Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen (4 page)

 

He sat down on the bed, avoiding the damp towels because he'd had enough of sitting around in soaked jeans for one day, and tried to think instead of panicking. It wasn't easy.

"He knows me," Tyler said. "He knows if he tries to take me, people will get hurt. I don't think he'll risk it. What would be the point? Plenty of people out there he can recruit; a whole army of them."

"So it's just a social call?" Dan demanded. "He wants to wish you Happy New Year, and oh, by the way, come and kill someone for us to start it off with a bang isn't on his agenda?"

 

"Maybe he wants me for a job," Tyler said carefully. "That's possible. But he'll just ask me, if that’s the case."

Dan shuddered, creeped out by the idea of it. Snipers might save lives, looked at one way, the government wielding a scalpel and not a battle axe, but he'd seen too many movies with a coldeyed killer blowing someone's head off from the top of a building. Snipers didn't get parades for them with crowds cheering a hero; they lived in the shadows. Tyler had been awarded a medal, sure -- Dan had seen it -- but it'd been passed to him over a desk in private, because what he did wasn't meant to be public.
"You're not going to do it, though, right?"

"You know I'm not." Tyler sat down next to him, leaving a space between them. "For one thing, if I did, I'd come back to find you gone."

Dan wanted to tell Tyler that, no, he'd stick around, but he wasn't sure that he could make it convincing when he wasn't certain that he would. On the other hand, leaving Tyler -- never seeing him again, because Dan knew if he took off, Tyler would, too -- that thought wasn't appealing at all.

"Yeah," Tyler said flatly into the dense silence. "Thought so."

"Look, if you did, I'd get it," Dan said. "National security, doing it for your country -- I know you wouldn't be doing it for the -- for the wrong reasons, but it's still a lot to wrap my head around, you know?" He pictured Tyler coming back after the mission. "Hi, honey, how was your day?" just wouldn't cut it as a greeting.

"I'm not going to do it," Tyler said. "And we don't know what Cole wants yet, so maybe we should both stop borrowing trouble. But it's something I have done, and you know it and you're still here, so I don't see why one more would matter." He held up his right hand and curled it into a tight fist before spreading his fingers wide again, flexing them slowly. "What is it, Dan? Can't face the thought of fresh blood on my hands, but you don't mind about the old kills?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Dan said evenly, refusing to back down.

 

"At least you're honest about being a hypocrite." Tyler stood and walked away, leaving Dan to stare after him, stung by his parting shot, but unable to deny that the label fit.

 

***

Sunday night brought heavy rain and high winds that soon reduced the snow on the ground, though enough remained the next morning to make the view from the cabin windows one of white and gray under a pale blue, scoured clean sky. With nowhere they had to be, and too much that they couldn't -- or Tyler wouldn't -- talk about, Dan retreated to a corner of the living room with his laptop.

Tyler had spent way too long cleaning every gun in the house with meticulous attention to detail and then hiding them again, showing Dan where each one was. Dan appreciated the trust that showed, even if he had a feeling that Tyler had other weapons that Dan didn't know about, outside, maybe, or in Tyler's truck.

After that, Tyler had holed up in the kitchen. Dan suspected that what Tyler really wanted to do was to get drunk, but that would have put him at a disadvantage if Cole showed up early, so Tyler stayed sober and morose. The same need to be a Boy Scout meant that sex was on the 'not a chance in hell' list, but that didn't matter because Dan wasn't in the right frame of mind for it anyway. Not when even mentioning it would lead to an argument. Dan pretty much always wanted to jump Tyler, but he didn't need Oprah to tell him that make-up sex two days in a row wasn't a sign of a healthy relationship.

Instead, he researched the trip they were supposed be taking in the spring. Tyler had told Dan to make a list of everywhere he'd ever wanted to go and promised to take him to as many as possible. Dan clicked through pages without the usual fizz of excitement as he looked at places he'd only seen in movies. Some of the locations on his list were too remote or far-flung to be practical. Tyler said he had money stashed away, but he wasn't a millionaire. Not on a government salary. It didn't matter. Planning the trip was almost as much fun as doing it would be, and if it got reduced to a week on a beach somewhere, well, it would still be better than every vacation Dan had taken, because he'd never had one.

Dan stared at a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge without really seeing it and thought about Tyler's other offer -- to put him through college. That wasn't as tempting as traveling, and not only because it would split them up. Dan hadn't hated school, but when his father had told him that college was out of the question because Dan was needed on the farm, he hadn't minded or fought to be allowed to go. Farming suited him well enough. Ambitions weren't something that troubled him much, though he couldn't settle for hanging out with nothing to do.

He liked working. Liked earning. Dan's dad might have been an intolerant asshole when he'd found out that Dan was gay, but laziness wasn't one of his faults, and he'd passed that work ethic on to Dan. The past months without a job, unable to pay Tyler anything toward food or the other bills, had hurt his pride, even if Tyler hadn't wanted to take money off him in the first place.

A rich, complex smell was drifting over from the kitchen as Tyler cooked. One of the presents Dan had given Tyler was a curry cookbook he'd found in a used bookstore in Carlyle, its pages clean enough, though the cover was missing. Tyler had gone out and bought a big sack of basmati rice and herbs and spices, their bottles glowing like traffic signals, yellow, red, and green, in the kitchen cupboard. Some of his culinary experiments had left Dan's eyes streaming and the kitchen filled with an oily, smoky reek, but Tyler was getting better at producing food with enough flavor to satisfy him, yet mild enough that Dan could eat more than three bites without needing a tall glass of water.

Cooking was Tyler's way of calming down as much as a means to an end; Dan didn't have a similar outlet. When he was on edge, he yelled or stormed off, but neither of those worked well with Tyler. He usually stayed infuriatingly calm, refusing to join in the discussion once it got heated, and letting Dan's temper burn until it had nothing left to feed on and flickered out. Dan had pointed out that Tyler being mature just made him want to channel his inner five-year old that much more, but Tyler had grinned and said, "That's why I do it, boy. I thought you would've figured that out by now."

Yelling didn't seem like a good idea today, not with both of them tense, and it was too wet to walk in the woods -- assuming Tyler would have let Dan out of his sight.

Dan sighed, put his laptop down, and went into the kitchen. He leaned against the table for a while, just watching Tyler work, deft hands chopping, stirring. Tyler looked good in a kitchen, a man who knew what he was doing. A damp, cold breeze from an open window kept the air from getting too thick, but it smelled good enough to make Dan's stomach rumble. Chicken was sizzling in a pan, and a pile of chopped onions was growing under the snick and slice of a wickedly sharp knife.

Maybe the tools were what attracted Tyler to cooking. Some of them looked lethal, including one that had been left behind by the cabin's previous owner. Neither of them had known what it was when Tyler found it wedged at the back of a kitchen drawer. They'd spent an hour inventing uses for it, ranging from the obscene to the gruesome, only for Anne to take one look at it and inform them that it was for making curls of butter and they were barbarians. She'd kept her face straight for about ten seconds after that and then burst out laughing.

When she'd gone, Tyler had picked up the twisted hook, one edge serrated, ending in a sharp point, and shaken his head. "You could do some serious damage with this and they use it to make those fancy curls of butter?"

"When it's perfect for gouging eyeballs out," Dan said, secretly glad that their game hadn't been ruined.

 

"Or for a sadistic manicurist."

 

"Or--"

Word games and gadgets weren't important today, though. All that Dan could think about was how snugly the knife fitted in Tyler's hand, an extension of it, as if he wasn't put off by the fact that it could chop through a finger without much difficulty.

"Did you always use a gun when you worked?" Dan asked, regretting the question as soon as he asked it.
Nice one
, he told himself.
Why not ask him how he got the bloodstains out of his clothes while you're at it?

"Rifle," Tyler said, correcting him without turning. "Mostly, anyway, but let's just say if I ran out of bullets, I could improvise." He glanced over his shoulder. "Why?"

 

"The way you hold a knife," Dan said frankly, once he'd decided that Tyler didn't seem to mind the subject under discussion. "I never noticed it before."

 

"Yeah, I like knives." Tyler flipped the paring knife up high in the air, watched it twist and turn and fall, then caught it neatly by the hilt. "But I prefer a rifle."

 

Dan choked on a yelp. "God, Tyler, don't do that! I like you with ten fingers, thanks."

"I'm not planning on doing a Frodo impersonation, don't worry," Tyler said, using the knife to scrape the onions from the chopping board into the pot. They hit the pan with a sharp, fierce sizzle, adding another layer to the scent-drenched air.
"Frodo?" Dan frowned and then got the reference. "Oh, right, Gollum bit his finger off in the movie, didn't he?"

"In the book as well," Tyler said mildly.

"I couldn't finish it," Dan said, knowing just where this was going. Tyler's refusal to have a TV had lasted for about one month of Dan's persistent nagging. Tyler had taught him to like reading for fun, but Dan missed a TV to watch. They couldn't pick up many channels, but the built-in DVD player meant that they could watch movies, which helped to keep Dan sane. "Too long. No special effects. Aragorn wasn't as hot on the page."

"You have to use this thing called imagination," Tyler said.

"Hey, I've got imagination." Dan walked over to Tyler and ran his hand down Tyler's spine, tracing each bump slowly. "Right now, I'm imagining you naked, and if I try real hard, I could probably put me in the picture along with some, uh, some…" Dan paused, pretending to be out of ideas, and Tyler chuckled softly as he glanced back. Dan widened his eyes in exaggerated shock. "God, maybe I
don't
have any imagination." He kissed the side of Tyler's neck. "Or maybe the thought of you naked just fries my brain."

Tyler turned, his hands empty, and folded his arms across his chest. "What do you want?"

 

"Huh?"

"Compliments and romance… they're not really your style, boy." Tyler leaned in and kissed him, only their mouths touching, a lingering kiss that ended with a nip at Dan's lip, like chocolate flavored with chili: sweet, powerful heat in a single package. "Makes me suspicious."

"I don't want anything." Dan nudged at Tyler's folded arms until they opened and he could get closer to all those muscles and all that body heat. What had seemed too risky to ask for a few minutes ago was starting to look like it was his for the taking. "Just this."

"Again with the hearts and flowers," Tyler murmured into Dan's hair, the words tickling. Tyler moved his mouth to Dan's, and Dan closed his eyes and let the kiss melt away his worries, for a little while at least. Tyler always tasted good, but sometimes Dan couldn't get enough of kissing him, holding Tyler in place, demanding more, until Tyler either gave in and fucked him or chuckled and walked away if he wasn't in the mood.

Today, Dan just wanted a moment when Tyler's attention was on him, only him, but even though the kiss was thorough and left his lips tingling, he could tell that Tyler wasn't concentrating.

"Do you think he'll come today?" Dan said, stepping back to give Tyler space when the unsatisfactory kiss died a natural death.
Tyler cocked his head to one side, his eyebrows pulling together in a frown. "I think he's here now."

"What?" Dan felt his heart thump painfully in his chest. "Here in the house? Shit!"

 

"You can't hear the car?" Tyler waited for Dan to focus past the rush of blood in his ears and nod as the muffled sound of an engine registered. "It's him. Has to be."

 

"So what do we do?" Dan licked his lips nervously. "I could take one of your guns and stand somewhere he can't see me. Jump out at him."

"You touch one of my guns and I'll use it to beat you bloody," Tyler said without heat. "You'd shoot your foot off or put a hole in me. Plus, trying to sneak up on Cole would get you hurt, the same as it would if you did it to anyone trained, and I don't want that to happen, you hear me?" Tyler's hand cupped Dan's chin and tilted his face up for a single swift kiss. "You're not part of this fight. If it is one."

"No, but I'm connected to you." Dan jerked his chin to the side. "And if you think I'm gonna let him take you away--" He didn't finish, because "from me" was hovering in the air, waiting to drop into the conversation like a lead weight into water, disturbing it and making ripples.

The car stopped outside, and Tyler turned off the burners on the stove and walked into the front room, with Dan a few steps behind him. A gun Dan hadn't seen or felt when he'd been hugging Tyler had appeared in Tyler's hand, and he looked… different. Not scary, exactly, just a world away from the man who'd bitched him out about crunching his burned toast too loudly at breakfast and then made him a fresh stack, honey-pale the way Dan liked it, but he'd been brought up not to waste food, so he'd done his best with the carbonized slices.

Footsteps, one set of them, came up onto the porch, and there was a tap at the door. It was a soft, polite knock, and somehow that calmed Dan's nerves. Bad guys kicked doors in or hammered on them hard. He conjured up an image of a short, skinny, meek little mouse waiting on the other side, watery eyes blinking rapidly, and hung onto it in the face of logic that told him that a man like that wouldn't have been likely to be Tyler's boss.