Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2017 15:10:36 -0400
From: Bear Pup <orson.cadell@gmail.com>
Subject: Lake Desolation 4

Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/rural/lake-desolation/)
for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved.
Includes sex between adult men. Go away if any of that is against your
local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but
flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty
**TODAY** at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.

SPECIAL NOTE: This series is written from the POV of an older American
man. He is the product of his times, complete with serious baggage about
race, age, sexuality and socioeconomic status. He is not a raving bigot,
but he's certainly not enlightened. Please don't think that I agree with
him.

*****

I sigh deeply, contentedly as one of his hands move down inside the
too-tight y-fronts I'd always worn, and I gasp as his thick fingers begin
to stroke up and down my painful teen erection. As in any wet dream, it
takes little time to reach completion and my teen body convulses with
pleasure. I drift further toward wakefulness and feel warm breath on my
neck, "Thank you, Jake, for saving me." I freeze. This is no wet dream and
I am no teen. Logan is spooned behind me and just gave me one of the best
orgasms I've had in a decade. My mind is spinning with afterglow,
confusion, guilt, pleasure and horror. What have I done?

*****
Lake Desolation 4: The Storm Builds

By Bear Pup

M/M; sensuality (no actual sex)

I teleport into the bathroom, finding a mask of confusion and horror in the
mirror. I peel away my long johns and try to make sense of the sticky mess
I find there. It's been 40 years since I last had to clean up after
myself. Maria was a reserved, proper young lady, something rare for our
times. We were both oddities in the freewheeling perpetual party that was
the 70s. Clean cut, quiet, studious, dedicated, unruffled. Hashish? Once,
the night we met. Pot? Perhaps three times. Swinging, key parties, cocaine?
Never once.

But that prim and proper exterior evaporated like mist in a summer sun when
the bedroom doors were closed. Maria's sexual drive actually outstripped my
own at the time, and her inventiveness never waned or abated. The last time
I cleaned up a spilt load was perhaps a year and half into our
marriage. Maria was well into her pregnancy with Joseph and I didn't have
the heart (guts) to suggest any sort of sex. The next time, Maria caught me
and made it... more than clear that such behaviour was utterly
unacceptable.

She dragged me to our bed and proceeded to suck five consecutive loads out
of me. After the second, she had to tie my hands to the bedstead and stuff
a sock in my mouth. I wondered for years afterwards if there was a word for
the opposite of blue balls, when you've cum so many times you want your
balls to literally fall off.

It took another couple of years to perfect our 'tells'. Before our son was
four, an eyebrow or subtle smile was enough to tell the other that the game
was one. Once inside that bedroom, all rules were off. So it is with some
trepidation that I start trying to separate cum from the steel-wool of my
whitening pubes.

I settle myself and start the hot water for Logan's morning bath. I let him
do his business in peace now that I'm unworried about his steadiness, but
am back to bathe him. Logan is twitchy and obviously worried, and starts to
say something several times. He literally holds his breath at I wash his
erogenous zones and freezes, hard and throbbing but otherwise immobile, as
I cleanse his dick and foreskin. His breathing is fast and short, obviously
close to cumming.

I pull away before I can repeat the previous performance, still completely
at a loss over what happened earlier. Logan is still painfully stiff as I
wield the towel, and tries terribly hard to control the sounds he makes as
I dry him, especially tits and feet, ass and cock, stifling moans and
whimpers but failing just enough that each one crashes against my
conscience. I know at some level am tormenting this boy for no good reason
other than my own confusion, but I cannot take the implications of bringing
him to completion.

I flat-out flee the bathroom, leaving him to dress in the fresh clothes,
and start on the cream of wheat. A chiding itch at the back of my brain
makes me relent and prepare the dreaded oatmeal for myself. I am doing that
when I hear a sound that had not echoed in this cabin since 1989, the
unmistakable fap-fap-fap and strangled groan of a young man in the throes
of what I'd known as 'self-abuse'... even though I never saw how the word
'abuse' applied to the most-treasured release a boy could have.

Logan is red-faced but smiling with relief and fulfilment as he sits, then
scowls at the dreaded breakfast. I sit next to him and give the exact same
look to my own bowl of mush. Logan noticed. "Why eat that if you hate it,
and why am I eating this?" The voice holds a subtle pout, which makes me
smile.

"That has what I know you need in it, and this cra-- stuff is what the
doctors tell me is good for me. If I can eat this sh-stuff every morning,
you can eat that until you're back to 100%... Then you can join *me*," I
add with a cruel smile.

I get one of the first real smiles for my new charge and it transforms his
young but careworn face. Even with the dreaded breakfast, he still seems in
a better mood throughout the meal. I feel terrible to have to wipe it away
so quickly.

"There is one thing that we need to address, Logan." His face drains of all
blood and his eyes dart to the bed we shared. It dawns on me that he is
expecting a dressing-down over the liberties he'd taken, but I'm honestly
not sure I can face thinking about it, must less sort out the 'right
response'. I bull my way forward, "Your hair is to the point that I can't
even wash it, son." Logan exhales explosively and tries to turn it into a
cough. "It's going to have to come off." Relief turns to slack-jawed panic.

I add a little Dad Voice, "It will grow back, but right now we can't even
keep you clean." I clear the dishes and grab my trim kit and two kitchen
towels. Before he can even react, I have them tied around his neck and the
clippers plugged in. Without any guard at all, I first tackle the mats and
knots that are, luckily, not right against his skull. Logan is trying to
sputter and object so I deploy the Dad Deafness module.

There is only one hairstyle I know, the one I've worn for all but a brief
and tragic episode in the 80s when an editor convinced me that I needed a
'hip' look on the dustcover. In spite of one of the most-talented stylists
in New York, I looked like a guy wearing a multi-coloured and stylised
mop. So, 2 around the sides, 4 across the top. I pull the guard off again
and close-trim his neck, ears and sideburns; I'm done in perhaps five
minutes.

I roll up the towels and set them aside and ask Logan to sweep up the
mountain of hair on the floor whilst I go to the bathroom mirror and
repeated the process on my own slightly-shaggy scalp. When I come back,
there is what appeared to be a rather ratty guinea pig lying on the floor
and a supremely-surly young man standing over it. He stomps into the
bathroom to inspect the damage and emerges slightly less horrified than
he'd expected to be but not in the least happy.

It's Wednesday, the day when one or more of the Miller kids will be by with
supplies. That makes it cleaning day. I enlist the still-sullen Logan. I
tackle the bathroom, which needs attention after Logan's recovery, then the
kitchen as Logan sweeps then damp mops the main floors. I start wet-mopping
the stone areas and Logan settles into the mindless work of
Swiffer-dusting.

When I finish the bath floors and go to move to the kitchen, I'm a bit
taken aback that instead of longing after his assigned task, he's taken it
upon himself to start cleaning the inside of the windows. I'm a bit shocked
that a kid, especially a street kid, would have thought to do something
like that. I give it a little thought and decide, 'He's at least part
Hispanic; maybe he helped his mom with maid work sometimes.'

I decide on something simple again today: Grinders. I pull the
just-barely-stale long-rolls, split them and smear in a small touch of
mustard on each side. I layer in cheese (provolone on one side and
Butterkase on the other), then ham on both sides, and lastly tomato,
lettuce, and a splash my oil/vinegar/herb mix (just herbs for Logan). I
roll into a tight foil pack and set on the rack high above the fire, almost
to the flue. I set a timer for 20 minutes and finish the mopping.

Inevitably, my mind sees foil and thinks 'refrigerator' so I do the
ouchy-ouchy-hot-hot juggle-dance over to the table. I grab plates and
unfurl the grinders. There is a slight char along the bottom edge, but the
bread is crisp, the cheese melty, the ham warm and the veggies still a bit
chilled in the middle.

I call Logan to the table after crosscutting the grinder and we dig in,
using napkins as heat-guards and working from the slightly-cool middle
toward the originally-molten ends. Logan is not eating with the gusto he
had before and I ask why, "Oh, no, sir. It's really good!"

"Okay, you're lying. What's up, Logan?"

"Well, I never much liked mustard." His voice is small and apologetic.

WHAM! It never even occurred to me to ask. Maria and I ate sandwiched this
way so everyone does, right? I think back on all the icky-gooey,
mayonnaise-slathered sandwiches I'd endured at conferences and
book-signings. I'm a bit chagrined to think that I never bothered to ask.

"I'm sorry, Logan," my voice echoing the sincerity, "I've just made them
like this for so long..."

"Please! Oh, please don't apologise to me! You saved my life, Jacob. I
shouldn't have said anything!"

"Nonsense. Yeah, I kept you from becoming a human popsicle, but that has
nothing to do with common courtesy like asking someone if they like this or
that."

Logan hangs his head and eats quietly. He tells his grinder in a very
small, young voice, "I'm also sorry about this morning. It was wrong and
stupid and... wrong."

I pause and look up at him. "Look at me, Logan, please?" He does and I can
see that there are tears on the knife's-edge of falling. "I have to be
honest, son. I don't know what to think about this morning. Can, um, can
you tell me why?"

In that same spanked-boy voice, "Cuz you, you know, saved me and helped me
and made me feel so human and, and all I gave you was trouble. And you
seemed to be having a really... special dream and I thought, I don't know
what I thought, just that I wanted you to feel good, too. You're just
so..."

"So... what, Logan?"

"I'm sorry. I'll shut up."

"No, tell me, son."

"So sad."

"And me being sad made you, um, think you should, you know, help a buddy
out? I'm not really following."

Logan is silent for a long, long time. So long in fact, that I think he
will refuse to answer. If anything, his voice is even quieter and more
tentative. I have to lean forward to hear even though he is still looking
at me intently, guilt and fear and hope mingled in his face.

"You as- asked me about, you know, HIV and s-sex. I told you I'd
never... and I haven't, I swear. Suddenly, you seemed so lonely and sad and
you're, you know, hunching a little in your dream and I thought, I thought,
I..." There is a long pause that I am incapable of breaking, lost in my own
amazement. "I thought, maybe I could give you, you know, something?
Something special? One nice moment in the middle of all this?"

I find a serious war going on inside me. I want to scream at him for
touching me at all, doubled for touching me without my permission, triple
from the fact that he is a guy and so am I. How that isn't love or concern
or compassion, it is something disgusting and depraved. I want to lecture
him like a teacher or parent, how wrong and inappropriate it is to touch
anther guy, any guy, to be sexually aroused by or to sexually please
another man. I want to comfort the boy who used such a truly wrong way of
expressing tenderness that he so obviously wants to give, but chose the
worst possible way to show. I want to rant about how utterly revolting it
is to be touched that intimately by a low-life, drugged-up street kid. I
want to pull him to me and tell him he is right, that it is what I needed,
and that I never could have imagined or admitted it with him.

Wait, what? What? WHAT? Scream; check. Lecture; check. Comfort;
check. Rant; super-check. Hug and cuddle; NO CHECK!

Okay, so I'm a bastard and prick. I'm 67 and it's ALLOWED. "I can't even
think about that right now. Let's finish lunch." I refuse to look up again
until I finish and clean the plates; obviously there are no prep dishes to
clean. I turn just as I hear a tell-tale growl echo through the
trees. Logan looks up in undisguised fear and frantically looks around the
tiny cabin. I put my hand on his shoulder and he jumps and moves against
the wall. The look on his face is purely one of betrayal, despair and
resignation.

I put on my second coat and go out, closing the inner door of the entry
firmly behind me. Sarah Miller drives the last 100 yards through the
deepening snow. I step through the outer door to greet her. I notice
belatedly that it has started again, giant wet flakes falling slowly but
steadily across the New York landscape. She pulls right next to the porch
and jumps up to give me a strong hug. She is only a head shorter than me,
even though she is barely 16. Apparently, she's drawn the short straw in
the ugly weather.

"Papa McKay! Oh, how great to see you! I am so glad I got to come before
the storm!" With Sarah, exclamation points have to be considered an
expected hardship in any conversation.

"It's good to see you, pigtails." She hates/loves the childhood nickname.

"PAPA!" She is already unloading, moving the parcels into the vestibule.

I lean down and whisper, "If there's rum in that load, take it back with
you, okay, honey?"

She gives me an odd look, "Why, Papa McKay?"

"I have a guest who needs to be away for that kind of thing for a while."

At that very instant, she sees Logan at the window and her eyes go
huge. "Oh, God, Papa McKay. You DIDN'T!"

"Didn't what, honey?"

"Oh, GOD, Papa! LOOK!" She shoves a newspaper into my hand. The entire top
of the page is about a fugitive on the run. The picture looks remarkably
like... Logan. The crime... something about a convenience store
robbery. The date... I scan the article frantically. A week ago Sunday,
just right for Logan to be the perp.

"Who is he, Papa McKay? When did he get here?!?"

I cannot explain why, but I lie. "He's Maria's nephew's son; well, cousin's
grandson, whatever you'd call that so we just say nephew. He arrived two
weeks ago tomorrow."

Sarah relaxes slightly. "You sure, Papa McKay? Josh didn't say anything
about a visitor last week and you didn't ask for extra supplies!" God save
me from smart children!

"He was working on the shed when your brother was here, and we didn't need
anything extra, pigtails. I didn't think to introduce him to Josh." I lean
into the house and practically drag Logan out. "This is Laurence Mallory,
hon. Larry, this is Sarah Miller. She and her family bring me what I need."

Sarah is wary in the extreme, and Logan is not much better. He stammers a
greeting, grabs a couple of the larger, heavier parcels and flees back to
the safety of the cabin.

Sarah lowers her voice. "Why is he really here, Papa?"

I sigh deeply, almost melodramatically. Sue me; I write
bodice-rippers. "He's a college kid, Pigtails, and got into booze
and... other stuff you wouldn't know about."

"Pot? Pills?"

"PIGTAILS! You shouldn't know such things. Yes, all of that. He came here
to dry out someplace that he can't get any, well, anything. I ordered some
Amazon.com stuff last week," I cross my fingers and pray the packages won't
say 'Amazon Prime 2 Day Shipping' when they arrive, "for him to wear. He
goes to school in Florida and doesn't have anything for cold at all."

"Oh, Okay!" Sarah has always been my favourite and I spoil her rotten. "So,
you saw the weather?"

"Um, no, Pigtails. What's coming our way? I didn't think to check; I've
been writing, finally. Tell your mom that I'm, well, writing again
after... well, after." I drop my head, and Sarah drops her voice in
compassion. Misdirection successful.

"Sure, Papa McKay. That's good, and mom will be really happy. She
worries... we all worry. Anyway, the snow is supposed to real get bad! Even
with the ATV, we might not see you for as much as a week! It's why I
brought so much! You sure, really-really sure that you don't needs anything
else? That you're all set? And you got a list for whenever we can get
through, Papa McKay?"

"Of course, Pigtails." I hand her my list.

"If the snow gets too bad, Dad and Josh will be up with the big truck and
plough it for you! But that can't happen until after the snow stops! You
sure you're gonna be alright?" I ruffle her cap-covered head and she
giggles before riding off into the thickening snow.

There is a pop, then another as the porch light flares then dies. I step in
and notice that everything is off. Logan is breathing fast. I tell him to
settle down, that it's normal for the power to fail in a storm. I throw a
couple more logs on the hearth then pull one of the many flashlights out
(they are strewn about after long experience). I check the fuse box and the
main breaker. Yep, dead. I flip off all the breakers except the
refrigerator, freezer and porch light, again from experience. It isn't that
rare for the power to come on in fits and starts, and too much load could
trip the mains.

I light two hurricane lamps, one on the side-table between the armchairs
and one on the kitchen table. I ask for Logan to help get the supplies
sorted since he can do that without being exposed to the outside air
directly. I make the slog to the woodshed twice, bringing a total of six
bundles to the porch. I also take a minute to find Logan's clothes under
the snow and spend a minute beating the ice out of them; grimy chunks fall
off like muddy rain.

I turn out every pocket and am surprised to find... almost nothing. There
is a handkerchief, an empty rolled-leather package that unquestionably held
syringes and other user paraphernalia... and nothing else at all. No
wallet. No ID. No phone. No money, not even pocket change. I frown and head
into the cabin, beating the snow off my coat before I come through the
inner door.

Logan is sitting in one of the chairs holding a book but simply staring at
the hearth fire. His leg is jumping and I can tell he is nervous, scared
and worried.

"Logan? Is everything okay?"

He drops his head and starts to cry. "No. I saw her hand you the
newspaper. You, y-you'll find out anyway. I r-r-robbed a convenience store,
sir. That's why I'm here."

"Oh, Lord, son. Yeah, you screwed up, kid. We need to talk about that
later. You'll have to deal with that, and the consequences, when you get
back on your feet. Right now, though, we need to prep for a real
howler. It's early in the season, but P-- Sarah says that we have a major
storm coming. I'll show you want we need to do, then we'll get the stores
put away."

The windows are insulated, but I still use this spray crap when the first
weather hits each year to make sure the sills, edges and stiles are sealed
tight. I show Logan on one, watch him do second, then we split and finish
the cabin. The doors are as sealed as they can be and still open, but I use
'snakes' to keep the wind from coming under. Oddly, pipes are the one thing
we never cared about. The well-pump is under a hatch near the middle of the
sleeping-half of the cabin proper, the reservoir and water-heater are above
the rafters, and none of the pipes run to exterior walls except the spigot
I'd drained a month earlier. We'lla be long dead before the pipes could
freeze.

We finish and set about stowing the supplies. Logan is a quick study,
understanding intuitively where things should go based on where other
things live. I find we worked well together in companionable silence. When
we finish, more for giggles than anything else, I check to see if my
internet connexion is live. It isn't, but that never worries me. There is
an 'emergency button' unit that will summon the Millers if there's a fire
or a medical emergency, but I never had nor wanted a phone or radio in the
cabin.

Right about then, the whole cabin trembles and I look up to see a strong
gale blowing the snow hard from the northwest, hammering the windows with
icy pellets. Within 30 minutes, the storm is fully upon us. It's likely
only 5:00 but it is as dark as midnight outside.

We are finally done and Logan joins me where I sit, but refuses to look at
me.

"Son, you can't change the past. You have to deal with what you've done and
fix it, but it won't go away. Do you want to talk about it, son?"

He just nods and cries quietly, so I drag him over to the loveseat and just
rock him until the crying stops. "I'm here, son. Talk to me, Logan. What
happened, kid?" He curls into me and I find myself hugging him, not like I
did my son but in a... new and different way. My body reacts... strangely
to this beautiful and strange young man, and I think back to the shock of
the morning and the... unexpected thoughts it caused. I am strangely
comfortable, even a little breathless holding Logan like this.

The story comes in fits and starts. His mother had died about six months
earlier, and he went through their meagre savings for drug money in that
time. He was desperate for a fix and found a gun in a drawer. He didn't see
any bullets and never even looked; he'd never fire it. He walked into the
convenience store and pulled the gun.

"I-I-I was more sc-scared than the guy behind the counter. There were a
couple of other people in the store, a girl and her grandmother, a
construction guy getting beers. The clerk popped the drawer and handed me
all the bills. I was shaking so hard. I was jonesing soooo hard, and soooo
scared, and just utterly ashamed. I couldn't believe what... scum I'd
become. As I took the money, my other hand shook so bad that I d-d-dropped
the g-g-gun. I didn't know! I swear to God I didn't! I d-didn't know it
w-was loaded. It, it f-fell and went off. The grandma screamed and fell."
His trembling voice fell to nothing. "I. I-I think I, I k-k-killed her." In
a flash, Maria's face and fate exploded in my mind. The stray drug-gang
bullet that killed her as she sat in traffic. The grandmother falling dead
in the convenience store... instantly wore Maria's face.

<eof>

The blizzard is on, the power is off, and Jake is getting whiplash from the
range of emotions wracking his brain and now... this? Well, this should be
an interesting few days.

*****

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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay...
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The Heathens: 11 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/
Off the Magic Carpet: 5 chapters .../military/off-the-magic-carpet/
Lake Desolation: 4 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/