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Title: 28 - Sleep Better
Rating: NC-17,
Warning: Grimes is ill. But that can’t stop him from getting... horny.
Disclaimer: Has absolutely nothing to do with the real life men the book and movie were based. It's only inspired by the movie and I make no profit. And I do not set forth this type of relationship as ideal or healthy for anyone. Although it works for these two.
Sleep Better
“So this is your colonel.”
Grimes’ arm twitched when he heard the night nurse’s voice. McKnight barely had enough time to pull his hand away before she rounded the corner.
“Good evening, Sherri.” Grimes had learned the names of every nurse, doctor and orderly who had cared for him since he got out of the ER. “This is Linda’s brother, Colonel McKnight.” Maybe his voice was a bit too proud. Maybe she wouldn’t notice.
McKnight stood up. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“You’re not in my way,” she said lightly. “Yet. But it is ten minutes past visiting hours and my supervisor will show up soon. You’ll have to come back at eleven tomorrow.”
McKnight looked as if he didn’t want to leave.
Grimes didn’t want him to leave either.
“I’ve got to finish my rounds, but I expect you out of here by the time I get back,” she said. “Five minutes, Mr. Grimes,” she warned.
McKnight rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Well, I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”
Grimes hated hospital rules.
“I’ll be back in the morning.”
Grimes didn’t want to spend another night in this room. He would have preferred to go home with McKnight, or at least to Linda’s house with McKnight. Or for McKnight to stay with him. Failing that, he would have preferred to be in a room with someone else. But Linda had insisted on a private room. Grimes knew he couldn’t afford it, but Linda claimed she could.
Besides, the night before they hadn’t known what was wrong with him. There could have been some kind of suppressed immune system thing. They didn’t want him to catch anything from another patient. Last night, they’d made Linda wear a gown and mask and gloves as she sat by his side and held his hand and said comforting things.
He was really glad his blood tests had turned out so well. If McKnight were wearing an isolation gown, Grimes wouldn’t be able to see the new insignia, and McKnight wouldn’t have thought to tell him about the promotion.
Grimes liked knowing about it. It made him feel… proud. And horny. He couldn’t wait to properly congratulate McKnight.
Not tonight, though. He was still tired, even after sleeping half the day. And there was no privacy in a hospital, even in a private room.
But at least in the private room McKnight had been able to hold his hand and kiss him.
McKnight leaned down and kissed him again, on the forehead. Grimes was sure it had been intended as a quick, good-night kiss, but McKnight’s lips lingered deliciously.
Grimes wanted to say something. Something about being glad McKnight was safe.
“Shhh,” McKnight said. “Tell me in the morning.” His voice was ragged, like he might… but that was impossible! McKnight didn’t cry.
He sounded scared too, and Grimes had been sure McKnight wasn’t really scared of anything.
Except…
“I’m already feeling better, sir,” Grimes assured him.
McKnight nodded.
“I might even be able to go home tomorrow.”
“I hope so,’ McKnight said, still rough but steadier.
Linda came in and gave Grimes a kiss on the cheek and said ‘goodnight’ and ‘I love you’ and it wasn’t as good as McKnight saying it but it helped.
“I love you, too,” Grimes said to McKnight while he looked at Linda.
And then there was just Sherri, standing by the bed reading his chart. “Good news, Mr. Grimes. We can take off these wires for the night so you can sleep better, but you’ll have to promise to keep the finger monitor on.”
Grimes hated the finger monitor. It pinched. But at least he wouldn’t feel so tethered to the bed.
“Can't we take those right off?” he asked as the nurse disconnected the leads.
“No, we keep the stickies on so the doctor can take another ECG in the morning.”
Grimes seriously doubted that ‘stickies’ was the proper technical term for the adhesive pads placed all over his body. But they were sticky. And they itched.
There were little shaved patches on his chest and legs. The pads hadn’t adhered very well, and the doctor figured they’d have to stay on for a while, so the orderly shaved him. “It’s either this or we’ll have to use a big ‘x’ of tape over every pad, and that’ll pull out more hair and more painfully,” he’d said cheerfully as he made the ‘stickies’ stick even more.
The hair would itch too, when it grew back.
But McKnight would like the little hairless patches, Grimes thought. They would be smooth for a little while. McKnight would want to touch them. Feel the skin. Lick them.
Grimes bent one leg to hide his erection. He didn’t want Sherri to assume she’d had anything to do with it.
“You’re a lucky one, aren’t you?” she said as she handed him a glass of water. “That Danny seems very nice.”
How did she know his name?
“How do you know…”
She bent down and whispered, “You said it in your sleep last night.”
Shit.
“Why do you think I let him stay here so long after hours?”
Aw, fuck.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”
Yeah, Grimes thought. Sure.
“My brother’s in the navy,” she continued. “His boyfriend used to be my hairdresser.”
Oh.
“I think ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ sucks,” Sherri said. She switched off the light. “Is that okay? You had a nightmare last night.” She looked down at his leg.
Of course, she’d seen the scarring. And of course, she would think he was having some kind of flashbacks to his time in Somalia.
Nothing of the sort.
“I’m fine,” Grimes said.
He hadn’t dreamt of Somalia. He hadn’t thought of it at all. This hospital was nothing like the medical tent at the makeshift base. And the illness was nothing like his wound.
Back then, he’d been in pain. Terrible pain. He’d been able to handle it during the battle, but once he was in the tent and his adrenaline died down – probably leaked out of him with all the blood – it had hurt like hell.
In the medical tent he’d been surrounded by men in agony. Grimes had been shocked by the loss of so many, but it was harder for the other guys.
None of the dead soldiers were close friends of his. Grimes had been careful, maybe too careful, not to let anyone really know him, nor did he know them. He had no close friends. In a way, it would have been easier if one of them had been a friend, because then he could have mourned the way the others did. Shared their intense grief. All he could do was feel the physical pain and the emotional numbness.
After Grimes got back to the States, he’d been no more connected to the others than when they’d shipped out. The other guys had a bit more respect for him, since he’d proven himself in battle, but they weren’t close. And he still had all that fucking trauma to deal with. Alone.
No, he wasn’t reminded of that at all. Not only was he not in pain, but he could walk. Sure, he’d have to bring the IV along with him, but the IV was only glucose. He wasn’t all fucked up on painkillers that didn’t work and antibiotics so strong he couldn’t digest solid food.
But the most important difference was that when McKnight visited him, it wasn’t as a concerned superior officer with an unacknowledged sexual interest in him. McKnight had kissed him and held his hand.
And he’d been the cause of the nightmare, although Grimes would never admit it to anyone.
It was a stupid nightmare. Grimes knew McKnight could take care of himself. But McKnight didn’t get home when he was supposed to, so Grimes had spent the night imagining the worst.
In the morning, when Linda told him she’d contacted the base and found out the exercise was merely extended a day or so, he’d been relieved. Now that he’d actually seen McKnight, seen that he was okay with his own eyes, Grimes could relax.
He closed his eyes and instead of imagining broken safety lines and weapons malfunctions, he dreamt that he was in the garden and McKnight was talking to him. Grimes couldn’t understand the words, but they weren’t important. What was important was that McKnight was talking in that low, rumbly voice he got when he was at ease. What mattered what that he was saying whatever he was saying to Grimes.
It could have been in the future. The garden was grown in, full of plants Grimes had circled in his A-Z of Gardening Encyclopedia but had not yet purchased.
Grimes stretched out on the soft, dry grass while McKnight played with his hair. A little tug, and Grimes’ cheek was resting on McKnight’s solid thigh. He rubbed against the crisp uniform and felt the heat from the leg beneath it. The hand on the back of his neck was wide and warm. It guided him up, past the hard cock under the uniform. Grimes couldn’t see anything in the dream anymore, but he could feel McKnight’s lips on his lips, and opened his mouth to let McKnight’s tongue slide inside. He whispered his name.
Was that what Sherri heard? Had he whispered McKnight’s name softly? Or had he cried out because McKnight wasn’t there?
Grimes opened his eyes. He was alone in the hospital bed.
Damn.
It sure had felt real.
He hoped he would have the dream again. And he hoped he wouldn’t wake up again, so he could keep dreaming, and McKnight’s hand would guide him back down. Since it was a dream, he wouldn’t have to waste any time. The uniform would magically disappear. So would Grimes’ clothes.
No. The uniform, or at least the top of it, would reappear. On Grimes.
Much better. He could still feel the sun on his naked ass, but McKnight’s hand fisted the uniform blouse, and Grimes had to open his mouth really wide to fit all that delicious cock inside.
Was it good or bad for one’s system, he wondered, to dream of giving one’s commanding officer a blowjob while recovering from an environmental illness?
He was still a bit wheezy, and tired, so perhaps something less strenuous, breathing-wise, would be in order. He could lie on his side, and McKnight could lie behind him and slide his cock inside Grimes, slow and easy. A long, leisurely fuck, gentle rocking back and forth, with McKnight’s hand covering his cock, not squeezing, not pulling, just holding him. Keeping him safe.
Grimes opened his eyes again.
He really wished he could jerk off. But he couldn’t bend one elbow because of the IV needle near the joint, and the other hand had the pulse monitor clamped to the index finger. He wouldn’t be able to get a good grip on his cock, and the wire would hamper his movement, and the rough edges of the device would be uncomfortable, if not dangerous.
Plus, if he got come on it, there might be a short. He was sure the room was costing a fortune. He wouldn’t want to add ‘reckless damage of medical equipment” to the bill.
He was irked that Linda insisted on all this. The private room, all the tests. Every test possible. She kept demanding more. She told him it was no problem. Some poetry he’d discovered was not, in fact poetry, but song lyrics, and lyrics were not specified in the will. The books and drafts and letters from writers had to be cataloged and distributed to the correct institutions or sold in the right places, but non-literary works, or rather nontraditional literary works, belonged to Linda, to do with as she wished.
She had discovered Grimes, collapsed in the laundry room, when she’d come over to discuss an offer – an astronomical sum – for something he’d found in the desk in the upstairs back room. Who knew a few words and a doodle or two would be worth so much to a Grammy-winning guitarist?
Dead rock stars, Grimes mused, were worth so much more than dead soldiers.
“Kiss the sky, indeed,” Grimes muttered out loud as he tried to get more comfortable. He wasn’t even going to question what a middle-aged, at the time, high school teacher had been doing exchanging letters with the likes of Jimi Hendrix.
Mildred had never been anywhere. She lived in that cottage her whole life. Yet she collected things from everywhere, corresponded with the most amazing people, and managed to have a long, rich, full and exciting life.
Grimes had traveled all over, lived and served on four continents, been awarded a purple heart, and yet the cottage had almost killed him.
But the cottage was the only place that had ever felt like home.
It was obvious why.
If he had to move, McKnight couldn’t come with him. They could, he supposed, get apartments near each other, but Grimes would have to get a full-time job to pay the rent. They could stay with Linda short-term, but it would be difficult. He didn’t really want to live anywhere he couldn’t go down on McKnight at a moment’s notice.
Grimes tried to picture himself in McKnight’s old room. With McKnight. McKnight naked on the bed, solid and real. No, wait. McKnight in full uniform. Crisp and sharp. Grimes naked, kneeling, rubbing his face across hard cock, pulling the cock out, McKnight’s fingers in his hair, hand on his neck, McKnight falling back on the bed, Grimes climbing up after him, pulling away clothes, licking and sucking. McKnight pushing him back, uniform peeled back just enough to set his cock free. Grimes spreading, spreading, moaning McKnight’s name.
“Shh,” McKnight would say. He’d put his hand over Grimes’ mouth to keep him quiet.
Grimes licking McKnight’s palm and spreading his legs so they can wrap around McKnight’s waist. Grabbing uniform, the bird under his palm, fingers clenched.
That’s how he’d managed to endure the oxygen mask, when he was in the ER and they were attaching things to him and he couldn’t get enough air and there were people all around and none of them were McKnight. The mask pressed into his face, and he wanted to get up and run away. So he imagined it wasn’t an oxygen mask at all; he wasn’t ill; he wasn’t in the hospital; it was McKnight.
McKnight would never hurt him. McKnight was just keeping him safe.
“Good boy,” McKnight would whisper. Rotate his hand a bit so the skin of his palm rubbed over Grimes’ lips.
Pushing into him deeper.
“Sir,” Grimes would whisper into McKnight’s palm.
Arching his back, willing his body to take more.
Grimes reached for some tissue, mindful of the wire attached to his finger. He wasn’t going to need to even touch himself at this rate, but he didn’t want to make a mess on the sheets.
He hoped his heart rate wouldn’t go up high enough to cause any distracting beeps.
“I’ve been waiting to fuck you,” McKnight might say.
Or, “Virgin tight, just like I ordered.”
Grimes would tighten even more. McKnight would groan, “John.”
Grimes' come was absorbed by the tissue before it could soak into the sheet.
“Danny, he whispered,” obeying orders.
Continued in: 29 Too Far
Back to: Soldier Porn
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