Paper Doll - Part Ten
Sep. 15th, 2011 07:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sonora_conejaPairing: Face/OMC, Hannibal/Face
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
John’s plan has unintended consequences, and Templeton leaves the Colonel’s house forever...
Templeton looked around at the bleak little YMCA room, so much different from where he’d been living the past year. Stripped of pleasantries, the only adornment a framed, faded copy of the Lord’s Prayer. A thin bed on its weak springs, a small dresser, a single, rickety chair. It was clean though, and the sheets the front desk attendant had given him smelled acceptable.
It wasn’t a prison, at least. It wasn’t a cage. And it wasn’t a lie.
There was something comforting, the young man thought dully to himself, about the empty honesty of the little space, but he couldn’t feel it.
Couldn’t feel anything.
Templeton, my lad, you know that I have always looked after you and always would. So understand that this pains me to do...
What pains you, sir?
He tossed the linens down on the foot of the bare bed and sat down heavily in the single chair, peeling his gloves and jacket off, numb. It wasn’t just the cold, seeped into his bones from the night, from the sixteen blocks he’d had to walk from where Bosco had dropped him off, from the drive from Long Island into Manhattan. Wasn’t merely the guilt, from lying to Bosco about the Plan, about meeting John downtown in a few days, just to get the big chauffeur to take him away from the horror. Wasn’t just the surging grief at what he’d lost tonight.
No, it was more elemental than that, what was running through him. More base. More...selfish.
It was all his old survival instincts surging back into the fore, planning, shaping, executing as if on their own accord.
He knew, knew in theory, what he should do. What he would do. Left the mansion. Come downtown. Stopped far away from his ultimate goal. Stopped for the night while the trains weren’t running.
Now, there was just to head to Grand Central Station, first thing in the morning. Get a train to Chicago or Pittsburg or Boston or anywhere but here. Get the hell out of town. Pawn a few things, find a good card game or two, someplace to work, someplace to sleep, rebuild some semblance of a life.
Leave all of this behind.
The Colonel.
Vance.
That damn estate.
And...
And John.
John.
Templeton moaned, even thinking that name, and fell forward in the chair, elbows to knees, as shattered emotion, shards torn from his soul by the events of the evening, tore at him like so much broken glass. The echoes in the dark, reeking bedroom, threatening to tear him apart.
Sir, what is this? What did I do to...
You’re signing these papers V-Vance has for you, my boy. You’re being disinherited.
...sir, please...
Sign the fucking papers, Peck. Sign them now...
How stupid he had been.
How foolish.
To believe that there was something real and true and honest and pure in the world. To not see through the lies and the falsehoods, to not see past his own wretched desires for affection, to let himself be manipulated so.
I don’t understand, Colonel. I...
Your...your lover, J-John Smith...
Sir, no, please, no...
You did, my boy. You...you did.
He poisoned my father because of you, Templeton.
Vance, what are you talking about? You’re the one killing him! You! You did this!
It’s John, Templeton. John.
Templeton hadn’t wanted to believe. Hadn’t wanted to think it at all.
But the way John spoke of the Colonel. The way John hated the man. The way John had told him about the poisoning, hadn’t reacted, had seemed almost happy...
And he hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking.
Why?
One little question, one little answer, and his world fell to pieces.
Because he wanted the money you are going to inherit. Were. Were going to inherit...
No...
John did. He told...t-told me as much. I do not blame...do not blame you, my boy. He manipulated you into...thinking that he...loved you, and all for the money...my family’s fortune...to a fucking...fucking sodomite...
Sir, no, he’s not like that, he would never...
The money, Templeton, my...my boy...
No.
No.
They’d...they’d started before the inheritance was discussed. Long before. He’d seen John in the gardens, unawares, bringing himself off with Templeton’s name on his lips.
It wasn’t possible.
Templeton wanted to say it to himself again now. He wanted the tears to stop. He wanted the revelation to fade into nothingness, to be laid bare as a lie or lost from his memory.
But...
He...he wouldn’t do that.
So you admit to cheating?
No, he...he wouldn’t...he doesn’t care about money...
He...he did it to hurt me...a dying man...
No, Colonel, no...
But Templeton feared, no, knew...knew...
John knew people, knew what was in their hearts. John planned, schemed, plotted. And John had told him that only his death would release him from the Colonel’s service, so...
If this was happening, then it was happening for a reason.
...which meant it was true.
Know that I always...always loved you...my boy...but I cannot look at you any longer. It...pains me to know...know that you can be so cheaply bought...be smarter...in your future...
Sir...please...
Sign on the line, Temp, and get the fuck out of my father’s house.
Foolish.
To believe that John had spoken true.
To believe that John had truly loved him.
But in the end, in the very bitter end, it had been the Colonel who’d been honest with him. It had been the Colonel who’d never lied to him. It had been the Colonel who truly cared for him.
Hadn’t it?
Hadn’t that been what the Colonel had done for him? Opened his eyes to his own naiveity. To his mistakes. Given him that last lesson.
No matter how much it broke his heart, seeing it all. The Colonel, so sick, dying, knowing he couldn’t be there to offer him the simplest of comforts as he slipped away. Vance, the strain and stress on his face, grief so over-evident it was unbelievable he had never seen it before. John, the man he’d wanted to...well, John was something entirely different from what Templeton had believed him to be.
Wasn’t he?
It didn’t matter now, though.
It was all over.
It was all gone.
Sighing, Templeton picked himself up. He stripped to his underwear, laying his clothes across the chair carefully, and started unfolding those sheets, making up his miserable little bed for the night. Just for the night. Just one night. In the morning, he would be gone, far away from the nightmare of his own idiocy. A whole ream of mistakes, to never be repeated.
“Never again,” he whispered to himself, feeling it a vow, and switched off the little lamp.
But as he lay there in the dark, feeling the springs beneath the thin pallet, the boiled sheets itching across his skin, Templeton clung to his pillow, more alone than he had ever been before. For as false as it had been, as untrue as John’s feelings might have been for him, he now knew what it felt like to be held by someone he loved.
For he knew he would never have that again.
He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
+++++
In the Colonel’s old study, John was frantic.
“What do you mean, he left?” he demanded, pacing up and down the Turkish rug. It didn’t make any sense.
Templeton wouldn’t just leave.
Templeton wouldn’t leave him
Unless the Colonel had told him...
The gardener had found Murdock in tears in the kitchen after coming back in from the garage, badly shaken. Murdock was barely coherant, but John got a bit out of him, just that he had escorted Vance and Templeton up to the Colonel’s room. It hadn’t been ten minutes after he’d ducked back inside, after, to bathe the man’s fever once again, that the Colonel had breathed his last. He’d come back down to tell Doc Harper, who’d asked for a cup of coffee before leaving and was thus available to go up and inspect the body.
“But Temp, Murdock, Temp...”
“Temp didn’t talk after he got outta there, John. His face was all green and he headed for them back stairs. He looked real sad...”
John had dashed back outside upon hearing that, but Bosco wasn’t in the garage any longer and neither was the automobile.
Templeton was gone.
And so John was in the study, with Vance, trying to get his head around whatever had happened in that room. What had happened to his boy.
But in his heart of hearts, he already knew. And the fear of it, in him, was growing to choke him..
“He left,” Vance said calmly, unscrewing the little cage from the top of the champagne bottle. “He said something about...there not being a reason for him to be here any longer, now that the Colonel decided he wouldn’t be getting one red cent.” The Bureau man paused, and popped the cork off, a spurt of foamed 1910 Duval-Leroy dancing out.
“That is not what he said,” John growled, pausing to stare, wishing he could divine the series of events directly from the brat’s brain.
“It is,” Vance shot back, and poured three glasses of bubbling golden liquid. He handed one to Brock, that goddamned private investigator, who was sitting smugly in one of the armchairs. “Rather beneficial, regardless, don’t you think?”
“How does Templeton leaving benefit anyone?”
“We can pin the crime on him,” Brock said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to think. “Otherwise, it will just turn into a he-said, she-said between you and Vance when you both, inevitably, accuse each other of the crime.”
“Crime? So you’re admitting...”
“Oh, it’s not me. Doc Harper was just in here. Said my father was poisoned. Imagine that.”
“Imagine,” John threw back sarcastically, his guts twisting up.
“Yes, wild accusations would be bad,” Vance agreed. “Especially since you keep the grounds, and you have quite the knowledge about poisonous plants...”
The gardener felt sick. All his carefully laid plans...there was a way out of this, he knew it, he knew it to be true. But he couldn’t think of anything. All he could think of was his boy, his sweet, beautiful boy, out there alone, somewhere, and no way of getting to him. “You have far more reason to kill the man than I. Shall I tell this hypothetical jury of all those times I witnessed you coming out of your father’s room, late at night?”
It hung, the threat, the implications of all the things that would come, heavy and dark in the room for a moment, some of that cockiness slipping from Vance’s face, but then Brock laughed. Hard and harsh. Breaking the mood entirely.
“It’s all a matter of what can be proven,” the gumshoe laughed, and paused for a moment, grabbing for something on the desk behind him. “This officially repeals that farce of a document that named Angelface there beneficiary,” Brock contributed, holding up a sheet of paper scribbled about in Vance’s strong hand. “It’s even got Templeton’s signature on it, right here...”
John shook his head. “That won’t hold up in court, either. Any more than your murder charges against me.”
“Then it’s a good thing that Templeton won’t be around to challenge it,” Vance replied, and offered John a glass, his blue eyes smiling cruelly.
John resisted the urge to hit him. “If he wanted the money, why would he leave it behind over something so easily disputed?”
Vance’s smile deepened. “Perhaps he knew that a certain someone was only fucking him for that money.”
Fuck.
What he had feared.
But John could still feel the blood draining from his face.
What he had said...what he had intimated...of course the old bastard used that against his boy. Of course Templeton, the orphaned, abused boy within him, had run.
From the supposed revelation that the man who loved him had merely been manipulating him for profit?
Of course he'd run.
John scrubbed a big hand across his forehead. He had ruined it, ruined it all...
“You’re welcome to stay on as the head groundskeeper on my estate, John, of course, and we can forget any of this ever happened. A terrible accident, the old fool’s arthritis tincture was off,” Vance told him, grinning again.
“I’d rather be castrated than work for you,” John growled, and slammed the glass down on the nearest table, turning to go.
“Oh, but John, if you leave, I shall have to take that as an admission of guilt and see that the Bureau issue an arrest warrant for you!” Vance told him in a low voice.
John stiffened, but walked on, the mocking laughter following him into the hall, lost in thought.
He had to do something. There had to be something he could do. But Harper was already gone and Murdock was a mess and the rest of the staff were useless and Bosco had the automobile...
There was no way into the city, no way to go after Templeton, no way to know where he was, until Bosco returned with the Rolls.
John knew he had at least an hour before there was a chance of that happening.
Enough time to make it to his cottage and back.
He had a few things to gather if the Plan was to change this drastically.
If they were to do this.
If Templeton would even have him back.
If he could even find his love again.
+++++
Templeton had a dream that night.
He dreamt that he tossed and turned and tossed again, unable to get comfortable as half-memories of the Colonel tore through him mind. He dreamt that he moaned and woke only to tumble to sleep again, unable to hold on to anything real, nothing discerned, chaos descending in the cold little room.
And then he dreamt that he was warm again, as the black night turned to gray dawn, that he was anchored again, that there were strong arms around him, holding him to the world, that there was a voice in his ear, whispering sweet words to him about the Rocky Mountains and bright stars and everything they’d promised each other, driving away the evil in the night, replacing it with that undescribable sweetness he’d only ever found with...
“John,” he moaned, trying to wake himself, unable to deal with that dream any longer. “John, please...”
But the dream seemed determined to follow him as he surfaced, because there was a whisper in his ear, or so it seemed. John’s voice, John’s wonderful tenor, telling him, “I’m here, my love, I’m here...”
And that was so wonderful, such a wonderful thought, that nothing had gone wrong, that John was still with him, that they could still be lovers...
Except that it wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be.
“No!” he half yelled, jerking up and awake and away from the torment of those phantom desires. His back hit the wall and his head hit his hands. “No, please god, no...”
But God must have been listening, for once in his miserable existence, He’d given him something he needed.
An empty room, an empty bed, silence in place of John’s voice.
He sighed.
Sweetheart, my love, my sweet boy.
How he longed to hear that. To hear it from a man who truly loved him...it had been a wonderful thing. Even if it had been a lie, it had been a wonderful thing.
But he now knew it was a lie. So there was no going back, no finding comfort in it. No acknowledging it.
Templeton still felt himself tearing up, and dashed the moisture from his eyes. He knew what he had to do, he knew his plan, and while it might not have been as clever as John’s, it would still serve him well.
So he slipped from the bed where he’d dreamed his lover had been curled up against him, and shook out his trousers and his shirt, dressing as fast as he could. He had to get away from these memories.
Except that maybe God hadn’t listened to him after all.
Because there, on the front stoop of the YMCA building, was a tall, lanky man smoking a cigar, wrapped in an old woolen jacket, looking up as the door banged shut behind the young man, and Templeton thought his heart might stop.
He stared for a moment, his mind refusing to process the information, that John had found him. That John had found him, and was there and was smiling at him, smiling at him so, so hopefully...
“Kid...” he said, that smile infectious on his handsome face. Just begging for Templeton to smile back.
And everything inside of Templeton locked up. He couldn't. He couldn't...
“Please...please go,” he said quietly, coming down the chilly steps and out on to the main sidewalk. “Just leave me alone.”
“Temp, just listen to me...” John said, rising to his feet and tossing the cigar away.
“No, John,” and he sighed, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and walking back towards Grand Central. If he could reach the station, he’d be free. Free of all of this. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“I waited for Bosco to get home, asked him to take me back out to where he’d dropped you off,” John’s voice explained softly, walking behind him. “He told me what direction you headed off in, so I went the opposite way. I stopped at every bar and flophouse between there and Grand Central Station, and when I didn’t find you at any of them, I...I kept walking.”
“And stopped here?”
“I just...it felt right, kid. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but...I knew you were here, so I stopped and waited.”
Templeton paused at that, feet halting, not believing that for a moment. According to the clock he’d seen as he’d come down the stairs, it was 6:23 AM. “But...”
“I’ve only been here about half an hour, waiting.” John sounded sheepish. Templeton did not lift his eyes from the sidewalk. “It took some time to...”
“To what, track me down?” Templeton snapped, trying not to give in to that clamoring in his chest telling him to turn around and run back into John’s arms.
“Most of the night, kid.”
He shook his head. “For godssake, John, why? The Colonel took me off his will. You’ve got no reason...you’ve lost your revenge...”
And then John was there in front of him, clearly wanting to touch but restraining himself, given where they were. “I know he told you that I was only with you for the money, kid, but...”
“Did you tell...did you tell him that?”
John hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to talk about,” Templeton said, and shoved past John, continuing on down towards the train station.
“Templeton, wait!” John called, rushing after him. “Please, kid, hear me out...”
“There’s nothing to listen to,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, and tucked his chin further down into his collar as he picked up his pace down the quiet street of red brick buildings. Christ, he thought, it was a cold, cold morning.
“Yes, Temp, yes there absolutely is,” John growled, surging ahead, and a hand landed on his shoulder, yanking the young man about so hard he almost lost his balance entirely.
Templeton’s back hit the alley wall, knocking the air out of him entirely. And for a moment, all he could feel was the hand on his collar and the brick behind him and the older man’s strength and he couldn’t run. The feeling of entrapment was overwhelming.
He shut his eyes and slumped back.
“I can’t fix it for you, John,” he said, defeated.
“Fix what, Temp?”
“I can’t...I can’t go back and get him to put me back on the will. He knows I was...that we were...he won’t take me back, even if he’s still alive...even if you haven’t...haven’t killed him yet...”
“Oh, kid,” and that hand left his collar, sliding up into his hair, lifting his head off the side of building, cradling it so tenderly, Templeton was put in mind of that winter night in John’s little cottage. “None of that matters.”
“It does matter.” He dared to look, to see John’s soft blue eyes watching him so carefully, and Templeton looked away, focusing on the alley wall beyond the man’s shoulder. “You killed him. And you never loved me...”
“It doesn’t matter, Temp, because I don’t care about his goddamned money, or revenge, or him, or Vance or anything at that goddamned estate,” John continued, his other hand sliding around the younger man’s waist, pulling them close. “It was only ever you. It’s only ever been you.”
Templeton pulled back, unable to move far, but moving nonetheless. What? What was John talking about? And his heart started beating faster. Was it possible that...
“I lied, my love. I lied so I could get you out of there. I lied about why he was dying, I lied about what I wanted with you. I told him I was killing him for his money, your money, so he’d let you go. It was all I could think of, to keep you safe...”
“W...w-what?” Templeton stammered, thinking about what that could mean. That John had willing confessed to a murder he hadn’t committed, had branded himself a criminal...all for him? That didn’t make sense. Why would John do something like that? It was suicide. With Vance in the Bureau, that federal agency, there’d be nowhere John could hide, no state that was safe. “John...”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before he did.” Fingertips touched his face, tracing a curving S along the top of his cheekbone. “I’m so sorry, Temp. I never intended for you to suffer so because of it.”
“You put a price on your head,” Templeton said, furrowing his brow, looking up at the older man in confusion. “John, that’s an insane plan...”
“Not necessarily,” John said seriously. “I retrieved the bottle of tincture Vance had been poisoning, gave it to Bosco. He’ll take it over to Major Harper for me. The police can pull fingerprints from the glass...”
“What if that doesn’t work? Vance could still pin this on you...”
“Then he pins it on me,” the older man replied, shrugging his shoulders, and Templeton realized they were terribly close once again and one of his own hands hand slid underneath John’s jacket. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
Templeton rolled his gaze slowly to meet John’s, confusion flooding him fully. The last day had been so difficult, so obscured, he couldn’t parse through all the conflict in his mind. There was a fog he couldn't get through. A book of revelation he could not read. “Why?” he whispered, desperately needing an answer. “Why?”
John kissed him softly, barely, holding him in the dirty shadows, and murmured the answer in his ear. Templeton could feel the rumble of lovely tenor words deep inside himself, warming him through, lighting a fire within him that burned away the last of the grasping doubts, and he clung tight as they ran their course and turned to ash and blew away in the light huff of his lover’s breath.
“I...I was going to go west, John,” he managed, trembling, as the final sentence trailed into silence, as uncertain blue eyes met his own. “Somewhere new.”
“You’ll find the West a worthy challenge, my love.”
“Maybe. But if I have someone come with me,” he replied hopefully, “it would be a wonderful thing. We could take it on together.”
John pulled away, cupping Templeton’s hands in his own for a moment, and then laying his palms on the younger man’s shoulders. “You don’t need a tour guide or a guardian any more, Temp. You've...you've become, my love, so much more than that.”
“But I do need a partner,” and he smiled, loving the man, loving being able to love him again. “How else am I to work the ranch?”
A moment more, John watched him, his eyes shifting a little, as if he was thinking very hard, and then a dazzling smile broke out on his face. And then a beautiful laugh tore loose from his throat.
And then he laid an arm around Templeton’s shoulders, hugging him tight as he could, leading them from the alley, towards the station and whatever their future would hold for them.
While those words echoed still in Templeton’s heart.
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it;
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect
And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
+++++
Three Months Later
Templeton cast an appreciative eye around the interior of the Broadmoor’s foyer, the front desk tucked tastefully within the curve of a spiral staircase, everything clad in rich mahoganies and maroons, as a liveried concierge presented them with their room key.. Who would have thought such a place of true European luxury existed in the rough mining country of the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range. He’d heard rumors about the place, of course, but he hadn’t thought them this true. And everything, just from the long, cold carriage ride up from the Colorado Springs terminal through a still-wintery pine forest, the beautiful rise of the hotel’s facade through the trees, the grand arches of the entrance, all had the feel of a fairytale.
He thoroughly approved.
Their finances, between the thousands John had saved in his years with the Colonel, the pawning of a few choice pieces of jewelry Templeton had in his pockets, the occasional card game, and a few fees they’d taken here and there, helping out speakeasy owners or shopkeepers in some of the cities they’d stopped at in their three-month journey here, weren’t terrible. Good enough, in fact, to afford a week or two here straight out.
But Templeton believed that they would need every cent of what they had, to start out with a good parcel of land as John wanted, and had resigned himself to a boring few weeks in Denver’s industrial gloominess. But he’d managed to win, through an intentionally convoluted poker game in one of the nicer social clubs in Denver he’d managed to scam his way into, a month’s paid stay at the landmark hotel from an rather morose hotel manager. Which would give them plenty of time. In April, John said, the snows should be infrequent enough to accurate judge a parcel’s merit.
So in the meantime, they got to linger in the lap of luxury. With Egyptian cotton sheets and inclusive room service and ensuite baths and a fully stocked bar that the police had never, ever, bothered to raid.
Templeton couldn’t wait. He didn’t plan on letting John out of the room for at least two, three days. They’d been on the move so long, trying to glean tidbits of information from the national papers, afraid that the other shoe would drop at any moment, that the Bureau or some gumshoe would be lying in wait for them. It was somewhat excited, thinking they were wanted men, exotic criminals, but mostly it was just exhausting. A break would do them both good.
“...and breakfast is served from eight to ten in the dining room on the second floor,” the man checking them in concluded in a French accent, and nodded to John. “Anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, monsieur, do not hesitate to ask.”
John smiled graciously at the man, those strangely refined manners of his on display, wrapped as he was in that perfectly cut suit he’d had tailored in Denver for the occasion. “Thank you, for both me and my nephew.”
The concierge chuckled, and nodded back again. “Of course, monsieur. I shall have the bellhop show you to your rooms.” And as he called the boy over to take their bags, Templeton caught some quick French from the man.
“Neveu ? Ces deux sont amants...”
He smiled over the deep curve of the banister, looking down at the man. “Ne dites pas de telles choses si bruyamment, monsieur. Nous ne sommes pas à Paris ici!” he called, and the concierge smiled back up at him.
“I shall send you some champagne, then, monsieurs? On the house?”
“Anything but a 1910 Duval-Leroy,” John supplied breezily, but caught Templeton’s elbow as they climbed the spiral stair. “What did he say, kid?”
Templeton grinned, and leaned in, as they emerged up into a great gold and cream space, done up in the most tasteful of Victorian-era decor, glass windows facing the majestic Rockies clad in their winter whites. “He said he could tell we were lovers, and I told him to keep it quiet. Ah, the enlightened French...”
And he laughed as John started choking.
Their room was spacious and bright, two beds in separate little rooms, only one of which would be seeing any use, heavy curtains thrown open to the fairy story of unspoilt forest surrounding the hotel. Templeton stood at the window, watching that world beyond , as the bellhop deposited their luggage and John tipped the appropriate amount and the door closed behind. A hand ran around the young man’s shoulders and he smiled, leaning back as his lover leaned forward, cheeks brushing together.
“Is this what you were dreaming of, sweetheart? Something such as this?”
“Yes,” Templeton replied, not really looking at the room but instead considering the slope of land running east to the high, rolling plains, white and glinting in the afternoon sun. “It’s everything you said it would be.”
“You should see it in the summer, after the July storms turn it all to green,” John whispered in his ear, and ran his lips around the shell of Templeton’s ear. “Wonderful country.”
“Mm,” the younger man nodded, and turned, those big,wonderful hands sliding around the wool of his his suit coat, until they were facing each other once more. “Wonderful.”
“Beautiful,” John agreed, rubbing the small of his back.
“Everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Perfect in every way.”
“Amazing...”
“Irresistable...”
“Ours, together...”
And the way John was looking at him when he said it, those dancing blue eyes so full of love and lust and need and affection, had Templeton surging up on his toes, seizing his lover’s hair, claiming his mouth, with every ounce of his strength.
John was startled, but only for a moment. He regained his bearings and gained control, whirling them both about and laughing as he broke out of the embrace, Templeton’s hands held so lovingly in his own. “Come to bed with me, my love,” he crooned, tugging lightly, walking backwards.
“Oui,” Templeton replied, cheeky, and laughed back.
The bed was soft. Soft and huge, long enough for John’s long body to rest comfortably on, but Templeton had no intention of letting his lover rest right then. It had been nearly five days since they’d been in a position to do this together, to make their seamless coupling, and he needed that. Needed it badly. Needed it more than anything.
John took his time, though, undressing him slowly, kissing every inch of skin as it was exposed beneath his questing fingertips. It had Templeton quivering, arching up, moaning as his filling cock sprang free into the cooler air of the room.
“Beautiful,” his lover growled, moving down the young blonde’s body to strip those trousers and boots away. “All mine.”
“Ever...ever yours,” Templeton agreed shakily, watching as John’s lips touched to his thigh, right above his knee.
It got him another growl, and John started working his way up.
Nips and kisses, sucking tension and soothing slides of warm tongue against his skin. Templeton propped himself on his elbows, head fallen back, moaning, the sensation, John’s worship, almost more than he could handle, breathless for the moment that his eager cock would be encased in wet, wonderful heat.
But his lover only sucked lightly on each of his balls, just once, pulling the tender skin into his mouth and out again, and those kisses continued. Up the line of dark little hairs that led to his navel. Up the center of his belly and chest. Pausing to worry at the curve of neck to shoulder, teeth and suction raising a bruise before moving up further. Templeton touched this, face hot, arousal unbearable under his lover’s still-clothed form, as John placed one last kiss to the underside of his jaw and propped up over the top of him.
He pressed himself down, the hard tent of his still concealed erection straining the buttons of his fly, and nuzzled close to Templeton’s neck. “I need you, kid.”
“You have me, old man,” he moaned back, running both hands up into silver hair. “You always have me.”
They kissed again, faster, hotter, deeper, as John pushed his hips up to draw himself out. Their lips never left one another’s, not as John’s massive cock glided against his own, not as John opened a small tin, contents already warmed from its ride in his pocket. And Templeton clung hard, to John’s shoulders, to John’s mouth, savoring every grunt and grumble of possession as a knee was pushed to his chest, as slicked fingers dove into him and opened him wide.
It didn’t take much any longer, Templeton’s body adjusted to his lover’s length and girth, and it was without a single twinge of pain that they came together, the younger man sighing with pleasure as he was filled, in that way only John could fill him. Of everything they did together, all their physical exertions and explorations, it was the first push that Templeton loved the most. That first slide of hard flesh into him, hitting every erotic spot he had, reminding him of what they were to each other, of the love they shared...
“Is that what you wanted, sweetheart?”
Templeton smiled, tried not to come on the spot, and firmed his grip on his knee, pulling it out wider in response. John was always so careful with him. Even when it was harder, this was always so careful.
“Make love to me,” he breathed, his cock twitching between them in anticipation. “Take me, John.”
John growled again.
Gave everything.
Just as he’d promised.
Just as Templeton knew he always would.
and laying there, body filled again and again and again with the rocking force of their lovers’ dance, clinging to John’s shoulders, gasping and kissing and laughing in turn, held securely, surrounded by warmth, their springtime mission beyond frosty glass, everything so immediate and so near, Templeton felt everything, every nerve, every shred of his soul, singing out as the blinding clarity of orgasm claimed him utterly.
Home, he thought to himself as the world but for John fell away. I’m home.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: mentions of domestic violence and underage
Summary:
John’s plan has unintended consequences, and Templeton leaves the Colonel’s house forever...
Templeton looked around at the bleak little YMCA room, so much different from where he’d been living the past year. Stripped of pleasantries, the only adornment a framed, faded copy of the Lord’s Prayer. A thin bed on its weak springs, a small dresser, a single, rickety chair. It was clean though, and the sheets the front desk attendant had given him smelled acceptable.
It wasn’t a prison, at least. It wasn’t a cage. And it wasn’t a lie.
There was something comforting, the young man thought dully to himself, about the empty honesty of the little space, but he couldn’t feel it.
Couldn’t feel anything.
Templeton, my lad, you know that I have always looked after you and always would. So understand that this pains me to do...
What pains you, sir?
He tossed the linens down on the foot of the bare bed and sat down heavily in the single chair, peeling his gloves and jacket off, numb. It wasn’t just the cold, seeped into his bones from the night, from the sixteen blocks he’d had to walk from where Bosco had dropped him off, from the drive from Long Island into Manhattan. Wasn’t merely the guilt, from lying to Bosco about the Plan, about meeting John downtown in a few days, just to get the big chauffeur to take him away from the horror. Wasn’t just the surging grief at what he’d lost tonight.
No, it was more elemental than that, what was running through him. More base. More...selfish.
It was all his old survival instincts surging back into the fore, planning, shaping, executing as if on their own accord.
He knew, knew in theory, what he should do. What he would do. Left the mansion. Come downtown. Stopped far away from his ultimate goal. Stopped for the night while the trains weren’t running.
Now, there was just to head to Grand Central Station, first thing in the morning. Get a train to Chicago or Pittsburg or Boston or anywhere but here. Get the hell out of town. Pawn a few things, find a good card game or two, someplace to work, someplace to sleep, rebuild some semblance of a life.
Leave all of this behind.
The Colonel.
Vance.
That damn estate.
And...
And John.
John.
Templeton moaned, even thinking that name, and fell forward in the chair, elbows to knees, as shattered emotion, shards torn from his soul by the events of the evening, tore at him like so much broken glass. The echoes in the dark, reeking bedroom, threatening to tear him apart.
Sir, what is this? What did I do to...
You’re signing these papers V-Vance has for you, my boy. You’re being disinherited.
...sir, please...
Sign the fucking papers, Peck. Sign them now...
How stupid he had been.
How foolish.
To believe that there was something real and true and honest and pure in the world. To not see through the lies and the falsehoods, to not see past his own wretched desires for affection, to let himself be manipulated so.
I don’t understand, Colonel. I...
Your...your lover, J-John Smith...
Sir, no, please, no...
You did, my boy. You...you did.
He poisoned my father because of you, Templeton.
Vance, what are you talking about? You’re the one killing him! You! You did this!
It’s John, Templeton. John.
Templeton hadn’t wanted to believe. Hadn’t wanted to think it at all.
But the way John spoke of the Colonel. The way John hated the man. The way John had told him about the poisoning, hadn’t reacted, had seemed almost happy...
And he hadn’t been able to stop himself from asking.
Why?
One little question, one little answer, and his world fell to pieces.
Because he wanted the money you are going to inherit. Were. Were going to inherit...
No...
John did. He told...t-told me as much. I do not blame...do not blame you, my boy. He manipulated you into...thinking that he...loved you, and all for the money...my family’s fortune...to a fucking...fucking sodomite...
Sir, no, he’s not like that, he would never...
The money, Templeton, my...my boy...
No.
No.
They’d...they’d started before the inheritance was discussed. Long before. He’d seen John in the gardens, unawares, bringing himself off with Templeton’s name on his lips.
It wasn’t possible.
Templeton wanted to say it to himself again now. He wanted the tears to stop. He wanted the revelation to fade into nothingness, to be laid bare as a lie or lost from his memory.
But...
He...he wouldn’t do that.
So you admit to cheating?
No, he...he wouldn’t...he doesn’t care about money...
He...he did it to hurt me...a dying man...
No, Colonel, no...
But Templeton feared, no, knew...knew...
John knew people, knew what was in their hearts. John planned, schemed, plotted. And John had told him that only his death would release him from the Colonel’s service, so...
If this was happening, then it was happening for a reason.
...which meant it was true.
Know that I always...always loved you...my boy...but I cannot look at you any longer. It...pains me to know...know that you can be so cheaply bought...be smarter...in your future...
Sir...please...
Sign on the line, Temp, and get the fuck out of my father’s house.
Foolish.
To believe that John had spoken true.
To believe that John had truly loved him.
But in the end, in the very bitter end, it had been the Colonel who’d been honest with him. It had been the Colonel who’d never lied to him. It had been the Colonel who truly cared for him.
Hadn’t it?
Hadn’t that been what the Colonel had done for him? Opened his eyes to his own naiveity. To his mistakes. Given him that last lesson.
No matter how much it broke his heart, seeing it all. The Colonel, so sick, dying, knowing he couldn’t be there to offer him the simplest of comforts as he slipped away. Vance, the strain and stress on his face, grief so over-evident it was unbelievable he had never seen it before. John, the man he’d wanted to...well, John was something entirely different from what Templeton had believed him to be.
Wasn’t he?
It didn’t matter now, though.
It was all over.
It was all gone.
Sighing, Templeton picked himself up. He stripped to his underwear, laying his clothes across the chair carefully, and started unfolding those sheets, making up his miserable little bed for the night. Just for the night. Just one night. In the morning, he would be gone, far away from the nightmare of his own idiocy. A whole ream of mistakes, to never be repeated.
“Never again,” he whispered to himself, feeling it a vow, and switched off the little lamp.
But as he lay there in the dark, feeling the springs beneath the thin pallet, the boiled sheets itching across his skin, Templeton clung to his pillow, more alone than he had ever been before. For as false as it had been, as untrue as John’s feelings might have been for him, he now knew what it felt like to be held by someone he loved.
For he knew he would never have that again.
He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
+++++
In the Colonel’s old study, John was frantic.
“What do you mean, he left?” he demanded, pacing up and down the Turkish rug. It didn’t make any sense.
Templeton wouldn’t just leave.
Templeton wouldn’t leave him
Unless the Colonel had told him...
The gardener had found Murdock in tears in the kitchen after coming back in from the garage, badly shaken. Murdock was barely coherant, but John got a bit out of him, just that he had escorted Vance and Templeton up to the Colonel’s room. It hadn’t been ten minutes after he’d ducked back inside, after, to bathe the man’s fever once again, that the Colonel had breathed his last. He’d come back down to tell Doc Harper, who’d asked for a cup of coffee before leaving and was thus available to go up and inspect the body.
“But Temp, Murdock, Temp...”
“Temp didn’t talk after he got outta there, John. His face was all green and he headed for them back stairs. He looked real sad...”
John had dashed back outside upon hearing that, but Bosco wasn’t in the garage any longer and neither was the automobile.
Templeton was gone.
And so John was in the study, with Vance, trying to get his head around whatever had happened in that room. What had happened to his boy.
But in his heart of hearts, he already knew. And the fear of it, in him, was growing to choke him..
“He left,” Vance said calmly, unscrewing the little cage from the top of the champagne bottle. “He said something about...there not being a reason for him to be here any longer, now that the Colonel decided he wouldn’t be getting one red cent.” The Bureau man paused, and popped the cork off, a spurt of foamed 1910 Duval-Leroy dancing out.
“That is not what he said,” John growled, pausing to stare, wishing he could divine the series of events directly from the brat’s brain.
“It is,” Vance shot back, and poured three glasses of bubbling golden liquid. He handed one to Brock, that goddamned private investigator, who was sitting smugly in one of the armchairs. “Rather beneficial, regardless, don’t you think?”
“How does Templeton leaving benefit anyone?”
“We can pin the crime on him,” Brock said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world to think. “Otherwise, it will just turn into a he-said, she-said between you and Vance when you both, inevitably, accuse each other of the crime.”
“Crime? So you’re admitting...”
“Oh, it’s not me. Doc Harper was just in here. Said my father was poisoned. Imagine that.”
“Imagine,” John threw back sarcastically, his guts twisting up.
“Yes, wild accusations would be bad,” Vance agreed. “Especially since you keep the grounds, and you have quite the knowledge about poisonous plants...”
The gardener felt sick. All his carefully laid plans...there was a way out of this, he knew it, he knew it to be true. But he couldn’t think of anything. All he could think of was his boy, his sweet, beautiful boy, out there alone, somewhere, and no way of getting to him. “You have far more reason to kill the man than I. Shall I tell this hypothetical jury of all those times I witnessed you coming out of your father’s room, late at night?”
It hung, the threat, the implications of all the things that would come, heavy and dark in the room for a moment, some of that cockiness slipping from Vance’s face, but then Brock laughed. Hard and harsh. Breaking the mood entirely.
“It’s all a matter of what can be proven,” the gumshoe laughed, and paused for a moment, grabbing for something on the desk behind him. “This officially repeals that farce of a document that named Angelface there beneficiary,” Brock contributed, holding up a sheet of paper scribbled about in Vance’s strong hand. “It’s even got Templeton’s signature on it, right here...”
John shook his head. “That won’t hold up in court, either. Any more than your murder charges against me.”
“Then it’s a good thing that Templeton won’t be around to challenge it,” Vance replied, and offered John a glass, his blue eyes smiling cruelly.
John resisted the urge to hit him. “If he wanted the money, why would he leave it behind over something so easily disputed?”
Vance’s smile deepened. “Perhaps he knew that a certain someone was only fucking him for that money.”
Fuck.
What he had feared.
But John could still feel the blood draining from his face.
What he had said...what he had intimated...of course the old bastard used that against his boy. Of course Templeton, the orphaned, abused boy within him, had run.
From the supposed revelation that the man who loved him had merely been manipulating him for profit?
Of course he'd run.
John scrubbed a big hand across his forehead. He had ruined it, ruined it all...
“You’re welcome to stay on as the head groundskeeper on my estate, John, of course, and we can forget any of this ever happened. A terrible accident, the old fool’s arthritis tincture was off,” Vance told him, grinning again.
“I’d rather be castrated than work for you,” John growled, and slammed the glass down on the nearest table, turning to go.
“Oh, but John, if you leave, I shall have to take that as an admission of guilt and see that the Bureau issue an arrest warrant for you!” Vance told him in a low voice.
John stiffened, but walked on, the mocking laughter following him into the hall, lost in thought.
He had to do something. There had to be something he could do. But Harper was already gone and Murdock was a mess and the rest of the staff were useless and Bosco had the automobile...
There was no way into the city, no way to go after Templeton, no way to know where he was, until Bosco returned with the Rolls.
John knew he had at least an hour before there was a chance of that happening.
Enough time to make it to his cottage and back.
He had a few things to gather if the Plan was to change this drastically.
If they were to do this.
If Templeton would even have him back.
If he could even find his love again.
+++++
Templeton had a dream that night.
He dreamt that he tossed and turned and tossed again, unable to get comfortable as half-memories of the Colonel tore through him mind. He dreamt that he moaned and woke only to tumble to sleep again, unable to hold on to anything real, nothing discerned, chaos descending in the cold little room.
And then he dreamt that he was warm again, as the black night turned to gray dawn, that he was anchored again, that there were strong arms around him, holding him to the world, that there was a voice in his ear, whispering sweet words to him about the Rocky Mountains and bright stars and everything they’d promised each other, driving away the evil in the night, replacing it with that undescribable sweetness he’d only ever found with...
“John,” he moaned, trying to wake himself, unable to deal with that dream any longer. “John, please...”
But the dream seemed determined to follow him as he surfaced, because there was a whisper in his ear, or so it seemed. John’s voice, John’s wonderful tenor, telling him, “I’m here, my love, I’m here...”
And that was so wonderful, such a wonderful thought, that nothing had gone wrong, that John was still with him, that they could still be lovers...
Except that it wasn’t true.
It couldn’t be.
“No!” he half yelled, jerking up and awake and away from the torment of those phantom desires. His back hit the wall and his head hit his hands. “No, please god, no...”
But God must have been listening, for once in his miserable existence, He’d given him something he needed.
An empty room, an empty bed, silence in place of John’s voice.
He sighed.
Sweetheart, my love, my sweet boy.
How he longed to hear that. To hear it from a man who truly loved him...it had been a wonderful thing. Even if it had been a lie, it had been a wonderful thing.
But he now knew it was a lie. So there was no going back, no finding comfort in it. No acknowledging it.
Templeton still felt himself tearing up, and dashed the moisture from his eyes. He knew what he had to do, he knew his plan, and while it might not have been as clever as John’s, it would still serve him well.
So he slipped from the bed where he’d dreamed his lover had been curled up against him, and shook out his trousers and his shirt, dressing as fast as he could. He had to get away from these memories.
Except that maybe God hadn’t listened to him after all.
Because there, on the front stoop of the YMCA building, was a tall, lanky man smoking a cigar, wrapped in an old woolen jacket, looking up as the door banged shut behind the young man, and Templeton thought his heart might stop.
He stared for a moment, his mind refusing to process the information, that John had found him. That John had found him, and was there and was smiling at him, smiling at him so, so hopefully...
“Kid...” he said, that smile infectious on his handsome face. Just begging for Templeton to smile back.
And everything inside of Templeton locked up. He couldn't. He couldn't...
“Please...please go,” he said quietly, coming down the chilly steps and out on to the main sidewalk. “Just leave me alone.”
“Temp, just listen to me...” John said, rising to his feet and tossing the cigar away.
“No, John,” and he sighed, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and walking back towards Grand Central. If he could reach the station, he’d be free. Free of all of this. “There’s nothing left to say.”
“I waited for Bosco to get home, asked him to take me back out to where he’d dropped you off,” John’s voice explained softly, walking behind him. “He told me what direction you headed off in, so I went the opposite way. I stopped at every bar and flophouse between there and Grand Central Station, and when I didn’t find you at any of them, I...I kept walking.”
“And stopped here?”
“I just...it felt right, kid. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it, but...I knew you were here, so I stopped and waited.”
Templeton paused at that, feet halting, not believing that for a moment. According to the clock he’d seen as he’d come down the stairs, it was 6:23 AM. “But...”
“I’ve only been here about half an hour, waiting.” John sounded sheepish. Templeton did not lift his eyes from the sidewalk. “It took some time to...”
“To what, track me down?” Templeton snapped, trying not to give in to that clamoring in his chest telling him to turn around and run back into John’s arms.
“Most of the night, kid.”
He shook his head. “For godssake, John, why? The Colonel took me off his will. You’ve got no reason...you’ve lost your revenge...”
And then John was there in front of him, clearly wanting to touch but restraining himself, given where they were. “I know he told you that I was only with you for the money, kid, but...”
“Did you tell...did you tell him that?”
John hesitated only a moment. “Yes.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to talk about,” Templeton said, and shoved past John, continuing on down towards the train station.
“Templeton, wait!” John called, rushing after him. “Please, kid, hear me out...”
“There’s nothing to listen to,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, and tucked his chin further down into his collar as he picked up his pace down the quiet street of red brick buildings. Christ, he thought, it was a cold, cold morning.
“Yes, Temp, yes there absolutely is,” John growled, surging ahead, and a hand landed on his shoulder, yanking the young man about so hard he almost lost his balance entirely.
Templeton’s back hit the alley wall, knocking the air out of him entirely. And for a moment, all he could feel was the hand on his collar and the brick behind him and the older man’s strength and he couldn’t run. The feeling of entrapment was overwhelming.
He shut his eyes and slumped back.
“I can’t fix it for you, John,” he said, defeated.
“Fix what, Temp?”
“I can’t...I can’t go back and get him to put me back on the will. He knows I was...that we were...he won’t take me back, even if he’s still alive...even if you haven’t...haven’t killed him yet...”
“Oh, kid,” and that hand left his collar, sliding up into his hair, lifting his head off the side of building, cradling it so tenderly, Templeton was put in mind of that winter night in John’s little cottage. “None of that matters.”
“It does matter.” He dared to look, to see John’s soft blue eyes watching him so carefully, and Templeton looked away, focusing on the alley wall beyond the man’s shoulder. “You killed him. And you never loved me...”
“It doesn’t matter, Temp, because I don’t care about his goddamned money, or revenge, or him, or Vance or anything at that goddamned estate,” John continued, his other hand sliding around the younger man’s waist, pulling them close. “It was only ever you. It’s only ever been you.”
Templeton pulled back, unable to move far, but moving nonetheless. What? What was John talking about? And his heart started beating faster. Was it possible that...
“I lied, my love. I lied so I could get you out of there. I lied about why he was dying, I lied about what I wanted with you. I told him I was killing him for his money, your money, so he’d let you go. It was all I could think of, to keep you safe...”
“W...w-what?” Templeton stammered, thinking about what that could mean. That John had willing confessed to a murder he hadn’t committed, had branded himself a criminal...all for him? That didn’t make sense. Why would John do something like that? It was suicide. With Vance in the Bureau, that federal agency, there’d be nowhere John could hide, no state that was safe. “John...”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before he did.” Fingertips touched his face, tracing a curving S along the top of his cheekbone. “I’m so sorry, Temp. I never intended for you to suffer so because of it.”
“You put a price on your head,” Templeton said, furrowing his brow, looking up at the older man in confusion. “John, that’s an insane plan...”
“Not necessarily,” John said seriously. “I retrieved the bottle of tincture Vance had been poisoning, gave it to Bosco. He’ll take it over to Major Harper for me. The police can pull fingerprints from the glass...”
“What if that doesn’t work? Vance could still pin this on you...”
“Then he pins it on me,” the older man replied, shrugging his shoulders, and Templeton realized they were terribly close once again and one of his own hands hand slid underneath John’s jacket. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
Templeton rolled his gaze slowly to meet John’s, confusion flooding him fully. The last day had been so difficult, so obscured, he couldn’t parse through all the conflict in his mind. There was a fog he couldn't get through. A book of revelation he could not read. “Why?” he whispered, desperately needing an answer. “Why?”
John kissed him softly, barely, holding him in the dirty shadows, and murmured the answer in his ear. Templeton could feel the rumble of lovely tenor words deep inside himself, warming him through, lighting a fire within him that burned away the last of the grasping doubts, and he clung tight as they ran their course and turned to ash and blew away in the light huff of his lover’s breath.
“I...I was going to go west, John,” he managed, trembling, as the final sentence trailed into silence, as uncertain blue eyes met his own. “Somewhere new.”
“You’ll find the West a worthy challenge, my love.”
“Maybe. But if I have someone come with me,” he replied hopefully, “it would be a wonderful thing. We could take it on together.”
John pulled away, cupping Templeton’s hands in his own for a moment, and then laying his palms on the younger man’s shoulders. “You don’t need a tour guide or a guardian any more, Temp. You've...you've become, my love, so much more than that.”
“But I do need a partner,” and he smiled, loving the man, loving being able to love him again. “How else am I to work the ranch?”
A moment more, John watched him, his eyes shifting a little, as if he was thinking very hard, and then a dazzling smile broke out on his face. And then a beautiful laugh tore loose from his throat.
And then he laid an arm around Templeton’s shoulders, hugging him tight as he could, leading them from the alley, towards the station and whatever their future would hold for them.
While those words echoed still in Templeton’s heart.
Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage
Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit,
To thee I send this written embassage,
To witness duty, not to show my wit:
Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine
May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it,
But that I hope some good conceit of thine
In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it;
Till whatsoever star that guides my moving
Points on me graciously with fair aspect
And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving,
To show me worthy of thy sweet respect:
Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee;
Till then not show my head where thou mayst prove me.
+++++
Three Months Later
Templeton cast an appreciative eye around the interior of the Broadmoor’s foyer, the front desk tucked tastefully within the curve of a spiral staircase, everything clad in rich mahoganies and maroons, as a liveried concierge presented them with their room key.. Who would have thought such a place of true European luxury existed in the rough mining country of the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range. He’d heard rumors about the place, of course, but he hadn’t thought them this true. And everything, just from the long, cold carriage ride up from the Colorado Springs terminal through a still-wintery pine forest, the beautiful rise of the hotel’s facade through the trees, the grand arches of the entrance, all had the feel of a fairytale.
He thoroughly approved.
Their finances, between the thousands John had saved in his years with the Colonel, the pawning of a few choice pieces of jewelry Templeton had in his pockets, the occasional card game, and a few fees they’d taken here and there, helping out speakeasy owners or shopkeepers in some of the cities they’d stopped at in their three-month journey here, weren’t terrible. Good enough, in fact, to afford a week or two here straight out.
But Templeton believed that they would need every cent of what they had, to start out with a good parcel of land as John wanted, and had resigned himself to a boring few weeks in Denver’s industrial gloominess. But he’d managed to win, through an intentionally convoluted poker game in one of the nicer social clubs in Denver he’d managed to scam his way into, a month’s paid stay at the landmark hotel from an rather morose hotel manager. Which would give them plenty of time. In April, John said, the snows should be infrequent enough to accurate judge a parcel’s merit.
So in the meantime, they got to linger in the lap of luxury. With Egyptian cotton sheets and inclusive room service and ensuite baths and a fully stocked bar that the police had never, ever, bothered to raid.
Templeton couldn’t wait. He didn’t plan on letting John out of the room for at least two, three days. They’d been on the move so long, trying to glean tidbits of information from the national papers, afraid that the other shoe would drop at any moment, that the Bureau or some gumshoe would be lying in wait for them. It was somewhat excited, thinking they were wanted men, exotic criminals, but mostly it was just exhausting. A break would do them both good.
“...and breakfast is served from eight to ten in the dining room on the second floor,” the man checking them in concluded in a French accent, and nodded to John. “Anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable, monsieur, do not hesitate to ask.”
John smiled graciously at the man, those strangely refined manners of his on display, wrapped as he was in that perfectly cut suit he’d had tailored in Denver for the occasion. “Thank you, for both me and my nephew.”
The concierge chuckled, and nodded back again. “Of course, monsieur. I shall have the bellhop show you to your rooms.” And as he called the boy over to take their bags, Templeton caught some quick French from the man.
“Neveu ? Ces deux sont amants...”
He smiled over the deep curve of the banister, looking down at the man. “Ne dites pas de telles choses si bruyamment, monsieur. Nous ne sommes pas à Paris ici!” he called, and the concierge smiled back up at him.
“I shall send you some champagne, then, monsieurs? On the house?”
“Anything but a 1910 Duval-Leroy,” John supplied breezily, but caught Templeton’s elbow as they climbed the spiral stair. “What did he say, kid?”
Templeton grinned, and leaned in, as they emerged up into a great gold and cream space, done up in the most tasteful of Victorian-era decor, glass windows facing the majestic Rockies clad in their winter whites. “He said he could tell we were lovers, and I told him to keep it quiet. Ah, the enlightened French...”
And he laughed as John started choking.
Their room was spacious and bright, two beds in separate little rooms, only one of which would be seeing any use, heavy curtains thrown open to the fairy story of unspoilt forest surrounding the hotel. Templeton stood at the window, watching that world beyond , as the bellhop deposited their luggage and John tipped the appropriate amount and the door closed behind. A hand ran around the young man’s shoulders and he smiled, leaning back as his lover leaned forward, cheeks brushing together.
“Is this what you were dreaming of, sweetheart? Something such as this?”
“Yes,” Templeton replied, not really looking at the room but instead considering the slope of land running east to the high, rolling plains, white and glinting in the afternoon sun. “It’s everything you said it would be.”
“You should see it in the summer, after the July storms turn it all to green,” John whispered in his ear, and ran his lips around the shell of Templeton’s ear. “Wonderful country.”
“Mm,” the younger man nodded, and turned, those big,wonderful hands sliding around the wool of his his suit coat, until they were facing each other once more. “Wonderful.”
“Beautiful,” John agreed, rubbing the small of his back.
“Everything I’ve ever wanted.”
“Perfect in every way.”
“Amazing...”
“Irresistable...”
“Ours, together...”
And the way John was looking at him when he said it, those dancing blue eyes so full of love and lust and need and affection, had Templeton surging up on his toes, seizing his lover’s hair, claiming his mouth, with every ounce of his strength.
John was startled, but only for a moment. He regained his bearings and gained control, whirling them both about and laughing as he broke out of the embrace, Templeton’s hands held so lovingly in his own. “Come to bed with me, my love,” he crooned, tugging lightly, walking backwards.
“Oui,” Templeton replied, cheeky, and laughed back.
The bed was soft. Soft and huge, long enough for John’s long body to rest comfortably on, but Templeton had no intention of letting his lover rest right then. It had been nearly five days since they’d been in a position to do this together, to make their seamless coupling, and he needed that. Needed it badly. Needed it more than anything.
John took his time, though, undressing him slowly, kissing every inch of skin as it was exposed beneath his questing fingertips. It had Templeton quivering, arching up, moaning as his filling cock sprang free into the cooler air of the room.
“Beautiful,” his lover growled, moving down the young blonde’s body to strip those trousers and boots away. “All mine.”
“Ever...ever yours,” Templeton agreed shakily, watching as John’s lips touched to his thigh, right above his knee.
It got him another growl, and John started working his way up.
Nips and kisses, sucking tension and soothing slides of warm tongue against his skin. Templeton propped himself on his elbows, head fallen back, moaning, the sensation, John’s worship, almost more than he could handle, breathless for the moment that his eager cock would be encased in wet, wonderful heat.
But his lover only sucked lightly on each of his balls, just once, pulling the tender skin into his mouth and out again, and those kisses continued. Up the line of dark little hairs that led to his navel. Up the center of his belly and chest. Pausing to worry at the curve of neck to shoulder, teeth and suction raising a bruise before moving up further. Templeton touched this, face hot, arousal unbearable under his lover’s still-clothed form, as John placed one last kiss to the underside of his jaw and propped up over the top of him.
He pressed himself down, the hard tent of his still concealed erection straining the buttons of his fly, and nuzzled close to Templeton’s neck. “I need you, kid.”
“You have me, old man,” he moaned back, running both hands up into silver hair. “You always have me.”
They kissed again, faster, hotter, deeper, as John pushed his hips up to draw himself out. Their lips never left one another’s, not as John’s massive cock glided against his own, not as John opened a small tin, contents already warmed from its ride in his pocket. And Templeton clung hard, to John’s shoulders, to John’s mouth, savoring every grunt and grumble of possession as a knee was pushed to his chest, as slicked fingers dove into him and opened him wide.
It didn’t take much any longer, Templeton’s body adjusted to his lover’s length and girth, and it was without a single twinge of pain that they came together, the younger man sighing with pleasure as he was filled, in that way only John could fill him. Of everything they did together, all their physical exertions and explorations, it was the first push that Templeton loved the most. That first slide of hard flesh into him, hitting every erotic spot he had, reminding him of what they were to each other, of the love they shared...
“Is that what you wanted, sweetheart?”
Templeton smiled, tried not to come on the spot, and firmed his grip on his knee, pulling it out wider in response. John was always so careful with him. Even when it was harder, this was always so careful.
“Make love to me,” he breathed, his cock twitching between them in anticipation. “Take me, John.”
John growled again.
Gave everything.
Just as he’d promised.
Just as Templeton knew he always would.
and laying there, body filled again and again and again with the rocking force of their lovers’ dance, clinging to John’s shoulders, gasping and kissing and laughing in turn, held securely, surrounded by warmth, their springtime mission beyond frosty glass, everything so immediate and so near, Templeton felt everything, every nerve, every shred of his soul, singing out as the blinding clarity of orgasm claimed him utterly.
Home, he thought to himself as the world but for John fell away. I’m home.
