The Mix of Us Read online

  “What are we doing here?”

  “In due time, that answer will show itself.” Gio walked up to Steve, brought their naked chests together, and kissed him on the neck.

  The kiss felt potent, filled with a life of its own. Steve couldn’t help himself and compared the bliss to bright and cotton-fluffy colors like electric pink, explosive turquoise, and melting lime green. The radioactive action sent fire through his limbs and balled at the back of his neck, pulsing. It caused him to warm from the inside out, boiling, and formed a wide grin on his handsome face, proving his liking for Gio, in love with the man.

  “Are you in Buffalo at a teacher’s meeting?”

  Gio brushed the tip of his right index finger against Steve’s nose. He nodded. “Yes…and I’m here with you.”

  “What is this place?”

  “Your childhood mixed with your adulthood, and the place you always dream of.”

  Gio was right. The summertime meadow was familiar; a place Steve had often visited during sleep, finding it warm and enchanting.

  Bright butterflies danced around their frames. Crickets, a nearby owl, and the muses became melodic, filling the meadow with their comforting sounds.

  Steve asked, “How do you know I frequently dream of this meadow?”

  “There aren’t many secrets you keep from me, if any at all. Our relationship isn’t like that. We both know that.” Gio reached down and collected one of Steve’s hands within his own. He swung the pair together. “Let me show you around a little. There are a few things you haven’t seen yet. Some additions have been made to your meadow that I think you’ll like.”

  “What kind of additions?”

  Gio shook his head, keeping a smile on his face. He waved a finger at Steve. “You’ve always asked too many questions.”

  “Tooooo…maneeee…questions,” the muses sang.

  Steve rolled his eyes, one of his bad habits that Gio didn’t like, among others: buying too many Pop! collectables, not keeping in contact enough with his mother and father in Naples, Florida, and always double-booking events for the both of them. Steve had a lengthy list of bad habits, of course, all of which Gio handled with grace, well-mannered.

  “I’ll stop with the questions. Now, show me the place. I want to see these additions you’re talking about.”

  “Aaaaahhh…ditions,” the muses sang.

  Steve looked in their direction. One blond winked at him, but he didn’t wink back. He asked Gio, “Do you get bored with the singers?”

  “Never. Don’t be rude. This place belongs to them more than it does us. We can’t get bored with them or insult them. They can sing up a storm if they want. Don’t underestimate their powers. They can create a tornado, thunder, and lightning. You name it, and they can ruin us. So don’t piss them off.”

  Steve whispered under his breath. “I’ve never trusted younger men.”

  His lover turned his head in Steve’s direction and hissed, “Mind your manners, Steve. Trust me, you don’t want to put the muses in bad moods.”

  “Don’t pisssss…off the muuus…es,” the trio sang.

  “I’ve got so much work to do with you here.” Gio squeezed Steve’s hand. “You’re going to keep me quite occupied on this expedition.”

  “Expedition?” Steve asked, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of expedition?”

  “You’ll learn. We’ll both learn together. Now, if you’ll walk with me. We can continue our time together. I want to show you the greatness of what two men can find together. Love. Tenderness. Hope. Maybe even marriage. A lifelong adventure of togetherness. Or, whatever else you think we’ll find here.”

  The muses sang, “Weeee’llll…find…herrrre.”

  Steve rolled his eyes again at the young singers. He told Gio, “Lead me astray, lover. Do with me what you will.”

  * * * *

  Low Hollow

  “Babe…babe.” Gio knelt beside Steve and gently slapped his left cheek. “Are you with me, sweetheart? Babe, can you hear me?”

  Steve stirred awake. The first thing he saw through his blurry vision was the falling snow beyond Gio’s left shoulder: large flakes drifting down from a white heaven. He heard the winter wind twirl and swirl outside, lightly howling. He blinked and felt a strong and steady sting in his left temple: pulsing, worse than any headache he had ever experienced, ringing in his ears, a heightened temperature.

  “You have caked blood against your temple, Steve. Jesus, what went on here? And how long have you been knocked out?”

  Steve thought about Buffalo and a gathering of music teachers. The Tooter Cult is what he called it, often joking with Gio; something very similar to a coven. Steve had often said, “You tooters are going to plan the takeover of the world. Every human in the next three years will be blowing horns and strumming guitars.”

  His eyes started to drift closed, but Gio slapped him again, this time harder.

  “Don’t leave. Stay with me, guy. Don’t go back to sleep. You have to stay awake. You may have a concussion.”

  Heavy. Steve couldn’t help but close his eyes. Their lids felt like iron curtains closing and closing, blocking out the snowflakes. He saw a black tunnel in the distance, most of which was surrounded by soft, violet light. The snowstorm’s circulating wind still spun within the hollows of his ears.

  “Steve…Steve,” Gio said, shaking him by his shoulders. “You can’t sleep. You have to wake up. We have to take you to the hospital and get you checked out. Your head was bleeding. You took quite the spill.”

  Take…hospital…check…spill. The words floated in and out of Steve’s broken consciousness. Then he smelled dried blood for the first time: crusty, bittersweet, unappealing. Gio had mumbled something, but Steve couldn’t make it out.

  * * * *

  “I have to call 911, Steve. There’s no other option.”

  Steve vaguely comprehended his surroundings; Gio rose from the living room floor and bolted to his cellphone, which sat on the kitchen counter. In the process of grabbing the device, it slipped out of Gio’s hand and crashed to the tile floor. After lifting the phone, flipping it over, Gio saw that its screen was now shattered in a cobweb pattern, cracked in three places.

  Steve heard, “Fuck!”

  Gio dropped the phone on the counter and rushed to the kitchen’s wall, using the only landline remaining on the planet. Just as he was dialing the emergency number, he heard Steve calling from the other room.

  On the floor with opened eyes, conscious again, at least for the time being, Steve called out, “I…I…I’m going to be all right!”

  Gio rushed from the kitchen into the living room and fell back on his knees next to Steve. He brushed Steve’s perspiration-coated hair out of his eyes. “You’re among the living now. How do you feel?”

  “Dizzy. Exhausted. Like how I would feel if three guys just fucked me in a porn movie.”

  “So you’re feeling great then.” Gio laughed. “We need to get you some professional help.”

  “Don’t call EMS. I’m fine. Honestly, I am.” Steve reached out with one hand and placed it over Gio’s arm, giving it with a tender squeeze. He attempted to sit up, couldn’t. “I just want to lay here for a few more minutes.”

  Steve watched Gio shake his head. “You really need a doctor. I’m guessing you’ve been knocked out for twenty minutes or longer and…”

  * * * *

  “Wait a minute. Why aren’t you in Buffalo?” Steve asked, unable to rationalize the situation.

  Gio had a meeting to attend with The Tooter Cult. What was he doing here when he should have been up north, busy at work with his fellow Tooters, discussing whatever Tooter Cult members talk about at such a function?

  “Canceled. A snowstorm is sweeping through Buffalo. The lead Tooters wanted all the teachers to be safe and called it off. Clef turned his Xterra around as soon as we heard. We almost made it to Buffalo.”

  Steve attempted to roll his eyes, couldn’t for the time being, exhausted. He kne
w that Jeffrey Clef—thirty-two years old and a pretty man with brown curls and wishing well blue eyes, muscular build, and a six-three frame—had a sexual thing for his man. The coworker at Low Hollow High School couldn’t be trusted. Steve was always worried that he would scoop up and keep Gio for his personal needs. Unfortunately, Clef had to be watched, closely, or Steve would lose his boyfriend. The only reason he allowed Gio to head north with the man was because he had great respect for Gio, putting all of his trust in his lover; a key in all relationships.

  Gio continued, “The meteorologists say we’re going to get some of that snow here. Ten inches. Maybe more. Something like that. Should be a doozey of a storm heading our way right now. Not that I care about that. I’m more worried about you. What happened? How’d you end up down here?”

  Steve shared an unabridged story with him. “I was dusting, tripped, and cracked my head off the coffee table. Then I passed out.” He left out the meadow and muses of his dream, feeling they were unimportant to the main facts of his accident.

  “You sure you don’t want to see a doctor?”

  “Positive. There’s no need for that. I’m fine.”

  “Well, I need to take care of the cut along your temple. Let me wash it off and bandage it up. I’m not going to let you sleep. If you have a concussion, that won’t be good for you.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” Steve sat up, prepared to be his lover’s patient, once again.

  * * * *

  Low Hollow

  Just as Weatherman Jack on Channel 5 predicted, a shitload (Jack used the professional term Mother Lode while on air) of snow dropped on Low Hollow. Twelve inches in just twelve short hours. Jack called it a February microburst. Gio called it a pain in the ass, preferring summer months over the cold, winter ones. As for Steve, he loved the snow, everything about it: covering the day with a white wall; a windfall accumulation occurring in the front yard of the Tudor; the cause of school closings which forced him to stay home; the reason why roads were closed; other events that caused him to feel giddy, enjoying the precipitation.

  Steve’s accidental tumble in the living room the day before turned Gio into a dutiful nurse. Hot soup and salty crackers were served. Gio honored Steve with the television remote. Plus, he fluffed Steve’s pillow as Steve took residence on the sofa for most of yesterday and today. Comfort became Steve’s occupation: uselessness on the sofa as he watched documentaries on some of the greatest violinists of all time like Jascha Heifetz, David Fyodorovich Oistrakh, and Hilary Hahn. Then he watched a two-hour drama based on Antonio Vivaldi’s life, which he found exhausting and unentertaining, but watched in full, wasting his time.

  At approximately seven in the evening, about thirty-six hours after his tumble, boredom fell over Steve, and he yawned. During Jeopardy! is when he felt his eyes become heavy, and he slowly drifted into sleep! Had Gio not been doing dishes in the kitchen, occupied and humming Barbra Streisand songs while at work, Steve wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep, floating from this world into a less familiar and seemingly distant one…drifting…drifting…drifting…

  * * * *

  The Meadow

  Stephen awakened under Gio’s bulky and meaty weight. Their naked chests glided together. His legs were spread wide, and Gio thrust inside his tight ass, panting. He felt pressure in his bottom as Gio made love to him somewhere in the shadowy and sparkling meadow. Punches occurred to his center as the man rocked to and fro within him. Huffing was heard. And glittery sweat sealed the two men together.

  Gio groaned and grunted, pulverized Steve’s rear in quick crescendos, and smacked his ball sack against the base of his lover’s spine. “I love you. Marry me, Steve. You know I want you to marry me. Marry me.”

  In the distance, somewhere among the thicket of Pennsylvania (or somewhere else, Steve was uncertain of his exact location in his dreamy state) trees, the sounds of the single owl and the orchestral crickets, Steve heard the muses again, this time singing in vibrato.

  “Marreee…meeeee!”

  Steve also heard the lute again, choppy and sharp sounds echoing inside the meadow. More unrefined than during his first visit to the meadow. Perhaps, sexual sounds.

  As Gio built up to his orgasmic explosion, Steve felt the man’s lower stomach (his tight navel and abs) cause friction with his dick. The excess skin on the mass glided up and down as Gio’s movements heightened. Overcome with elation, lost in that woodsy, fern-inhabited, and nameless place that Steve could only refer to as the meadow, he listened to Gio whisper into his ear.

  “Come with me. Both of us at the same time.”

  “Sayyyyyme…tiiiieeeme,” the muses sang, telling a story among them, unseen at the moment since Steve lay on his back.

  Their orgasms happened with Gio’s continuous east and west motion atop Steve, rubbing Steve’s erection with his firm belly, gliding. Steve shot a syrupy load between them, and Gio emptied his ejaculate inside the condom that separated the two men. Together, they huffed and puffed and blew their loads, coming. Their voices rose within the meadow, almost sounding like the trio of muses: uplifted rough tones with some added rhythm, but nothing spectacular or Broadway-perfect.

  Afterwards, the two men lay panting together in a mound of soft ferns. Their chests rose and fell. Tangled together. Sweating. Spent. Both of them heaving for oxygen, exercised.

  It was Gio who called their intimacy, “Just what we needed to bring us closer in this strange and somewhat foreign place to you.”

  “The meadow. Does it have a name?” Steve inquired, sticky along his chest, sleepy.

  “Just the meadow. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

  In the distance, somewhere to the west, the muses sang, “The meaddddd…owwwww.”

  Steve flicked one of Gio’s hairy nipples in a playful action and asked, “Don’t you get tired of those young men singing all the time?”

  “Not really. They live here. It’s their place more than it’s ours. Don’t forget that. Always show them respect.”

  “Which brings me to my next question: why are we here?”

  “For the enlightenment and a lesson.”

  “I get the enlightenment, but not the lesson. What’s the lesson?”

  “Wait and learn.”

  “What do I have to learn? That we just had great sex on a fern bed in one of the most beautiful meadows I have ever seen? That three young men watched us get it on?”

  Gio chuckled, squeezing Steve against his side. “Be patient, Mr. Quaver. Please be patient. In due time, you will…”

  * * * *

  Low Hollow

  They were snowed in, Steve realized. “We’re not going anywhere soon.” He woke up in his shared bed with Gio at his side and looked out the window. The window was covered with frost, ice, and snow, impossible to view anything outside.

  “Seven more inches are going to fall today. We’re snowbound, buddy. It gives me plenty of time to seduce you.” Gio reached between Steve’s legs and grasped the erection there. “After you take a piss and get rid of your morning wood.”

  Steve laughed, knowing Gio’s addiction to morning sex. “Stop playing with it, or I’ll piss the bed.”

  Gio leaned into Steve and kissed him. Following the kiss, he said, “I carried you to bed last night and thought about seducing you while you were sleeping.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “How can it be illegal when you’re going to marry me?”

  There it was again, the topic of marriage. Always present. Always an issue and hanging over Steve’s head like a tempestuous thundercloud. Something he didn’t want to handle, especially now, since he had to take a piss. Something…viral to him.

  Ignoring Gio’s question, Steve decided to jump out of bed and head to the bathroom. “You think I can shovel us out?” he called over his left shoulder, already releasing his firm junk while stepping up to the en suite’s toilet, preparing for the piss of his life, and then maybe a seduction of Gio’s bottom, since the guy needed some
attention.

  “It will be a waste of time,” Gio said from the bed, stretching. “You can do better things. Like me. My ass needs some of your love. Maybe you can give it few pounds. I guess it depends how your head feels, though. Do you have a headache from your fall?”

  Steve was fine. No headache. No pain. No damage to his brain that he knew of. What had come out of the tumble was nothing more than a miniscule cut at his left temple, which was already starting to scab over. The only other concern was the strange and nameless meadow he kept dreaming about: the fern beds, muses, sounds of crickets, lute playing, illuminated moon, sparkles everywhere, and the skimpy loincloths that barely covered up Gio’s and his private parts. Such a strange place. And such strange dreams.

  After he finished his piss, shook his dick, and washed his hands, he walked out of the en suite and returned to the bed. He was just about to mention the pair of dreams he had of the meadow when…

  Gio was fully naked on the bed, sheets wrapped around his ankles, and sported an upright seven inches of veined and cut erection between his legs. His legs were spread open, and Steve saw the man’s furry balls and pinkish ass-slit; a certain something that he sometimes banged with his own erection, pleasuring his man.

  Gio stroked the beef up and down and unromantically requested, “Suck me and fuck me, man. What do you say?”

  So much for mentioning and discussing the meadow, Steve thought.

  Instead, he slipped off his cotton boxers, stepped out of the fabric, and climbed on the bed. Positioned between Gio’s legs, he went to town on the music teacher’s pulsing spike with his mouth and throat. He pleasured the guy’s bottom with the tip of one finger, two fingers, almost three fingers, until Gio gasped in orgasm, shot three arcs of white and gooey juice over his own chest, decorating his Italian-furry abs, filling his navel like a pool.

  “Now me,” Steve suggested, lying on his back. “Give me one of those hand jobs I can’t resist. What do you say?”