Snow Drifting

It had snowed the week before Thanksgiving in Watertown, New York. The burg with an unimaginative name, which matched its basic cultural footprint, was a small town west of Fort Drum and nearly on the shore of Lake Ontario, just to the west of the town, and about as far north in the United States you could get without spilling over into Canada. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual, but it had been continuously snowing in that week, and already had reached twelve inches in drifting snow. This wasn’t unusual in a town where, if you put a glass of water on your nightstand on a winter night, it would freeze and pop the glass before dawn.

However, it was perhaps not the best time for Scott Reynolds to be coming home unannounced for the winter holidays from his second tour in Afghanistan. Scott was on the drift himself, not knowing whether he wanted to pick up the pieces he’d left behind four years earlier in Watertown or reup for a third tour in the army—or maybe something else altogether. He had a few ties in Watertown, but there were a few elsewhere too—just a few anywhere. He’d pretty much drifted all of his life and most of his relationships had been casual. In his lifestyle, they were called hookups.

He’d taken the bus up from New York City. The snow storm touched down there too, but conditions had become increasingly worse as they were leaving the city on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The distance of some 320 miles between city and town, which normally wouldn’t have taken more than seven and a half hours to drive, took two days in the snow, with a stop at a rundown motel outside Binghamton, New York, on Sunday night before they could get going again the next morning. The bus company hadn’t paid for the motel rooms, but it had warned the passengers of the probably forced stop, because of the snow, and all had opted to take the trip. Most of them were trying to get someplace for Thanksgiving.

There hadn’t been many on the bus, but they were doubled up in the rooms anyway. Scott had drawn a young Jewish guy named Josh, who was on his way up to Fort Drum to be drummed into the army. The young man had found out that Scott was just coming out of Afghanistan and had clung to Scott during the first leg of the journey, interminably asking him questions about the army and serving in Afghanistan and into more intimate matters, like how soldiers in combat got their needs served, that told Scott, twenty-six, that the young man, no more than twenty, was nervous about serving but interested in serving a big bruiser like Scott. Scott was experienced at picking up signals of gay interest and Josh was too inexperienced not to provide them. Scott also was experienced at taking his pleasures where he could get them.

Josh didn’t stand a chance, assuming he wasn’t fully prepared for a casual hookup.

Scott gave Josh a tutorial in how some guys managed to get their rocks off in combat conditions when he fucked him that night, holding the nervous Jewish boy under him in a strong embrace and fucking him deep, while Josh moaned and traced the pec and sleeve tattoo swirl of color on Scott’s bulging musculature with his fingers, marveling at how the design resolved itself in a dragon’s head on Scott’s right pec. Josh hadn’t known that soldiers were allowed to have tattoos, and Scott had given him a tutorial on the rules of that, while he let the younger man trace the tattoo lines with his fingers, start to pant, go into high heat, gasp when he saw what Scott had to put inside him, but still laid back and willingly opened his legs to the cock.

He had taken cock before, but never as arousingly and as fully controlled, erotic, and satisfied as this.

“Did you like that? Did that do you?” Scott asked when he had finished the young man and they were lying stretched out against each out, Scott’s beefy arm around Josh’s shoulders and Josh fingering the tattoo covering the right side of Scott’s body from pec to shoulder and back down his arm, still in fascination, but still trembling.

“You’re huge. I thought you’d split me.”

“But did you like it? I stretched you, but I didn’t split you. You can take more than you thought you could.”

“Yes, I liked it.”

“You won’t have any trouble finding more of it at Fort Drum. They don’t have enough to do there, especially in the winter. Fucking each other is something to do.” Was that why he was coming back to Watertown, Scott wondered. Because it was so easy to hook up at Fort Drum, just a few miles up Route 11 from the town? That it had been so easy for him when he’d lived there before? He didn’t know, but it was worth a thought. He couldn’t drift on like this forever.

“And Afghanistan. Was it like that there?” Josh was back to the army-life questions.

“It could be. For those who want it. You wanted it tonight.”

Josh didn’t dispute that, sticking with his line of questioning. “All just casual and in-passing encounters, like this was, or were there serious relationships formed?”

“All just casual, like this,” Scott said. Even while he said it, he knew it was a lie. “You couldn’t afford getting serious with anyone in Afghanistan.”

Josh didn’t ask why. Scott might not have heard him if he had, because his mind had drifted back to nineteen months ago, out beside a vehicle he had been maintaining in a field encampment. Kentuck, his steady for three months, on top of him as Scott lay prone next to the wheel of a transport, both of them fully clothed in camouflage except for where it counted. Kentuck straddling Scott, fucking himself in a cowboy when shots rang out. A sniper attack. Blood spurting out of what was left of Kentuck’s forehead as his boy slumped on top of Scott, protecting Scott from the follow-up shots. Scott had been contemplating calling it a day at the end of the first tour. But he reupped the next week.

“Uh, you don’t think you could . . . that you would . . . ?” Josh was asking as Scott’s mind drifted back.

“Sure, why not?” He rolled over on top of Josh, putting his arms under the young man’s legs and spreading and raising them. Josh arched his back, rolled his head up, clutched at Scott’s bulging pecs and cried out.

“Shit, you’re huge! You’re too big!”

“Yes, yes, I am,” Scott admitted. “And you’re going to take it all and love it.”

“Shit! Fuck! Fuck, yes! Fuck me! Fuck, you’re killing me.”

Scott grabbed the young man’s wrists, forced his hands over his head, thrust hard, and killed Josh some more. It was best to make the most out of such chance encounters.

It was dark, after 8:00 p.m., when the bus let Scott off next to what was probably a sidewalk under the drifting snow on West Main Street, just north of the banks of the Black River, in the center of town, right in front of Schaffer’s Exon station and garage. The gas station was owned—or had been four years ago—by the family of Scott’s best friends and high school football team buddy, Jack Schaffer. From here it was just a two block walk north, up Morrison Street, to his dad’s house. Josh had already been let off at Fort Drum’s main gate, with just an exchange of cellphone numbers as a good-bye between them. There was no expectation, at least on Scott’s part, of hooking up again. He knew Fort Drum. If Josh let his preferences be known, the soldiers there would eat him alive, and he wouldn’t be needing anything from Scott. He’d been a sweet lay.

Neither of them had spoken to each other after they’d left the motel room and before boarding the bus. They’d sat at separate tables in the motel’s breakfast room. They sat with each other in the bus, but they talked sparingly and neither spoke of hooking up again.

As the bus lurched off onto the snowy, frequently cleared but continually recovered West Main Street, Scott hefted his duffel bag on the back of his six-foot-three husky, all-muscle frame and crossed over to the mouth of Morrison Street. He hadn’t phoned ahead that he was coming home—for a visit or longer, he didn’t know himself. Not knowing from day to day what he would do, he hadn’t registered this trip with his father, a general practitioner in town, serving mostly the poorer residents and giving them more care than they could afford. Scott had sent a trunk home with all his worldly goods, but that hadn’t been before last Saturday. It wouldn’t have arrived here yet, especially because of the snow.

The snow was falling heavily again as he trudged up Morrison in his combat boots, glad that he was still wearing them. He saw the problem when he was a block from the house, although it took a while to register with him as blinding as the snow was. The cold and wet was already getting under his fleece jacket, plastering his flannel shirt to his chest.

Scott stood there for a full twenty minutes looking at where his father’s house had been, the house in which Scott and his younger brother, Steve, had been raised, where his father had raised them alone since Scott’s mother had run off without them when Scott was nine. The house was a pile of ashes between two forlorn chimneys, rising two stories with nothing to connect to. He supposed it didn’t matter than he hadn’t called ahead. There was no ahead to call to.

He, of course, wondered about his father and whether he’d made it out. Scott’s brother, Steve, now twenty-four, had already moved out and lived west of town, closer to Lake Ontario, where he worked at a water sports facility at Sackets Harbor in season. He must work somewhere else in the winter, but Scott didn’t know where. He wasn’t even sure if he had Steve’s cellphone number. The brothers weren’t that close. Steve was different from Scott and his father, and that difference kept the family on tenterhooks and distant from one another. But calling Steve might be a place to start. Or his dad’s medical office a block over on Bradley Street. The office wouldn’t be open at this time in the evening, though.

He didn’t really feel like starting in either of those places. He knew what he wanted, who he wanted to see. He turned and trudged back to West Main Street, across the street, to Schaffer’s gas station. There was an apartment over the office and three-bay bank of garages, and he’d seen that the lights were on there. Scott went to the covered staircase on the north side of the garage and climbed the stairs. He knew where he was going. He’d been here a thousand times before.

The door at the top of the stairs was opened by a tall, husky, muscular, hirsute blond giant. He was just in athletic shorts and flip-flops. The contrast was startling between him and Scott, standing on the threshold, covered in snow, and bundled up, but not really bundled up enough for the snowy conditions. Sopping wet, a duffle bag at his feet.

“Yes?” Jack didn’t recognize Scott immediately.

“It’s me, Scott, Jack. I tried going home, but there’s no home left. I came here.”

“Scott? Is that you? You’re out of Afghanistan? You look like the abominable snowman. Get in here, man, out of the cold. What in the hell are you doing here? Visiting, or are you back to stay. Here because of the fire?”

“I don’t know,” Scott said, as if that were an answer to all of those questions. “I went home. There’s been a fire. I don’t know what’s happening. I came here.” He allowed Jack to drag him into the warm apartment. There was a fireplace in the living room, with a roaring fire in it. That’s where Jack dragged Scott and began peeling the wet clothes off him.

“Yes, your house burned down. Saturday night. No, your dad and Cory are just fine. The house he owns that’s attached to his medical office over on Bradley was vacant, and that’s where they’ve moved.”

“Cory? Is he still with Dad?” Cory had been a town waif Scott’s dad had brought home after Cory had graduated high school without further prospects and had sponsored for technical school. He and Cory had been like brothers for a while—and then they weren’t.

“Yes, Cory has his LPN and is working as your dad’s nurse and office assistant now. But they’re OK. But you. You need to get out of these clothes and into a hot bath. You’d die of exposure just walking over to Bradley now this time of night. And there’s no telling if either of them is there anyway. Here, strip that off. I’ll get us a couple of beers.”

Scott was stripped down completely with his wet clothes puddled around him as Jack turned toward the kitchen.

“Jack . . . thanks,” Scott said as he grabbed Jack’s arm and pulled him back and into an embrace. “I came here first—after trying Dad’s. I knew I could,” he whispered. They moved into a kiss. Scott’s hand went gliding down Jack’s flat, hard belly and under his waistband, finding and extracting Jack’s hard cock. Jack’s hand was encasing Scott’s cock. Scott frotted the cocks as they kissed. Jack’s hand went to palming Scott’s tattooed right pec.

“Remember when we were seniors and did this, but went no further?” Scott asked.

“We thought we were having hot sex then,” Jack answered. He laughed. “Later we did have hot sex,” he then said, his tone more somber. “You really could give it rough. I’ll bet you were a star in the army. Bet you got a lot of tail in Afghanistan.”

“I took it where I could get it,” Scott answered, “and from who I wanted to get it.”

They went no further at this point, either. When they pulled away, Jack said, “You got yourself a humongous tattoo while you were gone.”

“Yes, yes, I did.”

“I like it,” Jack said, pulled away from the embrace, and went off to the kitchen.

Scott was reclining on his back in a tub of steaming water when Jack, now naked, came in with their third beers. Jack sat on the side of the tub and they necked and fondled, but again went no further. As they did so, they each provided a little bit of update of their lives—Jack owned and ran the garage now and he’d already offered Scott a mechanic’s job, knowing that that had been Scott’s specialty in the army.

“Scott,” Jack murmured, using a different, a more intimate tone.

“What?” Scott asked, knowing what Jack was going to ask and not sure how he would respond.

“I’m hard for you, man. You know you can—”

The soldier didn’t want to go too far with this without knowing. “Ricky Taylor. Are you—?”

“Rick went to the navy soon after you left. I haven’t heard from him in over a year. Last I heard from him, he was giving it out all over the Pacific. I could always fall for a stud like him—and like you, Scott.”

“Then you—?”

“It’s great to have you back, Scott. And I’m dyin’ here. I’m hard for you.”

Scott came out of the tub, let Jack watch him dry off, and led Jack into the living room. He fucked Jack on the sofa in front of the heat-radiating, light-flickering fireplace, Jack bent over the sofa arm and Scott covering him from behind and above, fucking him hard and rough, mounted high on his ass, yanking his head back into Scott’s chest and pounding, pounding, pounding, as Jack screamed bloody murder, egging him on. They had done this often through the two years from when they’d been seniors in high school together until Jack had come under Rick Taylor’s spell and Scott had left for the army, conflicted even then over what and who he wanted—or who wanted him.

Afterward, Scott broke the tension by saying, “Now I have to take a bath again.”

Standing in the bathroom door, holding two opened cans of beer and looking at Scott, Jack said, “Man, that is a great tattoo. Very sexy. You’ll stay the night, won’t you? It’s too late and messy out to track family down until tomorrow.”

“You’re just trying to get me into bed.”

“You betcha. It’s been too long. No one cocks me like you do. You still give it rough, man.”

“And that’s how you like it.”

“You betcha. You’re an animal and I’m an animal. We’re from the same family in what we want from sex.”

Family, Scott thought. Is that what he came back for, was family? Steven? Absolutely not. They’d be civil to each other, but their worlds and wants were just too different. His father? Now that was complicated. He couldn’t avoid it; his thoughts went to Cory. Cory, who had been eighteen and Scott twenty-two when the beautiful redheaded boy had been brought into the family home and fawned over by Scott’s father—and, rather quickly, by Scott too. Had his father been fucking Cory back when Scott had begun spiking him?

And relationships. Could Scott have a real relationship again after being in one with Kentuck and having that ripped from him by the Taliban? Is that what he had been moving into with Cory when he abruptly signed up with the army to get out of a triangle here in Watertown that was too close to home? Is that who he’d come back for? Cory? And what about Jack? Always good for a good time. Always had been. But a relationship? Wouldn’t that destroy the good times they had? What would happen when the next Ricky came along?

Jack handed Scott a can of beer as Scott lay in the bathtub and sat on the rim again, his hand going into the water, encircling Scott’s cock, and stroking it hard. “You think you can . . . again . . . now?” Jack asked. “It’s been a long time.”

“Have you forgotten? I can get it up again put it to use whenever I want.”

“And do you want now?”

Scott took the beer in long pulls and tossed the empty over the side. He smiled and opened his arms. Jack slipped into the tub above him, saddling on Scott’s pelvis. Holding Scott’s now-rehardened cock erect, under him, Jack positioned himself and descended on the shaft.

“Christ, you’re huge, man,” he hissed through gritted teeth as he sheathed the cock.

“Yes, yes, I am.” Scott answered.

Jack grasped Scott’s bulging biceps in his hands, lowered his face to Scott’s for a deep kiss, and began to rise and fall on the cock, fucking himself. Scott grabbed him by the waist, raised him and slammed him down, raised him and slammed him down.

“Oh, shit! Oh, fuck!” Jack cried out.

“This is the way you want it,” Scott growled.

“Yes, this is the way I want it,” Jack answered, panting hard.

* * * *

Thanksgiving was a sparse family affair at the Reynolds’s house attached to Doctor Reynolds’s medical office on Bradley Street. The house had been Stanford Reynolds’s parents house and was still furnished, if spartanly. It had been rented with the basic furniture, which had been in the Reynolds family. Nothing had come over from the Morrison Street house. That had been a total loss, although the fire hadn’t reached the garages at the back of the house, so the trusty Jeep Cherokee and snowmobile hadn’t been lost. The doctor had needed those to be able to do house calls through the winter. Since they still had transportation in the snow, which had now drifted to eighteen inches, they probably had as many for Thanksgiving as anyone else in the town had. It had continued to snow, even though some of it melted during the day. That it did just made the streets more treacherous at night. Watertown and snow were constant companions in the winter, though, and snow never impeded Stanford from making his house calls.

No one had called in distress on Thanksgiving afternoon, so the doctor was there for dinner with both of his sons. Steve had a Ford pickup that he could drive almost anywhere. The snow didn’t deter him. Cory was there too, of course. He was the one who made the meal, being the most domesticated of the men. And it was a fine meal he made too. The guests were mostly close—in relation if not in relationship—with one exception. Steve had brought a date, maybe to emphasize the running family issue. Certainly, his choice of date supported that suggestion.

Samantha was a barmaid from a tavern downtown and was a stereotype floozy, at least in appearance. She had a big head of platinum blonde hair, big tits, a bit of a belly, and earth mother hips. She had dressed like Thanksgiving was a cocktail party, and she was painfully self-conscious about being in Doctor Reynolds’s house. Scott got the impression that Steve had said that they were going “out,” not that they were coming to the Reynolds house. There was nothing the rest of them did to make her uncomfortable, though. She was from among the people of the town who Doctor Reynolds served, and he—and the rest, by his example—treated her as an equal. She, in turn, was in awe of him, which only added to the tension in the living and dining rooms before and during dinner.

The conversation was equally stilted, with the only discussion that seemed to be safe being professional sports. But there was a split in loyalties expressed there too. They even had to quickly drop the subject of the weather. Scott had mentioned the unusually early heavy snow in the same sentence with climate change and, as Doctor Reynolds was poised to agree and add to that, Steve attacked, saying climate change was fake news by fucking liberals, and the topic was closed. Samantha tried to save the conversation, but only made it worse by talking about hurricanes, which really needed to be discussed in Watertown. The doctor didn’t help by picking up his favorite discussion ever since Scott had reappeared.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do now, son?” he looked to his right and asked.

“Not much, Dad. I’m either on vacation or looking for something more permanent,” Scott answered.

“You can’t just drift along forever,” Stanford said.

“I rather thought that might be an option too,” Scott answered, clearly tired of this line of questioning and showing it.

“You have a community college diploma. I can help you pay for a full college education. Business, that’s the way to go these days, I think.”

“I feel like I have had the business, Dad. I have benefits from the army if I want to use them.”

“But you aren’t thinking of reenlisting,” Stanford said, making his big fear evident. The two had wrangled when Scott had first enlisted. That had been when Scott realized that both of them were fucking Cory. And then the father had gone ballistic—and silent for several months—when Scott had reupped in Afghanistan. Scott hadn’t been able to tell him why. He hadn’t told anyone in his family about Kentuck. He didn’t fully understand why either, other than he had to do it to be able to live with himself—to honor the memory of Kentuck. Kentuck had been gung-ho for the war effort, certainly more so than Scott was. For some reason he couldn’t fully explain to himself regardless of to anyone else, he had felt honor bound to fulfill Kentuck’s Afghanistan commitment as well as his own. That and he had a grief he couldn’t explain to anyone else—and didn’t want to have to.

In time that particular hurt between father and son had lessened, but, as is often the case in families, it never went away.

“Yes, that’s an option too, Dad.” The silence at the table was palpable. The tension was only broken by Cory.

“So, is everyone ready for desert now, or do you want to have it later?”

“I couldn’t tuck away another bite now,” Samantha said. The atmosphere was so thick, though, that no one joked that she’d eaten like a bird, obviously worried that she’d do something wrong even in lifting a fork.

Cory rose from the table. “Why don’t the rest of you go on into the living room, while I clear the table? We’ll have dessert later.”

They cleared from the table, but Scott found himself to be the only one who entered the living room. Stanford helped Cory clear the table, the two of them whispering in serious tones. Scott had noticed there had been tension between the two of them since he’d reappeared. He hoped it wasn’t because of him. As far as Scott knew, Stanford had never realized they both had been fucking Cory. Regrettable, the Cory ship had sailed for him, he thought—and hoped. He still got hard just looking at the handsome young man, though. Cory was about half his size. He was perfectly formed, though, and closer to being beautiful than handsome. He moved with grace, like a dancer. Scott’s father had told him that children and women were happy and comfortable with Cory’s care. Scott thought that there were probably more than a couple of men who got hard while Cory was tending to them. He knew he would—but then, he’d experienced the charms of Cory intimately.

He didn’t want to be in the living room alone and he had to piss anyway, so Scott climbed the stairs to the second level, where there were four bedrooms and two baths. The house was so old that there once had been five bedrooms and no baths of there, but the Reynolds had taken one of the bedrooms to create a bath for the master bedroom and a larger one off the central hallway for the remaining three bedrooms.

Leaving the hall bathroom, Scott heard sounds coming from one of the back guest bedrooms. The door into the bedroom was ajar and he had a clear view of Steve fucking Samantha by the bed. They both had their backs to the door. Samantha, dressed only in a necklace, a chain around her belly, and an anklet, was bent over the bed, her right leg raised, with that foot on the surface of the bed. Her left leg extended to the floor. Her arms were spread out in front of her, her hands buried in the bedspread. Steve, naked, was covering her from behind, one hand cupping an ample breast, the fingers of the other hand working her clit and cunt, and his dick cocking her from behind.

There was very little in physical characteristics between the two brothers. Scott took after his father, tall, ruggedly handsome, robust, blond, smooth skinned. Steve was like their mother—of average height, thin and wiry, a bit hirsute, dark. He was handsome, but in a foxy sort of way. Scott and his father were stallions. The similarity in the brothers, though, was in the vein of a stallion. Both of them were hung. Samantha was receiving the full benefit of that from Steve now. Scott knew Steve had women all over town. The attraction of his cock was probably one reason he could manage that. Once, though, when Scott had accosted his brother about using and then dropping women casually, Steve had retorted that he had to make up for three Reynolds men with the women of the town. That so many women here wanted them, but only Steve wanted them back.

Scott had no doubt that this moment was what Steve had had in mind when he brought the poor woman to Thanksgiving dinner here. He was sticking it to his gay father and brother in his father’s house. No doubt he’d appear at Christmas with another woman and bring her up here too—and leave the bedroom door open so they could be seen in coitus.

When Scott went downstairs, he found his father and Cory standing in the foyer. Stanford was pulling on a heavy coat. He already was in his snow boots.

“Your father got a call. He has to go out,” Cory explained.

“Of course he did,” Scott said. It was a running family joke that no family occasion went unchallenged by someone’s medical emergency.

When Stanford was gone, Scott and Cory entered the living room. Cory waited to see where Scott would sit—on a sofa at one end—before he sat—in an armchair across from the sofa.

“We haven’t really been alone since I came home,” Scott said. “I hope you haven’t been avoiding me.”

“No, of course I haven’t. It’s been busy in the office.” Cory sounded a bit nervous.

“I’ve been avoiding you too,” Scott said. Both gave a little laugh, Cory’s more nervous and forced than Scott’s.

“Seriously, it’s OK, Cory,” Scott said. “You and Dad OK? You seem a little reserved with each other. I hope that isn’t because I’m here. Seriously, it’s OK. I want you and Dad to be happy with each other—you both deserve it.”

“He’s good to me. Really good to me,” Cory answered, leaving something unsaid lingering in the air. Scott picked up on that.

“But?”

It took a while for Cory to answer. “I think maybe he’s seeing someone else.”

“Really? That would surprise me. Why do you think that?”

“We sleep together—still—but we don’t . . . you know . . . do it. We’re like an old married couple. We are comfortable with each other—were comfortable with each other—but . . . I don’t know, it’s changed somehow.”

“I’m sorry to hear—”

“I think I’d best get to those dishes. I wonder where Steve and his date are.” He stood up.

“You don’t really wonder, do you?” Scott answered. “This is Steve we’re talking about. What do you think they’re doing?”

Cory blushed. “Yah, I guess I knew what Steve was up to with that. I wondered if it deflated him when he found out that she was a patient of your dad’s and that Stanford would treat her like family.”

“I don’t think he’s deflated about it,” Scott said. “When I saw them upstairs he was as hard and inflated as she could take.”

“Yes, well, the dishes call.” Cory fled the room.

Some minutes later, Scott came into the kitchen. Cory was standing in front of the sink. Scott came in close behind him and extended his arms, grabbing the edge of the counter on each side, coming in close behind Cory.

“Scott. Don’t,” Cory whimpered.

“If you and Dad aren’t doing it. . . .You smell nice,” Scott said, his face buried in Cory’s throat and taking a big pull of breath.

“Scott. You can’t. We can’t?”

“We can’t? You want it, don’t you?”

Cory didn’t answer.

“I can’t stand the thought of you not getting attention. You’re too young to not be getting it. If Dad won’t give it to you—”

“No, Scott. It wouldn’t be right. Oh, why did you have to come back?”

“You want it don’t you?”

“Do you think you can just waltz back in here and take what you want?”

“Yes. I’ve never lied about it. I take what I can get when and where I can get it. I’ve held off on you because of Dad. If he isn’t taking it from you, though. . . . You want it, don’t you? I can feel you trembling for it.”

“Yes, god damn it, I want it,” Cory answered through clinched teeth.

“You want it from me.” He had unzipped himself and pulled his hard cock out. And he had pulled Cory’s trousers and brief’s down in back. His cock had been shoved between Cory’s thighs, which opened, with a sigh from Cory, to give him access to his crack.

“Yes. From you. I’ve always wanted it from you. You’ve always known that. Oh, shit.” The cock was being rubbed across his hole—the thick side of it rubbing across it, but also the bulb teasing the rim. Cory reached up with his hands, cupped the back of Scott’s head, and brought their faces in position for a deep kiss.

“You want it here or upstairs?”

“Upstairs. Not in Stan’s and my bed, though, please. Anywhere else.”

Scott picked the smaller, lighter young man up, slung him over his shoulder, belly down, and climbed the stairs. He fucked him in his own room. He took his time because, as he’d already known, he was really too big for the small man. Stanford wasn’t as heavenly endowed as his sons were. Cory wasn’t reamed to Scott’s specifications any more. It had been too long since they’d last coupled. Scott took his time with Cory, which should have given him pause to consider why it was only Cory he did this for. Scott was a rough fucker. He’d taken other small channels before, but he’d given them no quarter. He’d conquered them all at a quick pace. It was only Cory who he made slow, sensitive love to.

They lay on his bed, stretched out against each other, Cory on his back, with Scott turned toward him on his side, an arm around Cory’s torso, that hand run into Cory’s hair, holding the young man in place. Cory’s right leg was bent, his foot on the bedspread, his pelvis turned to Scott. Scott’s free hand grasping Cory under the balls, his fingers working in Cory’s ass, a finger being added as Cory’s channel could open to it. Cory was moaning deeply and murmuring, “Yes, yes. God, it’s been so long.”

“So long since you’ve had it from me,” Scott whispered, wanting it to be about Cory and him. Taking his father out of the equation. “And you want it from me.”

“Yes, so long since I’ve had it from you, Yes, I want it from you. Fuck me. Fuck me now. Do it. Do it now.”

Scott knew Cory wasn’t open enough for it, but he couldn’t wait any longer than Cory was indicating he could.

“You’re so sexy; so beautiful. I want you now,” he said, pulling Cory down to the foot of the bed with him. Grabbing a pillow to take with them.

“Yes, yes. Do me. Fuck me,” Cory was insistently moaning.

Scott got the small man to the foot of the bed, his buttocks on the edge. He manipulated Cory’s legs spread and bent, the young man’s feet curled on the edge of the bed. The pillow went under his lower back, raising and rolling up his pelvis. Scott stood between the spread thighs, hunched over Cory’s prone body. Cory was reaching out, tracing the pec and sleeve tattoo on Scott’s torso.

“Love the tattoo. So nice; so sexy; so . . . oh, shit. Oh FUCK!”

“Am I hurting you?”

“Yes. No. Yes. God you’re big!”

“You want me to stop?” The bulb was barely lodged in the hole.

“No. Don’t stop. Just take it slow. Fuck me. I want it so bad.”

Scott did take it slow, but he was relentless. Cory cried out and groaned and moaned, and he grabbed up wads of the bedspread in his fists. He even turned his head to the side and stuffed the bedspread into his mouth to keep himself from screaming. But he persevered and he slowly opened to the cock, which moved, relentlessly, up inside him. Scott gathered him up in his arms and began the long-sliding pumping of the passage as Cory moaned and panted and gasped for air. He took his own cock in his hand and stroked himself off while he put his pelvis into motion, rocking against Scott’s groin, taking the cock, taking it deep, the muscles of his channel rippling over the thick, insistent shaft.

Cory’s eyes opened wide and his panting went into double time, as Scott tensed, held, unloaded, tensed held, and unloaded again. He wasn’t sheathed. Cory got the full load. Scott brutally took Cory’s lips with his, and, again, he tensed, held, and unloaded. Tensed, held, and unloaded.

“It’s been too long,” he murmured in Cory’s ear.

“Yes,” Cory said, but he wriggled out from underneath Scott, rolled off the bed, and grabbed his clothes off the floor. “Damn you, why did you have to come back,” he sobbed and fled out of the room and across the hallway to the master bedroom.

Scott heard the lock on the master bedroom door being shot home. It was a shot to his gut, as well. Had he gone too far? Was this making it all worse? Would Cory hate him? And when his father found out—if his father found out—would he hate him too and throw him out on his ear?

He picked up his briefs and pulled them on. On his way to the hall bathroom, the sounds from the back guestroom told him those games hadn’t concluded. Samantha as on the bed, her rear raised off her knees, her tits grinding into the bedspread. She was giving little yip sounds. Steve was crouched above her, grasping her hips between his hands, fucking her in the ass in long slides. You could take the barmaid out of the tavern, but you couldn’t take the johns’ cocks out of the barmaid’s ass. The door to the bedroom was still open enough for anyone in the hallway to see them on the bed.

Scott turned back and went into the hall bath. Before he turned on the shower, he was able to hear that Cory had turned on the shower in the master bath. Anxious to wash the violation of Scott from his body, Scott wondered.

What was done was done, though. And it only had made Scott more horny. He showered and dressed and went downstairs to raid the liquor cabinet. He heard Steve and Samantha fussing in the foyer, but he didn’t go into the foyer to tell them good-bye. Steve had made his point and Samantha didn’t deserve the embarrassment of knowing what that point was.

As the front door closed, Scott picked up the phone and rang Jack Schafer’s apartment. No one answered the phone. Doctor Reynolds wasn’t home yet either.

* * * *

Doctor Reynolds drove carefully and slowly in the Jeep Cherokee, because of the drifting snow, out Bradley Street, past the North Watertown Cemetery to the left and turned into the drive to the county library just before the Superior Street intersection. The parking lot had been cleared earlier in the day but already was filling in with drifting snow again. No other cars were in the lot. The library, fully glass across the front, was dark, although some night lights shown through from the back of the main room.

Maybe he couldn’t wait, Stanford thought. Maybe he had to leave because the snow was accumulating too fast. His car isn’t here. But, no, there he was standing in the window next to the main door, shown in the headlights of the Cherokee as Stanford rolled up to the door. Ken Dayton. The new county librarian. Somewhat under height, slim built, blond curls, and blue eyes. An angel, dedicated to introduce the masses to other worlds through books. Stanford, of course, couldn’t see that in the dark by the light of his headlights. The doctor knew that from intimate knowledge of the young man who had first come to him with a sprain from a hiking accident.

“I thought you’d gone,” he said, as Dayton opened the door and he slipped in. They didn’t turn on the lights as the fifty-five-year-old doctor pulled the twenty-one-year-old librarian into his arms and went into a kiss.

“I walked here for work today,” Dayton answered when Stanford released his lips. It was always the older doctor who guided this relationship. “My Miata wouldn’t make it here and back in the snow. They don’t have snow like this in North Carolina. You’ll have to drive me home. It’s just across Bradley, on Hillcrest. I just realized that you have never been to my apartment.”

“Later. I want you now. I must be inside you right now.”

“Now? Here?” He wouldn’t say no. He couldn’t make such a decision in this relationship. His response was purely from surprise that Reynolds would be so insistent, so in heat. Perhaps he wasn’t as much in control of himself and his needs than Dayton had thought he was.

“Yes. You don’t know what a day it’s been. Family. And Scott and Cory giving each other the eye like they would fall on each other the moment I’d walked out of the room. I’m in heat and I’m exhausted from the two of them dancing around each other since Scott came home.”

He pushed the young man down on his knees, right there at the glass, beside the door, unzipped himself, pulled his cock out, put his hands on the back of Dayton’s head, and pulled the young man’s face into his crotch. Dayton opened his mouth to the shaft and took it in. He was on familiar ground now. All of their encounters had begun with him paying homage to the doctor’s shaft. He gave it gagging suck for a few minutes but pulled away when the lights from a vehicle pulled out of the mouth of Pamelia Avenue, directly across Bradley from the library driveway, sweeping its lights across the front of the library building before the vehicle turned south on Bradley.

“Not here. It’s too exposed,” he said. There was no way they’d been seen, of course. The car was too far away for anyone to pick out unexpected activity in the library building. But this was where Dayton worked. His encounters with Reynolds had been alien to his basic nature. He didn’t feel right doing this at his place of employment. He realized, though, that if Reynolds didn’t care, his reticence was irrelevance. The doctor had dominated him from the moment they had met—not in a cruel or evil way. It was more a matter or two lonely men in need finding each other and the older man being bold enough to do something about it.

“The offices are in the back?” Reynolds asked. “They have interior walls separating them from the main room?”

“Yes, come with me.”

“Strip,” Reynolds commanded when they entered Dayton’s office behind the checkout desk.

“I’ll have to clear the—”

“Strip. I want you now,” Reynolds growled, sweeping the desk clear with his arm. His voice was insistent, almost primeval. Any of his patients would declare that this couldn’t be their doctor speaking in that manner. The sudden appearance of Scott back in his life had unsettled him more than he had realized.

Reynolds didn’t strip. He was unzipped, with his erection and hair of his bush protruding from his fly. He grabbed the now-naked, small-statured librarian in an embrace and took him into another kiss, bending him over the desk on his back. He kissed him on the lips and down his cheeks and on the throat and then down to the nipples, as the librarian gasped and panted hard. Turning Dayton, Reynolds slammed him down on the desktop on his belly, went down on his knees behind the young man, pulled Dayton’s butt cheeks apart with his hands and went for the hole with his lips and teeth and tongue. Dayton writhed under him and began to rock his hips back into the doctor’s face. Reynolds pulled the young man’s cock through and alternated stroking and sucking that with the attention he was giving to Dayton’s hole with his mouth.

This didn’t last long. Reynolds was too much in heat. He stood up behind the librarian, pulled a condom packet out of his trousers pocket, split the package with his teeth, and rolled the condom on his long, hard cock with one hand, while he pressed the young man’s lower back to the desk top with the palm of the other hand. That wasn’t enough, physically, to hold the librarian down, but Dayton wasn’t going anywhere and he never had questioned the doctor’s emotional control over him. He was grinding his crotch into the front panel of the desk and murmuring, “You’re driving me crazy. Do it. Do it. Cover me. Doggie me.”

Reynolds ripped his belt buckle open, flared his trousers to get all of himself exposed. He pressed Dayton’s cheek to the desk top with one hand and grabbed one of the young man’s wrists with other and cruelly twisted his arm behind his back. He moved his hips to position his cock head at the young man’s hole, and started the slow, deep journey up into the librarian’s channel.

Dayton writhed under him crying out “Yes, yes, yes!” in a voice full of pain and pleasure that echoed out into the main library room, as Reynolds opened him up with his cock and then fucked him in slow, but relentless, thrusts. As Reynolds got close, he leaned over and turned Dayton’s face toward his. He was kissing him deep when his flow started, with jerks and little gasps from Dayton, and he filled out the bulb of the condom.

They held there, cheek to cheek, for several minutes, both concentrating on Reynolds going flaccid inside Dayton’s channel, both working to calm their jerking and shuddering down.

“That was . . .”

“What?” Reynolds asked.

“Purely primitive,” the librarian answered. “Primordial. Right up to when you used a condom.”

“Do you want me to fuck you without one?”

“Someday, yes. When we can know it’s safe—when we know it’s just the two of us.”

“Sorry. I’ve had a rough day. I couldn’t help it. I wanted you so bad.”

“Don’t be sorry. I had no idea you’d want me that badly. It was glorious.”

“Yes, I want you that badly. I . . . I love you. This isn’t like me. I wouldn’t have a need this strong or be lost to it if I wasn’t lost to you.”

“I love you back,” Ken Dayton whispered. Then after a pause. “But Cory. Should we keep this from Cory?”

“No, I’ll tell Cory. I think he suspects anyway. Scott’s back. This is maybe the best time to tell Cory. But I can’t be without you.”

“Are you going to let me up and take me home?”

“Do you want me to let you up? I could do you again right here.”

“Take me home. Do me there, properly on the bed.”

And that’s what Reynolds did, this time both of them naked. Dayton lay on his back at the foot of the bed, with Reynolds crouched between his thighs, hands clutching the young man’s butt cheeks, spreading them and raising them to his groin, Dayton’s torso streaming back on the bed, arms outstretched, clutching wads of the bedspread, rocking his hips up into the slow-thrusting cock, murmuring his pleasure and the power of his master, reciting all of the exotic and heavenly places the doctor was taking him in the glorious fuck.

* * * *

When the first call wasn’t answered, Scott pulled out his wallet, checked a number, and made another call. This one went through.

“I hoped you’d call someday.”

“Yes, well. I’m horny now. Are you—?”

“I have a furlough today and had no way to use it for anything. This damn snow. It won’t stop.”

“Are you getting it at the fort like I said you could?”

“Yes.”

“You getting better than you got from me?”

“No. But I’m trying. Taking samples. This place wants a lot of blow jobbing. Not enough carry through.”

“You want my cock again?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tonight?”

“It’s snowing. Nobody seems to be going anywhere.”

“Be at the Route 11 gate in twenty minutes. Wear something warm. We’ll be on a snowmobile for a little while.”

“Fucking in a snowsuit won’t—”

“We’ll be inside. You’ll be naked. So will I. And we’ll have all the heat we need. You’ll be in as much pain and pleasure as you can take.”

“Twenty minutes at the Route 11 gate,” he said and disconnected.

There was a gay dive named Sarge’s a quarter of a mile south on Patterson Lane, from Route 11, half way between Watertown and Fort Drum. It was there to serve soldiers from Fort Drum. Scott knew every hookup spot in the area from when he’d lived before. He trained up to sex with soldiers from Fort Drum—mostly in the cabins behind the bar at Sarge’s.

He took Josh, the Jewish guy he’d met on the trip from New York to Watertown to one of the cabins behind the bar. He put him up against the wall, the soldier’s back to the wall, and held him there with a choke hold, while Josh hooked his legs on Scott’s hips and clutched his biceps, and Scott forced Josh’s shocked channel open with his thick cock, thrusting up again and again. Pulling Josh down and pushing him to the floor on all fours, Scott mounted his ass and finished him in a pounding doggie.

Josh loved every minute of it and begged Scott to call him and do him again before Christmas.

“I haven’t found anyone at Fort Drum with a tattoo or a power body or a huge cock like you have,” Josh gushed. “Nobody’s done me like you have.”

“And that’s how you want to be done?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

Scott laughed.

* * * *

Thanksgiving had early this year, on November 22nd. There were nearly five weeks between then and Christmas. Scott let his dad know he’d be staying at the house at least through Christmas. Stanford was happy with at least that much information on what his oldest son intended to do—Scott even told him he’d be working at Schaffer’s garage, fixing cars, while he was here—but Scott wouldn’t commit any further on his future plans beyond that.

“You know you can’t just drift forever,” Stanford said.

“I can until I decide what I want. I’ll be working, Dad. I won’t mooch from you. I’ll pay rent and help with the food. I can bunk somewhere else if I’m in the way here.”

“You know that’s not the point, son,” Stanford said.

They left it at that.

Scott did trudge up the snow-bound street to West Main every week day to sit in the Exon garage and wait for cars to work on. He would have come in on Saturday, too, if Jack Schaffer called him and needed him. Jack needed him, but not for that.

There was no lack of sex for Scott during those five weeks. Whenever he was at home and in heat when Stanford was called away to a patient (or a lover, although Scott and Cory weren’t kept apprised of that) and Cory was willing, which was whenever Scott was in heat, Scott fucked Cory in Scott’s bedroom. Cory would never do it in the master bedroom, and he always was reluctant at first to do it with Scott behind Stanford’s back, but once Scott had gotten his cock in him, Cory melted to him and rode the cock enthusiastically. They had to get into the fuck, though, for Cory to wholeheartedly go with it. He always reacted to it as a bad habit he couldn’t break.

And there was Jack. The snow kept building and drifting. It would melt a bit by day and freeze again by night, during which the snows would come again and cover the ice. They were at twenty accumulated inches by Christmas Eve. Very few people were getting out on the streets in their cars. Even fewer were deciding this would be a good time to take their car to the garage to have it worked on. Jack and Scott had a lot of time on their hands. They spent a lot of it with finding new ways for Scott to cover Jack and pound his ass into submission.

The edge came off the Scott and Jack show, though, during those weeks before it could work its way into a relationship. It became another instance of Jack having something else going as well that took over his interest—like had happened with Ricky before Scott had left for the army.

A guy named Vince brought his Dodge Ram in for Scott to check over. Scott did a double take when he saw him. It was like looking into a mirror. He was a tall, husky, Norwegian-type blond with rugged, handsome features and a swagger that told one and all that, yes, in fact, he was hung, that he knew what to do with his cock, and that he had no trouble rounding up someone to do it to. Unlike Scott, though, he played cowboy, wearing cowboy boots, a ten-gallon hat, and fringed Western shirts. He could bring the fashion choice off, however. No one sniggered at Vince Evans. Women and men alike melted for him.

Scott was to find out, starting the day Vince brought his Dodge Ram in for an hour and a half of inspection it didn’t need, that Jack was one of the men who melted to him—and probably had been doing so for some time before Scott showed up unexpectedly in Scott’s bathtub. That day Vince was gone for an hour and a half while Scott played with his truck and Jack closed the gas station office for lunch for the same time period. Later that afternoon, business was so sparse that Scott wanted to play around upstairs but Jack said he was too tired that day.

It didn’t take a genius . . .

Over the weeks, Vince showed up more than any other customers did, and one Saturday night, the week before Christmas, on December 22nd, Scott was horny, Stanford and Cory were out doing last-minute Christmas shopping, and Scott decided to visit Jack. He had a key to the apartment over the gas station. The Dodge Ram was parked in front of the gas station, so Scott knew what he’d find upstairs. He checked it out anyway. Vince had Jack tied up, more so than Scott ever had. Jack was hogtied, wrists to ankles, with a spread bar keeping his legs spread, He was face up and ass down on his bed, and Vince was mounted on his ass and pounding away. And, yes, Vince was hung like a bull.

Scott went home, called Josh, was assured Josh could appear at the Route 11 gate at Fort Drum in twenty minutes, and Scott took him to a cabin behind Sarge’s bar and fucked the shit out of him. Josh moaned his appreciation and then Scott fucked the hell out of him again. Josh expressed full satisfaction after the second time too, but he lay there, spread-eagled on the bed, moaning softly. He hadn’t come that time and Scott sat down beside him on the bed and turned him over on his back. With a groan, Josh spread his legs, bending them, and presenting his tail again, thinking there would be a third fuck, and, though exhausted, welcoming it. But Scott didn’t fuck him with his cock. He entered the gaping hole with a couple of fingers and stroked the young man’s cock with the other hand, while Josh groaned, rocked wearily against the fucking fingers and, at last, ejaculated in a weak stream.

Afterward, as they lay together on the bed, calming back down, Josh said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t call me again before Christmas.” He sounded a bit whiny and needy.

“Would you come out with me again after how hard I worked you tonight?”

“Of course. You’re the best.” Scott had half wanted Josh not to want any more of this. There were fresh soldiers at the fort for Scott to discover and exhaust. Josh was getting needy.

“I’ve been busy,” Scott answered. “You not getting enough from the soldiers at Fort Drum?”

“I get a lot, but no one does it like you do. You know, I’ve gotten an opportunity transfer to Fort Dix, in New Jersey. That would put me near where my family is. The weather would be better than here. I’m not sure I’d like it there as much, or get there what I can get here. What do you think? What do you think I should do?”

Scott didn’t bite. He didn’t take the hint to tell Josh that Scott couldn’t live without him here.

“I think it’s probably a great opportunity. You could get out of this snow,” Scott said. “I think you should do it.” He fucked Josh again and then took him back to the gate at Fort Drum. He was not going to have a relationship with Josh. No way. He was a good occasional lay, but . . .

He knew he could continue mixing it up with Jack, if he kept it cool—which he probably wanted to do, but there would be no deeper relationship there either. Still, it was kind of neat that the man Jack had latched on to to take care of him when Scott wasn’t there was virtually a mirror image of Scott himself.

* * * *

In some respects, Christmas Day at the Reynolds house was much the same as Thanksgiving Day had been. In some significant ways it was different, though. It was extended family day again, mostly provided by Cory, who wasn’t in the nuclear family—in fact, he was farther out of the nuclear family on Christmas Day than he had been at Thanksgiving. Despite that, he again was the one to fix the meal, to clean up after it, and to provide the glue that kept Stanford Reynolds and his sons from running out into the snow, screaming.

The snow was still there, of course, and now even Steve was prepared to talk about it as something unusual. It wasn’t drifting about as much, though, and neither was the Reynolds family. Some issues were coming to a head being resolved, for good or for ill.

Steve had chosen the occasion to make a point to his father and brother again. He had brought a date, and more than that, he’d brought his date’s two children. Emily was the mother. She was quite a change from Samantha, who Steve had brought for shock value to Thanksgiving but had not managed to shock. Emily was more domesticated and of the kind acceptable at a doctor’s dinner table. The shock Steve was providing was in her children, or more specifically, her two-year-old son, Stevie. She had a four-year-old daughter, Erin, as well, but it was Stevie, as reflected by his name, who was the potential “stick it to dear old dad and brother” point. All of the rest spent the evening looking from the boy to the man of that name and trying to determine whether the family resemblance was good enough to make a call.

In any event, Steve had announced his guest list in time for Stanford and Cory to have added presents for the kids to their Christmas shopping list.

That wasn’t the real bombshell, though. The big declaration was that Stanford had added new town librarian Ken Dayton to the Christmas Day guest list and declared that he’d be arriving with luggage—to be placed in the master bedroom. The first that Scott and Steve knew about this was on Christmas afternoon, when Stanford went out in the Cherokee and returned with Ken. Cory remained in the kitchen, fixing a meal. He had been told of the change in sleeping arrangements the day he and Stanford last went Christmas shopping and had kept it to himself. Scott hadn’t noticed that Cory had moved to one of the guest rooms at the back of the house, that he’d been reticent since then, and that he hadn’t visited Scott’s bed since that moment, wanting to stand back and assess the whole situation.

Although he wasn’t in Stanford’s bed anymore, the elder Reynolds had made quite clear that Cory was still part of the family, and a necessary one, not only in the medical office but also in the Reynolds house, where the young man kept everything ticking along. Cory didn’t know what he was going to do, but he had decided that he would stay put until the snow stopped drifting. He didn’t admit it even to himself, but what he’d ultimately do depended on what Scott was going to do. He hadn’t discussed that with Scott, though, as Cory was terrified at what Scott might say or do.

After dinner, which came early, around 4:00 p.m. on Christmas Day, after all of the gifts had been unwrapped, Cory and Scott found themselves in the living room alone with Emily’s children. Scott didn’t mind. He liked children and his one regret about the path he’d taken is that he’d never have any. He did notice, though, that it was just he and Cory were along with the children. Using the excuse that he needed to piss, he went up the stairs when he saw that Stevie and Erin had toys they were occupied with themselves and he checked out the landscape on the second floor.

He wasn’t that surprised that Stanford and Ken were trying out the master bed for the first time together. They’d hardly been able to keep their hands off each other during dinner and had gone upstairs immediately afterward. That was fine with Scott as long as Cory could manage it. Stanford had looked like he genuinely was in love.

He wasn’t that surprised with what he saw through the open door in the guest room Cory hadn’t moved to. Steve had his shirt on, but his butt was bare and was clinching and releasing and thrusting forward and pulling back. His butt was toward the door and rising up and out from his hips were a woman’s legs, capped with red pumps—the shoes Emily had worn to the party. Her Christmas dress was puddled on the floor below the bed.

Scott wondered what they would name the next one—and if Steve was thinking of settling down—as he came back downstairs. Emily had seemed like the kind of woman who could easily be coaxed into having sex in a respectable doctor’s house during a visit—even if the doctor was just across the hall having sex with his new boyfriend.

The day wasn’t the disaster it could have been. They managed to survive. And that was largely because Cory kept his cool, provided the meal, stayed away from the master bedroom, and babysat Emily kids while Steve fucked her on the guest bed.

The test for Scott came that night—and he didn’t pass. He was in bed, in his room, trying to go to sleep, when Cory came in, naked, and slipped between the sheets. They cuddled and fondled and groped. Scott rolled over on top of Cory, who arched his back, grabbed for the rungs of the headboard overhead, and groaned as Scott slid inside him and fucked him. They fucked raw, barebacking, each wanting to be as much a part of the other as possible. They dozed afterward for a short period and then Cory moved down Scott’s body and it was Scott’s turn to arch his back and grab for the rungs of the headboard overhead and arch his back, while Cory sucked his cock erect and then came back up his body, sheathed himself on the cock, leaned back and grasped Scott’s knees, and fucked himself to a mutual ejaculation.

Later, when they were stretched out against each other and kissing and fondling was when Scott made his mistake. While they were whispering about this and that, including the unfolding of Christmas Day in the Reynolds household, Cory asked, “But what about us? What does this mean about you and me?”

“You know I haven’t made up my mind about anything yet, Cory,” Scott said. “And I’m not in the mood to talk about it just now.”

“Fine,” Cory said, rolled away from Scott and off the bed, and trundled back to his new bedroom.

Scott hadn’t meant that he never thought about the issue—or about his relationship with Cory. He actually thought about it a lot. He’d meant that that particular time wasn’t when he thought they should do it. He thought more about getting sex than about what a sexual relationship might mean—or require.

* * * *

It snowed again the day after Christmas. No one was going anywhere. Steve had made it out the night before with Emily and her kids, but Stanford, Ken, Cory, and Scott were cooped up together, and not everyone appreciated that. The next day, though, the sun came out, the temperature went up, and, for the first time in weeks, there was a hint that the streets of Watertown were paved with asphalt. Stanford, Cory, and Ken went off to work, happy to be fully taken up with routines that kept them thinking about love triangles. Antsy in the house still steeped in tensions and not needed at the garage, Scott went outside and shoveled the driveway and walk—and the walks of the houses on either side of his dad’s home.

On Friday, the 28th, Stanford and Ken were awakened with the cry of “Shit, shit, shit” from downstairs. When Stanford came out into the upstairs hallway to see what Cory’s problem was, the young man was trudging up the stairs.

“It’s Scott,” he said. “He’s gone. His trunk is packed and his duffel is gone. There’s a note on the dining room table saying he may reup for Afghanistan and he’d let us know later where to send his trunk. He was still here, in his room, when I got up to make the coffee. Where could he have gone? Your Jeep and the snowmobile are still in the driveway.”

“The only things that would be leaving from Watertown today would be the bus or an airplane.”

They all hurriedly dressed and bundled into the Cherokee. He wasn’t at the airport and no planes had taken off from there that day yet. He was at the bus station.

“I don’t know,” he said when they approached him from three different angles. “I just thought it was time to do something. I was waiting for something, but I don’t think it’s happening.”

“Come home, Scott,” Cory said. “I’m not pressing you for a decision on us. Do whatever you want. Just don’t decide until after New Year’s.” He went home with them.

The next day the “something” happened. He stood in the foyer holding a letter, and exclaimed, “Well, shit.”

The other three descended on the foyer. “What is it, son?” Stanford said, trepidation in his voice. “I’ve got to admit that I hope it isn’t the army accepting you back again.”

“No, Dad, it’s what I’ve been waiting for and was afraid wasn’t going to come. I’ve been accepted at Syracuse University—in business, as you suggested. Syracuse is only seventy miles away. I can still home base here. This will settle me down for now. I can stop drifting.”

New Year’s Eve went off better than the two previous Reynolds holiday gatherings did. The snow was melting, the tension was off, the evening was convivial, and, shortly after midnight, the second floor of the house was a fuck fest. Stanford was fucking Ken in the master bedroom, Scott was fucking Cory in Scott and Cory’s bed, as it now was designated; and Steve was fucking his date for the evening, Alexis, in one of the guest rooms.

Exhausted after their New Year’s fucking, Scott and Cory lay with each other, decompressing.

“When do you have to leave for Syracuse?” Cory asked.

“I know it will crush Dad, but he deserves to have to make adjustments. I was hoping that it would be ‘we’ leaving for Syracuse.”

“We?”

“You and me,” Scott said. “The army comes across with enough support for me to take care of us both in Syracuse, and you wouldn’t have any trouble finding a job there. Going to college isn’t the only settling down I hoped to do. Would you consider going with me?”

“I might consider it,” Cory said, and then, almost in the same breath, he said, “I’ve considered it. Yep, I can do that.”