in return.

The gently aggressive move delighted Nick. His cock was hard the moment Lance’s fingers gripped it through his tuxedo slacks. “I’ll take those words as a promise you’d better keep.”

The new Bay Bridge was fun to ride over, but the dark hulk of the massive old bridge to their left reminded him somehow of Chase, left at home, alone and without them. Only the persistent fingering of Lance’s hand on his cock through the fabric kept him hard and mostly focused on the current joy of being on a real date with one of the two hot men he loved, had always loved. Part of him wanted Chase to be there with them enjoying this moment, too.

The Men Out of Time Club was one of the first gentlemen’s clubs that catered exclusively to gay men in the United States. It occupied a large multiple-story building that had survived the San Francisco earthquake, the Great Depression, and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hate committee with the club intact. The parking structure next to the club belonged to it, and the Duesenberg was a well-known car there, although it was usually Nick at the wheel and Chase riding alone in the back. Lance surrendered the keys to a hot, lanky valet with a crisp hundred-dollar bill, and a stern smile. The young man took the money and the warning with equal seriousness. “It won’t have a dent or a scratch when you come down for it, sir.”

“If it does, you could end up bitch-slapped and fucked over the fender,” Lance warned him.

“Even if that meant getting beat up first, I’d be tempted to key it myself,” the young man teased back. “I’ll make sure it’s well cared for, sir. But any time you want, I’d bottom for you.”

Nick looked the young man over and noticed his name tag. “Scott, he’s my date. Feel free to look, but don’t touch, or I will hurt you. A fat lip might making sucking that next cock less fun.”

Scott looked Nick over and shrugged. “If that cock was yours, I’d still chance it.”

Nick grinned. “I like you, kid. You got balls.”

After they left the garage for the club, Lance gave Nick a little kiss on the cheek. “That was a little harsh to call that valet ‘kid’ when I doubt you’re more than a year or two older than him.”

“It was either that or deck him then and there,” Nick argued gently, kissing Lance on the lips. “And being out with you in a tux makes me look older than just twenty-two, don’t you think?”

Lance grinned at him. “It would have been more polite to tell me that you make me look younger just being out with you.”

“That, too. But you get to show me just how young I make you on the dance floor and then later, between the sheets,” Nick tartly teased him back. “When the room heats up, as it always does, the jackets, bow ties, and shirts go so we can dance and sweat all we like. I want to see your abs moving to the music.”

“Then why wear tuxes at all?”

“To make a grand entrance, of course, and to have something to take off one another in front of all the other guys, so that they watch us dance together. For such a hot stud, you have no sense for clubbing do you?”

Lance smiled, his golden-brown eyes smoldering with a little pique to them. Nick instantly regretted being an ass to him. “Thank you for letting me make an ass of myself without rubbing my nose in it.”

“That could still happen, later, when we’re alone, and I decide the wait is over for you.”

“Promises, promises,” Nick retorted with a giggle. “You’d better fuck as hard as you fight.”

The music and their first look inside the ballroom of the club together stopped the small talk between them. Everyone entered in formal attire as they did, but they could see other guys already stripped to the waist and moving to the music on the dance floor. Nick took a moment to capture the hot, hunky views, the smells of men and cologne, and the sound of the music in his mind. “Thank you so much for bringing me here. It’s so much better with you next to me than by myself or with other guys.”

The look Lance gave him told Nick he was still on the hook for slighting Lance’s clubbing acumen. Lance seldom got mad, but he usually got even. Nick could expect to pay for his remark the next time they sparred in the training room, but tonight was to enjoy. Nick put his fingers to Lance’s mouth and pushed the corners up into a smile. The gesture made the older man grin, chuckle, and shake his head. Nick wondered what it made him think of, but it worked, and Lance gave him a genuine smile. “Goddamn how you get to me, and always have. I love you for that.”

Nick kept his smile perfect in response. He did not want to fuck up the moment by telling Lance that was the first time those three words had passed his lips in reference to him. Nick knew Lance loved him and always had, but not man to man, not romantically. “I love you, too.”

Lance pulled him out onto the dance floor, taking the lead as they settled into a slow Glenn Miller tune. Practically nose to nose, Nick studied Lance’s face. Lance pulled his mouth to one side, put Nick at arm’s length, and peeled Nick’s tuxedo jacket off him in a single, smooth motion. Lance looked at one of the several young club attendants standing nearby and held up the discarded jacket for him. The young man in his fitted lace shirt and rainbow bow tie instantly claimed the jacket. Lance’s gaze held him there as he removed Nick’s bow tie and then undid his see-through lace shirt.

“Club etiquette be damned,” Lance told Nick as he finished undoing the shirt. “I want to touch you, feel your skin next to mine as we dance. You’ll strip me next and then tip him for us.”

“I’ll take what I can of you, from you, Daddy Dearest, since I know you’ll never fuck me like I want you to.” Nick grinned at Lance, obeyed him. As quickly as Lance had him out of his shirt, Nick dutifully helped Lance out of his tuxedo jacket, undid his bow tie, and undid and removed his shirt, maximizing contact with Lance’s arms and torso in the process. Nick gave the Blushing Star on Lance’s chest some fingertip attention, making Lance grin at him. Lots of other couples were shirtless, but all eyes in the club were on them, to Nick’s complete delight. That Blushing Star on Lance’s chest was like a magnet to their eyes.

As quickly as Nick gave the attendant a generous tip, Lance claimed him by slipping a strong arm around his lean waist. Hand planted on the small of Nick’s back, Lance spun him out onto the dance floor. For a moment, they were the only couple dancing in a ballroom full of hunky guys, everyone watching them dance. Lance pulled them close so that their bare torsos touched and their hips moved together as they stepped in perfect time with the music, turning and constantly moving, as they danced. Lance kissed Nick long, slow, leisurely, with plenty of tongue on tongue. Nick found himself grinning with pleasure at Lance’s possessive attention to him.

When they pulled back from the kiss to breathe, the pained look and forced smile on Lance’s face utterly surprised Nick. “What’s wrong?”

Lance looked at him. Lance’s muscles trembled, his face paled, beads of sweat glistened on his face, and his grin became a grimace. Nick nodded, understanding. “The Four Ds. Younger you has just arrived to perform for us onstage. I kissed him before I left the mansion, you know.”

Lance’s eyes flashed. He nodded at Nick and said, “I know. I felt the kiss, just like every Lance here did. The one here to sing and dance feels my hands on you, and your hands on me.”

“Good.” Nick grinned, glad the pretense was gone. “Give him, and me, something to savor.”

As the music shifted, Lance swung Nick out and then pulled him back in to him with his strong arms, only to swing him out again. They turned, started to swing back in, and collided with another couple of hunky, shirtless guys. Lance and the hot honey-blond dancing with the green-eyed brunet shivered and looked ready to puke as their arms and torsos touched. Nick stared at them, did his best to support and bear Lance’s weight. The younger version of Lance had honey-blond hair where Nick’s Lance shaved his head, but they had the same golden-brown eyes, square jaw, and powerful, veiny build.

Nick glared at the younger Chase and Lance. “You’re not in costume.”

The younger Lance, Lance Eight, gave Nick a glare of his own. His British accent was crisp. “It’s not a costume. It’s a uniform. And we treat it with respect. You’ll learn to respect it, too.”

Nick looked the two over and grimaced at Lance. “You were kind of a dick at my age.”

Lance grinned. “That’s one of the things you’ll learn to love about me at that age.”

Nick looked Lance Eight over. “So, you’re what I’ve kept my ass virgin for. You’d better be worth it. My bet is that older you, here, is still the better fucker.”

“I’ll let you know when it’s time for me to pop that cherry ass of yours,” Lance Eight assured him. “And you’ll beg for more. As for the old guy… it’s the same fuck then as now. You don’t improve on perfection.”

Nick chose to ignore him and look at Chase Five instead, who still wore the makeup that went with the Blood Angels uniform. “You’re gorgeous made up that way, but I like your face better without it. Your voice, your looks, your every move makes me want to fuck you and never stop.”

Chase Five gave him the most delicately pleased smile. For all of his powerful, hunky looks, he was the gentlest creature. Nick wondered how savage Chase Five could really be in a gun fight.

“I really want to be the first Chase you ever fuck,” Chase Five assured him with a sexy French accent. “You’re very sweet. I like that about you.”

“I can’t wait to hear you, see you, sing and dance as les Anges de Sang,” Nick guessed.

“Oui,” the French hottie admitted. “Your accent is hot, crisp. I like it.”

Lance Eight looked Nick over. “It’s time to go get ready to sing, and you’re joining us onstage. Our Nick wanted some time with Chase Prime, since you’d be here anyway.”

“Chase Prime?” Nick questioned, half smiling to himself at Lance Eight’s use of the term to describe Nick’s elderly parent.

Chase Five nodded at Lance Prime, Nick’s Lance. “Lance Prime,” Chase Five announced and then nodded at Nick. “Nick Prime, because you are the Nick living with Chase Prime and Lance Prime on this time line. Just like I’m Chase Five, and he’s Lance Eight.”

Nick looked at Lance Prime, who smiled at him. “It would be a dream come true. That has always been your favorite gay bedtime story.”

“You want me to just get into uniform and makeup and perform without any rehearsal?”

The honey-blond Lance Eight grinned. “We have time to practice some before we go out.”

Nick looked between the young Brit and his own fatherly Brit, noted the similarities in their smiles, and said, “So, this was the plan all along?”

Lance shrugged and gently smiled. “This is always the plan. This is part of your transition.”

Nick looked him over. “You’re not coming backstage with me, are you?”

Lance Prime put his mouth to Nick’s, but let Nick drive the kiss between them. “Remember your training and you’ll be safe enough back there without me.”

“I’ll miss you.”

Lance Prime grinned. “I’ll miss you more. And I’ll be out here when you dance.”

“You’d better,” Nick told him, giving one of his nipples a twist. “I’m doing this as much for you as for me.”

Lance Prime nodded. “You’ll love doing it, and I’ll love seeing you do it. Enjoy yourself, son.”

Nick let himself be led away backstage by the two young performers, having untied the knots of several secrets he knew he could not admit to knowing, not yet, anyway. As quickly as they were in the dressing room backstage, the two blond performers began stripping naked. The French hunk gazed at Nick and nodded at his slacks. “We normally practice in the nude, just the heels, and sometimes our angel wings.”

Nick smiled and quickly stripped down with confident ease. His Lance and Chase had raised him to prefer nudity instead of clothes. “You guys do this particular act a lot for live crowds?”

The hunky Brit gave Nick a surprised look, but continued to strip bare as he answered. “Quite a bit actually. The Blood Angels are a cult classic in the gay world and have been since they appeared in that theater in war-torn Paris all those decades ago. It’s the perfect cover for the real rescue operations we do if folks think we’re just singers and dancers.”

Once Lance Eight was nude, his things set neatly aside, Nick looked him over and observed, “Your nerves and stomach have obviously settled down.”

“Yes, yes, they have,” the Brit admitted, his accent very crisp.

Nick stepped forward to them, put a hand to each of their chest tattoos. Nick fingered the eight at the center of Lance Eight’s six-point Blushing Star, and touched the five at the center of Chase Five’s star. “The meaning of the eight and the five are obvious, but the symbolism of the star is not, and no one has ever explained it to me. My dads are proud of theirs and they earned them, but I don’t even know how they did that.”

Chase Five nodded. “You’ll earn yours, too. When you go to France. The Blushing Star is the result of superimposing the two hated symbols of the Nazis, the pink triangle for homosexuals, like us, and the yellow Star of David for the Jews, like the Lances. To move freely about Paris among the outcasts and the resistance, you and your Chase will become Jews, with your Lance circumcising you as a hereditary Levite. Like me and every Chase before me, your Chase will combine the two symbols of hate into our one badge of honor before we first perform as the Blood Angels instead of merely Scarlet Angels, kill hundreds of Nazis, and save scores of gay boys forced to be their sex slaves. The first Blushing Star is painted on, but if and when we come back alive, we get it tattooed with our time line number in the center. It’s our badge as angels of mercy and vengeance, as Blood Angels.”

“That’s why Nick Jr. and I don’t have them; we haven’t been to France to meet our Chases and our Lances or risk everything to save the blow-job boys from the Nazis.”

“Nick Jr.? That’s what you call Nick Seven? He must hate that.” Lance Eight chortled. “He’s pretty cocky for a pre–time jumper.”

“And you’re pretty cocky yourself, circumcision and all,” Nick observed, looking down at Lance Eight’s flaccid penis.

Nick suddenly let his hands slide down Lance Eight’s powerful torso and took the young hottie’s cock in one hand and grabbed his balls with the other, giving the two big orbs a squeeze. Lance Eight’s cock sprang to life. Lance did not pull away or try to push Nick away. Nick squeezed his balls again, and mocked him. “You like that, don’t you?”

“Actually, I do, quite a bit, or you’d be picking yourself off the floor just now.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Nick grinned at him. “Definitely, if you were a decade or two older than you are. But you’re basically my age, not forty-seven. I bet I know more about your moves than you do.”

Lance Eight responded to the taunt as Nick expected, exploding into controlled, swift violence. But Nick expertly countered his moves, grappled him and pushed against the wall. Nick told him, “It would be a pity if I ended up fucking you instead of you deflowering me.”

“I’m versatile,” Lance Eight said with a little grin, “and I like it rough, top or bottom.”

Chase Five pulled Nick back. “We’ll have plenty of time for fucking after the performance. Let us get you into uniform and practice dancing while we have the luxury of time.”

Nick grabbed Chase Five, bent him back down over the makeup table, and sharply smacked his bare ass, getting a little grin from Chase Five. “What if I decided to fuck you now and skip the rehearsal? I bet I could improvise the singing and dancing just fine.”

“Obviously,” Lance Eight said with snort. “You invent the moves we use and select several of the songs we sing in our time line during the war.”

Nick pulled back, letting Chase Five up. “World War Two is your era, just like it’s Chase’s? How? You, my Lance is only forty-seven.”

“You’ll time travel back to the prewar era when I’m only fourteen, invite me into the Rolls, and change my entire life,” Lance Eight told him. “You just haven’t done any of that yet.”

“And then I die while you go back to wartime England, as a guy in my forties?”

Lance Eight looked appalled. “You shouldn’t know that about yourself. It fucks with the time lines in bad ways for each of us to know our fates.”

“Except for all of us knowing mine, apparently,” Chase Five told them.

“Don’t you dare talk to Nick about that. Not yet!” Lance Eight gave Chase Five a withering glare.

Nick felt bad enough for Chase Five that he put both arms around him. “He’s a dick, but a cute one. And I’m here. Don’t let him get to you. There’s nothing you can say or do that would make me want you any less. I know that I love you as much as my Chase, and I know he’s dying. Lance is also a good guy, even if he’s a dick who thinks with his dick.”

Lance Eight looked Nick over. “You really don’t like me much do you?”

Nick gave him a contemptuous glare. “I never said that. I like the fact that you’re a dick. You two are polar opposites of one another, and so I fit right in between you, where I want to be. But Chase will get a little more stern with age, and you will get a bit more tender. I want to be free to be a smart-ass with you, and tender and sweet with Chase. That’s how I was raised, how you two will raise me. And now I understand why you’ll make me wait to have sex with you guys. God, how I want to do it with you two, be in the middle of a sandwich fuck with both of you.”

Both Lance Eight and Chase Five grinned at him. Lance Eight snorted. “You Nicks are so predictable about sex. You guys are all over the place on everything else, but you are so OCD about the sex you want.”

“So, you don’t want to fuck me while I fuck Chase?” Nick tried and failed to not sound hurt.

“I never said that,” Lance Eight countered with a saucy little grin that instantly reassured Nick. “I said you’re predictable about sex. But you do have to wait until we finish singing and dancing or you won’t want to stop to sing or dance. Be honest, you know you won’t.”

Nick found himself nodding. “You’re right. You obviously have history with me that I don’t yet have with either of you. But I want both of you in the worst way.”

Chase Five grinned and nodded at Nick’s pulsating erection. “We can tell. You Nicks are horny all the fucking time. It’s something we both love about you.”

Nick grabbed both of them by the cock, working them until both guys got hard. Lance Eight pulled away, but Chase Five very gently unwound Nick’s fingers from his member.

“Careful,” Lance Eight warned. “Your Lance doesn’t need to get so hard he needs to duck into the men’s room to take care of it. Older guys can’t take edging the way we can.”

Nick nodded and then looked at Chase Five. “Was that too much for my Chase?”

Chase Five shook his head. “I’m barely aware of him at this distance. I feel all of the other Chases our age more. You’ll have to fuck me for your Chase to notice it this far away.”

“And the Four Ds? They obviously affect me and sometimes Lance, but not Chase, as old and frail as he is?”

Chase Five looked at Lance Eight and said, “Your Chase takes countermeasures due to his age. All of us younger Chases help him with the countermeasures. It also helps us as much as him.”

“Why don’t the Nicks and Lances do it, too?”

Lance Eight grimaced and shrugged. “We prefer to tough it out. I can’t speak for you Nicks.”

“So, how far away do you have to be to not feel the Doppelganger Dimensional Disruption Disorder, which is a mouthful? So, how far from your doppelganger do you have to be to not disrupt either one of you when you change dimensions?”

“Ten or twenty yards apart keeps it pretty painless,” Chase Five told him. “We materialized in the observation room at your Chase’s request, which is why you felt it so intensely today.”

“And set everything in motion to arrive at this moment, here with us,” Lance Eight added.

Nick nodded, and found himself staring into the mirror, his thoughts chasing puzzles and clues.

****

Chapter Four

Gazing ahead into the mirror, Nick watched Chase Five put foundation on his face and start working on his eyes and lips. Nick enjoyed seeing how Chase Five magically transformed himself from tough guy to cabaret hottie. Chase Five smelled of delicate herbs mixed with his own masculine muskiness. His brushwork was deft and delicate, his facial expression both intense and sweetly selfless. Nick’s cock ached with his desire to be connected to Chase Five’s tight, muscular ass. For Nick, lust and love blurred into one intense emotion. He knew exactly why Lance Prime wanted him to wait.

“And do I really fuck you the first time with a gun to your head?” Nick asked Chase Five as the hot young stud put delicate finishing touches to the makeup on his face. “I hate the thought of treating you that way. I want it to be sweet and gentle when I fuck you.”

Chase Five grinned. “You’ll have to time travel back to our first meeting for me to find out.”

“Teach me to dance the routine, so I can fuck you now.” Nick made no attempt to hide his arousal, as naked and hung as they all were. “Will my Chase feel it when I fuck you?”

Chase Five became serious for just a moment. “If and when we fuck, he’ll feel it. Every Chase here will feel it. But that’s a good thing. Your Chase draws strength from having the other, younger Chases here in your time line. Our fucking will make him feel young again.”

Nick looked at them both. “I can still feel your Nick. It’s mostly a warm, reassuring feeling at this distance, but I know he’s there with my Chase right now.”

“You’re both the most sensitive to the Four Ds and the least negatively affected by them,” young Lance told him. “Your sensitivity to things is what makes you the puzzle solver that you are. Your progesterone levels are off the charts compared to most people, even to Chase and me.”

“Always my mentor, my tutor, even when we’re essentially the same age,” Nick observed, enjoying the moment. “My Lance will feel it at this distance, so I think you need to fuck me when we do it. It’ll tease him and get him ready to be with me in person tonight.”

Lance Eight grinned. “I was already planning on it, even if I had to fight you for it.”

The thought of fighting and fucking with Lance Eight made Nick’s erection ooze. He looked down at it, then up at them. “Let’s get to that dance lesson before I need to fuck or be fucked instead. What sort of moves do I need to know?”

Lance Eight produced three pairs of glittery red high heels in sizes meant for tall men with large feet. He tossed a pair to Nick, and he slid them on, grinning at the perfect fit. Nick took a tentative step or two in them and found himself quite nimble footed. “I suppose this is why you, or rather my Lance always made sure I had spike heels when I wanted to dress up girly as a boy.”

The hunky blond Brit smiled at him. “You haven’t been born yet in my time line, so thanks for the idea on how to raise you. I already know I need to tell you a kid’s version of our angel exploits. And that I’m to be tough and demanding of you. Anything else?”

“You let me hug you and manhandle you when I’m small, tossing me around and tickling me mercilessly, but I love it,” Nick confided to Lance Eight. “You’re my dad, my brother, my first man crush, and the guy I always want to be with sexually while you urge me to wait, presumably for this exact moment now.”

Chase Five looked a little somber, but quickly shrugged off whatever was bothering him. Before Nick could reassure him how much he would idolize him as well, Chase Five said, “You already know all the moves. You taught, will teach them to us. We don’t have instant videos in our time lines like you grew up with, so think of your favorite gay dance videos.”

Nick grinned. “The DC Cowboys? I teach you guys to dance like them to swing music?”

“The first time I visited this time era,” Lance Eight told him, “I had to check them out on YouTube. They’re hot, but we’re hotter. You made sure of that. But I’d love to dance in boots and jeans sometime. But our signature look is ours, and theirs is theirs.”

“Was theirs. They disbanded in two thousand twelve. My Lance made sure I saw them live every summer at the DC Pride event, front row every time. Now I know why.”

Chase produced a well-worn computer tablet, keyed up a tune on the attached external speakers, and struck a pose in his heels, his tight ass looking as inviting as his upraised cock and big balls. Lance Eight struck the same pose, and Nick joined them. Nick knew the tune as quickly as the first notes of “Muss I Denn” or “Wooden Heart,” the old German cabaret song came up.

Nick found himself free dancing moves like the DC Cowboys used to the lively old tune, with lots of heel stomps, kicks, and sexy abs twists. The two younger versions of the men he loved matched his free dancing move for move as if that were the very same version he would teach them in Chase Five’s era to perform before his Nazi overlords. Every fresh step, every torso twist or abs dance move he made, they matched as if his innovations were designed in advance.

They sang and danced shoulder to shoulder, often touching and physically interacting with one another, Nick finding the contact strangely new and just as strangely old yet very familiar. When the music faded, the next two tunes were American jazz, “Blues in the Night” followed by “I Said No.” The next two songs were a hat tip to the DC Cowboys: “Deep in the Heart of Texas” and “Cow-Cow Boogie.” The final song was British, and Nick Prime knew from Lance Prime’s storytelling that they only sang it in occupied France for Germans about to taste machine-gun bullets: “We’ll Meet Again.” They went through the motions of unclipping invisible submachine guns from between their shoulder blades and aiming them as they sang the last bars of the last song.

“How many do you plan to sing and dance to this evening?” Nick asked them as they finished singing and dancing through all seven songs, all three of them aglow with their own sweat.

Chase Five grinned at him. “We don’t know. That’s a call you usually make. This whole act is, was, and will be your idea and creation. When I was L’ange écarlate, the Scarlet Angel, I mostly just sang, barely moved to the music in comparison to this act.”

Nick accepted the comment with a little smile. “Trying to fuck with my mind over the paradoxes of quantum time theory?”

“I’d rather fuck with you on a more physical level, but yes I was,” Chase Five admitted with a flirty little smirk.

Nick whirled around between the other two guys, grabbing each by the penis, and pulled them to him and went to his knees before them. “A taste of each for luck?”

Lance Eight glared at him, his cock nonetheless engorging in Nick’s grasp. “Sure, but if you can’t stop with a lick, I’ll have to lick your ass, and not in a nice way.”

“I want you to lick my ass in the best way.” Nick grinned at Lance Eight. “So, I’ll keep myself in check now, if you promise to spit-and-tongue prep me to fuck after we perform.”

Lance Eight nodded and let himself be kissed warmly to seal his promise. Nick Prime immediately turned his pale-blue eyes on Chase Five. “You make my heart race. I love my Chase dearly, but I want to lick your ass and put my cock into that ass of yours. Is it okay to want you for you, and for him as well?”

“If I live to be as old as your Chase.” Chase Five shrugged, his green eyes very somber. “He’s the first Chase to get that old. We die at different times in every time line you know. Some key events stay locked once they occur in time loops that follow. We’re here now because—”

“Because we need to be,” Lance Eight cut in abruptly, giving Chase Five a stern glare.

“What? What’s going to happen?” Nick demanded, giving each of their captured cocks a tug.

“You told us not to tell you no matter what,” Chase Five assured him, his erection fading a little in Nick’s grasp. “I promised you.”

“You mean the me that’s with my Chase right now. You mean him.”

Lance Eight shook his head. “Chase means you, not your doppelganger. You. At some time in the future, our paths will cross and you’ll ask us to be the ones to come here for the purpose we promised you to not divulge. And we won’t, no matter what. You even warned us.”

Nick stood up, looked the two hot young hunks over like two puzzles to be solved. Lance Eight obviously came by his poker face naturally and was just as hard to read as his Lance was. Chase Five, however, was the same tender, open book that old Chase, his Chase was. Chase said nothing, but the pained sadness in his darting, shifting gaze told Nick his worst fears would soon happen. “You’re here because my Chase is going to die. Is that why we are here? To keep me away when it happens? I wouldn’t want that. I would never ask you to keep me away when it happens. We have to leave, I have to leave. I have to kiss him, hold him, say good-bye to him.”

Chase Five grabbed Nick’s arm, and Nick punched him with his other hand as hard as he could in the stomach. Chase doubled over, winded, but did not release the arm he held captive. Nick would have hit Chase Five again, but Lance Eight stopped him, pulled him into a tight hug. “Stop that. Chase Prime, your Chase feels every punch worse than Five. Don’t do it again.”

Nick collapsed against him and just sobbed, his frame trembling against Lance Eight’s.

When Chase Five had his breath back, he said, “Your Chase won’t die tonight. Our Nick will make sure of that.”

Nick felt doubtful. He wanted to believe them, trust them. “Are you sure?”

Lance Eight nodded. “We wouldn’t lie to you about this. This is important to all of us.”

Nick composed himself, his thoughts still racing, but not in every direction at once.

Lance Eight said, “This night, you singing with us here, it’s more important than you know.”

“You’ll have your time to say good-bye, but you know that your Chase won’t want to talk about dying. I can assure you that,” Chase Five told Nick. “He’ll want to talk about what you mean to him. Don’t spoil his end with your fears. You won’t forgive yourself.”

Lance Eight rubbed Nick’s back, his touch both comforting and sensual to Nick. He resisted the sensation, still worried about Chase Prime. “How does my dad, Chase Prime die? Is he sick?”

Chase Five looked at him. “He’s tired of being old. He hates being in that wheelchair. He has COPD, obviously, but that’s not it. He just wants to end it, slip off the oxygen mask and die.”

“Why now? He’s been that way for years.”

“He’s stayed alive for you,” Lance Eight told Nick Prime, continuing to deeply massage his tense back muscles. “Once you jump back to wartime France with your Chase and your Lance, you won’t need him, and he’ll be free to end it.”

“I don’t want to lose him.”

“Do you want him to suffer as he does for you, forever?” Chase Five asked Nick Prime.

Nick Prime shook his head. He didn’t ask any more questions. He just surrendered himself to Lance Eight’s gentle kneading of his back and shoulders. He felt himself get hard again and pulled apart from Lance Eight just enough for both of them to look down between them to see that both of them were aroused. Lance Eight nodded and said, “Death, people dying, anticipation of death, and mourning death can all get you horny as hell.”

Nick nodded, staring down at his throbbing penis, and then glanced at theirs.

“We need to get ready to go dance now, but as soon as our act is done, we can have sex,” Chase Five told him. “We should have sex.”

Lanced Eight nodded his agreement. “It’ll help you accept what’s coming and feel more connected to your father Lance and your father Chase when it does happen.”

“And the stuff I warned you guys about, or will warn you about?”

“What you haven’t guessed is what you shouldn’t guess before it happens,” Chase Five assured him.

Lance Eight gave Chase Five a withering glare. “Telling Nick there’s a puzzle puts him to solving it, dumb-ass. Are you done with your makeup? Time is not our friend right now.”

Chase Five winked at Nick and then smiled at Lance Eight. “You really are a dick. It’s a good thing for you that Nick will want your dick in his ass instead of mine. This one has the best Nick ass I’ve ever seen. I prefer to bottom, but that ass begs to be fucked. And yes, I’m done. Time to suit up.”

Lance Eight slapped Nick on the ass as he handed Nick a blue lace thong to slip on. “That ass does beg to be fucked. I’ll be watching it the whole time we’re singing and dancing.”

Nick shook his head, grinning as he put the thong on, then tucked his manhood in. He no longer felt anxious; their sexual banter had worked. “Am I that predictable in all my other selves?”

“About sex? Absolutely. We count on it. On anything else? The supreme puzzle solver is all over the map on everything except sex and the lucky fact you love the pair of us. Which vintage car do you like best?”

Nick didn’t even have to think about that one. “The nineteen thirty-nine Rolls Phantom III.”

“Our Nick likes the Duesenberg,” Chase Five told Nick as he got out the makeup and started selecting the various creams and powders to use on Nick’s face. “I don’t like either of them. I prefer the nineteen forty Cadillac four door. It still has a running board, but it’s sleeker, and faster.”

Lance Eight helped Nick put on his snowy angel wings after Nick put on the blue thong with its see-through blue lace pouch. “I love the color choices. They’re so American, and yet also French and British.”

Chase Five kissed him by way of thanking him. “That was the whole idea. It irritated the Germans, but not so much that they did not come to see me perform, or all three of us, once you two joined me on the stage.”

When Chase Five put on his blue lace thong, his cock erect from kissing, Nick noticed the ragged edges of Chase Five’s circumcision. “You were your Lance’s first circumcision or what?”

“In my case, on my time line, my Lance cut my foreskin to punish me, not protect me.” Chase Five laughed, patting Lance Eight’s face. “My Nick made my Lance cut him too. But the punishment was also a reward, of sorts. We had to let our Lance fuck us until we came without either of us touching ourselves, or stay horny until our tender cocks healed.”

Lance Eight blushed and gently punched Chase Five before aggressively hugging and kissing him. “I’d have done a lot worse to you if our Nick had not intervened in the nick of time. Thank God he did. I was still confused about being gay and about how I felt about my Chase.”

Nick looked between them and observed aloud, “I don’t want my Lance or my Chase to have such a rocky start. Is that something I can change in my time line?”

Lance Eight shrugged and then nodded. “That will depend on when and where you first meet your Lance. What you’ll need to know about me is that I was not out to myself or anyone else when you and I first meet. I could have, would have killed Chase after maiming him if not for my Nick stopping me, helping me to come out to myself and to the two of them.”

“So you’re the one of us that develops the whole time-travel thing?”

“No, that will be you in about twenty-three years, but I will be your first experiment in sending a live subject backward in time, after you raise me from an orphaned teenage boy.”

“So, we’re all from totally different time lines, and we found the way to intersect time lines to be together, and what? Be the legendary Blood Angels?”

“Yup, we’re our own self-made time loop with a special gay mission that occupies our whole lives, when we’re not fucking one another like rabbits,” Lance Eight agreed. “It’s a good way to live, again, and again, and again.”

On that note, Lance Eight pulled the submachine guns from their innocuous musical instrument cases and put one in Nick’s ready hands. Nick grinned and pulled it to his torso as if ready to fire away. “I fancied myself a Blood Angel every time you made me practice shooting one. Ironic isn’t it, after all?”

“Careful,” Lance Eight cautioned Nick, his accent precise. “That’s the real item. No more substitutes for you from now on. Once you’ve been trained, you’ll time jump like the rest of us our age.”

Nick looked the weapon over, saw that it appeared to be a Thompson submachine gun from the World War II era. Painted white to blend with the angel wings on their shoulder blades, it had laser sights and was powered with an energy source Nick could not identify, but was more than mere lithium batteries. “Real bullets?”

“Real enough to kill, but not metal. They’re frangible, made to break up rather than ricochet, and very high tech. They break down fairly quickly after impact to minimize both the dimensional disruption and their traceability back to us, and the time line where they are from.”

“And if every Nick, Lance, and Chase our age time jumps like you guys do, for how long and why do we ever stop?”

“Time jumping takes its toll on your health,” Chase Five told Nick. “You always start at age twenty-two and you’re done jumping by the time you’re thirty-five. I start when I’m barely eighteen and keep at it until I’m thirty-eight, if I live that long. Lance starts at age twenty and varies the most as to when he hangs up his Blood Angel outfit.”

“Why do I stop at that age every time?”

Chase Five looked at Lance. “You take Lance in when he’s fourteen and you’re thirty-five.”

“Take him in? I don’t raise you like you raise me?”

“Lance doesn’t always raise you. Sometimes, I do. Each variation of the time line helps the three of us have more time together before one of us dies or disappears while time jumping.”

“My time-travel Nick never met a Lance before he met me. Chase raised him, and his Chase died protecting him before they could ever have sex. He’s really jealous of all the time you’ve had with your first Lance and Chase. And so are we. You’re that unique among all our time lines.”

Nick nodded, but his mind was elsewhere. “If I always take Lance in at age fourteen, where do you live before that?”

Lance Eight said, “You’re not going to like the answer. It’s one of the benchmark events you’ve never figured out how to change and have me turn out to be me. Changing it changes me, and not for the better. Fourteen is the youngest age guys can time jump safely for some reason.”

“Okay. That’s weird but it also explains a lot of other things.”

Chase Five spoke up. “Knowing that does not make it any easier for Lance or you or me, time loop after time loop. Lance still lives on the streets to age fourteen, and I still get sexually abused as an altar boy. It frustrates you most of all because we get to raise you without any of that shit.”

“Oh, God!” Nick gasped, grabbing and hugging Lance to him. “You will be the best parent a kid could ever have, and I let you grow up in the streets until you’re fourteen?”

“Bristol, England, to be exact,” Lance Eight confided as Nick hugged him, his British accent becoming very guttural and uneducated. “It makes me tough, but more than a little homophobic until you teach me to come out to myself. You save me, and if I am ever that great parent to my baby Nick when his parents die, I’ll still owe you for saving me. Chase’s story is worse, and it’s another benchmark we never can change. I could have killed him, but you send a younger you to stop me, and save us again right in the nick of time.”

Chase Five looked at the clock on the dressing room wall. “My story will have to wait. We need to be good to go, and this makeup won’t put itself on us. And then you will need to be ready to finish the evening with your Lance, once we finish singing and dancing together.”

“Will I see you two again before you go?”

Lance Eight nodded. “We’re here as long as you need us to be. You’ll know where and when to send us when that time comes. Let’s go wow our audience and help renew their hope in us and our solemn promise to them as their gay guardian angels.”

Chase Five put glitter on their faces and torsos to complete the looks. Nick could still see himself in the makeup and glitter, but knew from how different his partners looked that no one else would recognize any of them. Chase Five put the makeup away and grinned. “We have one last thing we must do, for luck.”

Lance Eight then led them in a little preperformance tradition that Nick knew he would treasure: hugs, leisurely kisses, and cupping one another’s ball sacks before stepping out to sing and dance as the Blood Angels— gun-toting, time-traveling, gay guardian angels. Nick saw in Chase Five’s green eyes and Lance Eight’s golden-brown eyes that they felt the same sudden burden and irony he did. Somewhere a gay kid needed them to arrive in the nick of time, and it could so easily be one of the three of them.

****

Chapter Five

Nick loved every twist, turn, abs crunch, and pec dance that they included as they stomped and pranced their red heels, swirled their angel wings, and gyrated their thong-clad groins, updated machine guns against their backs between their strapped-on wings. They pulled their guns and waved them over the delighted crowd as they sang a round of “We’ll Meet Again,” the mostly male audience joining in for the final chorus. Once they finished being called back onstage for another song two times, they left and stayed off.

Lance Prime was there to greet them, both Lance Eight and he steeling themselves against the nausea of being so close to one another. Nick pulled the three men to him for a group hug, sandwiching Chase between the two cross-timed Lances. Nick could see them struggle against the Four Ds just to be happy for him; putting Chase between them appeared to help them fight the inherent disquiet of being present with their doppelganger. He loved them all the more for pushing through that nausea for him.

Nick kissed all three of them, kissing his Lance longest and most lavishly, loving that his spiked heels made him so much taller than his Lance. “You felt it when I let other Lance feel me up, didn’t you? And liked it?”

Lance Prime shared a knowing grin with his younger self and then nodded up at him. “So, was it worth all the waiting I put you through?”

Nick put hands on him, caressing his torso and cupping his manhood. Lance was rock hard for him. “It was, but younger you still has me waiting to fuck him, be fucked by him. I want you to feel it when we do. Will you?”

Lance Prime accepted Nick’s attentions in front of Chase Five and his younger self. Lance Eight read the poker face like an open book. “He wants to be there. Watch us do it.”

Lance Prime smirked at him. “You’ll get plenty of practice staying horny while raising Nick, if you get that privilege on your time line. So, you’d better enjoy him, every bit of him, now.”

“So, when I was sixteen and making out with guys my age, that got you hot for me?”

Lance Prime nodded. “Absolutely, but you needed a dad not a boyfriend twice your age, so I took care of those things elsewhere. I’m not made of steel, but I know my duty.”

“Yes, you are. You’re stainless steel, both of you are to be so near one another and mostly just horny for me,” Nick told the two Lances, pulling Lance Prime to him and pressing their mouths together for a leisurely kiss. His dad let himself be kissed, but then pulled away, hand to the bulge in his tuxedo pants.

Nick grinned at his dad Lance. “Is it the Four Ds or the big D that’s getting to you, Daddy?”

Lance Prime gripped his crotch and nodded at Lance Eight. “You know damned well that it’s both, but if you want to fuck a Lance, fuck him. I’ll take my blue balls home alone, first.”

Nick Prime grinned and stepped toward Lance Eight. Lance Eight, who was also rock hard for Nick, let himself be kissed and felt up. When they parted lips, Nick said to Lance Eight, “I want you in me, fucking me as soon as possible. Do you think we could commandeer a room here at the club for a while?”

Lance Eight nodded. “It’ll make being around your dad easier to endure if you, Chase, and me have sex, and sooner rather than later. Fucking can make the Four Ds all but disappear.”

Lance Prime grinned at the three young men in front of him. “We can have any room you like. The club exists because of us and the foundation we own to fund our time travel. How about the small bar with the picture wall?”

Nick caught the grins Lance Eight and Chase Five gave his Lance. “Really? Okay, I own up to it. I love the idea of being fucked in front of all those pictures of guys. But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

For an answer, the two Lances and one Chase led him to the small bar near the club’s elevator lobby. Chase Five reached behind himself to pull cash from a cache within the harness of his fluffy angel wings. Hunky club attendants soon cleared the room, leaving it vacant except for the bartender and the same club bouncers who had cleared the room for them. Nick grinned at his guys. “You know I won’t mind an audience for this, don’t you?”

Chase laughed. “We know, but they’re here to keep everyone out of our way while we have our fuck sandwich in front of the Blood Angels gallery. We’re good to go when you are.”

For an answer, Nick grabbed Chase, propelled him to a completely bare table, and bent him over it. Nick kissed the back of his neck, felt up his pecs, wonderfully surprised how the angel wings and machine gun holstered between them did not get in the way of enjoying that man of his. They just made him hotter to be on him, in him. Kissing Chase everywhere the harness, wings, and gun were not, he leisurely made his way down to Chase’s ass, one hand finding its way to the French stud’s genitals, freeing them from the pouch as he pulled aside the thong strap between Chase’s ass cheeks. Nick licked Chase’s asshole, spat, and probed with his tongue. Chase writhed and moaned under his attentions just as ardently as if it were his very first time together with any Nick. Nick realized that every time with any Chase in any time line would be like a first time for him, for both of them.

Nick grabbed that long cock and pulled it down between Chase’s legs, licked it, sucked it and Chase’s balls before letting that cock catapult back to smack Chase’s tight abs. God how Nick loved doing that, knowing how it would please and tease Chase, who was ready to let him do it again, and again. After a third cock catapult, Nick spat into Chase’s crack and licked the spittle into his hole. Nick spat on his fingers and probed him with more spit and more fingers until he reached three. Then Nick freed his own cock from his thong pouch and gave it to Chase, forcefully entering that hole this time, making Chase gasp and grin with pleasure.

Lance Eight deftly stripped off his blue lace thong as Nick prepped and entered Chase, ready to step up and start prepping Nick the moment his cock slid into Chase’s ass. Nick let out a hiss of pure pleasure to feel Lance Eight’s face down between his cheeks, pulling the thong strap aside to lick his ass. Nick kept his thrusts slow and deep to let Lance have his way. As Lance prepped him and he slowly fucked Chase, he looked up at the wall of old photos, realizing that the table he had Chase leaned over afforded him a perfect view. It momentarily amazed him how could he fuck, enjoy it, enjoy the attention to his ass, and still consider each individual photo on that wall. He gasped and groaned with pleasure as Lance forcefully plunged his cock into Nick Prime’s well-prepped ass, hands caressing him as Lance went at it. Nick picked up the pace and force of his thrusts into Chase Five, but kept his eyes glued to the photo wall.

Nick Prime simply looked, really looked at each photo. The photos were a mosaic of old and new, with no apparent pattern at first, but by the time Nick had considered less than half the total wall, he saw the pattern. Their decorative frames told an important part of the story. Gold frames meant mission accomplished. Black frames meant mission failure or mission somehow unattainable. Brown frames meant missions in time still pending. Frames mixed with all three colors meant work still in progress, the dominant color letting him know mission status. Many of the photos were images of the three of them: alone, together, or just two of them in all sorts of times and places. The rest of the photos were the guys they had rescued, tried to rescue, or failed to rescue, some old, some very young, but mostly young adults like they themselves were.

The steady rhythm of fucking and being fucked helped Nick Prime’s mind sort out that wall and make sense of it. He was surprised when he knew he had to pull out or shoot inside of Chase Five, realizing all at once that they had fucked, the three of them, in that one position for almost a half hour. He pushed back against Lance Eight and pulled out of Chase Five. Lance Eight fucked him once or twice more and then pulled out of Nick’s ass. Nick grinned at Lance Eight and then rolled Chase Five over, planting him up on the tabletop. Tall as Nick was, and in high heels, stroking off onto Chase Five’s face, torso, wings, and gun was not going to be a problem. He grinned, shared a brief kiss with Lance Eight, and the two of them furiously stroked off, lavishing Chase Five with their gushing spunk, very nearly at the same time. Chase Five also furiously stroked himself, adding his ejaculate to theirs on his smooth, muscular front.

“God, you are so beautiful covered in our cum,” Nick Prime told Chase Five, bending down to plant his mouth on Chase Five’s to vigorously share tongues. He kissed Lance Eight and then Lance Prime, who was still stroking himself, long cock thrust out from the fly of his tuxedo trousers. Lance Prime shot his jizz across Chase Five’s powerful pecs and abs as Nick tongue wrestled him. Once Lance Prime was spent, Nick licked cum off Chase Five’s torso and snowballed some of it back to Chase Five, and both Lances, in turn. Swallowing the last taste, he said, “I like to think of sharing that taste of jizz as our own private sacrament of love.”

Chase Five sat up, and Nick helped him stand. Chase Five nodded. “I like that idea. It’s just sacrilegious enough and just sincere enough to fit us, and who we are.”

Nick assured his Lance, “Thank you for being part of this, sharing cum with us.”

Lance Prime nodded, but Nick could tell his mentor was unhappy with himself for letting his connection to his younger self take him over the edge and come in front of Nick. “Not very fatherly of me.”

“I love you better for being my dad and my true love all at the same time,” Nick told him. “The only thing better would be for you to fuck me yourself.”

Lance Prime shook his head. “I’m too much your parent for that to ever happen.”

“I know, and now I understand.” Nick nodded, kissed him. “But I can still want it.”

Lance Prime nodded, and Nick knew his guardian wanted it, too, but was too self-disciplined to ever let it happen. “Being your dad is every bit as much fun as being your lover.”

Lance Eight grinned and interjected, “So, do I get an A for effort, or just a gold star?”

The mention of the star spurred a thought in Nick, unlocked a detail overlooked. He stood and whirled to face the wall of photos. Each frame had a star or a heart centered on the bottom below the image. Some stars were blue, some were silver, and some were gold. The hearts were always purple. Blue stars meant none of them got injured or wounded, however the mission turned out. The purple heart was obvious: one of them bled. Silver stars meant one or more of them risked everything to save someone else. Gold meant one of them died during the mission, and there were a lot of gold stars on the wall. Too many gold stars, and Nick knew this was a puzzle meant for his eyes in his time. “No more gold stars on the wall, not if I can help it.”

There would be one more gold star, if not on that wall, at least in his heart. “I need to go home and see my Chase.”

“We will,” Chase Five promised him. “But now that you understand the wall as we understand it, you need to see the whole picture as we see it.”

Chase Five looked at one of the young club attendants who stood watch during the three of them having sex, helping to keep other club members out. “Casey, go stand by your picture, and tell Nick how you came to be here in this time and place with us.”

The studly young ginger went to the wall of photos and reverently touched a very old black-and-white photo. It was San Francisco in ruins, the Men Out of Time Club still standing nearby. Nick saw two men and a boy in the photo. He stepped closer and saw that the men were Lance and himself. Casey looked at Chase. “You pushed me clear of the beam before it fell on you and crushed you. They pulled me free of the rubble, put me in that magic old car of theirs, and brought me here to this time, to this life. I would be dead and forgotten, an Irish immigrant street boy turning tricks for rich men on the streets, if not for the Blood Angels, one of whom bled for me.”

Lance looked at another young man. “Dirk, go to your photo and tell us your story.”

The dark-haired, pale-skinned young muscled man strode briskly to a photo of the German death camps. He looked straight at Nick, his accent German as he said, “I was at Auschwitz, a skinny teen with a pink triangle on my shirt, forced to clean the ovens by day and do favors for the SS by night. You came between me and German bullets as the other two loaded me into their magic car. You died in my skinny arms, your saving blood all over me. I am ready to bleed for any of you, anytime you ask.”

The third young man in the room approached the wall at Nick’s nod. His eyes were green but his skin swarthy and his hair pitch black. He told his story to the two Lances. “I’m Adnan, from Turkey. I was naked and buried to the base of my neck in sand, about to be stoned for being gay and Muslim.”

Adnan nodded at Lance Eight. “You three came to the stoning dressed as the Blood Angels, guns out, and stood between me and the stones in the air, cutting down my accusers with your guns, but a rock got you in the head, and you fell dead in front of my eyes. I was no one. No one wanted me. You died for me, so I could live here and now. I owe you, all of you, everything.”

“All the guys who work at the club, at our foundation, and at our houses are boys and men we have rescued or will rescue from death, maiming, or lifelong humiliation for being gay in the wrong time and place,” Lance Prime told Nick. “The price of a few gold stars among us three is not a price too high for them, all of them, to live.”

Nick took the time to listen to every young man on duty in the club who had a picture on the wall and a story to tell. The guys whose pictures had a gold star went first, the purple hearts next, then the blue stars, and finally the silver stars. Last to step to a photo on the wall was Chase Five. His old black-and-white photo showed the three of them all dolled up as the Blood Angels, standing in the nave of a French cathedral, the bloody corpse of a slain cardinal at their feet.

“The cardinal was a notorious pedophile who had an addiction to altar boys, including me. The Germans knew and used his cast-off boys, like me, to do their dirty work before they took over and openly ruled in Paris. My parents never asked about the extra things we got, so I assumed they knew and were just using me, too. My future was either a British bullet for being a collaborator or a German pink triangle for being too old, even for their likes.

“At sixteen, someone discovered that I could sing and dance, and so I became L’ange écarlate as a gay mockery of all things French to entertain the SS, avoiding the pink triangle by continuing to collaborate and providing other services to secretly gay German officers. By eighteen, I was notorious, and the British sent agents to silence me. Luckily, both agents were Men Out of Time, Nick and Lance. The first score we settled together as Blood Angels was to retire the cardinal. Nick and Lance risked everything to save me and make me one of them.”

Nick and both Lances embraced and kissed Chase Five in front of everyone who had gathered in the bar to tell their stories. Nick said to him, “And now, I must go spend every moment I can with your older self, the Chase who was my other parent, and grandparent. I owe him everything I will ever be, just as I do my Lance, who also raised me.”

****

Nick wore the Blood Angel costume home, his Lance driving him in the old Duesenberg. The fluffy white angel wings had to come off to get in the car, but Nick stayed in the makeup, blue lace thong and red high heels. Lance let him snuggle against him, staying shirtless at his request. Nick traced his fingertips over the veins in Lance’s right arm, and sighed. “What will Bristol be like, sixteen years from now, when I finally invite the teenage you into my car?”

Lance waited until they passed under streetlights to glance at Nick, smile, and answer. “You go back in time for me, not just live ahead to find me. I’d be dead either way now, if not for you inviting me into that car. When you send me back to England in nineteen forty-one at age twenty-two, you are just returning me to my own time line, at my request. I leave you because you come out to me, and I’m not ready to come out to myself, let alone accept my foster dad as gay. You take a kid from the nineteen thirties off the streets of England, who may have been turning tricks to stay alive, but he’ll have both the good and the bad values of the times. You know how stubborn I am.”

Nick was silent for most of the time they drove across the new Bay Bridge, his fingers tracing those ropy veins in that powerful arm like a puzzle he needed to solve. “Do you know what the puzzle is that I keep trying to solve, time loop after time loop after time loop?”

“You’ve never said, but we’ve never had to guess,” Lance told him, putting his right hand onto Nick’s bare thigh. “Rescuing others as the Blood Angels is dangerous work. Once the three of us are together in German-occupied France and know the mission of our lives, we want just one thing in return: to somehow, sometime live together and all three of us grow old together. Chase and I think you keep trying to find the balance by which we can save LGBT kids forever, and yet grow old and die together. The price we pay to give happily ever after to those we save is that we never get that ourselves, for us three. We just get these bits and pieces of one another’s lives, and make the most of them when we can, until violence and death breaks another loop of time.”

Nick felt the tears well. He did his best to not let tears fall from his cheek to Lance’s taut, smooth upper arm, but one or two escaped his fingertips. Lance told him, “Don’t hold back the tears. Just be dry-eyed and smiling when you go up to see Chase. You’ll have to steel yourself against the Four Ds, because your other self also wants every minute he can get with Chase.”

Lance reached across with his left hand to press Nick’s cheek down to his bare shoulder. Nick stopped fighting the tears as his face came to rest on Lance’s shoulder. “Why does all this hurt so much more for me when I’ve never personally done any of the things we’re all famous for doing among gays everywhere?”

“It’s always that way for each one of us, the first time we have to let another one of us go and slip away to death,” Lance told him. “It hurts the very worst of all the deaths you will ever witness, and that first bittersweet parting never stops hurting, no matter how many times we meet again across the time lines. Knowing that you’ll meet each of us again, and again, just makes anticipation of this Chase’s passing hurt even more. So, let it hurt, let yourself mourn now and after he passes. Just don’t waste a moment you have left with him this way.”

Nick felt as comforted by the contact with Lance’s firm, muscular frame as his gentle, kindly words. The tears faded, and he suddenly smirked. “You know, the first time I had a really stiff hard-on was in a moment like this. My head on your shoulder, your manly scent in my nostrils. I was thirteen.”

“Yes, you were,” Lance agreed. “And playing stupid to that erection in your jeans cost me some effort. You’ll deal with that and worse from me. You accepted being gay right away. I just had to be open to letting you tell Chase and me when you were ready. I’ll be a tougher nut to crack all the way around on that one.”

The electronic gates of the estate slid back to let the antique touring car pass up the long, paved drive to the big house perched on the brow of a hill. When Lance started to pull up at the car portico in front of the house, Nick slid his hand down against the older man’s crotch. “Just take it into the garage, and I’ll walk up from the garage with you.”

“I need to service the old girl. She uses a lot of gas you know.”

“Like hell it does,” Nick countered, squeezing Lance’s manhood. “I know for a fact that none of these cars use any fossil fuels at all. They’re powered by whatever source allows us to travel backward through time, aren’t they?”

“What gave that away?” Lance asked, letting himself smile ever so slightly at the handling of his genitals.

“I snuck down into the garage when I was sixteen to see the engine of the Duesenberg up close and had the shock of my life,” Nick told him, giving his manhood another little squeeze. “The ‘alien’ technology under the hood was not the shock. It was the fact that it all made sense to me, almost as if I designed it myself, but I knew I hadn’t. Will that power plant also be one of my inventions in the future?”

“Most of it.” Lance nodded. “It was my idea to put the power plant into so many different old cars and other vehicles. Even the old horse-drawn carriages have power plants built into them, for transdimensional getaways, as do our various boats and aircraft. Every time you find some gay kid to rescue in some time or place new to us, we outfit something big enough to cross time and space with the Meister power plant. If we think we might be back, we like to hide one then and there.”

“The angel-wing harnesses?”

“They have just enough of a power module to give us a little protection from stray bullets in a gun fight,” Lance told him. “That was one of Chase’s innovations after you got yourself killed in action the first time. You’ll bitch about the weight it adds until the first time the EMP field saves my sorry ass. They still won’t stop a thirty-eight slug at close range.”

“And our submachine guns?”

“That was my idea.” Lance shrugged as he pulled the old car into the garage and parked in the space set aside for it, in sight of a dozen cars from different past eras. “They have a magazine of rounds and a backup that we carry on the harness, but the guns pull most of their rounds across time and space to fling at our targets without ever actually entering or exiting the barrels. You can turn a Panzer tank into Swiss cheese or level a city block with our guns and a virtually endless supply of rounds.”

“When do I get initiated into time travel?” Nick asked as they got out of the car.

“Possibly tomorrow, but before Chase passes,” Lance told him gently. “He’ll want to see it happen and have you return safely from your first jump, probably a short hop for him.”

“Is that how it always is? It takes the funeral for us to get initiated, activated?”

“No, usually not. I started traveling time with you very much alive and well. Each loop is a little different. This loop is different for another reason besides initiating you after the funeral,” Lance told him. “This funeral will be special, your Chase, our Chase, is the original Chase. Every last one of us not on active duty will cross time and space to be here. They will be all ages from the age we first were when we came together: eighteen, twenty-two, and twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four? I let you wander alone, in wartime England, for two years before I send another me to find you?”

“It’ll be a productive two years,” Lance assured Nick, pulling him into his arms. “My foreknowledge and poker face help me make all the right connections for me to be in Paris as a covert operative at the exact right time to meet our Chase. And you use your past time-loops knowledge to send a younger you to me in the nick of time. But that also varies. The only constant is the love we three have for one another, regardless of all time-loop variants.”

“Now that I’m ‘grown up’ by our way of thinking,” Nick asked, “how much adult love can I hope to have from you before duty pulls us apart?”

“I’m not done being your dad yet, so you may have to find and fuck another Lance my age, once you start jumping,” Lance told Nick, but let Nick kiss and tongue him just the same. When they parted lips, Lance added, “However much time we have, as father and son or as lovers, it’s never enough. Sooner or later, one of us will die violently in front of the other, marking us, scarring us. It’s how we live and die, and probably always will.”

“I can’t stop losing Chase, but I’ll be damned if I lose you,” Nick told him. “I’ll find a way to save the boys, all the boys, and save us, too. If not in this loop, then in the next.”

Lance nodded and kissed Nick. “Go spend time with Chase. I’m sure he wants to see you.”

Nick suddenly felt afraid. “You will be here until it’s over. You aren’t leaving me, too, are you?”

Lance smiled and shook his head. “It’ll be you that leaves me behind when our time of parting comes. I’ll be the one missing you.”

Nick accepted that premise for the moment, but was still a little wary about leaving Lance to go to Chase. “I’ll be gone all night. I may be late for our morning workout.”

“We’ll flex all of that,” Lance assured Nick, hands on him, but not keeping him from leaving. “With all the angels here, we’ll probably do Blood Angel dance moves in the ballroom for exercise.”

Nick grinned at him. “I’d like that, especially in jeans and boots, DC Cowboy style.”

“Good, I’ll set it up with the others,” Lance agreed. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Nick started to leave, hesitated, and then blurted what lingered on his mind. “My ass still tingles from having your cock inside me.”

Lance Prime grimaced. “It was Lance Eight, not me, that did the honors. His cock was uncut, remember?”

“He’s you, will be you in twenty-odd years,” Nick countered. “Same cock, minus the foreskin. The point is that my ass still tingles from having it inside me. I like that feeling. It makes me feel whole, complete. I know now why you made me wait.”

“You’re still waiting,” Lance Prime told him. “You felt the right dick but the wrong version of me. When you let the right Lance fuck you, then, and only then, will you be complete. You had your first taste of it, and you’ll no doubt get another, but until it’s your forever Lance, it just won’t be the same.”

“Do you ever like to bottom?” Nick suddenly asked Lance, almost embarrassed to ask.

“I love to bottom,” Lance nodded, “for Chase. I would have bottomed for my Nick, but he never wanted to top, not me. Chase and I are the versatile ones. You are the one that tops with Chase and bottoms with me. You Nicks are very predictable about that.”

“I’m sort of OCD,” Nick admitted.

“No.” Lance shook his head. “You’re fucking crazy OCD, but it goes with being the puzzle solver among us, and we love that quality in you.”

“Then, you know what it feels like to have your ass tingle for the man you love after he’s fucked you?”

“I do,” Lance assured him. “It’s so very different from how your cock is after cumming. It lingers and reminds you in ways you never feel in your penis after sex.”

“Thank you for making me wait to feel this,” Nick told him. “I love how it makes me feel, and you for making me wait to feel it.”

Lance nodded. “I know. I still remember that same feeling from after the first time Chase fucked me. It’s part of the glue that binds us three together, across dimensions and death, forever.”

Nick allowed himself one last lingering kiss with Lance before making sure his borrowed angel wings were straight, turning away to strut on those spike heels to the door leading from the garage into the mansion. He gave Lance a last glance and smile and then stepped through.

Each time Nick passed any of the young men on duty in the mansion, he realized that they had a rescue story to go with their presence there. Each of them paused in their duties to watch him strut by, geared up in the outrageously sexy gear of their rescuers. It made him feel a little more humble to wear those fluffy white wings, the gun strapped between them, snug blue lace thong, and those sparkling red high heels. He had yet to earn the right to wear the uniform, scant and sexy as it was, but he knew he needed to wear it with pride as a promise to earn the right to it.

When he reached the door to Chase’s suite on the top floor of the mansion, he gently knocked and then opened it, not waiting for anyone to do that for him. He had felt his unease turn rapidly into serious nausea fifty feet or more from that door, but he stepped in with his chin up, shoulders squared, and chest out. If anyone betrayed the effects of the Four Ds, it would have to be Nick Jr.

Chase was in his wheelchair in the sitting room and Nick Jr. sat shirtless in a wingback chair near the elderly man, the only noise being the sound of the breathing regulator giving Chase the needed amount of oxygen-enriched air. Chase grinned up at Nick Prime all dolled up as one of the Blood Angels. Nick Jr. was less amused. Trying and failing to hide his annoyance, Nick Jr. quipped, “Look who just got here in the Nick of time.”

Nick Prime stepped up to Nick Jr, gave him a little caress, and leaned in to quip back, “Obviously I got here in the Nick of time. You’re still in your knickers, Nicky Jr.”

“I hear that you sang… and danced with… the Blood Angels tonight,” Chase told Nick Prime, pausing every few words as he did to let the regulator help him breathe. “I bet you have… a lot of questions.”

“I do,” Nick Prime admitted. “I also know how lucky I am to have you in my life. My biggest question is about being ready to step up and earn this uniform I’m wearing.”

“Seeing it as a uniform… and not a costume… means you’re ready,” Chase told him.

Nick Jr. started to stand as if sensing he should leave. Nick Prime shook his head at his other self. “Stay. We can share the moment. I know I’m the lucky one to have more of Chase to myself than you have had.”

Chase looked at Nick Jr. and nodded. The shirtless young hunk sat back down. Chase smiled at both of them. “You are such studs… both of you… to just pretend… the Four Ds don’t… affect you… as they do… I would like both… of you to stay… and let me… fall asleep between you.”

Nick Prime knew how to prepare the elderly Chase Prime for bed and set to it, once he had his angel wings off, letting Nick Jr. help. Most of it was not fun, but holding a bedpan for Chase to pee in, helping him brush his teeth and get undressed were customary privileges to Nick Prime, not burdens. Nick Prime grew up helping Lance care for Chase as he aged. Nick Jr. grew up without a Chase in his life, making coming here to this moment a priority.

The two Nicks helped the old man ease into the sheets of his large, hospital-like bed with its elevated head, making sure he had plenty of oxygen tube slack before each got naked and crawled in next to him. The visiting Nick claimed the far side of the bed beside Chase, giving Nick Prime the side closer to all of Chase’s supplies. Chase told both how much he loved them and soon drifted off to sleep, both young men laying silent as he did so. Once he was out, Nick Jr. asked, “Should I go, so you can sleep some, too?”

Nick Prime shook his head. “He’ll drift in and out all night. He wants both of us here. So, stay. It does us good to endure one another’s presence, doesn’t it?”

Nick Jr. nodded. “But I have more experience ignoring the Four Ds.”

“So, stay and be my endurance meter, and tell me how your life has differed from mine.”

Nick Jr. nodded. “I will, but none of this will prevent the pain you’ll feel when he passes. That will be so much worse than the pain of having me here with you.”

Nick Prime looked at Chase. “Then tell me, since you’ve been there, about coping with losing one of us. I know his body is used up, and he’s tired of struggling against it, but I don’t want to lose him.”

“I can do that.”

“Why don’t you do it over here on this side of the bed, where there’s more room for both of us?”

“Getting skin to skin with you will really amp up the discomfort level,” Nick Jr. warned him, getting up to walk around the bed. He paused beside the bed even as Nick Prime threw back the covers for him. “When my skin touches yours, it will really hurt. I’m used to it. You’re not.”

Nick Prime shrugged. Looking his doppelganger over, he felt himself getting erect and saw Nick Jr.’s cock rise to match. “I think that means we’re going to take our chances with the pain.”

Nick Jr. grinned. “I guess it does.”

****

Chapter Six

If a hundred nails had been driven through his skin, connected to electrodes at high voltage, they would not have hurt as much as that first skin-to-skin contact as Nick Prime’s doppelganger climbed into bed with him. It momentarily paralyzed him, snatching away his breath as if someone got him in the belly before he could flex his abs. And yet, his cock just got all the more engorged for the surprising sensuality of that first contact as well. Nick Prime found himself focused on the amazing, instant gratification that came with the pain. “Is the first touch always going to be that painful and yet so very pleasurable between us?”

His mirror twin, Nick Jr., grinned at him, obviously reading his face like an open book. “Yes, it will, and good for you. You feel the two extremes and are focusing on the pleasurable part of it. It’ll help you endure and control the other sensation as much as we can.”

“You’ve had sex with another Nick before?”

Nick Jr. nodded. “Once or twice. You’ll enjoy it, but it’ll never be the same as sharing yourself with our two guys. Never. The Four Ds make sure of that.”

“As horny as we both feel, that’ll have to wait. I don’t want to disturb Chase by us having sex right next to him. We should wait until he’s more deeply asleep or go elsewhere.”

“It’s okay… to stay,” Chase whispered without moving or opening his eyes, speaking in the little gasps allowed by the regulator. “I’d like it if… you two did it here… next to me before… before tomorrow comes.”

Nick Prime saw the quirky smile on his doppelganger’s face. “What?”

“We felt you three fucking at the club, all the Chances, Lances, and Nicks did,” Nick Jr. told him. “Chase had me help him finish off. It was sweet. I tasted his cum. He tasted mine.”

Chase grinned and opened his eyes. “You’re not jealous… I hope… I never raised… that Nick as my… child like I did you… It made him… so happy… to help me.”

Nick Prime grinned and shrugged. “I’m very jealous, but also happy for you, and us. I understand why Lance and you wanted me to wait. And I get that you’re more my dad with Lance than my lover right now. But I still want to kiss you like a man on the mouth, if that’s okay?”

Chase nodded, and Nick Prime bent over Nick Jr. to reach Chase’s mouth, reacting to the intense pleasure and pain of his skin against the doppelganger’s skin. He then gently, tenderly put his mouth on older Chase’s mouth, letting Chase tongue him and control the kiss. When Chase pulled back sooner than he would have, Nick Prime smiled. “Thank you. I love you so much, Chase.”

“I love you, too… I love… both of you,” old Chase assured them, then winced as he moved to get more comfortable in the bed.

Nick Prime was instantly concerned. “Are you okay? Is something wrong?”

Chase shook his head, but his eyes still betrayed pain. Nick Prime pulled back the covers and saw the bruises on his torso. He gave Nick Jr. an accusing glare. His doppelganger shook his head. “You did that when you punched the other Chase at the club. We’re all interconnected with our doppelgangers when we share the same time and dimension. We feel everything done to any of us, everything. Age makes this Chase more vulnerable to bruising.”

Nick Prime felt crushed, but Chase put a gentle hand to his face. “You didn’t know… I also felt how… that Chase felt… when you fucked him… and made him… very happy… With so many… younger copies… of me around… the bruises… will be gone… by morning. You’ll see. Don’t let it… ruin the occasion… okay?”

Nick Prime pulled back, saw Chase watching him react to the pain and pleasure of skin-to-skin contact with Nick Jr. The double sensation helped Nick Prime deal with the bruises he had caused Chase. He smiled at Chase. “I’m good. I won’t let my fuckup ruin our time together.”

“There’s something you boys… can do to get… rid of the Four Ds… if you want to. But it has… its own risks. Double live transfuse… mix blood together… makes each belong… to other’s time line. I have the… needles and tubing… here in my room.”

Nick Prime looked at Chase and said, “Medical supply drawers?”

Chase smiled and nodded. “Yes. Get them, please.”

Nick Prime eased out of the bed to obey the suggestion that to him was a command he needed to fulfill. As soon as he opened the first drawer full of medical supplies, Nick Prime found two sets of live-transfusion needles and tubes. Both sets were packaged, one in clear plastic, one in an old-fashioned, waxy cloth Chase had told him about, oil cloth. Both were tied up with pretty tricolor bows in old-fashioned curling ribbon. The delicate, fun wrappings were typical of Chase’s gentle sensibilities and style. The handwriting was clearly Chase’s, even if the hand that wrote the simple words was not as steady as it once was. The clear plastic package simply said, Use now, disposable. The other said, Reusable, take with, every time jump. Every one.

The disposable kit included tubes, needles, and a small, syringe-like pump to clear air from the lines. Nick Prime took it and lay next to Nick Jr., the two of them following Chase’s slow, careful instructions on where to set tourniquets, how to pierce a vein or artery, using the pump to get air bubbles out. Chase mostly observed as they did it the second time on the other arm, so that each young man had blood going out one arm and in the other. Chase told them, “Now, mostly wait… It will hurt worse… but slowly fade… When the Four Ds… mostly fade, make sure… I’m awake to help… unlink you two.”

Even before Chase spoke the words, Nick Prime felt his arm burn and ache from the inside out as Nick Jr.’s blood flowed into his artery. He saw and felt Nick Jr. tense up in response to the new pain source. Nick Prime had positioned himself to where he could observe a clock on the wall with a glance, but he mostly spent the wait watching Chase doze off or admiring his time-shift twin. It was a bit vain, but it was fun to note the small differences between them. Nick Jr. had tan lines to match the outrageously sexy Blood Angel uniform, marking him as an experienced time jumper. The tan lines look all the sexier for what they represent.

They sure do. But our ass looks just as fuckable without them.

Fuck. I’m talking to myself about myself. Shit.

Nick Jr. put his hand to Nick Prime’s manhood, careful of the needles in their arms and the blood-filled tubing running between. Looks just the same as mine. Feels weird but fun to handle his and feel mine handled, too.

Fuck. He’s doing the handling, not me.

Both Nicks suddenly met eyes and shared the same thought. Fuck! You’re in my fucking mind.

Fuck, yes.

Telepathy?

You have another word for it?

You think Chase knows sharing blood does this?

Well, fuck yes. All the Chases must be able to do this.

You’re right. They’ve all shared blood.

Nick Jr. spoke aloud for both of them, for Chase’s benefit, seeing that he was awake again, and watching them. “I think we’re done, no pain left.”

Nick Prime gently slid his hand over Nick Jr.’s frame, felt only the strange double pleasure of touching and feeling, but no pain, no pain at all. Nick Prime glanced at Chase, who slowly talked them through removing the needles, covering the puncture sites, and removing the tourniquets. Once they were done, Chase told them. “I’ve tried to get… as many of us… as I could… to do this… with one another… as I could. It really helps. You’ll see.”

“So, what now?” asked Nick Jr. as Nick Prime got up and disposed of the used live-transfusion kit. What I really want is to fuck you hard right now.

Same. Only I’ll be doing the fucking. You get to have me in that ass of yours.

Save it. You know right now we’ll flip fuck several times before we let one another come.

But you like the bullshit between us, so why not indulge it?

“Exercise of choice,” Chase told them. “Just no time jumps… or heavy weights… for several hours… I’d like to see… you two flip fuck. The feel and effect… is out of this… world.”

Nick Prime and Nick Jr. did not need inviting twice. Nick Prime returned to the bed, and he and his other self kissed, caressed and went straight to sixty-nining one another, deep-throating without hesitation. The contact was electrical. Every touch, caress, penetration, and thrust intense, sensual, and pleasurable. They knew exactly how much oral sex to give one another, when to change from sucking cock to sucking balls to licking and prepping ass for fucking. Fucking one another, taking turns, felt very equal and intense. During the whole process— from the first tongue-wrestling kiss to the frame-trembling gushes of spunk onto one another’s torsos and faces— they watched Chase’s face and reactions to them having sex. Between the words, shared thoughts, and the contact of their bodies side by side, Chase fell asleep cradled in Nick Prime’s and Nick Jr.’s strong arms. As Chase slept, the two Nicks gently unwound themselves from Chase, moved to the wider side of the bed together, and fucked one another again. When they came and shared spunk with snowball kisses, they saw that Chase was awake. Nick Jr. shared a snowball kiss with Chase, and Chase accepted the same kiss from the Nick he’d raised as his own. Chase drifted off again, and the three of them slept, arms intertwined until morning.

Nick Prime woke to an empty bed, but from the sounds nearby, knew that his other self was helping Chase use the toilet and take a shower.

It feels a little weird sensing how sexual Chase lets you be with him, while he treats me as his kid.

You are his kid in every way that counts. You’ll get your chance to enjoy an older Chase and an older Lance as lovers, but not these two.

I know it now.

It will never feel right. Touching them. Kissing them is your limit, their limit, and you know it.

I feel how you feel. I’m glad he’s just your lover and that he’s my other dad with Lance.

You should; you still have them, both of them. I don’t.

Nick Prime got up, wandered into the bathroom, grinned at his mirror self, shared smiles with Chase, and emptied his bladder into the toilet. He noticed without comment that the bruises on Chase’s ribs from the night before were mostly gone, faded away. Older Chase was also a bit brighter, more cheerful, as if he was drawing strength and vitality from his younger selves.

I feel your loss. I’m sorry for you, but it frightens me. I don’t want to lose them.

I like feeling how you feel about him, about Lance. I miss both of mine. My Lance left after I started doing missions. I know he’s alive. I see his mission vlogs; I just never see him.

That’s what I’m afraid my Lance will do, once he thinks I don’t need him.

He’s going to. You can’t stop him. He’s still young enough to jump, so he’ll jump. We all jump as long as we can. They sacrifice more for us Nicks, by stopping long enough to raise us.

Your memories of your Lance and your Chase comfort me. I won’t ever really lose them, will I?

And we can always go visit them as adults in time lines where they are young and we are kids or haven’t been born yet.

Our lives really are forever, in a way, aren’t they?

They really are.

Nick Jr. kept washing Chase, letting Chase use the handheld showerhead as it suited him, but Chase was mostly watching Nick Prime urinate into the toilet. Older Chase’s eyes and face were even more worshipful of Nick than the younger version of Chase had been. The greater amount of shared lives obviously being the difference. Nick Prime lived for the looks that Chase and Lance gave him, looks he saw in the younger versions, but were not as intensely satisfying as in the originals.

A thought suddenly occurred to Nick Prime, and he gave Chase a startled, penetrating gaze. “Lance, my Lance is the original Lance, and I’m the original as well. All three of us are, aren’t we?”

“Yes, and no,” Chase told him, the pauses and measured breaths just part of his speaking. “Your time line gets fucked… with the very most… among us… For the three of us… this is the original… time line, complete with… all the fun and… interesting disruptions… by our doppelgangers… throughout it all… But in a sense… all of our intertwining… time lines and time-twisting… dimension jumps… makes every copy… of each of us… part of… the original three.”

“How do we keep track of it all, or do we even bother?”

“I keep track of it,” Chase told Nick Prime with Nick’s doppelganger nodding vigorously. “We Chases do… You solve problems.”

Nick Jr. said, “Nicks invent things, refine inventions, and solve puzzles of the time lines. Lances manage all the gadgets we use and keep us all fit and strong enough to keep going. Chases handle the money, keep our supplies up, and keep logs of all our lives and adventures.”

“So, you direct our missions?” Nick Prime asked Chase.

“After you boys… exercise, shower, and eat,” Chase told him by way of answer, “I’ll let you take… me to our time… library here… let you look… into the book… of time lines… for the first time… Look and you will… know when and where… you personally… need to go next.”

Nick Prime looked at his doppelganger. “You’ve looked into the book?”

Nick Jr. nodded. “It’s a tablet, actually, linked to a server, voice and touch navigated. You can search by person, date, or event. Handwritten logs become PDFs. The rest are computerized text or vlogs. We time jump to send time library records back and forth within the library itself. Everyone does library runs; so will you, once you look into the book and take your first jump.”

“And I’ll know when and where to send myself by reading the time logs?”

Nick Jr. looked at Chase and then nodded. Chase said, “There are basic… guidelines… We keep track… of time lines and the… three of us by… random index… numbers. You’ll get yours… when you first log… into the time… journal interface.”

Nick Prime wanted to know more, but Nick Jr. kept them on pace to dress in jeans and cowboy boots and go downstairs with the oldest Chase to join the other younger versions of Chase, Lance, and themselves for some sexy line dancing. All the various versions of the three were in their early twenties and late teens and grouped by threes on the dance floor of the mansion’s ballroom.

Some groups included one of each, some two Chases and a Nick, etc. Nick Prime found himself paired with the Chase Five and young Lance from the night before, while Nick Jr. found another young Chase to dance with. Nick Prime did a quick head count as he got into line and started strutting and stepping to the old swing tunes, counting seventeen young men, including himself. The twists, hip grinds in tight jeans, and abs and pecs moves were all fun to perform together with the other young guys, cowboy boots tapping and stomping in time to the music. Eight songs and roughly a half hour later, everyone had broken a sweat, and they ended the occasion with hugs, kisses, and butt slaps.

Sweating and dancing with all those nearly identical young hunks left Nick Prime realizing he had at least a visual sense of who was who, and who went with who. He was very much the odd man out. His young Lance and young Chase were not present. Everyone else belonged to someone else, except the Nick he had transfused blood with. They were both odd men out.

Nick Jr. rejoined him and gave him a little grin. You figure it out yet? Why we don’t have our own Chase and Lance, but everyone else does.

The Chase and Lance last night claimed you aren’t the one they met in France.

“We all claim one another,” Doppelganger Nick said aloud, his grin provoking a guess.

“You’ve time jumped for practice, but you haven’t made the critical jumps that count yet,” Nick Prime told him, getting an affirming nod. “How long have you been jumping time?”

“Since I was sixteen, and my Lance caught me suiting up to go without knowing what I was doing,” Nick Jr. confessed. “I think they sent me to you to keep you from jumping prematurely yourself. The possibility exists on your time line for that.”

“Is that when your Chase died, when you were sixteen?”

Nick Jr. shook his head. “I was fourteen and had never kissed a boy, that they knew of, when he died. But with only Lance to keep me in check, and Chase Five taking over our time library, I had most of the pieces put together by age sixteen. I hated the new Chase until I figured out the whole time-travel thing and realized he was Chase, just younger.”

“When you realized he was a younger version of your Chase, and not some random relative of his, what did you do?”

“What would you do if you were sixteen and a twenty-year-old Chase was handy?”

“I’d take him and fuck him before he could pretend he didn’t want me to,” Nick Prime told Nick Jr.

“I got shot down twice before I stopped asking with words and got him to let me seduce him without words,” Nick Jr. told Nick Prime. “You were much smoother with the Chase you met at the club, from what I heard. I came pretty close to raping my new Chase.”

“That’s how we Chases… like it. Just take us,” they heard old Chase tell them. Nick Prime turned and realized that the older man was in a powered wheelchair and had caught up with them. “Remember that… when you meet your… own younger… versions of me… for the first time.”

Nick Prime nodded. “Power chair means you’re going outside.”

“It means we three… are going… outside as soon… as you two eat.”

“Showers?” Nick Jr. inquired. “Your Nick stinks, so I must as well.”

“You both smell… fine to me.” Old Chase smiled up at him. “Better than roses.”

Food at the mansion was served buffet-style with a host of young guys in the kitchen and dining area. Nick Prime knew several by name, although the kitchen staff rotated every few years as the cooks and kitchen workers finished their educations and pursued their careers. Nick Prime saw them all with new eyes, as rescued boys from across the globe and the time lines. They all looked at him as differently as he observed them. Many were less flirty but more open and friendly, others a bit more awed to see both Nicks getting breakfast there. Nick Prime wondered how such sexy saviors looked to them, faces all reflecting awe and appreciation. The tall, swarthy brunet who Nick Prime last dated and fucked before learning the truth poured tall glasses of milk for both Nicks, but knew which one to share a little smile with. “I never got to thank my rescuers properly. Thank you for letting me share that thanks with you.”

Nick Prime nodded and let the lanky guy give him a brief, gentle kiss. Nick Jr. grinned. “There’s a difference in our time lines. My Lance would never let me fraternize with the rescued boys.”

“The Lances can get… pretty anal… without the… softening touch… we Chases provide,” old Chase agreed. “We’ll see how… the variation… in your time line… plays out in your future.”

Nick Prime smiled at their server and inquired, “You do have a regular boyfriend, don’t you?”

The dark-eyed server smiled. “I date, a lot, but I also still struggle with the values I was born into. Marriages are arranged in my birth time and place. I have no family to do such things for me. I don’t know how to turn casual sex into something more.”

Chase looked up at him. “We are your family… Lance will stand in… for the father… that cast you out… You have choice here… and family… to support you.”

“Thank you,” the server told Chase. “Peace be unto you at journey’s end.”

As they left the line to find a table in the dining hall, Nick Prime glanced at his doppelganger and they looked at one another’s trays.

We are fucking OCD about food as much as we are about sex, aren’t we?

Cheese and bacon omelets, whole wheat toast, chocolate milk, two glasses of it. Yep. We are.

It’s a good thing we’re okay with that. Disagreeing would bug me, bug us, wouldn’t it?

I can’t believe you like the Phantom III better than the Deusy. That bugs me, plenty.

Same thought in reverse back at you. Just be glad we both like to flip fuck one another.

Chase had limited his choices to a poached egg, a half slice of toast, and coffee. The parting words of the server weighed on Nick Prime as he ate, but Nick Jr. helped him keep it in perspective. Feeling a compulsion to keep pace with his doppelganger in quickly eating the food, his angst disappeared. Chase dabbled at the egg and the toast, barely finishing the coffee by the time the two Nicks had wolfed down their breakfasts.

Nick Prime looked at Chase. “You should eat more.”

Chase shook his head, making his oxygen tube whip back and forth, and pushed his tray away. “I’m not hungry… and we have a very… full agenda… this morning, boys. Shall we go visit… the time library?”

****

Chapter Seven

The time library turned out to be a room within the mansion’s guest house, accessible near the large, covered lap swimming pool. There were large wingback chairs, library tables and chairs, and a tablet computer on a table near every possible seat. Everything about the room was comfortable and understated, given its central role to their lives and life mission.

Chase handed Nick Prime a tablet once they were seated, with Chase taking the head of the table in his wheelchair. “Your e-mail… and password… will get you… into the… library server… Once you get… your random… index number… or RIN, use… it and a… new password… to get in… after that.”

Nick Prime cued up the login screen, entered his e-mail and password, and then waited as the screens blurred and produced a photo montage of himself from a tiny baby to the present moment. There were even photos of him line dancing earlier that morning with all the other Blood Angels. Hands on a clockface whirred past one another as the server built whatever files were meant for him into a menu. At the top of the menu, as it finished developing, he saw the announcement:

Welcome, Nick Prime 001, to the Time Library.

Nick Jr. grinned from over Nick’s broad, bare shoulder. “I knew it. I have bets on that number with the other Nicks here with us.”

Nick Prime twisted around to look at his doppelganger. “So, double-oh seven is your RIN?”

“Bond. James Bond. License to chill.” Nick Jr. grinned. “I did all that in my time line.”

“That suits you, Double-oh Seven.” Nick Prime grinned at him. “You seem to have all the answers and you fuck like a man in harm’s way. But you’re still Nick Jr. to me.”

Double-oh Seven snorted. “I fuck exactly like you.”

The two Nicks shared a look, Nick Prime lifting his face up and his doppelganger bending forward so that they could join mouths and tongues in a leisurely kiss. It was funny how they shared thoughts and words so simultaneously. “Yes, you do.”

The screen opened up an array of past, present, and future entries all entitled Nick, each accompanied with a time line marker, date, and location. Nick Prime instantly went to the future entry of when he would first discover viable cold fusion as an energy source and then accidentally send an object across time and space when the cold fusion generator arced. The resulting electromagnetic field created a time-warping wormhole, and his desk disappeared only to turn up in his garage three days later. All of the entries were vlogs in 3DHD with details so true to life that there was zero grain to the images. He looked at Chase and asked, “Does the library have big-screen capability? I’d like to see these vlogs in as much detail as possible.”

Nick Jr. just grinned at Chase, making Nick Prime certain that he had made the same request of his second Chase in that time line. Chase touched the tablet in front of Nick Prime, brought down a menu, and touched the appropriate icon. Instantly, the vlog images appeared on a section of wall that obviously doubled as a 3DHD screen. Nick Prime found himself remarking, “Three D and no special glasses to marry the images. Cool.”

Chase reached for and picked up a small device, causing Nick Prime to split his attention with the screen and with what Chase was doing. The device was like a partial glove that left fingertips free, but had a laser pointer fixed behind his right index finger. It allowed Chase to point out features of the presentation on the wall, speed up the sequence, slow it down, and even pause the whole thing.

With Chase controlling the feed, Nick Prime watched an older version of himself methodically retrace and retry the whole incident, recreating the EM field and event horizon. The desk was enveloped and disappeared. But this time, it turned up in his storage unit with a month’s worth of dust on it. More experiments, smaller objects, and a slow process to find which amplitudes sent what volume when and where, the cold fusion reactor handling the tremendous energy load put on it without incident. Nick Prime saw that he could speed up the vlog feed and still hear a faster version of spoken notes, instantly doing so.

Years of refining experiments sped by in a matter of minutes, and Nick Prime saw the Time Warp Projector emerge as a viable, controllable tool. Then Nick Prime used it on live animals. The first results were grim, but he soon found out how to ensure that living things stayed alive and intact. Eventually, future Nick was ready for people and ready to put the whole thing into the first old classic car as a camouflaged housing. Nick Prime was not surprised that the classic Cadillac was the first car so honored to be gutted and rebuilt with a cold fusion power plant.

But as soon as the vehicle was operational something totally unexpected to future Nick occurred. The car powered up, an EM field formed, and a younger version of Nick appeared in the field. The younger Nick was dressed as a Blood Angel, complete with wings and submachine gun on his back. Nick and his doppelganger shared a grin, and then Nick observed to Chase, “That’s always our first jump forward, isn’t it? So, why does it always surprise the older us that way?”

“It was certainly mine.” Nick Jr. nodded. Pretty boring, except to meet older us.

Other vlog entries flashed by, each depicting some rescue or other.

See the whirling sphere form around the Blood Angels? That’s the event horizon of the wormhole. Even when you walk into it, it looks like a spinning beach ball, not some lame-ass circle or hoop, Doppelganger Nick projected, supplying a silent, running narrative. Entering the singularity or event horizon can be tricky, so we try to initiate them around us when we can.

Our uniforms can’t be all that practical for stepping into a whirling orb of energy.

The basic Blood Angels look is iconic, but impractical. Still, efforts are always made to improve it. You’ll find it holds up okay, and you with it. It’s rescue boys we worry about when stepping in.

Chase flicked the scene forward with his fingertip laser pointer. They saw Blood Angels seemingly float in the air, snatch gay kids out of harm’s way and then disappear. There are tiny cameras mounted in the angel-wing harnesses that do a lot of the vlogging for us.

Blood Angels can fly?

Hover, defy gravity, but only a little bit. The high heels have antigrav plates built into them that act like antimagnets that repulse us off any solid surface by a foot or two. It can soften a fall, or give us an unearthly look, but not much else.

And time jump in midair without a visible event horizon?

The event horizon was there, just not as visible in broad daylight.

And they time traveled on the energy stored in the fake submachine guns?

The submachine guns are more power source than gun these days, but they have limits.

What can they do? What are the limits?

They shift us a couple of miles to wherever one of the old converted cars is located. The cars send us back and forth in time, generating large enough event horizons and wormholes to do so.

Even as Nick Jr. filled in the details, they listened to Chase speak slowly, still paced by the oxygen tube, “No matter how much… foreknowledge we… take with us… when we time jump… we change the time… line in little… ways by just… being there… and so events… always unfold… a little different… than we expect. Surprises, good… and bad abound.”

Nick Prime nodded, looked down at the event menu, and touched one that seemed somewhat faded. It did not come up. Instead, it asked for an authorization code. Nick Prime looked at Chase. “We Nicks never get as old as either the Lances or the Chases, do we? This file tells how we most often die, doesn’t it?”

“Seeing that file… always seems to… bring bad luck to… the viewer,” Chase answered him. “Every Nick to… look at it… has died sooner… than the rest.”

“And that has been every Nick designated Nick double-oh one, which is why that number now falls to me,” Nick Prime guessed. “I’m not actually the first Nick but rather the latest to date, based on time-loop time-tracking. What would be my designation if none of the other Nick double-oh ones had died?”

Chase Prime let out a sigh. “Nick oh-seventeen… This is Time Loop… oh-seventeen… based on the… average number… of all three of… us to pass through.”

“And you’ve lived through all seventeen time loops?” Nick Jr. asked.

Chase nodded. “I have, but not every Chase has. Obviously, some of us have done a fair amount of time traveling. And so did I in my day, while mostly living through to this time and this age.”

The two Nicks looked at one another. Nick Prime looked at the bandages covering their blood transfusion sites in the crooks of their elbows. Nick Prime told his doppelganger, “You’re the Nick with the least amount of Chase time, and I’m the one with the most. Somehow older us thinks that helps one of us live longer to achieve the next step.”

Nick Jr. looked at Chase. “How old was the oldest of us Nicks when he passed, so far?”

“All of you live… long enough to build… the Time Warp… Generator and… send both young Lance… and yourselves… back through time.”

“But none of us live long enough to bring everyone forward from that time. Chase always gets left behind to live forward instead of joining Lance and us in the future, right?”

Chase Prime nodded. “Leaping forward… is still the… trickier jump… to get precise… even with all we… know now in… this time frame… Because that… future stage is… so unsettled… and changeable… right here and now… has been our base… of operations… all along… even though all the… inventions needed… happen in that… future time line.”

“How do we die?” Nick Prime asked, already knowing some details from Lance, but not all.

“You’re not… going to look?” Chase was clearly surprised.

“It hasn’t helped so far,” Nick Jr. observed. “You brought two of us here together, had us mix bloods so we could work and think together without the Four Ds fucking with us. This is the reason, isn’t it?”

“They were fucking with us by tricking us into transfusing to fuck one another,” Nick retorted with a little snicker. “But the wisdom in the move is obvious. We feed ideas off of one another.”

Nick Jr. repeated the question to Chase Prime, “How do we die?”

Chase Prime sighed and then slowly, carefully explained, “The wormhole… generator… produces a… spherical event… horizon… within a… spherical chamber… with approach paths… cut into the… up-curving sides… of the sphere… When Lance brings kids… we rescue through… the event horizon… I get left behind… and you try… to pass through to… retrieve me but… disappear. We… never find… your body, no… parts of a body… and if you… live, we have… no idea where… the wormhole sends you… If the three of us… try to come forward… without the boys… we rescue… it still happens… and happens… If Lance stays… and I go forward… with the boys… you still disappear.”

As Chase Prime slowly commented, his voice hampered by age, frailty, and the oxygen regulator, Nick let his doppelganger help him navigate the tablet. After Chase finished speaking, Nick Jr. said, “These entries are all open, that is to say, the loop events in the vlog entry allow for another Nick to be part of it. Closed loops are ones where the best outcome has already occurred, and there’s no reason to revisit that point in the past or future. And we can create new time loops every time we get a news report or read a historical reference to gays being persecuted somewhere or somewhen. We just call ‘dibs,’ so to speak, and form a team with another Chase and another Lance, or we can join them in the field if a loop looks like there’s a Nick missing.”

“Or dead?” Nick Prime asked, looking at Chase Prime.

“If the mission failed according to the vlog entry, another live Nick can cause the vlog entry to change with the sudden arrival of that new, living Nick,” Nick Jr. told him.

“That’s how it… all started and… how it goes on,” Chase agreed. “Loop after loop… across time and… space, forever. Where do you… want to go, first?”

Nick Prime grinned at them both. “You know where I really want to go first, but I see that I need to train first. I need to prepare. And double-oh seven here needs to tag along, so what do you suggest, James Bondage?”

“We’ll see who spanks who next time we fuck,” Nick Jr. joked back. More seriously, he added, “I have some ideas. But let’s gear up and get ready to jump.”

Nick Prime nodded. “Back to the mansion, then?”

Nick Jr. shook his head. “Everything we need is here at the time library.”

Nick Prime looked at Chase Prime. “What about the transfusion kit, the reusable one?”

Chase Prime nodded. “I have… several… here at the… library.”

Nick Prime looked at the control glove still on Chase’s hand. “Can that interface with our power packs, our machine guns?”

Chase looked surprised, but nodded. “Good idea… And yes, it does… and I have… copies for… both of you.”

Doppelganger Nick showed Nick where all their gear was stored within the time library. They stripped off their jeans and cowboy boots and got dressed in their skimpy, see-through blue thongs, sparkling red high heels, and moderately weighty angel-wing harnesses, submachine guns already slung tight into the harness between the fluffy white wings.

No makeup or glitter for my maiden jump?

Chase will see to that. Just don’t react if his work is not as deft and precise as his younger self. Having him paint us up is still fun.

The two Nicks took turns sitting for old Chase as he made up their faces and applied glitter to their faces and torsos. Nick noticed the same intent, artistic gaze in older Chase’s eyes, looking at Nick’s face as both a canvas and an object of pure love. He knew how his doppelganger felt about the personal attention, but both of the Nicks liked his reaction to Chase’s artistry better.

“The makeup is… like a mask… of sorts for us… It shocks our… enemies and… delights and… comforts the boys… we rescue,” Chase told them even more slowly, more deliberately than usual, as the task of painting their faces and applying glitter took much of his mental energy. “The haters… have the masks… to hate and not… our true faces. We have visited… will yet visit… so many… time lines that… our images… our mission… permeates all… of gay culture… everywhere… everywhen. Every gay… boy knows he… has a gay… guardian angel. And so… with this makeup… I imbue… the two of you… with our magic… to give hope… to every… gay boy… alive.”

Chase’s words were so perfect, so lovely, and Nick still had yet to earn his way to them.

Look at me. Look at me. Nick Jr.’s mental command was very insistent, very urgent.

Nick stared at his doppelganger, fighting tears.

Savor those words later, when something goes wrong. Every mission has problems, pain, disappointments. Let these words be for then. Steel your heart. Be the stud, not the tender heart.

Nick obeyed his carbon copy. Once he had himself in control, a contrary thought crossed his mind, and he shared it with Nick Jr., The litany against fear from Dune is no use to us, is it?

Fear is the mind killer, but we Nicks don’t fear much. Too much testosterone for our own good.

No such thing. I want to fuck you, and still fuck another Chase and Lance after that.

When Chase put down the last brush and closed the last jar, he said, “You have not said… so let me say… I know that… sharing blood… lets us share… thoughts as well… as feelings… Nick to Nick… or Chase to Chase. Nicks… and Lances… do not know it… Other Nicks… do not know it… but all Chases… do. Share blood and… then share thoughts… do not share this… until after… you share blood… for safety’s sake… yours and theirs.”

“But should we share blood, every chance we get?” Nick asked Chase.

“Yes, please, share blood… Nick to Nick… Nick to Lance… We are all… the same blood type… O negative… Universal donors… universal gay… saviors, avengers… Our blood, our mission… our lives, are one… We three, are one.”

Both Nicks showed old Chase that they had their reusable transfusion kits tucked in tight against their submachine guns in their angel-wing harnesses. They each gave him a leisurely kiss and let him escort them to the door of the short tunnel leading to the Quantum Field Generation Chamber. Nick grinned at Chase. “We’ll only be gone a minute or two by your reckoning.”

Chase nodded. “I’ll be here in the time library when you come back. Have fun, but be careful.”

****

Chapter Eight

The QFGC was a perfect sphere extending mostly underground, its skylights sitting above a long shaft on the roof of the pool house. The QFGC tunnel was more of a shaft, with a ramp sloping in a spiral down to the base of the empty ball-shaped chamber. An elevated platform stood in the middle of the chamber.

The platform is intended for a maximum of nine: three teams of us, or one team and up to six rescue boys, Nick Jr. silently explained as they spiraled down, walked to the departure pad, and climbed up to it. The generator can handle up to twice the load at a moderate span into the past or a short jump forward. The longer the jump, the smaller the possible payload.

What if we go back really far?

We do it in smaller jumps. This estate exists clear back to the gold rush. We, meaning Chase Prime, the original Lance, and the original Nick, made sure of that when selecting it as our base.

Then, other Nicks were not all raised here on the estate?

Nope. Nick Jr. shook his head. The original property had been a Catholic monastery dating back to the early eighteen hundreds, while it was still part of Spain’s Alta California colony. The mansion, what’s now the garage, and the guesthouse were all parts of the original monastery.

Anyone ever jump back that far?

Nope. So far, just to the early gold rush era, Nick Jr. told Nick Prime. We had journal entries and newspaper articles that told us about gay boys being mistreated or murdered in San Francisco after the gold strike.

And we went back to rescue them, right?

Some rescues have been made, but not without mistakes and casualties. We lost an entire team of us while trying to go back before the gold strike here. No one has gone that far back ever since.

Are there other Quantum Field Generator locations?

Bristol, England, and Paris, France. We put them where we are born and grow up so that we can visit frequently to preserve and play with our own time lines. There is one in Jerusalem, as well, but I’m supposed to let Lance Prime tell you about that one. It’s been his pet project.

How do the refitted classic cars get into the past? Nick Prime asked as Nick Jr. checked the controls of the QFG and showed them to Nick Prime. No way to get them in here.

Each one can duplicate what this facility does, but it has to be someplace that stays open, space jump to space jump, and the vehicles can’t make long jumps like these big boy chambers can.

The two Nicks shared a momentary gaze as Nick Jr. cued up the QFG and they waited for the energy field to form around them. Notice we have set it for Time Line Two, twenty-five years ahead of now. Just remember, the numbers do not equate to any one chronology; they just help keep us from getting lost, like the ball of string in the Greek Labyrinth. Events in this time line may or may not have happened in that time line, so never assume anything.

That’s why we’re taking the transfusion kits that Chase Prime gave us?

Exactly. Ready to go? Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly as we shift. You won’t get to breathe again until we exit on the other side. Put your hands on me and hold tight. This is going to hurt.

Nick obediently drew in a deep breath just as the energy field formed around them and began whirling counterclockwise, gaining speed with each rotation. He felt weightless, super heavy, stretched apart, and crushed all at the same time. He clung to his doppelganger, feeling their hearts pound together, and slowly exhaled the air in his lungs. Then the whirling slowed and disappeared, leaving them in the same exact spherical chamber on the pedestal-like platform. Doesn’t feel as if we’ve gone anywhere, does it?

At that moment a door opened with a bang, the noise echoing through the spherical chamber. The two Nicks looked down all four narrow aisles that cut through the lower curve of the sphere at ninety-degree angles, intersected by the jump platform at the lower axis of the chamber. A young man stomped down the aisle opposite from the one they had used to arrive there from the time library. Both Nicks instantly recognized a young Lance who was red in the face, ready to hit someone or something, and yet also on the verge of tears. Nick Jr. looked at Nick Prime. Time line two should make him Lance Two.

Twenty-two-year-old Lance Two did not see the two young studs in their outrageously gay and sexy uniforms on the jump platform in front of him. His face was aimed at the floor. He pulled off his lab coat and shirt and tossed them to the floor, leaned back against the waist-high, slowly curving slot cut in the inner surface of the sphere to allow for the aisle, and then looked up to see them. “What the fuck! Who in the fuck are you two faggots? And what the fuck are you doing in this lab dressed like that?”

Nick Prime grinned at his doppelganger. You know, Junior, this isn’t when on this time line we were supposed to drop in, right?

But it is when and where both of us wanted to go. Any regrets?

None. Let’s go have a little fun with young Lance, the self-hating gay and homophobe.

You know we’ll change this time line by talking to him, Nick Jr. reminded Nick Prime.

We started changing it the second he saw us.

I know. I just wanted to make sure you did, too.

Nick spoke up for both Nick Jr. and himself. “We’re here because you’re gay, in denial, and about to fuckup big because your foster dad just came out to you.”

“I am not some shit-eating, cocksucking fudge packer!”

Nick Jr. snickered at young Lance. “Yes, you are. Tell us that you aren’t hard for us?”

Lance Two paled, grabbed his crotch, and then blushed. “Goddamn it. I don’t want to be gay.”

“But you are,” Nick told him. “You know that you’ve always known you were. You’re pissed at Nick because he’s your dad, and he’s gay, and because you want him to want you the way you want him. Right?”

Lance Two went silent, his face furious. He looked away, but did not go away.

The two Nicks descended from the jump platform, making each step a sexy strut, heels clicking on the polished concrete floor, making the whole chamber echo. Lance looked up, watched them descend and strut toward him, his face a mix of raw emotions. Nick Jr. said to him, “You can’t have him that way, the way you want him. He’s your dad.”

Lance Two turned red. “That goddamned fudge packer is not my father.”

“The asshole rabbi who made you has been dead and buried for seventy years,” Nick agreed. “But the man who took you off the streets and raised you is your real dad, and will always be.”

“Are you two fairies from the future or something?” Lance Two demanded.

“Something,” Nick Jr. mocked him. “Chill with the epithets or I’ll have to make you suck my cock here and now.”

“Maybe he should suck both of our cocks,” Nick half joked. Seeing Lance get angry enough to want to fight them, he said, “Whichever one of us you take on will face fuck you first.”

“That means that if you take a swipe at us, you’re saying ‘yes’ to whatever sex we demand of you once you lose, and you will lose,” Nick Jr. assured Lance Two. “You swing first and the fight ends when one of us comes in your mouth.”

You know he’s going to attack us for sure, now. Submission wrestling and BDSM are things he likes.

He needs to. It’s the only way past his self-hatred and bristling against all things gay.

Lance Two swung on Nick Prime, and Nick Jr. took half a step back to give Nick Prime more space to respond. Nick Prime easily countered the first swing and punched young Lance right under the ribs, partially winding him, but the young stud just gasped for air and swung again. His wild swing partially connected with the side of Nick’s neck but the glancing blow barely reddened the skin. He punched Lance again in the abs and winded him, dropping him to his knees.

“You can quit now and start sucking cock, or I can put your lights out and you can still suck cock when you wake up,” Nick Prime advised him.

Gasping for air, Lance Two lunged up, trying to regain his feet. Nick Prime punched him in the face hard enough to drop him. Nick Prime glanced at Nick Jr. Is fighting yet another chicken-and-the-egg paradox? Do we teach him to fight so he can teach us later? This Lance sucks at it.

He’s going to get to suck at something else when he comes around.

Nick Prime reached down and gently slapped the unconscious Lance Two’s face, rousing him. “Wake up, so you can either accept your fate and suck us off, or fight back some more.”

Lance Two glared up at him. “I’m not going to suck that. I’ll bite it if you put it in my face.”

Nick Prime put his thumb and index fingers to the back of Lance Two’s jawline and pushed into the flesh. “Try to bite down. It’ll hurt, and then you’ll give up. I can do that to you and face fuck you at the same time, if you insist. You took the swing, you knew the consequences, so man up. Get to your knees, get my cock out, and mouth it. Don’t make me do you like a coward.”

Lance Two gave Nick a hateful look, but got to his knees. “Just mouth it?”

“You can suck it or let me face fuck you,” Nick Prime told him. “You picked a fight, and you’re getting my spunk in your mouth as your reward. Suck me or get face fucked.”

Lance Two took a breath and put his hands on the see-through blue lace pouch constraining Nick Prime’s fully aroused penis and balls. He gently, methodically slipped Nick’s cock and balls free of the cloth pouch. He handled it with ease, pushing back the foreskin to inspect it. The Nicks could see that for all of his homophobic rhetoric, Lance Two liked having Nick’s cock in his hand, treating it respectfully, appreciatively. “Nice foreskin, although I half expected you to be Jewish like me.”

“I’m going to convert,” Nick Prime assured him.

“We both are,” Nick Jr. added. “We’ll just need a rabbi who’s gay friendly.”

“Good luck with that,” Lance Two scoffed.

“Any Levite could circumcise me and it’d count as done correctly, wouldn’t it?” Nick Prime persisted.

Lance shrugged and nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true, but true Levites are rare. Most rabbis are not actual Levites.”

“You’re just such a Levite, aren’t you?”

“Now, you’re just mocking me for being gay and Jewish,” Lance Two accused them, glaring up at Nick Prime, still leaning forward. “You’ll have to face fuck me. I won’t suck it. Not now.”

“But you will put it in your mouth, or I’ll have to hurt you to help put it there. And you won’t bite me, will you? You bite me, and I’ll take you down and bite your cock harder. You’ll pee blood.”

“I won’t bite your cock, and not because of your threat,” Lance Two told him and then leaned forward to mouth the erection in his hand. “Your cock feels good in my hand. I just owned up to being gay. But you’re being an asshole, so you can just face fuck me or do without.”

Lance Two put the erect penis in his mouth and gave it a little suck, in spite of himself. Nick Prime let the pleasure ripple through him and put a hand to Lance’s cheek, patting it. “That was good. I can see you liked sucking it. Suck it some more, please.”

Lance Two looked up into Nick Prime’s pale-blue eyes, his whole expression softening. He gave the cock in his mouth another suck, pulled back, and then licked it. His glittering golden eyes betrayed the war inside him. Having Nick Prime’s long, pulsating cock in hand won out.

“God, I forgot how much I liked doing this as a kid,” he told them and then suddenly deep-throated Nick Prime’s big erection. When he pulled off, he said, “Face fuck me some. I want to feel that, enjoy that. I’m asking for it. Don’t make me beg.”

Nick Prime firmly, yet gently put his hands behind Lance’s head to hold it, stabilize it, and then thrust his big, erect penis into Lance’s waiting mouth and down his throat. He was forceful, but also very aware and considerate of Lance as he thrust into that mouth again and again. He pulled back and said, “Feel like sucking both of us? I love it but want to share, if you’re game.”

Lance Two nodded, reached for Nick Jr.’s manhood, freed it from its protective pouch. He fingered it, pulled back the foreskin, and remarked, “Your cocks are remarkably similar, even for identical twins, like yourselves. But you’re not perfectly identical.”

Lance Two licked the tip of Nick Jr.’s cock, eyeing him for a reaction. The honey-blond hottie sniffed Nick Prime’s pubes, put fingers to his pale-blond treasure trail, and traced those fingers back down to Nick Prime’s pulsating penis. His golden eyes dancing, Lance Two gripped Nick Prime’s cock and then sucked Nick Jr. again.

Nick Jr. smiled and nodded, but silently shared another thought with Nick Prime. I think he’s playing us. I knew my way around this whole complex by the time I was seventeen and just played stupid when my father Lance finally showed it to me. I’d fucked two green-eyed Chases and had been fucked by my first honey-haired Lance by the time I got my official tour.

That sure makes me the class idiot.

You have two dads. I just had one by then. You fucked and sucked all sorts of guys I never will.

The Chases and Lances do spoil having sex with anyone else, Nick Prime agreed. Golden Eyes here just has one dad, namely older us. Let him play us or confront him?

Nick Jr. answered by grabbing the back of Lance Two’s head and face fucking him vigorously for several minutes. Lance Two looked as if he was in gay-boy heaven as Nick Jr.’s cock slid in and out of his mouth, ramming hard enough to bury Lance’s nose in his pubes with every thrust. The doppelganger eased up and let Nick Prime take over, going at Lance’s mouth and throat just as forcefully. This is a lot of fun, but— I’d rather have—

His cock in our asses instead of our cocks in his mouth, Nick Jr. agreed, finishing the thought for Nick Prime. Aloud he said, “You got us edged, so fuck us. We want that long kosher sausage dancing in our gentile manholes.”

Lance Two stood up, eyes bright, and kissed both Nicks, one at a time, sharing plenty of tongue. “First, I want to know which of you is my Nick. Neither one of you have Blushing Stars tatted to your chests, so one of you is most likely mine, right?”

Nick Jr. laughed. “I knew you were playing us. You know a lot about this place, who goes through it, don’t you? So, you really that antigay twenty some years after the summer of love?”

The golden-brown eyes went from delighted to sad with puppylike speed and devotion. “That language was unacceptable. I was just so mad at my dad for being gay and not into me, when you two showed up looking so damned hot and tempting. I hit you with words rather than fists, but those words were awful.”

Nick Jr. grinned. “The epithets were sexy, coming from you. Your shitty fighting, not so much.”

The golden-brown eyes brightened, and a hint of a grin revealed a glimpse of Lance’s perfect teeth. “I know I should have hit Treasure Trail there harder, but I didn’t want him to hate me, if he’s the one, my Nick, my forever Nick. So, which one of you is it?”

Nick Prime said, “We don’t know for sure. Neither one of us has jumped back to that time yet. This is my first jump of any kind. Nick here has been jumping for months.”

Nick Jr. put a question to Lance Two. “Been fucking the Chase on duty in the time library?”

Lance Two shrugged and then shook his head. “I’ve fucked a girl or two, jacked off a lot, and have tried to convince myself I wasn’t gay, even if the Chase in the time library is gorgeous beyond belief. So, which one of you becomes my dad? Or do you know that?”

Both Nicks shook their heads. Nick Jr. said, “It could be either one of us, or any of five other Nicks our age.”

“The only Nick you can’t fuck is the one that is currently your dad,” Nick Prime told him. “So, you going to find out what it’s like to have the fuck of your life, or just stand there?”

“You’re that good?” Lance Two tried to scoff, but failed. Both Nicks knew he wanted them.

“We’re that good, together,” Nick Jr. assured him. “The way the three of us fuck and fit into one another’s hearts and lives is what keeps us going, time loop after time loop after time loop.”

“You know you were in love with us, both of us, the second our eyes met,” Nick Prime told him. “You may be the best bullshitter you know, but this isn’t something you can lie to us about.”

Lance Two nodded. “But you’re fucking with the time line, my time line, just being here now.”

Nick Prime nodded. “We are. We all do that all the time. This is just a moment no one has fucked with before. But then they sent two of us forward this time, sending us here before you jump back to nineteen forty-one and away from your dad. We think you never seeing him again to tell him how you feel is something we need to fuck with. You were damned easy to seduce, too easy.”

Lance Two shrugged. “The Chase on duty has the biggest crush on me, so I’ve milked him for details here and there. My dad Nick has me working on his prototype of a time machine that’s already working here and is controlled over there. I assume he still has to make the first one here and now, even though another later, cooler version operates here all the time.”

“So what has you so pissed that you want to go back to your own time line and leave your dad to die or disappear, alone, while you’re gone?” Nick Jr. demanded.

Lance Two’s mouth fell open. He closed it and then started talking really fast. “Dad’s going to die while I’m gone? I’ll only be gone an hour or two by his time. I checked the time logs when Chase wasn’t looking to make sure I picked a time when nothing’s scheduled to come through. How? I don’t kill him coming back, do I?”

Nick Prime gave Nick Jr. a look and some silent words of warning. “We’re not sure what happens. No one does. He, we, will just disappear about the time your returning event horizon takes shape.”

“I won’t go. Or I won’t come back. I’ll just stay and never come back. I won’t risk killing my own dad that way.”

“It’s not that simple,” Nick Jr. told him. “You have to come back. You have to time jump with your Nick and your Chase. It’s what we do. If you don’t, you’ll disappear and so will all of us. Your dad will never have rescued you from the streets of Bristol. You’ll never get to be our dad someday.”

“Why are you doing this to me? It was so much simpler to just be pissed at Dad for being gay, for telling me he knew I was, too, but then tell me we could never be together. My anger was so clean, it made what I had to do so clear. Now, you’ve fucked it all up, fucked me all up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I just don’t.”

Nick Prime grabbed Lance Two by the bulge in his jeans. “This is hard and going to waste while you fret over things we want to fix or change as bad as you do. So fuck us, and let us help you.”

Lance looked down at the Nicks’ erections and nodded. “I want you, too. Both of you. But—”

Nick Jr. shook his head, putting his hand to Lance Two’s erection through his jeans as well. “No buts, unless or until that is in one of ours. We have plans for you. Fretting uselessly is not one of them.”

****

Chapter Nine

Once the Nicks had Lance Two out of his jeans, he more than adequately fucked them both to their satisfaction, painting their asses in cum before going down on them and letting each Nick gush spunk onto his face and into his mouth. He shared a taste of their combined essences with them both in leisurely kisses at the end, dodging the swelling swirl of an incoming event horizon in the process of that final kiss. The uniformed Blood Angels that materialized on the platform just grinned down at them and used the aisle and spiral path up to the time library.

As Lance Two got back into his jeans, and the Nicks slung their cocks and balls back into their skimpy blue lace thongs, Nick Prime suddenly thought about his conversation with Lance Prime in the garage about anal sex and tingling asses. His ass still felt warm and tingly, almost as if Lance Two’s cock was still in it, thrusting back and forth, but before he could decide if his rectum felt even more specially tingly, the door from the origination lab opened and framed Nick Two in it.

Everyone was more or less sufficiently covered, but there was no point in trying to conceal anything from the older Nick, both younger Nicks knowing their faces were an open book to him. Lance, however, blushed clear down to his belly button at the expression on his adoptive dad’s face. Defiantly, he said, “You said you knew I was gay whether I wanted to accept it or not. And you said we could never be together because you were, and would always be, my dad.”

Nick Two nodded. “And?”

“I’m gay. I like being gay, and having had great sex with two younger versions of you, I understand why you will always be ‘Dad’ and they never will be.”

Nick Two nodded. “Good. Who knows how this changes the time line. But it makes me happy for you.”

“Goddamn you, Dad. They say you’re going to die because of me.”

“No, that’s not true, son. I live because of you. If I give my life to preserve yours, I’ll gladly do that. And you’ll goddamn let me. But these two are here to fuck with the one time line we’ve never dared touch. So we’ll see how that turns out.”

“They’ve already fucked with me,” Lance teased his dad. “That’s how that turned out.”

“Any complaints about that?” Nick Two asked him. “You appear to have survived it.”

Lance shook his head and let out a deep sigh. “No complaints. I enjoyed it. But how does it help you?”

Nick Two shrugged. “Little changes in the time line have ripple effects. They’ll have a plan, or at least a notion that’ll turn into a plan. We always do. So now will you, when you travel back in time to start the whole process over again.”

Lance Two nodded at his dad and looked at the two younger Nicks. “So what’s the plan, besides fucking me?”

Nick Prime grinned at him and tweaked his right nipple, getting a little grin from Lance for doing it. “You did the fucking and we liked being fucked. Next up, is to go pump the resident Chase for a little info we need. By the way, I like being in the middle of a fuck sandwich more than anything. So I’ll pump Chase, or Nick here will, and you can pump us again. Better be up to it.”

“Our current Chase is pretty green,” Nick Two cautioned them. “He’s fresh from France and the war, and his English is not all that strong, but he needs the practice.”

“Who died?” Nick Jr. asked. “His Nick or his Lance?”

Nick Two shook his head. “Neither of them. They stayed in wartime France with the theater blow-job boys to train them as resistance fighters. He’s not very happy with the other Chases over this variation in the time line. I’m not sure how they keep him in the here and now, but they do.”

The two younger Nicks share a glance and some thoughts. Nick Jr. said, “Got about ninety minutes or so to spare right now?”

“You two boys planning to fuck older you to see what it’s like?”

Nick Prime snorted. “Oh, that’s on the agenda before we leave, don’t worry. But we want to live transfuse our blood with you, the way the two of us did in my time line, at my father Chase’s request, Chase Prime. It’s one of those ‘don’t ask before we do it’ things, so we just need to know if you’re in, and we can tell you why after, if you need to be told.”

“If Chase Prime wants it, of course, I’m in.” Nick Two nodded. “Origination lab okay?”

The younger Nicks both nodded. Nick Prime looked at Lance, put his hands on him, and pulled him into a brief embrace to kiss him. Lance grinned after the kiss. “What was that for?”

“I don’t need a reason more than you’re you and fucking hot to me,” Nick told him. “If I have to spend years hands-off to raise you, I’d better have hands on you as much as I can when we’re the same age.”

Nick Two laughed. “I still feel that way anytime there’s a Lance my age within reach to kiss or fuck. Shall we go see the lab? I know you two will want to.”

Lance Two let the two younger Nicks go ahead of him, pausing to pick up his cast-aside shirt and lab jacket. As he bent down the second time, Nick Jr. put a hand on his ass. He stood up with his castoffs in hand and accepted a kiss from that Nick as well. After the kiss, he observed, “You know that you’re making it harder to carry out my plan to go back to wartime London and insinuate myself into British military intelligence.”

Nick Prime, who had stopped and turned around to watch Nick Jr. kiss Lance, said, “You’ll still find pretty girls to fuck, but you’ll think about us while fucking them.”

Lance Two nodded. “You can count on that. I’m ruined to fucking anyone else without thinking of you, either of you, while fucking them.”

Nick Two shook his head. “Not ruined, son. Saved. Harvested. Made one of us. But you still need to enjoy being with a Chase to be complete. We are part of an eternal threesome. When you’ve loved both guys you are meant to love, you’ll understand and feel complete. Even more so than now.”

Nick Jr. put his hand to Lance Two’s crotch, squeezing his cock through the denim. “You should go find the resident Chase while we’re stuck transfusing blood with your dad and give him a reason to grin. It’ll be good for both of you.”

The pressure of Nick Jr.’s fingers on his manhood had Lance hard right away. Nick Prime felt what Nick Jr.’s fingers felt and laughed at the surprised look on Lance’s face for getting hard again so quickly. “We have that effect on one another. We breed like rabbits, the three of us. And it never gets boring. Go find the duty Chase. Chase is the easy one, and the hottest fuck among us. You’ll see.”

Lance Two nodded. The look he gave the two younger Nicks got him kissed again by both of them before he turned around to mount the jump platform and exit to the time library.

After Lance Two was out of ear shot, Nick Two looked at the younger two. “You guys plan to fuck me while we transfuse?”

“Got a better way to kill an hour or two while we trade blood around the three of us?” Nick Jr. wanted to know. “And you know it’ll help with the Four Ds.”

Nick Two nodded. “A sensation you two appear to have learned to live with quite well together. How’s that possible?”

“Let’s transfuse the blood, and then we’ll answer any question about that sensation you have,” Nick told his older self. “Shall we?”

Having seen a cascade of vlogs shot in the origination lab, the large lab was no surprise to either young Nick, but they still let their older self show them around. The two younger Nicks used a stainless-steel lab table to put their angel gear on, stripping down naked before getting out the transfusion kits tucked in their angel-wing harnesses. Nick Prime told Nick Two, “Once we do this you’ll know why you’ll insist every Nick who comes through here shares blood with you and every Nick Jr. here at the same time. This kit needs to be standard issue with the angel gear.”

The origination lab was spotlessly clean, thanks to the rescued boys. Nick Jr. squatted in a wide-open space and patted the cool, polished concrete floor. “We’re going to be a while, so this will have to do for our transfusion space and our lovemaking space as well.”

Nick Two smiled and started stripping down. As soon as his shirt was off, both Nick Prime and Nick Jr. instantly noted the zero-zero-two in the center of Nick Two’s Blushing Star chest tattoo. “You two are off to an ambitious start with your time jumping. I was a lot more cautious. I went exactly where and when they told me to go.”

Nick Prime smiled back. “Nice try, but you won’t need to get us to talk by the time we finish transfusing and fucking. Nervous about having sex with two younger versions of yourself?”

Nick Two shook his head as he stepped out of his pants and set them aside on the same stainless-steel table. “We Nicks are pretty OCD about sex. It’ll be predictable, but hot.”

Nick Two’s big, circumcised cock sprang to life as quickly as he pulled off his boxer briefs and tossed them aside. Younger Nick and his doppelganger shared happy thoughts about it. Nick prime said aloud, “I hope my Lance is as skilled and careful with the circumcision knife as yours was.”

“Kitchen knife, and I was fucking afraid he’d cut more than foreskin off the whole fucking time he was cutting,” Nick Two told them. “I was out of action for sex for a good two weeks.”

“Bullshit,” Nick Jr. told Nick Two. “You probably had Lance up your ass ten minutes after your foreskin was history, doing his best to make you come without handling your cock.”

Nick Two laughed and sat on the floor within easy reach of the younger Nicks. “You’re right of course. Lance is good at doing exactly that for a guy. And he had to do it for both Chase and me, after cutting both of us, for almost two weeks. I never get tired of his cock in my ass.”

“So why the fuck don’t you visit him more while raising the Lance that’s your son?” Nick Prime asked him, putting hands on his torso, kneading the muscle under his taut skin. “My dad’s Nick never comes to visit. It would make his day, fuck, his whole decade.”

Nick Jr. nodded as he unpacked the two transfusion kits. “My dad gets really lonely now that his Chase, my other dad, has passed. Given what’s probably ahead for you, why the fuck don’t you see some Lances your age, while you still can?”

“It’s mostly about raising you guys as normally as possible given all this time-jumping stuff. You have to be raised in your own time lines for the time loops to keep going,” Nick Two told them, gently putting his hands to Nick Jr.’s manhood, fingering his uncut cock. “Fourteen is somehow the fulcrum age for time displacement among us. Jumping sooner can fuck with who you are, who you’ll become. Even when we rescue gay boys from abuse or death, we try very hard to never shift them from their birth time lines until they reach age fourteen.”

“That’s why Lance is fourteen when we take him off the streets? The fulcrum age?” Nick Prime asked, feeling himself get hard at the same time as Nick Jr. under the tender touch of their older self. He tossed the others some rubber tubing for the tourniquets that they would need on both arms to ease back blood flow before piercing veins and arteries.

“Leaving him on those streets until age fourteen will be torture for both of you.” Nick Two nodded, catching the rubber tubing tossed to him. He deftly tied each above his elbows. “That’s why someone always stays behind after the theater massacre when we first become Blood Angels. A lot of the blow-job boys in that theater were, will be, younger than fourteen, some as young as eleven. Someone has to stay behind until the youngest reaches age fourteen and can time travel safely. Keeping them all alive and safe is always hard.”

“And Chase Prime was cut off in the past for twenty years before we came back for him?” Nick Jr. both asked and recalled as he put needles into the crook of each elbow of the other two, getting the vein or artery on the first try. Younger Nick inserted his needles.

“We didn’t have back up Quantum Field Generators then, as we do now,” Nick Two told them. “No other Chase stays back longer than needed for the youngest boys to time jump forward. We make sure of that. Now, sometimes it’s a Nick or a Lance who stays behind with the boys.”

“Chase Prime stayed on his time line longer than twenty years,” Nick Prime reminded them as he cleared all the transfusion tubes of air bubbles with the small syringe pumps on each one. “He’s mostly lived his whole life on his original time line, just jumping to this time and that as occasion required. It’s killing him.”

Nick Two shrugged. “Not yet, it hasn’t. He’s outlived every Nick and every Lance. Still, I miss him. I’d like to see him again before, well, you know.”

“So, why do you, we, work here, without updated tools, to make the first Quantum Field Generator from scratch, time line after time line?” Nick Jr. wanted to know as he loosened the tourniquets above their elbows to encourage blood flow among them.

Nick Two used their mutual proximity to put his hand to Nick Jr.’s uncut cock and gently stroke it. “I sometimes miss having that sexy little bit of skin on my cock, but never enough to not have Chase and Lance in my life. Lance made up for the pain involved in losing it many times over. You know I’ll want to suck both of you off because of that foreskin you still have.”

Nick Prime nodded. “We plan to share you between us, sucking the cut version you have.”

Nick Two arched his neck and his big pecs, tight abs trembling as the pain of Four Ds blood coursed through his veins. “That certainly hurts as bad as I expected, but you two aren’t feeling it, are you?”

Nick Jr. grinned. “We’ve already transfused one another. That’s why we get to suck you first.”

Nick Two nodded, accepted it as the two younger versions of himself converged their faces over his groin and began licking and taking turns sucking his big cock. Conversation among them dropped off, replaced with pleased grunts and groans. Coordinating their efforts telepathically, the two younger Nicks soon had Nick Two properly edged, and they kept him there for a good long time, his trembling cock rewarding their oral attentions with rivulets of precum to taste. When they finally let him go over the edge and pump gush after gush off hot jizz onto their faces, they heard him mentally shout, God. Oh, god that’s good. Damn fool going this long without getting any.

Aloud, Nick Two kept his rejoicing to guttural grunts and groans. Licking, sucking old Nick’s spent cock, Nick Jr. caught his eye and mentally whispered, You’re so very welcome, Nick.

Telepathy? Really?

Nick Prime nodded. Would you have believed it possible by us just saying so?

Nick Two shook his head. Not a fucking chance in hell.

Nick Jr. silently inquired, still milking the cock in his mouth with his tongue, Four Ds all gone yet?

No, mostly, but not completely, Nick Two admitted, obviously enjoying both the final attention to his manhood and the cool trick of speaking mind to mind. He drew their thoughts from their minds, and responded with his own, The telepathy first, and the pain fading second could just be the effect of me being twice your ages.

The fact that my Lance and my Chase blame themselves for you dying does not mean stay away, Nick Prime mentally chided Nick Two. It means go fuck the hell out every copy of them you can with the time you have left, if it comes to that, shithead. What the fuck are you thinking?

If you’re going to be a dick, I can just satisfy myself with sucking his cock and not yours.

No, you can’t. We’re all in one another’s heads, you won’t be happy until you’ve sucked us both off. More to the point, you know you want to go suck off Original Chase, and fuck my Lance.

Nick Two grabbed Nick Prime by the balls and squeezed them, making all three of them wince with the pleasure and pain of the action. Nick Prime grinned at Nick Two. We’re fully telempathic as well; we feel everything every other Nick feels within our personal range, whatever that may be.

Nick Two squeezed Nick Prime’s balls again, feeling pressure on his own. I can take that sensation all day long, can you?

If I have to, but I get the point. I’ll get off your case, so you can get on my cock.

Nick Two initially had his doubts about keeping the two younger copies of himself as thoroughly edged for anywhere near as long as they did that for him, but as the link between them strengthened, and the aggravating Four Ds faded, their confidence in him and feedback to him helped him do exactly that. When he finally let them come, one at a time onto his face and into his mouth, they came with the same joyous energy as they drew from him. This time, however, he was aware of two more people in the lab as the two younger Nicks finished coming. Nick Two looked up to see his son Lance and their duty Chase watching him get painted in spunk.

Lance grinned as his dad blushed, cum dripping off Nick Two’s face. “You actually look good with a cum beard, Dad. Maybe you should grow a real one.”

“This is not a moment I ever planned on sharing with you,” Nick Two told his adoptive son, wiping spunk from his brow and cheeks. He smiled a quirky, half-embarrassed smile as he licked his fingers clean. “I wasn’t going to just wipe it off on my thigh because you’re here.”

Nick Prime tapped the numbers on Nick Two’s pectoral tattoo. “You being Nick Two makes your son Lance Two, doesn’t it?”

Nick Two nodded. “It does until he gets his own designation in the time library.”

Nick Jr. grinned and quipped, “Well, Lance, you’ll always be number two to me.”

Lance Two snickered and touched his own chin. “You still have a dribble of my dad’s cum on you, Junior.”

Nick Jr. nodded. “Is that you volunteering to lick it off, number two?”

Lance Two grinned, bent down, and licked the dribble of cum off Nick Jr.’s face. He shared the taste with both younger Nicks in turn, his kiss with Nick Prime lingering longest.

The younger Nicks retightened tourniquets briefly to remove the needles and tape cotton balls onto the puncture sites. Nick Jr. collected the transfusion tubing and gear, using the syringe pumps in reverse to clear remaining blood from all the lines. “This could stand being sterilized properly in an autoclave. The rubber tubing is supposed to hold up under the heat of it.”

Nick Two nodded at where the autoclave was situated in the lab, and Nick Jr. got up to go take care of it. Nick Two looked at his son and the duty Chase. “You tell my son exactly how we both get circumcised while he was fucking you?”

The duty Chase nodded, looking very nervous about it. Nick Two grinned at him. “Good. He’ll still have to do it to his Chase and his Nick, but it won’t have to be a guilty burden among the three of them, just something they do to get them out of a problem in that time line.”

When Nick Jr. came back from setting up the autoclave cleaning cycle, Nick Two said, “We need to go fuel up and then transfuse Lance and Chase with both younger Nicks. Once you four have done that, everyone will find out what these two boys have in mind by way of a first adventure for you all, something new and cool before you all go your separate ways.”

Nick Jr. looked at Lance Two and scoffed, “I think someone’s daddy needs a hug and a kiss before we go.”

“Or just a big ‘I love you’ before then,” Nick Prime also teased. “We Nicks are not the most communicative lot, not on a personal level. You should make note of that for when you’re the dad of a Nick and not the son.”

Nick Two gave his younger selves a little sneer. “My Lance can decide for himself when and if he wants to say that to me. I already know how he feels. He knows how I feel.”

Lance Two looked at his dad, extending a hand to help him up. “I do, and you do, but you could shut the fuck up and let me tell you that I love you anyway.”

Nick Two let himself be pulled into a hug with his bare-chested son and said, “I love you, too, I always will.”

“You’ll still be here when we get back from this first new time-loop adventure of theirs?”

“We’re days away from you leaving for your original time line, and a week before I need to get my affairs in order,” his dad assured Lance Two. “And I’m coming with you guys, at least as far as your first jump. There’s an older version of you that I really need to fuck while both of us still have time to.”

Lance Two let out a contented sigh. He gave both of the younger Nicks leisurely kisses. “Thanks for deciding to fuck with my time line, after all.”

****

Chapter Ten

Once everyone had been transfused, and they all had as good a night’s rest as possible under the circumstances, there was really no need for questions, answers, or explanations. The entire plan, a bit sketchy and thin in places, was firmly in all their heads. The young Nicks slowed them down a little by insisting on transfusing every young Nick, Lance, or Chase who came through the Quantum Field Generator. They finally had to give themselves eight hours of downtime before they jumped with Nick Two, Lance, and the duty Chase, Chase Eleven. They obliged another Chase to cover the time library before Chase Eleven painted himself and the other young men up for action as the Blood Angels. Chase Eleven’s hands were deft and steady, the artwork on their faces and the glitter on their torsos perfect as they joined Nick Two on the jump platform, and Chase Eleven set the time and location coordinates.

Nick Prime grinned at Nick Jr. as the energy wave started to form around them. That special day came and went without giving it its due celebration and reverence. If we succeed, it will give back to that day what we still owe it.

Amen to that thought, Chase Eleven, Lance Two, and Nick Two all agreed.

The event horizon swirled counterclockwise around them, faster and faster, everyone having drawn his last breath and letting it out slowly until the whirling energy field faded and their bodies no longer felt tortured past all endurable pain. The five guys on the platform all gave one another the customary hug and kiss for arriving alive and in one piece. Sirens were blaring as they stepped down from the jump platform in the direction of that chamber’s time library. They heard a door open and slam above them and hurried footsteps rushing down the spiral ramp. Moments later, they saw a Lance very much like Nick Prime’s own dad, but not quite him. Their host had short-cropped graying hair and a bald spot. He was bare-chested and the zero-zero-three in the middle of his Blushing Star tattoos stood out. He grinned at Nick Two. “You goddamned scared the holy shit out of me, but I’m glad you came, Nick, very glad. What the fuck did it take to get you off that sweet ass of yours to come see our new Jerusalem Quantum Field Generator?”

Nick Two grinned at Lance Three and said, extending his hand toward the younger four in Blood Angel gear. “These boys would like you to let them take the generator for a little spin and make a certain rescue not far from here. And while they’re busy with that, I thought we could wrestle a bit to see who fucks who before I have to get back to my work.”

“If that’s what it takes to get you to come visit me for sex, they can have it as long as they want it,” Lance Three assured Nick Two. To the younger guys, he said, “Log your mission in with our duty Chase, and then the QFG is yours as long as you need it.”

Chase Eleven spoke up, “Chase Nine already knows we’re here and our mission plan.”

Nick Two looked at his two younger doubles. I’ll be here, listening as long as you’re in range to me for anything you need. You have the video the terrorists made and the building coordinates. The only tricky part is whether or not our analysis of the video pinpoints the time of day for that rooftop hate crime precisely enough. Either way, you need to flash in and out. Take several passes but never linger too long. The energy fields will not stop heavy ammo, so be careful, and call for back up, if you need it.

Nick Two shared a hug and a kiss with each of the young men on the jump platform. He held his adoptive son to him longest. I’m very proud of you. I love you. I know you’ll do good out there. But come back safe. You are my life now.

As quickly as Nick Two was off the platform and halfway to greet his lover Lance Three, Nick Prime keyed up the QFG and the four young men drew one last deep breath. The energy field formed around them, swirling counterclockwise faster and faster. Nick Prime felt the event horizon tear at him, envelop him, and he felt how it hurt the other three standing with him, hands all linked together. Just as the pain came close to being unbearable, the swirling energy field slowed and cleared, and they found themselves hovering a few inches above the rooftop of a very dirty building in a very dirty deserted town.

The sun was low in the west, an hour or less from sunset. A dozen men in ragtag military garb with weapons held four young men blindfolded at the edge of the rooftop, waiting. Guns in the area started shooting off rounds. The men on the rooftop received a cell phone call in an Arabic language. The armed thug in charge nodded at the blindfolded boys lined up at the edge of the rooftop. The four time jumpers knew that they had arrived just in the nick of time and pointed laser-guided fingertips at the gunmen as the thugs prepared to murder their blindfolded victims.

In that instance, the two Nicks struck as one, aiming their fingertips and laser pointers at the men with guns, clicking the thumb control. Silent bullets materialize in the air in front of their fingertips and shot toward the laser points. No gunfire or warning before blood gushed everywhere as bullets struck their targets and the ragtag gunmen fell dead, some falling off the roof, some collapsing in a heap. Neither the spray of blood nor the screams of the dying gunmen affected the two Nicks, and somehow they knew it wouldn’t. As the two Nicks shot down the armed men without warning, Lance Two and Chase Eleven dropped down to the rooftop from suspension above it, each of them stepping between the blindfolded young men, wrapping an arm around one on each side, and then touching off the QFG remote to shimmer away.

Just as the two Nicks were about to follow behind, they heard a heavy metal door clang open. Nick Jr. saw a gunman aim at Nick Prime, and he pushed Nick Prime clear, but got struck by a round to the chest himself and went down. Nick Prime whirled and dropped to Nick Jr. He grabbed his double by the side of his face and silently commanded him. Keep your eyes open. Look at me. And breathe. I don’t care that it hurts or that you taste blood. Breathe and keep those fucking eyes on me. Breathe. Breathe.

Nick Prime cued his QFG remote and shook Nick Jr. mercilessly to keep him awake and breathing. If he passed out before the energy field formed, he’d be left behind, and there was nothing Nick Prime could do to stop that, so he had to keep Nick Jr. conscious at all cost. Milliseconds felt like hours as the energy field formed and swirled around them. Nick Prime felt a bullet round pierce his own shoulder, but he stayed focused on keeping Nick Jr. awake and focused even as he coughed blood and looked ready to die then and there. “Breathe and look at me, goddamn it! Breathe!”

Then the whirling energy took them and froze them, but Nick felt his contact with Nick Jr. continue. And as the energy field slowly faded, both of them arrived on the jump platform surrounded by half a dozen or more Nicks, Chases, and Lances, who had transfusion tubes and needles ready to pierce and pump live blood into the two wounded Nicks. Nick kept shaking Nick Jr., forcing him to keep his eyes open and breathing until he himself passed out and was taken into darkness.

****

When Nick Prime next opened his eyes, it was almost night, wherever they were, and he was surrounded by others like him, all of them grinning down at him. Lance Two helped him sit up without him asking, just knowing he wanted to. He saw Nick Jr., also sitting up, Chase Eleven tending to him very carefully. He could tell they were all on a rooftop somewhere in America, and as other guys parted in front of him, he knew where they all were, and when. He could see the White House in the distance, and as the sun faded behind them in the west, the White House turned all the colors of the gay rainbow. It was that night, Gay Love Night over Washington. Lance Two told him silently, We had to jump backward a couple of days. The two of you were out of it. But you did save Nick’s life. And we saved all four of those boys they were going to kill in opposition to this event here at this moment. We won, and hate lost. No gold stars on the club wall for this mission, just blue ones, and two purple hearts.

Lance Two laughed at Nick Prime’s next thought. No, you’re in no condition for me to do that to you here. But we can come back here to this time, this place, another time, and do exactly that. I left for London and then came back. I was not going to be gone for two years and not know if it was you coming to find me or some Nick Jr., because you had died. I’m going back again as soon as we get you two back to California.

“Then you are my Lance, my true Lance,” Nick Prime gently whispered with his own voice, ignoring the pain it cost him. I thought you were from the moment I first laid eyes on you.

And our Chase is somewhere back in France waiting for us, not knowing that we even live or live to meet him, Lance Two assured him. “We fucked with my time line pretty damn well. My dad has agreed to let Nick Jr. be his lab assistant, once he’s up and around.”

“He’s not going to France like we are?” Nick Prime again spoke aloud, ignoring how much more it hurt to breathe using his real voice.

Lance Two laughed and looked at Nick Jr., who looked their way. “Sure he is, in four years. That little asshole’s eighteen and a good fuck for being barely legal. He lied his way into our lives and our adventure. He only got caught because he almost died. The Chases had a fit tracking down his proper time line and his own father Lance. Your father Chase was furious. He’s going forward to my dad’s time line to make sure that Nick stays put until he turns twenty-two. No more talk from Chase Prime of just ending it by taking himself off his oxygen tubes. That little asshole of ours is a whole other reason for your father Chase to live and keep living.”

“We owe him,” Nick Prime told Lance Two. “He saved one of my dads and your only dad.”

And I’m sure we’ll both get to thank him by fucking him again. Do you see how he looks at us?

Nick Prime nodded. Hold me, kiss me. I want to stay here and enjoy those rainbow lights on the White House until the sunrise makes them fade.

Lance Two wrapped his arms around Nick Prime and supported him. We’ll stay, and I’ll hold you, but only until your lights fade. Then, it’s back to California and your time line, and London for me, and the time line in which our Chase is waiting for us.

And if your dad dies or disappears, anyway?

Lance grinned. “The point of linking all you Nicks together and linking all of us Lances to you Nicks is so that if my dad does disappear into the event horizon, we will still know he’s alive, and have some idea when and where he is. Now that you’re out of the woods, Chase Prime tells me I will still feel you seventy years and half a world away. I won’t need any girls or guys at night. I’ll just be able to stroke off myself and know that you feel what I feel as I do it or you do it.”

Nick Prime and Lance Two kissed until Nick had to pause to breathe. They fumbled around until they were both shirtless, being very careful of Nick Prime’s bandages, and Lance Two held Nick Prime against his bare chest. They stayed that way looking across the Capital Mall at the rainbow colors on the White House until Nick faded and fell asleep in Lance’s arms. Lance sat there with Nick in his protecting embrace until his dad, Nick Two, and Nick’s dad, Lance Prime, came for them. The two older men smiled and let him hold the sleeping Nick in his arms until just before dawn when Nick stirred and opened his eyes and then watched the rainbow fade from the White House in the rising dawn. Once they kissed and hugged, they flashed away with their separate dads to their separate places.

****

Epilogue

Nick Prime was nervous, but kept his nerves in check, as the 1940 Cadillac slowed and stopped in front of the shop. Nick was costumed in the vile uniform of the enemy. The narrow streets of wartime Paris looked grim with that hateful red and black banner everywhere. His father Lance, disguised as his driver, stopped the car, got out, and opened the passenger door for him. Looking around to make sure no one was watching them, Nick kissed his father good-bye. “You’ll be at the rendezvous point after we recruit Chase, so that we can train him right?”

Lance Prime nodded. “I came along on this mission to make sure my only son comes home with no bullet holes in him this time. You fucking well know I’ll be there.”

Nick grinned at his dad. “I’m glad you came, too. Thanks for helping me recover so quickly.”

Lance Prime grimaced. “I know you, son, I know you’re still not one hundred percent healed. We could have waited until you were, but I knew you wouldn’t wait.”

“I’m connected empathically, telepathically with my Lance across time and space, Dad,” Nick reminded his dad, glad that Lance finally let him call him that. “The two years that have passed for him are all compressed inside of me, jumbled against the much shorter span of my recovery. But I’m healed enough to be here and start my future with my Chase and my Lance.”

“I suppose ‘Dad’ is better than ‘Daddy.’” Lance grimaced. I came close to beating you when you were still bedbound and calling me ‘Father’ in every language you knew.

If you got to call older me ‘Dad’ then I have the right to do it, too, old man. I’m your son, too, and proud of it.

Me, too, son. Now go get to know both loves of your life. Your Lance could have your Chase half-castrated by now.

I heard that, old man, Lance Two’s mind echoed in theirs. You’ve been in my mind’s ear range for miles now. But your dad’s right. Chase is practically shitting himself. You need to march in here in your fucking fake Nazi uniform and fuck some sense back into his rattled mind. The idea of adult circumcision has not gone over all that well with him so far. Go figure.

Who was the fool to mention circumcision out of the gate when you first talked to him? Nick reminded Lance Two as he kissed and hugged his dad one more time. Are you sure you’re up to staying here for three years, so my Lance and I can take our Chase home with us?

You guys need to be free to go track down your Lance’s dad, now we know where and when he went, Lance Prime told his son. You and Nick Jr. have the closest connection to him. You both feel him when no one else does. And we need to bring him back, along with all the other Nicks gone there, too, before you become one of them, son.

Nick Jr. Nick Prime laughed. God how Nick Seven hates being called that, so that’s all I called him the last time we got together to feel Lance’s dad in the past.

And to fuck one another silly, Lance Two reminded him, while I’ve been stroking to your telepathic ghost for two fucking long years. You only ever call him Nick Seven after fucking, when you’re so fucking pleased with yourselves. You’re going to hate being Nick Seventeen someday when we find my dad and all the other missing Nicks in the distant past.

No, I’m not. I’ll be glad to be whatever number they give me, if it means I’m with you and our Chase that much longer, Nick Prime assured Lance Two. Have you been brushing up on your Spanish for when we jump back to colonial California to find the missing Nicks?

I’ve been just a little fucking busy getting in good with British Intelligence, not outing myself as gay to all the fucking homophobes of this era, and feeling you fuck Nick Jr. every time I turn around. That time compression thing worked just as weird on this end as it did on yours.

Once we get things sorted with our Chase, we need to get on the Spanish, both of us, Nick Prime chided Lance Two. You know I love you so butt out while I kiss my dad good-bye. You know I want to have eyes on the Chase that’s ours to claim as fucking soon as I can.

Nick Prime shared a last grin with his dad, made the hated Nazi salute, and went inside the closed little shop. It was one of those corner miscellaneous-goods shops that dotted Paris and many European nations, more than the convenience stores they had in America, but much less than a supermarket. The war had left many shelves bare, but the goods available in that little store came at the price of what the man and woman in the store were doing to their son, prostituting him to the Germans for a round of cheese or a pound of butter to sell. They had to know that sooner or later, the Germans would kill their gay son, once the same Nazis grew tired of fucking him. They knew and willingly made their choice, anyway.

Monsieur and Madame Chevalier only saw a young German officer passing through their shop, presumably to have sex with their son in the back while they conducted business with the one or two customers with enough war ration stamps to shop there. Nick Prime only saw two people to hate for what they were willing to do to their gay son to gain a little favor from the Germans. They were the real collaborators, but they somehow convinced British Intelligence that it was all Chase and not them. They had sold their gay son out to the Church, the Germans, and now the British. Nick did not hide the wrath he felt for the Chevaliers as he curtly entered and passed through their shop to the backroom he’d learned from Lance Two was there behind the curtained doorway in the back of the shop. All that mattered was getting to the eighteen-year-old Chase and claiming him, forever. Without Chase, his parents had nothing of value to trade anyone.

He stepped past Chase’s frightened parents, wishing he could linger and really frighten them for selling out their own son as fucking meat to the Nazis. Instead, he barked at them in French to stay out and not enter the backroom no matter what, on pain of their deaths. He strode into the backroom and stood transfixed as he looked on the form of the frightened, gorgeous young man he knew he would love all the days of his life.

Chase was rail thin, emaciated by the rigors of life in Paris under the Nazis. He was not the vibrant, studly young adult he would soon become, but more like a teen waif, barely eighteen and almost a man. Nick realized that Chase’s starved, boyish features were what had saved his life long enough to be found and saved. The broad-shouldered, deep-chested man Chase would soon become would have already died in the death camps, a hated pink triangle on his chest. Looking young and underfed had kept him alive— abused, and misused— but alive.

Nick mustered his best French and told the frightened young Frenchman, “I am Nicholas, from the future. I am here to save you and make you my true love forever, and ever. Lance, there, and I are already lovers, and you will love us, too. Always, and forever.”

Chase stood still and watched, transfixed, as Nick slowly, sensuously stripped himself bare, cock rising to life as quickly as it was freed from the hated German cloth. Chase’s breath became ragged, and he gasped as Nick stepped to him, started stripping him down. Chase trembled as Nick put hands to him, easing him out of his loose shirt and pants. Chase’s cock got hard the very second it was free from his pants, and Nick crushed him to his broad, bare chest, planting his lips on Chase’s. Chase shook and trembled with frightened pleasure, letting out a tortured sigh as the kiss ended. Nick told him, “We will take our time, but when I fuck you, and Lance there fucks me, we three will become one and be one for the rest of our lives.”

Chase nodded, then shook his head. “I believe you. It’s all crazy talk, but when I hear your voice, see that body of yours, I want you. I want to believe I can have you forever. Take me, take me now, even if it’s all a lie, and you’ll hurt me or kill me. I want you that much, that bad.”

“I will never hurt you, Chase. I love you, and I will give my life to protect you, if I must.”

Nick glanced at Lance, who nodded, and then Nick complied with Chase’s urgent demand, taking him, letting Lance take him, and the three of them became one, joining all the Lances, Chases, and Nicks that ever were or would ever be, looping, loving lives without end. There was still that one fear, one dread among them that Nick would possibly disappear into a time beyond their ability to pull him back from, but they had their Chase and the chance to change that future for them and all the Chases, Lances, and Nicks with them. Being one of flesh and heart at that moment left no room for such fears or doubts. They had one another and hope for a brighter tomorrow.

The End

Author Bio

Jay D. Clark was born in and has returned to live in rural northern California after living in other states and countries. His life has been a mixture of really great moments mixed with some pretty difficult ones, both of which inspire and shape his writing. He feels that since his own personal and family histories read like romance novels M/M romance is his writing niche. He spends time with his family and friends, having a passion for reading and writing. He loves rural living, horses, open spaces, swimming, and all things outdoors and in nature. Relatively new to M/M romance, writing these stories helps make his life feel more complete. The only downside of writing M/M romance fiction is having less time to read stories from the true masters of the genre. Jay D. is thankful for so much inspiration from life and good friends for his writing.

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