Robin stopped squirming when Peter helped him shuck off the scrubs he was wearing. It took some complicated contortions to get rid of their shorts but by the time they made contact, flesh to flesh, Peter was so breathless and ready that all he could do was try to stay quiet. Robin teased his way down from abs to groin using his lips and tongue, doing anything and everything he could to make Peter blow

his cool. Peter gasped in a breath when Robin cupped his balls with a strong-fingered hand then snorted a half laugh through his nose.

Robin was agile and voracious; he ran his tongue and lips over every surface, finding and teasing Peter’s highly sensitive areas as though he had done it a thousand times. His hands were so gentle, his touch so caring that the warmth seemed to burn Peter’s skin. He tried to remember the last time he’d been touched by a caring partner. Tried to remember when or even if he’d ever wanted a partner to care. Peter’s chest tightened. He needed to feel as if Robin cared about him if only because he was losing the one person in the world who actually did.

When at last Robin wrapped his mouth around Peter’s cock and sucked his way to the base, Peter let out an almost groan that he was afraid the residents of the house could hear. Peter’s muscles clenched and his spine arched, even as Robin’s long fingers stroked and massaged the small of his back and slipped down into his ass crack.

“No.” Peter shifted onto his side and cupped Robin’s face with his hands. “C’mere. Let me.”

Robin grinned, moving carefully so he could lie on his own side with his legs pointed toward the head of the bed. His cock bobbed within easy reach of Peter’s hands and mouth. Its long, hard length was uncut, the head emerging from the surrounding skin, taut and glistening. Peter’s first act was to push his face into the nest of hair above it and breathe in the scent of sex and man, something that never failed to fire him up in a way that nothing else could. His initial taste of Robin’s cock was electrifying, smooth and hot, the fragile skin slip-slid around the head as it thickened and tightened and pulsed in his hand. Robin tasted briny and bitter and delicious; he gave up a low groan when Peter pulled on his cock with his lips and licked the sensitive slit with his tongue.

Robin made a sound. Like ah, or oh; like pleasure and losing control and come and get me that filled Peter’s heart with pride.

Peter wanted more, and he urged Robin to straddle his head so his cock hung over Peter’s lips, exposing the silky skin of his balls and the tender perineum behind them. He put his hands on Robin’s hips and took one silky orb into his mouth, even as Robin nuzzled his own. They explored each other; Peter licked and teased with his tongue until he could feel Robin’s muscles tremble beneath his hands as he stroked Robin’s firm thighs.

Robin started sucking him off then, expertly swallowing his cock and setting up a rhythm that made Peter arch and twist beneath him. He held himself up on his elbows and knees, his hands snaking under Peter’s hips to finger his hole.

Peter positioned his head and allowed Robin access, so he could take Robin deep into his throat and simply let Robin fuck his mouth. Peter couldn’t keep his hands idle, he moved them over Robin’s toned buttocks and thighs. Over the strained muscles bunching in his back. He loved the feel of Robin under his fingertips. Peter soothed, caressed, and urged him on, yet at the same time, tried to show a tenderness that was entirely new for him.

Robin’s rhythm was as natural and graceful as the man himself, he worked the cock in his mouth and pumped his own into Peter’s and when Peter’s balls tightened and he knew he was going to blow, he could feel the shifting and jerking of Robin’s hips as well. He circled a finger around Robin’s tightly puckered hole and gave himself to pleasure completely, letting Robin come down his throat, swallowing every bitter drop even as he pulsed into Robin’s mouth.

Peter continued to tremble through small, heady aftershocks as his cock softened and slid free. Robin nuzzled and sucked Peter’s overly sensitive skin gently, prodding and licking his balls and settling his cheek on one hairy thigh. Peter held onto Robin’s hips, not letting go of the man, allowing him to soften and withdraw when he chose, letting his dick go with a snap and a sigh. Even then, he wished he could hold onto everything, the quiet moment of bliss and the man who gave it to him, a little longer.

Robin rolled off and righted himself, slipping –in what seemed like the most natural move in the world– into Peter’s arms. They ended up lying chest to chest, with one of Peter’s legs slung over one of Robin’s and his head nestled into Robin’s neck. Robin smoothed small circles at the base of Peter’s spine.

Peter brushed a kiss just under his ear and whispered, “Thank you.”

Robin’s lips grazed his forehead. “The pleasure was all mine.”

“Not quite all yours,” Peter teased.

“I can’t stay; I’ve been longer than I planned as it is.”

“I understand.” Peter rolled onto his back when Robin sat up.

Robin leaned over him with a sated smile and gave him a kiss that tasted of his own cum and sweat. “I want more, soldier man.”

Peter pulled him in again and gave him a kiss that said what he couldn’t yet say for himself. He gripped the back of Robin’s neck and held him there, their foreheads pressed together, without speaking. When he finally let go Robin bumped their cheeks together.

“I’ll come get you if your mom is alert at all later.” His eyes were shadowed with concern.

Peter pushed to a sitting position. “Is she…?”

Robin shook his head. “I couldn’t say… There’s something that happens… the patient becomes uncomfortable and restless. You can’t settle them and every little wrinkle in the fabric of their clothing feels like rocks against their skin. That usually happens near the end, Peter. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if she’s awake…”

Peter acknowledged what Robin wasn’t saying. He watched in silence as Robin pulled on his scrubs. When the door closed behind him, Peter sank back into the pillows. He turned off the radio and rolled over, teased by Robin’s scent on the pillow.

It would be easy to let Robin creep in and out of his room while he stayed in this place, turning the radio up while they made love and opening the window while he smoked, as if he was a teenager again.

Except as a teenager he’d never done anything remotely like that. Not anywhere in town, at any rate. All anyone knew of him was that he was an elusive, quiet boy who took a nice girl to the prom and left a few weeks later to join the army.

Still nude, he rose from his bed and went to the old-fashioned sash window, raising it enough that he could lean out into the night. Despite the warmth of the day there was a chill on the air and a bank of fast moving clouds from the west told him they might be in for a little rain. He lit a cigarette and sat on the sill, half in and half out, looking down over the skirt of the roof to the yard, at the end of which was the shed where his mother’s car sat, waiting to be taken out again.

Once when he was a boy he’d stayed in his Aunt’ house, long before she’d turned the place into a hospice care center, and he could remember with almost perfect clarity sitting in that very same way, gazing out at the distant farmland, beyond the rolling hill, beyond Hadleyburg, wondering what else was there. Even then he’d known, in some deep core within himself that he didn’t belong here. For years he’d thought it was because he was gay.

Now Hadleyburg seemed small and old and tarnished. A serviceable shoe in a world full of designer footwear. It was the very fact that he’d known it for what it was long before he’d left it—before he knew anything else—that isolated him. He’d wanted to soar, to find the very biggest thing he could do, to push himself to the limit of his physical endurance, and yes, he’d wanted to feel what it was like to be a hero.