UNWANTED FREEDOM

P. L. Ripley

Chance Marlow spent his last day of unwanted freedom in O’Henry’s Pub drinking enough boilermakers to kill the desire to skip town. Tomorrow Tommy Bradley was being released from a five-year stint in Hardaway Prison. Chance had sent him there.

Running would be a smarter move than staying, but he had to face Tommy like a man. They had, after all, been lovers for more than a decade.

The door opened, filling the pub with an explosion of afternoon sunlight. Chance and the handful of other customers squinted against the invasion. “Christ!” one of the old men at the bar screamed, the shot glass in his hand quivering as he brought it to his liver-spotted lips. The light reflecting in the glass shimmered with a dull gray color. The old man was drinking whiskey. It should have been a soothing amber. Chance suspected the old man had been served mop water but was too drunk to notice, or care.

The draw of O’Henry’s was its lack of light. In the dark, Chance could forget he had once been happy.

Chance glared at the door as it swung shut, sealing off the light and the outside world. A silhouette filled the archway. It was a familiar shape. Tall, lean, with one leg cocked oddly to the side. The silhouette took a step and Chance realized it was Bennie, his oldest and closest friend.

Bennie limped into the pub, nodded his head at the men at the bar. They gave him a big hello and clapped him on the back as he passed them. Everyone loved Bennie. Maybe it was because he handed out blow jobs like they were sandwich coupons, or perhaps it was that he genuinely liked people and treated them with respect. Even when they didn’t deserve it. Like Chance. He didn’t deserve Bennie’s friendship but was grateful he had it.

“Jesus Chance, you look like shit,” Bennie said, pulling out the chair across the table. He dropped into it, keeping his bad leg stuck out from under the table, and massaged his knee. Bennie had his kneecap shot off in Afghanistan. A little reward for serving the current Washington administration, who, in all fairness, had inherited the war from the previous one. Though the current one was in no hurry to end that mess over there. Bennie was lucky it was only his kneecap that got blown away.

“Thanks man,” Chance said and emptied his glass for the… what was it, sixth time now? Seventh? He didn’t know or care. He just wanted to get drunk and it was starting to piss him off that he couldn’t seem to.

“So, Tommy’s coming home, huh?” Bennie asked and pulled his pant leg up to really get in good on that knee. His fingers worked the flesh. The plastic kneecap rolled and slid over the bone. Chance glanced down at the thin, hairy leg with the dragon tattoo curled over the shin, its mouth open, fangs dripping saliva or venom, looking like it was ready to take a bite out of Bennie’s bad knee. He stared at that leg and wanted to feel it against his face. He wanted to run his tongue through that long leg hair, watch it clump with his saliva as he pulled those legs onto his shoulders and buried himself inside Bennie. He wanted to hear Bennie cry out his name as he pounded him to the fragile ledge of an orgasm, then push him over it. He wanted to feel the insides clamp down on him as Bennie came.

But, it would never happen. He knew that just like he knew he was in love with Bennie, and always had been. Bennie knew it too, that’s why he would never sleep with Chance. “Good friends are hard to come by,” he had said once when Chance proposed a bedroom maneuver. “If it doesn’t work out, and it won’t because I’m a whore, then we will end up with nothing. We won’t be lovers and will no longer be friends. I don’t want to lose you.” Chance had thought it was a cop-out. That Bennie didn’t want to risk feeling…something, anything. That’s why Bennie had never been with anyone for more than a few weeks. He also realized Bennie was right. If it didn’t work out then it probably would end their friendship. Reluctantly, he retracted his offer, but he still wanted him just the same.

“I don’t know if he’s coming home,” Chance said, answering Bennie’s question. “He is getting paroled. I’m just not sure where he’s going to end up.”

“Has he written to you?”

“No.”

“In five years, he never wrote one letter? Not even a phone call?”

“No. I received a letter from the prison board that his parole has been granted, because I am his last address contact and…” he paused, struggling to verbalize the rest.

“The arresting officer,” Bennie finished for him.

“Yeah.”

“So, you’re just going to what…sit here and get drunk and let whatever happens tomorrow when he gets out, just happen?”

“What am I supposed to do? Wait outside the prison for him?”

“Yes. That is exactly what you should do. Confront him. Find out if he does want to come home with you.” Bennie stared at Chance. Their eyes bored into one another. “You do want him to come home, don’t you?”

He did. That was the big kick in the teeth about the whole mess. He did want him to come home. He loved Tommy as much as he loved Bennie, if not more. He wanted him to come home so they could pick up their lives where they had left off five years ago. But he knew that was unlikely. He had arrested Tommy. He was the one who had held Tommy’s hands behind his back and put on the cuffs. He was the one who read Tommy his Miranda rights, then dragged him from their home and shoved him in the back of the cruiser. How could Tommy ever want to come home to him after that? But then, how could Chance want Tommy after what he had done?

“I’d rather just get drunk. Maybe you will be nice and take me home. Maybe you will be really nice and let me suck you off before I pass out,” Chance said, and he could hear his own voice slurring. The whiskey was finally kicking in. It was affecting him down below, too. He reached down and pulled the alcohol induced semi-erection from the crease of his leg and up onto his thigh.

“I’ll take you home,” Bennie said. “But that’s all I’ll do. We can drive up to Hardaway in the morning. You can hear it from Tommy himself if he wants to come back to you.”

“And if he doesn’t? What if he wants to kill me? I’m sure it’s crossed his mind a few times in the last five years. I know, if I had been in his position, I would want him dead.”

“You’re a big boy. I’m sure you can handle him.”

“I’m not afraid of him killing me, I’m afraid he will want to. I don’t want him to hate me. Isn’t that fucked? After what he did. Breaking into that old woman’s house, tying her up and… Jesus, why do I give a fuck what he thinks? Why do I care if he’s pissed that my testimony sent him away?”

“Because, you’re just as crazy as he is.”

“Perhaps. Maybe that’s why we fit so well together all those years. All this time not hearing from him has given me the illusion that we can still be together when he gets out, though. That maybe he has forgiven me. Tomorrow, I guess, I’ll find out what he really feels.”

“You are the one that needs to forgive him. He is the one, after all, that…did what he did.”

“I have. I forgave him the night I arrested him. He didn’t kill anyone anyway. It was Sam who pulled the trigger on the old lady.”

“If you forgave him, maybe it will all work out then.”

Chance doubted it, but what option did he have but to hope?

After another couple of rounds and a slow, painful vomit session in the men’s room, they stood on the sidewalk while Bennie hailed a cab. Chance weaved left and right in the fading sun, his eyes squinted against the light like a bat on his first day out of the cave. Dusk was coming, the streetlights flickered to life along the avenue, but it was still brighter out there than in the pub.

Chance squinted against the dim light, suppressed the urge to run back inside the pub. It was safer in there. There was booze still to be drunk in there. More importantly though, there were no reminders that Tommy was getting out tomorrow in there.

When they arrived at Chance’s home, Bennie staggered him down the hall to the bedroom. The same room where Chance had slammed Tommy against the wall and applied the cuffs. The same room they had slept and fucked in for ten years. Some nights the only thing Chance could see when he closed his eyes was the look of shame in Tommy’s eyes as Chance asked him if he understood his rights as they had been read to him. Other nights he saw the look of bliss on Tommy’s face as Chance made him come again and again. Both memories hurt now.

Bennie dumped Chance in the bed, pulled his shoes off for him and started to leave. “Stay,” Chance called to him. “Please.”

“I’ll be back in the morning to take you to Hardaway.”

Chance woke when he was pulled from the bed and thrown to the floor. He opened his eyes to see the intruder drop to his knees, the left one planted firmly in the center of Chance’s chest, and shove a thin slice of steel to his throat.

“Tommy, you’re home early,” Chance said, not surprised to see his old lover.

Tommy grunted a hard reply. “No thanks to you, asshole.”

Chance stared up at him a moment, waiting for the knife to pierce his skin, to tear into his larynx or slice into the jugular vein. When it didn’t happen Chance said, “You look good Tommy. You’ve been working out.”

Tommy had always been muscular from a lifetime of working construction. He was bigger now than the last time Chance had seen him, the day of the sentencing, five years ago. His chest was thicker, arms so fat with new muscle growth Tommy seemed barely able to keep them at his sides. They kept wanting to balloon out from him as though his hands were filled with helium.

“I didn’t have much else to do, besides trying not to get raped or killed,” Tommy replied, pushing the blade a little harder against the thin flesh. A tiny bead of blood welled up under the knife. Chance could feel it trickle down into the hollow of his throat.

“I’m sorry you had to go to prison. I’m sorry I had to arrest you,” Chance said, and ran his fingers through the thick hair on Tommy’s forearm. He traced the tattoos all the way up to the shoulder. Tommy had most of them before he went away, but there were a few new ones. A skull on his hand, a line through Chance’s name on his bicep. “If you’re going to kill me, just do it.”

“You always were impatient,” Tommy said and rose to his feet. He stuck out his hand for Chance to take. Chance accepted it, lifted himself from the floor and stood beside Tommy. It felt good to touch him again. He missed him more than he had admitted to Bennie. He was still powerfully, terribly in love with Tommy.

Chance slept in the nude. It felt odd standing naked with Tommy fully dressed. He turned, pulled a pair of white briefs from the dresser and stepped into them. Tommy dropped the knife on the end table, it clattered next to the alarm clock, then he sat on the bed. He huffed out a long sigh.

Chance sat, far enough away so they were not touching, but close enough to feel the heat coming from him, to smell the sweat and road on him. “I thought you weren’t getting out until this morning.”

“I got out on the twenty-eighth, yesterday.”

“Oh. I must have mixed up the dates. I thought today was the twenty-eighth.”

“Still can’t read a calendar,” Tommy laughed. “You were always bad with dates. I had to remind you when Christmas was coming up, remember?”

“Yeah. I remember,” Chance said, his eyes suddenly filling with tears. A decade of memories came back to him all at once. Ten years of birthday celebrations, anniversaries and holiday parties. Memories of just the two of them together, doing something unremarkable; eating dinner, cleaning the house, paying the bills together. The first time they made love. The relationship they had worked so hard to maintain, gone the moment Tommy decided to break the law.

“Hey,” Tommy said, gripping Chance’s chin and lifting his face. He wiped the tears from his cheeks and kissed him delicately on the lips. “I’m so sorry I did that to you.”

“You’re sorry?” Chance asked. He was the one that was sorry. If he could have lived that night over again, he would still have arrested Tommy, but not in their house. That was what bothered him more than anything else about that night. He should have met him somewhere neutral, the racetrack or O’Henry’s pub. Anywhere other than their home. He had been afraid it would taint the place for Tommy. That even if Tommy forgave Chance for the arrest, he would not be able to step foot in the home they had shared for ten years because it was the place of his downfall. He was here now though, so maybe it hadn’t bothered him as much as it had Chance.

“I was so mad at you. The first two years at Hardaway I spent planning your death. I not only wanted you dead, I wanted you to suffer just as I was suffering. I was your lover and you turned on me like some fucking rat.” His face grew red with the ancient rage that had become new all over again.

“I realized though, you were right. I had gotten involved with some pretty shitty people. All I could see was the money. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt. The old lady was supposed to have a million in jewels and cash in that place. I didn’t realize she was Sam’s grandmother, his only living relative. If we hadn’t been caught, he would have inherited the house, everything in it and probably a hefty insurance check for what we stole. He killed his own grandmother for money because he couldn’t wait for her to die naturally. She was in her nineties. How much longer could she have lived?

“I was such a fool,” he continued. “I’m so sorry for cornering you into arresting me. I figured you might be the detective on the case. Part of me hoped you would be, that you would…I don’t know, cover up my involvement in the theft. Sitting there in Hardaway for all those years though, I realized that if you had let me go, I would have hated you even more. You are a good cop. An honest cop. I tried to corrupt you.”

“I’m not a cop anymore. I quit the night I arrested you,” Chance said and scooped Tommy’s hand into his own. “If you forgave me, why didn’t you let me visit you?”

“Once I realized you were right to do what you did, so much time had passed. I thought maybe you had moved on. Found someone else. Forgotten about me. I kind of hoped you had. I thought maybe Bennie had finally come to his senses and…and you were happy. That’s all I hoped for in there. That you were happy, even if it wasn’t with me.”

“There is nothing between Bennie and me.”

“Only because he won’t let it. I know you love him, and you always have.”

“Maybe.” Chance said, averting his eyes from Tommy’s for a moment.

Tommy moved in closer, pressed his lips to Chance’s, then backed away. His nose wrinkled. “You stink. When’s the last time you bathed?”

“I don’t know. What month is this?” Chance asked, lifting his arm and giving his own pit a good sniff. He did stink. The funky odor of very old sweat wafted off him. He could also smell the booze he had wallowed in a few hours before rising off him like a morning fog.

“Were you in O’Henry’s getting drunk tonight?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Chance replied.

“Are you still drunk?”

“Yeah, a little bit,” Chance repeated.

“Come on. I’m getting you in the shower,” Tommy said and pulled Chance to his feet and yanked the briefs Chance had just donned down to his ankles. Chance stepped out of them and let Tommy lead him to the bathroom. He waited patiently as Tommy turned on the water in the tub, ran his hand under the stream until it reached the right temperature, then flipped the lever to direct the water out the showerhead.

Chance stepped in the tub, let the hot spray pulverize his skin. It felt good, the quick, needle-like stabs of hot water cleansing him. Tommy pulled his own clothes off, dropped them on the bathroom floor, then joined Chance in the shower. He drew the plastic curtain closed and grabbed the bar of soap from the recess in the wall. He hugged Chance from behind while he ran the soap over Chance’s chest. He massaged the soap into his skin, working the bar down over Chance’s cock and letting it slide up into the crack of his ass.

Chance leaned into Tommy and let him wash him. He felt Tommy’s hands scooping down between his buttocks, the finger sliding into him. The soap burned, but the penetration felt good. Tommy’s hands grabbed at Chance, tugged on him, stroked him until he was standing to full attention. “Fuck me,” Tommy moaned and turned, facing the wall. Chance turned, slid inside Tommy until his balls rested lightly against Tommy’s own low-hanging testicles.

It was incredible, so warm in there, and tight. It was like coming home after a long day. The familiar way Tommy pressed back against him, wanting more and more of Chance inside him. The shivery little sigh as his cock rubbed against Tommy’s prostate, working faster, pounding him to a hard, whimpering cry as the orgasm built inside him. He knew just where to touch Tommy to bring him pleasure. Knew how to twist Tommy’s nipples and yank on his hair as he slammed into his lover, harder and harder, until his own groin was battered and bruised. Tommy liked it rough and Chance was always eager to love him that way.

Chance looked down at his bare cock sliding in and out of Tommy and he wondered how safe this was. Did Tommy play safely in prison? Did he ever take a chance and have unprotected sex? He could not have been celibate for five years. Tommy always wanted it several times a week, often needing it daily. He couldn’t go five years without it, could he?

Chance himself had not been celibate. He never brought a man here, though. He wouldn’t infect their home with another man. He had kept his indiscretions to the back room of the leather bar or traded blow jobs through a glory hole at the adult book store. The release had eased his tension, yet the orgasms made him feel empty. He had often thought of Tommy when he came and it had made Chance miss him even more. He would lie in bed, staring up at the black ceiling, wishing he was in that prison cell with Tommy, then realizing he was in a cell of his own. His solitary life had become his prison. Now he had been paroled.

He trusted Tommy though. After all he had done, after breaking into that old woman’s house and screaming at Chance in the courtroom that he wanted him dead, he still trusted him. Tommy wouldn’t risk his own life just to come.

He pushed himself harder, deeper into Tommy, feeling the warm passage milk him. The channel churned and convulsed as he pounded Tommy’s prostate, bringing him closer and closer to his nut-busting end. “Fuck me, Chance,” Tommy groaned, his voice gurgling as the hot water sprayed over their backs, filled his mouth. He spat it out, ran his fingers over his eyes to clear the soap and water and stringy clumps of dark hair. He pressed his hands against the tub wall, pushed back. His ass gobbled more of Chance’s cock. He always wanted more, no matter how much Chance gave him. He was a greedy fuck and he fucked greedily.

Chance grabbed Tommy’s dark hair, pulled it until his neck snapped back, head tilted at the ceiling. He leaned in and bit Tommy on the ear, feeling the skin pop as his eyetooth punctured the lobe. He could taste blood. Tommy yelped and shoved himself backward, slamming Chance into the wall. The hot and cold water dials slammed into his back, the showerhead raked his own head. Pain shot though Chance’s body like an explosion. Chance grunted and shoved Tommy hard. The two men tumbled and slipped on the slick tub floor and spilled out of the tub, bringing the plastic curtain with them.

Chance had slipped from Tommy’s body. Tommy was on his back, the curtain spread out beneath him like the rubber sheet they had used for the water-sports games they had played on occasion. Chance climbed on top of him, pushed his legs up and shoved himself back inside Tommy again. He entered him without care or ceremony, just set the head against the wrinkled hole and shoved his way in. Tommy yelped, but didn’t pull away. He liked it like this. Hard, rough, angry.

Chance held himself up with his arms locked at the elbows, hands on either side of Tommy’s head. He stared into Tommy’s eyes as he pounded away at him. There was light staring back at him. It was a warm glow, loving. It made Chance feel welcome, like the happy yaps of the puppy he had as a kid when he came home from school. This was home, the house surrounding them and the body engulfing him.

He loved him more now than he had ever before. Tommy had come back to him, even though Chance didn’t think he would have returned if the roles were reversed. He didn’t think he could swallow his pride and admit he was wrong, like Tommy had.

He was close now, so dangerously close to coming he turned his eyes from Tommy’s and filled his head with unpleasant images. He saw Tommy screaming for his blood in that courtroom five years ago. He saw the anger and pain of betrayal in his lover’s eyes directed at him. His erection began to wither. Chance shook the images from his mind, stared back down at those same eyes, filled with love and ecstasy for him now instead of hate. Everything came back to him harder and stronger.

He needed Tommy to come before he could. He lifted his hand from the floor, slid it between them and took Tommy’s cock in his palm. He stroked it with the same rhythm he pumped Tommy’s ass, like a well-choreographed dance. Water dripped from Chance’s face, raining down on Tommy as they grunted, pushed and pulled at each other.

It only took a few stokes before Tommy let go. He lifted his hips, bucked against Chance as he came. The hot wet splash shot up over his chest, arcing in the air with the force of five years of want. Chance caught some on his tongue as it flew between them, like a kid catching snowflakes. He swallowed it and wanted more. A gob fell on Tommy’s mouth, sealing his lips. Chance leaned in, lapped the come from his face as Tommy’s insides clamped down on him. It was all over for Chance. No man could take the pressure he was feeling and not lose control. He came with the same violence Tommy had. His entire body spasmed and he saw nothing but a hot white cloud and Tommy’s eyes floating in the mix. He collapsed on top of his lover as his balls continued to empty, filling Tommy to overflowing. He sat back, slowly pulled his cock out of the pulverized hole and watched as what seemed like gallons of his seed trickled out, pooled on the shower curtain.

Tommy sat up, dipped his finger between his legs and pulled a thick gob of Chance’s come from the curtain. He popped the finger in his mouth. “I’ve missed that. You taste so good,” Tommy said and pulled another finger full from the wet plastic. He held it before Chance. Chance opened his mouth and let Tommy feed him.

Tommy said, “Thank you for bringing me home again. I wasn’t myself for so long. Doing what I did just showed how far from myself I had gotten. You brought me back.”

Chance stood, turned the water off in the shower, then picked Tommy up from the floor. He was heavier than before, but Chance carried him into the bedroom just the same. He gently set him on the bed. This time, they were not so forceful, not as hungry for an orgasm. Chance explored Tommy, touched him everywhere both with his hands and his tongue. He sucked the water from Tommy’s skin and traced the new tattoos with his fingers. He stared at his own name, the thick, black line running through it. Tommy glanced down at the altered tattoo, averted his eyes from Chance’s. “I’ll have it fixed,” Tommy said.

“If you want,” Chance said and slipped himself inside Tommy again. He wasn’t rough. He didn’t pull Tommy’s hair or drill him like he was searching for oil, but slowly pushed back and forth inside him, letting the rush of his cockhead tickling Tommy’s prostate do all the work.

Hours passed as the two men touched, kissed. Chance slowly rocked his hips, working his cock back and forth inside Tommy. “I love you,” Tommy moaned.

Chance came, not with a hot flash explosion but a ripple like a pebble tossed in a lake. It seemed to go on forever. “I missed you,” Chance said once he could speak again and they held each other as sleep took them.

Chance woke when he heard the front door open then close. He looked over at the other side of the bed, expecting to see Tommy had left. He was still there. His hair had dried to dark, standing spikes. The clock read 6:00 a.m. It had to be Bennie out there, ready to take him to Hardaway prison.

Chance slipped out of the bed, donned the pair of underwear Tommy had removed from him before ushering him into the shower and quietly crept out to the kitchen. Bennie was leaning against the counter. He had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand. Another sat on the counter. “Good morning,” Bennie said. “Hungover?”

“A little. Tommy came home last night. I got the dates wrong.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. We had a good night,” Chance said. He felt the smile splitting his face. It felt good to smile again. To be happy again.

“That’s great,” Bennie replied and pulled Chance into his arms. Chance hugged him back, tightly. He could smell the fresh shampoo in Bennie’s hair. He didn’t want to let him go. He loved Bennie so much it often hurt. But he loved Tommy just as fiercely.

No, he realized just then, he didn’t love Bennie the same way he loved Tommy. He had gone five years waiting for Tommy to get out of prison, barely even looking at another man the entire time. He had quickly forgiven Tommy for fucking their lives up, for the crime he had committed and the incarceration that followed. He had been alone all that time waiting for Tommy to come home, not even sure if he would return to him.

He was not sure if he would have done that for Bennie. He loved him, but it was not the same.

Bennie pulled himself out of Chance’s arms. “Well, I guess we don’t have to drive to Hardaway now, do we?”

“No. Thank you for getting me home last night.”

“Anytime. Give Tommy my best. He’s a lucky man, you know that?”

“Maybe I’m the lucky one,” Chance said, knowing it was true.

Bennie left and Chance went back to the bedroom. He climbed in the bed, curled himself around Tommy, felt his steady breathing and regular heartbeat thumping in his chest. Tommy moaned, rolled over. His head rested on Chance’s chest. Chance wrapped his arm around him, hugged him even closer. He buried his face in Tommy’s hair, kissed the top of his head. Tommy was out of prison; Chance’s unwanted freedom was gone.

Finally, after five years, they had both come home.