"Stuff" Happens

So sorry it took me so long to update. My computer is one of those crappy \'put together\'s and it gets viruses as often as the sun sets in the evening :) I was lucky enough today that it let me log on to the internet, so I took my chances. I don\'t have the money to get it fixed right now, so I\'m going to have to battle with it until I can afford to send it off somewhere.

Even though I can\'t be here like I want to because of my \'problem\', I\'m still writing here at home. This brain is full of ideas! Anyway, Thank you\'s go out to you beautiful people out there who have reviewed. And for those of you who have been recently reviewing, Going to Camp, it is not going to be scrapped. I just need thoughts on how to move it along. I love that story too much to give up on it though. If anybody would like to help me with that story, let me know in your review here.

Enjoy!

--Scribbles05

Chapter VI


Five thirty had finally came and Austin pulled in to the driveway. Max and Regina were still outside from earlier; now just relaxing and enjoying the setting sun and cool breeze. “Welcome home.” Regina said to him when he walked to where they were seated.

“Thanks. You two been enjoying yourselves while I’ve been gone?”

“Yeah. For once, we actually had a great day. Didn’t we, Max?” She lightly hit the man on his arm to get his attention.

Max, who had been looking down at the floor since Austin got home answered. “Yeah.” Regina frowned at how he all of a sudden clammed up again. *He was doing so well today.* She thought.

Austin looked at Max’s rather drab response with a roll of the eyes. “If you say so.” He sighed.

“Well,” Regina said as she finally stood up from her chair after spending long hours sitting, and stretched her back out. “Time to go.” She started to walk to her car.

“See you tomorrow, Regina.” Austin said as she passed. “And be careful out there driving home. It’s coming up a rain cloud.”

“I will, Mom. Bye.” She laughed.

Austin turned back to the now silent Max and looked at him for a minute. “You ready to go back inside?” Max nodded and Austin wheeled his lover back inside the house.

************

The storm grew harder as the lightening flashed so bright, it lit up the night sky, the rain fell so hard, it sounded like a river, and the thunder sounded so, you’d think it was a band of drums. One lightening bolt flashed and hit the street’s power line, turning all the lights in the neighborhood off.

Both now finished with doing Max’s leg exercises and their shower together, Max and Austin sat together in the livingroom. “I found more candles.” Austin said as he blindly walked back into the room and placed the glass containers of wax on the coffee table. Striking a match, he lit them and added them to the other two lit candles on the table. “That ought to be enough to last us.” Max had been silent for a while now. At this point, Austin didn’t know if he was talking to Max or to himself.

He too fell silent after not getting any responses and just sat on the floor, against the couch, rested his head back on the chair’s cushions, and listened to the storm. The sounds of nature taking it’s course outside, had started to lull Austin into a sleep, and he barely heard Max’s soft, “I’m sorry.”

Austin opened his eyes and looked at Max. The candles were able to give him a slight golden view of his lover. He WAS able to see his face though. It looked peaceful, sincere, apologetic. “What did you say?”

“I–I said I’m sorry. For the way I’ve been acting........I shouldn’t have treated you like that.” Austin was silent. He didn’t know what to say. He turned his body to face Max’s and listened. “When I got into this accident and became paralyzed, I thought that you wouldn’t want me anymore. I felt like your care for me had become more of an obligation than anything else. I know how you are. I know that when bad things happen, you just swallow it up and go with the punches. That’s why I acted the way I did around you. I wanted to be so mean to you that you’d leave and find someone else. I knew that if I pushed you enough, that would be the only way I could get you to move on and live your life. The truth is, I don’t want you to go. I love you too much to let you go.”

“Don’t say things like that, Max. I could never leave you, you know that. What I’m doing for you; the baths, filling medications, helping you get around and dressed, it’s not done out of obligation. It’s done out of love. When we declared ourselves to each other before you shipped out, when I said I’d be by your side through the good and the bad, I meant it.” Austin kneeled in front of Max and placed his hands on the man’s knees. “Yes, I know that being paralyzed is not a good thing, but I’d take this any day over not having you around at all.” He smiled. “I thought that all this time, you were pushing me away because you had found another man while overseas and just didn’t want me anymore.”

“No. You’re the only one I want.”

Austin’s smile grew bigger and he leaned forward and kissed Max. “Lie down with me?” He asked. Max nodded. “Okay. I’ll be right back.” Austin left the livingroom and returned carrying a thick comforter folded up in his arms. The blanket was so thick, Austin could barely see overtop it. Max laughed when he saw Austin trying to carry it in the livingroom.

“What are you doing?” He asked the smaller man.

“It’s to put on the floor.” Austin spread the comforter out on the hardwood. “That way, we won’t be uncomfortable on this hard floor.” He walked to his lover and locked the wheels of his chair. Grabbing him by the waist, Austin lifted Max and placed him on the floor. “Whew.” He said as he laid down next to Max. “I should be gaining muscle mass with all the times I’ve had to pick you up.”

Max lifted his lover’s arm to examine it. “And yet, you’ve still got that lean, compact, body of yours.” He smiled.

Austin gave him a fake smile. “Funny.”

The couple laid together, wrapped in the large blanket, and listened to the storm. It had stilled itself to just rain and light thunder, but lights up and down the street had remained off. Austin rested his head on Max’s shoulder and gently rubbed circles over the man’s shirt clad abs with the tips of his fingers. Max held an arm around Austin’s shoulders and rotated between caressing his upper arm and running his fingers through the dark brown hair. But, he grew still when he felt his lover’s hand run down his stomach and rest on his dick. He massaged the covered area slowly. “Can you feel this?”

“......Yes.” Max managed to breathe out.

“Good. If you didn’t, we’d have a problem.” Crawling under the blanket, Austin pulled down Max’s boxers and sucked him.

Max groaned as he sat up on his elbows and watched as Austin’s covered head bounced up and down over his groin. Suddenly feeling too confined, he peeled his shirt off and tilted his head back, when Austin poked a hand out from under the comforter, ran it up his abs, his chest, and rested it over Max’s lips. His thumb slipped in Max’s mouth and sucked on it. He could feel Austin moan around his now fully erect cock.

Austin pulled off Max and moved the man’s staff to one side, so he could suck on the testicles. He could feel Max starting to shake and knew his lover was almost ready to blow, so he pulled back. He laid himself on top of Max and kissed him repeatedly as he reached for the small lubricant he had in his pajama pants. “You always keep lube in your pants now?” Max asked.

“No. Though, that might be a good idea.” Austin pulled off his bottoms and placed his knees snugly against the sides of Max’s waist. “Give me your hand.” Max gave him his hand and Austin poured the clear substance on the fingers. Bending back over, he let Max find his way to his entrance. When he did, he pushed one finger inside with ease, then another. Austin moaned.

“It HAS been a long time, hasn’t it? You’re as tight as a fist. Before I left, I could at least get three fingers in you.”

Austin closed his eyes as Max started to scissor him. He was humping against them slowly before he knew it. “Well, then I was gettin’ it on a regular.” He panted.

“I’m going to put another in, are you ready?” His lover nodded. He pushed a third finger inside the hot entrance and Austin made a whimpering noise. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.” Austin whispered back.

After a few minutes, Max finally pulled out and prepared himself with the lubricant. But before he could put himself in position, Austin moved his hand away. “Let me do it.” So, Max sat up on his elbows and watched as Austin held his dick straight up and slowly sat down on it. He took it an inch at a time, becoming re-accustomed to the feeling of being filled by another man, namely, Max.

He gave a long moan when Max grazed over his prostate. When he finally reached the base, he leaned over Max, with both arms holding him up, and started to have slow sex. Max pulled his lover’s shirt over his head and while holding on to Austin’s narrow waist, he helped guide the hips as they grinded into his groin in a strong rocking motion.

The sex went on for nearly an hour, before Max heard a loud moan then a whimper. He felt a tightening around him and Austin started to fuck faster. It kind of surprised Max. Normally, Austin would very occasionally like to have fast sex. He’d much rather make love in a slow lingering manner, so they could prolong the ecstacy. So Max let go of his grip on Austin’s waist, laying his hands by his side, and watched –with great enjoyment– his younger lover fuck himself into a frenzy. Austin hadn’t touched his own hard-on since they started. Max guessed from the angle Austin was moving in, he had found his own prostate and was getting off that way.

Austin’s arms couldn’t hold him up anymore and he collapsed on top of Max. Cradling his face in his lover’s neck, he never missed a beat as he kept moving. Max could feel a burning down in his loins and he knew he was getting close to completion. His pants started to get louder and he wrapped his arms around Austin and came. Austin followed soon after, groaning as he spurted jets of come between the both of them, his hips jerking in post orgasmic spasms.

“Damn,” Max started, still panting. “What got into you?”

“You. Finally.” Austin gave him a lazy smile.

Max held Austin as they relaxed and got their senses back. The storm had long since finished sometime in the middle of their coitus. Suddenly, the lights turned back on. The sounds of the refrigerator and the air conditioning, was another sign that the storm had passed. Austin chuckled. “Sex during a storm. That sounds a lot like the first time we got together, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. We were living in that teensy-ass apartment.”

“I liked our teensy-ass apartment.”

“You’re joking, right? The place was a hell hole. We lived on the eighth floor. Most of the time we had to walk that, because the elevator stayed broken and the super was too stupid to get it fixed right. Heaven forbid the grocery days, when we had to carry bag after bag up those damn steps.”

“We had good memories there too.”

“Like........”

“We fell in love there.”

Max playfully brushed it off. “So?”

Austin gasped then laughed. “You ass.”

Max laughed with him for a while, but then his smile faded and he got serious. “Don’t go through with it.”

“Don’t go through with what?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday. Your boss, he’ll be expecting an answer from you. Tell him no.”

Austin sat up on his elbows and looked down at Max’s face. “What about you? If I tell him no, he’ll ruin you with the army. You’ll be exploited as a coward.........”

Max shrugged. “So what. I don’t care. No one is laying a hand on you, but me. And as far as my status in the army goes, you and I will know that what happened to me was not deliberate.”

“We’ll never find another job.”

“Your boss doesn’t have ‘friends’ in every city in the US. I find that hard to believe. If what you say is true and we won’t be able to get a job here, we’ll go to the next town, and the town after that, and the one after that. We’ll find some place. You know what, forget all that. That’s not what matters. What matters is, is that he’s not laying a finger on you and that’s all there is to it.”

Austin crawled off his lover and laid next to him. “Max, there’s too much at risk. We can’t...........”

“We can. Don’t think I won’t kill a man for you, because I will. My legs may not be working right now, but my hands work fine enough for me to pull a trigger.”

Austin turned his face away. “Don’t talk like that, Max.”

Max placed his hand on his love’s cheek and turned him back to face him. “It’s the truth. Even if he says it’s just for one night, that’s one night I’ll never forget. I would always remember that June, 18th was the night I let another man take you off and have his way with you. I can’t bear that, Austin. I can’t.” Tears started to form in Austin’s eyes and Max grabbed him in his arms.

************

There was a knock on the door Friday morning. Max wheeled over to the door and opened it. “Hi, Regina.” He said with a smile.

Regina was taken aback at Max’s cheerfulness. “Well hello, Max. Or should I start calling you sunshine?” She smiled.

Austin walked in the livingroom with his car keys in one hand and was trying to put on his black suit jacket with the other.

“You’re running late, Austin.” Max said.

“I know.” The younger man said as he fought with putting his other arm in the jacket. “Am I running late or am I just stalling?” He murmured to himself.

“You’re just running late.” Max replied for him. “You have nothing to stall for, right?”

Austin stopped frantically moving and looked at Max. “Yeah. You’re right. Okay. I’m going.” He leaned over and planted a kiss on his love’s full lips. Regina even noticed that though he WAS running later than usual, according to Austin, all time slowed down for that one kiss. Besides from the fact that it was opened mouthed, the kiss was more loving, romantic, and meaningful than all the others she’d witnessed. When they pulled away, back in rush-mode, Austin was out the door quicker than a bolt of lightening.

“Awwwwwwwww.” Regina said. “Are you guys speaking again?”

“Oh hell, here we go.” Max mumbled.

Regina smiled from ear to ear. “I see that storm last night didn’t just purify the earth, but your relationship as well. I knew something was different today when you opened the door. You’ve never been up and ready since I’ve been coming here. And a smile on your face? Mr. Sourpuss, smiled at me today.” Max put a hand on his forehead. “That make-up sex must’ve been explosive, because Austin is absolutely glowing. Is that what happened? Did you ‘make up’?”

“Could you stop talking about this?”

“It’s obvious you two rocked the sheets last night. I saw it all over that kiss just now. That kiss said, ‘If he didn’t have to work today, you guys would be in the sack right now’.”

Max tossed his hands up in defeat. “It’s like talking to damn brick wall. Regina, could you stop yapping for a minute. I need a favor from you.”

“What is it?”

“I need you to take me somewhere.”

“Where?”

************

Austin made it to work on time, by the skin of his teeth. Though he may not have looked it, he was scared out of his wits. Whatever decision he was going to make to Mr. Cutlis, would either break him or..........well, break him. That was the big problem. Both choices were bad ones. He didn’t want to tell Mr. Cutlis no and end up having Max court martialed for something he didn’t intend to do or risk their chances of ever getting a job. On the other hand, he didn’t want to tell Mr. Cutlis yes, and whore himself for the sake of his job and have to deal with remembering “That night” every time he saw his boss’s smirking face. He also believed Max last night when he said he’d kill Mr. Cutlis if he found out he put his hands on him. At least try to anyway. That would mean he’d be sent to court for that too. Either way, both he and Max were in deep shit.

Austin tried to do some work while he was there, since he did such a poor job on the previous article. Mr. Shutler was right. The hot topic in the city was about the child molestation case and other newspapers were rolling in news. Also, as predicted by Shutler, no one gave a shit about Miss Doppleganger turning 101. Austin decided to wait until closing time to talk to Mr. Cutlis. That way, other employees would be more focused on cleaning off their desks and heading home, than wanting to talk to the boss, and interrupting their conversation.

Other than that little piece of information, the day went smooth. Jamieson Cole got on his nerves, Mr. Shutler kept reminding him of his next deadline every time he passed by his cubicle, the normal stuff. Austin just stayed focused on his article to get him through the day. And by the end of the work day, he had completed 70% of his copy. That was a very good thing, considering the deadline for it was next week.

“Say, Evans.” Jamieson started, just as he caught Austin making his way to the back where Mr. Cutlis’ office was.

Austin rolled his eyes before he turned around with a polite smile on his face. “Yeah, Jamieson?”

“What do you say we hang out tonight? Go paint the town red. Pick up some hot chicks.”

*You poor sap.* Austin thought. “No thanks, man. Not really in the mood for that tonight.”

Jamieson grew this look on his face, like he just had an epiphany. “Ooooooooh. I know why.” *He doesn’t know I’m gay, does he? Should I be nervous?* “You’re afraid I’ll take all the beautiful women and leave you with scraps.” He did that obnoxious laugh again. You know, the one where his belly lifts up and down.

*Why in the world was I even worried?* “You got me, Jamieson. That’s exactly why. We’re on two different playing levels.”

“Aw,” He patted Austin on the back. “You’re my buddy, Austin. You know I’d never leave you with grade B women. I’ll help you pick up one or two.”

Austin smiled. “And I really do appreciate it, but I’m just not feeling it tonight.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Okay. I’m going then.”

“Alright.” Austin said as his dorky co-worker walked away. “Try not to take them all tonight, Casanova. Leave me one or two, will ya?”

“Will do!” Jamieson yelled back before he walked out.

Austin shook his head and smiled. *To be honest, I’d take “painting the town red” with Jamieson any day, over having to deal with Mr. Cutlis.*

************

Austin knocked his boss’s door and waited. “Come in, Austin.” The man said in a very calm voice. Austin walked inside the large office and found his boss over by his miniature golf setup, practicing his putting. His jacket was off, and he stood in a black suit, white shirt, red tie, and his favorite red suspenders, with his putter in his hands. “Shut the door, would you.” He said, while never taking his eyes off the club and ball by his feet. Austin complied and shut the door behind him.

Just being in the office again was making Austin uneasy. So uneasy, he couldn’t find any words to say. He just stood there and watched as Mr. Cutlis took two test swings, before he finally hit the ball over the fake grass. The ball crept a ways down the green, then it circled around the hole, but didn’t go in. “Aw, damn.” He said with his deep bass voice. He sighed then shrugged his shoulders. “Oh well. Can’t have everything.” He smiled. *Yeah right. Considering you can get the life story on every person in this city with a simple phone call, I doubt that bit of logic applies to you.* Austin thought. Mr. Cutlis placed his putter in his golf bag by the far wall and sat down at his desk. “Well don’t just stand there, Evans. Sit down. You’ll give me a neck strain.” Again, Austin complied and sat down at the leather chair in front of the large man, without a word. “Well? What’s this about?”

Austin looked almost shocked. *He forgot? Could I be that lucky? Then again, based on that arrogant look on his face, I think this is just another of his games. The bastard is probably getting off on watching me practically sweat.* “You told me Tuesday, that you had a way to help me.............get back in balance. Today was the day I was to tell you yes or no.”

Mr. Cutlis smiled and sat back in his chair. “Oh yes. I remember now.” He looked Austin square in his eyes. “And your answer is?”

Austin found himself grabbing hold of the chair’s armrests and gripping them so tight, his knuckles turned white. “My an.........My answer.......My answer is no, Mr. Cutlis. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”

Mr. Cutlis shook his head. “You realize all the trouble that’s gonna come your way. All that, for what, Mr. Evans?”

“For my dignity. I care about myself and who I am too much, to whore myself like some prostitute. And also for my frie..........my boyfriend. I promised myself to only him. Nobody else. Those two things mean more to me than having a job or receiving any amount of money you bring my way.”

Mr. Cutlis chuckled as he ran his hand over his goatee. “And your Max. He knows about your decision, I presume?”

“He had a big part in my decision, yes.”

“He knows he’s ruined, right?”

“He doesn’t care about that.”

Mr. Cutlis managed to laugh. “I’ll give you a few months, then I’ll ask you that same question again. We’ll see then if he cares about it.” He sighed. “Okay. If that’s the way you want to go. Fine. I won’t force you.” He flipped through his small desk calender, like he was about to make an appointment for a casual meeting with executives. “I’ll give you until July 2nd. That gives you two weeks to get your stuff together. That includes articles that you are obligated to finish. Anything else?”

“Why? Why are you doing this to me? You said I’m one of your best writers, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then, why? It can’t be because I’m gay, is it?”

Mr. Cutlis laughed. “Heavens no, boy. If I had a problem with you being gay, I wouldn’t have asked to fuck you, would I? You’ll find out soon enough. You can go. Oh, and give my regards to Max. Tell him I hope he’s getting better.”

Austin opened the door and walked out. The building was empty when he left the office. Not a soul was in sight. Austin walked out the front door and began to walk down the street to find his car. *Somebody just shoot me and get it over with.*

More to come. *Hint* BIG event coming up next! R & R.

Don\'t forget to let me know if one of you would like to help with Going to Camp. If you don\'t hear from me immediately, it\'s because my computer is acting up at that moment and I can\'t get on the internet.