Snow Drifting

It had snowed the week before Thanksgiving in Watertown, New York. The burg with an unimaginative name, which matched its basic cultural footprint, was a small town west of Fort Drum and nearly on the shore of Lake Ontario, just to the west of the town, and about as far north in the United States you could get without spilling over into Canada. That, in itself, wasn't unusual, but it had been continuously snowing in that week, and already had reached twelve inches in drifting snow. This wasn't unusual in a town where, if you put a glass of water on your nightstand on a winter night, it would freeze and pop the glass before dawn.

However, it was perhaps not the best time for Scott Reynolds to be coming home unannounced for the winter holidays from his second tour in Afghanistan. Scott was on the drift himself, not knowing whether he wanted to pick up the pieces he'd left behind four years earlier in Watertown or reup for a third tour in the army—or maybe something else altogether. He had a few ties in Watertown, but there were a few elsewhere too—just a few anywhere. He'd pretty much drifted all of his life and most of his relationships had been casual. In his lifestyle, they were called hookups.

He'd taken the bus up from New York City. The snow storm touched down there too, but conditions had become increasingly worse as they were leaving the city on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The distance of some 320 miles between city and town, which normally wouldn't have taken more than seven and a half hours to drive, took two days in the snow, with a stop at a rundown motel outside Binghamton, New York, on Sunday night before they could get going again the next morning. The bus company hadn't paid for the motel rooms, but it had warned the passengers of the probably forced stop, because of the snow, and all had opted to take the trip. Most of them were trying to get someplace for Thanksgiving.

There hadn't been many on the bus, but they were doubled up in the rooms anyway. Scott had drawn a young Jewish guy named Josh, who was on his way up to Fort Drum to be drummed into the army. The young man had found out that Scott was just coming out of Afghanistan and had clung to Scott during the first leg of the journey, interminably asking him questions about the army and serving in Afghanistan and into more intimate matters, like how soldiers in combat got their needs served, that told Scott, twenty-six, that the young man, no more than twenty, was nervous about serving but interested in serving a big bruiser like Scott. Scott was experienced at picking up signals of gay interest and Josh was too inexperienced not to provide them. Scott also was experienced at taking his pleasures where he could get them.

Josh didn't stand a chance, assuming he wasn't fully prepared for a casual hookup.

Scott gave Josh a tutorial in how some guys managed to get their rocks off in combat conditions when he fucked him that night, holding the nervous Jewish boy under him in a strong embrace and fucking him deep, while Josh moaned and traced the pec and sleeve tattoo swirl of color on Scott's bulging musculature with his fingers, marveling at how the design resolved itself in a dragon's head on Scott's right pec. Josh hadn't known that soldiers were allowed to have tattoos, and Scott had given him a tutorial on the rules of that, while he let the younger man trace the tattoo lines with his fingers, start to pant, go into high heat, gasp when he saw what Scott had to put inside him, but still laid back and willingly opened his legs to the cock.

He had taken cock before, but never as arousingly and as fully controlled, erotic, and satisfied as this.

"Did you like that? Did that do you?" Scott asked when he had finished the young man and they were lying stretched out against each out, Scott's beefy arm around Josh's shoulders and Josh fingering the tattoo covering the right side of Scott's body from pec to shoulder and back down his arm, still in fascination, but still trembling.

"You're huge. I thought you'd split me."

"But did you like it? I stretched you, but I didn't split you. You can take more than you thought you could."

"Yes, I liked it."

"You won't have any trouble finding more of it at Fort Drum. They don't have enough to do there, especially in the winter. Fucking each other is something to do." Was that why he was coming back to Watertown, Scott wondered. Because it was so easy to hook up at Fort Drum, just a few miles up Route 11 from the town? That it had been so easy for him when he'd lived there before? He didn't know, but it was worth a thought. He couldn't drift on like this forever.

"And Afghanistan. Was it like that there?" Josh was back to the army-life questions.

"It could be. For those who want it. You wanted it tonight."

Josh didn't dispute that, sticking with his line of questioning. "All just casual and in-passing encounters, like this was, or were there serious relationships formed?"

"All just casual, like this," Scott said. Even while he said it, he knew it was a lie. "You couldn't afford getting serious with anyone in Afghanistan."

Josh didn't ask why. Scott might not have heard him if he had, because his mind had drifted back to nineteen months ago, out beside a vehicle he had been maintaining in a field encampment. Kentuck, his steady for three months, on top of him as Scott lay prone next to the wheel of a transport, both of them fully clothed in camouflage except for where it counted. Kentuck straddling Scott, fucking himself in a cowboy when shots rang out. A sniper attack. Blood spurting out of what was left of Kentuck's forehead as his boy slumped on top of Scott, protecting Scott from the follow-up shots. Scott had been contemplating calling it a day at the end of the first tour. But he reupped the next week.

"Uh, you don't think you could . . . that you would . . .?" Josh was asking as Scott's mind drifted back.

"Sure, why not?" He rolled over on top of Josh, putting his arms under the young man's legs and spreading and raising them. Josh arched his back, rolled his head up, clutched at Scott's bulging pecs and cried out.

"Shit, you're huge! You're too big!"

"Yes, yes, I am," Scott admitted. "And you're going to take it all and love it."

"Shit! Fuck! Fuck, yes! Fuck me! Fuck, you're killing me."

Scott grabbed the young man's wrists, forced his hands over his head, thrust hard, and killed Josh some more. It was best to make the most out of such chance encounters.

It was dark, after 8:00 p.m., when the bus let Scott off next to what was probably a sidewalk under the drifting snow on West Main Street, just north of the banks of the Black River, in the center of town, right in front of Schaffer's Exon station and garage. The gas station was owned—or had been four years ago—by the family of Scott's best friends and high school football team buddy, Jack Schaffer. From here it was just a two block walk north, up Morrison Street, to his dad's house. Josh had already been let off at Fort Drum's main gate, with just an exchange of cellphone numbers as a good-bye between them. There was no expectation, at least on Scott's part, of hooking up again. He knew Fort Drum. If Josh let his preferences be known, the soldiers there would eat him alive, and he wouldn't be needing anything from Scott. He'd been a sweet lay.

Neither of them had spoken to each other after they'd left the motel room and before boarding the bus. They'd sat at separate tables in the motel's breakfast room. They sat with each other in the bus, but they talked sparingly and neither spoke of hooking up again.

As the bus lurched off onto the snowy, frequently cleared but continually recovered West Main Street, Scott hefted his duffel bag on the back of his six-foot-three husky, all-muscle frame and crossed over to the mouth of Morrison Street. He hadn't phoned ahead that he was coming home—for a visit or longer, he didn't know himself. Not knowing from day to day what he would do, he hadn't registered this trip with his father, a general practitioner in town, serving mostly the poorer residents and giving them more care than they could afford. Scott had sent a trunk home with all his worldly goods, but that hadn't been before last Saturday. It wouldn't have arrived here yet, especially because of the snow.

The snow was falling heavily again as he trudged up Morrison in his combat boots, glad that he was still wearing them. He saw the problem when he was a block from the house, although it took a while to register with him as blinding as the snow was. The cold and wet was already getting under his fleece jacket, plastering his flannel shirt to his chest.

Scott stood there for a full twenty minutes looking at where his father's house had been, the house in which Scott and his younger brother, Steve, had been raised, where his father had raised them alone since Scott's mother had run off without them when Scott was nine. The house was a pile of ashes between two forlorn chimneys, rising two stories with nothing to connect to. He supposed it didn't matter than he hadn't called ahead. There was no ahead to call to.

He, of course, wondered about his father and whether he'd made it out. Scott's brother, Steve, now twenty-four, had already moved out and lived west of town, closer to Lake Ontario, where he worked at a water sports facility at Sackets Harbor in season. He must work somewhere else in the winter, but Scott didn't know where. He wasn't even sure if he had Steve's cellphone number. The brothers weren't that close. Steve was different from Scott and his father, and that difference kept the family on tenterhooks and distant from one another. But calling Steve might be a place to start. Or his dad's medical office a block over on Bradley Street. The office wouldn't be open at this time in the evening, though.

He didn't really feel like starting in either of those places. He knew what he wanted, who he wanted to see. He turned and trudged back to West Main Street, across the street, to Schaffer's gas station. There was an apartment over the office and three-bay bank of garages, and he'd seen that the lights were on there. Scott went to the covered staircase on the north side of the garage and climbed the stairs. He knew where he was going. He'd been here a thousand times before.

The door at the top of the stairs was opened by a tall, husky, muscular, hirsute blond giant. He was just in athletic shorts and flip-flops. The contrast was startling between him and Scott, standing on the threshold, covered in snow, and bundled up, but not really bundled up enough for the snowy conditions. Sopping wet, a duffle bag at his feet.

"Yes?" Jack didn't recognize Scott immediately.

"It's me, Scott, Jack. I tried going home, but there's no home left. I came here."

"Scott? Is that you? You're out of Afghanistan? You look like the abominable snowman. Get in here, man, out of the cold. What in the hell are you doing here? Visiting, or are you back to stay. Here because of the fire?"

"I don't know," Scott said, as if that were an answer to all of those questions. "I went home. There's been a fire. I don't know what's happening. I came here." He allowed Jack to drag him into the warm apartment. There was a fireplace in the living room, with a roaring fire in it. That's where Jack dragged Scott and began peeling the wet clothes off him.

"Yes, your house burned down. Saturday night. No, your dad and Cory are just fine. The house he owns that's attached to his medical office over on Bradley was vacant, and that's where they've moved."

"Cory? Is he still with Dad?" Cory had been a town waif Scott's dad had brought home after Cory had graduated high school without further prospects and had sponsored for technical school. He and Cory had been like brothers for a while—and then they weren't.

"Yes, Cory has his LPN and is working as your dad's nurse and office assistant now. But they're OK. But you. You need to get out of these clothes and into a hot bath. You'd die of exposure just walking over to Bradley now this time of night. And there's no telling if either of them is there anyway. Here, strip that off. I'll get us a couple of beers."

Scott was stripped down completely with his wet clothes puddled around him as Jack turned toward the kitchen.

"Jack . . . thanks," Scott said as he grabbed Jack's arm and pulled him back and into an embrace. "I came here first—after trying Dad's. I knew I could," he whispered. They moved into a kiss. Scott's hand went gliding down Jack's flat, hard belly and under his waistband, finding and extracting Jack's hard cock. Jack's hand was encasing Scott's cock. Scott frotted the cocks as they kissed. Jack's hand went to palming Scott's tattooed right pec.

"Remember when we were seniors and did this, but went no further?" Scott asked.

"We thought we were having hot sex then," Jack answered. He laughed. "Later we did have hot sex," he then said, his tone more somber. "You really could give it rough. I'll bet you were a star in the army. Bet you got a lot of tail in Afghanistan."

"I took it where I could get it," Scott answered, "and from who I wanted to get it."

They went no further at this point, either. When they pulled away, Jack said, "You got yourself a humongous tattoo while you were gone."

"Yes, yes, I did."

"I like it," Jack said, pulled away from the embrace, and went off to the kitchen.

Scott was reclining on his back in a tub of steaming water when Jack, now naked, came in with their third beers. Jack sat on the side of the tub and they necked and fondled, but again went no further. As they did so, they each provided a little bit of update of their lives—Jack owned and ran the garage now and he'd already offered Scott a mechanic's job, knowing that that had been Scott's specialty in the army.

"Scott," Jack murmured, using a different, a more intimate tone.

"What?" Scott asked, knowing what Jack was going to ask and not sure how he would respond.

"I'm hard for you, man. You know you can—"

The soldier didn't want to go too far with this without knowing. "Ricky Taylor. Are you—?"

"Rick went to the navy soon after you left. I haven't heard from him in over a year. Last I heard from him, he was giving it out all over the Pacific. I could always fall for a stud like him—and like you, Scott."

"Then you—?"

"It's great to have you back, Scott. And I'm dyin' here. I'm hard for you."

Scott came out of the tub, let Jack watch him dry off, and led Jack into the living room. He fucked Jack on the sofa in front of the heat-radiating, light-flickering fireplace, Jack bent over the sofa arm and Scott covering him from behind and above, fucking him hard and rough, mounted high on his ass, yanking his head back into Scott's chest and pounding, pounding, pounding, as Jack screamed bloody murder, egging him on. They had done this often through the two years from when they'd been seniors in high school together until Jack had come under Rick Taylor's spell and Scott had left for the army, conflicted even then over what and who he wanted—or who wanted him.

Afterward, Scott broke the tension by saying, "Now I have to take a bath again."

Standing in the bathroom door, holding two opened cans of beer and looking at Scott, Jack said, "Man, that is a great tattoo. Very sexy. You'll stay the night, won't you? It's too late and messy out to track family down until tomorrow."

"You're just trying to get me into bed."

"You betcha. It's been too long. No one cocks me like you do. You still give it rough, man."

"And that's how you like it."

"You betcha. You're an animal and I'm an animal. We're from the same family in what we want from sex."

Family, Scott thought. Is that what he came back for, was family? Steven? Absolutely not. They'd be civil to each other, but their worlds and wants were just too different. His father? Now that was complicated. He couldn't avoid it; his thoughts went to Cory. Cory, who had been eighteen and Scott twenty-two when the beautiful redheaded boy had been brought into the family home and fawned over by Scott's father—and, rather quickly, by Scott too. Had his father been fucking Cory back when Scott had begun spiking him?

And relationships. Could Scott have a real relationship again after being in one with Kentuck and having that ripped from him by the Taliban? Is that what he had been moving into with Cory when he abruptly signed up with the army to get out of a triangle here in Watertown that was too close to home? Is that who he'd come back for? Cory? And what about Jack? Always good for a good time. Always had been. But a relationship? Wouldn't that destroy the good times they had? What would happen when the next Ricky came along?

Jack handed Scott a can of beer as Scott lay in the bathtub and sat on the rim again, his hand going into the water, encircling Scott's cock, and stroking it hard. "You think you can . . . again . . . now?" Jack asked. "It's been a long time."

"Have you forgotten? I can get it up again put it to use whenever I want."

"And do you want now?"

Scott took the beer in long pulls and tossed the empty over the side. He smiled and opened his arms. Jack slipped into the tub above him, saddling on Scott's pelvis. Holding Scott's now-rehardened cock erect, under him, Jack positioned himself and descended on the shaft.

"Christ, you're huge, man," he hissed through gritted teeth as he sheathed the cock.

"Yes, yes, I am." Scott answered.

Jack grasped Scott's bulging biceps in his hands, lowered his face to Scott's for a deep kiss, and began to rise and fall on the cock, fucking himself. Scott grabbed him by the waist, raised him and slammed him down, raised him and slammed him down.

"Oh, shit! Oh, fuck!" Jack cried out.

"This is the way you want it," Scott growled.

"Yes, this is the way I want it," Jack answered, panting hard.

* * * *

Thanksgiving was a sparse family affair at the Reynolds's house attached to Doctor Reynolds's medical office on Bradley Street. The house had been Stanford Reynolds's parents house and was still furnished, if spartanly. It had been rented with the basic furniture, which had been in the Reynolds family. Nothing had come over from the Morrison Street house. That had been a total loss, although the fire hadn't reached the garages at the back of the house, so the trusty Jeep Cherokee and snowmobile hadn't been lost. The doctor had needed those to be able to do house calls through the winter. Since they still had transportation in the snow, which had now drifted to eighteen inches, they probably had as many for Thanksgiving as anyone else in the town had. It had continued to snow, even though some of it melted during the day. That it did just made the streets more treacherous at night. Watertown and snow were constant companions in the winter, though, and snow never impeded Stanford from making his house calls.

No one had called in distress on Thanksgiving afternoon, so the doctor was there for dinner with both of his sons. Steve had a Ford pickup that he could drive almost anywhere. The snow didn't deter him. Cory was there too, of course. He was the one who made the meal, being the most domesticated of the men. And it was a fine meal he made too. The guests were mostly close—in relation if not in relationship—with one exception. Steve had brought a date, maybe to emphasize the running family issue. Certainly, his choice of date supported that suggestion.

Samantha was a barmaid from a tavern downtown and was a stereotype floozy, at least in appearance. She had a big head of platinum blonde hair, big tits, a bit of a belly, and earth mother hips. She had dressed like Thanksgiving was a cocktail party, and she was painfully self-conscious about being in Doctor Reynolds's house. Scott got the impression that Steve had said that they were going "out," not that they were coming to the Reynolds house. There was nothing the rest of them did to make her uncomfortable, though. She was from among the people of the town who Doctor Reynolds served, and he—and the rest, by his example—treated her as an equal. She, in turn, was in awe of him, which only added to the tension in the living and dining rooms before and during dinner.