In Another Country Page 7

  He slung an arm around Tupper’s shoulders and pinched the bridge of his own nose and thought for a while, and all he kept coming up with was Tupper talking about doing real good for the community and all that incredibly earnest shit, and he sighed and said, “Tupper, buddy, we’re heading to the hospital.”

  And then he remembered the multiple gin and tonics, and called a cab.

  Dec didn’t get any sleep that night even after the hospital, because he was sitting up watching Tupper sleep. The doc had said that there was a huge backlog for test results so it would be a while.

  “Yeah, funding, tell me something I don’t know,” Dec said.

  “Pending results, though, I’m definitely guessing roofies. ‘Cause, unless your friend normally tells men he just met that they have remarkably sincere mustaches, I’d say he’s a little off,” he added. “Not as bad off as many I’ve seen, but still, it would be good for someone to make sure he didn’t vomit in his sleep and aspirate.”

  “Breathe it in,” he added gently, after Dec blinked at him for a minute and apparently made the face of someone who was so very, very tired that he was wondering what vomiting had to do with your butt.

  So Dec had been sitting here in the uncomfortable armchair in his bedroom that usually was heaped with unmatched socks. Watching Tupper sleep, and coming reluctantly—almost angrily—to the conclusion that yeah, goddamnit, he’d like to keep watching Tupper sleep for many future nights. Not from an armchair. God DAMN it.

  Tupper finally stirred, blinked blearily, and then groaned and put his hands on his head.

  “Yeah,” Dec said. He had figured Tupper would wake up with the mother of all hangovers, so he was prepared. He had BC Powder sitting ready on his nightstand, and he patted Tupper very gently on the shoulder, said, “Be right back,” and headed to the fridge to get a cold Coke.

  He dumped a packet of the powder in the Coke and handed it to Tupper, saying, “Drink up, buddy.” Tupper looked dubious and Dec said, “Trust me,” and then winced because that was the worst possible thing to say while handing a drink to someone who had just had the night that Tupper did, but Tupper downed the Coke with no more hesitation, which made Dec’s chest hurt a little.

  “That’ll help fast,” Dec said, and Tupper nodded and then grimaced.

  “Yeah, not that fast,” Dec said. “You uh…you remember much? In case you were wondering about...nothing happened. I mean, the guy never got you into his car or...anything.”

  “Thanks to you,” Tupper said, in a slightly raspy voice. BC and Coke was a little rough on the vocal cords. “Were you...I must be misremembering. Flying?”

  “Falling with style,” Dec said, and Tupper managed to grin at him a tiny bit.

  “Dec, I’m an idiot,” Tupper said.

  “Not your fault, not your fault at all,” Dec said, almost yelling at the poor guy, because he’d heard that so much from victims of all kinds of crimes. Why was I so stupid, why did I set my purse down for a second, why did I believe him, why did I stay? And he hated that, he hated that a lot. Not their fault at all. “Fault of the asshole in custody,” he added.

  “Not that,” Tupper said. “The whole...storming dramatically off.”

  Dec opened his mouth and started to object, and then realized that yeah, okay, wishing Dec a good life and shaking hands politely actually was storming dramatically off, for Tupper.

  “No, listen, big guy, I... I’m the idiot here,” Dec said. And while Tupper was laid up with a roofie hangover was probably not the best time to dump everything in Dec’s head on him...but if Dec put it off he was never gonna do it. Because one thing he’d worked out last night, sitting in that damn armchair just watching Tupper breathe, was that he’d been scared out of his mind for twenty-five years. And he’d never liked admitting to being afraid of anything—he had the knee and elbow scars from dumb-ass teenage skateboard dares to prove it. So this was gonna be tough and he had to get it over with.

  “So,” he said, “I got some local history for ya, Tupp.”

  Tupper smiled a tired little smile, not the full-on dazzler that Dec had only seen a few times, but it was a start. “I love local history,” he said.

  “Of course you do. No trappers or moose or muskrats in this one, though.”

  “Pity.”

  Dec snorted, then took a deep breath and dove in. “So, 1979, I was fifteen. And there was this park. Pope Park. Nothing to do with, you know, the Pope. Named after some military guy. It’s the Cape Fear Botanical Gardens now, people have weddings there and stuff.”

  Tupper raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah, I’m putting it off,” Dec said, sighed and tried again.

  “So…I knew I liked girls. That made itself pretty damn obvious when puberty hit. But for a while, for a few months, I’d been having other...confusing stuff happen, right? Hard-ons in the locker room. A few really intense dreams about my best friend. But I was fifteen, and a dumbass, and I just thought, ‘Huh, weird, not mentioning that to anybody,” and didn’t really put it together, you know?”

  Tupper “mmmmm”ed encouragingly, and Dec said, “To be fair to my dumbass teenage self, I don’t think I’d ever even heard of being bisexual. I mean, obviously I wasn’t gay, right? Because I liked the hell out of girls. So everything was fine. And then…then there was this big bust in Pope Park. Guys having sex in the men’s room, apparently. Big sting, the police had been sending undercover officers into the park for weeks. My dad used to read stories from the Fayetteville Observer out loud over breakfast, and he read that one just with...this disgust, like it was the grossest thing he’d ever heard tell of. And I didn’t feel like eating much breakfast for once but I didn’t know why, and then I went to school and all the guys were joking, telling jokes about the faggots in Pope Park, and it just suddenly…I just knew it was me, Tupper, it just somehow broke through that even with the liking girls that this was about me too.”

  “That can’t have been the easiest way to come to terms with your sexuality,” Tupper said gently.

  “I actually passed out in the fucking boy’s bathroom,” Dec said. “Just sheer total panic. I think I forgot to breathe for a while there. So, yeah, when I fell for Christine…I mean, that was real. I fell fucking hard. But I maybe fell faster than I would have because it was so ‘thank god, this still works, I can just do this and be ‘normal’ you know? And I never, I absolutely never did anything with a guy. Because I was married.”

  Tupper nodded, and Dec was relieved that apparently he could at least do that now without his head killing him. “I believe you, Dec,” he said.

  “Yeah, sorry, just…some of the guys I hooked up with after we split were like, ‘Yeah, but you were getting some on the down low, right?’ and just, NO.”

  “That is the level of ethics I would expect of you.”

  Dec grinned at him and carried on. “But it started to get…I was thinking about it more and more the last few years. And I still never would have done anything. Because, married, and honestly because it scared the shit out of me still. But Christine…she knew something was up, and she dug in and started asking questions, and…when Christine digs in, man. It is pretty much the same thing as getting in a fight with a seriously pissed-off dog. She has never, not once in her life, let one goddamn thing go. Which is, I gotta admit, part of her charm, but it meant that she finally fucking dragged it out of me, and then she just...she could never get over it.”

  Tupper’s face right then…if Christine were there Dec was pretty sure Tupper could murder her just with his face. Which made Dec stupidly happy, but wasn’t fair. “Nah, not like that,” he said. “She isn't a bigot. It was the idea that I hadn’t told her, all those years. That I hadn’t trusted her with something big like that.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah, ah. I can’t really blame her. I mean, I did, I blamed her good and hard for a while, but I shouldn’t have.”

  Tupper reached out a hand and Dec just took it, and there they were, holding hands.r />
  “And it was...it was really for the best, I can see that now. Because, damn, Tupper, once I let myself try it…damn. I was a big depressed drunk fucking mess, but Jesus, the sex was awesome.”

  Tupper snorted and squeezed his hand.

  “Wouldn’t have wanted to go my whole life wondering about that and never finding out. But I was still scared, still telling myself that this—” Dec waved a hand between them, “wasn’t important. Wasn’t a big part of me. Wasn’t something that I wanted,” he took a deep breath, “to keep doing. And those were all lies, and that was why I was an asshole, and I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Tupper said in a soft voice, and then he pulled on Dec’s hand, and then Dec was in bed with him.

  Dec curled around him and they just lay there for a while, half dozing.

  Finally Tupper murmured in his ear, “Do I recall correctly that I was being rather affectionate in front of your colleagues last night?”

  “Hah. Yeah.”

  “Terribly sorry.”

  “Eh, it was okay. Ace’s a decent enough guy, he’ll give me a little shit about it but nothing bad. And Rollie...well, he isn't decent enough, and I’m sure he’ll come up with some faggot jokes that he thinks are just hilarious, but I’ll live.”

  Tupper’s jaw clenched and he muttered something about a temptation toward fisticuffs.

  “Look at us,” Dec said, grinning. “I’m all peaceful and philosophical and you’re threatening violence. We must be rubbing off on each other.”

  “Wouldn’t mind doing that some more,” Tupper said, eyebrows wagging.

  “Really now,” Dec said happily, and then remembered what Tupper’s last twenty-four hours had been like, and changed it to, “Really? Now?”

  “Absolutely now,” Tupper said, and started nuzzling at Dec’s neck. Dec was a sucker for neck-nuzzling, and after a while Tupper started getting a little tooth action in there, little nips up and down the side of the neck that might or might not be leaving marks, Dec couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He groaned happily and peeled his shirt off, and Tupper obligingly explored his chest too, kissing and nipping and sucking. He was holding gently onto Dec’s wrists while he did it; he always seemed to like that but he’d never asked about tying Dec up again since that first time when Dec turned him down.

  “Hey,” Dec said, and Tupper replied, “Mmmm?” while he was licking at a nipple.

  “I got some neckties I never use in the top nightstand drawer,” Dec said, and Tupper lifted up his head and gave Dec a few bewildered blinks like he was trying to figure out if Dec was suddenly suggesting they take some unused clothes to Goodwill right this second.

  Tupper’s eyes got big and he said, “Ohhhh. You’re sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tupper climbed out of bed so speedily Dec had to laugh, and rooted through the top drawer, not even folding things tidily back after he’d messed them up, which made Dec feel irresistibly hot. Dec took a few seconds to peel off pants and boxers too, and Tupper sat back down on the bed with four ties wadded in his fists...four? He was going for ankles too? Dec swallowed and decided to go for it; he could always stop it later if he freaked out.

  “These are all acceptable to use?” Tupper said, and Dec took a deep breath and tried to ignore his heart pounding and actually looked at the ties. Like, at this point, he would not give a shit if Tupper used any goddamn thing he owned, but Tupper would probably feel bad later if he destroyed something Dec actually liked.

  Tupper had grabbed an ugly brown tie, an ugly navy tie, a tie with rubber ducks on it—where the hell did that even come from?—and one nice dark-purple tie that had been a present from Christine.

  Dec bit his lip and just waited for the wave of regret and loneliness that...didn’t happen. Not even a little. Just a sort of...bittersweet feeling. “Huh,” he said.” Yeah, those are all fine.”

  Tupper sat next to him on the bed, all serious-faced. “Do you have a safe word?”

  “Tupper, come on,” Dec said. “All I gotta do is say ‘stop.’”

  “Fair,” Tupper said, and took Dec’s wrist, rubbed a thumb slowly along the inside of it in a way that gave Dec shivers, and then flicked his hands in some kind of magic way and zoom, Dec’s wrist was firmly, unpainfully tied. Jesus. Dec had to stand in front of his mirror every time and angrily mutter things about rabbits and holes to even do a normal necktie knot.

  Tupper secured the tie to the bedpost and murmured, “Doing okay?” while he was reaching for the other wrist.

  “More’n okay,” Dec said, and then another flip of Tupper’s hands and both Dec’s wrists were attached to the bedposts. Dec tried to slow down his breathing; he was already panting so hard he was afraid he’d pass out before anything major even happened.

  Tupper ran his fingertips down the sides of Dec’s ribs and Dec yelped because ticklish. “Nope nope, not so light there, you gotta touch harder than that there or I’m gonna knee you in the face by accident.”

  “Which reminds me,” Tupper said and waved the other ties at Dec. Dec must have made a slightly panicked face because Tupper said earnestly, “I won’t tickle, even with your knees out of threat range.”

  At which point Dec relaxed completely, because this was Tupper and nothing bad was going to happen when Tupper was in charge, and let his ankles get tied too.

  So then there he was spread-eagled on his bed and not going anywhere, and Tupper petted his ribs some more (firmly, with his whole hand.) Dec had always thought he looked scrawny in that area, and more so now with his arms stretched up, but Tupper seemed to go for that whole visible-ribs thing.

  Tupper just ran his hands over Dec for a long time, ribs and thighs and face, couldn’t seem to get enough. Finally he stretched out next to Dec, tucked his face against Dec’s neck, and whispered, “I missed you.”

  “Yeah,” Dec said. “Me too, buddy. Same.”

  Tupper kissed his neck and started biting again, and oh that was definitely leaving marks and Dec still didn’t care.

  He worked his way down Dec’s chest, stopping to pay a hell of a lot of attention to Dec’s nipples, and Dec stopped with that whole complete relaxation thing and was back to the panting, with added squirming.

  And then he got a hand around Dec’s dick and was pumping in time with the nipple sucking and Dec made a kind of happy strangled howl.

  “I want you to fuck me,” Tupper said, and holy shit, they hadn’t done that yet, Dec had been wanting it and wanting it and not asking because that sounded...serious. He gasped out, “Yeah, yeah, a lot yeah.”

  Tupper dug through the bedside drawer again and Dec was condomed and lubed in record time and then Tupper knelt over him and started working his way down onto Dec’s cock excruciatingly slowly. Usually Tupper’s sex-slowness was a way to tease Dec to near-insanity and Dec felt pretty free to try to talk him out of it and/or call him every name he could think of, but for this Dec got that it was necessary, that Tupper had to stretch himself open slowly.

  So he tried not to be a dick, and managed to just lie there panting and whimpering until Tupper, taking about eighteen years, had finally sunk all the way down so Dec’s cock was buried in him.

  “You good? You okay?” Dec said, with all the breath and brain cells he had left.

  “I’m very good,” Tupper said, in a slow almost drugged-sounding voice Dec had never heard out of him before, and then leaned forward to drape himself on Dec and make “mmmmmmm” sounds in Dec’s ear.

  “Godddddd,” Dec said, because just the shift of the angle of his dick when Tupper did that was almost enough to send him over the edge; he was not gonna be able to hang on for even a second when Tupper started really moving.

  So then of course Tupper started really moving, sitting back up and slowly easing up and down on Dec’s cock, and Dec surprised himself by not immediately coming his brains out. He managed that, just barely, by chanting, “Make it good for Tupper, make it good for Tupper,” over and over in h
is head, and he seemed to be following his own damn directions for once because Tupper’s face looked like he was seeing angels or something. He looked, he looked, there was a word for it— “Rapturous,” Dec thought, and said out loud, “You are so fucking beautiful.”

  Tupper gave out a startled little “Oh” and came all over Dec’s chest.

  Which—thank god, thank god—meant Dec could let go, so he did, yanking on the ties, arching his hips off the bed with the force of it while Tupper collapsed forward; somewhere in there, there was a mildly painful collision of foreheads.

  Dec waited a couple minutes until he could breathe sorta normally again and said, “Ow.”

  “Yes.”

  “Also, wow.”

  “Yes. Yes indeed,” Tupper said. He planted a quick kiss on Dec’s neck and sat back up, then slid sort of awkwardly up while getting hold of the condom. It was probably the only time Dec had seen him be awkward, but to be fair he’d never seen anyone accomplish that particular move gracefully.

  Once the condom was dealt with Tupper collapsed next to Dec on the bed and slung an arm across his chest.

  Dec soaked that up for as long as he could, but eventually his shoulders went from “feeling a little stiff” to actually cramping, and he said, “Uh, ties.”

  “Oh! I’m sorry!” Tupper said, sitting bolt upright. He looked horrified, and Dec said, “Don’t worry about it, I’m fine,” but by the time he got that out of his mouth Tupper had already undone all four ties and was rubbing Dec’s left wrist, mouth in a guilty downturn.

  “Hey, said I’m fine,” Dec said. “Cut it out,” and he reached up and pulled Tupper back down against his chest.

  “I was so caught up in the afterglow that I forgot you were immobilized.”

  “S’okay. No harm, no foul.”