Dreaming In Black and White - II. First Things First
by elfin
Rico:
I knew the principals of making love to a man, the same as making
love to a woman. But I didn't know about the mechanics.
I'd never messed about with another man in my life. That came as
a surprise to Sonny, and it was a while before I decided if that was a
compliment or an insult. I never thought that he'd had any experience
with guys until we started into this.
He was too sure to be a virgin. So maybe I was the one who climbed
into his lap that night, but I was crazy for and about him. You have
to know Sonny and I to realise that being so physical with him wasn't too
much of a leap from the way we'd always been together.
We'd never kissed before, obviously. But we'd touched, hugged,
held hands. When we sat together in briefings and at meals, we sat
so close that others commented on it. We've always drawn on one another;
strength, courage, comfort. When one of us was lacking, the other's
always there.
We've been in three am call-ins to the office where he's fallen asleep
on my shoulder while we've been waiting to be briefed.
We're close. We have been close from the first fight on Sonny's
speedboat the night I nicked it. The night we met. Something just clicked
between us, like chemistry. I reckon I've been falling in love with
him ever since.
He's difficult not to love. Easier back then of course, when the
cigarettes calmed his nerves and Burnett was nothing more than a cover
name. Before this all happened - us, I mean - he was weighed down.
Katlin's death hit him so hard. The bad shit that went down in Lauderdale....
He told me once that the worst thing about that had been what it had done
to us. It took time to trust him again. And he worked for it,
harder than he'd ever worked for anything in his life.
After that first night we got together, he mellowed out to something
akin to what he was before all the crap. The haircut knocked ten
years off him. He joined a gym! Not that he ever went.
The department paid for his membership, and Sonny was really pleased until
he found out why. Turned out that Castillo thought the gym's owners
were bent, its accounts being used to launder drugs money. Crockett
wasn't amused, and somehow he managed to wangle a weekend off work for us
both in payback.
After not too much discussion, we ended up taking the boat out to the
Keys. There was something unspoken between us that weekend, something
we both knew we needed to talk about with neither of us knowing how to approach
the subject.
We got out there late Saturday night, fell into bed together, made love
lazily and finally fell asleep.
On the Sunday morning I woke to the smell of freshly ground coffee and
baking pastries. I had no idea that Sonny knew how to live the good
life. I'd imagined he lived on cheap coffee and chilli-dogs between
expensive meals with dealers.
It was easy to be with him on the boat, just the two of us and Elvis.
It's always been easy with us; easy conversation and easily silences.
By lunchtime he was sitting on the back of the boat, feet up, fishing for
something to grill later on.
We'd moored off one of the Keys, only Sonny knew where. I couldn't
have cared less if we were in International waters. Even Elvis was
quiet, enjoying the rays like his Dad. We'd found a private slice
of heaven.
Sonny:
The mechanics was something I'd only ever thought about once or twice,
when I'd been drunk or the subject had come up. So to speak.
It had been three weeks since my relationship with my partner had gone
from a close partnership and even closer friendship to something that had
blown both our minds.
In my whole life I've messed about exactly four times with other guys.
Once in school, twice in 'Nam, once at the academy. With Evan, would
you believe? Each time it meant nothing. Just desperation or
curiosity. With Evan it was weird, like... atonement.
With Rico, it's all different. The first time he touched me my
brain went into overload and I came within seconds. He thought it
was very flattering and very funny. I wanted the world to open up
and swallow me. First night together, I came four or five times.
Never thought love would make so much difference with a guy.
With Rico, it's like magic.
Since the Burnett thing I've had trouble getting it up. Haven't
really had reason to. All I thought about for ages was winning back
Rico's trust. When things were settled again, work got crazy, and all
the stuff with Billy, me rushing off to Atlanta, having to heal Rico's heart
when I got back, after he fell in love with yet another bad apple.
I never wanted my life to be quiet, or normal or dull. Never wanted
a bungalow and a picket fence. I like the boat. I love the
Ferrari. Rico's beach house has its own private stretch of shoreline.
My job destroyed my first marriage. I used to believe that it had
killed Katie, but it didn't. She was in deeper than she knew before
I came along. That's why we met.
With Rico, the job was never going to make the slightest bit of difference.
Because he knows the pressures, knows what drives me to do what I do because
it drives him too. When I'm called in at three in the morning, chances
are that he'll be getting the same call.
And we work together like we're the same person.
I've lost count of the number of hours we've spent sitting in a car -
his or mine or some rented bucket of a van - watching some suspicious address.
Mostly at night, one of us sleeping while the other one watches and vice
versa. Or just talking, making each other laugh. Some damn strange
conversations have been had at times like those.
The week before the weekend in the Keys, we'd spent two long nights sitting
outside a hotel waiting for some guy who finally showed toting a M-16.
Two nights' work ending in a flurry of bullets and our mark in a body bag.
If I'd known he was going to get himself killed by being an idiot, I'd
have left him to it.
While we were sitting there, slowly becoming car-shaped, we started talking
about the weekend. Castillo had shafted me on a gym membership, using
me as an 'in' into what he thought was a dodgy operation. I was mad
as hell! And I talked him into giving Rico and I the weekend off.
The least he owed me, I told him haughtily. As he agreed to my terms,
he was smiling.
Rico had been talking about getting away from Miami but it was difficult
to make plans when you don't know what the local drugs community's plans
are. It seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Before that, we'd spent almost every night together since for just under
three weeks, and I'm not talking sitting in my car. After the first
week, I had to get some sleep by myself. He's just too tempting,
even after a twenty-hour day. My dick hadn't had so much exercise
in the last year and I was loving every minute of it. But even I
need sleep eventually.
The previous Monday, we'd stepped out of OCB in the early hours of the
morning and just looked at one another, both of us wearing these goofy
smiles.
"Hey," I'd said to him, "I gotta get some shut-eye, Partner. The
Lieutenant's gonna start noticing when I'm snoring in briefings."
He grinned, and nodded, and I knew he needed some rest as badly as I
did. So I came back to the boat and he went home - I think he went
home - and I lay awake for hours just thinking about him, about us, about
how crazy it was that we were together in this way, and how incredible.
I got less sleep that night than I did when I was with him!
As soon as he mentioned getting away for the weekend, it seemed like
the best idea I'd ever heard. I told him so, and he'd replied, "we
need to get away from... people."
It was the vague way he'd said "people" that got my mind thinking.
Then the kid had arrived with the M-16 and everything went to hell for
a couple of hours. It wasn't till the next day when I remembered
about it, and the next night before I had chance to ask him.
Rico:
Neither of us had said it, but I think we both realised. We're
in this relationship for the duration. While we're partners, we'd
be lovers. And after that I think Sonny wants to retire further south
and raise alligators. That's just fine by me.
Deep down, I'm a romantic. So's Sonny, but it's even deeper with
him. Difficult to hold on to romance, to believe in it, after all
he's been through.
But being a romantic, being in love, doesn't mean that the desire to
fuck vanishes to the wind. If anything, it gets more intense.
I've been noticing Sonny's ass since we met. It's difficult not
too, the pants he wears. Those linen slacks, when he shoves his hands
in his pockets, the material pulls tight across his firm ass. And I'm
not the only one to have noticed, of course. Gina and Trudy eye him
up all the time. I swear I've even seen Castillo clocking it once or
twice.
Add to that the extra new dimension of our partnership and I kept thinking
about everything that might mean.
All we'd done up till then was think with our hearts while we played
with our dicks. But we both knew there was more, stuff that wasn't
going to come so naturally.
"Stuff we don't have to do," he murmured to me late that night.
We'd made love slowly, touching one another luxuriously. Sonny has
this wonderful obsession with my chest. He found out, within days of
us first making love, that I have sensitive nipples.
He loves to nibble on me, on the skin at the top of my spine, over my
first vertebrae, on my collarbone, the base of my throat. When he started
to nibble on my nipples the first time, I urged him on, urged him to do
more, to take it further.
Afterwards, we lay there, him lying on his back, me on my side propped
up on one elbow.
"Rico," he murmured after a long time, "you've been thinking, right,
about all the... all the rest of it?"
Couldn't lie to him. I've never lied to him. "On and off."
All right, a little lie.
"Does it scare you?"
I looked at him, knew he would never hurt me but.... "I don't know,
Sonny. I honestly don't know."
Sonny:
I admit it. I have an obsession with the peppercorn curls on Rico's
chest. They surround his nipples, tickle my tongue as I head for
the hard buds I love to sink my teeth into until he screams.
I did it that night on the boat, moored so far out that no one could
have heard us. That was what Rico had meant by "away from people".
Part of it at least.
"Rico," I said, "you've been thinking, right, about all the... all the
rest of it?"
I could see in his eyes that he wanted to say no, but he wouldn't lie.
He shrugged, dismissing it. But he wasn't getting away that easily.
I asked him if the thought scared him and he told me he didn't know.
"First things first?" I asked him roughly, and he nodded. I smiled
gently. We'd got another day and another night. I was going
to bring my lover out of that innocent shell.