The City

One

If nothing else, this new health craze was having a positive effect, even if it was in ways not originally intended. Of course I had been getting more than enough exercise in and out of bed. I'd had more sex in the last six months than I had in the previous ten years put together. That combined with the fact that my partner frowned and fussed every time I tried to light up and said that if I wanted to put something really satisfying between my lips...

Well, you know.

The ban on smoking in public buildings was making those addicted to that particular vice get more exercise as they were forced to go outside to indulge. The back door of the bar was propped open and there was a steady stream of people rotating in and out as they puffed away in the back alley. There was enough second hand smoke curling back in through the door that between that and the empty pipe I was chewing on, it was enough to keep my own cravings under control.

Which was a good thing. I didn't want to get up and lose my seat, as I had already attracted the eye of a couple of shifty types circulating the room. They tended to spook easily and any sudden movements on my part might make them bolt and I would have to start all over again somewhere else.

My partner and I were working on a lead that a shipment of stolen rare books might be in town. They had disappeared from a shipping container on a freighter destined for Manhattan and the auction houses there. Best guess estimates on the lot were around five mil. A certain insurance carrier in Zurich was having kittens and had offered a sizable reward for all or even part of the collection.

Odds were that the collection had already been broken up and shipped around the world. It was too readily identifiable when left intact. Those who stole antiquities usually did so with a certain buyer in mind. And I had learned from experience that the filthy rich who collected such things were more often than not more interested in getting what they wanted than they were in how they were acquired. But whispers on the grapevine had intimated that at least part of the collection might be moving here.

It was worth a shot, anyway. The City had more bookstores per capita than anywhere else in the country. And the highest number of rare book dealers in the world. Only Christie's and Sotheby's saw more rare books in a year than we did in The City.

So I sat along the back wall of this once-smoky bar, in a booth by myself slowly sipping a scotch on the rocks and pretending to be reading a copy of Aliester Crowley's "Moonchild". It in itself was a pretty rare edition I had borrowed from a friend. A 1929 edition worth a little over a grand. I had to promise to be very careful with it and had offered up part of my collection of old pulp sci-fi mags as collateral.

I pretended to be at least viscerally interested in the book, even though I thought it was twaddle. In my opinion, Great Uncle Aliester was a fraud at best. But the book itself provided good cover and just a little bait.

Cover... Heh heh...

My partner was in a more upscale and trendy place about ten blocks up nearer to college town. It drew the younger more cerebral crowd as well as a spate of horny professors and literary types looking for a quick hookup and stroking of more than their egos. He fit in and could talk the talk among the younger crowd better than I could have. He looked like he could be doing infomercials for exercise equipment.

Me, I looked so much like a detective or an ex-cop that I stood out anywhere. It took a lot to cover that. I wore an old tweed driving cap with a frayed bill and a pair of small round glasses with clear lenses and had, like I mentioned earlier, an empty pipe clenched in my teeth. A loose sweatshirt and baggy khaki pants layered over with an old down jacket that left a trail of feathers wherever I went covered my frame and made me look dumpy and out of shape. I looked like a slightly down at the heels book dealer or maybe a not so prolific author, which was what I was going for. Somebody who was desperate enough to maybe take a chance on something that might or might not be a little hot in hopes of a large payoff.

The two shifty types had been circulating around the place trying to not be obvious that they knew each other. Even a moderately trained observer would have noticed that they were so much a pair that if they were really strangers, they would have clicked together like magnets. Both of them had wandered by my booth several times trying hard not to look like they were checking me out. And I tried hard to pretend not to notice them as I read my book and sipped my watered down drink. I figured that if nothing happened, one or the other of them would have tried to make some sort of contact in the next fifteen minutes or so. I'd be interested to hear what their line would be.

Then, of course, something happened. Just as one of the shifty types was slowly circling closer to my booth, a pair of uniformed City cops walked in the front door of the place. One went to the bar to have a word with the bartender and the other circulated, eyeballing the clientele. Just a casual walk-through, like they did off and on all the time. As soon as they cleared the door, a discrete cough got the one shifty guy's attention and both of them casually slipped out the back door, as if just going out for a smoke. But I knew as soon as they hit the alley, they'd be gone.

Damn. I had a lot of respect for the City's finest, but sometimes they were a hindrance to a guy trying to make an honest living.

I sighed and slipped the book back in it's protective plastic bag and sealed it up tight. It just fit in the inside pocket of my jacket. I laid the pipe and the fake glasses on the table in front of me and rubbed the bridge of my nose to ease the headache that had been building there for the past hour.

The younger of the two cops strolled past my booth and gave me a polite nod. I nodded back, just as politely. I didn't know him. The older one, making small talk with the bartender, kept his eyes on his partner as he made his way around the room. Not really expecting trouble, but keeping an eye out for it anyway. It was what a good partner was supposed to do.

Him, I recognized. Pat Martin and I had been on the force together many many moons ago. We weren't exactly friends, but we weren't enemies, either. He'd passed up several promotions to stay on the streets because that was where he felt he could do the most good. I had a hatload of respect for the man. Pat had trained a lot of the newer street cops and they were the better for it. He caught my eye and gave me a surreptitious wink. I tipped a finger at the bill of my cap in a small salute. He was enough of an old pro to realize that I was most likely undercover and wouldn't have come over for a chat, even if he had wanted to.

Two

When I had first gone through the police academy and joined the force twelve years ago, my sexuality had been a closely kept secret. Back then, being anything more or less than a staunch heterosexual would have been an instant career killer. Back then, in public, I drank with the guys and ogled the girls and pinched the bottoms of the barmaids and even dated a few of them from time to time.

But in truth, my interests lay elsewhere. An in order to keep it as secret as possible, I would drive two hundred miles south of the City to Springfield, rent a discrete motel room and cruise the gay bars once a month. It was emotionally unsatisfying, but it kept my needs down to a slow simmer in between trips.

So I managed to keep my secret life secret for almost twelve years. I'd made detective by then and was looking forward to retirement. Hell, I figured I'd done it this long, it would keep for another eight years. There had never been anybody serious enough to come out for, anyway. I had one relationship with a young car salesman down south that had lasted most of a year. We would meet once a month and alternate on who rented the room and would spend the whole weekend in bed. But he broke it off when his wife found out and threatened him with divorce. I couldn't blame him for that. And it was just sex between us, anyway.

Two years after I made "D" everything changed. I'd been doing a solo stakeout on a side road up in the hills just outside of town. There had been three body dumps up there in the last six months and people were beginning to worry that we had a serial killer on our hands. It turned out there wasn't, but that's not something to get into right now.

I was sitting in my car alongside the road, slumped down in the seat trying to look like I was a drunk sleeping it off if anybody got curious. Noting down the makes and plate numbers of the vehicles that passed my spot. I'd been there about two hours, drinking coffee and chain smoking trying to stay awake when a drunk sixteen year old with his equally drunk girlfriend in a souped up Camaro came flying around the curve at almost eighty miles an hour. The kid ground against the guard rail, bounced off a tree, spun across the road and t-boned my car backwards, knocking it down the embankment.

They told me afterward that if I hadn't been there, both of the kids would have gone off the embankment and most likely died. They also told me that my car had rolled approximately fifteen times before it came to a rest. I almost wish I could remember that part. I'm sure it was a wild ride.

I woke up three days later in the hospital. I had a broken pelvis and left leg plus a half dozen other broken bones and two cracked vertebrae. Two months and three surgeries later I had enough steel pins and plates in my body to ensure I would never make it easily through an airport metal detector again.

I wasn't all that fond of flying, anyway. No great loss.

During that time I was also given a medical retirement from the force and certified as partially disabled. Between the partial pension and the disability I figured I had enough to live on for awhile so I didn't kick up too much of a fuss. Or so I thought, anyway.

I'm not a good patient, as far as hospitals go. I can really be a prick when I am not feeling good. When I finally managed to get out of bed, the doctors assigned me to physical therapy every morning. I managed to piss off three different therapists before they found one that could put up with me.

Some people are just too sensitive, in my opinion.

If you looked at Andrew, your first impression might be "young college kid". In truth he had already done his four years and graduated with a degree in physical therapy and had been working at the hospital full time for six years. Andy was warm and outgoing and extremely personable and bright. He had been an avid science fiction reader all of his life and that was how he got past my defenses. He saw one of Asimov's "Foundation" books sticking out of the pocket of my hospital robe and we spent the next two hours discussing the series, which I had read several times before. He also had a mania for hair metal bands of the 80's that made me shake my head several times in wonder. When that first session was over, I was barely even aware that I had been exercising the whole time.

I won't say it was love at first sight, because it wasn't. I was in pain a lot of the time and angry because I had one: lost a job that I loved and two: still couldn't walk without help and it was pissing me off. I was no fitness fanatic but I had always kept myself in shape. You never know when you might need to be able to run, either to get to somewhere and maybe save a fellow officers life or to get yourself out of trouble.

I had issues. I still do, but who doesn't?

In my mind I had classified Andy as a young pretty boy. I thought he was maybe twenty five, tops. He had that whole "baby face" thing going.. you know. Turns out he was thirty when we met. He has short black hair kept in an almost military crew cut and a brilliantly white smile that makes me think of car salesmen. To me he looked a little like Matt Damon. I could tell right away from the arms sticking out of the sleeves of his hospital scrubs that he worked out. His forearms and biceps were nicely developed but not cut like some body builder. And he was surprisingly strong. It turns out that those baggy scrubs covered a very fit and well toned body. You could see eyes following him whenever he walked down the hospital hallway.

And Andy made friends with every single person he encountered. I don't think he ever met a stranger, if you know what I mean. He was just one of those friendly people. His happiness was almost infectious and despite whatever funk I was in, he always left me smiling at the end of our session. We were so opposite in so many ways it was almost scary. And despite the fact that he worked hard to present himself as this mostly vacuous surfer boy type, Andy had a keen analytic mind and (I found out later) a photographic memory.

So we slowly made friends there in the PT room. I'll have to confess right now that I found him sexually attractive. Hell, I think everybody in the whole hospital did! When he would be sitting with my leg in his lap doing a deep muscle massage on my knee and thigh I always ended up holding my book firmly across my lap to cover my hardon. Andy, being the professional that he was, pretended not to notice. But he told me later that he had noticed every single time.

We joked and talked and cut up and occasionally acted like fools in the PT room. I was getting better and the head of the ward always smiled when he saw us together. I had gone from being a problem patient to being a success story.

When my doctor told me that I was going to be discharged at the end of the week, I was happy and sad. I still didn't like hospitals, but I was going to miss spending my two hours a day with Andy. As a side effect of our sessions, I had been returning to my room every afternoon and jerking off under the covers. Every time he put his hands on me I ended up with an erection. It had become a bit of an ongoing fantasy of sorts. I'd fantasized several times about taking that hot young man to bed with me, but I knew, deep in my heart, that he wasn't really interested in a banged up forty two year old ex-cop with no job and no real prospects. But I hung on to the fantasy anyway, because it made me feel better at least for a couple of hours a day.

On that last morning I was up and packing up my few things into a bag to take home. There wasn't all that much. A friend from the "D" squad had fetched my toothbrush and a few clothes from my apartment early on during my stay. I'd returned the books I had borrowed to the hospital library. They had given me enough pain pills and analgesics to last me for the next month with scrips to renew if I needed more.

I figured once I finished packing I would walk up and say goodbye. If nothing else, I'd get a last look at Andy and have a lingering picture to hold onto for awhile. I dropped the last pill bottle in the bag when I heard a noise behind me.

Andy walked into my room, smiling softly. I smiled back and said "I was hoping I'd get to see you again before I left." I held out my hand and he took it in his and squeezed my fingers.

He stood with his back to the hallway, his hand warm on mine and said "Alex, that's what I came to talk to you about. I..." he paused and for the first time in our acquaintance, looked a little uncertain. He turned and shut the door and sat on the edge of my bed.

"I..." he paused again. I sat on the other end of the bed and said "Hey, Andy. It's okay. It's just me, remember? The grouchy old ex-cop?" He smiled again. He said "I'm going to miss you, Alex."

I nodded. "I'm definitely going to miss seeing you every day, Andy. You gave me something to look forward to."

I could see he was thinking about something. He pursed his lips a few times, then said "Now that you aren't going to be my patient anymore, I'd like to see you again, Alex." He turned those warm brown eyes on me and I felt my blood pressure raise a few degrees. A small hope flew through my mind, but the practical part of my brain smacked me around a little. It said to me "Don't be a fool, Alex Cable. He probably just wants a favor or something. He's not interested in you. And even if he was interested in men, there would be line of them outside his door every night."

I told both sides of my brain firmly to shut the hell up. Nodding, I said "Sure, I'd like that."

"How about Friday night, then?"

"What?" I was a little startled.

Andy gestured at the cane propped up by the side of the bed and said "It looks like drinks and dancing will be out of the question for awhile. How about you come by my place about seven and I'll make you dinner?"

"Ummm... Sure! That sounds good to me."

He reached into the top pocket of his scrubs and handed me a slip of paper with his address on it. He'd already had that prepared in hopes that I would agree. It just made me a little more confused. And a little bit horny. And a little more grumpy with myself.

Andy leaned over and gave me a quick hug and said "Great! I can't wait. See you then!" And he jumped up off the bed and left the room.

So I had four days to wonder and worry about it. I spent a good part of the time in bed but made sure that I got up and exercised as much as I could. And a good part of the time I was in bed I was stroking my prick and thinking about Andy and his hard little body.

One afternoon I went down to the station and picked up the box of my stuff from my desk. I got a lot of good natured ribbing from the guys about the easy life of early retirement and made promises to join them for drinks as soon as possible.

There was already some young new detective sitting at my desk. That stung just a little, but I didn't let it show.

I walked around town some but couldn't go more than a couple of blocks before the pain sent me hobbling back home again. It was frustrating but I knew that every time I was getting a little bit stronger. I was determined to get back into shape as quickly as I could. And I admit that I used the mental picture of Andy's sweet body as a goal to work towards.

Friday afternoon I was an emotional wreck. At noon I took a shower and started trying to decide what to wear. An hour later I got frustrated and took a walk. Six blocks later I got back into my apartment in pain and took a pain pill and a nap. Then at four o'clock I got up and took another shower and started the process all over again.

I realized that I was acting like a teenager on his first date. Having a long serious discussion with myself, I managed to reach an agreement between my brain and my wild fantasies and we both decided to wait and see what happened. That helped.

Opting for loose dress slacks and a button down shirt, no tie, and a tweed sport coat, I looked in the mirror and decided I looked presentable enough. I caught myself looking for my shoulder holster and badge before I realized that I didn't have them anymore. That brought me back to earth a little more. I slipped the rest of my stuff into my pockets and called a cab.

The cabbie stopped briefly at a liquor store on the way and I slipped inside. Trying to remember if Andy ever mentioned what he liked to drink, I bought both a bottle of decent local wine and an imported bottle of some real Scottish whiskey that I had tried once and liked. I knew I shouldn't be drinking with the pain pills and whatnot in my system but I figured one wouldn't hurt. And I could really use something to help me relax. I was still nervous!

When I approached the apartment door I could hear muffled music wafting out from behind it. A second later I recognized "When I See You Smile". And it did make me smile and shake my head.

Andy opened the door to my knock and my eyes widened just a little. He was wearing tight jeans and a t-shirt that fit him like a second skin. It showed off his tightly muscled body perfectly. I only had a second to react before he hugged me and said "I'm so glad you came, Alex." I tried not to whack him in the back with my cane as I hugged him back. My nostrils were filled with the scent of him... Soap and just a slight musk that I could almost taste on the back of my tongue. When he stepped back he took the bottles from my hand and said "You aren't supposed to be drinking, you know. But.." he said with a little frown "I guess one won't hurt you." Andy shook his finger at me and said "Only one!" I grinned and agreed.