Astounding! (28 page)

He braced himself. Would they wipe him out all at once, or slowly, like with a virus? Well, he wouldn’t go without a fight.

But these creatures were the type to move deliberately rather than lashing out. And before they could do anything to Carter, John was there, blanketing his essence over Carter’s, forming a frail but determined shield.
Do not harm him
, he said.

The others had to consider this for a few moments. Carter understood they were forbidden from destroying their own kind—which they’d have to do to get to Carter. It was a powerful prohibition, rarely violated. They’d probably be horrified if they knew that humans murdered each other all the time.

Then one of them—or perhaps more; it was hard to tell—came to the conclusion that John was no longer truly one of them.
A corrupted file
was the nearest translation Carter could manage. The aliens prepared to destroy Carter
and
John.

Carter had no defense. Carter and John clung together in soul and in body.
I’m sorry
, John said.
So sorry I did this to you
.

I’m not. It’s been a marvel. And I love you.

John glowed in and around him, loving him back.

Love.

What had Tammy said? “Let ’em know you’re for real.” Real and solid and capable of emotions the aliens could never fathom in their natural state. They could soar among the stars, but they could never feel what Carter and John felt for each other.

But if they
could
feel that… could have just a small taste… would they recoil from destruction?

Had Carter been capable of breathing in this state, he would have inhaled deeply. Instead, he gathered John tightly, merging their selves more closely than bodies would ever allow. John didn’t struggle. Maybe he decided this was a last embrace.

But that wasn’t what Carter intended. He pulled John to himself and then kept on pulling, like a tiny black hole. The aliens should have been able to resist because they were stronger, but they hadn’t expected this. In their shock, they were tugged right in. Even when they were as close as John, though, Carter didn’t let them go. Straining with the effort, he continued his traction, dragging the whole lot of them into his body and John’s.

Consciousness of his physical self returned so quickly that Carter tumbled to the ground. John fell on top of him, and inside his central nervous system, the captured aliens vibrated with alarm and anger. Good. Already they were feeling something.

Carter threaded his fingers through John’s hair and brought his head down so they could kiss. Fiercely. Deeply. Again, John didn’t fight him but joined in the kiss wholeheartedly. It was a kiss to harden cocks and curl toes and steal oxygen. They both moaned, their chests rumbling against one another.

Like opening a box, Carter let loose everything he felt about John. Love, yes. Also gratitude. Amazement. Lust. Admiration. And sorrow and desperation at the thought of losing him. It all washed through him at once, and the buzzing went silent. After a long moment, the aliens escaped Carter’s body in a rush.

John and Carter broke the kiss, but John remained collapsed atop Carter. They both breathed hard, and their skin was clammy with sweat.

Very gingerly, Carter removed his hands from John’s hair. He winced when he realized how many strands were caught around his fingers. John’s scalp must hurt. “John?” he whispered.

“Wait.”

Carter waited.

Minutes passed. John was heavy and the ground was cold and hard. But Carter didn’t move, at least not until John heaved a long sigh and slowly rolled to the side. “They’re gone,” John said.

Yes. That dense energy had disappeared, as had that goddamn humming in Carter’s nerves. “What… what happened?”

“They felt us.” John’s voice was flat with shock. “You made them feel… what we feel.”

“And?”

“And they’d forgotten, Carter. I’d forgotten too, until I met you. Forgotten how good and how deep emotions are in a corporeal being. Now you’ve reminded them.”

With some difficulty, Carter sat up. He gave John a hand to leverage himself upright too. “Is reminding them a good thing?”

John blew out a puff of air. “I think so. They’ve gone home to study this. I think they’re envious.”

Study. “What does this mean for us?”

“It means time. I told you, my people don’t do anything quickly. Change takes aeons. They’re going to be mulling this over for many centuries.” His face transformed as a smile slowly grew. “They won’t be coming back for us.”

Carter let go of the last dregs of his pride—fat lot of good it had ever done him anyway—and threw himself into John’s arms with a sob. And oh
God
, John felt so good and solid against him. So human.

They both cried for a while. It felt surprisingly nice. But by the end, they were laughing through their tears, and that was even nicer. “You are astounding,” Carter said, unsuccessfully trying to wipe a smudge from John’s cheek.

“Let’s go home, Carter. I want a bath and bed.”

Carter wanted those things too. And goddammit, in the morning he wanted pancakes.

T
HEIR
HALF
of the duplex was a little small for two people. They tended to bump into each other a lot, like now, when they stood in the tiny foyer to strip off their coats and shoes. It didn’t help that their cat, Octavia, wound around their feet, loudly demanding her dinner. Neither of them minded. They probably could have afforded a somewhat larger place, but they didn’t want to move. Their three rooms plus bath contained everything they needed.

Carter fed Octavia while John tidied up a little. “Are you going to read for a while?” John asked.

Carter looked at him. John’s hair was slightly mussed, and even from a couple of feet away, Carter could feel his body warmth. Carter eyed his broad hands, which were strong but uncalloused, and his wide shoulders, his pink lips and smooth cheeks. “I’d rather go to bed,” Carter rumbled. John flushed slightly, his pupils expanded, and his breathing sped up a notch or two.

God, John was so beautiful. So
good
. And he was Carter’s. Astounding.

“Me too,” said John.

They walked to the bedroom, closed the door against their inquisitive cat, and undressed each other slowly, like unwrapping a present when you don’t want to tear the paper. As each bit of skin was revealed, the other man would press fingers or lips to it. Not so much laying claim to territory as worshiping. There was no part of John that Carter didn’t love, not even the tiny imperfections that John had created in his own body. And certainly not the pink scars that were souvenirs of John’s solo trip through space. Who else had a lover with skin marked by the stars?

By the time they were fully naked and their cocks hard, Carter trembled a bit with the effort of holding himself back.

John smiled and drew him close for a kiss. Before John, Carter had never been much interested in kissing. Overrated, he thought. He didn’t think that anymore. John’s lips were soft, and he always tasted wonderful; every kiss was a fresh revelation. Of course, making out was especially nice without clothes, which meant that while their mouths were busy, their hands were free to wander. Carter loved to hold John’s ass, which was round and firm, and if he inched his fingers between the cheeks—like
this
—John would shudder and whimper into Carter’s throat, and he would dig his fingers into Carter’s back almost hard enough to bruise.

“Bed,” John gasped when they broke the kiss. Which was just as well, because Carter’s knees were wobbly.

Now safely horizontal, they resumed kissing. They shared more body contact as Carter draped himself over John, and now John could play with Carter’s ass, pleasing them both.

“Lube,” said John when Carter attempted to impale himself on one broad, dry finger.

Carter laughed. “Monosyllables?”

John answered with hardly more than a grunt. “Yes.”

Well, a good editor knew that sometimes dialogue was redundant. He reached to the nightstand, where a large bottle of slick waited, flipped open the cap, and drizzled some onto John’s impatient hand. He had barely replaced the bottle on the table when John’s slippery fingers entered him—one, then quickly another—and Carter moaned into John’s shoulder.

John was dexterous. He could finger-fuck Carter beautifully while at the same time fucking Carter’s mouth with his tongue. It was slightly overwhelming, in a wonderful way. Carter squirmed against him, adding some lovely friction as their dicks rubbed together.

Soon, though, he decided that he’d rather have John’s cock in him than against him. He lifted his head, gently and somewhat reluctantly pushed John’s fingers away, and sat up, straddling John’s narrow hips.

John looked up at him as if Carter was the miracle.

They needed a bit more lube for John’s cock. He hissed and arched his back when Carter applied it. But that was nothing compared to the sounds he made when Carter guided him into his eager body.

Some nights they coupled in soul as well as body, flying above the city, free and joyous. But sometimes it was enough to be corporeal, to share their human selves. This was one of those nights.

Carter flexed his legs, moving up and down on John’s cock while John stroked his. Somewhere in the back of his head, Carter was aware that he’d grown remarkably strong and flexible for a man nearing forty, and that his running wasn’t the full reason. He also knew that his early sprinkling of gray hairs had disappeared and that the thinning at the back of his scalp—which had caused him considerable distress—had reversed itself. He’d face these realities soon, and he and John could consider the repercussions. Now he just wanted John buried deeply inside of him.

John wanted that too. He bucked up as much as he was able, and when he came, he roared triumphantly. Carter climaxed moments later, then allowed himself to collapse bonelessly onto John’s chest.

“Good,” John said, holding him tightly.

“Still no complex words?”

“Soon.”

Carter laughed. He didn’t roll off John—he was far too comfortable, and John showed no inclination to let him move. Instead, Carter settled his head against John’s shoulder, snuffled slightly at his skin, and marveled at his life.

A couple of weeks earlier, they’d had dinner at Ery and Karl’s place. After they ate, they all sat on the lower deck, watching the river flow by. Even at night, Carter and John could see it well. That was when Karl announced that he was a stroemkarl—a Scandinavian water sprite—and John admitted he was from outer space. They exchanged origin stories, and it was hard to tell which of the four of them was most amazed.

And then Karl stripped out of his clothing and dove into the water, making barely a splash. Ery surprised Carter by quickly following suit.

Carter stood at the edge of the deck to watch them frolic like a pair of dolphins. “Isn’t the water cold?” he asked when they came up for air.

“Not for me,” said Karl. “And not for Ery—not anymore.”

Well, that raised some new questions.

After a while Karl and Ery emerged from the water. Ery dressed, but Karl didn’t bother. Apparently water sprites were most comfortable in their own bare skin.

“You swim very well,” Carter said to Ery. “For a human.”

“Yeah. Not as well as Karl, but… yeah. I could barely dog-paddle when we met.”

A long significant silence hung between them before Carter cleared his throat. “So maybe you won’t be totally surprised if I tell you that since John and I met, I seem to have picked up some of his… unique characteristics.”

Ery did not look surprised. He grinned. “My grandmother has a theory. She has lots of theories, actually, about lots of things. One of her favorites is that souls… life forces—whatever you want to call them—they’re a form of energy. When we croak, that energy goes on. It gets recycled into other forms. Our friend Chris is convinced I was a flock of hummingbirds in my former life.”

Carter chuckled. He had noticed how Ery was always brightly colored and how he energetically zoomed from one thing to the next. “I have to say that now that I know John, I agree with your grandmother. He used to be nothing
but
energy. Pure life force, I guess.”

“I’m glad I have a body now,” John said, and Carter smiled at him.

Apparently not minding that Karl was still slightly damp, Ery plopped down into his lap and began finger-combing Karl’s long hair. “Yeah, bodies have their advantages for sure.” He gave a strand of hair a light tug. “Fun to play with. Anyway, my grandmother also thinks that when two people fall in love, they exchange a little of that energy. The same way families end up sharing bacteria and stuff, only less gross. Maybe that’s one of the reasons losing a loved one hurts so much—you literally lose a little bit of yourself.”

Carter thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “And maybe also why it feels so damn good to fall in love. You’re gaining fresh juice.”

“So I guess Karl and I did that. I can swim well now, and hold my breath underwater for ages, and even the Columbia in November doesn’t freeze me. And Karl can stay on dry land a lot longer than he used to. Plus he dreams now.”

Stroemkarlen didn’t dream? That was interesting, but a topic for later exploration. “I think John and I have exchanged a
lot
of energy,” Carter said.

John frowned and rubbed his cheek. “Does that disturb you?”

“No. God no. Best gift I’ve ever been given.”

John’s frown turned to a sunny smile as he nodded his agreement.

That conversation had been a few weeks ago. Now, with John warm and pliant beneath him, Carter smiled too. He began to rub his cheek stubble against John’s shoulder in a way he knew would drive John wild.

Sure enough, John moaned and palmed Carter’s ass. “Another round?”

“Definitely.”

“We have to get up early.”

Carter wiggled enticingly. “Yep. But I have plenty of energy.”

John laughed, squeezed his ass, and maneuvered them into another earthshaking kiss.