Mike and Danny: Restless
Hearts
by Rock Lane Cooper
This is
a work of homoerotic fiction. If you are offended by such material or if you
are not allowed access to it under the laws where you live, please exit now.
This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be copied or distributed in
any form without the written permission of the author, who may be contacted at:
rocklanecooper@yahoo.com
Note that these stories, including this
one, are not an endorsement of unsafe sex. They take place many years before
the appearance of AIDS and before it was standard practice to use condoms to
reduce the risk of infection from sexually transmitted diseases. Remember
always: that was then, this is now. Sex is precious, and so are life and
health.
Chapter 12
Mike returns to the farm; Ed is back
on the road; Brian wants something from Danny.
It was late afternoon when Mike said
goodbye to Danny and got headed back to the farm. The sky was clearing, and the
rainy weather was over. Maybe the next time there would be sleet and snow
instead of rain, but before then he had about a hundred acres of corn to get
picked.
Driving down the interstate, however, he
wasn’t thinking much about corn. His thoughts were busy with the memory of
lying together naked in Danny’s bed. After Danny had come, and lay there over
him sweaty and spent, talking of how much he loved Mike, the room had filled
with a burst of afternoon light, and he’d been taken by a feeling of guilty
bliss—a hard-working farmer in bed while the sun was shining bright outside.
After a while, he felt Danny’s cock,
still full, easing from him, and he had this twinge of regret that the pitch of
passion was over—as always, too quickly. For those few minutes, he’d let
himself be taken up and swept along in another man’s desires, while his own
cares disappeared. There was no worry, no loneliness, no responsibilities—just
this warm blanket of someone he loved wrapped around him, entering him over and
over—his very own Danny.
“Sorry,” Danny had said, when he’d caught
his breath again. They were on the same pillow now, face to face.
“What for, bud?”
“I was gonna
give you the rest of that blowjob I started, but we kinda
got sidetracked.”
“There’s still time,” Mike laughed.
He felt the urge deep in his groin for
release, and his cock sprang to life as Danny touched him, kissing his face,
his chest—finding each of his hard nipples with his tongue—and then
disappearing under the sheet to nuzzle him between his legs.
In the next moment, lying there on his
back, autumn sunlight brightening the room again, Mike had felt his erection
gliding into what was almost surely like a jar of warm honey, and he was
overtaken by a second wave of bliss, this one even guiltier than the first.
Later, they’d taken a hot shower together
in Danny’s bathroom and then sat at the kitchen table in their underwear
hungrily eating the submarines Mike had bought at the sandwich shop. Danny had
loaned him a pair of his clean jockeys, which gave him a friendly hug in the
crotch as he drove along the highway now on his way home—his penis lazy and fat
in them as he remembered it all.
“Where’d the cookies come from?” Danny
had wondered when he saw them on the kitchen counter.
“Your friend Lucille was here,” Mike
said. “We had a talk.”
“What was on her mind?”
Mike thought for a moment. “Well, she had
things to say about you and me.”
Danny frowned like he didn’t understand.
“She said she thinks you and me are like
equals.” And Mike had said how she thought it must be different for them, being
two guys, than it was for her and her husband.
“Ah, women’s lib.”
“What’s that?”
“Women who want equal rights.”
“Don’t they have that already?”
“Maybe on paper, but
not for real.” And Danny had
tried to explain it to him. But Mike got the feeling he’d have to think about
it for a while and have it explained some more before he understood it the way
Danny did.
“I never thought of us that way, I
guess,” Mike said.
“Well, when it comes to smarts, we’re not
equal. You’re way ahead of me and you always have been.”
“That’s not true, bud.”
“You’re also way better at being a real
man than I am. I’m always wishing I was more like you.” And he went on for a
while like this, saying things that would have embarrassed Mike if they’d come
from anyone else. “Hell, you’re a hero to me,” Danny said, as if in some way he
was ashamed of himself. “I’m in awe.”
All Mike could do was protest. He’d
always thought that if Danny had a fault it was how he didn’t have enough
respect for himself. He could sell himself short and never give himself credit
for all he’d done with his life—or for the fine, loving man that he was.
Danny shook his head. “I try to be like
you, and half the time I just fuck up.” He told Mike then about agreeing to let
a student sleep over at his place because the boy was broke and living out of
his car.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“He has no business here. I’m his teacher
and this isn’t a rooming house.”
Mike couldn’t see it. He thought Danny’s
heart was in exactly the right place, and he said so. He would have done the
same thing.
“If it ever comes out that I’m queer,
letting a male student stay here with me is not going to look good to some
people. It could get me into a whole lot of trouble.”
Mike had heard him out, and when he was
done he’d said, “It’s not wrong to help someone who needs it. You gotta do the
right thing, no matter what other people think.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It doesn’t have to be complicated, bud,
and you know that,” Mike said. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be the Danny I
know.”
Danny sighed and just looked at him
across the table. Then he got up and walked around to where he sat. He put his
arms around his shoulders and pressed Mike’s face to his chest. “Will I ever be
the Danny you know?” he said.
There was no answer for that question
because it made no sense to Mike, so he let it go. He just hugged Danny back
and inhaled the smell of him, his freshly laundered shirt, his aftershave, and
the Ivory soap they had both showered with.
— § —
Ed had got a late start in the morning.
It was difficult saying goodbye and leaving LeRoy. He
hadn’t even made
The fact that he’d got very little sleep
the night before—rolling long and easy in LeRoy’s
arms—made him wish more than anything for some shut-eye. He was already
half-asleep at the wheel, and getting off the road seemed a welcome prospect.
Any of the big new motels along the interstate here would have one of those hot
tubs to soak in, and then he’d go early to bed.
The parking lot at the Ramada Inn was
already full of cars and trucks with out-of-state plates. He parked and went
inside, where he waited at the front desk for a room.
Ahead of him, there were a couple guys
who looked like truckers, a family with three little kids, a gray-haired couple
who could have been retired school teachers, and a guy with broad shoulders
wearing a big, gray Stetson hat—probably cost him $300 at least—dressed in a
suede jacket and new levi’s. He stood with his back
to Ed, motionless and still, with all the patience of a statue.
With just one person working the desk—a
tall young guy in glasses who was new on the job from the looks of it—the line
was moving slowly. After what seemed like several minutes, it hadn’t moved at
all, and as Ed listened he could tell there was some problem with the credit
card of one of the truckers. A manager had come from a back office and was
asking him questions with a look of suspicion on her face.
Ed looked around and saw an entrance to a
restaurant and beyond it the neon lights of a Budweiser sign. He decided a beer
would pass the time better than standing in line, so he walked across the lobby
to the bar. A tall guy in glasses who could have been the twin brother of the
one at the front desk was tending the bar, watching a baseball game on a color
TV that was mounted on the wall.
Fascinated, Ed settled himself onto a bar
stool and asked for a beer, hardly taking his eyes from the screen, amazed by
the bright green of the field and the flash of other colors during the
commercials. “I gotta get me one of those,” he said after a while, to no one in
particular.
“The car?” a voice came from beside him.
He’d been watching a commercial for a Mustang. A good looking man in a sweater
and khaki pants had stepped from the car and was walking around it with a big
grin, talking to the camera.
“The color TV,” Ed said without turning.
“I never seen one of them before.”
“And the driver?” the voice came again, a
little quieter this time. “What about him?”
It was an odd question, coming from a
stranger in a bar at a Ramada Inn. Ed glanced for a moment to see who was
talking to him, and sitting beside him was the guy with the $300 Stetson, who’d
been in front of him in line. He was giving Ed a little smile, like they knew
each other, and then Ed realized he was no stranger.
It was Jake, a rancher from
“Jake,” he said, and they shook hands.
“Ed, you sonofabitch.
How’s your ass?”
“Same, I guess.”
“I could see that when you was walking
away,” Jake said. “Always admired the hell outta that wrangler butt of yours.” Under the edge
of the bar, he wedged his knee against Ed’s.
Ed looked at the bartender, who kept his
gaze held steady on the ballgame. If he could overhear their conversation, he
wasn’t letting on.
“What are you doing in
“Lookin’
for a cutting horse.”
“You missing
one?”
“I see you haven’t lost your sense of
humor.”
“Don’t do to lose that.”
“No shit.” Jake looked up at the
bartender. “Bring us two more brews,” he said.
At one time, Ed would have been tickled
to run into Jake like this, but now there was LeRoy
to think of. He looked across the lobby toward the front desk. “I should go
back over there and get me a room for the night,” he said, drinking down the
last of his bottle and starting to get down from his stool.
“Don’t bother yourself. They just gave
the last one to that old married couple.”
Ed didn’t believe him. “Then you must not
have a room either. They was in line ahead of you.”
“Some folks, like me, have reservations,”
Jake said.
“I’d better go see for myself.”
Jake grabbed him by the belt. “Forget it.
You’re bunkin’ with me tonight.”
“No offence, but I was thinkin’ of having a room of my own.”
“I didn’t say we had to fuck, if that’s
what’s got you worried,” Jake said under his breath. “My room’s got two beds in
it. You may as well have one of ’em.”
The bartender, satisfied that Jake was paying
for another round, set two more bottles on the bar in front of them.
“Drink your beer, and let’s catch up on
old times,” Jake said. “You got the rest of your life to watch color TV.”
— § —
When Danny got done with his last class
for the day, he worked in his office for a while, typing up a mimeo to run off
for his Shakespeare students. When he got home, it was already getting dark,
and flipping on the light switch as he walked in the door, he was greeted with
the usual emptiness. Mike was gone, leaving hardly a trace of himself—only an extra plate and a coffee cup set there with
Danny’s in the kitchen sink.
These nights alone were possible to bear
when he worked long days and turned on the TV for company. But the memory of
Mike, here in these rooms only a few hours before, and beside him all night in
his bed, made him feel lonely this time—and a little abandoned.
He set down his briefcase and hung his
sport coat in the closet, then opened the refrigerator in the kitchen to see
what there was to eat. At which point, the phone rang, and when he picked it up
to answer, it was Mike.
“Have you heard anything from Ty or Rich?” he wanted to know.
“No.”
“Ty’s been
here. He got his car and he’s gone.” There was just a note from him that said
he was going back to
“No. I never heard him say,” Danny said.
“What about Rich?”
“There’s nothing here about him,” Mike
said, like he was holding the note in his hand while he was talking. “I don’t
like the sound of this, bud.”
Danny didn’t know what to say at first.
He’d never got to know Rich and Ty very well, but
they’d always seemed something of a mismatch. After a tour of duty in
“Could be something
simple.” They would need a car in
“He just says, ‘Plans changed. Came back for my car. Going home to
“Well, there you have it.”
“Wish I’d been here. Then we’d know for
sure. ”
“Mike, you can’t be looking after
everybody.” Danny started to tell him that sometimes he needed to just let
people be and they’d figure out things for themselves.
But there was a knock at his door, and
when he went to open it, he found Brian standing there with a gym bag in one
hand and a big box of pizza balanced on the other.
“I hope you like pepperoni and double
cheese,” he said. “A buddy of mine works at Luigi’s,”—an Italian place in town
where college kids went for pizza and plates piled with spaghetti—“and they
made one too many for some guy with a big take-out order.” The words came tumbling out in a rush like he’d been rehearsing them
all the way there.
Danny had decided to give Brian money for
a motel room, but here he was in the middle of a conversation with Mike—who’d
already told him to let the boy stay for the night—and Brian was standing there
looking hopeful. Danny felt himself giving in to the urge not to disappoint
either of them.
“I’m on the phone,” he said, and he waved
Brian inside and closed the door behind him.
There was really not much more to say to
Mike with Brian opening the pizza box and parking himself at the kitchen table
a few feet away.
“Give it some time,” he finally said to
Mike. “We’ll hear from both of them as soon as they get settled.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Mike said, but he
didn’t sound convinced. “Anyway, thanks for making this overworked farmer feel
like new again. I’d be happy to come right back there and do it all over
again.”
“Me, too, but I got company. That student
I told you about? He’s here.”
“Hey, bud, you’re a good man.” He had
brightened. Sometimes it took so little to please him.
After Danny hung up, he joined Brian, who
had started into the pizza like someone who hadn’t eaten all day. He was eating
it straight out of the box with his fingers. Danny helped himself to a piece
and stood without talking until he remembered he had cokes in the refrigerator,
and he got one for each of them.
Brian had pulled off his letter jacket
but still had his ball cap on his head. He was wearing a wrinkled flannel shirt
and a pair of worn jeans. His athlete’s body seemed alive with nervous energy,
his knees spread wide apart as he sat, one foot wobbling under the table.
“I got a question for you, Brian,” Danny
finally said.
“Yessir.”
“Don’t you have some other place you
could go tonight?”
“You don’t want me to stay here?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just wondering if
there aren’t buddies of yours who’d let you sleep on their couch.”
Brian shrugged. “I’m kinda
on the outs with ’em all, I guess.”
Maybe like he was with Virgil, Danny
thought, but decided to steer away from that subject.
“You always seemed to me like a popular
guy. What happened?”
“Little of this. Little of that.” He reached
for another piece of pizza.
“That’s too bad. A guy needs his
friends.”
Brian just looked at him, like there was
nothing more to be said.
“Didn’t you used to have a girlfriend?”
Danny asked.
Brian’s mood darkened. “Yeah, but you
probably know how that goes.” He glanced around the room like the absence of a
female proved his point.
“You got a shower I can use?” he suddenly
said. “I haven’t had a bath in days.”
“Sure, help yourself,” Danny said, aware
that the subject had been swiftly changed.
Brian polished off another two pieces of
pizza, finally leaning back in the chair with a hand on his stomach, looking
satisfied. Then he opened the top button of his jeans, like he’d eaten too
much.
“Anything I can do to pay you back for lettin’ me stay here tonight?” he
asked.
“The pizza was plenty, thanks.”
“I’m just saying,” he said and held open
his hands in front of him, like a vague invitation.
Danny was suddenly suspicious. “What are
you saying?”
“Nothin’. I just thought there might be, you know, something.”
He absently buttoned and then unbuttoned his jeans again.
Now the invitation was clear. Danny
didn’t know what Brian was up to, but it was more than likely no good. He felt
his heartbeat suddenly quicken.
There was a time when he would have been
excited and flattered by what Brian was offering—the chance to give him a
blowjob, by the looks of it—but that was when he was half charmed by the boy’s
personality and hardly able to keep his eyes off his ass. Now it just pissed
him off. He was playing Danny for some other kind of sucker.
“I think you better go,” Danny said.
“Wha’?”
“You heard me. Go.”
“Sir?” He sat up in the chair, like he was surprised and
couldn’t understand.
Danny pulled out his wallet and looked
for a twenty-dollar bill. “Here,” he said. “Go find yourself a motel room.”
Brian looked at the money but didn’t take
it.
“I changed my mind about tonight,” Danny
said. “I want you to leave.”
Brian still didn’t take the money. A
stricken look had crossed his face. “Sir?” he said, a tone of pleading now in
his voice. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“I got places I could maybe stay, you’re
right. But I was hopin’—really hopin’—I
could stay here. Just for one night. Just so—.”
Danny let his hand with the money drop
and waited for him to finish the sentence.
Brian swallowed hard. “Sir, I want you to
like me.”
Danny was at a loss for words now
himself. If he was being taken for a ride by this young man, the guy was doing
a first-class job.
“If that’s what you want,” Danny said,
pointing to the front of Brian’s jeans, “don’t ever do that again.”
Brian leaned back in the chair and looked
away, like he’d just been caught in a lie.
Danny was struggling to figure out what
to do or say. “What makes you think I’d take advantage of you like that?”
Brian covered his eyes now.
“You gotta tell me. Is that something
you’ve done before? With another man? A teacher? A coach?”
Brian shook his head, but didn’t look up
at Danny.
“To get them to like
you?”
It went on a while like this, Danny
trying to make sense of Brian and Brian saying almost nothing, just making weak
denials, until he stopped doing even that.
For Danny, a picture began to come
together of this young man he’d known as confident and sure of himself, an
athlete who was also a good student, more mature and thoughtful than his
classmates. Now all those things began looking like a big act—an act to protect
himself.
Bent forward in his chair now, face in
his hands, he seemed broken and forlorn. And Danny remembered that Brian had
lost his father when he was still a boy. In fact, not having fathers was
something that had drawn him and Virgil together. Dazzled, as others were, by
the young man’s easy grace, Danny could not see the lonely figure behind the
appearance—that boy left to face the world on his own.
Yet, Danny was thinking—and doubting himself—maybe
this wasn’t exactly right either. From past experience, he knew he couldn’t
always trust his judgment. Things never were what they seemed—one way or the
other—which remained a lesson of life he kept learning. And when it came to
life’s lessons, he was never good at the pop quizzes.
“OK, look,” he finally said. “It’s none
of my business what happened. But I’m guessing it did, and whatever it was, it
probably shouldn’t have.”
“It’s all right, sir,” Brian said
suddenly, his head lifting from his hands to look up at Danny. He seemed to be
pulling himself together. “I know I can trust you.”
And he told a story of going to a
baseball camp when he was in seventh grade where someone on the staff—a boy
himself, still in high school—had taken a shine to him and found ways to get
them alone together. Sometimes in the equipment room,
sometimes the laundry.
Darrell made him feel safe and cared
for—a feeling he hadn’t known since his father left. When camp was over,
Darrell went back where he came from, some suburb of
Over the years since then, he’d tried to
find someone like Darrell, someone older, stronger, and full of affection for a
boy—someone he could trust. It had happened for a while with a man on his
newspaper route, who took to spending time with him when he came by doing
Saturday morning collections. And there was the man with a young family who
rented the house next door for a year, who would play catch with him after
school in the back yard. But each time, he would end up alone and forgotten. It
was like being left by his father all over again.
Finally, when he started high school, he
told himself it was time to grow up and be his own man—stop looking for someone
else to do the job for him. He’d be strong and rely only on himself.
And for the most part, that had worked.
He’d met Virgil and had a real friend his own age. He got good enough grades to
get on the honor roll—something that pleased his mother—and he focused on doing
well in sports, aiming for a scholarship to college. He was on top of the
world. And he stayed there.
But somehow, the summer after he’d
graduated from high school—when he’d turned eighteen and should have felt like
some kind of prince with the future in his pocket—it had all begun falling
apart. And as it did, he found himself missing his father again.
This time, pumping gas at a filling
station, he’d met a man who was an electrician during the day and had a weekend
job as a night watchman at a warehouse in town—a friendly divorced guy who
liked to talk about his two sons in the Marines.
They’d get together after hours at the
warehouse as the guy made his rounds, and Brian got to telling him everything
that was on his mind, eventually trusting him with his hopes and fears and
young man’s sorrows. Here was another Darrell in his life, older and wiser, and
he felt his spirits lifting again. Then came the night when the man took him to
a back room, touched him, and when he didn’t resist, opened his shirt and his
pants and caressed his bare skin, admiring him, then finally kneeling to take
him in his mouth.
The shock of this had stunned him for a
moment, and though part of him felt alarmed, he couldn’t bring himself to pull
away from the man, whose arms were now around him and holding him in an embrace
of fierce affection, that felt like it could have been love. When he came—which
surprised him for happening so quickly—he was swept up in a kind of rapture he
didn’t know was possible. And he’d returned to the warehouse again and again
that summer, trying each time to feel once more the ecstasy of that moment.
When he started college that fall, he
started having second thoughts, and when he considered the nights in the
warehouse, he felt confused and ashamed. And he’d decided to get himself a
girlfriend. Since he’d never had one—not one to have sex with, at least—this
effort had taken a while to produce results.
But after several months and putting some
distance between himself and Virgil—who seemed to want to take up all his time
and attention now that they were roommates—Roxanne had come along. And for a
while that had been spectacular. He was getting laid and discovering that there
was nothing like regular intercourse to get him feeling on top of the world
again.
But that had not lasted either.
Now—and he seemed to save this last part
until there was no longer a way to put off revealing it to Danny—she was
telling him that she was pregnant. In need of a father to show him a way out of
his own predicament, he was on the road to becoming a father himself. It was
too much.
Danny stood there, feeling like shit as
he listened to Brian tell his story, and wondering what Mike would do, the
motel money still in his hand.
Continued . . .
More stories. There are
links to all the Mike and Danny stories, plus a
conversation with the author, pictures of the characters, and some cowboy
poetry at the Rock Lane Cooper home page. Click here.
© 2008 Rock Lane Cooper
rocklanecooper@yahoo.com