Wild Raspberries (4 page)

“Good riddance to bad rubbish?”

There was something just a little wistful about that question, but Tyler had troubles of his own and no time to spare for coddling the boy. “That’s right.”

Dan finally took the money and made it disappear into his jeans pocket. “I can spend it all?”

All? What the hell could you get with a lousy sixty bucks, these days? It would cover the basic toiletries and leave Dan with enough for a — well, he wasn’t sure what Dan would consider vital. “Knock yourself out.”

Dan pointed up at the clock on the wall. “Give me an hour, okay? I’ll be back before then, most likely, but I promise I won’t take off on you.”

He lingered until Tyler nodded an acknowledgement of the promise and then left as Mira emerged from the doctor’s room, her eyes red-rimmed, a handkerchief dabbing at her nose. A shattering sneeze followed by a bout of coughing told its own story.

Betty stood. “Mira, I’ll deal with your follow-up appointment in a moment. Poor Mr. Edwards here has to be seen right away. It’s an emergency.”

It really isn’t, Tyler wanted to say. I fell off a fucking roof. I need a few painkillers and a couple of stitches. I can wait. He swallowed back the words; no sense getting Betty mad at him.

Mira gave Tyler an incurious look. “I guess I can wait.”

Clucking under her breath, Betty wheeled Tyler over to Doctor Collins’ office, his file tucked under her arm. “I guess she can wait,” she murmured. “Seeing as she’s going back to do nothing but sit and stare at that TV of hers. If I was a germ, I’d pick someone a mite livelier to live off.”

Betty rapped at the door, and Tyler let himself get pushed through and positioned by the doctor’s desk on a wave of exclamations, explanations, and greetings he pretty much tuned out.

The door closed behind Betty, and Tyler and the doctor exchanged rueful glances. “She’s good at her job,” Anne Collins said quietly. Her dark hair was drawn back in a neat bun and her hazel eyes, though tired, were amused. “And she’s right; you need to be seen to. Are you sure it’s not broken?”

“Yes. I broke it last time, though, which is why it hurts so goddamn much now, I suppose.”

She grimaced sympathetically. “Ouch. What happened?”

He told her and finished with a terse list of his other injuries. Her eyebrows rose. “I think I’d better check you over.”

He bit back a sigh and nodded reluctantly.

It took her a while to finish with him, and he felt like hell when she had, even though the painkillers she’d given him there and then, with a prescription for more tucked into his pocket, were nibbling away at the raw, ragged edges of the pain and reducing it to something more bearable. She stitched and bandaged his hand and strapped his ribs lightly, telling him to unwrap the bandages the next day. “It’s more to remind you to take it easy,” she said as she strapped up his ankle. “Hmm. Bad sprain.” Like he hadn’t already figured that out. “It’s swollen, so you need to keep doing the ice and rest. I’m sure you know the drill.” She frowned. “How did you get here? Tell me you didn’t drive yourself.”

“No.” He hesitated, habit making him reticent, but after all, for once, there was no harm in telling the truth. “This morning I found a boy in my raspberry bushes.”

“Not a baby in the gooseberries?” She grinned. “Sorry. A boy? How old?”

“Twenty.”

“And what was this enterprising young man doing?”

He gave her an abbreviated, expurgated version, leaving out anything he’d learned on his computer search and the way Dan had been paying for his rides.

Anne screwed up her face. “Well, I don’t like it, but if he’s twenty, there’s not much we can do about it.”

“Nope.” Not a damned thing.

She began to write in his file. Without looking up, she said casually, “Are you going to ask him to stick around and help you for a day or two? You really need to rest that ankle, you know.”

“And while he’s with me, apply some gentle persuasion to get him turned around and headed home?” Tyler said dryly. “No. In the first place, he’d drive me insane, and that’s harder to get over than a few cracked ribs and a sprained ankle, and for all I know, he had a good reason to leave.”

“True.” She glanced up. “Then I’ll assign a nurse to come by in a few days and check up on you.”

“No, thank you.”

“
Mr
. Edwards —”

“
Doctor
Collins.”

She slapped his file closed. “Tyler, he needs somewhere to stay and regroup, from what you told me, and you need someone fit to do the work around the place. I’ve seen your garden; this is one of the busiest times of the year for you, isn’t that right?”

“Fall’s busier. So’s spring.”

“Are you going to keep arguing with me, or are you going to say, ‘Yes, doctor,’ and let me get to Mr. Thompson’s sciatica and baby Jordan’s two-month needles?” she demanded.

He pursed his lips. It seemed to be his day for people walking all over him. He made one last attempt to keep his home pest-free. “People will talk.”

“If his name was Danielle, not Dan, they would.” Their eyes met with a shared understanding. Tyler had told her the reason he’d turned her down when she’d asked him out to dinner, a few months after he moved in. She’d considered it, shrugged, and told him that a meal she hadn’t cooked and a conversation with someone who hadn’t known her since birth would do nicely even without the prospect of sex for dessert, and did he like Italian?

They met for dinner a few times a year and went to the movies now and then, the invitations always coming from her. He’d never been to her home, though she’d stopped by his once or twice — on foot. Although he resisted all her efforts to draw him into the town’s social life, his friendship with her had given him an acceptance of sorts in the town. People still viewed him warily, but he wasn’t the only unsociable eccentric in the area, after all.

She thought she knew him. If he had any regrets, it was that she deserved better than the half-truths he’d shared with her.

“Fine,” Tyler told her tersely. “He can stay for a day or two, assuming he hasn’t already left town.”

“A week, at least, and I want you resting that ankle, you hear me? Unless you want to be limping for the next few months.” She stood to open the door for him and then glanced through the slats of the blinds into the parking lot. “If he’s the scruffy man leaning against your truck, I think you can assume he’s staying. Is he gay?”

“Not that I know of,” Tyler said evenly, refusing to give her the satisfaction of looking startled at the segue. “And I don’t see it being something I need to know. Did I mention the part about him being twenty? And a complete stranger?”

She opened a drawer and took out a sample box of condoms. “I wasn’t asking if you planned to sleep with him, Tyler. But whatever his orientation, he should take these with him when he leaves.” She tossed him the box and he caught it with his left hand, without fumbling. He wasn’t naturally ambidextrous, but it was something you could learn, and he had. It had come in useful more than once.

“I’ll make sure he gets them.”

She glanced out of the window again. “Cute,” she decided. “But way too skinny.”

“Living on fresh air and sunshine will do that to you.”

Cute? Not the word he would’ve chosen, but cute was safe; he didn’t think he’d ever fucked anyone who fit that description.

Dan looked at the bags on the floor. Maybe he’d gone a little wild. There was no way he’d fit all of this into the pack he’d bought, even folded down small. He still had fifteen bucks left, though, money he planned to give back to Tyler as soon as they were someplace they could argue in peace.

The town was so much like the one he’d left that he’d been both soothed by its familiarity and jittery because he kept expecting to see a face he knew. The streets were tree-lined and wide, there wasn’t much litter or graffiti, and people were nodding to each other as they passed.

Oh, yeah. Just like home.

He’d gotten some stares, but the town wasn’t small enough that a new face stuck out a mile, not with the summer visitors out in flocks, buying up souvenirs, their faces shiny with sunscreen, their arms dotted by bug bites.

Not that anyone would look at him and think “tourist”; his jeans were too filthy for that. He’d bought some basic toiletries and then gone into the clothing store. The prices had made him blink and back out again, fast. A dollar store with a wide selection in the window display had looked promising, and he dug through a basket of sale items in a dark corner and bought some socks with Santa hats on them and three pairs of boxer shorts because not being able to change his was making his skin crawl. The green ones with holly berries weren’t too bad, but only the price tag made him feel good about the pink ones covered in Valentine hearts and the yellow pair covered in hopping rabbits.

Then he’d headed for the thrift store he’d noticed as they drove in. He wasn’t wearing someone else’s underwear — he’d go commando before he did that — but hand-me-down clothes didn’t bother him.

Tyler, moving nimbly and using a cane, an Ace bandage on his ankle, looked pissed even before he spotted the purchases Dan had made. The man had one hell of a nice smile, but he didn’t let it out to play very often.

When he was a few feet away, he tossed the keys to Dan. “Drugstore, then back to my place.”

“You need to work on your pick-up lines,” Dan said.

Tyler’s hand shot out, the cane clattering to the ground, and Dan yelped as he was thrust up against the truck door, Tyler’s hand fisted in his shirt. “Listen to me,” Tyler said, his breath warm on Dan’s face. “I need help for a day or two, and you need somewhere to lick your wounds. Fine. You can drive me back and stick around if you want. But you keep coming out with comments like that and we’re going to have a problem.” He raised his eyebrows. “Do you
want
me to have a problem with you?”

Dan licked his dry lips enough for him to be able to form words. Common sense should have made him back down, but he’d never been good at that. He’d faced down bullies before, and although Tyler came across more as someone who didn’t realize how intimidating he was, it didn’t mean he was going to cave under pressure however it was applied. “Mister, I won’t kick a man with a cane, but if you don’t move your hand, I’ll rethink that.”

Tyler’s face was so close that Dan could see right into the light gray of his eyes, flecked with darker gray, the lashes thick and soft. It was like staring up at the night sky and feeling yourself falling into it in a dizzying, topsy-turvy tumble.

Tyler blinked once and let him go. Dan unlocked the passenger side door, tossed his bags into the truck bed now that he was sure of what he was doing, and walked on strangely wobbly legs around to the other side. He turned the key and pulled away, wondering what he would’ve done if Tyler hadn’t backed down. On the whole, he was glad he hadn’t had to find out.

“Drugstore’s coming up,” he said into the sticky silence a minute later. “Want me to go in for you?”

Tyler moved the cane so that it wasn’t knocking against Dan’s knee as he drove, which was possibly an apology. “No.”

Dan sighed and parked as close as he could get to the drugstore’s entrance. He turned the engine off and took out the keys. “Here.”

Tyler stared at him. “You don’t have to do that. I trust you not to drive away — and, yeah, if you did, I would track you down.”

“A cop comes around and finds me in a truck I don’t own and I’m not insured to drive, and I’m in trouble.” Dan pushed the keys unto Tyler’s hand and got out of the truck. He leaned back in just long enough to say sweetly, “I won’t even bother offering you a hand getting out with your cane and all, seeing as my head’s been bitten off twice already.”

Slamming the door before Tyler could reply was very satisfying.

***

The long, mellow light of early evening was spilling over the cabin when they returned. Tyler made one more stop and picked up take-out Indian food from a restaurant on the outskirts of town, empty of everyone but a waiter desultorily straightening starched white tablecloths.

“I give it six months before this place folds,” Tyler had told Dan in the truck. “The people here are more the burgers and pizza type.”

So was Dan, given a choice. “But you aren’t?”

“Nope.” Tyler looked almost human talking about something mundane like food. “I like it spicy and I got a taste for curries when I was in —”

“India?” Dan guessed.

“England.” Tyler sniffed the air ecstatically. “I don’t eat out often, or buy take-out, but it’s been a hell of a day. Want me to order something for you?”

Tyler’s mood swings were going to take some getting used to — or maybe the meds were kicking in and making him a better, kinder person? Dan shrugged. Food was food and he was starving. “Sure — just nothing too hot.”

“No, I won’t do that. You wouldn’t like it and you need some food in your stomach.”

So stop by a burger place.

Dan had to admit the place smelled interesting when he walked in, though. And in a surprisingly short amount of time, they were walking back out, his arms laden with brown paper bags, heavy and fragrant, something oily already leaking through one of them.

In the cabin, he helped Tyler to empty the bags and burned his fingers prizing open the small foil containers. There was rice, which he recognized, though it wasn’t something he’d eaten a lot of, his daddy being the original meat and potatoes guy, some of it white and fluffy, some bright yellow, and a lot of meat swimming in sauce.

“What’s this?” He prodded a thick, roughly oval slab of something soft.

“Naan bread. You rip bits off and dunk it in the sauce.” Tyler dropped into a chair with a sigh, his face pale under its tan. “Mind dragging over a chair?”

“You need a cushion, too.” Dan’s friend Alex had broken his leg in high school and some memories were surfacing about what you did with breaks and sprains. “Elevation, remember?”

“Then go and get one from the couch.”

Time for some training of the beast. Dan waited, arms folded across his chest.

Tyler got the hint faster than he’d expected. “
Please
.”

Okay, he’d work on the snarl later.

The first bite was weird, the second less so, and by the third, washed down with a beer Tyler had put in front of him without asking, Dan was hooked. “What’s this one?” he asked around a mouthful of naan, which was bland but still tasty. Tyler had rearranged the cartons and told Dan to help himself to any but the two farthest away from him.

“Chicken Dhansak.”

“It’s good.” He scooped up some rice, his stomach approving every mouthful. “All of it’s good.”

“Might be a bit rich for you,” Tyler warned.

“So why did you get it?”

“Because it’s not all about you, boy.”

The conversation kind of died right there. Dan finished what was on his plate and had a second helping out of sheer stubbornness — chicken korma, this time, creamy with a hint of coconut.

Finally, with the beer buzzing pleasantly in his head, he waved his last piece of naan bread in the air. “Can I try dipping it in one of yours?”

Tyler looked at him with tolerant amusement. “You won’t like it.”

“Is that a yes?”

Tyler shoved a container over to him, the spicy smell rising up like smoke. “Shrimp Vindaloo.”

He got a dollop of sauce and a shrimp balanced on the bread and popped it all into his mouth. Tyler had settled back to watch with a “this should be good” air about him.

The sauce had cooled down enough that his first impression was one of warmth, not heat, but that changed rapidly. He choked, swallowed as the best way to get it out of his mouth that didn’t involve spitting it onto his plate — tempting, but gross — and then opened his mouth wide. Sweat was popping out on his tongue and his nose was running.

“Kitchen towel over there,” Tyler said kindly. “And a few gulps of milk will help.”

Dan made a strangled sound of acknowledgment and headed for the fridge.

When he’d recovered the use of his lips, which were both numb and tingling, and Tyler’s smile had faded, he asked if he could take a shower.

“Sure. And you’d better bring in your stuff from the truck.”

Dan nodded. “That reminds me…” He took out the change from the money Tyler had given him and put it on the table. “I didn’t need it all.”

“You bought enough.” There was a frown puckering Tyler’s forehead. Did he think Dan had shoplifted it or something? “Maybe too much, seeing as you’ll be carrying it around with you.”

“Yeah, I might need to donate some of it back, but I didn’t have time to try anything on so I just grabbed what I saw.”

“Donate?”

“I got most of it from the thrift store,” Dan explained.

The frown deepened. “You didn’t have to do that,” Tyler said slowly.

“I don’t need fancy and new when I’m sleeping rough,” Dan said. “And everything looked clean, with no holes.” He backed away before Tyler said anything else, feeling hot around the ears. Taking food from Tyler in exchange for doing some chores was one thing; taking money — taking charity — crossed a line. And it didn’t feel like earned money. Taking care of a man with a sprained ankle didn’t seem like something a person should get paid for doing.

Outside, the air was sultry, the sky deepening to black with a half moon climbing. Dan slapped at a mosquito and got his gear from the truck. The woods looked scarier with the cabin behind him than they had when he was in them, somehow, as if he’d gone from being part of them to being an outsider. He didn’t mind, though. He was going to sleep clean on a soft couch tonight, with the hum of a fridge in his ears and the taste of mint in his mouth. He’d have taken all of that for granted a month ago, but not now.

***

The shower over the deep bathtub was old, with the steel fittings dulled by lime scale but clean. The shower curtain looked new, though, a plain, chilly, pale blue. The water came out hot and pounded the back of Dan’s head with enough force to make him bow it forward. He watched the water swirl at his feet, cloudy with dirt, and reached for the shampoo he’d bought.

Being clean felt good. Good enough that when he was smoothing the shower gel he’d bought (more expensive than soap, but less messy, as long as he made sure the top was closed tight) over his stomach, his hand dipped lower and cupped his balls.

They needed washing as much as the rest of him — God, his ass probably still had bits of leaves stuck in it from his attempts to clean up after taking a dump behind a tree, his muscles clenched, his gaze darting around because it had felt so fucking weird to do that outside, like an animal or something. So, yeah, they needed scrubbing, but they probably didn’t need to be stroked and squeezed gently as his cock filled with a delicious slowness, pointing north.

He did it anyway, one hand braced against the white tiles, the other busy, a soap-slick slide from root to tip until he was as hard as he was going to get with nothing but his own hand and fantasies to juice him up. He couldn’t find his place, though; his best jerk-off scenes felt used up and tainted, lust-ugly faces from the last few weeks taking over, invading.

He gave a frustrated, unhappy moan and slapped his hand hard against the tiles, his cock bobbing, neglected, his hard-on waning. He was fighting back tears, stupid, weak tears of tiredness and misery when Tyler knocked at the door.

“You about done? Because I need to piss.”

Dan had locked the door, so he couldn’t just holler for Tyler to come in and get on with it. He didn’t really think Tyler would have jumped him, even before spraining his ankle, but once learned, caution stuck with you better than riding a bike. He rinsed the soap away with a half-hearted swipe or two and shut off the water. “Give me a minute.”

“Boy, I’m balanced on one leg and my tonsils are floating. Wrap a towel around your skinny ass and open the door.”

Dan got out of the bathtub and opened the door, his hair dripping with water and one of Tyler’s towels — no sense in getting the small one he’d bought all wet — around his waist. It was the biggest towel he’d ever used, soft and thick, and it covered him to his knees, but he still felt on the naked side.

Tyler’s gaze raked over him, indifferent and impatient. “About time.”

He was too tired to defend himself and not really sure of how long he’d stood under the water. Maybe he had been a while. He gave Tyler an apologetic smile and murmured, “Sorry.”

Tyler grunted and propped his cane against the wall before transferring his grip to the doorframe. Beaded with steam, it was slippery and his hand skidded. Tyler cursed and tried to regain his balance without setting his foot to the ground. It was never going to work, and Dan was already moving to grab him when Tyler fell forward. They swayed in place, Dan struggling to support him, Tyler trying to pull back.

“Stay still,” Dan said. “Before we both end up flat on our backs.” Tyler smelled of sweat and antiseptic and man, an emphatic assault on his senses. He tightened his arms around the broad chest and tried not to think about the muscles hidden under cotton and what they’d look like exposed.

“I don’t think that’s physically possible, and will you let go of me, please?”

“It’d serve you right if I did.” Dan got one hand between them and laid it flat against Tyler’s chest. He pushed and Tyler groaned, the sound bitten off fast, and got hold of the doorframe again. He straightened up, his face a shade paler.