Homeless Haven

Wyatt Cooper spent several minutes figuring out why the young pole dancer on stage at Hershee seemed familiar. The young man being nearly naked and picked out by changing-color strobe lights had captured his attention and “where have I seen him before?” thoughts and put him off the hunt for a young guy among the patrons that had brought him into the bar. The hottie on the pole looked like the youngest one in here, so Wyatt’s eyes and thoughts kept going back to him, as, no doubt, the bar management intended them to do. The guy who kept coming into Wyatt’s mind as he scanned the room, Brad Tyler, was too young to be in here. Wyatt doubted that Hershee would hire underage pole dancers, with the employees at a club being determined by the liquor laws. The drinking age in Virginia was twenty-one.

Brad Tyler was only nineteen. Wyatt was pretty sure of that. He required the tenants in his place to register with him—IDs shown and all. Brad, who seemed to have no family and who was bunking with the two Tidewater Tech students in the apartment under Wyatt’s apartment in the three-story Victorian building he owned on Amherst Street in Norfolk, Virginia, had registered with him and had obtained Wyatt’s approval Wyatt’s way—but there had been just that once. Maybe Brad had a different license, making him older, to show to the bookings manager at Hershee.

But, yeah, now that Wyatt was concentrating on him, the pole dancer was, indeed, Brad Tyler. Maybe he had another ID to flash that claimed he was over twenty-one. Lots of kids had them so they could liquor up.

Whatever, the guy looked good. He was very flexible and danced with a good sway to the beat. He also was the best prospect Wyatt saw in the bar tonight. Brad, had been a good lay that one time when Wyatt was approving him moving in with the guys downstairs and agreeing to overlook that the young man seemed to have come off the streets, homeless. His flexibility had come into play then too. The young guy had been restrained in every which way—very pretzel like—when Wyatt had penetrated him and still the guy had enough flexibility to fuck back on the shaft. And he hadn’t complained about the taxing position. Wyatt now knew where the guy had learned his moves from.

There were a lot more older guys—older than Wyatt’s thirty-six—here tonight than younger ones. Wyatt liked them younger—really young. And he was needing it. He’d brought Frank into his home and his bed when Frank was eighteen. It had been more than a month since Frank had left Tidewater Tech after a year and a half there, signed up with the Navy, and shipped out. Wyatt had had to press Frank to go through his last year of high school and then had wanted him to get through the computer programing associate degree at the technical college and work with Wyatt, who was a day trader. Frank had dragged along, saying he hated school, but letting Wyatt nag him until the day he’d come home with his naval enlistment papers.

There were a lot of Navy guys in here tonight. The Norfolk Naval Shipyard was just across the Elizabeth River, and there was a bridge from there over into Norfolk. Norfolk was crawling with naval installations, and the city catered to sailors. The problem was that the sailors in here tonight were older ones, and they were looking for the same thing Wyatt was. Some of them weren’t looking for someone really young, like Wyatt was, though. Some of them were happy to hook up with someone Wyatt’s age, and he was a looker and built well, so he was getting hit on by guys not knowing they wanted the same thing.

That was getting a little irritating for Wyatt, who hadn’t been in the clubbing scene while Frank was with him, and he’d been here for an hour without seeing anyone he could be interested in—other than the Brad lookalike dancing the pole. But, yeah, he realized now that it was, indeed, Brad. Knowing the young man was one of his tenants gave Wyatt pause on hooking up with him here.

Brad was coming off the pole, Wyatt saw, and when he was out from underneath the lights and could see into the audience, he now saw Wyatt and registered surprise. But Wyatt didn’t think Brad was registering any form of distaste. Quite the opposite. In fact, since Brad had moved in with the technical college students in the apartment under Wyatt’s, the older man had sensed interest from Brad in getting it on with him again. Seeing Brad’s smile tonight made Wyatt go hard. He was about to wave Brad over to his table when he saw a sailor corral the young man and, after a shared drink, some fondling, and meaningful looks, Brad took the sailor through a beaded-curtain doorway at the back of the bar.

Wyatt felt deflated. He had thought he’d find someone to go through the door with tonight, but so far he hadn’t. And now Brad, who had got him stirring, was gone too.

When yet another, beefy, sailor slid into a chair at Wyatt’s table, put a hand on Wyatt’s knee, and said, “You’re not drinking alone on purpose are you?” Wyatt said politely as he could that he had some place else to be, rose, and quickly left the club. It wasn’t just that Wyatt now was thinking of Brad and “young guy”; it also was because the sailor quite evidently was an aggressive top. Two tops didn’t have much of a chance of producing satisfaction. Wyatt went to his car, parked down the street and by the opening into an alley, and turned the ignition on. When he did so, he briefly put his head down on the steering wheel and felt sorry for himself.

Frank had been with him since the young man was eighteen. Wyatt had given him everything. He’d taken the Frank off the street, cleaned him up, sent him to school, and prepared him for life. He was happy Frank, who had worked two summers at the naval weapons station, had developed an enthusiasm for the Navy. They needed computer programing in the Navy as well as anywhere else. Wyatt would have preferred that his protégé go on to get a college degree after the technical school, but he didn’t want to stand in Frank’s way. And, if he admitted the truth, Frank had become a man sexually and didn’t arouse Wyatt as much as he had when he was eighteen or even nineteen. Wyatt was finding himself looking beyond Frank, although he hadn’t found anyone yet.

It was stupid for him to come to Hershee to look for someone, though. There wouldn’t be anybody that young here. At nineteen, Brad was here, but he would have had to lie to be here. Brad was as close to homeless as a guy could be and not to have to sleep on the street.

Lifting his head off the steering wheel, his eyes slightly misted from feeling sorry for himself and his frustration, Wyatt put his red Lexus RC F sports coupe into gear, started pulling away from the curb, and felt a thump against his right front bumper.

* * * *

Slick’s knees and the palms of his hands hurt. There wasn’t enough padding on the floor of the Naval Recreation Department van parked in the alley off Chesapeake Boulevard to cushion his doggie stance. He was clutching two twenty-dollar bills, one each from the two sailors in the van. He couldn’t reach his torn jeans nearby to tuck them away in a pocket. Maybe later, between taking the two guys in tight, sexy, Navy blues with the buttoned flies.

Sailor One was crouched over him. He’d taken a long time to get his cock inside Slick’s channel, declaring repeatedly while he was doing it that the young man was as tight as a witch’s cunt. It wasn’t said like it was a complaint, though. The sailor was big and bulky. Slick was small and thin, just an eighteen-year-old youth. Thin because he lived on the streets, although he hadn’t been out there long—he was naturally slim. He was dirty and smelly, he knew, as he hadn’t bathed in a while. The sailor on top of him didn’t seem to mind. In Slick’s channel now, he began fucking the young guy in long strokes, one arm encircling the young man’s slim waist and the other hand grasping the long, greasy strands of Slick’s dirty-blond hair and arching the young man’s torso back painfully. He was breathing heavily in the youth’s ear, his teeth latched onto Slick’s ear lobe.

Thrust, thrust, thrust. Slick was into it now. He was no virgin. He’d gotten into the rhythm and was rocking back into the cock on every thrust-forward stroke. He did this while living on the streets as much because he liked having a man’s cock inside him as needing a bit of money to supplement the handouts and soup kitchens. It had been letting a man get his cock inside him—wanting the man’s cock inside him—that had led to Slick being homeless on the street.

“Yes, yes, Fuckin’ A. Give it to me!” he called out.

The sailor snorted, gave it to him, and came in a flood of cum.

“Your turn, Mate,” he called out to the other sailor, who had been sitting in the front seat of the van and watching Sailor Number One doggie fucking the homeless young man on the floor of the van in the back.

“You’ll come up here and keep a lookout?” Sailor Two asked. “I don’t like that we’re in a service van.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sailor One, agreed, rising on his knees and buttoning up the fly of his tight sailor blues.

“Was he—?”

“Tight and smells like a fish market, but he rocked back on it. He takes it. He wants it. A nice little piece for the price.”

Slick had a thought of needing to review his pricing structure. Thing is that he hadn’t been out on the street long enough to gain the confidence of the other guys out here who shopped their bodies. No one had given him a straight answer yet on the going prices.

“Kinda young, ain’t he?” Sailor Two asked, as he came over the back of the front seat into the van bed, brushing by Sailor One, who was replacing him in the front seat.

“He’s got a hole and he takes seven inches.”

“You, seven inches?” Sailor Two barked, with a laugh. “You mean me, don’tcha?”

“I’ve opened him up for you, fucker. Say thank you, Gunner.”

“Thank you, Gunner,” Sailor Two said, hovering over Slick, as the young man turned onto his back, reached out for his jeans, and tucked the two Alexander Hamiltons in his pocket. “How do you want it?” Sailor Two asked. He had his cock in his hand, working it up more—it already was worked up from watching Gunner fucking Slick. Slick moaned at seeing that Sailor Two was thicker and longer than Sailor One had been. Slick had known he would be, though. The two had mentioned the first opening him for the second, but leaving some stretching room, when they were discussing who went first. The second sailor was younger, in better shape, and a lot better looking than Gunner was, as well.

“Fuck me, stud,” the young man called out as he remained on his back and raised and spread his legs. “Any way you want it. It’s your buy.”

“You got it, boy,” the sailor said, with a laugh, as he grabbed Slick’s legs to widen the young man’s stance and jerked them up, raising Slick’s pelvis off the bed of the van.

“Fuck him good, swabbie,” Gunner called out.

“You got it, Gunner,” Sailor Two growled. He plunged his cock up into Slick’s opened-up hole and immediately started to pump. Slick howled, and writhed under the young sailor, not in the least upset that he was getting a good fucking by a hunk. The young man went into a trance, every nerve ending concentrating on the thick cock stroking his channel, all references to the real, dingy world of homelessness around him fading away. He was being fucked good. He was being fucked better than Coach had ever managed. For the few minutes that lasted, he was in another world of being wanted, his body being worshipped, being the center of a hunk of a man’s lust and need.

He went with the rhythm of the fuck, the man inside him moaning at the wonder of the total surrender and acceptance of the young man under him. For just a few minutes they both were in heaven. Slick held steady, thrusting his pelvis up into the young sailor’s groin, crying out, “Yes, yes. Oh, fuck, yes!” as the sailor tightened and released, tightened and released, pumping his cum into the condom buried deep in the young man’s channel.

Ten minutes later, the back door of the van popped open, and Slick, holding his jeans, was ejected. He had to swerve off to the side to avoid being run down as the van doors shut and the vehicle immediately went into reverse, backing out of the alley, onto Chesapeake Boulevard headed for the bridge that crossed the Elizabeth River over to the Naval Shipyard on the southern bank of the river.

Pulling his jeans on, Slick hobbled over to a line of trashcans, pulled his backpack up from behind a barrel, staggered out to the mouth of the alley, and collided with the front bumper of a red sports car.

* * * *

Wyatt had the parking brake of the RC F set, was out of the car in a nanosecond, and was racing around to the curb side of the bumper. It was starting to rain. A clap of thunder and the flash of lighting punctuated the panic of Wyatt’s maneuver. In the light of the lightning strike, he saw the figure of a young man, a double backpack on top of him, sprawled out at the alley entrance. The young man had a confused “What hit me?” look on his face. Wyatt, with his interest in older teens, registered the blondness of an angel despite his concern that he might have hit a pedestrian.

“God, son. I didn’t see you coming out of the alley. Are you OK? Where does it hurt? If it hurts, don’t move.” He looked up, one way down the street and then the other, for someone to call 911 or gauging whether anyone had seen the accident, while he checked over the young man. It was raining in earnest now. No one was on the street. The only light, a flashing neon sign, was projected over the entrance of the Hershee bar. He didn’t want to go back in there.

“It’s OK. I’m good,” Slick muttered. “The bumper hit my backpack.”

Or your backpack hit my bumper, Wyatt reflexively let run through his brain, already ready to deny responsibility, not that he considered fleeing the scene or not going to the young man immediately. He wasn’t ready to just let go. The young man was heavenly. Small; a terrific face; long, curly hair, if a little greasy. But in dirty rags. He wondered how old the young man was.

“Are you out here alone? How old are you?” he idiotically blurted out, the young man’s age having been what was running through his brain. He’d already gotten the notion the young man was homeless and wasn’t accompanied by anyone who could claim responsibility for him.

“Old enough,” Slick answered, also reflexively. Wyatt’s groin gave a little lurch. But the kid was hobo dirty. He probably smelled too in close quarters. “I’m OK. There’s nothing . . . ow!”

Slick had tried to sit up. “My leg. I think it’s bruised.”

Wyatt’s chest contracted. The kid was hurt. Of course. The backpack took the force, such as it was, of the car’s bumper, but the blow had put the kid on the ground—hip slammed down on the slight lip of the concrete between the road and the entrance of the alley. The kid had lurched out of the alley. Wyatt had to keep hold of that thought. The kid had hit the car; the car hadn’t hit the kid. This couldn’t be Wyatt’s fault. But he had to do something. And the kid was beautiful. Just what Wyatt . . .

“Stay there. I’ll call an ambulance. We need to have someone look you over.”

“No. No ambulance. No police. No hospital. Shit, it’s raining hard. Help me to get under cover.” He tried to rise, groaned an “Umpf,” and sat back down on the concrete.

“We should see how bad it is. And you need to get cleaned up to check that out. Look, I live just down Chesapeake Boulevard. We can go there. You can get cleaned up and we’ll take a look at it. If you need medical attention, I’ll take you to a clinic or something.”

“Just get me over to—”

“There’s a free clinic I know of where they won’t ask questions if you can be fixed up without going to a hospital. First to my place to clean up and assess and then to the free clinic, if needed. OK? No questioning unless it’s serious. Better then if you’ve been cleaned up. Fewer questions.”

The kid was homeless, obviously. He wouldn’t be dirty and dressed in rags and be hauling around a backpack that size if he wasn’t—or worried about getting hooked up with authorities of any type. Not being IDed obviously had the kid more worried than his injury did. Wyatt needed to know how bad the kid was hurt or he’d always wonder. And he was an angel. Just the right look and size. Wyatt knew what would speak to him. “Look, I’ll give you a meal too . . . and twenty dollars. Let’s just check it out. I’m not more than a mile away. Or I could call the police.”

“No! No police. OK, OK, I’ll go to your place.” Wyatt helped him up. The kid stood, favoring his right leg, but he was putting some weight on it. “Hey. This your car? Some wheels. You rich or something?”

“Yes, this is my car. I’ll get you out of the rain. We’ll take my car to my place.”

That worked. Slick let Wyatt put him into the passenger side of the RC F, and he only grimaced slightly and gave a little moan at the pain of folding himself into the low-slung passenger seat. The little moan sent a flash of desire through Wyatt’s body. But that had nothing to do with getting the young man cleaned up and checked out. Wyatt wanted to know that there wouldn’t be any trouble from this. The kid being a sexy little thing had nothing to do with this—or so he kept telling himself. It wasn’t like he had been shopping for a replacement for Frank. He’d offer to take a dumpy old woman home under these circumstances as well as a teen angel. Sure he would.

Wyatt wasn’t lying—about far away he lived. He did live not much more than a mile away, toward the Elizabeth River and Portsmouth, just a block off Chesapeake Boulevard, on Amherst Street. They drove for a while in silence, the young man clutching the big backpack to his stomach.

“You OK?” he asked, to break the silence. “It isn’t far now, I promise. The leg hurting you more or less?”

“Less, I think. You could pull over and let me out. I’ll be OK.”

“No, we should check it out. If you don’t need medical attention, I’ll drop you back wherever you want to go. You live near where you . . . where it happened?”

“Yeah, sure. I live here and there.”

So, Wyatt was right. The young man was homeless. “My name is Wyatt. Wyatt Cooper. You’re . . . ?”

There was a moment of silence. “I’m Slick. Everyone calls me Slick.”

“But that’s not your real name, is it? It’s not the name your parents gave you.”

“No, it isn’t. But you can call me Slick.” It was obvious the kid wasn’t going to be forthcoming—or chatty. The guy was asking a lot of questions, and Slick knew the look the guy was giving him. There was interest there in more than just if Slick’s leg still hurt.

“OK, Slick. Here we are. Right here. Just a block off Chesapeake Boulevard, as I said.”

Slick looked up at the story-and-a-half Victorian, with wraparound porches, set on a basement half out of the ground. “All of this yours?”

Wyatt laughed. “Yes, but I don’t live in it all anymore. It was just one house when I was raised in it. But now it’s three apartments. It’s not just me in there. There will be others in the building.” He laughed again, a little nervously. He had no idea why he was assuring the young man he was going into a building where he wouldn’t be alone with Wyatt.

“Neat. The car’s boss too,” Slick said, as he opened the passenger door, gave a little groan, and rolled out onto the drive. The rain had stopped, but there still were lightning strikes close enough that a renewed deluge was threatened. Rain had been predicted to cover the next several days.

“Here, lean on me. I’ll help you up the stairs. The main level is my apartment.”

Wyatt felt the heat and smallness of the young man as they came together. He almost groaned himself in want and need. The young man fit into his side just right. They slowly moved up the front stairs to the porch, drawn by the light beside the front door that Wyatt had left on when he’d taken off for the gay bar. This might work out OK, Wyatt thought. This might be Frank all over again—but with a better ending.

* * * *

“So, do you want to hump me now? You can, if you want. No charge, of course, for the help you’ve given me. Where do you want to do it?”

Slick was standing in the doorway to the second bedroom—each of the bedrooms in Wyatt’s apartment had a full bath attached. Slick had been sent off to take a shower in the second bedroom’s bathroom a soon as they’d entered the apartment. Wyatt was across the living/dining room combination, beyond the kitchen island, scrambling eggs for them both. He turned and looked at Slick, naked and rubbing his hair, in the bedroom doorway. Despite the shock of Slick’s bald statement, it had registered with Wyatt that the young man’s hair, now washed, was not a dirty blond—it was a golden blond and cascaded to his shoulders in curls. The rest of him followed the Michelangelo young man angel mold as well. Wyatt went hard.

“Excuse me?” he said, nearly dropping the pan he was using to scramble the eggs.

“You brought me here to fuck me, didn’t you? You were leaving the gay club when you hit me with your car, weren’t you? This is all about getting your rocks off, isn’t it?”

“No, this most certainly is not about fucking you or getting my rocks off, young man,” Wyatt said, indignantly. “And I didn’t hit you with my car. You ran into my car. I just want to make sure you’re OK. How is your leg? Is it just bruised? If so, I’ll give you something to eat and then I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go. If it’s hurt more seriously than that, I’ll take you to a clinic and cover the cost.”

Wyatt was filling the air with words because of course he was thinking of fucking the young man. He just didn’t intend on really doing so—he wasn’t even thinking of actually doing it as long as the young man was filthy and smelly from living on the streets. But now, with the young man clean . . . that beautiful, young, smooth-skinned body . . . and those golden curls . . .

It was then that Slick saw that his backpack was leaning against the wall on one side of the front door of the apartment and the clothes he’d had in it were piled on the other side of the door, neither of the piles had come any farther into the apartment than they had to be. “Hey, what are you doing with my stuff?” he said. “And the clothes I was wearing are on that pile too. I’m standing here starkers because you took my clothes while I was taking a shower. I figured you wanted me naked. It’s OK. I can go any way. I have experience with men.”

Of course Wyatt wanted the young man naked. Wyatt increasingly wanted the young man totally. “You can’t put those clothes back on,” he said. “They’re filthy. Everything in your backpack is filthy. It’s no good taking a shower, getting clean, and then putting filthy clothes back on. The backpack itself is filthy. I think the whole lot needs to be taken out to the trash.”

“Fuck that,” Slick spat out. “That’s my stuff. What am I supposed to wear? Fuck this shit, man.”

The guy obviously was angry. And he had a point. Wyatt had to recognize that. He was just so used to making the decisions and to doing what he could to make life better for young men—young men like Slick and like Frank before him. All they had to do to get taken care of was to let Wyatt fuck them. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I forgot to tell you. The bedroom there has clothes that should fit you in the closet and the bureau drawers. Just pull out something you like that fits and put it on.”

“Why are there clothes that will fit me in this bedroom?” Slick asked, suspicious. “And I don’t want you to throw away my stuff.”

“That bedroom is Frank’s. Frank lived here for three years. He went into the Navy, where they provide all of a sailor’s clothes. There should be clothes close to your sizes there. Just pick something out that fits you. You can have it. Or, if you want to stay that long, we’ll put these other clothes through the washer and dryer and you can have your own stuff. Everything is filthy, though. You can’t just put any of that on now. You should let me wash and dry it for you. Now, why don’t you go find something to put on and I’ll have something for us to eat when you come back. Scrambled eggs. And do you want white toast or wheat?”

“White,” Slick said, mollified and mulling over the mention of a Frank. He’d figured he’d let the guy have a quick fuck for making sure he was OK. His leg was just bruised. He’d be OK, but it was nice of the guy to ask. And the guy was really good looking and was built. Slick wouldn’t mind riding him if he had a good cock.

“My leg’s OK,” he said, as he turned to go back into the bedroom. “It’s just a bruise.”

They were sitting at the kitchen island, the eggs, toast, and coffee polished off, and Wyatt had scooped out some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream that Slick couldn’t say no to.

“So, it sounds like it’s still raining hard outside,” Wyatt said as they were finishing up. “Have you thought about your stuff? This would be an opportunity to start off clean with everything before I take you wherever you want. And you might as well stay where it’s warm and dry until the rain starts. You’re living on the streets, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m on the streets. I like it that way.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m nineteen.”

“Come on, Slick. We both know you aren’t more than sixteen.”

“I’m eighteen,” the young man shot back. “I have ID if you want to check it.”

“There. I knew it was younger than nineteen. And you’re on your own?”

“Totally, yes. And I like it that way.”

“And you’ve finished high school?”

“Not the whole way. But I’m good on my own.”

“That’s fine. But it makes sense, doesn’t it, not to go back out into the rain until it stops and to get your clothes washed and dried while you’re waiting?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Looking at the pile over there, it won’t all get dried until late in the night. You might as well stay here tonight. You can have the second bedroom.”

“What about the young man you mentioned? Frank. He’s your son? He won’t come back and want his bedroom?”

“Frank’s grown now. He went into the Navy. He’s off in an ocean now. Nobody’s using the bed in there. You might as well. Just if you want. Just for tonight while your clothes are getting clean. Then tomorrow I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. I think it’s raining even harder out there now.” Slick didn’t seem to notice that Wyatt hadn’t said whether or not Frank was his son. Wyatt didn’t want to go there yet.

“You really want me to sleep in that bed?” Slick asked. “Or do you want me to sleep in your bed? I’ve seen the way you look at me. I don’t mind. I’ll owe you for the meal and the wash and the roof over my head tonight. I admit that would be nice—not to have to sleep out there in the rain. I could show you a good time.”

“I didn’t bring you here to take advantage of you,” Wyatt said, his voice stiff. And, indeed, he hadn’t originally brought Slick home with that purpose in mind—that he chose to remember. He hadn’t formed any intentions toward the young man. He’d just been worried about the young man tangling with the RC F and had wanted to be a good guy. And he was used to doing for Frank. He’d missed that. But it wasn’t only his voice that was stiff at this moment. So, yes, he now wanted to fuck the young man. But he knew he should stick to his original, more noble intent. “You go on into the bedroom over there. I’ll put a wash in and clean up these dishes. I’m glad your leg isn’t broken.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure . . . Slick. Wish you’d tell me your real name. I don’t think your parents gave you the name Slick.”

“My parents didn’t give me much of anything but a hard time,” the young man said, as he slipped into the second bedroom. He left the door open though.

Wyatt struggled with the strong desire to follow the young man into the bedroom. Slick had told him he could. The guy’s willingness to be covered wasn’t helping Wyatt’s resolve not to do that. He’d said again that he owed Wyatt for taking him in and feeding him and washing his clothes and the young man didn’t want to owe Wyatt anything. He hadn’t taken the twenty dollars Wyatt had told him he would give him; he had forty dollars of his own he’d earned by himself. He wanted what he’d said he knew Wyatt wanted from him and hadn’t had the strength to directly say he did, though. He’d said that Wyatt could have it, not that Slick wanted Wyatt to take it. The man was a hunk. And he’d assured Wyatt that he’d done it before—that it was one way he managed to live on the street. He even said he’d been with a couple of Navy guys in the alley before the car accident. When push came to shove, Slick would like to have someone to hold him in the night, to hear someone breathing beside him, both of them under clean sheets, safe—even having done it before they went to sleep. Slick thought he’d done everything he could to let the man know it was OK.

Wyatt had stuck to his guns. It was a matter of pride now. But, shit, it took all the control Wyatt could muster not to follow the young man into the bedroom. God, he missed Frank. With a sigh, he climbed off the kitchen stool and went over to start the young man’s clothes—more, his rags—in the washer. It would be a long night before he’d get to bed. Just as well, Wyatt thought, as he was determined to go to his own bed tonight and not Slick’s.

Wyatt turned out his light a little after 4:00 in the morning, the washing, drying, and folding all done. Slick didn’t have enough clothes to take up the whole night. They were in bad condition, even when clean. He’d have to think of a way for the young man to take some of the clothes that Frank hadn’t needed for some time—what he’d worn at eighteen when he’d first lived with Wyatt—and slept in Wyatt’s bed. There had always been that second bedroom, with a bed, and Wyatt had bought all of the clothes. But the bed in there had only rarely been used. Wyatt had let Frank decide, though. Just as he was letting Slick decide.

He stood at the door to the second bedroom, the door being open, for several minutes before going into his own bed. The young man was on the bed, on top of the sheets, wearing briefs only. He was an angel. Wyatt unzipped himself and stood there, pulling out and stroking his cock as he watched the young man sleep. He could have finished himself there, but he was afraid Slick would wake and see him. With a sigh, he went to his own room, took a quick shower, and climbed, in sleeping shorts, into bed.

He woke, moaning, with the young man lying between his legs, his mouth covering Wyatt’s engorged shaft.

“What?” he muttered. And then “Oh, shit. Fuck,” as he looked down to see the golden curls of the young man’s head, bouncing up and down as Slick gave him head.

“Slick, no. You don’t have to—”

“But you want me to, and I don’t want to owe you for anything,” the young man said, taking his mouth off the shaft momentarily. “Shit, you’re big. You got a nice one. It’s OK for you to put it in me. You’re a hunk and a half; a lot better than most I let fuck me. You want me to suck you off, don’t you?” he added as he went back to sucking the cock.

“Yes, I want you to suck me off,” Wyatt moaned. “Oh, Slick. Oh, fuck.”

The young man was moving up Wyatt’s body, positioning himself over Wyatt’s pelvis, holding Wyatt’s shaft in position.

“You want to fuck me too, don’t you?” Slick asked. “You don’t want to do me, tell me now.”

Wyatt couldn’t bring himself to say anything. Slick laughed and descended on Wyatt’s cock, sheathing the older man with his tight channel—and rising and falling, rising and falling.

“Oh, Slick. Oh, you beautiful boy!”

Later, the two stretched out against each other, Wyatt having rolled off the young man’s slight body, which he had taken in the missionary position, the older man held the youth close to his body in an embrace and whispered in his ear, “Oh, my dear young man. You are so beautiful. Flexible, tight, yielding. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

“You’re good,” Slick whispered. “Big, thick. I could stay here, you inside me, forever.”

Wyatt’s spirit soared. “I can’t think of you as Slick. You have to tell me your given name. We have to start new.”

“It’s Steve. I was named Steve,” the young man answered after a pause and a sigh. “But I want to be called Slick.”

“Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for clothes, Steve,” Wyatt said. “And a haircut. The hair is beautiful, but you have to get it cut sometime. We’ll get that done tomorrow.”

The young man didn’t respond, though, because he was asleep.

* * * *

Steve wasn’t asleep at 7:00 a.m., though, when, waking and seeing that the young man’s eyes were open, Wyatt gathered Steve’s back into his chest and held him close. He worked his shaft into Steve’s ass from behind and took him in a slow side split. And Steve wasn’t asleep at 10:00 a.m., when Wyatt woke to the young man’s total surrender and positional expertise as Steve coaxed the older man onto his back and hovered over his body, supported above Wyatt on bent arms and legs, hands and feet pressed into the mattress on each side of the older man’s body, facing up to the ceiling, while Wyatt grasped the young man’s waist and raised and lowered Steve on his buried cock.

They didn’t rise, the young man rising first and going into the other bedroom, until noon. It had been raining all night and was still raining.

Wyatt, back in his sleeping shorts, was laying breakfast out on the kitchen island and the shower in the second bedroom had stopped providing stereo in the sound of falling water with the rain outside when there was a knock at the door. Wyatt went to the door and opened it.

“Brad,” he said. The nineteen-year-old dark and sultry pole dancer was leaning on the doorframe in a provocative pose, not unlike one he had taken on the pole at Hershee the previous evening, when the door was opened. He was wearing just athletic shorts and had a six-pack of Budweiser hanging from the fingers of one hand.

“Hi, Mr. Cooper,” Brad said. “I saw you at Hershee last night and thought for a minute we might, you know, hook up there. We haven’t like . . . you know . . . since that time when I moved in. It’s too rainy to go out today, and I thought you might be out of beer and, with Frank gone to the Navy, might want some . . . company.”

He had hesitated because, as he was reaching the end of his speech, his gaze had gone beyond Wyatt, across the living area of the apartment to the door into the second bedroom, where Steve was emerging, naked, and drying his hair.

The two young men paused and squared off, each assessing the other.

“Thanks for thinking of me,” Wyatt said. “Steve here and I are going out for a while after we eat, though. We have a little shopping to do.” He reached out with a hand and placed it on Brad’s forearm to reassure the young man. “Just a bad time,” he said. “Another time for sure.”

He’d been meaning to see if the sexy nineteen-year-old would go for another round after Frank had gone, and he would have been up for it—he, in fact, had been up—hard—for it watching Brad ride the pole the previous night. But now there was Steve. Eighteen-year-old Steve. The magical age. Brad had ridden his pole that first time as well as he was dancing the pole at Hershee the previous night, though. Just such difficult timing.

Brad decided to end the embarrassment for both of them. Handing Wyatt the six pack, he said, “As good in your refrigerator as mine, I guess. Maybe . . . some other time.”

“Yes, for sure . . . ,” Wyatt said, but Brad had just given him a sad look and turned and was gone.

Steve—Wyatt had been calling the young man Steve from the time the young man had taken over riding his cock that morning, signaling that he’d surrendered fully to Wyatt’s wants—drifted over to the dining table where his clothes were folded and piled while the awkwardness at the door was playing out.

As Wyatt closed the front door, the young man spoke up in slight irritation. “Where’s my backpack? I don’t see it here. I was going to pack my clothes.”

“Your clean clothes, Steve?” Wyatt asked. “The clothes I washed and dried for you? You’re welcome for that.” If the young man was going to stay around, he’d need polishing. Wyatt had gone through all of that with Frank. No time better than the present to start civilizing the young man.

“Yeah, OK, thanks for washing them. But where’s my backpack?”

“It was filthy, through and through,” Wyatt said. “I tossed it. It’s down in the trash. We’ll buy you a new one when we go out clothes shopping.”

“I hadn’t said I wanted new clothes,” Steve said, “and I don’t want a new backpack. You said you’d drive me wherever I wanted to go after you’d washed and dried the clothes . . . and fucked me.”

“I didn’t say you had to let me cover you, son—you came to me. You wanted to do it. And I said I’d take you where you wanted to go when the rain stopped. It’s still raining. I did say I’d take you clothes shopping today. And now you need something to put the clothes in, so we’ll need to buy you a new backpack before you can pack. Right?”

“I guess.” It was reluctantly admitted, but it was admitted.

“Right. Now breakfast, and find something to wear in Frank’s stuff, and we’ll go shopping. OK?”

“OK,” Steve said, although it was a slightly belligerent “OK.”

The conversation was pretty stilted during breakfast. Wyatt leaned into the young man and kissed him on the lips when they were mounting the stools and he touched and stroked the young man’s body here and there as if checking that the young man was real and was still there while they ate. Steve didn’t respond in kind, but he tolerated the touching. The man had fucked him three times—and had done so really well—in the last eight hours, so he would ride this out until the rain stopped. But then . . .

Wyatt left first to take a shower in the bathroom off the master bedroom and to dress. He shut the door to the bedroom, out of habit, when he left. Slick, Slick again in his own mind now in an effort to regain a bit of himself, waited, watching the master bedroom door, until he heard the shower start. He then hopped off the stool, went into the second bedroom, quickly found shorts and a T-shirt from Frank’s bureau drawers that fit him, and pulled on his sneakers. He then left the apartment, making sure the door was unlocked so he could get back in, and moved quickly down the stairs and to the back of the building. He was back, with his backpack, before the shower in the master bath had stopped running. He was soaked, as the rain had picked up and was now accompanied by thunder and lightning. He got the backpack tucked away in the closet of the second bedroom, though, had dried off, changed to dry clothes from the Frank collection, and was back in the living room, sitting on the sofa, before Wyatt emerged from the bedroom, wearing just briefs and drying his hair with a towel.

“You settling in OK, Steve?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure,” the young man answered. “I was just checking the TV schedule. It’s raining real hard now.” As if to punctuate that, the lights flickered, but they held.

“We’ll go out later then, when the rain lets up. There’s a DVD on the set now. It might be something you’d like. We’ll have to think of something to do with ourselves until we can go shopping.”

The DVD was a gay porn film—a Daddy film, a thirty-something muscle guy screwing a twink on a sofa.

Steve lay on his back along the sofa cushions, his face turned to the TV set, his fingers pressing into Wyatt’s biceps, his ankles hooked on Wyatt’s shoulders, as the older man knelt on the sofa between the young man’s thighs and moved his hard cock in and out, in and out of Steve’s passage. Steve clutched Wyatt’s biceps, arched his back, and cried out his pleasure, as Wyatt creamed him deep. The young man had no complaints to give about Wyatt’s screwing technique. Wyatt didn’t voice any disappointment with the young man’s submissiveness to him either. Their fucking had mirrored that of the porn flick on the TV set.

So far they were doing great, Wyatt thought.

* * * *

“Brad. You got a few minutes you can come up to my apartment?”

Just a couple of minutes? was Brad’s first thought. He’d just turned off the power mower. The rain had stopped the day before after several days running and the grass had grown almost too high to mow. It had dried out now, though. It was Brad’s job to keep the lawn mown at the Amherst Street house.

“Sure, Mr. Cooper. Should I stop and get some beer?” He turned to face Cooper, who was standing on the porch in front of the door into his apartment. The man was in just athletic shorts and sandals. He looked really good to Brad. Brad was just in athletic shorts as well, although he had sturdier shoes on since he was working with a power mower on a sharply sloping front yard. He knew he looked good too. He’d heard that the guy Cooper had in his apartment was going back on the street—that he was a homeless guy—when the rains stopped. The rains had stopped, so maybe he was gone and Brad could make a move. He posed at the mower in a way that showed his developing musculature off well. He didn’t want to overdo it; he knew Cooper liked the small guy look. Both he and Cooper knew Brad was too young to be drinking beer. Sharing beer was a euphemism between them for doing something else Brad was a bit too young to be doing with Cooper.

“It won’t take long, Brad. You’re from this area, aren’t you? Didn’t you go to B. T. Washington High School? Aren’t you in Tidewater Tech now?”

“Yes, sir, to both. When school starts up, I’ll be in my second year at Tidewater Tech, over off East Princess Anne Road.”

“I thought so. I’d like you to come up and talk to Steve about the school. I’m getting him enrolled there and he’s fighting it a bit. I think if someone going there tells him about it, he’ll come across.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Cooper. I’ll be up in a few minutes. Have to put the mower away and clean up a bit.” That’s what Brad said, but what he was thinking was, Shit. The little fucker’s still there. And Cooper wants him to stay. He wants another Frank. I thought I had a chance. Shit, shit, fuck.

* * * *

“I don’t want to go to college or to tech school, so there’s no reason for me to go to Tidewater Tech. And you don’t have to drive me over there. I’ve seen it. If I wanted to go school, I’d . . . I’d . . .”

“You’d do what?” Wyatt asked. “I’m just trying to help you, to give you a step up in life. You don’t want to be homeless and live on the streets forever, do you?”

The three of them were sitting in the living room area of Wyatt’s apartment. Steve had been sullen, but he’d heard Brad out. Brad had been patient, although he was aching to be in the other young man’s place instead.

“Fuck it,” Slick said. He was digging in again, wanting to assert he was Slick, not Steve. He almost told them. He’d almost said that if he wanted the life that Wyatt was trying to build for him, he wouldn’t have left home to begin with. He was born and grew up here in Norfolk. He’d lived within a few blocks of here forever. He’d lived up in Green Hill Farms, in a nice house, with parents who had careers, were totally into their own shit, and had had him by accident. Norview would be his high school now if he hadn’t left home. And he might not have left home if Mr. Paine, the P.E. teacher and his soccer coach at Norview High School, hadn’t done what he’d done to him—hadn’t started him off and broken him down and said there was a teacher at Tidewater Tech he was going to turn Slick over to when Slick went up to the technical college. Not that Slick hadn’t liked what Mr. Paine had done with him; Mr. Paine was a hunk and knew how to fuck. Slick just didn’t want someone making all of his decisions; telling him what to do; controlling him. If that’s the way it was to be, Slick had thought he might as well be free—and get paid for it on the street.

“OK, OK,” he said. “But I’ve missed some school. I’d rather do another year of high school. Isn’t there one near here?”

“There’s Norview. It’s the closest high school,” Wyatt said, relieved, feeling he was making headway. “Or there’s B. T. Washington, about the same distance in the other direction. Then after another year in high school, we can talk colleges or Tidewater Tech.”

“B. T. Washington maybe,” Slick quickly said. “Not college or trade school. I don’t want to talk about anything that far in advance,” he stubbornly added.

“You know, I’d love taking whatever Mr. Cooper would give me in education and a place to stay, if I was in your place,” Brad said. And it was true; he was aching to get what Cooper was offering to this snotty guy. Cooper had done wonders with Frank, and Brad hadn’t thought that Frank had appreciated it enough. Frank had told Brad that going into the Navy was a release for him—release from Cooper’s control. Brad couldn’t see that. He was dying to get the support that Frank got—and that Wyatt was offering to this guy. And he was aching to get the loving that Wyatt gave Frank and Brad knew he was giving Steve now. Brad would love having a man who wanted to protect him.

Wyatt got up to get another round of Cokes for them from the kitchen, and Slick turned to Brad and fairly hissed, “Why don’t you do this then? Why don’t you let him control and fuck you and decide what your life is going to be?”

“I would if I could,” Brad hissed back. “But he chose you. I would if I could. And I’d be grateful that he pulled me out of the gutter and gave me a life. Don’t screw this up—for yourself, and for him. I’d give the world to have a hunk like Mr. Cooper taking care of me—and taking care of me in bed too.”

When Wyatt came back, he said, “What do you say, Steve? Shall we drive over to B. T. Washington this afternoon and see what can be done on getting you back in school?”

“If you want,” Slick answered wearily. “You’re the boss.” He said that in a sarcastic tone and turned a pointed look at Brad.

“Someone has to be the boss, Steve,” Wyatt said, as he handed the young man a cold can of Coke. “You’re too young to be on your own.”

But not too young to fuck, Slick thought. And then he wanted to kick himself. There was nothing wrong with how the man fucked him. He felt safe and protected when he was in Wyatt’s arms, with Wyatt’s dick inside him. But, for the rest, Slick felt the walls closing in on him.

That night was the best sex they’d had so far. They took turns giving each other a body massage, reaching all crevices and curves and moving to giving hand jobs that went to the brink and back again. And then the young man coaxed Wyatt onto his back on the master bed, put himself in a cowboy man position, facing Wyatt’s head, and rode the older man and rode him and rode him.

They fucked like there would be no tomorrow.

When Wyatt woke up the next day, he was alone in the bed. He rolled out of bed and did what he had to do in his bathroom. He expected to hear some manner of sound from beyond the bedroom. Steve had gotten up before he did before in the week he’d been here, but Wyatt had always heard him in the shower in the other bedroom suite and banging around in the kitchen. Today he heard nothing.

When he came out of the bathroom, he padded out into the living/dining area in his sleep shorts. He still heard nothing and he saw nothing. Until he did see something. Steve’s new backpack was sitting on top of the dining room table. And beside it, neatly folded and stacked, were all of the clothes Wyatt had bought him as well as Frank’s clothes Steve had loaned him.

In panic, Wyatt went into the second bedroom. Everything had been tidied up. He went to the bureau and opened the drawer where Steve had put the clothes he’d come with, clothes that he’d told Wyatt he’d thrown out, but he hadn’t. Wyatt had snooped, of course, and seen the clothes in the drawer. They were gone now. He looked in the closet where he’d found Steve had retrieved and stashed the old backpack Wyatt had trashed. Wyatt had plans to celebrate, to take Steve somewhere special, when the young man signaled he was comfortable enough to stay and go with traveling down the new life’s path Wyatt was providing for him by throwing out this old stuff. This didn’t feel like Steve had turned that corner, though. Wyatt didn’t think the young man had thrown out the old stuff. This felt like something entirely different.

He came back out into the living room and stumbled over to the dining room table, where he saw, for the first time, that Steve had left him a note—and two worn twenty-dollar bills.

“Sorry, I can’t do this,” the note said. “And my name is Slick. Sorry I didn’t leave more, but it’s all I’ve got. I want to pay my way, though. I don’t want you to think I stole anything from you.”

* * * *

The red RC F pulled over to the curb two blocks up Chesapeake Boulevard from the Hershee club and the passenger seat window scrolled down. “You need a lift, Brad? You coming or going?”

“Going home, I guess, Mr. Cooper. If you’re headed in that direction—”

“Hop in. I can take you there and come back.”

When Brad had folded himself into the seat, Wyatt managed a U-turn and started back down Chesapeake Boulevard. “You here to do something at the club?” he asked.

“I guess I’m out here for the same reason you are—looking for Steve.”

“So, you heard then. Heard that he took off this morning.”

“Yes. And I heard you had gone looking for him. I thought you’d appreciate the help.”

“Thanks, Brad. You’re always helpful.”

“Anything for you, Mr. Cooper.”

“It’s Wyatt,” the driver said and reached over and squeezed Brad’s knee. “Again, appreciate it. You stick with a guy.”

You don’t know the half of it, Brad thought. The hand was still on his knee. He had an almost overwhelming urge to put his hand on top of Wyatt’s, but he resisted.

“Frank did that a couple of times—ran away,” Wyatt said. “It’s really rough at the start.” He put the hand back on the wheel.

“Steve might be different from what Frank was,” Brad said. “Some really don’t want a normal life . . . and support. I didn’t get the feeling that Steve was ready to go back to school, or that he had any ambition to learn to work in anything yet. I think he is one who enjoys the freedom of the streets, even with what that denies him.”

“It’s hard to think anyone would think like that,” Wyatt said.

“It’s sure hard for me to think that,” Brad replied. He swallowed hard, and went for it. “I certainly don’t think that. If someone was to want to help me get an education and a good job, I’d do anything he wanted to get that help.”

“Anything?” Wyatt asked, turning his head and flashing a grin.

“Yes, anything,” Brad responded.

“What is it you want to do in life, Brad?”

“I know you’ll laugh, but I’d like to be a stockbroker. That sounds like an interesting, steady job.”

“You would? I’m a day trader, you know.”

Yes, I know, Brad thought.

“And I do pretty well with it.”

Yes, I know.

“There was a man who helped me get there,” Wyatt said after a moment. “Saw the potential in me when I was graduating from high school and pulled me under his wing.”

I didn’t know that, Brad thought. That explained some things.

Wyatt’s right hand came off the wheel and went back to Brad’s knee. It wasn’t clear he realized it had. It was quite clear to Brad that it had.

“I’d like a man to do that for me,” Brad said in a low voice. “I’d do anything for him.” He took the plunge. He put his hand on top of Wyatt’s.

“I had to do it all for that man,” Wyatt said.

“I’d have no trouble doing it all. Not with someone like you,” Brad answered. “I think you know I would. We’ve done it already, anyway.”

“You don’t think Steve is coming back, do you?” Wyatt asked.

“No, I don’t think he is . . . Wyatt.” Brad knew Slick wasn’t coming back. Brad had found Slick, in the same alley were the young man had been before he exploded out of the alley and into the fender of Wyatt’s RC F a week earlier in the rain. Slick had told Brad how he wasn’t ready for what Wyatt wanted, how much he wasn’t ready to go under a man’s control like that. And Slick had told him why he didn’t want to go to Norview, about how his high school soccer coach said he was going to hand Slick over to a man at Tidewater Tech for more control and sex. Brad didn’t doubt him. He went to Tidewater Tech. He knew the teacher Slick was talking about. And the teacher knew Brad—biblically. He didn’t wish that guy on anyone, including Slick.

No, Slick wasn’t coming back. When Wyatt had pulled up to the curb beside Brad near the Hershee club, Brad was just back from getting a friend to help Slick move to another patch, out of the neighborhood he’d been working before.

“So, here we are,” Wyatt said, pulling into the driveway of the house on Amherst he’d had made into three apartments. He turned the ignition off and popped his door open.

“You aren’t just leaving me off here?” Brad asked.

“No, I’m not. Not unless that’s what you want me to do.”

“You know it’s not what I want you to do,” Brad murmured.

Wyatt reached around and placed his hand on the back of Brad’s head. It didn’t require any pressure at all to bring the young man’s face to Wyatt’s, and Brad’s mouth opened to receive Wyatt’s tongue as their lips came together. Brad heard Wyatt’s fly being unzipped and he didn’t flinch. Neither did the young man resist when the hand cupping his head pulled his face down into Wyatt’s lap. Holding the base of the engorging cock with one hand, Brad opened his mouth over the shaft.

Wyatt sighed as he settled back in the driver’s seat. “I think we’ll go up to my apartment,” he whispered. “Someone gave me some beer a few days ago I haven’t gotten around to drinking, and I think I’d like to share that with someone—and then, maybe, share something else too. Sharing’s good.”

He smiled when he heard the compliant young man giving him head voice a muffled, “Yes, please.”