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First Time Vignette 4:
Scars
Originally posted to
TS in July 2001
Series: Fourth in a series of post-First Time for Everything vignettes
Disclaimers: The usual apply.
Spoilers: Up to "Out o' Time"
Notes: Effusive and heartfelt thanks to Grackle, the Official FTFE Editor
and Advisor, for being the absolute bestest. You are Almighty! *HUGS*
Dedicated: This one's for Pucky. Pet the poodle, baby!
Ratings/Warnings: Men. Fucking. Men Fucking Men. It's
really as simple as that.
Scars
“Is it botherin’ you?”
Toby stops squirming for a minute, frowning vaguely. “A little. It itches
more than anything, now.” He pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it
onto his bed, gingerly rubbing at the bandage covering his newest wound. “I
guess that means it’s healing. Think it’s okay to take this thing off?”
Chris shrugs without replying, and Toby begins peeling the tape away. “Dr.
Nathan said I lucked out. It could have been a lot worse.” Wincing, he
removes the last strip and lifts the gauze from his skin. “But I’ll tell
you, I’m starting to think I should stay the hell out of the gym.”
Chris glances at him sharply, his jaw muscles tensing, but Toby, still
studying his scar, doesn’t notice.
“Fuck, that’s nasty. Look, Chris. What do you think?”
Chris stretches out on his stomach across the bunk, silently gazing at the
uncovered wound. Torn, jagged edges, held together by invisible thread -- it
reminds Chris of them, him and Toby. In the gray light filtering through the
pod, the scar is a silvery stain against Beecher’s skin.
“I think that one’ll probably stick around for awhile.”
Toby tosses the gauze in the trash can and leans back against the sink. “Is
that the voice of experience?”
“You oughta know,” Chris retorts with a hard-edged smile. “You sure you
wanna go there, Beech?”
* * *
Beecher likes to talk. Maybe it’s the lawyer in him, but man, he’ll talk
about anything -- tell his whole life story if you show a little interest.
Offer up the right amount of pity, and he’ll yap at you all fucking day.
Like he figures other people give as much of a shit as he does. He says it
helps him “deal” with things -- as if he can wrap all his fuckups in words,
then file them away under “done” and let them all go.
And that’s bullshit. Fact is, there are some things you just shouldn’t talk
about. Things that don’t make anything better by telling.
* * *
“You recover pretty well,” Toby mutters, and Chris looks at him quizzically.
"I’m intimately familiar with almost every inch of your body, Chris. I haven’t
found any flaws.”
“Everybody has scars, Toby. You just can’t always see ‘em."
“Thank you for that moment of Zen.”
“What the fuck is the matter with you, Beecher? I’m not the one who stuck
that shank in your gut. You wanna make yourself fucking miserable, go right
ahead. Don’t drag me into it.”
“Easy for you to say,” Toby says irritably. “You’re not the one who was
bleeding all over the gym.”
“Just because I don’t wear a swastika on my ass don’t mean I haven’t done
time in that particular battle zone.”
Toby’s lips flatten into a thin line as he digests that. “You’ve never told
me.”
“Told you what.”
“About Vern,” Toby replies, cautiously. “About *you* and Vern...”
* * *
I don’t talk about it. Never have, at least not since that day in the gym,
and I only did then because I had to. Even that wasn’t the real truth, just
Schillinger’s own fucked up version. Beecher never asked me again, and we’re
both better off.
I could tell him, right now. I could tell him I was only seven-fucking-teen
when that Nazi asshole plowed his way into my life; just a goddamn kid. I
could say I woke up in a sweat every night, same way he does, at least until
I learned how to take it. I could tell him how much it fucked me up in the
head, changed the way I see things. And maybe he’d get it. I mean, shit –
here’s a guy who licked Schillinger’s boots with his tongue, a guy who put
on a dress and sang like a Vegas queen, with even the hacks looking on.
Yeah, Beecher could probably understand some of the things I’ve done.
* * *
“Why the fuck would I want to talk about that?”
“Sometimes it helps. Said says -- ”
A cold stare cuts off Toby’s words. “I don’t give a shit what that cocksucker
says, Beecher. Neither should you.”
“Look, Chris, I know you thought it was stupid. Crazy Beecher, trying to
make nice with the Nazi fuck who ruined his life. And hell, maybe it was.
But regardless of what he’s done to me, I have to live with what I did to
his son. Every day, I live with that on my conscience.”
“So fucking live with it, then.”
Sighing, Toby turns to the sink and picks up his toothbrush. “Not that simple.”
“Yeah, I know.” Keller rolls onto his back and closes his eyes. “Nothing ever is.”
* * *
What Beecher don’t know, maybe wouldn’t believe if I told him, is that him
and me share a lot of the same scars. Vern knew it, that’s why he chose me.
Who else would know how to work their way in, better than someone who’d been there? How to slip past suspicious defenses, soothe the nervous
animal Beecher was then -- same animal *I* was, before I learned how to turn
it around.
Taught by a fucking master. Both of us were. He’ll live with little Andrew
the same way I live with him, and nothing either one of us says will make
that go away.
Besides, talking got me a blade in my back. It got Beech a shank to the
side. So what the fuck is the point?
* * *
“Hey. Come here.”
Swiping his face with a towel, Toby glances over at Chris. “I thought we
were *talking*.”
“You were talking,” Chris says with a smirk. “Me, I got better ways to get
my point across.”
Toby stares at him for several beats, studying him, before tossing the towel
on the sink and moving forward without a word. Chris throws his legs over
the side of his bunk and rises to his feet, waiting for Toby to come to him.
Smiling wryly, Toby hooks his fingers into Chris’s waistband and pulls him forward.
Thrown somewhat off-guard, Chris eyes him suspiciously. "What, no closing
arguments?"
"Are you kidding me?" Toby laughs. "Keller, I've got self-medication down to
an art form." He presses his hand against the front of Chris's boxers,
molding his palm against the hardness there. “And believe me, this is as
good as any.” Before Chris can reply, Toby leans in, kissing him hard.
When they come up for air, Toby's hands are inside Chris's shorts, stroking
him. “You said something about making a point?”
"Crazy motherfucker." Chris mutters. Toby smiles against his mouth as they
move toward the shadows in the back of the pod.
* * *
Some scars are right out in the open, starin’ you right in the face. Every
minute of every fucking day, a reminder of what you’ve been through.
But others, they just disappear. They heal up so good that you find yourself
searching your skin just to see where they used to be – and that kind lets
you forget for a while, at least until you remember. Once you do, it don’t
matter how good it looks *now*. You see it, right there, just like it was.
Clear as fucking day.
* * *
Tongues clashing, hands twining, rigid cock against rigid cock, they grind
against the wall and against each other; a vertical retake of long-ago
lessons from the gym, merging into other lessons, more recently learned.
Toby catches his breath when Chris’s body comes full-length against him, pinning him to the wall with such force that it raises him up onto his toes.
A growl escapes from somewhere deep in his throat as he responds with equal
force, pulling Chris close and capturing him with hungry mouth and greedy hands.
Chris pulls away, panting. “Turn around.” Toby does so without hesitation,
and Chris is right up against him again – sleek chest to strong back, Chris’s
arms snaking around Toby’s waist and gripping his thighs, nudging them
firmly apart. He runs his hands up and down Toby’s sides as if searching for
something beneath the skin, and Toby laughs unsteadily.
“What is this, a shakedown?”
Chris smiles against the nape of his neck. “Thought you might be concealing
a weapon.”
“Well, considering that I’m practically naked, I’d say you’re safe.”
“You never know.” Chris presses his full weight against Toby's back,
grunting in pleasure when Toby meets the pressure and counters it, urging
him on. He reaches for Toby's arms and roughly caresses the length of them,
sliding his hands from shoulder to wrist and then back, drawing forth
memories of another kind of assault. Toby makes a harsh sound --
half-pleasure, half-remembered pain – but Chris gives him no room to
retreat. “Still hurt?”
"No, not exactly,” Toby manages. “They ache, sometimes.”
Nodding, Chris drops a hot kiss to the nape of his neck before moving lower.
His tongue burns a wet trail across Toby's back, nipping at sensitive skin
as he goes, and Toby gasps in surprise when Chris presses his mouth against
the new, exposed scar ----
"Fuck! Chris --"
----- flicking his tongue against the red, roughened skin, ignoring Toby's
halfhearted protests. Reaching around with one hand, he finds Toby's cock
and wraps his fingers around it, squeezing lightly. Toby moans, releasing a
shuddering breath, surrounded by competing sensations -- arching away from
the probing tongue, thrusting forward into Chris's hand.
Dropping to his knees, Chris removes Toby's shorts and exposes the swastika,
stark against prison-pale skin. Reclaiming Beecher's cock with one hand, he
clamps on to his waist with the other and presses his mouth to the ugly
tattoo -- kissing it, biting it, tracing it with his tongue. Toby moans
something incoherent, rocking his hips back and forth between Chris and the
wall, lost to everything in a near-mindless quest for release.
Suddenly Chris releases him, rising to his feet and swiftly removing his own
boxers. He spits into his hand and strokes himself, then presses forward
slowly, pushing himself inside, his eyes sliding closed as he feels Toby
open to him. Wrapping his arms around Toby’s waist he growls, deep and long,
and sinks his teeth into skin.
“Jesus Christ!” Toby inhales sharply, stiffening, then releases his breath
in a hiss when Chris reaches around again, stroking him fast and hard. “Keller…”
He groans, rocking forward once more, the sting from the bite dissolving into relief as he climaxes, arching into Chris’s hand.
Keller grits his teeth, gripping
Toby’s hips and thrusting into him roughly -- once, twice, three times, until
his own orgasm drives them both up to the wall, words and wounds forgotten.
* * *
And then there’s the scars that you never see at all. They’re in
you, too far down to get to. And the thing about those is, you don’t ever
know if they’re gone, or if they’re still fucking you up from inside.
But it don’t matter what kind they are; they’re all there, always there,
whether you see ‘em or not. You can tell everyone who will listen, or
pretend they don’t fucking exist. They’re still there... on you, in you,
can’t cut ‘em loose, any more than you could cut out your own fucking heart.
* * *
Chris slumps against Toby, wrapping his arms around him and closing his
eyes. “Fuck, Toby,” he breathes.
“Yeah.”
“Feelin’ better now?”
Toby snorts halfheartedly, his breath slowly returning to normal. “Well, I
think you made your point. Are they gone? Think you got them all?”
“Nah,” Chris says with a grin. “They’ll never be gone, baby. They’re part of
you now.” He leans his chin against Toby’s shoulder, his breath warm on Toby’s
ear. “Just like me.”
*
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