The General and the Horse-Lord (16 page)

Gabriel curled around in the bed, and John felt his warm breath against his thigh, then Gabriel’s soft mouth touching him. His belly was tight, his cock swelling at the unexpected touch, yearning sinking down through his skin, heat and sweetness, lust and love lodging against his spine, deep in a place only Gabriel could reach. Then Gabriel was climbing up his body, pressing him against the mattress. He held John down, hands on his wrists, took a bite out of his neck. Gabriel was hungry, thrusting his hips, and John felt their cocks slide roughly against each other. “John, can we…?” He could hear the longing in Gabriel’s voice, feel the desire in the roughness of his hands. John rocked against him, let Gabriel thrust hard, and then he lifted his hips, wrapped his legs high around Gabriel’s waist.

Gabriel groaned, his mouth moving down John’s neck, and John reached down between them, wrapped Gabriel’s cock in his fist. “Anything,” John said, and Gabriel lifted himself up, looked down at John, hands on either side of his face, pressing down into the pillow. Gabriel’s pupils were huge and black, his eyes as wild and dark as a desert sky full of stars. “Anything you want.”

Gabriel looked down at him and smiled, then bent close and let his mouth touch John’s. “Roll over,” he said.

Chapter 12

J
OHN
fixed a pot of coffee, and they both drank a cup while warming up out on the driveway. The morning was still cool, but the crystal blue sky and the smell of spring flowers told him it was going to be hot before ten. Gabriel was looking up as well, with something like lost hope on his face. “Good day to fly. Would you look at that sky?”

John thought about Gabriel without a chopper. Hard to imagine, but he had a house, a family, two kids in Catholic school, Juan in braces, and he’d only been working as a lawyer for less than a year. He’d picked a strange little group practice that seemed to spend too much time helping people get their immigration status fixed, and defending boys with HIV when no one would rent them an apartment. He still wasn’t making what his salary had been when he retired from the army, and didn’t seem to think he would anytime soon. He probably didn’t need the extra expense of a newly divorced father’s studio apartment. But John didn’t want to push him too much. He’d offered. He’d give him a couple of days to think about it, and they could talk again.

They finished the three-mile loop, an easy, flat run perfect for aging knees, and were walking up the street to the house when a car pulled up next to them. Dean Fox rolled down the window and stuck his head out. “General? You have a minute?”

“Sure. You want to come up to the house?”

He shook his head. “I just knocked on your front door and Kim chewed my ear off for ten minutes. That boy’s scary first thing in the morning.”

You have no idea
. “So what can I do for you?”

“I wanted to give you a heads-up. I don’t think there will be any comeback, but I’m giving Brian Walker his resignation letter today. Billy Dial, hey, do you know who his father is?” John shook his head. “Cody Dial. He’s a bull rider, world champion for six years running back in, what was it, ’92 to ’98? Something like that.” Fox shoved an elbow out the car window. “Man, he was more popular than Jesus where I came from. Anyway, I got a call from him last night, no idea how he got my number, and he’s on his way from Cheyenne to look after young Billy. I guess Billy called him about thirty seconds before he called me. You don’t have any idea where Billy is, do you?”

John shook his head again, and Gabriel spoke up. “Dean? Could I suggest you give Brian Walker the letter before his father has a chance to stick him in rehab? Because once he does that, he’s got a medical condition, and that’s going to complicate a termination for cause. I think he probably does have a problem with alcohol, maybe something else, but do you want him back on your faculty? Around students? What’s going on with that guy, it’s more serious than just substance abuse.”

“I didn’t think about rehab. He does need something to fix whatever is wrong with him, no question. His department head, he should have told me things were getting this far out of control.”

John stared at him, and Fox looked a little shamefaced. “I guess it didn’t seem as real to me as it did with Billy sitting in front of me, so young. He’s just a kid, so vulnerable, and he was here at my school, and one of the professors? I just can’t bear it, John. Once I get Walker off the faculty and take care of Billy’s father, I’m sending in my resignation as well.”

John was surprised.

“I know you blame me for not acting sooner, John, and you would be right. I blame myself. The president would never go against me on this, and he didn’t when we had a private talk yesterday. Too many old bones in both our closets, you know what I mean? I read that article you wrote for
Civil War Magazine
, about the failure of leadership among the northern generals. It really said something to me, John. The only thing I can do at this point is try and get back on the right path.”

John saw he was looking at Gabriel over his shoulder, and he couldn’t remember if he’d ever introduced them. “George, have you met Gabriel Sanchez? He’s my counsel.” John looked back at Gabriel’s handsome dark face, watched him lift his arm and wipe sweat from his forehead. “And my partner.”

“Your partner in what?” Gabriel slung his arm around John’s shoulder, and John watched the dean’s eyes get big with comprehension. “Oh, right, right, sorry. It’s been a rough couple of days. I’m slow on the uptake. That’s right, the army, they’ve got that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ thing, right? Oh, wait, they stopped that. Now they say it’s okay?”

He was babbling, and John stopped him before it got any worse. “Thank you for coming to let me know about Professor Walker. Does Billy know his dad is on the way from Wyoming?”

“I don’t know. I tried to call him but no one answered his phone.”

“I’ll speak with you later, then.” John turned back toward the house. He knew George Fox was watching them in the rearview mirror, probably drifting across the yellow line, and he didn’t want to be responsible for an accident. Gabriel was laughing, though, reached out and pulled John into his arms and kissed him, a deep sweaty soul kiss right on the streets of Albuquerque, at 0748 in the morning. “You never called me your partner before, not in all these years. You’ve never said it out loud. You’ve never told anyone.”

John leaned against him for a moment, resting his face against Gabriel’s strong brown neck, and closed his eyes. He smelled so deliriously male. “It’s way past time, don’t you think? That I claimed you for my own? I should have done it years ago. In the light, the way you wanted.”

Gabriel was shaking his head. “It’s easy to look back and second-guess. It’s easy, on a day when the gay boys are so free to be themselves, and join the gay student club, and look on the internet to find the gay bars in any city in America, to forget what it was like just a few short years ago. We did the best we could, John. All we have to work with is today.”

“And today I love you, and you’re my partner, if you want to be. How does that song go? ‘You’re all I’ve ever needed. Baby, you’re the one’.”

“Are you quoting Elton John to me? Now I know you must be gay.” Gabriel ducked out of the way when John tried to swat him. “I’ve always been yours. I tried hard to make it work with Martha, John, I really did. I gave it everything I could. But you were there first. In my heart, I mean. You’ve always been the one in my heart.”

They walked into the house, arms around each other, and Gabriel went off to the shower. Kim must have been watching for the very second he could have John for himself, because he burst into the kitchen like a little fireball to tell John everything Dean Fox had said. But he ended up just telling John what he had said to Dean Fox, since the man had not been able to get a word in after Kim started in on him regarding abusive men lurking among the faculty.

“So why do you suppose that you got so riled up over Billy, when you wanted to hide your own face when he did it to you?”

“He hurt Billy a lot more than he hurt me. And Billy’s young, he’s just eighteen, and….”

“Billy isn’t a child. He’s smart and tougher than you think. So why?”

“Why what?” Kim was cruising the fridge. “Do we have any bacon?”

“What happened to the Buddhism? Never mind, don’t tell me. You just think about it, okay? Why you’re treating Billy differently than you treated yourself. Add it into the mix, for whatever you’re plotting down at Ho Ho’s.”

“Did you ask the Horse-Lord to move in? Juan said that his mom said that it was only a matter of time, and she didn’t know why he bothered with the fiction of his own apartment.”

John sighed. He wondered why they didn’t just ask Martha what they should be doing. She had a real clear eye when it came to the general and her husband. “Can I remind you again that you aren’t a spy gathering information from the enemy camp, and Juan is young and angry and hurt, and he needs a friend?”

Kim smirked at him. “
Juan
is angry and needs a friend? I feel like patting Mrs. Horse-Lord down for weapons every time she comes in. Actually, you’re right, she’s very smart, and Juan tells me she paints, she has a little art studio out behind the house. I might get her to help on the—” He hesitated. “—on the Ho Ho’s project.”

John pulled out the English muffins and wondered why Kim couldn’t just stick his fingers into the business of the multitude of friends that flocked around him like bright little birds. There always seemed to be a crisis going on with that bunch. But maybe this was Kim’s business. This was affecting both of their families. “What do you think about all of this?”

“What do I think? I think it’s long past time you and the Horse-Lord were together like you should have been all along. I think it just shines out of you, when the two of you are together. The love, I mean. On both of you. Oh, that reminds me. I want to take some pictures of the two of you like saints. You know, the Virgin de Guadalupe. Or Bernadette. Yeah, Bernadette. I think that look on your face when you’re together, it’s the same look on the saint’s faces, when they’re having visions. Very camp. Like somewhere between a vision quest and a psychotic break.”

John stared at him, tried to let the disbelief shine out of his face. “Out. I’m trying to cook. And tell Billy to come in. I need to speak with him.”

Kim saluted him, his back ramrod straight. “Aye, aye, General.”

Billy stuck his head in the kitchen door, looked around like he was scouting for enemies.

“Good morning, Billy. Do you want some eggs for breakfast?”

Billy shuddered and pushed his hands away. “Oh, God, no. I can’t take food this early.”

“Then how about some coffee?”

He shook his head. “Do you have any herbal tea?”

John opened the cabinet over his head. “Kim has some tea bags that say blood orange, hibiscus, and rose hips on the label.”

“Oh, perfect!”

John tossed him the tea bag, pointed toward the electric kettle and the mugs. He waited while the water heated and Billy poured hot water over the little tea bag and put a saucer on top of the mug. “The key,” he said, “is steeping properly so it develops a rich flavor. This tea has more antioxidants than you probably get in a month eating a normal American diet.”

“Really?” John waited for more.

Billy leaned back against the countertop, tried to look casual. “So I decided to call my dad last night. I told him not to come, that I was fine and I’d be home for spring break, but my guess is he’s on his way.”

John handed over Kim’s bottle of unfiltered raw honey and a spoon. “Dean Fox came by this morning. He told me your dad’s on the way.”

“Kim told me George was here, but he didn’t have much to say.” Billy studied the wall, waiting for his tea to steep; then he sighed and opened the jar of honey, put a big, dripping spoonful into the mug.

The general waited again.

“He didn’t say anything about my brothers coming, did he?”

John shook his head.

“The thing is, when I’m back in my room at the dorm? Everybody is staring at me and asking questions and frankly, they all seemed pretty thrilled at the drama of it all. I don’t appreciate being the week’s entertainment. I don’t like being a poor little victim. That is so totally
not
me. But I don’t want to put you in a bad position by staying with Kim. Like, when my dad comes bursting in here with guns blazing.”

“Would you like me to call your dad and tell him who I am, and that you’re staying here?”

Billy took a big swallow of the tea. “That’s what I was hoping, General Mitchel, but I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. I know you and your lover are just moving in together, and that’s always a hard adjustment for everyone. I don’t want to make anything more difficult for you.”

John bit his lip to keep from grinning. There was more to young Billy than was evident at first look. He was smart enough to know when to tell the truth. “Gabriel and I have been friends for a long time, Billy. We’re cool. Don’t worry about that. You are very welcome here. Let me have your dad’s cell phone if you want me to call him, and I’ll give him directions to the house. Can you tell me, is he uncomfortable with you being gay? Is he likely to give Kim any reason to give him a lecture on civil rights? We should prepare if that’s the case.”