This story is about male/male relationships and contains graphic descriptions of sex. You should not read this story if it is in any way illegal due to your age or residence.
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TRAGEDY IN THE BLOOD by Steven H. Davis
Chapter 26
Linda dropped Taine off at his house first, and he slipped a sealed manila envelope into my hands before kissing me goodnight and climbing out of the car.
"Open that at home," he said. "I love you, Ricky."
"I love you, Babes," I replied. "See you tomorrow."
I climbed out of the backseat after him, jumping in the front next to Linda as we waved to Taine and drove off toward my house.
"I've made a decision," said Linda.
I looked at her expectantly, raising my eyebrows.
"I've decided," she continued, "that I like Taine. At first I thought he was a little weird because he's so shy and never talks to anybody, but I can see now that he's different around you."
"I'm glad you feel that way," I said, "because from now on, we're a package deal."
Linda smiled and glanced over at me. "You're different around him, too. You're really crazy about him, aren't you?"
"I am," I admitted happily. "He's not like anyone else I've ever met."
"He's got a lot of hurt inside," she said. "Are you sure you're up to that?"
"I hope so," I said, my fingers running over the envelope. "Somehow, I think that between me, Sly and Rex, we can take some of that pain away, or at least keep him safe while we work through it together."
"Just promise me something."
I waited, nodding.
"Just promise me you won't try to fix him. Boys are always trying to fix everything, but people aren't car engines or kitchen sinks, Rick. Just be there for him and help him to fix himself."
I pondered Linda's sage advice, and realized the distinction she was making. As she pulled her car up to the curb in front of my house, I made the promise which she had requested, and decided that I would have to keep it.
Giving Linda a goodbye peck on the cheek and thanking her for the ride, I gathered my things and made my way up the steep driveway to the garage.
Had I turned around, I might have seen the broken-down black Dodge Charger slowly trailing Linda's car as she pulled away.
Rex's white Chevy Nova wasn't in the garage, but Tynah's car -- a matching Nova, only bright blue -- was already in its usual spot. After feeding and watering the birds, I replaced the big bag of birdseed in the garage and entered the house through the door to the kitchen.
I found Tynah reclining in the La-Z-Boy chair in the living room, still in her office attire and watching a Match Game re-run on TV. I went over to give her a hug, then sat down on the couch to watch the rest of the show with her. We didn't have much in common except for a naughty sense of humor, and the show delighted both of us with its risque questions and answers.
"Unlucky Louie said, 'My rotten luck,'" smirked host Gene Rayburn. "'I went on a diet and I lost three inches. Unfortunately, it was off my... blank."
"Hoo-ha!" Tynah giggled. "He lost it off his hoo-ha!"
I laughed and said "nose," matching only one of the six celebrity panelists, Brett Somers. To my surprise, Tynah's naughty response matched Marcia Wallace, whose answer card was covered with a large digital OOPS! to appease network censors.
It was good to be laughing with Tynah again, as she hadn't shown much levity since the awful fate which had befallen our beloved dog Foxy the week before.
After snickering through the rest of the show, I went to my room to change into shorts and a t-shirt, flicking on the stereo before sitting down to do my homework. As I sat on my bed with my school books and folders in front of me, I decided to open the manila envelope which my Babes had handed me in Linda's car.
I broke the envelope's seal and was surprised as I withdrew a thick sheet of artist's drawing paper, revealing an elaborate pencil-sketch. I examined it carefully as the music played in the background.
*Hello darkness, my old friend/
I've come to talk with you again*
I didn't even know that Taine drew, and was impressed by his work. It was definitely a very good drawing, simultaneously obscure and evocative. It showed a boy -- obviously Taine himeslf -- sitting in a tall, almost seven-foot-high chair in what looked to be some sort of dark, concrete room. Taine's head was downcast, and had hair long enough that it hid his face as he leaned forward in the chair.
*Because a vision softly creeping/
Left its seeds while I was sleeping*
It almost seemed like Taine was crying, or at least that's what I thought he was doing. The perspective was from the door of this room, and a figure's shadow appeared in the dim light from the doorway as it fell across the dark cobblestone floor.
*And the vision that was planted in my brain/
Still remains, within the sound of silence*
Because the room was so dark, not much could be seen aside from the chair, Taine, and the shadow in the doorway. There was one other feature, however. Several lengths of barbed wire, crisscrossing the floor of the room, twining up the chair and wrapping around Taine's ankles and wrists.
And not just any barbed wire.
This wire had grotesquely oversized barbs, pointed and sharp as razors, and they were digging into Taine's flesh, rivulets of dark blood streaming from the wounds down into the shadowy darkness which surrounded him.
I searched the sketch for a signature or a date, but predictably didn't find one. Taine was not the kind of artist to sign his drawings.
I studied the drawing for a while, trying to understand its meaning, but soon the emotional exhaustion of my long school day, combined with my lack of sleep and draining -- though heavenly -- physical exertions with Taine the night before, sent me into a deep, long sleep.
I dreamed about Taine's picture. I was in the room with him, and he was still bound to the chair, bleeding from his wrists and ankles.
I tried to get the barbed wire off of him, but had only succeeded in getting my own arms and hands sliced up. Painfully, too. This was one of those dreams where I could feel everything. When I finally reached Taine, he looked up at me, and told me that I had to hurry if we were to escape.
I redoubled my efforts at freeing him, but that was when the door slammed shut, locking me in the darkened cell with Taine and... something else.
As the light began to fade, I heard an awful, wet laughter, low and gurgling.
Taine whispered, "It's here, Ricky. It knows you're with me now, and it won't let you go."
The slobbering laughter had moved to just behind my neck then, and I felt the barbed wire slithering around my ankles, my wrists...
When I felt the wire tighten around my balls, I tried to scream, but no sound had come out. That was when I felt the hot breath on my neck, and the laughter suddenly ceased.
Taine looked at me with sad eyes.
"It has us now," he said.
I awoke with a start and took a moment to shake off an eerie, disturbing dream. I was under the covers, and it was dark in my room. The stereo had been turned off, and my books had been moved to the desk in the corner. Tynah must have come in and found me asleep, and done all this while I was dead to the world.
I glanced over at the clock-radio on my nightstand, which read 1:11 a.m.
I remembered hearing something about how you were supposed to say a prayer for the one you love at 1:11, and it would be answered. Staring into the darkness of my room, I began to pray for Taine.
Then I prayed for myself.
And, finally, I saved my most heartfelt prayers for that new, fragile being called "Us."
Chapter 27
It was Tuesday evening, and I lay in Taine's bed upstairs at the Maxwell house, thinking deep thoughts. I was on my left side, most of my weight supported by my elbow as I gently rested my head on Taine's sleeping chest. His right arm was draped loosely around my shoulders and back, and my left hand idly stroked his warm, flat belly. His knees were up, resting his legs across the top of mine as I snuggled him, curled up tightly against his soft, smooth little butt. I was sleepy and content, feeling his heart beat beneath my ear, listening to the soft sounds of his breathing as his chest steadily rose and fell, my mind drifting back over the events of the day.
Nothing really terrible had happened on that Tuesday, which was a relief after what we had both been through, but there were a few events worth noting. First of these was Linda's nervousness about the car which had been following her. She was the one who first noticed the beaten-up black Charger as she had dropped Taine and me off at our respective homes the previous evening.
Linda was worried, wondering whether the car belonged to one of Kevin Gorman's vengeful friends, who had already brutally murdered my dog, Foxy, and destroyed much of Sly Maxwell's beloved new red Lamborghini.
I could see the despondent look on Taine's face as Linda told us of her concerns about the Charger, and I knew instantly what he was thinking: that the black cloud of doom which followed him around, which he was sure spread grave misfortune to everyone close to him, was about to claim another innocent victim. I tried to get his mind off it by pinching his butt right there in the hallway. He leapt off the ground as if electrocuted, but came down with a grin.
"What was that all about?" he asked, chuckling. "Someone will see us!"
"Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke," said Linda. "You two are adorable."
"Listen, Linda," I assured her, "Those guys aren't going to do anything to you. It's me they're pissed off at, and Sly for getting them in trouble. I don't even think they're that mad at Taine. They want me."
Linda nodded, her fears seemingly assuaged, but her worry for me was written all over her pretty face. She reached out a hand and gently grasped my bare forearm.
"Rick," she said in an urgent, quiet tone. "Be careful."
I assured her that I would, and then Taine surprised me by speaking up in a firm, confident voice.
"Nothing's going to happen to Rick," he said. "I'll make sure it doesn't."
Linda smiled indulgently at the suddenly-protective Taine, but I could see by his hot blush that he took it as condescension. He turned and walked off to class without a word.
As I was walking down the school hallway between my second and third period classes, the second interesting event of the day occurred. I could see Kevin Gorman, gauze still taped to his head to protect the wound I had inflicted, standing at the door of Mr. Salcedo's history class with his girlfriend, the lissome young cheerleader Tawny Watkins.
Suddenly filled with anger about my dog, Sly's car, and the Charger, not to mention my almost-overwhelming rage at him for bullying my Babes, I began to approach him. He and Tawny both looked up from their conversation, eying me suspiciously. Kevin took a half-step around Tawny, sliding in front of her protectively, and looked at me with defiance, but I could see fear in his eyes.
"Don't talk to me, psycho," said Kevin, all but shoving Tawny into Mr. Salcedo's room and following quickly behind her.
This was new for me, having a guy Kevin's size being so afraid of what I might do that he felt the need to flee with his girlfriend into the safety of a classroom.
I didn't know quite what to make of it, and found it somewhat disturbing to realize that I had a slight smile playing on my lips. But... wait a minute. If he was afraid of me, why would he be brazenly killing my dog and trashing Sly's car? Why would he be following Linda around in a beat-up Charger when he and most of his friends drove expensive Mercedes or BMWs? I hurried to my third period class, deciding that I would attempt to process this new information at a later time.
After class, I headed to the cafeteria to meet Taine. I found him already sitting at our table, but rather than picking listlessly and silently at his food as usual, he seemed agitated and eager to talk. I slid my tray onto the table, surveyed my leathery chicken-fried steak with congealed country gravy, and raised my eyes to meet his. They were blazing!
"Did you see?" he began, his expression animated and upset. "Did you see what Linda did?"
I was perplexed. "What did she do?" I asked.
"I said I wouldn't let anything happen to you, and she laughed! She fucking laughed!"
"She didn't laugh, Babes," I explained. "She was smiling because she thought it was cute that you were being so protective of me."
"She laughed!" Taine insisted heatedly. "She was being patronizing because... well, what you said! She thought it was 'cute'. I'm not 'cute,' I'm a man!"
"You're my cute man," I grinned, but instantly realized from the defiant look on Taine's face that I'd made a mistake.
"Yeah, you'll see how 'cute' I am," he said firmly.
I arched an eyebrow in confusion. I was taken aback by the seriousness of his tone, and wondered just what I'd led myself into.
Taine's mood seemed to lighten after that, and I eventually told him what had happened with Kevin and Tawny in front of Mr. Salcedo's class, making sure to include my observations about his friends' cars and the fear in his eyes.
My thoughtful, deliberative angel took in everything I told him, and I could see him processing it as he slowly chewed his enriched wheat biscuit. Finally, he swallowed the last of the cud-like mass and looked up at me seriously.
"It's not Kevin's friends," he said. "I don't know who it is, Ricky, but that doesn't make any sense."
"I mean, it could be..." I tried to qualify my statement, but Taine raised a finger to silence me. One thing about Taine which I had come to learn was that he would silently consider the ins and outs of any possibility, but once he voiced his opinion, that was it. It was set in stone and there would be no dislodging it with further consideration.
The rest of the day passed quickly, and other than a brief conversation with Linda in which I cautioned her about being too maternal or condescending toward Taine, nothing else happened of note.
When I got home and fed the birds, I checked with Tynah about spending the night at the Maxwell home. Sly had invited me over, knowing that I had been a good boy the day before and had paid my dues to Tynah and Rex by making my presence known at home, but decided that Taine and I needed to spend some time together. Rex had signed off on my overnight absence, and Tynah considered it for a moment before giving her assent.
"Normally, I'd think it was strange for a high school boy to sleep over at another boy's house," she said, wiggling her eyebrows with a suggestive leer. "But you are going through so much lately... I think maybe you two need to stick together for a while."
I nodded gravely, not failing to note that Tynah was making a joke of who Taine and I -- unbeknownst to her -- really were. To Tynah, gay people were jokes on television. They were Paul Lynde, Charles Nelson Reilly and Rip Taylor. Silly, campy people who jokingly hinted of unspeakable perversions, but in the end were just powder-puff comical creations, throwing confetti and mincing around a stage to delight "normal people."
I didn't let my expression reveal my inner thoughts. After all, if Tynah had even considered the true nature of my relationship with Taine to be a realistic option, in the realm of actual possibility, she would never have agreed to let me spend the night, and would probably have dragged me kicking and screaming to her fire-and-brimstone Methodist church to be "saved," whatever that meant.
I didn't need saving. I needed Taine.
And so it was that I loaded up my backpack with schoolbooks and a change of clothes for the next day and rode my bicycle over to the Maxwell house, scruffy little Meatball yapping and nipping at my heels for as long as his stubby, gnarled legs would let him run.
When I got there, I found Sly examining his newly-painted, well-restored Lambo in the driveway. He smiled as I coasted my bike to a stop in front of him.
"How ya doin', Rick?" he said with a jovial grin. "Come on inside."
He waved me into the house after him, and I dropped my bike by the garage door and followed. Sly had prepared a real Italian feast for us, with lasagna, garlic bread, steaming hot squash and homemade cannoli for dessert. It was all absolutely delicious. Taine was fairly quiet during the meal, but kept giving me strange, sidelong glances and nudging my Reeboks with his Jegs under the table. I wasn't accustomed to this side of Taine, and didn't really know how to react, but kept up a light conversation with Sly all the same.
After we had rinsed off all the dishes and loaded them into Sly's wide, modern dishwasher, Taine's dad grabbed his keys, gave us each a semi-crushing hug and a kiss on the forehead, and announced that he was going out for the evening. I blushed, aware that Sly knew full well what we would be getting up to, and was giving us the space to do so.
Taine had already taken his shower while I was at my house, so I jumped in to take a quick rinse as well after Sly had left for his date with Ms. Ogretz. I was very much taken with the showers in the Maxwell home, as they were large and spacious, with water just as hot as I wanted it -- I preferred my showers scalding -- and variable strength which I could crank up to the velocity of a high-pressure hose.
I dried myself as I left the bathroom, not bothering to put on any clothes. I knew Taine and I had some serious loving to catch up on, and I was eager to get started. I made my way into his room, but didn't see him anywhere. Shrugging, I stretched myself out nude on his bed, my pulsing erection already slapping my stomach in anticipation of our coming passion.
It would be only our second sexual experience together, and I imagined that it would proceed much as the first, with lots of kissing and cuddling, Taine taking a passive, innocently accepting and almost shy role as I explored his body with my hands, my mouth and my penis, filling him with slow, lingering pleasure which would continue throughout the night.
What I didn't realize was how much Linda's smile had belittled and upset him, and how much my overprotective nature had made him feel that he was being regarded as something less than masculine. My Babes now had something to prove, and I was about to experience the knowledge that we had awakened a sleeping tiger.
My first hint of this was when Taine ran into the room naked and pounced onto the bed on top of me, his beautiful cock already stiff and enraged, bouncing off his belly. This was not the bashful Taine of Sunday night, who had been almost demure in his shy acceptance of my physical attentions.
This time, Taine meant business.
With no preliminaries, he grabbed both of my wrists and gripped them tightly as he stretched above me, knees pushing my legs apart as he knelt between them. Growling passionately, Taine began hungrily kissing and biting at my lips, pressing his perfect mouth into mine. There was a wild, lust-filled look in his eyes as he ravished me, and I -- despite being completely taken by surprise -- was incredibly excited by it.
Gazing at me with at with an evil, seductive grin, Taine worked himself down my neck and chest, nipping at my pale throat with his teeth and lashing my nipples with his tongue. When he got down to my right nipple, he bit down hard, then licked the pain away as I gasped with pleasure, feeling his love bite in every nerve of my young body.
Taine stopped briefly, resting back on his heels between my outstretched legs. He leaned over and removed a pink bottle from under the duvet, then squeezed some of the baby lotion into his hand, slicking his steely, reddened erection without breaking eye contact with me. I didn't know who this person was in Taine's body, but I liked him.
"You're gonna get it now," he growled in a voice deep and husky with lust. I smiled seductively, giving him the okay -- as if he would have taken "no" for an answer, in the ridiculously unlikely event that I would have given it.
He slapped a hand between my legs, and I felt the cool lotion between my cheeks as he quickly slid a slick finger into my tight, hairless pucker. He worked the finger around inside me, warming the lotion and driving me crazy. After a time, he withdrew it, still smiling and never breaking eye contact.
Roughly, he pulled my legs apart so they were resting across each of his smooth, pale thighs. Then he leaned forward over me, holding himself up with his left hand as he used his right to guide his hard, glistening cock toward my well-lubed opening. Lunging forward with another deep growl, he buried himself inside me.
Unlike my experience with Jeff, this intrusion was entirely welcome and only hurt for a second. The pain of anal sex is never at the opening, because the first sphincter is under voluntary muscle control. It's the second, which is under the control of the subconscious, which causes any problems, which is why the passive partner in such endeavors is always told to relax. My feeling was that relaxation had nothing to do with it, and as consumed with passion and lust as I was at that moment, I was hardly what one would call relaxed. No, I thought, you just had to want it. And I did.
Oh, I did, and he gave it to me, hard and fast, jackrabbiting in and out of me with long, deep strokes, his tight, beautiful ass clenching beneath my hands as he pistoned his hot, steely-hard cock inside me. I was gasping, moaning, delirious with pleasure as he fucked me, and that's what it was. Taine wasn't making love to me. This was hot, sweaty, X-rated fucking, and he was proving a point to me in the most blunt, primal, and elemental manner possible.
And I got the point for the entire long, mind-blowing deep-dicking he was giving me until we both finally came together hard, screaming and grasping at each other's hot, sweaty flesh as we bucked against each other's hips and Taine shot wave after wave of his sweet, molten cum deep inside me.
The point that Taine had so emphatically made, and reaffirmed with a meaningful look into my ecstatically satiated eyes, was that he wasn't my baby, or my ward, or a charity case. He wasn't some innocent, helpless angel who needed pity and indulgence.
He was a man.
He was MY man.
And, I thought as I curled up against his warm, beautiful body as he dozed, I would love him until the end of my days.
Thank you for reading Chapter 26 & 27. To be continued...
"Match Game" created by Frank Wayne. Produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. c 1962-1999 Goodson-Todman Productions. "The Sound of Silence" written by Paul Simon. Performed by Simon & Garfunkel. c 1965 by Columbia Records.
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