The Jigsaw

Hello there!
It's been a long time since the last update, but I promised not to abandon my stories and here we go: I finished the next chapter :)

I've been through some really harsh times lately. I still am. Seriously sick, after the surgery, now under difficult treatment for a year to come or so...
That's why I had to put the stories on hold - I just couldn't write. But now I have some free time so whenever my health allows, I continue :)

Dear reviewers, you make me happy. Thank you very, very much for every effort put in letting me know that you read what I write and even like it a bit ;)
I carry on with writing mainly thanks to your words... They are such an amazing motivation!

Enjoy and review! :)

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The Ninth Circle


After almost three hours of waiting, Simon grew bored and tired. He'd read all the brain-damaging magazines scattered all over the hall table, and now he just sat in a half-reclining position, counting the minutes.

"Oi!" Someone's hand patted his shoulder from behind. "Gettin' careless?"

Simon slowly raised his eyes to see Sarah's face hanging above him. "I saw your reflection, smart-ass," he said, his expression perfectly conveying his inner state of absolute boredom.

She only smiled at that and skipped to the subject at hand. "Come on. Someone wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

"Someone you'd like to talk to. You'll learn some interesting things."

"I'm sure I will." Simon twisted his mouth but didn't move from the sofa. "Who?"

The woman hesitated for a long while, wondering if she should tell him the truth. Finally she decided she had to give Simon something to make him follow her. "LaVay."

"LaVay," the agent repeated emotionlessly. "And why am I not surprised?"

"Come on, the taxi's waiting." Sarah took a few steps towards the door and waved for him to follow her. There was no point in explaining the situation now, if LaVay had a whole big story to tell.

---

The motel room was shabby and...just worn out. Many people had slept here, many people had had casual sex here, and lots of money had been stolen here. That was for sure. The windows were curtained, and on the one rickety chair sat a man.

"Welcome, Mister Tader." The man smiled politely when the awaited pair appeared on the doorstep. He stood up and offered his hand. Simon ignored it, his hands shoved in his pockets and his face expressing nothing but mistrust.

"Being cautious, huh?" LaVay smirked. His hand dropped. "Good thing, I guess. Sit down, please." He indicated the bed, covered with a faded bedspread.

Sarah pulled on Simon's sleeve and they seated themselves on the cracking furniture.

"Not very talkactive, are you?" LaVay chuckled, amused by Simon's tense, serious attitude.

"Cut the crap, please. I came here and that's a lot. I'm just waiting for the revelations that are supposed to come from your golden lips. Would you start?"

"Oh, sorry for wasting your precious time, agent. I'll get to the point right away!" The man patted his thigh, apparently making fun of Simon. But the young agent wasn't one to get easily provoked; he just glared at LaVay from under knitted brows, waiting for information.

"The first thing you gotta know," LaVay started, "is that I went quite far out of my way to meet you. Appreciate it, agent." His voice became sharp and cold. "The second thing is that you know nothing about George Ramson."

Simon bristled inwardly at such disrespectful treatment. He had known Ramson for years, after all, and that was enough to make him fairly sure that he did know something about Ramson. He said nothing, though. He hadn't come here to fight; he'd come to get what he needed and he was determined not to be led astray. He guessed that LaVay was testing him, and it could only help him to keep his cool.

"Not denying it?" The tall, dark haired man raised his brow. "Good. Maybe you are a professional, after all." He smirked again.

"Don't tell me you're gonna test me for the whole day, Mister LaVay," Simon said, returning the spite.

"I'll think about it."

"When you come to some conclusion that might be interesting to me, call me." Simon gathered himself to stand up, but Sarah stopped him, pressing her hand against his thigh. He stared at her hand for a moment before asking, "Is that an invitation?"

"Fool," she snorted impatiently, her eyes sparkling warningly. "Don't play the smart-ass and don't behave like a jerk. Sit patiently and listen. You'll not regret it, I promise."

"Yeah, you said that a few hours ago." He shook her hand off his leg and gave LaVay a hostile look. "I will not play games, Luke. May I call you Luke?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Either you tell me what you have to say, or I leave and do my job."

"Calm down, young man," sighed LaVay. "And listen to me carefully." He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "D'you smoke?" He offered one to Simon, but the agent only shook his head. "As I said, you know nothing about Ramson. It's even difficult to figure out where to start..."

"God, you had plenty of time to think about it!" Simon rolled his eyes.

"Shut up, will you?" Sarah dug an elbow in his ribs.

"Okay, let's start with Winston Blade. Well, Winston, Ramson, and I, we worked in the same anti-terrorist unit. Winston was my partner and Ramson was our supervisor. For quite some time the two of us had been gathering circumstantial evidence on George Ramson's dirty business: money laundering, trading in confiscated goods, and so on. Surprised?" LaVay broke off, eyeing Simon's face.

"Not really." The agent shrugged his shoulders. "His police career is none of my business."

"How convenient, soldier." Luke smiled almost imperceptibly. "Okay, let's go on." He dragged on the cigarette. "I preferred blackmail, but, unfortunately for him, Winston decided to officially charge Ramson. Well, it was the worst possible idea. Ramson took the first opportunity to get rid of Blade. That's why Winston got killed during the theater action. It wasn't a stray bullet—not at all. I feared for my life; I had to disappear. And Ramson fabricated all the proof against me—it would be easier to track me down. End of story. That's why I was officially announced a criminal, Ramson got a medal, and Winston had a touching funeral with all the honors. The rest is quite simple, isn't it? Somehow he spotted my tracks, as for five years now I've settled in the Italian Mob, and out of my own good will and a sense of duty, I've been reporting to the FBI. Bad luck, I guess. This young lady got an order to eliminate me but failed, and thanks to that she got a chance to learn the truth."

Simon stared at LaVay expressionlessly. He had an inner feeling of a threat. Why was the man telling him all this so freely? What did he know about Simon? What was he keeping up his sleeve?

"Well?" Sarah asked, waiting for Simon's reaction.

"Well what?" The agent returned the question, still keeping a poker face.

"What do you say? That's quite some news, isn't it?"

"For you, maybe. It was your father who got killed, not mine. Mine decided not to acknowledge the sad fact of my existence." He smiled sourly. "So why should I care about all this? You have some old business with him, go ahead and finish it. I'll just do my job."

"Does that mean you're still going to report to Ramson?" Sarah wrinkled her forehead, her voice full of reproach. "And chase me down? And kill Luke?"

"I didn't get an order to kill Luke. Yet." Simon gave the other man an ironic look.

"But if you do?" she persisted.

"Then we'll talk. Maybe I'll turn out to be quite easy to buy, who knows?" The smile on Simon's face wasn't very promising, though.

"You're...you're strange," Sarah stated, shaking her pretty red head with resignation and deep disappointment. She'd hoped for a different reaction. This conversation had been supposed to change a lot, when instead it was becoming obvious that it wouldn't change anything at all. "You behave like a machine. The only thing that counts is an order."

"The pot calling the kettle black," Simon snorted scornfully. "Just remind me: who tried to kill our friend without even knowing exactly who he was, with only Ramson's order for grounds?"

She bit her lower lip almost to the point of drawing blood, and her cheeks bloomed with shameful color. She didn't answer; there was nothing she could say that would matter.

"Yeah...that's it." Simon finished off the wounded, not without a certain satisfaction. "So," he said to LaVay after a moment of heavy silence, "why don't you tell your story to the FBI?"

"They don't know my real identity." Luke smiled slightly. "That's the first thing. And the second—you should already know what it's worth to say, 'Hey, I'm not guilty, but I can't prove it'."

"True." Simon tilted his head to the side. "So what do you think—how much is it worth to me, your saying, 'Hey, I'm not guilty'?" He raised his brows slowly. Everyone in the room knew the answer.

LaVay raised his brows too. "Not bad, kiddo, not bad."

"You don't have to flatter me. I do this job 'cause I'm not bad. And I'm still alive 'cause I'm not bad."

The older man smiled a strange, very unpleasant smile.

"Is that all?" Simon asked, giving the rest of those present to understand that he had nothing more to talk about.

"No, it's not. 'All' is much more," LaVay answered coolly. "But if you're not interested, why blow my cover?"

"Fair enough." The young agent patted his thighs and rose. "Thank you for the invitation." He smoothed his pants. "Contrary to what I said, I may find it useful. Some information is always better than the lack of it, after all. And about the reporting...." He looked at Sarah. "I think I can wait for a day or two. That's all." He didn't reach out to shake LaVay's hand and didn't bow his head to Sarah. He just turned his back on them and slowly started toward the door, knowing that he had about a fifty percent chance of leaving alive. He shut down his emotions and wondered if LaVay would shoot and how good he was. Which of the two of them was better? Who was faster? All these thoughts crystallized in Simon's head in the blink of an eye, just before he heard the characteristic click of the gun and Sarah's shocked shout. He jerked to the right, but not quickly enough. The bullet went through his lung. LaVay was better, after all. Well, nothing strange there.

Simon spun and softly dropped to his knees, coughing up blood. He tried to support his body with his hands but his elbows gave out and he landed on the floor, wheezing and gasping, the ragged carpet soaking up his blood. Sarah shouted something, someone moved, something was happening around him, but Simon didn't care any more. Actually, he felt a bit relieved; it was exactly like he'd imagined it would be. His pale, blood-stained lips twitched in a faint smile when the second silent bullet sent him to eternal sleep.

It took LaVay some time to clean the room of evidence. The damned big-mouthed woman was still deeply shaken and didn't even lift a finger to help. At first LaVay was mad at her for her sentimental attitude, but finally he softened, sighed, and decided to try to help her overcome the trauma.

"We couldn't trust him," he said, even though she hadn't spilled a word.

"We could," she whispered. "He was...he was honest."

"My god, how stupid can you be?" The man shook his head in disbelief. He was trying hard not to get irritated. "It has nothing to do with being honest. He didn't buy what he heard, he was going to check it out. That's obvious, isn't it? He wasn't my friend, and he wasn't yours either. He would do the most reasonable thing—go and ask Ramson. Then he'd wait and see. That's what I'd do, anyway." He shrugged. "Well, he took his chances and lost. Bad luck."

"You don't even know who you'll have after you now," Sarah chuckled demonically. "Compared to him, Simon was harmless, you stupid asshole."

"You don't know me yet. I'm not scared of him."

"Well, you should be," she sneered, feeling a vindictive satisfaction at the memory of Sam's dark face.

---

George Ramson was scared. He was scared shitless. He didn't remember being so scared in years. Cold sweat marked his blue shirt with wet stains; his hands were cold and shaking.

Simon Tader was dead and everything had just slipped out of his control.

Of course, that was something normal in this profession—that someone got killed from time to time. Yet somehow it had never occurred to Ramson that it could involve Simon. Simon was his assurance, his safe conduct. His complicated relations with Sam were based on Simon's existence and their deal. And now everything was off. Chaos and responsibility looked Ramson in the eye, and it was paralyzing. He felt like there was a boiling lava pot under his butt and all he could do was wait for it to erupt.

Against all his expectations, Sam had taken the news calmly. He just absorbed the information with no sign of emotion, closing everything—and only God knew what it was—inside.

Ramson just felt the temperature of the lava rising dangerously.

They didn't know who had killed Simon. The report from the local police stated that it was a car accident. Yeah, car accident, my ass, was Ramson's first thought after he'd read the news. He wondered how much it would take for Sam to rip the information from wherever it was available, and how long the killer would stay alive.

George Ramson hadn't objected when Sam expressed a surprising wish: he wanted to visit Simon's foster parents and pass them the sad news, as well as the money and everything they might want of Simon's. Actually, Ramson suspected it was only a pretext for Sam to carry on with his dark, scary plans—Ramson was pretty sure they were scary—but he didn't really care. It was even better this way: he could pretend he knew nothing and wash his hands of the whole affair. And, which was far more reassuring, he could keep the unstable Sam at a safe distance, in Key West, Florida.

Now he had one more fatal conversation to carry out....

---

"Sit down, Casey." The colonel sounded very old and tired. It meant he had something unpleasant and difficult to say, so Casey tensed involuntarily, awaiting the bad news. However, he didn't expect the news to be this bad.

The moment had to come eventually. Casey's health was already good enough not to occupy him completely, so his learning about the tragedy was only a matter of time.

"Sit down, son," Ramson insisted, indicating the furniture. "I'm truly very sorry," he continued when Casey perched on the edge of a chair, his face distrustful. "My deep condolences." He sighed heavily and passed a printed report to the agent. It was difficult. Very difficult.

Casey's heart sank with fear as he forced himself to reach for the paper. Actually, he felt an irresistible temptation to leave it and run, his self-preservation instinct preferring to keep his mind in the sweet unconsciousness of the undoubtedly scary news that lurked on the scrap of paper being handled to him. But he overcame the urge and faced the facts, which crushed him as if he was a bug.

"Jesus..." he whispered almost voicelessly, and the sheet fluttered violently in his trembling fingers. When the meaning of the message got through to him, a sound that was neither sobbing nor choking made its way through his constricted throat. Something very strong, overwhelming, and ultimately painful swelled inside him, straining every piece of him and threatening to break out.

"I'm sorry, Casey." Ramson said it again, and he really meant it. It wasn't easy, to put it mildly, to witness such intimate pain.

Casey carefully put the paper down on the table as if it was something very fragile and very important to him. "I...I, uh...I need a moment," was all he managed to grunt, combing his hair with hands that still didn't want to calm down. He took a few deep breaths and tried to force his brain to work, even if only at half capacity. "Why? What happened? Who did it?" he asked in a hoarse, shaking voice.

"We're working on it. As soon as I know, I promise, I'll tell you." Ramson's face expressed concern.

"It...was it because of...his, um, work?" A wave of unpleasant heat rolled through Casey's body, making him sweat profusely.

"I don't know, Casey. Yet. But we'll know soon."

"Can I go home?"

"I'm sorry. You can't."

"What? Why? I have to...!"

"I know. But you can't." Ramson was trying hard to sound like a good, patient father. He had it mastered pretty well after all these years.

"But I have to!" Casey shouted, his voice cracking with despair. "You're—"

"Listen to me!" The colonel interrupted him in mid-flow. "It's for your own good, believe me. I don't know who did this, and I can't guarantee they didn't do it to get to you. So it'll be safer for everybody, including your family, to keep you away from home. Do you understand me?"

It took Casey a long time to force his mind to overcome his raging feelings and accept Ramson's arguments, but the thought of his mother and sister allowed him to keep the fleeting shreds of his common sense. "But I have to call them," he whispered, only a thin line separating him from a nervous breakdown. "I have to. Please, I have to."

"I know. Call them. And say you're sorry for not being able to come. You can use the state of your own health as a reason—blame it on a car accident, or whatever you want." Ramson patted the back of Casey's hand, expressing compassion and understanding, but Casey snapped his hand back, angry and embittered. He didn't need the man's fake sympathy now, when he didn't even know how serious Ramson's responsibility for the state of matters really was.

Barely keeping a hold on himself, Casey ran out of the office, forcing back his tears; not until he got to his room did he let himself go all soppy.

That night found him lying curled up on the floor, squeezed in between the bed and the table, terribly tired. Strong spasms of crying, unbearable heartache, and a desperate fight with awakening pricks of conscience that attacked him from the darkness of the past, with all the gods he could have thought of, with his reveling, contradictory feelings, finally left him dejected and empty. In one tightly clenched hand he held a scrap of newspaper, the tragic link with his father; in the second, an indifferently beeping phone receiver, the broken link with his mother.

He shut himself down and fell out of the flow of time, drowning half-consciously in the warm and sad illusion of the embrace of his family that he had already lost.

---

Ramson didn't let Casey visit his family or his father's grave, maintaining that it was safer that way. Instead, he found a different place to put Casey up: Key West. The colonel was quite proud of himself when he hit on that idea. Casey would be safe, he would have some time to shake off the shock, and additionally he could keep an eye on Sam. The perfect deal!

The next morning Casey collected his backpack from the airport's baggage claim. He threw it into the trunk and collapsed in the seat near the driver. Sam didn't say anything, either kind or mean. Not even a simple hello. He just gave Casey a blank, empty look and seated himself behind the wheel.

Casey, still shaken by his family tragedy, felt deeply hurt by the strange indifference and the distance between them, which, God knew why, had emerged again. If Sam had at least said, "I'm sorry for your loss," or something like that—but no, nothing. They hadn't looked each other in the eyes even once since they'd met at the terminal, they hadn't exchanged a word.

In depressing, gloomy silence they reached they hotel. They had a small two-bed room to share, and Casey clenched his teeth at this lack of privacy. Privacy was his basic need when suffering.

Sam, standing in the middle of the room, took off his pants and threw them carelessly onto one of the beds. As he did, a small scrap of paper slipped out of the back pocket. Casey mechanically picked it up and was just going to hand it to Sam when the red line caught his eye. He read the clipping and scrunched it up in his fist.

"So you knew—" he started after a long moment of hesitation.

"What?" Sam turned to Casey, his brows drawn together in an expression of incomprehension. He buttoned up his linen pants, which were the last thing Casey would have expected to see on the dark-skinned man.

"When you came to the isolation ward, you knew. That my father was dead."

"I knew." Somehow Sam wasn't surprised or confused. A fact was a fact.

"So that's why...." Casey laughed bitterly and sank onto the bed, shaking his head in disappointment. "Shit, this is...a blowjob. A fucking blowjob. That's it? That's all you could come up with?"

"I had some better ideas, but you weren't fit to handle them." Casey thought Sam would smirk, but he didn't.

"I knew it, and yet...." He didn't explain what he had known. "It's unbelievable. God, you're so...boring."

"I never said I wasn't," Sam said calmly, with no discernible wish to continue the conversation. "Make yourself comfortable. I'm going to take a walk."

Take a walk.

Casey wrinkled his forehead. What the fuck...? That didn't sound like Sam. In general, since the moment they'd met at the airport, Sam wasn't quite like Sam. Sure, he was always more or less unpredictable, but now...something was different, Casey just didn't know what. And he didn't have the strength to analyze this, his thoughts tired from dealing with his own problems.

Suddenly he felt his eyes glaze over at the memory of his poor old man. He squeezed them and shook his head to force back tears and pull himself together. Well, why not take a walk? he thought, slightly amused. It might be a good idea.

He didn't even change his clothes or take a shower, he felt such an urgent need to get out of the room. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a pile of papers on the chest in the hallway. He caught a glimpse of Simon's name on a credit card. Not thinking too much of it, he went through the documents and froze. Pieces of the ironic, devilishly cruel puzzle slipped into place. What heartless power had brought them together in fucking Key West? What should they do now—two wounded, broken men at each other's mercy, which was always in short supply?

Casey cried silently for a while, not really knowing what or who he was crying about. He just felt weak and sorry.

---

The sky was as gray and gloomy as the ocean. It cried in small drops, a soothing, monotonous patter of thick rain that filled up the whole sad world. In the middle of this landscape of despair a small silhouette showed faintly, huddled on the wet sand near a log that months ago had been swept onto the beach by winter storm waves. The man was soaked to the skin, his white shirt stuck closely to his back; thin trickles of rain flowed down his black strands.

Casey approached him slowly, with hesitation that verged on fear. He didn't know what he should do now, nor did he know what he wanted to do. Actually he hadn't even expected to find Sam there. For a minute or so he stood motionlessly, staring at the man's broad shoulders, hunched and weighed down by some invisible burden. He thought it was pathetic.

Finally he gathered up his courage and took a few steps through the heavy sand hampering his feet. Sam didn't move, just raised his scary eyes to the man who appeared in front of him. Led by an impulse, Casey dropped on his knees between Sam's drawn-up feet.

In that moment Sam knew that Casey knew. Strangely enough, he felt relieved. Something in him had wanted to share his pain, he just didn't know how. He had never.... But it was better now. It was better.

He let Casey move closer and shove his thighs under Sam's. His nature still made him keep his guard up and ready, but his crushed heart longed for something. For the first time in years he let someone else take control and it felt...scary. But not bad.

Casey fixed his warm, pained eyes on the black wells that didn't avert their gaze. Sam's face was all wet. From the rain, of course. It couldn't be tears, right? Men like Sam never cried. It must have been the rain.

Casey's face was also wet. From the rain. Just...what about those warm trails some of the drops left on his skin? A strange rain it was, really.

The distance between their faces decreased; water dripped from bright hair onto Sam's forehead, eyes, and nose. Their cheeks were glued together for a short, electrifying moment and they both were suddenly scared, because for the first time everything seemed so serious, so exposed. There was no place here for reassuring games, walls of indifference, and open options that one could always throw in the other's face, saving his own independence. Now they were painfully naked in everything they did.

It was freezing cold on the beach, but the men didn't feel it.

Two pairs of vigilant eyes looked for the slightest signal to retreat and react with the usual, safe "I don't give a fuck" attitude. Casey's nose brushed Sam's eyebrow, his lips almost touched the other man's cheekbone. Sam didn't back off, only tensed up, so Casey didn't move away either. His face lowered to the level of Sam's when he sat on his heels and bent forward, the tip of his nose connecting with the tip of Sam's, and his shivering, cold lips nervously nibbled the agent's lower lip. He tasted water. How come there was salt where lips touched lips? A strange rain, indeed.

"I don't need your pity," came a rough whisper.

Casey leaned his forehead against Sam's and whispered back, "Shit, I don't have enough strength for pity. I'm pitying myself, not you." With that he clung to Sam's lips with his own in an awkward, stiff kiss that was as far from ars amandi as it could be. He pushed against the seated man with his body and Sam let it happen, leaning backward until his back met the support of the slippery log.

As if stupefied by the speed of events, scared by the feeling of being left behind and kind of lost, Sam suddenly grabbed Casey's throat, softly but firmly, and pushed him away slightly. For a couple of seconds he kept the other man at arm's length, his face completely fathomless. Rain, together with tears, was dripping from one wet face onto another in oppressive silence, full of tension. Pathetic begging overflowing from wet, amber eyes drowned in black holes that gave no sign of sympathy; no sign of anything. Casey felt that something inside him was starting to crumble. He was at his limit, and his aching heart could endure no more.

It hurt as if it was that poor heart of his that was being stabbed when Sam's knee painfully pressed Casey's crotch, shoving his trembling body farther away. Surprisingly enough, Casey finally became weak enough to let everything go and just give up. He relaxed, somehow relieved, and then...he felt a hand between his legs. Panicked, he gave Sam an alarmed look. Black eyes still stared at him, empty and hypnotizing. The hand unzipped his trousers and slipped beneath his underwear, grabbing the soft flesh that reacted with a shudder of tentative pleasure, which gradually spread throughout his whole cold body. Casey made a muffled sound, something in between a sob and a grunt, and his head dropped low, covering Sam's chest with a tangle of wet hair. Did he want it? Yes, probably. But that touch felt so dirty, so out of place. It was a pleasure that was not pleasant at all, making him feel disgusting and guilty.

Sam's hand kept caressing him and Casey's thighs opened wider to receive the touch, his body bent forward, his knees spread. Then the hand stopped. Casey didn't raise his head, not ready for anything that might come next, and eventually the body under him started to fidget. He rose a bit on his hands, dug into the thick sand, to let Sam do whatever he was going to. The dark-skinned man lifted his hips slightly; with stiff fingers he undid his pants and lowered them, uncovering enticing, slanting muscles that met at his abdomen. Then he turned onto his belly, and placing his head on the log he fished around in his back pocket. He pulled out a small pink square packet. Strawberries. He didn't like strawberries, but most people did so he kept it just in case. He reached his hand out behind his head, not looking at Casey.

"Take it," he said calmly.

"What for?" Casey asked stupidly, but Sam didn't comment, just snorted briefly with laughter.

"Take it!"

"I don't like strawberries...." Casey was still a little off, his thoughts wandering over some weird paths.

"Yeah, me neither."

Casey thought he heard Sam's voice break at the end, but that wasn't like Sam. He must have imagined it. He shook his head and clung to Sam's back, feeling the touch of his own dripping wet shirt pressed against his cold skin and the deep rhythm of the other man's heart.

"Oh, fuck." Sam twitched, his anger audible. "Just fuckin' do it!" He shook the condom he still held between his fingers like a cigarette. There was something inside him that desperately wanted to be crushed. He wanted to hit rock bottom. Pain. Enslavement. Hell. Maybe then his mind could rest.

Casey grabbed the packet and it wasn't until then that the meaning of the whole situation reached his consciousness. My God! It was—

It was fucking scary. Yeah, he'd dreamt of this countless times. Well, no, he had no courage to even dream about it! But he had wanted it. He had come there for it. And now he was being given it, yet....

"Shit," he whispered, trying to pull himself together. The condom in his hand trembled like a leaf.

"Now or never, Cas." Sam expressed all Casey's raging feelings in words and it only made things tougher. "You know that as well as I do."

Yes, he did. And he didn't feel fit to deal with it.

He sat down on Sam's thighs. His feet were so cold he couldn't feel them any more; his teeth were chattering. With his pale hands he reached for the waist of Sam's pants and hesitantly pulled them farther down, revealing a strong, rounded ass. Under the white shirt that clung voraciously to his fingers, as if trying to stop them, he brushed the dark skin along the spine from the lower back to the tailbone and lightly squeezed the left buttock. Sam reacted with a twitch he couldn't help, and both of them knew it had nothing to do with pleasure.

Casey was close to tears. That's so fucking gross, he thought. Pathetic! His body and mind drooped, his head hanging on his aching chest, his hands lying numbly on his thighs, and his vital part completely useless: shrunk and limp. After a short yet heavy battle with everything that was making him so miserable, he slipped the condom back into Sam's pocket. Somewhat absentmindedly he caressed the naked butt and sobbed. He wanted to say he couldn't, that he was sorry, whatever. But he just cried, a big lump blocking his throat.

He was too drained to realize that the body under him relaxed and shivered a few times.

---

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Your turn now :)
What do you think?
You like the way things are going or not?

I promise to give you something really intense in the next chapter ;)