Clear Cut Page 7

  "Don't you think we'd better go?" he asked Nate eventually.

  Nate looked at his wrist like he was trying to check the time, but he didn't actually have a watch on. Great. He was in fine shape, obviously. Good thing Carter hadn't had any more than the one beer to drink.

  "Yeah," said Nate. "Yeah, you're probably right. Must be late." He stood up steadily enough -- he didn't look like someone who'd had... what, seven drinks in about two hours?

  Carter got up and followed Nate to the door. As they neared the SUV, he cut quickly over in front of the driver's door and held out his hand. "Here, give me the keys."

  Nate stopped. "I'm fine. I can drive."

  "I'm not going to argue with you about whether or not you can -- you're not going to. Give me the keys."

  "I'm fine," Nate repeated stubbornly.

  "Glad to hear it," Carter told him. "Give me the keys."

  "If you don't trust me to drive you, then find some other way to get back," Nate said, putting out his hand as if he was going to move Carter out of his way.

  "You're not getting behind the wheel, whether I'm in the car or not." There was no way he was going to cave on this one.

  Nate took a step closer and Carter saw that his eyes were focused on Carter's mouth. "Get out of my way," said Nate, and his voice was low and menacing.

  "No."

  Another step closer, and now Nate's thigh brushed against his own. "Move."

  "No." Carter hoped he sounded calmer than he felt.

  "If you don't move, I'm going to do something that will make you," warned Nate. There was something both dark and seductive to his tone.

  "I'm not moving until you give me the keys."

  "Don't say I didn't warn you," Nate said, and leaned in and kissed him.

  For a second or two, Carter pressed backward against the car door while Nate's tongue found its way into his mouth. Then Nate pulled backward, and the expression on his face was a combination of pleasure and what might have been triumph.

  "Get out of my way," he repeated.

  "No." And Carter grabbed onto Nate and kissed him back. Nate tasted of beer and scotch and uncertainty. The first two were no surprise, but the last was almost enough to blow Carter away.

  When Nate took a step backward and broke the kiss, they were both panting and Carter was hard as stone. They exchanged a long look.

  Nate dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them to Carter. "Okay," he said. "You can drive."

  * * * * *

  Without another word, Nate turned and walked over to the passenger side door.

  He waited. And waited. "Um, Carter? You have to unlock the door."

  "Right," Carter muttered. "Right." Nate could hear him fumbling with the lock and then he opened the driver's side door and poked the button that unlocked the rest of the doors.

  Nate opened the door and got in. His head was spinning slightly; he was definitely drunk, and probably drunk enough that he shouldn't be behind the wheel, even though he suspected he could have driven back just fine if Carter hadn't been so fucking stubborn.

  "You've got to tell me where to go," Carter said as he pulled the car out of the parking lot.

  "I know that," Nate answered gruffly. Inside he was wondering what the hell he was playing at. He wasn't even sure he liked this guy. On the other hand, kissing Carter had been pretty good. Pretty fuckin' great, actually. "Just follow this road. We won't have to turn for about ten minutes or so."

  "Okay." Carter was quiet, kept his eyes on the road.

  It was too quiet, which wasn't something Nate would have normally thought. He turned the radio on and fiddled with it, but couldn't come up with anything that sounded good and shut it off again.

  "So what the hell was that?" Carter asked into the silence.

  "Couldn't find anything I liked," said Nate.

  Carter waved his hand at the radio. "Not that. I meant before."

  Oh. "Wanted to see if you'd back down."

  "You thought I'd back down and let you drive drunk if you kissed me?" Carter shook his head.

  "How should I know what you'd do?" Nate felt pissed off all of a sudden. "I don't know you from a hole in the wall. And what I do know about you I don't even like."

  "Do you usually kiss men you don't like just to see what they'll do?"

  "Tell me why the fuck I'm letting you drive my car again? Shit, Carter, are you trying to piss me off, or does it just come natural?"

  Carter took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and adjusted the rear-view mirror. "I'm not trying to piss you off," he said finally.

  Well, he was doing a mighty fine job of it for someone who wasn't even trying. Nate was all screwed up inside, like someone had shoved two fists into his gut and twisted. "That why you got divorced? 'Cause it turned out you like men?"

  Carter shot him a look that he thought might have said 'it's not that simple'.

  "Or was she screwing around on you?"

  "Fuck off."

  Nate smirked. He figured you didn't get that kind of reaction unless you'd hit a nerve. "There we go, then. Was it with a friend of yours?"

  "Fuck off," Carter said again, with less heat behind the words this time. "You don't know anything about it, so just keep your fucking mouth shut."

  Heh. "I see when the truth comes out you start swearing like a normal person."

  Carter clenched and unclenched his hands on the steering wheel. "Normal people," he said slowly, "don't necessarily swear. Normal people know when the fuck to keep their mouths shut."

  "Guess neither of us is normal, then, huh?"

  There was a pause, and then Carter chuckled. He'd gone from what looked like steaming mad to practically laughing in the space of five seconds, which knocked Nate flat on his ass. He'd been waiting for a big explosion. Heck, he'd been gunning for it.

  "You've got me there," Carter said. "Okay, fine. We're both abnormal. So will you lay off?"

  "Maybe. For now." Nate was starting to get the nagging headache that came with drinking too much alcohol and not enough water. Okay, no water at all.

  Conversationally, Carter added, "We do seem to spend an awful lot of time pissing each other off."

  "True enough." Nate shifted in his seat to try to find room in his pants for the aching erection that still hadn't subsided. "Tell me about the divorce," he suggested, hoping for anything that might distract him.

  Carter sighed in exasperation. "Didn't I just get finished telling you that I didn't want to talk about it?"

  "Not in those words, no."

  "Well, I don't want to... okay, fine, whatever. But why do you care?"

  "I don't," Nate said, which wasn't entirely true, because he was definitely curious at the very least. "Just thought it would give us something to do."

  "You're just going to be sitting there listening," Carter pointed out.

  Carter adjusted the rear-view mirror again. Nate suspected there wasn't really anything wrong with it. Carter's fingers drummed on the steering wheel, a little pattern that didn't seem to have any sense to it.

  "We got married right out of college," Carter said. "We were in love for years before that. I wanted to have kids right away but she wanted to wait, so we didn't have any. Then about... a year and a half ago I met someone. A guy. First we were just friends; we got along great, he was fun to spend time with, it seemed like we had a lot in common. I started thinking something was wrong -- that I liked him too much, that maybe we'd just been spending too much time together."

  Carter sighed. "Finally I had to admit that I was attracted to him. That I wanted him. And as soon as I'd admitted it to myself, I knew I had to end things with Shannon. She's a wonderful person -- she deserves a real marriage with someone who wants to be with her sexually, and once I'd realized that I wanted to be with men... I couldn't do that to her. It wasn't fair. So I told her, in a conversation to end all conversations, and we filed for divorce. It just went through for real at the beginning of the year."

  Nate thought th
is over. Must have been rough -- at least he himself had been lucky enough -- or self-aware enough, or whatever -- to know that he was gay at a young age. He'd had a hell of a lot longer to get used to the idea. "You fuck him?"

  Carter glanced over at him disbelievingly. "What?"

  "The guy, the one that made you realize you wanted to be with men."

  "That's definitely none of your business." Carter kept his eyes on the road and refused to look in Nate's direction again.

  "Okay." Nate scraped at his shirt front with a fingernail. There was some of Jeff's blood, now dried and flaking, on it. He thought he'd probably just throw the shirt away -- no point in keeping it. Even if it came clean in the wash, it'd remind him. "Turn left up there, after that light," he said, pointing.

  Carter didn't answer, but he made the turn as directed.

  After another five minutes without conversation, Nate thought he was going to go crazy. He wasn't sure if Carter was sulking on purpose, to make a point, or if this was just what he was like. "You just gonna sit there the whole rest of the way back?" he asked finally.

  "What do you want me to do, jumping jacks?"

  "No, I mean, are you gonna refuse to talk to me?" Nate wasn't even sure why he cared. Usually he'd be all over the silence thing. Just as happy to sit quietly as to listen to someone babble on and on about some shit he couldn't care less about. Which should have been doubly true in this case, since God knew three-quarters of everything he'd heard come out of Carter's mouth had been pure shit. Why did he care if the guy talked?

  "I don't really have anything to say. I don't want to talk about my previous relationships with you," Carter said.

  "Christ. You are the biggest fucking pain in the ass I've ever met."

  "Well, I suppose that's an accomplishment then, isn't it?"

  "I guess so."

  Other than giving driving directions, they didn't talk the rest of the way back to the bunkhouse. When they arrived, the guys were all waiting around, wanting to hear all the details about Jeff, how the surgery had gone, what the doctors had said. Some time in the middle of all the talking Carter disappeared -- Nate was never sure when, exactly -- and by the time everyone had dispersed and settled back into something resembling their nightly routines, he was gone.

  Nate went to his office and dug out the forms that he'd need to fill out because someone on his crew had had an accident. They were the in triplicate, unbelievably detailed ones that he hated, not only because it sucked to have to write down every little thing about something painful and often bloody that had happened to someone he knew, but also because it always took him an hour to complete them. The last time someone had an accident -- it had been Big Mike, who'd slipped climbing down from a tree and sprained his ankle -- he'd told himself he'd need to come up with a better system for filling these out. Of course he hadn't, so it was start from scratch time again.

  Pain in the ass forms.

  He'd gotten about halfway through them, and he'd just heard what he thought were the sounds of Don going to bed -- Don was almost always the last one still up -- when there was a soft scrape outside his office door and then a shadow fell into the room as someone blocked the light from the hallway. He looked up to see Carter standing in the doorway.

  "Still had your keys," Carter said, a little bit sheepishly. He dangled them from the end of his outstretched finger.

  "Come on in."

  Carter did, handing the keys to Nate and then standing in front of the desk. He looked like he didn't belong, to Nate, despite the flannel shirt that fit right in. "What are you doing?"

  "Paperwork," Nate sighed. "Someone gets hurt, automatically there's a whole fuck-load of paperwork to fill out."

  "Oh." Carter shifted. "Is there anything I can do? To help?"

  Nate shook his head. "Not right now, anyway. Later I'll need you to write what you saw, sign a few things. You don't have to, but it'd help things go smoother."

  "I don't mind."

  Nate looked back down at the papers spread out across his desk. "I've got to finish this," he said finally. "Did you want something?"

  "Yeah, actually I did."

  Nate waited, and when no answer was forthcoming he sighed and rubbed his forehead. "What?"

  "You."

  7.

  Nate froze for just a second, and then he slowly leaned back in his chair and looked at Carter. Just looked at him, like Nate was really seeing him for the first time, even though Carter was pretty sure that wasn't true. "What?" Nate said again.

  "You heard me." Carter waited another minute, and when Nate still didn't say anything he felt himself flush. "Fine. If you don't want..."

  "Shut up," Nate said. "Christ, you like to hear yourself talk, don't you." He got up from the desk and came around and grabbed onto Carter's upper arm, and for a second Carter thought Nate was going to push him out of the office. Instead, Nate pulled him further in and closed the door. "I have to work here, you know," Nate said. "Think you could keep it down?" Then Nate kissed him.

  Nate was inches taller than he was and the man's mouth was hard, almost brutal. Nate hadn't let go of Carter's arm and his grip was equally hard there. Carter found himself being shoved back against the wall, and he had just enough brain cells still firing at that point to wonder what the heck it was with Nate and pushing before he felt Nate's thigh against his own.

  Warm lips and hot breath and then Nate's tongue in his mouth again, like he was going to take without asking first. Carter didn't know whether he liked that or not, but his cock must have because it throbbed and strained against the front of his jeans.

  Nate pulled his face back just far enough to talk. "This isn't gonna be pretty, Carter. It's not all flowers and candy, you know. You want me?"

  "Yes," he managed to hiss.

  Nate rocked his hips into Carter's and Carter could feel Nate, hard, pressing against his pelvic bone. "You have any idea what you're getting yourself into?"

  Carter nodded, and their faces were so close that the movement caused their noses to bump together. But no, he didn't, he didn't have any idea what he was getting himself into, and he didn't care. He wanted. Later he'd worry about the fact that they didn't even like each other and that he was trying to write a book that would make Nate and everyone in his profession look uncaring and money-grubbing and... Later, he'd worry about it later. Right now all he could think about was this, bodies on bodies and moving and...

  He groaned low in his throat and rocked forward into Nate, and Nate pushed back. So back Carter went, into the wall again with Nate's rough hands on his face and Nate's tongue delving into his mouth like he expected to be met on equal ground. Nate's hips thrust forward into his again. "No," Carter gasped, finally answering Nate's earlier question.

  Nate paused. "No, what?"

  "No," said Carter, and then gasped as Nate's teeth nipped at the skin of his throat, "I don't have any idea what I'm getting myself into."

  Pulling back, moving his body away from Carter's, Nate said, "Well, fuck."

  "What? You want me to lie?"

  "No. Just... didn't expect you to tell the truth. But no, I don't want you to lie." Nate leaned in again. "Want me?" he asked.

  "Yes." Carter's breath was ragged.

  "Know what you're getting into?"

  "No. And I don't care."

  "Perfect," Nate breathed, and shoved a thigh in between Carter's legs, giving him something to rub against. And good God it was sheer bliss -- he was so hard, had been at least partially so since the kiss outside the bar, and he rocked forward into the firm muscle of Nate's thigh and groaned.

  He could feel Nate's erection grinding against his own leg, rubbing up and into his pelvic bone. The kissing was heady and desperate now, desperate in a way that cried out for release and knew that it wasn't far off. It was desperation with a purpose, desperation that knew it didn't need to be desperate. It made Carter want to sigh and scream at the same time; it was so filled with contradictions. None of this made any sense, a
nd yet he knew with complete certainty that he wanted it -- that maybe he wanted Nate, at that moment, more than he had ever wanted anyone else in his life. More than he had ever wanted Shannon, and God, that scared him. It made him want to run from the room, the bunkhouse, and the state, and never look back.

  Nate's tongue sliding across his brought him back from the place inside his head where he'd gone, and then Nate's hands were on his ass, holding him closer as Nate rubbed off against him.