verdant

Verdant

By Jordan Castillo Price

I suspect that I worked at one of the few offices where people actually did congregate around the water cooler. Maybe because the coffee was so bad that most of us suspected the janitor peed in the water reservoir late at night when he was done buffing the floor. Yesterday’s water cooler conversation was all about morning wood. Being the only gay guy there, I’d been surprised that the subject had even come up, no pun intended, while I was trapped there between the microwave, the wall, and Heather Markowitz. Then again, I was surprised the subject came up around Heather Markowitz, either. If she’d gotten it in her head to bring a

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sexual harassment suit down on Bernie, the chairman of sales, she’d have an actual chance of winning. Here was the gist of the conversation: Bernie claimed that he regularly got laid in the morning before coming to work. So did the purchaser, Bill Conlan. It even happened to Eddy Ramirez from personnel on occasion. I’d replayed that conversation in my mind as I went to bed, and there it was when I woke up. Everyone in my office walked out their front door happy but me. I looked at Rand. Or, more specifically, the back of his head. Rand faced the window, not me, when he slept. There was a scar on his scalp about two inches long, pale and smooth against his dark brown hair. It was like a strangely placed part, just beneath the crown. I’d first noticed that scar when I realized that Rand always slept with his back to me. I never mentioned it to Rand. Like I didn’t mention that all of my co-workers were doing the nasty before they rolled into work. Even Heather Markowitz. I pressed against Rand’s back and slipped my arm around his waist. Even through the rumpled sheets and pajama bottoms, I fit him perfectly, curve for curve. He’s lean and beautifully proportioned. He’s got plenty of time to keep in shape, since he works at home and doesn’t have to deal with a ninety minute commute. I found the top edge of the sheet and eased my hand in through a gap. His skin felt so warm under the covers. I ran my palm down his side, spread my fingers over his flat stomach. I toyed with the waistband of his pajama bottoms. “Colin,” he said. Just that. His voice was soft and groggy, and I couldn’t quite catch the inflection, if there’d been any at all. I slipped my fingers under the waistband. His skin was hot where the elastic had been touching his body. My fingertips brushed the thin, dark line of hair that led from his navel to his pubes, and I felt my cock start to swell against his ass. I shifted my hips so that my shaft would be nestled between those perfect cheeks. I went lower. And then Rand’s hand clapped over mine, stopping it in its tracks. “I was up ‘til four working on the Green Grove ad,” he said regretfully. At least, I’d like to think he said it regretfully. I nuzzled his longish hair off his neck and kissed him just below the hairline. He liked that, having his neck kissed. “Then just lay there,” I said. “I’ll do everything.” I cupped Rand’s cock and balls. They were warm with sleep. I gave the back of his neck a sexy nip. Rand rolled onto his stomach, and I had to let go of his family jewels unless I planned on

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going to work without my hand attached. “Later on, baby,” he slurred into the pillow. “We’ll build that bonfire.” Right. It would snow out before we broke in our new copper fire pit. Three months after we bought it and we still hadn’t taken it out of the box. The thing would be green with verdigris before it ever burned up so much as a twig. Still hoping to convince him, I played with his ass for a while -- squeezing one cheek, then the other -- through his pajama bottoms. I imagined myself yanking the covers off the bed like a magician whisking the tablecloth out from under a freshly set table. I’d pull his pajamas down around his knees, grab one cheek in each hand, pry them apart and dive in tongue-first. That’d get his attention. But, of course, I didn’t. Because if I went that far and he still said no, I’d have to go in the bathroom and hang myself with the soap-on-a-rope. Rand must’ve thought my ass-grabbing made for a really nice massage. Because pretty soon I heard contented snoring drifting up from his pillow. It was hard to tell if morning traffic was weird, or if I was just annoyed that my co-workers were all getting some, whereas I’d had to jerk off in the shower. It seemed like the typical stop-and-go, thirty-eight miles per hour was replaced by long stretches of emptiness punctuated by near misses from people who wanted to drag race with me. I almost didn’t even notice that. I’d been playing the CD that came with my previously owned Audi, a rousing collection of John Phillips Sousa marches. And by rousing, I mean obnoxious. When I’d discovered the CD after I’d rolled out of the lot, I had half a mind to turn around and bring the Audi right back. But then I convinced myself that having the same taste in cars as someone who listened to John Phillips Sousa didn’t make me a jag-off. And besides, there were no U-turns allowed. It turned out that I kind of liked the Sousa CD, after all. It felt great to crank it up to the point of distortion and then rant like a maniac at the top of my lungs. One time Heather Markowitz remarked that when I’d gotten out of my car I looked a little flushed. But that’s OK. This morning I’d left in time to give my blood pressure a few minutes to stabilize once I’d gotten to the parking ramp. “Later on? What does that mean, Rand -- today? This week? This year? I know it can’t mean today, because today I’ll come home and you’ll be ass deep in Jolly Green Giant, or whatever the hell it is that you’re working on with your big stinkin’ Power Mac and your la-di-da stylus.” I narrowly avoided sideswiping a black Lexus convertible that’d come out of nowhere. It veered away and then turned down a side street on two wheels. “And like you can’t wake up for twenty lousy minutes to let me blow you. You work at home. You’re telling me you can’t take a nap later if you feel like it?”

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A green minivan beeped at me long enough for me to notice over the wild twittering of flutes and the baying of trumpets. The driver gestured, though I had no idea what he wanted. I figured I must have accidentally cut him off. I waved and kept driving. “And where do you get off looking so fucking hot, even with your nose pressed against that thirty inch monitor, even asleep. I live with you, and I still can’t have you.” I stopped at a red light and stared at it until it turned green. I noticed an accident off to the side, a young woman in a nightgown and an old man gesticulating wildly. I probably would’ve heard what they were yelling, if not for the Sousa. I pulled into the parking ramp next to my building. It was half-empty. I wondered if it was a Jewish holiday. Funny, no one had mentioned it. Then again, they were all too busy talking about getting some tail before breakfast. I turned off the Sousa, then sat in my car and did some deep breathing. My cheeks felt hot. But if I walked to my office slowly, I should look normal enough by the time I got there. I could just bypass the water cooler entirely and go straight to my desk. I’d find out soon enough what holiday it was. Someone pounded on the window and I jumped. I would’ve hit my head on the ceiling if I hadn’t still been wearing my seatbelt. It was Eddie Ramirez from Personnel. I rolled down my window. “What’s wrong?” “Go home,” he said. His eyes were showing white all around. “Why? What’s going on?” “Oh, man. Something bad’s going on. People acting all weird…they don’t know what it is. Didn’t you hear it on the radio?” As if the Sousa CD weren’t a guilty enough pleasure as it was. Eddie turned and ran deeper into the parking ramp. I pulled the CD out of the slot and tossed it onto the passenger seat. It would’ve been more dramatic if I’d thrown it out the window. But you never know when you’ll need a good rant. I turned on the radio. Each and every station had been usurped by news. …with reports coming in from both coasts and the Midwest…. …the Center for Disease Control recommends boiling your tap water if bottled water is unavailable…. …anyone found looting will be prosecuted to the fullest extent….”

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…by a simple quiz. Don’t ask for facts and figures, like their birthdate. Ask them what their favorite salad dressing is. Or what they got you for your birthday last…. …is imperative that you do not panic. Remain in your home with your doors locked and…. Holy crap. The apocalypse was coming, and I’d been busy complaining to a CD about my sex life. I made my way home a lot more carefully than I’d driven to work, even though I now had to go around a barricade and two more accidents. Cell phone service was out. I saw a flailing mob in front of the liquor store, regular-looking people gone Jerry Springer for a bottle of Jack. If I were single, I might have pulled over hopped right into the fray. A drink sounded like a damn good idea, but I had to get home to Rand. The front door was locked. Good, that was good. Rand kept the door locked when he was home alone so he could work to his heart’s content in the basement studio and not have to worry about finding vagrants wandering around the kitchen when he came up for air. My key skidded over the keyhole. I’d never seen my hand shake so violently. I tried again. Missed. Held my arm with my other hand and forced the key in. Turned the key. Opened the door. My house was quiet inside. Exactly like I’d left it. Relief flooded me. Maybe Rand was still asleep. He’d been up until some ungodly hour, after all, and it was barely eleven. I closed the door and locked it, and loosened my tie. I heard a moan. It came from the bedroom. I dropped my keys on the kitchen floor and ran upstairs, heart pounding. “Rand?” I said, and of course that was stupid, because if anyone had been in there with Rand, I would’ve lost the element of surprise by storming the bedroom. But it was only Rand, sitting on the edge of the bed in his pajama bottoms, dark hair tousled. Another moan, and the slap-slap slap of skin on skin. He looked up from the porno he’d been watching and stared at me, expressionless. I stared back, stunned. Here I’d been worried that a gang of whatever was roaming around out there was torturing him, and he was sitting there in his P.J.s watching Builder Bob’s Erector Set. I hardly knew where to begin. “So this is why you don’t want to have sex anymore? Jerking off to porn is what, faster? Easier? Better?” “Colin,” he said quietly, but not like he wanted to defend himself. More like he was happy to see me. I expected him to have the decency to look embarrassed, but no. He smiled. “Colin,” he said again.

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I planted my hands on my hips and glanced at the TV where a 10-inch schlong pounded a shaved, stretched-out hole in all its brightly-lit glory, and then glared at Colin. He held out his hand to me. I stared at it for a moment before I took it, and let him pull me onto the bed. “Have you listened to the radio,” I asked him, “or the news?” Rand took my face in both hands and pressed his lips against mine. He pulled my upper into his mouth, sucking it, tonguing it, and then my lower lip. That was new. Rand had never been a very forceful kisser. He pressed his tongue full into my mouth, and I hardly knew how to react. It was like I was letting a total stranger kiss me. It was hot. He grabbed me by the hair and trailed kisses down my jaw -- wet, needy kisses full of teeth and tongue. “Rand, Jesus. Have you seen the…?” He let go of my hair, and his hand went straight to my cock. I was already hard for him, probably because it was the worst timing ever. And the best kiss. Rand gripped me right through my pants. His loose fist glided up and down my hard cock, tracing the shape of my shaft, my cockhead. Even through all that material it took my breath away. I gasped, and he stroked me again, surer now, rhythmic and firm. I’d started breathing so hard that I couldn’t tell where I left off and the porno movie began. “Fuck, yeah,” I told Rand, because I had to compete with all that scripted panting and moaning and groaning. I stripped my tie off with one hand, and started on the buttons of my shirt. Rand leapt up and grabbed my belt. His pajama bottoms stood away from his body where his cock jutted out. With both of us yanking off my clothes, I was naked in less than a minute. Rand dove on the bed face-down, sideways, his mouth level with my hips. He swallowed my cock down, pressing his lips into my pubes. “S…suck it,” I managed. He sucked. Man oh man, did he suck. I ran my hand up and down his back, curved my body around his sucking, bobbing head to touch more of him. If I stretched out my arm, I could reach his ass. I trailed my fingertip over the crack, lightly brushing his hole through his pajama bottoms. Rand made a gargly sound and slurped on my cock. I did it again, and he whined deep in his throat. I felt it vibrate along the underside of my shaft. When Rand pulled his mouth off my cock, his voice was deep and gravelly. “Fuck me.” I stood and yanked his pajama bottoms down around his knees, then threw him face first onto the bed. He moaned something like, “Yeaaahhhh” as I grabbed his ass with both hands, just like I had that morning, only now it was my ass. I covered his hole with my mouth and tongue and breathed him, and damn, he tasted good, musky and something else. Herbal. Green. “Please,

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Colin. Please,” he begged, and I slid my tongue in low, taking my time to work it higher, and higher, feeling my way along the smooth cleft until I came to it, that sweet, tight hole that pulsed with anticipation. He howled into the sheets when I pushed my tongue inside. It was the sexiest noise he’d ever made. I squeezed his ass cheeks hard, working them, kneading them, while I pressed my tongue into his ass over and over, relishing the feel of him squirming into the bed. Rand begged me to fuck him, but I kept on teasing until he couldn’t make words anymore, just pleading little groans. By the time I was finally ready to fuck him, my cock was so hard that it ached. When I reached into the drawer of the bedside table for a squirt of lube, I saw that Rand had clutched the fitted sheet so hard that he’d pulled it off the top of the mattress. He lay there, face down in the center, fingers working convulsively at the wads of sheet in his fists, his back rising and falling as he drank air with his face pressed into a mess of rumpled bedding. My palm, slick with lube, glided over my cockhead. “Are you ready?” Rand made an incoherent sound. I grabbed a pillow and stepped between his legs. His pajama bottoms were pooled around one foot. I felt his thighs quiver as I pulled him up by the hips to slide the pillow under him. “You’re so ready,” I said, stroking his hole with my slippery fingertip just to hear him moan. The tinny slapping of balls on ass that’d been playing through the TV speakers gave way to static as the DVD ended. Fine by me. We didn’t need porn actors grunting and grinding to fire us up. The two of us were making our own sound effects. In fact, Rand was so loud when I started to push in that I thought for a second I’d hurt him. But, as he arched his back and pressed against me, that same long, low moan kept on going, and I decided it was a good sound. I slid in, enjoying every slow, tight inch, until I was in so deep that our balls were touching. “Fuck me,” he said, half desperation, half demand. I ground my hips against his ass and he groaned into the blankets. I pulled out halfway and eased in again, starting slow, building up steam. Rand kept on moaning and begging into the sheets. I mapped his back with my hands while I thrust, in and out, deeper now, harder, and re-learned the planes of his muscles, the light tracing of his ribs. So perfect. So beautiful. He’d gotten even louder, shouting out every time I thrust in, sometimes a broken word, but mostly just noises. It was almost like the porno movie, only not quite. It sounded sincere. I bent over Rand’s body, clasping his back to my chest, and pumped my cock into him faster with short, sharp, deep jabs. I took a fistful of his hair in my hand and bit the back of his neck while I fucked him, and he wailed so loud the neighbors had to hear it.

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“Colin!” he yelled, finally forming a word. “Oh, Colin!” His entire body clenched, and he slammed his hips into the pillow while his ass pulled at my cock. He came hard and he took me right along with him, the two of us a sweating, heaving mass battering against the bed. I screamed right along with him, a word I hadn’t even consciously thought of.

Yes.

Because it was so perfect, like it had never, ever been before. And if today was Judgment Day,

so be it. I was ready. I’d lived.

I cuddled against Rand as the sweat on my back chilled. He was still making happy noises,

contented rumbles muffled by the bedding. I nosed his hair aside and kissed his neck, and he

shivered. I felt a tingle in my balls. I wondered if I could go again without even pulling out,

kissing and nuzzling him until I was hard again, hard enough to fuck for the rest of the day, since

I seem to be able to go forever on the second round.

I wanted to. But I couldn’t. My lust had been satisfied, and now my curiosity had the better of

me.

I eased my cock out of him and pulled back just enough to run my fingers through his hair. The

scar on the back of his scalp was gone.

“Rand?”

“Mm.”

“You want me to make us some coffee?”

“Mm.”

I pulled on a pair of boxers and turned off the TV. I wasn’t sure if Rand was sleeping or if I’d

just fucked him senseless, but either way I didn’t want to disturb him. I chose my path to the doorway carefully, stepping around the creaky floorboard that had been bugging him for the last three years. “Colin?” he said as I reached the doorway.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

I looked back at him. He’d turned to watch me leave the room. The sheets had left a crease in his

cheek, and his hair was sticking up on one side. He was gorgeous. “I love you, too.”

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Later that evening… The pods in the basement were beautiful in their own alien way, like something you’d see in a steamy, green-smelling exhibit at the botanical gardens. Well, my pod was, anyway. Rand’s pod was just a husk, an empty shell in which he’d germinated, that started to soften and collapse once it’d served its purpose. My pod was so striking that it almost seemed like a shame when Rand and I dragged it out into the yard and balanced it on our new copper fire pit. It was much too big to actually fit in there, but Rand warned me that it’d be pretty gross inside if we tried to chop it up. I’d found some turpentine in Rand’s art supplies, and pretty soon we had a nice big blaze going in our backyard. We pushed our deck chairs side by side and wrapped the red plaid blanket around both our shoulders. Rand leaned his head on me and snuggled close. “I want to turn on the news,” I told him. He patted my knee, and his hand lingered here. It moved higher, tracing patterns on my inner thigh that made me shiver. “Don’t worry about it. Everything will settle down by tomorrow. It’ll sort itself out.” I pressed a kiss against the top of his head, and he sighed. There was a loud “pop” in the fire pit, and a spark from the kindling underneath the pod drifted up towards the dark sky like a firefly. A warm, resinous, green smell filled the crisp night air. “Rand?” “Mm?” “How will I know? Y’know. Who’s changed…and who’s the same?” Rand was quiet for so long that I almost thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he caught my hand in his and raised it to his lips. “Does it matter?” he breathed against my knuckles. Maybe not. I buried my nose in his hair. It smelled like fresh cut grass.

end

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Verdant Copyright © 2007 by Jordan Castillo Price All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680 Printed in the United States of America. Torquere Press, Inc.: Sips electronic edition / October 2007 Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680

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