Big Chicago

Big Chicago part 15.….by Samayel


Not a bad little burg, really. Cute, in a Midwest American, antique-saturated, somewhat kitschy way. Ron got the docking for the plane taken care of while Harry dialed up a ride. He reserved rooms at The Kingsley House, a bed and breakfast in a huge old house that looks just darling inside and out. I prefer things a little more modern, both in color and style, but luxury is luxury, so I’ll take it as it comes.

Ron gives Harry a knowing nod after we’re all unpacked, then heads for the door. I can’t help but ask what he’s up to.

“Where ya going? We just got here.”

He gives me a withering look that just shouts ’How can you not know?’

“We’re on vacation! You’re with Harry. The flying is done and we haven’t got a car. We’re in Michigan, and we’re right by the lake. Duh! I’m renting a boat and going fishing!”

My God. Can a man get any straighter?

“Have fun. Don’t…you know…drown…or capsize…or anything like that, okay?”

“Hah! Right. If it has a motor, I can make it purr. Don’t worry about me. Catch you two later.”

And then he’s gone, and I’m unpacking things with Harry, getting comfortable in a suite that looks like some Victorian bedroom from Martha Stewart Living. You know…the kind of setting that looks like anyone who touches it gets their hand chopped off for disturbing the perfection. It’s an anal-retentive’s wet dream in here, but Harry doesn’t care. I finally get everything unpacked, and that’s when I realize our plans had a flaw.

“Harry! I only went shopping for regular clothes before. I don’t have a swimsuit, or any beachwear. Now we’re out in the middle of, like, nowhere, and I haven’t a thing I can put on for the bea-”

“No worries, love. This is a beach tourism town. They have shops for that kind of thing. I just figured we’d shop when we got here. Hope I didn’t assume too much, but shopping seemed to make you very happy, so I thought a little of that wouldn’t hurt while we have the time.”

He’s fucking brilliant. Oh, if my ass didn’t still smart a bit from waking him up this morning, I would sooo christen this perfect bedroom suite with some mind-frying sex. I must have done very good things in a past life, because I’m smiling at the only good thing I’ve done in this one, and because I’m almost sure I don’t deserve a man this thoughtful.

Strolling through downtown, there are shops, but they’re heavily biased in favor of kitsch, antiques, retro-collectibles and art. All of this is lovely to look at, but I don’t really need any of it. I need a swimsuit, and it must be fashionable. I won’t be seen looking less than gorgeous, not here or anywhere else…if I can possibly help it. I’ve spent too many years looking like drek to go back to it now that I don’t have to!

I feel a little chatterbox-like, but it’s nice to speak of trivialities instead of heavy things. The weather, which is unseasonably humid, given the lack of rainfall, and my thoughts on the town in general. Harry is quieter than usual. He’s thinking, but he is smiling while he’s thinking, so it can’t be too bad. It feels like he marvels at me every so often, soaking up the ambience that only I can provide. I think I like that. Yeah…I’m sure. I like it a lot.

At least he gets a few kicks out of my comments on global warming. The lakes are lower than they were when I went into prison, and the average temperature in summer is hotter too. The whole world is busy flinging accusations about who and what is causing the change of climate, when the only thing people really need to concentrate on is adapting to the changes. There is no reversing it, and it might very well be a man made problem, but who cares? If we’re still arguing when the water dries up and the crops fail, movies like ‘The Road Warrior’ will be comedies compared to what comes next! As for me…queen of the short term plan…I’m increasing my sunblock SPF level…and making sure my lover always has air conditioning handy. Callow? Maybe. Realistic? Oh, definitely!

The beach isn’t all that far away, and since we had an early breakfast with Therese and Maria, we skip the eateries and head straight for the beach shops. Harry was right…they have everything, and being a very gay friendly town, they have some beachwear you might not see in some generic podunk towns. Especially for vain, little queens who want something they can wear and yet still scandalize people. A section of the beach is supposed to be nude, but even so, I’d rather have something on, even if it doesn’t amount to much in terms of fabric!

You can’t go wrong with basic black, so even if there isn’t much of it, the little thong I’ve found will do. Harry raises an eyebrow.

“Almost the same as going bare naked. You realize I’ll have to wear long jams if you traipse around in this? Otherwise, the entire beach will know how I feel about you.”

I put up a look of completely feigned innocence and concern. “Oh! I hadn’t thought of that! Whatever shall we do?”

“Smart ass. I should have known you’d enjoy driving everyone else absolutely crazy…not to mention making me eager to get back to the suite. Guess I’ll just have to bear up the best I can.”

I blow him a kiss, by way of teasing, and he picks up a few extras. The usual lotions and potions that protect from sunburn or speed tanning, and a giant towel just for the fun of it. Also…long beach jams. Hmmph! I was hoping he’d squeeze himself into something smaller. He has so much to show off. He’s probably just getting them to tease me!

Beach! Sun! Sand dunes that are as soft as gliding silk! I’ve been an indoor creature for most of this decade…all I have to say is: It’s about fucking time!!! We’ve drifted off from the main beach quite a ways, and there’s a lovely dune hill overlooking the area. It’s a bit high up, but I want a vantage point. I tease Harry by making him chase me, sniggering all the while, until we get around the corner of that hill and into the brush and scrub that crops up here on the edge of the beach. I’d say I let him catch me…but who am I kidding…the man is like lightning on sand. I’m exhausted in less than thirty seconds, he isn’t even sweating. Must be that whole military desert experience kicking in. Not that I’d want that experience, but I envy the results.

Snuggling in warm sun, so brazenly, so openly, is intoxicating in its own way. If he hadn’t put me right through the mattress this morning, not five hours ago, I’d probably give the signal for a prompt and sassy little ‘nooner’, but I wasn’t kidding about being a little sore. I pushed the limits a bit yesterday, and I’m paying a little of the price now. Don’t think I wouldn’t, or won’t, do it all over again in a heartbeat though. It was worth every slight twinge and ache a hundred times over.

So peaceful. So quiet. Just the sounds of gulls and small birdsong. Waves. Wind rustling the leaves on the bushes that line the edge of the dunes. You can hear other people a long ways off. This is a heat I can live with. Not the stifling stench of human misery, sweltering all day in disgusting little cells, stewing in our own hate and fear until we wish we could suffocate to death. This is the warm, golden, hazy heat that makes cats lounge on windowsills. At least here by the lake there’s a breeze, and feeling it caress my skin is just heavenly.

People only pass by every so often. Only men for the most part…at least on this stretch of the beach, and even then in couples most of the time, so we are left in perfect peace. I lounge until it’s time to roll over, basking in the heat like the cold-blooded reptilian creature I can sometimes be. Flicking a lazy, emotionless eye across the landscape, and ogling Harry’s muscled back in the process.

Yeah. For decency’s sake, it’s time to roll over. This thong doesn’t hide anything!

How perfect, the irony of savoring a moment of carefree near nudity, only to turn over and remember that the shapely, gorgeous little ass I’m about to show the world has the letter ’F’ scorched into it. Moments like that still make me want to grab something sharp and open a vein. I didn’t even sigh. I only hesitated. Harry sensed it anyway.

“It’ll be gone soon. You took enough punishment for this life. Do really need more badly enough to serve it up yourself? Your dues are paid in full. When we get home, I’ll be calling Doc Snape. You won’t have to look at that by the time my birthday comes around.”

Thank God for Harry. The perfect distraction! I need to think about his birthday. I can hoard the resources I have, think of gifts I can create rather than merely purchase, and maybe pick up a few nice things besides. For what he’s done for me, I have to make his birthday something unbelievable.

“I hear you. Don’t worry. Just…not used to some things…yet. Your birthday. I know at least one present you’re getting already! Hardly a secret, that one. This is nice. Thank you, Harry. I’m glad we came here.”

He’s staring at the sky, sunglasses still on, quiet and still. He has the kind of calm a Zen Master would fucking envy. I wonder what he’s thinking.

“I liked what you said. When we spoke about Zabini.”

“What? What part?”
“It takes a rare person…to not want some kind of immediate, horrible revenge. The kind you know I could deliver for you. Power corrupts. Absolute power…corrupts absolutely. You still don’t want him to die. There…there are ways…I wish I was more like you.”

I can’t help but hold my breath. Something momentous is taking place, here on a hill by the beach. I can feel it. Immense and heavy like storm clouds. In his soul, it’s about to rain. I will dance in that rain, thanking the heavens just for the chance to get wet.

“What I do. My business. I told you I do it for a reason. My parents died in a car crash…like I told you, but I didn’t tell you all of it. They were driving through the mountains. One of their tires was shot by a long distance rifle. They went off the road because someone wanted them dead. They knew the man my father worked for. He was an intelligence analyst…for the people I work for now. My parents were murdered in cold blood, at the orders of the man I’m looking for. What I do, what we all do, is play a game. We’re drawing him out, making it hard for him to operate. He does the same to us sometimes. The trash I take care of? They’re just part of organizations he makes use of. I ’discourage’ their cooperation with him.

The company I work for…is a front. It exists solely to track him and oppose him at every turn. I almost had him a year ago. That was the last time I got hurt. I was close. So close. He hired the people who killed my godfather too. I was raised by my mother’s sister’s family. They hated me. Wanted nothing to do with a kid that was tied to murder. They never let me forget that they’d been saddled with a kid they didn’t want. Funny, but I never really blamed them for it. I kind of understood the way they felt. Or at least the way they said they felt.

My godfather. He was my father’s best friend. He got into some trouble overseas. Doing the kind of thing I do now. He was framed and imprisoned for almost ten years. I suppose that’s why I don’t think of prison as some kind of mark that makes a person worthless. When he got out, the first thing he did was find me. Instead of being treated like a burden, he made me feel like a prince. Private school, tutors, museums and theaters. Symphonies and orchestras. All of it. He never let me think for a second that I wasn’t the most important person in his world. Two years after he found me, he was murdered. He left his entire estate to me, and it was arranged for me to attend a military academy. I was fifteen.”

I can tell it isn’t a time for me to speak. He’s tense. This isn’t easy for him. To look at him, a stranger might think he was talking about the weather. I know him better than that. He’s so powerful, so contained. Even speaking of this makes him vulnerable. He doesn’t like being vulnerable, but he’d doing it…for me. This is how he says it…louder than the words, the meaning behind them. I love you. I trust you. I’m being handed his heart. I’ll guard it with my life.

“Everything I’ve done, every…questionable…act, everything I’ve endured…it all has one purpose. I want the man who took my family away to die. I don’t even want it to linger. I don’t want to make a show of it. I just want him to be off of this planet. I want to know for a fact that he’s dead and buried, and I want the last thing he sees to be my smile. I want him to know why he died, and who killed him, so that he’ll know things came full circle. He took away the people who loved me, I’m going to take away his life…or die trying.

So you see…I understand revenge. I’ve lived for revenge my entire life. I don’t understand you…not completely. You have…compassion. Mercy. Some kind of moral voice that says ’enough’. Maybe I don’t understand you…but I admire you. You…are a better person than I think I can ever be. There is something…good…and pure…inside of you, and that you would choose to be near me…makes me think I haven’t done everything wrong after all. You make me…you make me think there’s something to live for…after…after I do what I have to do. I‘ve spent my entire life learning about death…and how to make it happen to others. You…you make me think about life…and just living it with you. I love you, Drake. Thank you.”

Awed? Dumbstruck? Those are close, but they don’t quite cover where I’m at. Maybe I shouldn’t use words. I’m not even sure I should use sex. Not that I don’t suddenly want to, but this is bigger than even that. I lean in…curl around his arm, lotion slicked and shining in the sun, and just rest my head on his shoulder. The words come when they’re ready.

“Harry. I love you. I didn’t even think those words meant anything…and then you made them mean something all over again. When you…finish…with what you have to do…I’ll always be here. When it’s all over…and the dust settles…I’ll still be waiting for you. As long as it takes. If I don’t show it every way that I can…just know that it’s still true. I love you, Harry.”

I know it to be true. Someday, somewhere…we will lounge upon some beach in golden sun and glorious silence, because nothing needs to be said. He will do what he must, until he doesn’t have to anymore, and I will wait for him as patiently and as desperately as I must, until I never have to wait again. It will happen because I believe in it too passionately for it to not come true. That’s our future, and I will endure whatever I have to in order to see it.

It’s a joyful little vacation from the world. We drink lightly at the little nightclub by the beach. I say little, because it’s not that heavily populated compared to a Chicago club, but the place is actually sprawling. There is a piano outside, just begging to be played, and by keeping my choices simple I can make sure I sound my best. It’s strange to get tips this way. I’m not used to making money with my clothes on. Insert a wry smirk with that remark. I did, and when I said it into the microphone the crowd laughed. They can’t even imagine how truthful that statement is.

Naturally, I get tipsier than Harry ever does, so I wind up practically being carried home. Well, I did walk, but it’s good thing Harry is sturdy enough to lean against without losing his balance. There’s nothing frantic about what comes after. None of the mad urgency or crazed need of before. He knows I want to be fussed over and cosseted, made love to with deftness and gentleness, teased and pleased and softly sated.

In the silence of the night, burrowed into the crook of his arm where I can properly rest, we chat sleepily of things that randomly cross our minds. We really are still getting to know each other. So many tiny mysteries…waiting to unravel. We are close…closer than either of us have ever been to another, but it’s been so fast that we still have to learn the little details. The things I ask him fill those tiny blanks in my mental image of him.

I wondered where he learned to cook breakfast so well. His guardians…his mother’s relatives…they used him like a servant when he still very small. He cooked their meals and cleaned their house. Apparently he’d been raised to believe that he owed them a debt for their ‘kindness’. He wasn’t often struck or beaten, although I suspect he downplays such things, but he was always made to feel inferior. A burden. The product of bad people who shouldn’t have left such a burden for others. He says it so calmly. I know that under the surface he rages. He must know that they were wrong and vicious and hateful people. Where he gained his incredible confidence I can only guess, but it’s easy to believe that people like that could never have kept someone like Harry down.

He asked about the paintings. I only had a few art courses in school. Not enough to make a big difference. They just introduced me to the concepts. I was self taught. It was always about expression with me. The power to vent emotions and make the unspoken come to life. My mother’s chill disdain or feigned histrionics to assuage her guilt. My father’s towering arrogance and pride. The sense of isolation that comes to a teenage boy who one day realizes that he is not like others his age, and that no matter how he tries to fake it and fit in, some ineffable portion of his soul will forever set him apart from the rest of the pack. These were the things that moved me to draw, and then to paint. Sometimes pictures and images have so much more power than words ever could. I took up drawing at age twelve. By the time I was fifteen, I was working in oil and acrylic. At sixteen I had dope and coke and boys to distract me from anything dangerous…like thoughts deeper than, ‘So do you wanna fuck me again?’ That was the end of my artistic spree. And then there was Harry…and the place inside of me that was too dead to respond snapped to wakefulness and clamored for release.

I wanted to know it for quite a while. I admit to the tiny hint of stupid jealousy. Has he ever had other lovers? How did he get so good in bed? He must have learned somewhere. Some small and spiteful little imp inside me just despises the notion that anyone touched him before me. He should have been mine and no one else’s. It’s a comfort that he is mine and mine alone now, but I am different in love than I am in all other things. I am more possessive than Flint and his pathetic heated wire could ever be. Harry isn’t property…he’s the breath in my lungs. The pulse in my veins. It bothers me to hear it, but I asked, and I receive accordingly.

“Not as much experience as you might imagine. I haven’t had the kind of life that lent itself to romance. I guess I figured out what I wanted while I was in military school. Not that it did that much good. The only person I ever told was the person I liked most, and then only because I knew he was gay and wouldn’t turn on me. He was the captain of the soccer team. He was a bit older than I was, but he’d always been kind to me, and by the end of my first year there, I liked him more than anyone else I knew. He was about to graduate, and I got a bit maudlin about him leaving and admitted having a crush on him. All I got was one good kiss and a few kind words. He really thought of me as a younger brother, because I was fifteen and he was three years older, and I suppose he just didn’t feel the same way about me as I did about him. Oliver was one of a kind, and I never really met anyone quite like him while I was in school.

Once I signed up and joined the service, I was too busy proving myself to fool around on the side. I never really wanted anything that didn’t have real feelings attached to it. Laugh if you want, but I really am a romantic, I guess. The only person I really had a relationship with, of all the places in the world to have one, was in Afghanistan. There was a tribe of nomads, hill fighters and guerillas all, that my unit was attached to for awhile. They provided us with directions and a safe station to re-supply and rest between missions.

A lot of people wouldn’t believe this, but I’ll swear to it that this is true. Parts of the Arab world are hostile to the idea of homosexuality, but not this tribe. It was a custom for warriors to have not only wives, but also a boyfriend. Wives were for marriage and children and leaving a legacy. Their male lovers were their real confidants and friends. We had orders to blend into the local population to protect ourselves and them, so we wouldn’t be easily targeted by militants. We grew beards like them, wore robes and turbans, and a few guys took boyfriends because there were no women in our immediate future, and because it made you accepted as a warrior in their culture. Including me.

I didn’t plan to. He kind of picked me. His lover had been killed in a mortar attack, and he’d spent months just mourning and getting by alone. I guess he set his sights on me because I was always on my own and reading when I had the time. I used to read Omar Khayyam’s ’The Rubaiyat’ a lot. I’d picked up a Farsi edition, to help me practice, because if you can’t curse properly or speak poetically, you don’t understand the language or the culture. Those are two things people respect deeply there, and if you can do both, you can get along well.

He trailed around, staring at me quietly, bringing drinks and food every so often and occasionally smiling or asking me little questions. I never pushed him away, but I didn’t quite get that I was being courted until one of the older tribesman laughed at me and told me that I was blind if I couldn’t see that I was wanted. It would have been unseemly to throw himself at me, so all he could do was hint that he liked me and hope I picked up on it. It was up to me to ask him. He was humiliated…because I’d had to be told that, and because if I had to be told then it must have meant that I hadn’t wanted him at all. I went to apologize for embarrassing him and wound up with a lap full of him kissing me senseless, and that was that. He moved into my tent the next day.

Ibrahim was waiting for me for four months. He was eighteen, and I was twenty-one. He taught me what he liked most, and helped me figure out what I enjoyed most. Did I have feelings for him? Yeah. A lot of them. I don’t think it was love. It was more like mutual needs being met at a time when we needed them met so badly that nothing else mattered. He didn’t make any pretense about love, but I know he genuinely liked me. It was the same for me. When our unit rotated out, and another was coming to take our place, he packed my bags without a word, we spent one last night together, and then he wished my a long life and beautiful children. He still thought I was like the others, taking a boyfriend because I wasn’t married yet. The last time I saw him, I was climbing into a helicopter and staring down while we took off.

That was all there was. I still wonder if he found someone else, or if he got married and has kids now, or if he’s even alive after all the shit happens every day there. Other than that, I’ve never been with anyone else. The only person I can honesty say I love is you. There’s never been anyone that made me feel this way. I feel like I was waiting my entire life for someone I hadn’t met yet, and when I first saw you, something clicked into place. Then again, when you tried to warn me about Flint, and again when you answered my questions. The first time we…when you…in the cell, when you didn’t have to…but you did it anyway…I knew something important was happening. Like I could feel something you were trying to say without words. When I heard it, in my heart, everything changed. I had to see you again…make sure you were safe and free…take a chance that you might stay long enough to know me. I wasn’t wrong. This…this is what I waited for.”

No baby will ever sleep as soundly in its mother’s arms as I do in Harry’s. I am safer here than I ever was in the womb. Maybe I am scarred…inside and out…but I regret nothing. Not anymore. Not if it led to this. Everywhere he has been, everything he has done, has been a part of him becoming who he is now. That is who I love. The same must be true of me. What he sees in me may have born in pain, but it was worth it to open my eyes and see a world like this, next to him, never really alone whether he’s near or far.

I am ashamed only of the slut I’ve been. Dozens upon dozens of men…held up against his one in stark contrast. I never felt that it was wrong to do as I pleased with whomever I wanted at the moment, but to even feel jealousy over a person who lived with self restraint and dignity while I wallowed like pig in the muck of my pathetic lust…it just feels wrong. While he waited, hungry to find someone who returned his feelings, I was the boy who deliberately seduced the summer gardener, willfully using him for a first fling to dispose of my hated virginity, only to set my sights on one person after another until I met Blaise. His is a legacy of searching patiently for love, and mine was a litany of empty encounters.

Thank God…thank God I can write off my past like a blank slate, because he doesn’t care about what I have done…only what I can do. The person who did those things is ebbing away like the flotsam along the beach, and the tide is carrying away the last of the old. Something new…and better…is being born, and Harry didn’t give his heart to a faithless whore. With every word that brings him closer to me, he brings me closer to him, and every minute next to him steals away an hour of the empty hell that used to pass for my life.

If only vacations lasted forever.


TBC!!!