Dan & Tyler 2 - Wintergreen (3 page)

"I'm not like them," Tyler said, real anger stirring as he thought of Luke, who'd up and left Dan at the first sign of trouble, and the assholes who'd made Dan pay for rides with his mouth as he hitched across the state. "Don't you ever fucking compare me to--"

Dan's mouth twisted sourly, but Tyler guessed it was more because of the memories than because Dan was still pissed at him. "Like I ever would. You're in a class of your own."

 

Good to know. "You got your hands on me for a reason, boy?"

"What do you think?" Dan slid the zipper of Tyler's jeans down. "Got to be quick; my ass is numb, and the snow's soaking through my jeans."
"You want to screw around out here?" Tyler sighed, pretending a reluctance he didn't feel. "We can go back inside, you know."

"I'm still mad at you," Dan said. "It's either go back to fighting, or this. You choose." His fingers wriggled inside the narrow opening he'd created. Tyler closed his eyes as he felt the rough, awkward scrabble of Dan's fingers. So tantalizing, that touch; a fraction too light, an inch away from where he wanted it to be.

His own jeans were heavy in patches with the wetness of melting snow, but he ignored the discomfort and freed his cock, exposing it to the icy air and the waiting haven of Dan's hand.

"God, you're so fucking hot," Dan told him. Tyler watched the anger fade from Dan's eyes, replaced by intensity as Dan bit his lip and looked at what his hand was doing. "You're so hard for me," Dan whispered, and threw an arm around Tyler's shoulders, pulling him closer to be kissed, Dan's tongue licking inside in time with the flick and rub of his thumb on the head of Tyler's cock.

It was supposed to be urgent, fast, their arousal fueled by the fight, but Tyler didn't want it to end, no matter how cold he was, and Dan wasn't rushing, either.

It was strange to feel so passive. Tyler's hands, still gloved, had nothing to do but hold on to Dan. His mouth was silenced by kisses that Dan seemed to give him every time he tried to ask if there was something Dan wanted, something he could do in return. The inability to touch Dan's skin meant that all of Tyler's attention was centered on what Dan's hand was doing to him as it moved with a surety Dan had learned over the months. Dan knew Tyler well enough to make this last or end it quickly, and he was using that knowledge to bring Tyler to the brink and back, over and over.

If it was meant to teach Tyler a lesson, Dan was going to have to explain it to him later, because right now Tyler wasn't thinking about anything but the ache in his balls and a tingle that he sure as hell hoped wasn't impending frostbite.

Chapter Two

Dan waited for the sound of water hissing in the shower that told him he had a few minutes alone, and then put the book he'd been pretending to read down and allowed himself the luxury of a long, heartfelt sigh. Okay, that had been a weird afternoon. Sex outside wasn't something they did often, but on the few occasions that they'd given into temptation, it'd been warm and dark, the woods wrapping around them like green curtains.

In the middle of a snowdrift in broad daylight just wasn't like Tyler. Dan had expected Tyler to drag their asses back to the cabin and a nice warm bed, but he hadn't. He'd just let Dan jerk him off, and if the cold emptiness in his eyes when he'd swung around, holding that fucking shovel like a weapon, had thawed and brightened when he came, it wasn't enough to make Dan think that things were okay between them.

Sometimes, he was reminded of just how high maintenance Tyler was. It wasn't like it mattered, set against the way he felt about the man, but sometimes it all just got a little too fucking much.

It didn't help that there was no one he could bitch to. Anne was Tyler's friend, not his, and though Dan liked her and felt that the feeling was returned, he always had a feeling that she thought Tyler could do better than a scrawny runaway, barely out of his teens. If he'd told Tyler that, he'd have gotten a blank stare and a headshake, followed by Tyler telling him he was being an idiot. Reassuring in a way, but not all that useful.

And if Anne knew that Tyler was an ex-sniper with nerves as shot to pieces as his targets, convinced that the department he'd worked for was trying to get him back, she'd probably still think that Dan wasn't the right man for him.

There were times that Dan would have agreed with her, but not many. Tyler's gray eyes might stare through Dan as if he weren't there when Tyler woke from one of his nightmares, but at the first touch of Dan's hand, Tyler would snap out of it. Tyler was broken, but Dan, who had more than a few cracks in him, didn't mind that.

He picked up his book when the bathroom door opened and stared blindly at black squiggles of ink.

"You're reading it upside down," Tyler said as he walked past, a towel around his hips and another in his hand, rubbing his hair dry. Wet, the gray at the temples disappeared, making it all look dark, but it didn't make Tyler look younger in Dan's eyes. It took a grin to do that. "You young kids nowadays… always with the new ideas."

Busted. Dan tossed the book aside and blurted out a question he'd wanted to ask for a while now, ever since he'd asked Tyler if he had any photographs of himself and Tyler had -- eventually -caved and dug out a creased, dog-eared envelope. Dan had expected the usual blurry photos of people smiling self-consciously into the camera, but the black and white images were crisp, even professional. Not artistic; Tyler hadn't taken hazy sunsets or a flower growing on a bomb site, but they were well-framed and in focus.

A training camp, soldiers like ants on an obstacle course, swarming over muddy ground or climbing ropes; a young man, his dark skin sweat-sheened, cradling his rifle, his shoulders slumped with exhaustion. Dan had leafed through them, picking up enough clues to guess that Tyler had taken them early on in his training. He was starting to wonder if Tyler had ever stepped out from behind the camera when he came across a less polished shot of the man, skinnier, with a buzz cut, looking serious, but with a lightness of expression that Dan had rarely seen on Tyler's face. Beside him was another soldier, blond, with broad shoulders and a blazing smile, his arm flung around Tyler's neck, his good-looking face smeared with what might have been mud, could have been blood.

He'd held it out mutely, and Tyler had shrugged. "Johnny Wilson. He's dead, like most of the men in the photographs. You've seen what you wanted to see; put them back where they came from."

It'd left him wondering, not so much about the smiling soldier from Tyler's past, who looked like a guy Dan would have gotten on well with, but about someone who was never going to say cheese for a pointing lens: a man he pictured as a faceless suit, sitting behind a desk and signing death warrants from nine to five. The man whose e-mail had left Tyler panicked and running in the summer. He swallowed and asked his question.

"Cole -- your boss -- what was he, is he, I mean -- what's he
like
?"

Tyler paused in the doorway to their bedroom for long enough that Dan didn't think he was going to get an answer. If Tyler turned away, that would end it as far as Dan was concerned. He'd learned when pushing Tyler to spill was a good idea and when it really wasn't; the subject of Cole felt about as safe as a ticking bomb.

"What brought that on?"

"Just curious, I guess." Of course, Tyler probably wouldn't get that as a motivation; Tyler never asked Dan anything about his past. Or maybe it was because he'd investigated and already knew all that there was to know?

"I could tell you," Tyler said, with just a trace of a knowing smile, "or you could find out for yourself on Tuesday. He's coming to see me."

The door closed behind Tyler before Dan could gather his thoughts enough to answer coherently. Tyler only closed that door when he wanted some alone time; Tyler needed space around him now and then after years of living by himself, and Dan respected that. He never intruded, always waited for Tyler to emerge, ready for company again.
Today, he shoved the bedroom door open with an angry slap of his hand and went face to face with a startled Tyler, already starting to cloud up.

"What the hell was that?" Dan didn't care that they'd only just gotten over one fight. He was ready to go another round or two, even knowing that more sex to paper over the cracks wasn't really an option. "You think you can just drop something like that and walk away, all Mr. Fucking Cool? Cole's coming here in two days? Since when? How long have you known?" Dan shook his head and tried to stop yelling, to achieve something more like Tyler's own icy calm when he was angry. "Guess I know why you've been so fucking jumpy now."

Tyler tossed both towels on the bed and gave Dan a nice view of a tight ass and long legs, a sight that after six months still made his mouth water, but was familiar enough that it didn't distract him for long. "Guess you think you do, but I didn't get the e-mail until an hour ago, so you'd be wrong." He picked up a clean black T-shirt from the bed and slanted a look at Dan before pulling it over his head. "Read it if you like."

Dan hesitated, and then, his pique at being put in the wrong when it was Tyler who was acting like an asshole giving way to curiosity, walked over to the computer. The message appeared on the screen after he jiggled the mouse, and he frowned as he read it.

"I don't get it."

"Yeah, you do." Tyler sounded tired, but confident in Dan's ability to make the jumble of numbers make sense. After a minute or two of staring and chewing on his lip, they did, in part, at least.

"Tuesday at four in the afternoon."

 

"Yep."

 

"16:00 hours."

 

"Look at you; you decoded it without a ring. Well done."

 

"I don't get this end bit," Dan said, pointing at it.

 

"Day, time, location. It's the GPS coordinates for just about where you're standing."

Dan felt his body jerk with the need to leap aside, as if a laser beam were about to bore through the roof and nail him. Stupid, but he felt targeted and vulnerable. If this was how Tyler felt all the time, his jumpiness was more understandable.

He stepped back slowly and turned to look at Tyler, who'd finished dressing, wearing thick black socks and loose navy sweats that still managed to cling to his ass. "So when do you think he'll get here? Tonight? Tomorrow?"
The corner of Tyler's mouth quirked in reluctant amusement. "Now you're thinking like me." He shrugged. "I don't know. Could be that he's already here, or he might show at four on the dot this Tuesday just because I wouldn't expect that. No way to know. We just make sure we're ready."

Apprehension curled through Dan's gut like wire, sharp and painful. "We can't take off? The truck can make it to the road… maybe."

 

"He always knows where I am," Tyler said flatly. "He'd find me."

 

"You're not--" Dan wetted his lips, not liking the way it was suddenly 'me,' not 'us.' "You're not going to--"

"Kill him?" Tyler looked tempted for a moment, Dan was sure of it, but then Tyler grinned, and he knew that he'd been had. "That would be a little drastic, don't you think -- and besides, there's no point. They'll fill his shoes before the body's cold and I'll have pissed them off for nothing." He shrugged and said more seriously, "Plus, I like Cole -- most of the time. He's not a villain, Dan; he's one of the good guys."

"You and he didn't ever -- you weren't --" Tyler didn't fill in the gaps for him this time, and Dan was forced to spell it out. "Did you ever sleep with him? I mean, the two of you, were you… together?"

"Hell, no," Tyler said, his eyes widening. "Cole's straight, as far as I know, and devoted to his wife. Even if he was inclined to play around, he'd never sleep with anyone working for him. Not his style."

"Oh." Dan rubbed his hands against his jeans, feeling unsure of just about everything right then. "Fine."

 

"Did you think he wanted me back because he
missed
me or something?" Tyler asked incredulously.

Dan felt his face flush with heat, because, yeah, he'd been wondering why Cole was so determined to end Tyler's retirement, and the idea that they'd been more than work buddies had occurred to him. "No, of course I fucking didn't."

Tyler gave him an appraising look and then crooked his finger. "Come here."

It was close to impossible for Dan to disobey Tyler when he used that calm, serious voice. The first time Tyler had, the day they'd met, Dan had gotten a blow job out of it, and the two events had become twisted around each other in his head. Before he'd taken his second step, Tyler's arm was outstretched and curving to gather him in for a rare hug.

"Boy, you look like someone told you Christmas was canceled and you had to give your presents back."
"Do not," Dan said into Tyler's shoulder, his words muffled by Tyler's soft cotton T-shirt. "And anyone who tries to take my laptop had better bring friends. Big ones."

The laptop had left him speechless and then achingly conscious that his own gifts for Tyler were as pathetic as could be expected on what he'd saved from minimum wage jobs. Not that Tyler had seemed to mind, turning each clumsily wrapped present -- Dan had discovered that Scotch tape was both sentient and malevolent -- over in his hands before opening it carefully and saying a few appreciative words that seemed sincere.

Well, apart from the neon green boxer shorts with the frogs on; that present had gotten Dan tickled until he was sobbing with laughter, weakly batting at Tyler's merciless fingers, and he hadn't even gotten to see Tyler in them. Tyler had buried the shorts in a drawer and refused to wear them.

"That laptop's saved my sanity, so they'd have to go through me first," Tyler assured him, as he placed his hand on the back of Dan's neck and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "Don't get all bigeyed and scared. Cole's not going to drag me off in an unmarked van."

Dan disentangled himself from what was left of Tyler's hug. "First," he said coldly, "my eyes look just like they always do--"

 

"No, you save the Bambi look for special occasions, trust me."

 

"Second," Dan said after thumping Tyler's arm hard, "I hadn't even thought about him doing that, and now I am, and -- shit."