Paper Doll - Part Nine of Ten
Sep. 15th, 2011 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejab>Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
John puts the plan into action...
Templeton woke first in the dark of the morning, candles burned away, sun not yet up, household not up yet and probably not for several hours yet. He yawned, stretching in John’s arms, softened but wrapped around him yet. And Templeton wriggled around so he was chest to chest with the gardener.
Those amazing blue eyes were still shut, but fluttered open again as Templeton placed a soft, soft kiss on those barely parted lips. “Good morning, love,” he whispered, snuggling in as close as he could.
“Good morning yourself,” John murmured back, voice still far away, and he kissed his forehead even as he reached over to switch on a lamp. “And a wonderful Christmas morning to you.”
“Christmas...” Templeton repeated, turning the word over on his tongue, just as he was curling a small bit of John’s silvery chest hair around his fingers. “I’ve never had a real Christmas.”
“And what’s a real Christmas, darling?”
The blonde shook his head, relaxing into his lover’s broad chest. “I don’t know...good food, lots of presents, Santa... the stuff you see in the Macy’s displays, I suppose.”
“You’ll have all that downstairs this evening, darling, more than you can handle,” John sighed, and let his fingers stroke up into Templeton’s sleep-mussed hair. “But is that all you think of as Christmas?”
“Maybe Mass as well,” he replied. “The nuns used to insist on Mass...”
“How about a time to spend with the man you love?” John urged softly, still petting his hair. “A holiday to celebrate that which is most precious to you in the whole world. A chance to tell him what he means to you.”
Templeton shivered at those words. Yes. Oh, oh yes. “John...”
“Yes, my love?”
“What...” and he stopped, flicking his eyes up to meet his lover’s, to see if what he was going to ask would be accepted. But there was nothing but soft wonder there, and Templeton pulled his courage together even as John fluffed the blankets back around them. “What do I mean to you, John?”
“The earth and the moon and the stars,” his lover answered without hesitation, those blue eyes clear and certain, his smile dazzling, and held his face in his hand, kissing him as he pulled them both to sitting. “The world, kid. The whole world. I’m honored, that you’d choose such a man as me.”
Templeton shook his head even as John pulled him to his feet again, pulled him off the bed to collapse into his arms. “Oh...” he sighed, and bared his neck for a kiss that John freely, freely gave. “Oh, John, I’ve fucked so many men these years... but I’ve...”
A finger sealed his lips together. “I don’t care what you’ve done in your past, kid, I just know what I see now...
He pushed John’s hand away, needing to say what he wanted to say. “But I’ve never been in love, John, not before...not before you, I don’t believe...”
“Then I have your first time, my darling, the only one that ever mattered,” John told him gently.
Feeling staggered as those sweet, unbelievable words washed over him, Templeton nodded slowly back. “I’m blessed, John, to have met you...”
And John, amazingly, laughed at that. The gardener’s steady hands pulled him the rest of the way into the bathroom, kissing him again before turning to run the bath. Naked, the arch of his spine, the angular turn of his buttocks, hard muscle, silver hair, tanned skin...
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, laying the back of his hand against the small of his lover’s back, letting his palm slide around, guiding the rest of him in against John.
Those luminous eyes turned up from their task at the tub, and John shook his hand out as he drew them even closer, cock to cock, that most sublime feel of velvet-smooth flesh hardening against crease of his thigh. Templeton moaned, and John smiled that gorgeous smile of his.
“I believe you’re the beautiful one, darling,” his whispered, low and throaty, right in Templeton’s ear. “I’ve been worn by life...”
“That’s why you’re beautiful,” Templeton said, half in awe, fingers tracing the outline of a small, white scar on his man’s torso.
John kissed him again, and drew back, stepped back, over the lip of the tub, offering Templeton a hand.
“Enough, love,” he chuckled, water licking up almost to his knees. “Come to me, and we’ll see about getting you that Christmas you deserve.”
Templeton smiled, but didn’t quite let his lover pull him into the filling tub. “Just a moment, John,” he promised, going back to the cabinet over his sink, feeling those blue eyes on, caressing his body in a single glance, and smiled to himself. He found the jar he was looking for as quickly as he could, taking it out and pouring a fair amount of its contents into the tub right under the spout, a warm scent filling the air.
“What’s that, kid?” John asked softly, settled back against the back of the tub, as Templeton stepped over the edge into the water with him.
“Some new-fangled thing I bought downtown,” he replied, easing down onto his knees, crawling forward into his lover’s lap. “I think it’s supposed to...”
“Do this?” And John laughed as he scooped up a handful of bubbles, blowing them right at the younger man. “Foam up like this?”
“It’s supposed to be very soothing for the muscles,” Templeton huffed, planting both hands on either side of John’s shoulders, kneeling up between those lean thighs.
“According to the cute girl behind the counter, making eyes at you,” John teased, running a hand up the younger man’s side as the bubbles rose around them.
“That make you jealous, John?” he grinned back, craning up for a kiss.
“Jealous in a manner you would not believe,” the older man murmured back.
And their lips met. Wet, gentle, coming together and apart, and Templeton laughed again, splashing some of that foamed, scented water up onto his lover’s strong chest. “You don’t have to worry about her,” he replied, nuzzling closer. “I’ve only got eyes for you.”
A feral growl ripped loose from John’s throat, and his hands shot out of the water, grabbing hold of Templeton and gathering him into wet, soapy arms. The jerk of that movement splashed water and bubbles out onto the tile of the bathroom floor, and got them both laughing again.
John reached around behind him, shutting off the tap and running a big hand into Templeton’s hair, cradling his skull, as silence fell in the bathroom, the mood shifting. The younger man shivered a bit, feeling that change, and reached out, letting his fingers slide down John’s skin. “I love you,” he whispered, still amazed at being able to say it aloud. “Oh, god, John, I love you...”
“I love you too, kid,” came the hungry answer.
Templeton hinged forward, falling into that expectant blue gazing so lovingly back at him. “Make love to me,” he asked softly. “Please, love, I feel empty without you...”
John made that growling noise again, and those hands drug Templeton closer, smashing their groins together, erection to erection. “You’ll never be without me, darling,” he whispered back, nipping at his ear, sliding a finger down through the cleft of his buttocks. “Never...”
Templeton sighed, and leaned in, forehead to forehead, kissing the bridge of John’s delightfully crooked nose, slipping a hand down between them, thumbing over the magnificent hardness he found there. “Is this my Christmas present, John, hmm?”
“You can have anything you want, darling,” John replied, eyes growing dark with lust, and kissed him again, neck keening up into just the right angle. “Anything at all that you’d like. Anything in my power to give.”
That curious finger pressed in, up through the puckered ring of muscle, and Templeton bucked up, closer, on his knees, head hitting John’s water-slick shoulder. “Oh yes,” he sighed. “Oh, oh, John, right there...”
“I know, darling, I know.”
Templeton clung to John as best he could as that finger explored, circled, started opening him wide. It felt amazing, kisses exchanged in the flow of moments, body, hardening cock, all half-weightless in the warmth of the bath, the hint of heat following John’s fingers up inside him, the sublime feel of those bubbles smoothing across his skin, excitement flooding his every thought, every nerve...
Then John asked him if he was ready, and Templeton nodded back, and they came together in another kiss, the younger man giving over to the probing thrusts of the elder’s tongue. A big hand cupped his buttocks and the blonde lifted automatically, sloshing water back and forth in the big tub, until he could feel the blunt pressure of that cock, that wonderful, wonderful cock.
And slid straight down onto it.
Both men’s shared cries mingled and escaped as the corners of that kiss broke apart under the relentless assault of that inward and upward push. It was rougher than last time, not nearly as smooth, no slick to ease the way. But Templeton’s muscles were relaxed and his lover’s eyes were mesmerizing, and he sank down all the way, until their thighs were touching and that look of wonder from the first night came over John’s face.
“You’re beautiful, my love,” he whispered, tucking a strand of wet hair back away from Templeton’s eyes. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s because of you,” Templeton replied in the same quiet, awed manner. He felt full to bursting, that pillar of his lover’s flesh thick and pulsating inside him, and he raised up on his knees, just a bit, and dropped back down. “You do this to me.”
“And you to me.”
Their lips sealed up again, no words needed for either man to know what the other was feeling, because the join they had made was seamless, everything connected, John thrusting up as Templeton pushed down, and for a moment, Templeton could have sworn their hearts were following the same beat.
But John drove harder and harder into him, and gasped out of the kiss. “Please, Templeton, I want to hear you...”
And Templeton smiled back, remembering something he’d learned in Paris. So he tossed his head back, hair flinging droplets of water around them both, and let both his hand fall back to grasp John’s knees underwater, arching his back, gasping as the angle changed, pulling John even deeper in.
“How’s...how’s that?” he moaned, pushing his hips forward.
John grinned and fingered the hollow of his spine. “It’s perfect.”
Templeton matched that grin, and thrust forward again.
It seemed to take only moments from there, and yet it lasted an eternity, John’s cock inside him, hitting every spot he’d never known he’d had, firing pleasure through him that escaped in needy noises, throaty pleas, and John gave him everything. Absolutely everything. Harder and harder, faster and faster, water splashing freely from the tub, the level lowering enough for him to bend forward, laying Templeton back into that warm cloud of bubbles, holding him just above the surface as he kissed him again, desperate, chasing release.
Templeton clenched down and wound a hand up into that glorious silver hair and bit at his lover’s lower lip as those strong, strong hips pistoned into him. “Come for me, John. Come for me, love...”
And that did it, pushed John right over the edge, and Templeton watched ecstasy crumple his handsome feature entirely, closing his eyes against the pleasure of those hot spurts of semen splashing up over his prostate, again and again and again, until he was spilling himself into the warmth surrounding him, and the entire world seemed to collapse into a tidal wave of sweet-smelling water around them...
He came back to the surface to the feel of John’s solid body behind him, John’s softened cock fitting right along the crease of his ass, John’s big hands, somewhat weakened from his own orgasm peeling the sopping wet hair out of Templeton’s face.
“I think we splashed half the water out of the tub, John,” he said softly, reaching back to wrap a hand around the back of his lover’s neck, snuggling back in what was left of their bath, the delicious sound of bubbles popping around them.
“Mmm, I think you’re right about that,” John replied, and kissed the top of Templeton’s head, still stroking back his hair. “Good thing there’s more where that came from.” He lifted a big foot from the water that was left, and turned the faucet back on, fresh, hot water pouring instantly in, steam rising. “All the pleasures of modern conveniences, eh?”
Something about the way John said it tugged at Templeton’s heart, and he turned around, using that hand around the older man’s neck as leverage against their slippery skin. “I don’t care about any of this, you know, John?”
“Kid...”
“I don’t care about it. This house, all the amenities, all the nice things he’s bought me,” he blurted out, needing to say it, needing John to hear him say it as the fears of what awaited beyond this small, sacrosanct space they’d created for themselves. “All of this. I don’t care. I don’t need it...”
“I know, kid...”
“I’m not here for that, John,” he whispered. “Please don’t think that I...”
“I don’t,” John said firmly, and kissed him again, water lapping higher and higher up on their bellies. “But tell me we you don’t enjoy it?”
He blushed a bit. Yes, it was nice. It was all nice. Soft sheets and good food and central heating and nice clothes... but Templeton moved back around, easing back against John’s chest, and rubbed the outside of the older man’s leg, eliciting a soft sigh. “Tell me about where we’re going to go, John. Tell me about the ranch.”
John’s lips teased along the shell of the blonde’s ear as he shut the water off again. “I love you, Temp. Know that.”
“I do,” he sighed, and arched back into him. “And I do love you, John.”
That hand moved to his chest, even as John laid back against the back of the tub, moving them both back to horizontal, the soft rumble of his speech starting up. “I was born on a ranch in Colorado, oh, about forty years ago now, lived there until I was sixteen and old enough to join the Army. We raised horses, wonderful horses. It’s horse country out there, where the Great Plains rise into the Rocky Mountains, big rolling hills and small pockets of pines, sweet and green in the summer, snow and sun in the winter. Endless skies. Blue like you’ve never seen, stars spread across the deepest black...”
The young blonde made a happy little noise, and wound his fingers through John’s. “It sounds beautiful.”
John lifted their hands to his mouth, kissing the back of Templeton’s hand lightly, squeezing. “We’ll go back there, close enough to Denver to take you to the opera for the weekend, if you wish, far enough out to live our own lives the rest of the time, without disturbance or hindrance. Get, oh, fifty acres, a few good brood mares, a nice little herd, to start. I’ll teach you how to hunt, how to ride...I think you’ll love that, sweetheart, fearless man that you are, and I hear you're a dead shot, so...”
Templeton let himself relax. Into the water, into the strength around him, into the conviction in John’s soft, wonderful words describing a beautiful future. Let himself believe, that no matter what awaited outside his door that morning, there was a future beyond it, a future he could have, a future with a man who loved him, who he loved.
Let himself believe it.
Even if it was all too good to be true.
+++++
“Here, Temp, thought you could use a refreshment. You’ve been in here all day.”
Templeton looked up from his book in the safe recesses of the estate’s library. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The same one John had read to him, that one glorious night. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear his lover’s voice, carrying on through the pages. He needed that now.
Needed it desperately.
“Eggnog?” he asked as the butler handed him the cup. “Smells great, HM.”
The other man’s eyes were on him, tired and defeated, so Templeton sat up and scooted over on the little chase lounge he was seated on. “C’mon, buddy,” he said, patting the cushion beside him, setting the glass aside. “You look trampled.”
Murdock shook his head. “I...I shouldn’t. He needs me...”
“Sit down, buddy,” Templeton insisted. “The doctor will be here soon. You can take a break.”
A second’s more hesitation, and then the butler was collapsing down next to him. Templeton automatically hugged his friend in, holding him in pale imitation of the way John held him.
“How is he today?”
“No better. I...I think he’s gonna die, Temp.”
The sob in the other man’s voice was audible.
It tore at Templeton’s heart.
The Colonel was getting sicker. Every day, it seemed, the man got sicker. The specks of blood had turned into violent fits of vomiting. A fever took him over at odd intervals, unrelated to meals, or so it seemed. He shook, he sweated, he screamed at the staff, and the only person he would let near him at all was Murdock, who was beginning to show the strain of the past five days. The doctor had come three days back, saying he did not know what was causing the fever, but recommended medication anyway, treatments which hadn’t worked.
He was due back that afternoon. And Templeton feared, selfishly, that the poisoning would be discovered then. That they would know. That it would fall to him.
But that wasn’t what was truly upsetting him.
It was the fact that the Colonel was dying at all.
He’d tried, he had, despite his words to John, to discover the source of the malady. To prevent this thing from coming to pass. But Murdock was a hawk in the kitchen, especially at the moment, trying to ensure that the Colonel only got healthy food, good-for-him grub, as the butler chose to put it, and he did not think that it would be possible to get anything past that intense attention. So it had to be something else. But what that could be, Templeton did not know.
It didn’t make any sense. Not even with Vance in the house, it didn’t make any sense. Why poison your father, without any solid way of connecting it to your father’s new heir? Without it clearly looking like poisoning? Why drag it out? Why use something without obvious symptoms? Why not simply give him hemlock and let him die over the course of one night? Even a desire to torture the old man didn’t make much sense...
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” he whispered back. “I know what he means to you.”
Murdock shook his head, and tried to smile. “It’ll be good for you. You and John can get out of here.”
Templeton closed his eyes. John. Yes. John.
They’d been sneaking every moment they could, every moment possible to spend together. Stolen kisses in the garage, in the garden, another quick tumble together out at John’s little cottage, when Vance had gone back into town and the Colonel was safely asleep. Wonderful things, beautiful things, but Templeton was afraid the entire affair would crumble like a house of cards under the pressure. Under the constant threat of that man’s death...
He did not know how to feel about it.
Truly, he did not.
Templeton could not bring himself to any clarity of emotion.
That first time, he hadn’t rightly known what was happening, and it had hurt, and it had scared him more than a little bit, and it had been nothing like what he had found with John these past days. But the Colonel had whispered my boy, my sweet boy in his ear, and that alone had been worth it, to the foolish private Templeton had then been.
Because that night, and every that followed, had still been a comfort, a warmth, a care he’d never known before, kindling something wonderful inside of him. He hadn’t known then, as the boy he was, what he was missing. Templeton had thought it worth it. He hadn't felt used then, oh no. He’d honestly believed the Colonel loved him...
Should he hate him for that?
Would part of his heart always belong to the older man?
Templeton didn’t know what the answer was. He just didn't know.
“I didn’t want it like this,” he murmured to Murdock.
“Temp...” the butler began, and then froze, like a dog to the scent, as the front doorbell rang.
The doctor. Had to be.
Murdock was off like a shot.
And Templeton, after a moment, followed.
By the time he reached the foyer, Murdock was already bustling past with a heavy jacket and Vance was there, back to the hallway from the library, hands stuffed in his pockets as he spoke in a low voice to the man who had just come in. Templeton crept in, careful around Vance as always, and saw nobody he was expecting.
The man Vance was talking to, the doctor, a different doctor, looked up through his thick glasses, and Templeton felt a shock shoot through him. And he couldn’t help but ask.
“M-Major Harper? You’re in New York?”
And the old regimental saw-bones struggled to smile, finally managing it, clearly thrown off balance. “Ah, Lieutenant Peck, what are you doing here?”
“The Colonel, he...he hired me on, over the summer.”
That got a snigger from Vance, and Templeton felt his cheek flame.
“And Vance, pleasant as always,” the doctor said with a little nod. “How’s the Bureau treating you?”
Vance grinned. “I’m sure Temp has more fun working for my father, but...”
“Yes, your father. Can I see him?” He turned back to Templeton. “He wanted a second opinion on what’s going on with him.”
Templeton nodded, wanting to ask if he could go up and wait in the room, while the doc examined the Colonel, wanted to be there, wanted to know if...and then his stomach clenched up again.
Major Harper frowned. “You okay, el-tee?”
“Fine, sir,” the blonde said, shaking his head, remembering the briefings on mustard gas, the physicals in the rough field hospital, the morning, the terrible morning, the doctor had sat him down and explained, in his quiet way, what Templeton would need to do to take care of himself, now that the Colonel had penetrated him, explained that there were certain expectations, certain procedures...and he shivered. “I’m just...seeing him sick like this is difficult.”
“I would think so, son.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Vance said with a yawn, breaking the moment, stretching over-dramatically, as if horrendously bored. “Go see my father before he dies, would you? We aren’t paying you to talk to the help.”
Major Harper looked over at Templeton once more and smiled a little, then looked back at Vance. “You aren’t paying me at all, Mr. Lynch,” he said, and headed for the stairs. “We’ll catch up after, shall we, Lieutenant?”
“Yessir!” Templeton nodded back.
And as Murdock reappeared right when he was needed, as he was wont to do, and as the Major followed him up the stairs, Vance sidled up and landed a hand on Templeton’s shoulder.
“So, Templeton,” he said genially, “you seem to know the new doc. care to enlighten me on who's examining my father?”
It wasn’t exactly a question.
Templeton felt like slugging Vance for it.
But it wasn’t the best time for that sort of thing.
So he nodded, and let the taller man lead him away, back into the parlor where Vance and Brock had, no doubt, a card game set up or something like that, relaxing into the safer memories, the good memories, the stories he could use for a laugh, to defuse whatever evil tic was starting up in the Colonel’s son. “Yes, he was in France with us. Best doctor in the Army, the Colonel used to say...”
+++++
John was waiting outside, in the cold afternoon, collar turned up, cap pulled far down, cigar not warming him up one bit, too many thoughts, too many actions and inactions, old and new, running through his brain, unruly as a herd of mustangs, when Major Harper emerged, led out by Murdock.
And the gardener smiled, despite himself.
“Alton Harper!” the former major said warmly, holding out a hand. “How good it is to see you again! How many years has it been?”
The doctor shook his head, taking John’s proffered hand and grasping tightly, smiling back. “Since the physical I did on you, I do believe, my old friend. When we discovered those old injuries weren’t healed up proper. I always felt bad about that diagnosis, John...”
Ah, yes, John reflected. That old lie. The lie about why he had to get out. The Colonel had given him that much dignity, at least, losing his commission over medical problems and not over, say, sodomizing a boy to the point of death, as he’d threatened, as would have been implied. But that exam, as with everything the Colonel had ever forced him to do, had truly haunted Major Harper, one of his best friends in the brigade. John had seen it in his face that day, so long ago. He saw it now.
John caught Murdock watching them, that eager, earnest, edgy look on his face, and he nodded at the butler. “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “I’ll only be a moment, okay?”
Murdock blinked at him, and nodded, slipping back inside the house.
Leaving them free to talk. Just as John had intended when he'd sent word to the doc's practice in uptown Manhattan. All part of the Plan, he reminded himself, but it was good to see an old friend again.
Even if it was to manipulate him to a desired end.
And the doctor sighed, falling back against the wall, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is going on here, John? You’re a gardener? And Captain Murdock’s a butler and Corporal Baracus is a chauffeur, and Lieutenant Peck...”
“Yes,” John agreed, pulling hot smoke into his lungs, exhaling slowly. “Yes, Lieutenant Peck...”
“It’s as if I’ve entered some strange reality,” the doctor said in that soft way of his. “It’s all incredibly bizarre, John, where nothing is as it should be. Especially that boy. I never thought the Colonel would continue his old...”
“Habits?”
“I was going to say perversions, but then...” and the doctor trailed off. “You...”
“I hope you never thought of me as you thought of him, Alton."
“The Bible calls it a sin, John,” the doctor told him, and tapped out a cigarette, silence reigning for a moment as he lit it and tossed the match away into the dirty snow of the dead flower beds. “But you and Russell never...”
It was John’s turn to be silent, the thoughts of his old lover, his first lover, washing over him, and he shook his head. “I’ve never done what the Colonel’s done. Especially with young Peck...”
“I remember him from France, you know,” Major Harper reflected slowly. “Such a spirit in that boy. A wonderful mind. He could have been a great soldier, John, like you were. He reminded me of you, John. And then the Colonel came to me one morning, told me to make sure he knew how to cleanse himself for...” and he paused, watching his fingers roll the white paper of that cigarette between them. “I wondered often, John, when we were out there, how different thing might have been for the boy, if it had been you in command, instead of Peter Lynch.”
John closed his eyes for a moment. He’d wondered about that, too. Often. That night he’d first truly felt his Templeton, since they’d given themselves to each other, after the kid had fallen asleep against his chest, he’d wondered. How wonderful it might have been, to train him, to guide him, watch him grown, watch him become. He would have made such a fine soldier, his love. Such a fine, fine soldier.
But he didn’t give voice to any of that. “It’s pointless to speculate,” he grunted. “I’m doing what I can for him now.”
The doctor thought about that for a moment, and laughed without amusement. “You always were one for living life dangerously.”
“Never mind that,” the gardener sighed, hating and loving the other man for his perceptive nature. The doc had never judged, but he’d never approved, either. It was a credit to his character, John always thought, that the subject of his...unnatural nature had never become a critical issue between them, never affected the care his boys had gotten. “What’s wrong with the Colonel?”
“It’s poisoning, just as you said when you sent word. Pokeweed or some other regional herb, I would guess, but god knows where he’s getting it from. Doesn’t much matter. If the old bastard makes it to the new year, I’d eat my hat.”
“He’s dying, then, Alton?” the gardener pushed.
“I’d give him twelve to twenty-four hours,” Major Harper confirmed. “Possibly thirty-six. But I believe the damage has been done.”
John digested that for a moment, ignoring the unexpected rush of conflicting emotions, and flicked his cigar away. “Are you going to talk to Templeton? He’s more shaken up about all this than he’ll admit.”
“I will, poor kid,” Major Harper nodded, turning back to the door that led inside, into the warmth, but paused long enough to touch John’s shoulder, the faintest hint of their old comradeship in the gesture. “He’s stronger than you think, Hannibal,” he said, throwing out that old nickname, a sad, almost wistful look on his face, “and far more delicate both. Take care with him.”
“I’d do nothing less for that one,” he whispered back. “I’d do anything for him.”
The doctor stared at him for a moment more, and then, shaking his head, vanished back inside the house.
Something about the way that parting had happened, some tremble of premonition, and John considered just calling the whole thing off.
But that would be impossible.
The Plan, John, goddammit, the Plan, the gardener told himself.
Time to see this thing through.
+++++
The doctor was with the Colonel for a long time. Longer than Templeton would have guessed. Longer than Templeton would have preferred, as well, since the interim had filled up with Vance and Brock’s stories about their days at Harvard and how they dealt with professors who marked them down in Philosophy.
“...so, after that, we managed to get a bottle of his chief rival’s cologne and splash a bit on his wife’s clothes!” Vance laughed, gathering the cards back up for another hand.
Brock grinned back, one of the house’s well-worn poker chips balanced between two knuckles. “And then he publicly accused her of cheating on him...”
“...only after you planted those letters in his desk...”
“Oh, yes, there was that! That was a nice touch. But I always thought she dressed like a whore, so...”
Templeton felt more than slightly ill. Maybe it was the eggnog, which was far too rich for his stomach at the moment. Maybe it was the game, which he couldn’t concentrate on and had already lost the better part of fifty bucks to. Maybe it was the company, or the conversation, or whatever was going on upstairs...
Vance chuckled again, reaching over to slap Templeton on the back, and started shuffling. “Ah, yes, those were the...”
And then mercifully, horribly, the doors to the parlor banged open.
All three men looked up from the card table, Templeton expecting the doctor, but it was only Murdock. Murdock, looking slightly gray in the face, leaning ever so slightly on the door handle.
“Mr. Peck,” he said softly, shaking his head, “the doctor asked for you.”
Vance frowned, and pushed his chair back, up on its back legs. “Just him?” he asked icily.
Murdock nodded. “Sorry, sir, but...”
The Bureau man’s eyes narrowed, and then that sardonic grin was back. “Well, I suppose Templeton is his next of kin now,” he sighed dramatically, and Brock sniggered, and cracked some joke about whether or not Templeton had some secret family heir squirreled away somewhere, some illegimate child, if he was this damn important to the Colonel, which led to an idle, sarcastic laugh from Vance, and Templeton felt himself clenching a fist even as embarrassment tore through his guts.
“C’mon, son,” Major Harper said softly in his ear, touching his shoulder. “Let’s talk, you and I. I’d love to know what you’ve been up to, these last few years. Haven’t seen you since V-Day...”
Mute from embarrassment, as Brock continued to speculate on whether or not one of Templeton’s babies would be as pretty as him, the blonde man nodded, and let himself be led from the room.
+++++
John hesitated only a moment at the Colonel’s door. The house was quiet, all the guests sent home day ago, Vance and Brock off to some kind of careless trouble, no doubt, Murdock likely polishing the silver, as he always did when he was greatly upset, Templeton talking to Harper.
All of them, every human in the building, safely contained in other activities.
He and the Colonel could have been the last people on the planet, with no more privacy than that.
It was time.
He turned the knob and slipped inside.
It’d been over twenty years since the first time John met the Colonel. Twenty years he’d been in the man’s service, in one way or another. Twenty years. A lot had changed in that time, weapons, tactics, enemies, professions, tools. Blood to dirt, bayonets to spades.
But the Colonel had always been a constant, always a rock to John, in his own, strange way. No matter how much horror had run between them, all the ugliness and abuse, the Colonel had been loyal to him, and he to the Colonel. That solidity had formed the cornerstone of John’s adult life. The Colonel had never changed. The Colonel had never been weak, never old or frail or sick.
He had never allowed himself to be so.
But the sight that awaited the former major now was nothing like the man he’d once known.
A bedside light and the fireplace illuminated the room with a dull, unhealthy glow. It smelt of sickness, of rot and blood, reminding John of the old medic tents and that tang of death that filled it.
The Colonel was half-hidden in a nest of pillows in the midst of it all, the source of all that decay. His breathing was labored, echoing across the space to John’s ears. Dark red was spackled across the bedclothes. Those weary, worn hands resting above the rich sheets seemed older than anything he’d ever seen before.
Dying. Truly.
The poisoning had brought him low.
John felt a niggling of regret.
Perhaps he was too late.
Perhaps he had dragged this out too long.
Perhaps this man deserved a cleaner death.
But there was nothing to do but go forward, no path but the one he’d decided upon. The one to save Templeton, his sweet boy, his beautiful man, his great love. And by god, John was not going to fail him, not if it meant his own life in exchange. So he steeled his soul and squared his shoulders, and marched forward, right to the edge of that deathbed. Sat down. Gathered one of those knarled, weak hands in his own. Brushed fingertips across a fevered, wrinkled brow. And waited.
Not for long.
“...John...” the Colonel croaked, his voice a faint ghosting of what it had been, those days long ago, bellowing orders across the desert wastes of the Arizona Territory. “John, you’re here.”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave you, sir,” the gardener murmured, recalling the words he’d spoken when he’s accepted the job at the estate, hating himself for being such a coward. “So I’m here.”
Bloodshot eyes watched him carefully. “Harper says I’m dying.”
John nodded. “I’d say that’s right.”
“He says I’m being poisoned.”
“Looks to be, sir,” John replied levelly, in the softest voice he could manage. “Sweating, vomiting blood, spasms, fever, weakness...tell me, is your heart beating faster? Is your breathing slowing? Does it feel like you’re dying?”
Those reddened eyes narrowed further, a weak growl issuing forth from that ruined throat. “What are you playing at, Smith?”
The Plan, John reminded himself.
But it took no effort at all to force a grin, to lean down and whisper what he’d been wanting to whisper since this whole affair started. What he’d wanted to do, since that private had died, since the Colonel had caught him and Russell together, since the moment he’d laid eyes on the old, monied, privileged, careless, evil bastard.
“I know what you’re being poisoned with, sir,” he said in a low voice, right in the Colonel’s ear. “I know, because it’s me who’s been doing it.”
For a moment, everything ceased. All noise. All movement. Everything.
And then the Colonel lunged. Lunged. Hampered by blankets and sickness and waste of muscle , but lunged, nonetheless, grabbing for John. Who just stepped back, releasing the old bastard to watch him fall forward onto the bed, hacking, horrible coughs racking his body with spasms.
He felt a twinge of regret, John did, leaving this so long. But any trace of sympathy or regret wasn’t going to do at all for the situation, for the game he had to play, for the image he needed to present in order for it all to work out the way he desperately, desperately needed to. So he covered his own discomfort by walking over to the sideboard and pouring a glass of water from the large carafe there.
John didn’t turn his back, so he saw the Colonel’s eyes fixed on him. Furious. Betrayed.
He tried not to shudder.
Forcing the Colonel back up, John tried not to think about the flecks of blood on his lower chin, and pressed the glass to his mouth. That dark, fevered gaze locked on him once more, and he shook his head. “It’s not poisoned, you idiot. You think I’d do something that obvious?”
Those eyes never leaving John, the Colonel sipped slowly, gulping with a disgusting, thick sound, and pushed the gardener’s hand away after only a few swallows, making a face. John set the glass aside and picked up a washcloth that Murdock had on a little makeshift nurse’s station, half soaked in a cool bowl of water. He wetted the cloth and squeezed out the excess, dabbing lightly at his former commander’s forehead. He was burning up, horribly feverish. John said a silent prayer that he’d managed the time on this one right.
He had to.
For Temp.
And, after a few horrible seconds, the Colonel cleared his throat and spoke.
“Why?”
John forced that smile, that hungry, happy smile, and nodded. “Considering, sir? Perhaps you should be asking why not?”
“I protected you, John,” the Colonel said, nostrils flaring a little. “I gave you safe harbor from the world that would have destroyed you, from your own inherent decay...”
“Only to protect your own evils, sir. No altruistic impulse has ever fired your heart to action,” John snapped back, angry over that comment, and not worried about showing it. He was tired, tired of being ashamed of what he wanted, what he was. Tired of being told it was wrong to love another man.
“Perhaps I trusted you,” the dying Colonel replied. “Perhaps I wanted you near me, John, for you were the only man I did trust.”
“Only to protect your money,” John said with a shake of his head, dunking and wringing and dabbing again. “My loyalty to you has nothing to do with any kind of affection for you. I’ve hated you from the first moment I laid eyes on you...”
“So you kill me?” And the Colonel cackled, a sound rendered demonic by the phlegm in his throat and the vomit stuck just beneath. “You kill me now.”
“I kill you now,” John confirmed.
The Colonel nodded, and gestured for the water, surprisingly calm for all of that. Like some warlord of old in his calm, he seemed to John, Attila with rare furs tucked about his feet, nodding as his advisers spoke of some village burned, far away from him. John gave him the glass, and he drank deeply.
When he spoke again, he was far more collected.
“Then I ask you, Major Smith, why now?”
John leaned in, grabbed his shoulders firmly, letting the old man feel every ounce of his strength, and pressed in close to his ear. His skin smelt foul, the toxicity of his blood, of his very soul, leaking out through the pores, perhaps. But John bore it down, because he did not trust himself to be seen as he said...
“Templeton Peck.”
There was no response, but he could feel the tension in the Colonel’s shoulders, feel the anger beginning anew. So John repeated himself.
“Templeton. Peck.” And those words said, he pulled back, the smile firmly in place, despite the sliding feeling deep in his gut, the tear in his heart. “Your precious little Lieutenant.”
The Colonel’s throat did a curious swallow, and his lips trembled for a moment before he spoke. “Godssake, John, we’ve known each other twenty years. And you’d kill me for a boy?”
It was...almost sad. As if he truly did not expect it.
But John couldn’t get distracted by it. He had to stay focused. Stayed focused on the Plan, the one he’d been working on in his head from that first kiss, in the shade under the summer trees, half a year ago. His Templeton. His beautiful, amazing, darling Templeton.
He firmed his grip on the Colonel’s shoulders, and pressed on.
“For that one, absolutely. He’s so sweet, isn’t he? All those needy little whimpers he can’t quite hold back, that little half-moon birthmark on his thigh, those expressive eyes...”
The Colonel stared. “You’re...”
“Fucking him, oh yes,” John confirmed, and smiled more broadly. “Oh yes. He was so lonely, Colonel, so eager for attention with you gone to work all day. And he’s so eager to please, just as you described him, begging for my cock, taking me all in as his pretty eyes tear up with joy...”
“You lie,” the Colonel hissed. “You lie, John. He loves me. I alone control him...”
John chuckled as darkly as he could manage, and sat down on the edge of the bed, releasing the Colonel’s shoulders in favor of patting his hand where it lay on the coverlet. “You’ve never understood what boys like him really need. Not pretty baubles and fancy cloths, no. If you want to own a kid like that, all you have to do is tell him you love him. And you’ve never done that. He cried so, the first time he told me as much...”
“He tells me he loves me,” the Colonel said, confusion growing, the fever creeping back in to his voice, and John hoped like hell the old bastard had enough life in him to do what needed to be done.
Perhaps not.
Time to open the taps a bit more.
“He says what I tell him to say to you, Colonel. Fakes devotion to you in order to secure your trust, just as I’ve instructed him,” John growled, and patted the Colonel’s hand again. “In order to secure the inheritance.”
The Colonel began to speak, but another coughing fit consumed him, and John didn’t do anything about it but turn away, and drop the washcloth in the tub. “Your life, your boy, your money. Everything you care about, Peter, I’m taking from you. Just like you took my life from me. It’s a fair trade, wouldn’t you say?”
He could hear screaming as he left the room.
And something in John broke apart, hearing that echoing down the hall after him, tearing around him as he made for the servants’ stairs.
The Plan, John, the Plan, he reminded himself as his knees gave out and he sat down heavily on the top step, head falling into his hands.
The Plan.
How he rued it.
When John had heard the Colonel was experiencing symptoms like he was, he’d been fairly certain he knew what it was, and why.
John had never forgotten his first month on the estate, back when he was still toying with the idea of working in the firm, the night he’d seen a tall, dark-haired boy emerge into the corridor from the Colonel’s room, tears in his eyes.
Tears he’d dashed, glaring at John.
The former major had tried to talk with him about it, ask if there was anything he could do, but Vance had only shaken his head, and asked if John couldn’t scrounge up some war to throw his father back into, get him away. Never a word, but John had known. And as much as he hated Vance for the bitter, sarcastic man he’d grown into, he understood, at a certain level, why that had all come to be.
Which was why John didn’t begrudge the boy his revenge. Hadn’t stopped him at all, when he’d oh so innocently come by four or five years ago, and asked if there was any pokeweed on the property.
Pokeweed, poisonous in high enough quantities, but quite present in low concentrations in certain medications. Like the Colonel’s arthritis tincture. What an elegant solution, John had thought at the time, upping the concentration, letting the man poison himself.
And so the gardener mentioned a few patches he’d seen, the fact that it was deadly if it was the wrong age and unboiled. John hadn't bothered to remove the plant after that conversation. He didn’t approve of murder, he did not, but he understood. Perhaps sympathized a bit. Yet still...
The only thing he couldn’t understand was why Vance had waited so long, until Templeton had emerged as a clear threat, to take action.
Maybe it was the same reason he’d found that little sleight-of-hand trick with the responsibility for the poisoning, for claiming the Colonel’s as-yet unmet death as his own kill.
After all these years, after everything that had happened, after all the ugliness, all the cruelty, there was something horrible seeing his old commander brought that low, brought to that...
But that was useless. All useless. The bad far outstripped the good. So for whatever guilt he carried in the man’s death, he was at peace with it.
For there was Templeton.
His sweet Templeton.
John had needed a way to get Templeton away from the Colonel, which meant that either the Colonel thought he was dead, which was going to be tricky, complicated, dangerous, or...
Or the Colonel disinherited Templeton, and threw him out.
John had learned, a long time ago, to use whatever life threw at him, turn lemons into lemonaide, or whatever the expression was. So when he’d heard about the poisoning, that was it. That was the way out. So much better than having to fake a death.
He knew the Colonel well enough to know that accusing Templeton of cheating would be enough to do it. Would be the only thing that would do it. That the Colonel would be so enfuriated he wouldn’t so much as speak to Templeton agai. And he knew Vance would get everything in order immediately, draft papers good enough to pass at his old law firm, which handled all the Lynch affairs. Templeton would be disowned. Nobody would go after the kid, either, once the money was not be an issue. John had known this family a long time, and dysfunctional as they were, he was confident in the responses he would get. As long as he sheparded it along in the right manner.
John rubbed his hands together, and pushed himself up, headed downstairs, to ensure that Murdock got up here, that the news went to Vance, that he intercepted Templeton and got him off the estate before anything might happen to him. BA had already been put on notice, was waiting in the garage, automobile ready, on call to take them to Manhattan, to freedom, to everything that would come...
And he smiled, thinking about Templeton. His boy’s beautiful face, that beautiful soul within, the feel of their tongues mingling, the sound of his needy little moans, the wide-eyed wonder in his eyes, every time they kissed...
Hurrying downstairs, into the kitchens and pantry, John only prayed the old man had enough life in him to get the proper paperwork signed.
Except Murdock wasn’t where he expected him to be.
Nowhere.
On the entire ground floor.
And John, heart in his throat, a sudden and unwelcome terror growing in him, found cook, who was slaving away over a stockpot of chicken bones and roots vegetables from the cellar.
“Oh,” she said with a smile, “the Colonel called about twenty minutes ago for Murdock to find Mr. Vance and Mr. Peck, to come see him in his room. He sounded in a bad way...”
“Called?” John asked, a ball of panic tightening in his airway, choking him.
“On the house telephone,” and cook shrugged. “I don’t hold with it, you know, John, he only had it put in a few months ago, and it’s been nothing but a nuisance...”
But John wasn’t listening.
No.
Not at all.
He was running, hell bent for leather, towards the garage, cursing himself for forgetting a detail such as that.
Bosco was there.
Templeton wasn’t.
And by the time John got back to the house, to see if he could catch Templeton there, before...
It was too late.
The Colonel was dead.
Templeton was gone.
And Vance, damn him, was breaking out the champagne.
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
John puts the plan into action...
Templeton woke first in the dark of the morning, candles burned away, sun not yet up, household not up yet and probably not for several hours yet. He yawned, stretching in John’s arms, softened but wrapped around him yet. And Templeton wriggled around so he was chest to chest with the gardener.
Those amazing blue eyes were still shut, but fluttered open again as Templeton placed a soft, soft kiss on those barely parted lips. “Good morning, love,” he whispered, snuggling in as close as he could.
“Good morning yourself,” John murmured back, voice still far away, and he kissed his forehead even as he reached over to switch on a lamp. “And a wonderful Christmas morning to you.”
“Christmas...” Templeton repeated, turning the word over on his tongue, just as he was curling a small bit of John’s silvery chest hair around his fingers. “I’ve never had a real Christmas.”
“And what’s a real Christmas, darling?”
The blonde shook his head, relaxing into his lover’s broad chest. “I don’t know...good food, lots of presents, Santa... the stuff you see in the Macy’s displays, I suppose.”
“You’ll have all that downstairs this evening, darling, more than you can handle,” John sighed, and let his fingers stroke up into Templeton’s sleep-mussed hair. “But is that all you think of as Christmas?”
“Maybe Mass as well,” he replied. “The nuns used to insist on Mass...”
“How about a time to spend with the man you love?” John urged softly, still petting his hair. “A holiday to celebrate that which is most precious to you in the whole world. A chance to tell him what he means to you.”
Templeton shivered at those words. Yes. Oh, oh yes. “John...”
“Yes, my love?”
“What...” and he stopped, flicking his eyes up to meet his lover’s, to see if what he was going to ask would be accepted. But there was nothing but soft wonder there, and Templeton pulled his courage together even as John fluffed the blankets back around them. “What do I mean to you, John?”
“The earth and the moon and the stars,” his lover answered without hesitation, those blue eyes clear and certain, his smile dazzling, and held his face in his hand, kissing him as he pulled them both to sitting. “The world, kid. The whole world. I’m honored, that you’d choose such a man as me.”
Templeton shook his head even as John pulled him to his feet again, pulled him off the bed to collapse into his arms. “Oh...” he sighed, and bared his neck for a kiss that John freely, freely gave. “Oh, John, I’ve fucked so many men these years... but I’ve...”
A finger sealed his lips together. “I don’t care what you’ve done in your past, kid, I just know what I see now...
He pushed John’s hand away, needing to say what he wanted to say. “But I’ve never been in love, John, not before...not before you, I don’t believe...”
“Then I have your first time, my darling, the only one that ever mattered,” John told him gently.
Feeling staggered as those sweet, unbelievable words washed over him, Templeton nodded slowly back. “I’m blessed, John, to have met you...”
And John, amazingly, laughed at that. The gardener’s steady hands pulled him the rest of the way into the bathroom, kissing him again before turning to run the bath. Naked, the arch of his spine, the angular turn of his buttocks, hard muscle, silver hair, tanned skin...
“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, laying the back of his hand against the small of his lover’s back, letting his palm slide around, guiding the rest of him in against John.
Those luminous eyes turned up from their task at the tub, and John shook his hand out as he drew them even closer, cock to cock, that most sublime feel of velvet-smooth flesh hardening against crease of his thigh. Templeton moaned, and John smiled that gorgeous smile of his.
“I believe you’re the beautiful one, darling,” his whispered, low and throaty, right in Templeton’s ear. “I’ve been worn by life...”
“That’s why you’re beautiful,” Templeton said, half in awe, fingers tracing the outline of a small, white scar on his man’s torso.
John kissed him again, and drew back, stepped back, over the lip of the tub, offering Templeton a hand.
“Enough, love,” he chuckled, water licking up almost to his knees. “Come to me, and we’ll see about getting you that Christmas you deserve.”
Templeton smiled, but didn’t quite let his lover pull him into the filling tub. “Just a moment, John,” he promised, going back to the cabinet over his sink, feeling those blue eyes on, caressing his body in a single glance, and smiled to himself. He found the jar he was looking for as quickly as he could, taking it out and pouring a fair amount of its contents into the tub right under the spout, a warm scent filling the air.
“What’s that, kid?” John asked softly, settled back against the back of the tub, as Templeton stepped over the edge into the water with him.
“Some new-fangled thing I bought downtown,” he replied, easing down onto his knees, crawling forward into his lover’s lap. “I think it’s supposed to...”
“Do this?” And John laughed as he scooped up a handful of bubbles, blowing them right at the younger man. “Foam up like this?”
“It’s supposed to be very soothing for the muscles,” Templeton huffed, planting both hands on either side of John’s shoulders, kneeling up between those lean thighs.
“According to the cute girl behind the counter, making eyes at you,” John teased, running a hand up the younger man’s side as the bubbles rose around them.
“That make you jealous, John?” he grinned back, craning up for a kiss.
“Jealous in a manner you would not believe,” the older man murmured back.
And their lips met. Wet, gentle, coming together and apart, and Templeton laughed again, splashing some of that foamed, scented water up onto his lover’s strong chest. “You don’t have to worry about her,” he replied, nuzzling closer. “I’ve only got eyes for you.”
A feral growl ripped loose from John’s throat, and his hands shot out of the water, grabbing hold of Templeton and gathering him into wet, soapy arms. The jerk of that movement splashed water and bubbles out onto the tile of the bathroom floor, and got them both laughing again.
John reached around behind him, shutting off the tap and running a big hand into Templeton’s hair, cradling his skull, as silence fell in the bathroom, the mood shifting. The younger man shivered a bit, feeling that change, and reached out, letting his fingers slide down John’s skin. “I love you,” he whispered, still amazed at being able to say it aloud. “Oh, god, John, I love you...”
“I love you too, kid,” came the hungry answer.
Templeton hinged forward, falling into that expectant blue gazing so lovingly back at him. “Make love to me,” he asked softly. “Please, love, I feel empty without you...”
John made that growling noise again, and those hands drug Templeton closer, smashing their groins together, erection to erection. “You’ll never be without me, darling,” he whispered back, nipping at his ear, sliding a finger down through the cleft of his buttocks. “Never...”
Templeton sighed, and leaned in, forehead to forehead, kissing the bridge of John’s delightfully crooked nose, slipping a hand down between them, thumbing over the magnificent hardness he found there. “Is this my Christmas present, John, hmm?”
“You can have anything you want, darling,” John replied, eyes growing dark with lust, and kissed him again, neck keening up into just the right angle. “Anything at all that you’d like. Anything in my power to give.”
That curious finger pressed in, up through the puckered ring of muscle, and Templeton bucked up, closer, on his knees, head hitting John’s water-slick shoulder. “Oh yes,” he sighed. “Oh, oh, John, right there...”
“I know, darling, I know.”
Templeton clung to John as best he could as that finger explored, circled, started opening him wide. It felt amazing, kisses exchanged in the flow of moments, body, hardening cock, all half-weightless in the warmth of the bath, the hint of heat following John’s fingers up inside him, the sublime feel of those bubbles smoothing across his skin, excitement flooding his every thought, every nerve...
Then John asked him if he was ready, and Templeton nodded back, and they came together in another kiss, the younger man giving over to the probing thrusts of the elder’s tongue. A big hand cupped his buttocks and the blonde lifted automatically, sloshing water back and forth in the big tub, until he could feel the blunt pressure of that cock, that wonderful, wonderful cock.
And slid straight down onto it.
Both men’s shared cries mingled and escaped as the corners of that kiss broke apart under the relentless assault of that inward and upward push. It was rougher than last time, not nearly as smooth, no slick to ease the way. But Templeton’s muscles were relaxed and his lover’s eyes were mesmerizing, and he sank down all the way, until their thighs were touching and that look of wonder from the first night came over John’s face.
“You’re beautiful, my love,” he whispered, tucking a strand of wet hair back away from Templeton’s eyes. “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s because of you,” Templeton replied in the same quiet, awed manner. He felt full to bursting, that pillar of his lover’s flesh thick and pulsating inside him, and he raised up on his knees, just a bit, and dropped back down. “You do this to me.”
“And you to me.”
Their lips sealed up again, no words needed for either man to know what the other was feeling, because the join they had made was seamless, everything connected, John thrusting up as Templeton pushed down, and for a moment, Templeton could have sworn their hearts were following the same beat.
But John drove harder and harder into him, and gasped out of the kiss. “Please, Templeton, I want to hear you...”
And Templeton smiled back, remembering something he’d learned in Paris. So he tossed his head back, hair flinging droplets of water around them both, and let both his hand fall back to grasp John’s knees underwater, arching his back, gasping as the angle changed, pulling John even deeper in.
“How’s...how’s that?” he moaned, pushing his hips forward.
John grinned and fingered the hollow of his spine. “It’s perfect.”
Templeton matched that grin, and thrust forward again.
It seemed to take only moments from there, and yet it lasted an eternity, John’s cock inside him, hitting every spot he’d never known he’d had, firing pleasure through him that escaped in needy noises, throaty pleas, and John gave him everything. Absolutely everything. Harder and harder, faster and faster, water splashing freely from the tub, the level lowering enough for him to bend forward, laying Templeton back into that warm cloud of bubbles, holding him just above the surface as he kissed him again, desperate, chasing release.
Templeton clenched down and wound a hand up into that glorious silver hair and bit at his lover’s lower lip as those strong, strong hips pistoned into him. “Come for me, John. Come for me, love...”
And that did it, pushed John right over the edge, and Templeton watched ecstasy crumple his handsome feature entirely, closing his eyes against the pleasure of those hot spurts of semen splashing up over his prostate, again and again and again, until he was spilling himself into the warmth surrounding him, and the entire world seemed to collapse into a tidal wave of sweet-smelling water around them...
He came back to the surface to the feel of John’s solid body behind him, John’s softened cock fitting right along the crease of his ass, John’s big hands, somewhat weakened from his own orgasm peeling the sopping wet hair out of Templeton’s face.
“I think we splashed half the water out of the tub, John,” he said softly, reaching back to wrap a hand around the back of his lover’s neck, snuggling back in what was left of their bath, the delicious sound of bubbles popping around them.
“Mmm, I think you’re right about that,” John replied, and kissed the top of Templeton’s head, still stroking back his hair. “Good thing there’s more where that came from.” He lifted a big foot from the water that was left, and turned the faucet back on, fresh, hot water pouring instantly in, steam rising. “All the pleasures of modern conveniences, eh?”
Something about the way John said it tugged at Templeton’s heart, and he turned around, using that hand around the older man’s neck as leverage against their slippery skin. “I don’t care about any of this, you know, John?”
“Kid...”
“I don’t care about it. This house, all the amenities, all the nice things he’s bought me,” he blurted out, needing to say it, needing John to hear him say it as the fears of what awaited beyond this small, sacrosanct space they’d created for themselves. “All of this. I don’t care. I don’t need it...”
“I know, kid...”
“I’m not here for that, John,” he whispered. “Please don’t think that I...”
“I don’t,” John said firmly, and kissed him again, water lapping higher and higher up on their bellies. “But tell me we you don’t enjoy it?”
He blushed a bit. Yes, it was nice. It was all nice. Soft sheets and good food and central heating and nice clothes... but Templeton moved back around, easing back against John’s chest, and rubbed the outside of the older man’s leg, eliciting a soft sigh. “Tell me about where we’re going to go, John. Tell me about the ranch.”
John’s lips teased along the shell of the blonde’s ear as he shut the water off again. “I love you, Temp. Know that.”
“I do,” he sighed, and arched back into him. “And I do love you, John.”
That hand moved to his chest, even as John laid back against the back of the tub, moving them both back to horizontal, the soft rumble of his speech starting up. “I was born on a ranch in Colorado, oh, about forty years ago now, lived there until I was sixteen and old enough to join the Army. We raised horses, wonderful horses. It’s horse country out there, where the Great Plains rise into the Rocky Mountains, big rolling hills and small pockets of pines, sweet and green in the summer, snow and sun in the winter. Endless skies. Blue like you’ve never seen, stars spread across the deepest black...”
The young blonde made a happy little noise, and wound his fingers through John’s. “It sounds beautiful.”
John lifted their hands to his mouth, kissing the back of Templeton’s hand lightly, squeezing. “We’ll go back there, close enough to Denver to take you to the opera for the weekend, if you wish, far enough out to live our own lives the rest of the time, without disturbance or hindrance. Get, oh, fifty acres, a few good brood mares, a nice little herd, to start. I’ll teach you how to hunt, how to ride...I think you’ll love that, sweetheart, fearless man that you are, and I hear you're a dead shot, so...”
Templeton let himself relax. Into the water, into the strength around him, into the conviction in John’s soft, wonderful words describing a beautiful future. Let himself believe, that no matter what awaited outside his door that morning, there was a future beyond it, a future he could have, a future with a man who loved him, who he loved.
Let himself believe it.
Even if it was all too good to be true.
+++++
“Here, Temp, thought you could use a refreshment. You’ve been in here all day.”
Templeton looked up from his book in the safe recesses of the estate’s library. The Picture of Dorian Gray. The same one John had read to him, that one glorious night. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear his lover’s voice, carrying on through the pages. He needed that now.
Needed it desperately.
“Eggnog?” he asked as the butler handed him the cup. “Smells great, HM.”
The other man’s eyes were on him, tired and defeated, so Templeton sat up and scooted over on the little chase lounge he was seated on. “C’mon, buddy,” he said, patting the cushion beside him, setting the glass aside. “You look trampled.”
Murdock shook his head. “I...I shouldn’t. He needs me...”
“Sit down, buddy,” Templeton insisted. “The doctor will be here soon. You can take a break.”
A second’s more hesitation, and then the butler was collapsing down next to him. Templeton automatically hugged his friend in, holding him in pale imitation of the way John held him.
“How is he today?”
“No better. I...I think he’s gonna die, Temp.”
The sob in the other man’s voice was audible.
It tore at Templeton’s heart.
The Colonel was getting sicker. Every day, it seemed, the man got sicker. The specks of blood had turned into violent fits of vomiting. A fever took him over at odd intervals, unrelated to meals, or so it seemed. He shook, he sweated, he screamed at the staff, and the only person he would let near him at all was Murdock, who was beginning to show the strain of the past five days. The doctor had come three days back, saying he did not know what was causing the fever, but recommended medication anyway, treatments which hadn’t worked.
He was due back that afternoon. And Templeton feared, selfishly, that the poisoning would be discovered then. That they would know. That it would fall to him.
But that wasn’t what was truly upsetting him.
It was the fact that the Colonel was dying at all.
He’d tried, he had, despite his words to John, to discover the source of the malady. To prevent this thing from coming to pass. But Murdock was a hawk in the kitchen, especially at the moment, trying to ensure that the Colonel only got healthy food, good-for-him grub, as the butler chose to put it, and he did not think that it would be possible to get anything past that intense attention. So it had to be something else. But what that could be, Templeton did not know.
It didn’t make any sense. Not even with Vance in the house, it didn’t make any sense. Why poison your father, without any solid way of connecting it to your father’s new heir? Without it clearly looking like poisoning? Why drag it out? Why use something without obvious symptoms? Why not simply give him hemlock and let him die over the course of one night? Even a desire to torture the old man didn’t make much sense...
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” he whispered back. “I know what he means to you.”
Murdock shook his head, and tried to smile. “It’ll be good for you. You and John can get out of here.”
Templeton closed his eyes. John. Yes. John.
They’d been sneaking every moment they could, every moment possible to spend together. Stolen kisses in the garage, in the garden, another quick tumble together out at John’s little cottage, when Vance had gone back into town and the Colonel was safely asleep. Wonderful things, beautiful things, but Templeton was afraid the entire affair would crumble like a house of cards under the pressure. Under the constant threat of that man’s death...
He did not know how to feel about it.
Truly, he did not.
Templeton could not bring himself to any clarity of emotion.
That first time, he hadn’t rightly known what was happening, and it had hurt, and it had scared him more than a little bit, and it had been nothing like what he had found with John these past days. But the Colonel had whispered my boy, my sweet boy in his ear, and that alone had been worth it, to the foolish private Templeton had then been.
Because that night, and every that followed, had still been a comfort, a warmth, a care he’d never known before, kindling something wonderful inside of him. He hadn’t known then, as the boy he was, what he was missing. Templeton had thought it worth it. He hadn't felt used then, oh no. He’d honestly believed the Colonel loved him...
Should he hate him for that?
Would part of his heart always belong to the older man?
Templeton didn’t know what the answer was. He just didn't know.
“I didn’t want it like this,” he murmured to Murdock.
“Temp...” the butler began, and then froze, like a dog to the scent, as the front doorbell rang.
The doctor. Had to be.
Murdock was off like a shot.
And Templeton, after a moment, followed.
By the time he reached the foyer, Murdock was already bustling past with a heavy jacket and Vance was there, back to the hallway from the library, hands stuffed in his pockets as he spoke in a low voice to the man who had just come in. Templeton crept in, careful around Vance as always, and saw nobody he was expecting.
The man Vance was talking to, the doctor, a different doctor, looked up through his thick glasses, and Templeton felt a shock shoot through him. And he couldn’t help but ask.
“M-Major Harper? You’re in New York?”
And the old regimental saw-bones struggled to smile, finally managing it, clearly thrown off balance. “Ah, Lieutenant Peck, what are you doing here?”
“The Colonel, he...he hired me on, over the summer.”
That got a snigger from Vance, and Templeton felt his cheek flame.
“And Vance, pleasant as always,” the doctor said with a little nod. “How’s the Bureau treating you?”
Vance grinned. “I’m sure Temp has more fun working for my father, but...”
“Yes, your father. Can I see him?” He turned back to Templeton. “He wanted a second opinion on what’s going on with him.”
Templeton nodded, wanting to ask if he could go up and wait in the room, while the doc examined the Colonel, wanted to be there, wanted to know if...and then his stomach clenched up again.
Major Harper frowned. “You okay, el-tee?”
“Fine, sir,” the blonde said, shaking his head, remembering the briefings on mustard gas, the physicals in the rough field hospital, the morning, the terrible morning, the doctor had sat him down and explained, in his quiet way, what Templeton would need to do to take care of himself, now that the Colonel had penetrated him, explained that there were certain expectations, certain procedures...and he shivered. “I’m just...seeing him sick like this is difficult.”
“I would think so, son.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Vance said with a yawn, breaking the moment, stretching over-dramatically, as if horrendously bored. “Go see my father before he dies, would you? We aren’t paying you to talk to the help.”
Major Harper looked over at Templeton once more and smiled a little, then looked back at Vance. “You aren’t paying me at all, Mr. Lynch,” he said, and headed for the stairs. “We’ll catch up after, shall we, Lieutenant?”
“Yessir!” Templeton nodded back.
And as Murdock reappeared right when he was needed, as he was wont to do, and as the Major followed him up the stairs, Vance sidled up and landed a hand on Templeton’s shoulder.
“So, Templeton,” he said genially, “you seem to know the new doc. care to enlighten me on who's examining my father?”
It wasn’t exactly a question.
Templeton felt like slugging Vance for it.
But it wasn’t the best time for that sort of thing.
So he nodded, and let the taller man lead him away, back into the parlor where Vance and Brock had, no doubt, a card game set up or something like that, relaxing into the safer memories, the good memories, the stories he could use for a laugh, to defuse whatever evil tic was starting up in the Colonel’s son. “Yes, he was in France with us. Best doctor in the Army, the Colonel used to say...”
+++++
John was waiting outside, in the cold afternoon, collar turned up, cap pulled far down, cigar not warming him up one bit, too many thoughts, too many actions and inactions, old and new, running through his brain, unruly as a herd of mustangs, when Major Harper emerged, led out by Murdock.
And the gardener smiled, despite himself.
“Alton Harper!” the former major said warmly, holding out a hand. “How good it is to see you again! How many years has it been?”
The doctor shook his head, taking John’s proffered hand and grasping tightly, smiling back. “Since the physical I did on you, I do believe, my old friend. When we discovered those old injuries weren’t healed up proper. I always felt bad about that diagnosis, John...”
Ah, yes, John reflected. That old lie. The lie about why he had to get out. The Colonel had given him that much dignity, at least, losing his commission over medical problems and not over, say, sodomizing a boy to the point of death, as he’d threatened, as would have been implied. But that exam, as with everything the Colonel had ever forced him to do, had truly haunted Major Harper, one of his best friends in the brigade. John had seen it in his face that day, so long ago. He saw it now.
John caught Murdock watching them, that eager, earnest, edgy look on his face, and he nodded at the butler. “Thank you, Captain,” he said. “I’ll only be a moment, okay?”
Murdock blinked at him, and nodded, slipping back inside the house.
Leaving them free to talk. Just as John had intended when he'd sent word to the doc's practice in uptown Manhattan. All part of the Plan, he reminded himself, but it was good to see an old friend again.
Even if it was to manipulate him to a desired end.
And the doctor sighed, falling back against the wall, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “What the hell is going on here, John? You’re a gardener? And Captain Murdock’s a butler and Corporal Baracus is a chauffeur, and Lieutenant Peck...”
“Yes,” John agreed, pulling hot smoke into his lungs, exhaling slowly. “Yes, Lieutenant Peck...”
“It’s as if I’ve entered some strange reality,” the doctor said in that soft way of his. “It’s all incredibly bizarre, John, where nothing is as it should be. Especially that boy. I never thought the Colonel would continue his old...”
“Habits?”
“I was going to say perversions, but then...” and the doctor trailed off. “You...”
“I hope you never thought of me as you thought of him, Alton."
“The Bible calls it a sin, John,” the doctor told him, and tapped out a cigarette, silence reigning for a moment as he lit it and tossed the match away into the dirty snow of the dead flower beds. “But you and Russell never...”
It was John’s turn to be silent, the thoughts of his old lover, his first lover, washing over him, and he shook his head. “I’ve never done what the Colonel’s done. Especially with young Peck...”
“I remember him from France, you know,” Major Harper reflected slowly. “Such a spirit in that boy. A wonderful mind. He could have been a great soldier, John, like you were. He reminded me of you, John. And then the Colonel came to me one morning, told me to make sure he knew how to cleanse himself for...” and he paused, watching his fingers roll the white paper of that cigarette between them. “I wondered often, John, when we were out there, how different thing might have been for the boy, if it had been you in command, instead of Peter Lynch.”
John closed his eyes for a moment. He’d wondered about that, too. Often. That night he’d first truly felt his Templeton, since they’d given themselves to each other, after the kid had fallen asleep against his chest, he’d wondered. How wonderful it might have been, to train him, to guide him, watch him grown, watch him become. He would have made such a fine soldier, his love. Such a fine, fine soldier.
But he didn’t give voice to any of that. “It’s pointless to speculate,” he grunted. “I’m doing what I can for him now.”
The doctor thought about that for a moment, and laughed without amusement. “You always were one for living life dangerously.”
“Never mind that,” the gardener sighed, hating and loving the other man for his perceptive nature. The doc had never judged, but he’d never approved, either. It was a credit to his character, John always thought, that the subject of his...unnatural nature had never become a critical issue between them, never affected the care his boys had gotten. “What’s wrong with the Colonel?”
“It’s poisoning, just as you said when you sent word. Pokeweed or some other regional herb, I would guess, but god knows where he’s getting it from. Doesn’t much matter. If the old bastard makes it to the new year, I’d eat my hat.”
“He’s dying, then, Alton?” the gardener pushed.
“I’d give him twelve to twenty-four hours,” Major Harper confirmed. “Possibly thirty-six. But I believe the damage has been done.”
John digested that for a moment, ignoring the unexpected rush of conflicting emotions, and flicked his cigar away. “Are you going to talk to Templeton? He’s more shaken up about all this than he’ll admit.”
“I will, poor kid,” Major Harper nodded, turning back to the door that led inside, into the warmth, but paused long enough to touch John’s shoulder, the faintest hint of their old comradeship in the gesture. “He’s stronger than you think, Hannibal,” he said, throwing out that old nickname, a sad, almost wistful look on his face, “and far more delicate both. Take care with him.”
“I’d do nothing less for that one,” he whispered back. “I’d do anything for him.”
The doctor stared at him for a moment more, and then, shaking his head, vanished back inside the house.
Something about the way that parting had happened, some tremble of premonition, and John considered just calling the whole thing off.
But that would be impossible.
The Plan, John, goddammit, the Plan, the gardener told himself.
Time to see this thing through.
+++++
The doctor was with the Colonel for a long time. Longer than Templeton would have guessed. Longer than Templeton would have preferred, as well, since the interim had filled up with Vance and Brock’s stories about their days at Harvard and how they dealt with professors who marked them down in Philosophy.
“...so, after that, we managed to get a bottle of his chief rival’s cologne and splash a bit on his wife’s clothes!” Vance laughed, gathering the cards back up for another hand.
Brock grinned back, one of the house’s well-worn poker chips balanced between two knuckles. “And then he publicly accused her of cheating on him...”
“...only after you planted those letters in his desk...”
“Oh, yes, there was that! That was a nice touch. But I always thought she dressed like a whore, so...”
Templeton felt more than slightly ill. Maybe it was the eggnog, which was far too rich for his stomach at the moment. Maybe it was the game, which he couldn’t concentrate on and had already lost the better part of fifty bucks to. Maybe it was the company, or the conversation, or whatever was going on upstairs...
Vance chuckled again, reaching over to slap Templeton on the back, and started shuffling. “Ah, yes, those were the...”
And then mercifully, horribly, the doors to the parlor banged open.
All three men looked up from the card table, Templeton expecting the doctor, but it was only Murdock. Murdock, looking slightly gray in the face, leaning ever so slightly on the door handle.
“Mr. Peck,” he said softly, shaking his head, “the doctor asked for you.”
Vance frowned, and pushed his chair back, up on its back legs. “Just him?” he asked icily.
Murdock nodded. “Sorry, sir, but...”
The Bureau man’s eyes narrowed, and then that sardonic grin was back. “Well, I suppose Templeton is his next of kin now,” he sighed dramatically, and Brock sniggered, and cracked some joke about whether or not Templeton had some secret family heir squirreled away somewhere, some illegimate child, if he was this damn important to the Colonel, which led to an idle, sarcastic laugh from Vance, and Templeton felt himself clenching a fist even as embarrassment tore through his guts.
“C’mon, son,” Major Harper said softly in his ear, touching his shoulder. “Let’s talk, you and I. I’d love to know what you’ve been up to, these last few years. Haven’t seen you since V-Day...”
Mute from embarrassment, as Brock continued to speculate on whether or not one of Templeton’s babies would be as pretty as him, the blonde man nodded, and let himself be led from the room.
+++++
John hesitated only a moment at the Colonel’s door. The house was quiet, all the guests sent home day ago, Vance and Brock off to some kind of careless trouble, no doubt, Murdock likely polishing the silver, as he always did when he was greatly upset, Templeton talking to Harper.
All of them, every human in the building, safely contained in other activities.
He and the Colonel could have been the last people on the planet, with no more privacy than that.
It was time.
He turned the knob and slipped inside.
It’d been over twenty years since the first time John met the Colonel. Twenty years he’d been in the man’s service, in one way or another. Twenty years. A lot had changed in that time, weapons, tactics, enemies, professions, tools. Blood to dirt, bayonets to spades.
But the Colonel had always been a constant, always a rock to John, in his own, strange way. No matter how much horror had run between them, all the ugliness and abuse, the Colonel had been loyal to him, and he to the Colonel. That solidity had formed the cornerstone of John’s adult life. The Colonel had never changed. The Colonel had never been weak, never old or frail or sick.
He had never allowed himself to be so.
But the sight that awaited the former major now was nothing like the man he’d once known.
A bedside light and the fireplace illuminated the room with a dull, unhealthy glow. It smelt of sickness, of rot and blood, reminding John of the old medic tents and that tang of death that filled it.
The Colonel was half-hidden in a nest of pillows in the midst of it all, the source of all that decay. His breathing was labored, echoing across the space to John’s ears. Dark red was spackled across the bedclothes. Those weary, worn hands resting above the rich sheets seemed older than anything he’d ever seen before.
Dying. Truly.
The poisoning had brought him low.
John felt a niggling of regret.
Perhaps he was too late.
Perhaps he had dragged this out too long.
Perhaps this man deserved a cleaner death.
But there was nothing to do but go forward, no path but the one he’d decided upon. The one to save Templeton, his sweet boy, his beautiful man, his great love. And by god, John was not going to fail him, not if it meant his own life in exchange. So he steeled his soul and squared his shoulders, and marched forward, right to the edge of that deathbed. Sat down. Gathered one of those knarled, weak hands in his own. Brushed fingertips across a fevered, wrinkled brow. And waited.
Not for long.
“...John...” the Colonel croaked, his voice a faint ghosting of what it had been, those days long ago, bellowing orders across the desert wastes of the Arizona Territory. “John, you’re here.”
“I promised I wouldn’t leave you, sir,” the gardener murmured, recalling the words he’d spoken when he’s accepted the job at the estate, hating himself for being such a coward. “So I’m here.”
Bloodshot eyes watched him carefully. “Harper says I’m dying.”
John nodded. “I’d say that’s right.”
“He says I’m being poisoned.”
“Looks to be, sir,” John replied levelly, in the softest voice he could manage. “Sweating, vomiting blood, spasms, fever, weakness...tell me, is your heart beating faster? Is your breathing slowing? Does it feel like you’re dying?”
Those reddened eyes narrowed further, a weak growl issuing forth from that ruined throat. “What are you playing at, Smith?”
The Plan, John reminded himself.
But it took no effort at all to force a grin, to lean down and whisper what he’d been wanting to whisper since this whole affair started. What he’d wanted to do, since that private had died, since the Colonel had caught him and Russell together, since the moment he’d laid eyes on the old, monied, privileged, careless, evil bastard.
“I know what you’re being poisoned with, sir,” he said in a low voice, right in the Colonel’s ear. “I know, because it’s me who’s been doing it.”
For a moment, everything ceased. All noise. All movement. Everything.
And then the Colonel lunged. Lunged. Hampered by blankets and sickness and waste of muscle , but lunged, nonetheless, grabbing for John. Who just stepped back, releasing the old bastard to watch him fall forward onto the bed, hacking, horrible coughs racking his body with spasms.
He felt a twinge of regret, John did, leaving this so long. But any trace of sympathy or regret wasn’t going to do at all for the situation, for the game he had to play, for the image he needed to present in order for it all to work out the way he desperately, desperately needed to. So he covered his own discomfort by walking over to the sideboard and pouring a glass of water from the large carafe there.
John didn’t turn his back, so he saw the Colonel’s eyes fixed on him. Furious. Betrayed.
He tried not to shudder.
Forcing the Colonel back up, John tried not to think about the flecks of blood on his lower chin, and pressed the glass to his mouth. That dark, fevered gaze locked on him once more, and he shook his head. “It’s not poisoned, you idiot. You think I’d do something that obvious?”
Those eyes never leaving John, the Colonel sipped slowly, gulping with a disgusting, thick sound, and pushed the gardener’s hand away after only a few swallows, making a face. John set the glass aside and picked up a washcloth that Murdock had on a little makeshift nurse’s station, half soaked in a cool bowl of water. He wetted the cloth and squeezed out the excess, dabbing lightly at his former commander’s forehead. He was burning up, horribly feverish. John said a silent prayer that he’d managed the time on this one right.
He had to.
For Temp.
And, after a few horrible seconds, the Colonel cleared his throat and spoke.
“Why?”
John forced that smile, that hungry, happy smile, and nodded. “Considering, sir? Perhaps you should be asking why not?”
“I protected you, John,” the Colonel said, nostrils flaring a little. “I gave you safe harbor from the world that would have destroyed you, from your own inherent decay...”
“Only to protect your own evils, sir. No altruistic impulse has ever fired your heart to action,” John snapped back, angry over that comment, and not worried about showing it. He was tired, tired of being ashamed of what he wanted, what he was. Tired of being told it was wrong to love another man.
“Perhaps I trusted you,” the dying Colonel replied. “Perhaps I wanted you near me, John, for you were the only man I did trust.”
“Only to protect your money,” John said with a shake of his head, dunking and wringing and dabbing again. “My loyalty to you has nothing to do with any kind of affection for you. I’ve hated you from the first moment I laid eyes on you...”
“So you kill me?” And the Colonel cackled, a sound rendered demonic by the phlegm in his throat and the vomit stuck just beneath. “You kill me now.”
“I kill you now,” John confirmed.
The Colonel nodded, and gestured for the water, surprisingly calm for all of that. Like some warlord of old in his calm, he seemed to John, Attila with rare furs tucked about his feet, nodding as his advisers spoke of some village burned, far away from him. John gave him the glass, and he drank deeply.
When he spoke again, he was far more collected.
“Then I ask you, Major Smith, why now?”
John leaned in, grabbed his shoulders firmly, letting the old man feel every ounce of his strength, and pressed in close to his ear. His skin smelt foul, the toxicity of his blood, of his very soul, leaking out through the pores, perhaps. But John bore it down, because he did not trust himself to be seen as he said...
“Templeton Peck.”
There was no response, but he could feel the tension in the Colonel’s shoulders, feel the anger beginning anew. So John repeated himself.
“Templeton. Peck.” And those words said, he pulled back, the smile firmly in place, despite the sliding feeling deep in his gut, the tear in his heart. “Your precious little Lieutenant.”
The Colonel’s throat did a curious swallow, and his lips trembled for a moment before he spoke. “Godssake, John, we’ve known each other twenty years. And you’d kill me for a boy?”
It was...almost sad. As if he truly did not expect it.
But John couldn’t get distracted by it. He had to stay focused. Stayed focused on the Plan, the one he’d been working on in his head from that first kiss, in the shade under the summer trees, half a year ago. His Templeton. His beautiful, amazing, darling Templeton.
He firmed his grip on the Colonel’s shoulders, and pressed on.
“For that one, absolutely. He’s so sweet, isn’t he? All those needy little whimpers he can’t quite hold back, that little half-moon birthmark on his thigh, those expressive eyes...”
The Colonel stared. “You’re...”
“Fucking him, oh yes,” John confirmed, and smiled more broadly. “Oh yes. He was so lonely, Colonel, so eager for attention with you gone to work all day. And he’s so eager to please, just as you described him, begging for my cock, taking me all in as his pretty eyes tear up with joy...”
“You lie,” the Colonel hissed. “You lie, John. He loves me. I alone control him...”
John chuckled as darkly as he could manage, and sat down on the edge of the bed, releasing the Colonel’s shoulders in favor of patting his hand where it lay on the coverlet. “You’ve never understood what boys like him really need. Not pretty baubles and fancy cloths, no. If you want to own a kid like that, all you have to do is tell him you love him. And you’ve never done that. He cried so, the first time he told me as much...”
“He tells me he loves me,” the Colonel said, confusion growing, the fever creeping back in to his voice, and John hoped like hell the old bastard had enough life in him to do what needed to be done.
Perhaps not.
Time to open the taps a bit more.
“He says what I tell him to say to you, Colonel. Fakes devotion to you in order to secure your trust, just as I’ve instructed him,” John growled, and patted the Colonel’s hand again. “In order to secure the inheritance.”
The Colonel began to speak, but another coughing fit consumed him, and John didn’t do anything about it but turn away, and drop the washcloth in the tub. “Your life, your boy, your money. Everything you care about, Peter, I’m taking from you. Just like you took my life from me. It’s a fair trade, wouldn’t you say?”
He could hear screaming as he left the room.
And something in John broke apart, hearing that echoing down the hall after him, tearing around him as he made for the servants’ stairs.
The Plan, John, the Plan, he reminded himself as his knees gave out and he sat down heavily on the top step, head falling into his hands.
The Plan.
How he rued it.
When John had heard the Colonel was experiencing symptoms like he was, he’d been fairly certain he knew what it was, and why.
John had never forgotten his first month on the estate, back when he was still toying with the idea of working in the firm, the night he’d seen a tall, dark-haired boy emerge into the corridor from the Colonel’s room, tears in his eyes.
Tears he’d dashed, glaring at John.
The former major had tried to talk with him about it, ask if there was anything he could do, but Vance had only shaken his head, and asked if John couldn’t scrounge up some war to throw his father back into, get him away. Never a word, but John had known. And as much as he hated Vance for the bitter, sarcastic man he’d grown into, he understood, at a certain level, why that had all come to be.
Which was why John didn’t begrudge the boy his revenge. Hadn’t stopped him at all, when he’d oh so innocently come by four or five years ago, and asked if there was any pokeweed on the property.
Pokeweed, poisonous in high enough quantities, but quite present in low concentrations in certain medications. Like the Colonel’s arthritis tincture. What an elegant solution, John had thought at the time, upping the concentration, letting the man poison himself.
And so the gardener mentioned a few patches he’d seen, the fact that it was deadly if it was the wrong age and unboiled. John hadn't bothered to remove the plant after that conversation. He didn’t approve of murder, he did not, but he understood. Perhaps sympathized a bit. Yet still...
The only thing he couldn’t understand was why Vance had waited so long, until Templeton had emerged as a clear threat, to take action.
Maybe it was the same reason he’d found that little sleight-of-hand trick with the responsibility for the poisoning, for claiming the Colonel’s as-yet unmet death as his own kill.
After all these years, after everything that had happened, after all the ugliness, all the cruelty, there was something horrible seeing his old commander brought that low, brought to that...
But that was useless. All useless. The bad far outstripped the good. So for whatever guilt he carried in the man’s death, he was at peace with it.
For there was Templeton.
His sweet Templeton.
John had needed a way to get Templeton away from the Colonel, which meant that either the Colonel thought he was dead, which was going to be tricky, complicated, dangerous, or...
Or the Colonel disinherited Templeton, and threw him out.
John had learned, a long time ago, to use whatever life threw at him, turn lemons into lemonaide, or whatever the expression was. So when he’d heard about the poisoning, that was it. That was the way out. So much better than having to fake a death.
He knew the Colonel well enough to know that accusing Templeton of cheating would be enough to do it. Would be the only thing that would do it. That the Colonel would be so enfuriated he wouldn’t so much as speak to Templeton agai. And he knew Vance would get everything in order immediately, draft papers good enough to pass at his old law firm, which handled all the Lynch affairs. Templeton would be disowned. Nobody would go after the kid, either, once the money was not be an issue. John had known this family a long time, and dysfunctional as they were, he was confident in the responses he would get. As long as he sheparded it along in the right manner.
John rubbed his hands together, and pushed himself up, headed downstairs, to ensure that Murdock got up here, that the news went to Vance, that he intercepted Templeton and got him off the estate before anything might happen to him. BA had already been put on notice, was waiting in the garage, automobile ready, on call to take them to Manhattan, to freedom, to everything that would come...
And he smiled, thinking about Templeton. His boy’s beautiful face, that beautiful soul within, the feel of their tongues mingling, the sound of his needy little moans, the wide-eyed wonder in his eyes, every time they kissed...
Hurrying downstairs, into the kitchens and pantry, John only prayed the old man had enough life in him to get the proper paperwork signed.
Except Murdock wasn’t where he expected him to be.
Nowhere.
On the entire ground floor.
And John, heart in his throat, a sudden and unwelcome terror growing in him, found cook, who was slaving away over a stockpot of chicken bones and roots vegetables from the cellar.
“Oh,” she said with a smile, “the Colonel called about twenty minutes ago for Murdock to find Mr. Vance and Mr. Peck, to come see him in his room. He sounded in a bad way...”
“Called?” John asked, a ball of panic tightening in his airway, choking him.
“On the house telephone,” and cook shrugged. “I don’t hold with it, you know, John, he only had it put in a few months ago, and it’s been nothing but a nuisance...”
But John wasn’t listening.
No.
Not at all.
He was running, hell bent for leather, towards the garage, cursing himself for forgetting a detail such as that.
Bosco was there.
Templeton wasn’t.
And by the time John got back to the house, to see if he could catch Templeton there, before...
It was too late.
The Colonel was dead.
Templeton was gone.
And Vance, damn him, was breaking out the champagne.
