Chapter 5
Jeddrick stopped at the store and bought everything on the list, then tossed all the bags in the back of his patrol car and beat feet. He’d already stopped at his house on his lunch hour(before driving out to the Lake) to pack more of his clothes and things he’d need for an extended stay at Benji’s cabin, so he didn’t need to worry about that. He drove swiftly, remembering his promise to take the artist for a walk before sunset. He didn’t want to renege on that; it wasn’t fair that Benji had to be cooped up in his house all day as though he were under house arrest or something.
He arrived at the cabin, pleased to see that the sun was just setting over the lake. He pulled the bags out of the cruiser and carried them to the front door, calling out to Benji. He’d already phoned ahead to say that he was on his way, so the artist readily opened the door. He greeted Jeddrick and took some of the bags from him, and they carried the groceries into the kitchen to put them away together. “How was your day at work?” Benji asked as he stowed a bag of flour in the cupboard.
“It was all right. Pretty peaceful, actually. Hey, I’ve got some cookies from Dolores, the lady I told you about who works as our dispatcher and secretary. She made them just for us.”
Benji looked interested. “That was nice of her! What kind are they?”
“Chocolate chip walnut. Dolores is a good baker, they should be great.”
“We’ll have them for dessert then. I’ve got a chicken in the oven; it should be done in about an hour,” Benji told him.
“That’s perfect. We can go for that walk now, and it’ll be almost done when we get back.”
Benji nodded eagerly, clearly desperate to get out of the house for awhile. Jeddrick surreptitiously checked his sidearm to make sure that he could pull it quickly should the need arise. Benji was fetching a light jacket from the coat rack and pulling it on. He looked like a St. Bernard puppy that somebody had offered to play Frisbee with, all excited and wound up. Jeddrick stifled a laugh as they went outside together. Dolores was right about one thing, he mused silently. Benji was very cute.
The artist stopped to look across the Lake at the sun setting over the horizon, exclaiming over the deep oranges and reds spreading over the tranquil water in a beautiful sheen. Jeddrick, meanwhile, was looking everywhere but at the sunset, his eyes darting around for any signs of danger. He kept one hand on the butt of his gun as they started along the shore of the lake together, alert and ready for anything.
“It's so beautiful here. So peaceful. I’m really glad that I decided to move up here, even though I knew it’d be lonely sometimes,” Benji told him.
“I’m glad you moved up here too,” Jeddrick agreed, meaning it.
The artist cast him a searching sideways glance, and something he saw in Jeddrick’s face made his own turn a little pink. Jeddrick decided that this was the best time to asked Benji what he wanted to. “Hey, Benji… I was wondering if you’d like to go into town with me Saturday and see a movie?” he said, feeling unaccountably nervous for some odd reason.
Benji stopped in his tracks, looking startled. “You want…a movie…with me?” he said rather incoherently. “Like…on a date?”
“Yes, like on a date,” Jeddrick replied. “In fact, that’s exactly what I’m asking. If you want to go on a date with me.”
“Oh, wow,” Benji exclaimed, pleasure making a soft tinge of color grace his cheeks. “Nobody’s ever asked me out on a date before. This is a first.”
Startled, Jeddrick’s eyebrows flew up. “Nobody’s ever asked you out before? Seriously?”
Benji nodded, looking rueful. “When you’re as big as I am, most guys seem to think that you should be the one asking,” he explained. “A lot of gay guys seem to fall into the same old heterosexual clichés – that the one who looks most like the ‘guy’ should do all the guy things, like asking the other person out and paying for the check and everything. And that was always awful for me, because I get really nervous and anxious when I have to ask somebody out. I usually end up making a fool of myself by stuttering and sweating and twitching. A lot of the guys I asked out probably thought that I was Rain Man’s cousin.”
Jeddrick laughed involuntarily. “I can see that,” he conceded. “But you didn’t answer my question. Do you want to go out on a date Saturday?”
“I’d love to,” Benji replied happily. “And thanks for asking me, Jeddrick. I don’t think that I could have done it this time – asked you out, I mean. I mean you seem really friendly and all, but I couldn’t really tell if you liked me or not.”
Jeddrick’s lips quirked ruefully. “I do like you,” he told Benji. “A little too much, maybe. But I think that I’m just old-fashioned enough that I think that you shouldn’t just hit on someone, and that you should ask them out properly on dates before you even think about sleeping with them. That hasn’t been an easy philosophy to maintain around here, when you’re the only gay man I’ve come across in a hundred miles, but there it is. That’s how I feel. That’s why I haven’t flirted with you or hit on you before now. I just thought that we should go on at least one date before we get all hot and heavy.”
Benji looked decidedly interested in the words ‘hot and heavy’. “Oh,” he said. “That’s cool. That just means that you’re a gentleman, Jed. I’m just glad that you do actually like me. While it’s been nice having you as a friend, I’ll admit that I’d like something more…” he added as his faint blush turned rather rosy.
“We can still be friends. Every good relationship should start and end with friendship,” Jeddrick replied seriously.
Benji nodded. “Yeah. I agree. So…since you’ve asked me out now, can we…I dunno…kiss or something? Maybe hold hands?” he went on rather breathlessly.
Jeddrick wanted to kiss him very, very much. But he was far too conscious of all of the hiding places everywhere around them, places that murderous, mysterious Germans could be hiding in even now. He sighed. “Yes,” he said. “But let’s finish our walk first. I want to keep my hands free and my mind sharp, and I can’t do either of those things if I kiss you,” he told Benji.
The artist looked around. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s make it a short walk, all right?” he asked hopefully.
Jeddrick felt a laugh rising in his throat. “All right,” he agreed fondly. “A short walk it is.”
That had to be the shortest, fastest walk in record, he thought as they went up the steps and onto the porch of the cabin. Neither of them cared much about walking right now – not when they were both anticipating something else. They went inside together, and Jeddrick closed and locked the door behind them and engaged the security system. He made himself do all of that slowly and deliberately, knowing that it was smart and necessary. But then he turned to look at Benji, who was standing there staring at him while the fingers of one of his hands played with the edge of his coat.
Jeddrick walked toward him. “Don’t be nervous,” he told Benji soothingly.
A tremulous smile darted over the artist’s lips. “I’m trying not to be. But I always get kind of nervous over the first kiss. I guess I worry that I won’t do it right or something.” He explained apologetically.
Jeddrick cocked his head. “Have you ever done it ‘wrong’?” he asked curiously.
“Well, not exactly. But this one time in high school this guy was trying to kiss me, and I went in too fast, and nearly brained him with my forehead. He had a bruise for two days, and he wouldn’t try again after that.”
Poor man-mountain. The hazards of being as big as Benji was, and not extraordinarily graceful…Jeddrick refused to laugh or smile over that embarrassing story. “It’s all right. How about you bend a little and let me do all the work after that?” he said to Benji.
The artist nodded and bent at the waist a bit so that his face was closer to Jeddrick’s level. The deputy reached up and curled a hand around the back of his neck, letting his fingers caress the soft brown hair. He stretched up a little(fortunately he didn’t have to stand on tiptoe entirely) and closed his mouth over Benji’s. It was just as sweet-tasting as he’d imagined it might be, and a soft moan made a surge of lust go through him. He darted his tongue into Benji’s open mouth, caressing everything inside until the larger man clutched desperately at his shoulders.
Benji was bright-eyed and panting when their lips finally parted. Jeddrick had to struggle not to just kiss him again, and after that do other things as well. He wanted to, he really did; but he also wanted to take this slow because he felt that this could turn into something very special. He didn’t want to rush into anything. So he smiled at Benji and said: “That was great. I’d love to keep doing that with you, Benji, but...”
“I know. You’re a gentleman. It's okay, Jed; I really like that fact about you. It makes me feel kind of…special.”
“You are special, Benji. And not because you’re Rain Man’s cousin, either,” Jeddrick teased.
Benji actually giggled, an amusing sight. “Thanks, Jed. Oh, I’ve gotta go check dinner. Don’t want my chicken to burn!” and he scurried off to the kitchen, leaving Jeddrick standing in the living room feeling rather bemused. “Oh, I called about that appointment to have Granddad’s paintings x-rayed! He said he could do it next week,” Benji called out to him.
“All right. Good,” Jeddrick replied. He sincerely hoped that those x-rays would show something, because he was completely baffled about the pictures and their significance to the thieves. He hated not knowing things, especially in such a dangerous situation. So he crossed his fingers mentally and hoped that the x-ray would reveal the hidden truth about the paintings that Benji had inherited from his grandfather.
Jeddrick lay on Benji’s couch and tried to sleep. While he’d slept like the dead last night, tonight he was having a harder time going to sleep. It helped that the artist was slumbering in his own bed rather than on the couch across from him, but not entirely. His body kept nudging him, reminding him sharply that a man he was strongly attracted to was sleeping in the bedroom not far away. His cock was roused, half-hard and throbbing in the sweat pants he’d worn to bed.
Normally he would have just pulled it out and jerked off to get some relief, but his good manners didn’t allow him to do that in another person’s house. He sighed, punching his pillow moodily. Saturday seemed a long way away to him. And he strongly suspected that if he got up right now and went into Benji’s bedroom, the other man would welcome him into his bed without a qualm. He wanted to do that – but he could hear his granddaddy’s voice in his head whenever he thought about it. The old man had taught him well how to treat a lady (this was long before he’d come out of the closet), dinning the lessons into his head. As a gentleman, you just didn’t do certain things. You respected women, and you didn’t just jump on them like a dog in heat.
Unfortunately for him, even discovering that his grandson was gay hadn’t deterred the old man. He’d simply pointed out to Jeddrick that his rules would apply to any life’s partner, and that being gay didn’t give him the right to be a mindless horn dog that’d hump anything that came within range of him. And those lessons had become so engrained into him that he couldn’t just throw them over in favor of speeding up the process a bit. You took a girl (or boy, in this case) out and wooed them properly before you tried getting fresh. That was just what you did. And some part of him, the old-fashioned part that he’d inherited from the old man, had agreed totally. So now he was screwed.
Jeddrick groaned and buried his face in his pillow. Dating when you held such old-fashioned beliefs was incredibly hard on a gay man. The other guy wanted to jump your bones right away, and usually gave you a flabbergasted and incredulous look if you refused to hop into the sack with him the first night you met. At least Benji understood – something he was infinitely grateful for. If he hadn’t, Jeddrick didn’t know what he would have done. Because he wanted Benji more than he ever had anyone else in his life, and if the artist had so much as crooked his little finger in invitation at Jeddrick he would have thrown all of his principles to the four winds immediately. But then he probably would have felt bad afterward, because he’d hear his granddaddy’s voice in his head yelling at him. Now, years after the old coot had kicked it, Jeddrick still heard his voice inside his skull. There was no getting away from his upbringing, try as he might.
Ah, hell, at least the old man hadn’t disowned him the moment he’d found at that his grandson was a rump ranger. He’d been startled and angry at first, but had eventually accepted it(albeit in a disgusted sort of way). He hadn’t treated Jeddrick any differently after he’d found out; thus the continuing lectures on how to treat another gay man rather than a woman. Jeddrick had always respected and loved his granddaddy, despite the old man’s bad temper and sometimes harsh ways. That was probably because his own father, his granddaddy’s only son, had been a piece of shit. He’d abused Jeddrick and his mother, sometimes beating them both until they were black-and-blue. The old man had stepped in when he’d discovered what was going on, and had told his child in no uncertain terms to get the hell out and never come back again. If he did, he’d get a face full of buck shot from granddaddy’s rifle. His father had left that same day, because he was terrified of his old man and knew that he’d get exactly what was promised if he didn’t high tail it out of there for good. Jeddrick had been happy to see the last of him, although he wasn’t sure what to make of his granddaddy stepping in to be a male role model for him after that. He didn’t trust or like men at that point, but the old man had proven to be a somewhat harsh but decidedly fair disciplinarian, with a set of principles that he lived by and never wavered from. He’d taught Jeddrick those same principles, along with lessons on how to be a real man and a gentleman. The lessons hadn’t taken with his asshole father, but they certainly had with him. And they’d made him what he was today, so he was grateful to his grandparent for teaching him those hard learned lessons.
Odd, that both he and Benji had been partially raised by their grandfathers. It was interesting that they had that in common. Of course, their grandfathers didn’t sound a thing alike – Benji’s had apparently been as gentle and kind as he was, while Jeddrick’s had been more Spartan with his emotions and affections. Maybe it was just as well that their situations hadn’t been reversed – his granddaddy would have destroyed a sweet creature like Benji, even though he wouldn’t have been trying to. His harsh ways would have crushed Benji’s big hearted sweetness, while they’d only made Jeddrick more disciplined. And he could easily have become a bad kid, after the abuse he’d suffered at home and the wild streak that he’d inherited from his male bloodline. Only his granddaddy’s tutelage had saved him from a life of crime. He was convinced of that, and one of the reasons that he’d become a police officer was as an homage to the old man who’d saved him from the darker side of himself.
He understood how Benji was feeling right now. Hard as he’d been, Jeddrick had loved that old man fiercely. So when his granddaddy had died of a blood clot that had developed after he’d broken his leg in a car accident, he’d been devastated. It was never easy to lose someone who’d raised you, even knowing that they were older and bound to go sooner than your parents. Not that he cared whether his father was alive anymore or not…he could be rotting six-feet-under for all that Jeddrick knew or cared. He certainly hadn’t returned for his father’s funeral, or for Jeddrick’s graduation from high school or from the law enforcement academy either. Good riddance to bad rubbish. His real father had been the fierce grandfather who’d made him a man that he could be proud of, not that shithead who’d liked to use his fists on the helpless who couldn’t fight back.
Jeddrick sighed, rolling to the left and staring across the darkened living room. Caught on the horns of a dilemma, he’d just have to suffer until his scruples would allow him to crawl into Benji’s bed at last. Ah, well…what was a little pain to the inevitable pleasure? Waiting always wetted the appetite anyway, so by the time they finally did get down to it they’d both be ravenous indeed…
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