Title: The Trouble with Gary (Young Men's Fancies #4)
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: jat_sapphire@yahoo.com
Series: pre-TOS
Rating: [R]
Codes: K/MSummary: Kirk's spring break, senior year at Starfleet Academy. Fourth in “Young Men’s Fancies” series. About fifteen months after the events of YMF #3 and 5 months after Kirk and Ruth break up.
Archive: Yes, please. Keep headings and disclaimers.
Disclaimer: Star Trek and most of the characters here are Paramount's. I borrowed Winona and the farm from other fans. I don't make money at this.
Series Notes:
These stories are about Kirk's early sexual and emotional life; I write him as bisexual. Previous installments are "That Fairness Thing," "Rain Check," and "Party Like It's '99" This particular section also intersects with part of "Machine Child and the Wild Ape."
Young Men's Fancies
#4, The Trouble with Gary
*****
March, Jim's Senior Year
***Jim didn't know why Gary wouldn't have sex with him.
All Spring Break he wondered about the possibility, especially after the day Jim went up to the attic to roust Gary out of the window alcove where he seemed to be spending the week. Jim ended up wrestling with him and would have won but that Gary pulled him into one of the hotter kisses he'd ever had. Gary rolled them both over, cradling Jim's head in his hands and crouching over him like an amorous vampire. Jim craned his head up and pulled Gary down, but Gary resisted, kept the position he'd taken, touching Jim only where his legs straddled Jim's waist and his hands held Jim's skull and his mouth drank from Jim's. Pulled back a little and nibbled Jim's lips. Moved in again and slid his tongue along the roof of Jim's mouth. It seemed to go on for a very long while, and Gary's eyes were closed the whole time, and Jim was hard and felt just the nudging tip of Gary's cock, and then suddenly Gary let go and stood up.
"No. I . . . No," said Gary, as if in answer to some unspoken demand. He shook his head and clenched his fists.
"Gary - " said Jim, and then his mother's voice called to them. Lunch was ready. Gary vanished down the stairs. Jim sat up, feeling dazed. He could still taste Gary's tongue and the soft places it had rasped were tingling.
"Jim?" - his mother's voice, still remote.
"Yeah, Mom, coming," he said, and he nearly had been, and that made him grin. He got up, dusted himself off, slapping the back of his shorts, and went down. But Gary wasn't at the kitchen table.
"He's washing his hands," said his mother, "and you could stand to do the same. How on earth did you get cobwebs in your hair?"
"Oh, we were in the attic," Jim said.
She shook her head but said only, "Use the kitchen sink," so he did, and was just smoothing back his hair and reaching for a towel when he heard her say, "Sit anywhere," and Gary's voice mumbling some reply. Gary seemed absolutely incapable of talking to Jim's mother, who usually charmed his friends in no time flat. Jim couldn't figure it out but right now he didn't think about it - he could feel where Gary was in the room without even looking, like a stove, warmth beating against his skin from Gary's direction. And when he turned and sat at the table, every movement of Gary's hands and arms and jaw drew Jim's eyes. It was all he could do not to stare, to sit and eat himself, so not counting a few remarks his mother made about the weather and the food, they ate in silence. Jim cleared away his plate and put it in the washer and would not have been able to say what had been on it. Gary reached past with his own plate and Jim looked up and met his gaze at last. Gary's eyes were wide and dark; his mouth still seemed flushed, and all Jim wanted was to grab and kiss him again, but couldn't bring himself to do it in front of his mother.
"You haven't even seen the barn yet, have you?" he asked, his voice involuntarily low.
"No," Gary answered.
"Come on, then, I'll show you." He led the way out the back door, across the porch and down the three wooden stairs, along the path edged with narrow flower beds where nothing yet bloomed. Again he knew without turning how Gary first hesitated, and then followed closely, and then, self-consciously, dropped behind again. They passed his mother's little bower with the long wooden swing hanging between arched trellises covered with bare vines, and the tool shed like a toy version of the barn. The path ended and Gary caught up to walk beside him across the grass.
"Aren't barns pretty much alike?" Gary asked.
"Depends what's in them."
"What's in yours?"
"Horses . . . and a hayloft." Jim smiled. "Don't you want to see the hayloft?"
"Oh, no," said Gary, "no more cobwebs." He reached out, tentatively, and Jim stood so still he almost wasn't breathing, but all Gary did was hook a cobweb out of the hair above Jim's collar, without even touching him. "You had that whole list of things to do - " the ghost of Gary's rakish grin was on his face - "I don't even remember them. Mmm, say again?"
"We could go riding," Jim suggested, though his heart was not in it. "Do you like to do that?"
And suddenly the moment twisted, anger flared on Gary's face and his hand, still half raised, snapped down to his side. "Where do you think I've been living? When did you think I'd learn to ride a horse?"
"Now, if you want." Jim tried desperately to get back to the warm spot they'd been in. "Gar, it's easy, I've taught people before." He reached out to grasp Gary's arm, but he stepped away. "Or we don't have to, it's just a thing to do." A small smile. "I'd rather go back to what we were doing in the attic anyway."
Gary's face was immobile. "Show me the horses," he said.
He was still pale and stiff in the barn, and when Topaz thrust her head over the half-door of her stall, he stepped back, out of the way of her questing nose. Jim realized Gary had never seen a real horse, certainly not closely enough to realize what large animals they were.
Tope nudged Jim's shoulder, and he rubbed up and down her nose and patted her neck until her ears stopped flicking back and forth and the white edge around her eye was gone. Now if he could get Gary to settle down he'd be two for two.
"Gary, come touch her," Jim said in his most soothing voice; "she can feel you're nervous." He kept his own hands on the horse as Gary stepped forward, and they stroked the warm fur together. And Gary did relax, gradually, and then looked up at Jim and smiled the way he hadn't in - Jim wasn't sure how long, but in the state he was in twenty minutes felt like forever. "She's the one I want to saddle for you," he said now over the tenderness and lust burning in his chest. He hadn't felt this since Ruth. The last thing he wanted to do was walk away to where the saddles were - he wanted to go on diving into Gary's brown eyes - but Gary looked away and began to rub the horse's neck, and Jim felt he had promised. Maybe Gary needed space.
He pulled his hands away with an effort, and said, "Stay with her," and went for the saddle. He checked it over and put it on the stand and came back to get Topaz, and Gary moved aside and watched hard, but impersonally, seeming more interested in the process than in Jim doing it. Jim wondered how long he had wanted to learn horseback riding and exactly why he hadn't. But some of the blood must have gone back to his brain at last, because he knew better than to ask.
Jim led Topaz out to the paddock, and Gary followed. Jim mounted, demonstrating, and then dismounted, very aware of Gary's eyes on his back, or his ass, or his legs . . . Jim hoped the interest was sexual but was no longer sure. When he turned, Gary's look was enigmatic. "You try," said Jim. "Take as many tries as you need - Topaz is a good, steady girl."
Gary's face was set, and he moved past Jim and took the stirrup from him without speaking. Gary's foot in the stirrup, Gary's hands on the saddle, Gary's muscles tightening as he braced himself - Jim did have a pretty good view, and part of his mind enjoyed it while another part automatically assessed the position and the amount and direction of the thrust Gary was using. It wasn't quite right, and Topaz shifted her weight, and Gary caught his ribs on the saddle, slid, and dropped down again.
"That usually hurts," said Jim, "your ankle OK?"
"Yeah, mmm, yeah," Gary said absentmindedly, eyes moving from horse to stirrup to saddle. He took his forward hand off the saddle horn and patted Topaz's neck. "Good girl," he said, and Jim felt a surge of satisfaction at the tone of Gary's voice. Gary readjusted and took a breath and heaved himself up into the saddle, not as smoothly as Jim had but better than most beginners. He sat for a moment looking between the horse's ears, then around the paddock from his new height, then down at Jim. The sun edged his figure with light and he looked calm and confident. Jim took a few steps and put his hands on Gary's leg and Topaz's side and smiled up at his gorgeous friend, and he knew his heart was in his face but he didn't care. Gary smiled down.
It was a moment Jim would remember for years.
"I could have sworn this horseback riding thing included moving around," said Gary.
They worked in the paddock for a couple of hours, then rubbed Topaz down and took a walk over one of the trails they might ride later, and talked about horses and riding, and Jim talked about teaching his young cousins. That was the first time the constraint came back, a little, and Gary looked sidelong at Jim and asked in a voice that was not as casual as he obviously meant to be, "You have a big extended family?"
"Not so big," Jim said, "Mom's an only child and Dad only had one brother - like me. So there's Uncle Peter and his three kids, and Grandma Evans, Mom's mother - now. Dad's father used to live here, help Mom out, until he couldn't any more." Grandpa had died of a stroke while Jim was lost on Tarsus, and even his things were mostly gone by the time Jim got back. He didn't want to talk about that, but the memory pulled in the corners of his mouth and he saw Gary looking curiously at him. "And you?" he asked to get away from the topic.
Gary looked away. "No." He said no more and Jim did not push him.
They were walking along the top of a tree-lined ridge and had reached a gap in the high brown weeds and the bundles of sticks bristling with small green leaves. "Oh look," Jim said unnecessarily, and they both paused. The field below was planted in soybean, and little clusters of green dotted the dark furrows; the sun was low enough to light all the buds and leaves and grass as if from within; the clouds streaked across the sky were getting dimly gold and rose though the sun was not actually setting yet.
"I suppose," said Gary harshly, "that someday this will all be yours."
"No," said Jim mildly, having seen this reaction in other people, "mostly Sam's, I think. My older brother. Sam's more likely to live here, or on Earth anyway, and he's already engaged to Aurelan, and they plan to have kids. Mom knows what it's like when the main owner's in space somewhere all the time. Not good. You and I, Gar, we're not farmers."
Gary was watching Jim again. When he didn't speak, Jim glanced over and caught him at it, and for a long moment they just looked before Gary said, much more softly, "Do you mind?"
"No. A little. Well, truth is, sometimes I mind a lot and sometimes not at all. I want space. I want to go a long way and do a lot of wild important things - " he laughed a little - "and command aa ship, and all that. But maybe, maybe someday I'll want to come back, raise horses, be more than just Uncle Jim who has the same guest room whenever he's got Earth shore leave. But by that time probably Sam's kids will be grown and doing it all themselves, they won't want some old spacer getting in their way. I don't know." He paused, looked down at the path, scuffed a toe under one corner of a fist-sized rock and tried to pry it out of the ground. Gary's eyes were still on him, he knew, but it was easier not to meet them just now. "Right up until last year, I still kind of assumed I'd marry somebody, and if they had a ground job and could telecommute they could live here, be company for Mom, you know. But Mom went through that and I've been thinking it isn't - " he laughed again because the phrase made him self-conscious - "isn't fair to anybody to make them wait that way. I've seen it with Mom and Dad." He gave up on the rock and looked up. Gary was still watching, his face quiet and open. If only he was like that more often, or just sweet and hot the way he was in the attic, if only people weren't so damn complicated and full of secrets, if only the wind wasn't chilly and the sun getting low, so they could just lie down in the grass and let their bodies do the talking. But it was almost dinner time. Jim took Gary's hand and held it firmly and said, "We'd better get back."
For a little while Gary's fingers tightened, and he wasn't angry or withdrawn, but he let go of Jim's hand and walked ahead on the path, and all the way to the farmhouse Jim looked at the muscular back and wondered what the hell was going on.
The next morning, Jim woke with a half-remembered dream and an erection and lay running hands over skin and imagining -
Jim gets up, throws on his robe, walks down the hallway to Gary's room, and though he'd heard the bolt slide shut the previous night, it's undone now; the door is just ajar and he sees the light; Gary left the curtains open. Jim touches the door and it swings inward. There is the corner of the bed, the blankets mussed, the mound of Gary's feet, the shape of his body under the covers. He is lying on his back with one arm across his face. Jim goes in as silently as the sun and treads through patches of warm light to the bed. He trails his fingers across the lightly furred forearm to the hand, and Gary raises the arm and looks at him. Yes, just like some of the looks before, like he wanted to swallow Jim whole. Jim pulls down the covers slowly, slow-ly, feeling Gary's skin with the tips of his fingers, and Gary just lies there watching.Or Jim says to Gary, "Turn over, I'm sure you're stiff from riding yesterday, let me help," and Gary flips back the covers and turns onto his stomach. He sleeps nude, just as Jim does. For a moment Jim can't even touch him, looking is so good, all those muscles and that skin Gary's clothes have been covering. A streak of sun from the window falls across Gary's ass. Jim doesn't want to scare him off or rush this, so he starts up on Gary's shoulders, rubbing, digging in his fingers, and the muscles are pretty relaxed already but are so warm and wonderful to touch that he keeps manipulating them. Over the hard edges of shoulder blades. Down the bumpy ridge of the spine, circling with his thumbs here, here, here, down either side.
Jim turned on his side so he could knuckle either side of his own spine while his other hand was on his cock.
Down to where the natural indentations are, and by this time Gary is breathing harshly into his pillow and his ass is tight . . . Jim hits it with the flat of his hand, the slap sounding loud in the quiet room, and Gary jumps.
"Huh!" Jim half-laughed, aching hard, his eyes shut so tightly he saw wheels of light. He stroked his own ass.
No, Jim doesn't spank him. He just brushes his fingertips across the tight skin. Gary shivers. Jim circles with both palms on Gary's ass, then runs his hands down the backs of Gary's legs clear to the soles of his feet, where he'll begin to massage in earnest. He picks up one of those broad feet, strong and flat like Gary's hands, and begins to knead it with his thumbs -
Despite the fact that he had already stopped pumping himself and was trying to hold back, Jim could no longer keep himself from coming, and he twisted into the sheets and gritted his teeth as the semen spurted out of him. Then lay still. What a mess. And he never even finished the fantasy! He sighed, wiped himself with the drier part of the top sheet, and then got up, shivering a little, and stripped the bed.Gary's door stayed bolted. After breakfast Jim drank a slow cup of coffee and looked at a newscast, still trying not to think about Gary in bed, and then went upstairs for a sweater. As he was emerging from his room, Gary came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist and another one over his shoulders, moving as if his legs ached. Jim's fantasy came back to him so vividly that though he gripped the doorframe with both hands, what he felt was Gary's skin.
"Hullo, Jim," said Gary.
"How are you?" Jim asked him, and then clenched his teeth and did not mention stiff muscles or massages.
"Slept great," Gary said. "Too great, huh?"
"We're on vacation," Jim shrugged. "There's no schedule." And Gary grinned and walked past to his room again, and Jim gazed after him and wondered.
He did that a lot, the rest of the day and the next, as they did most of the things he'd told Gary they might do - well, he skipped the girl-watching, and Gary didn't seem to miss it. He was doing a lot of Jim-watching, and Jim certainly didn't mind but could have done with some more Jim-touching, of which there was damn little.
At night in the yard, rocking in the swing and gazing at the field of stars they both meant to explore, Jim slipped his arm around Gary's waist and felt his back straighten, then relax. A few seconds later, Gary leaned out to raise his arm and then resettled with his elbow on the back of the swing and his hand in Jim's hair. It was cozy, but definitely not all Jim had in mind. He had been careful and self-controlled, and almost nothing had happened all Spring Break. There wasn't much of this free time left. He waited only a few more minutes and then said, "Gary."
"Umm?"
Well, he sounded relaxed enough. Jim brought his other arm across, turned slightly so he held Gary closer, and said, "Gary, why aren't we fucking?"
Gary pulled away sharply, stood up, walked away from the swing and the house without saying a word.
After a stunned second, Jim got up and went after him, not quite running. "Gary?"
Gary stopped but didn't turn. Jim caught up to him, reached out, thought twice and didn't touch the rigid shoulder.
"Let me go!" Gary said, as though Jim had grabbed him. "Let me go!" And this time he was the one who almost ran. Jim didn't follow. He went back to the swing and sat for a while, though he didn't really believe Gary would come back there. And he was right. And the stars were eventually too indifferent, so he went inside and got himself a cup of decaffeinated coffee to warm up before he went to his empty bed.
His mother came into the kitchen while he was drinking it, took in his expression and Gary's absence, and came to the table, wrapping her robe more tightly around her and retying the belt. She pulled his head over to kiss him on the hair, and held him for a minute or so. Then she let go.
"I hated being eighteen myself," she said cryptically, and went back upstairs.
The next morning they all pretended nothing had happened. Well, nothing had. That was the trouble.
There was only this day left of the break and it felt like a year. The weather even soured, cloudy and windy and not-quite-raining. Gary spent most of it reading again, though at least now he was doing it in the living room and not in the attic.
That evening, the last before they were going back to California, Jim didn't want to go to bed and Gary didn't seem to want to, either. Jim's mother went upstairs at around eleven, and then Jim and Gary just read, silently, under their separate lamps. The house was very quiet. The shadows up around the ceiling and down the corners of the room seemed thicker than usual. Jim stole glances at Gary, noting the light on his hair and forehead, shoulders and legs, crossed ankles and feet, and on his hand as it rose and languidly tapped the Next key. Then Jim turned a page of his own and read, and turned another page without having looked at Gary and kept reading. And then he did look up and found Gary gazing at him.
Mysterious. Ambiguous. Sexy. Jim stared back.
Gary set the bookpadd on the table and got up, and for a crazy moment Jim was certain he was going to walk across the rag rug and pull Jim up out of the chair and kiss him. "I'm turning in," Gary said instead.
Jim wanted to say, 'I'll go with you. I'll tuck you in. I'll blow you, would you like that?'
"Good night," he really said, but he suspected his other thoughts were showing clearly enough.
Gary hesitated. "I'm sorry," he said.
Jim looked at the unrevealing face. Then nodded. By rights he should have felt embarrassed - wasn't Gary saying he didn't want him? - but instead there was a kind of dull pressure in his chest and throat, something he didn't want to examine.
"It was a good vacation," Gary said, not very believably.
Jim tried a social lie of his own. "Maybe we'll do it again sometime."
After another pause, Gary said, "Maybe," and then, "Good night," and left.
Jim didn't want to read any more, but he let Gary get upstairs and into the guest room before he put his book away, shut off the lamps, and went to his own bedroom.
He looked at the bolted door as he passed it. He remembered the feel of Gary's fingers in his hair.
Maybe. Sometime.
**end of "The Trouble with Gary" **
Continued in "The No-Win Scenario"