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Title: The Dinner Party
Author: heartofslash
Fandom/Pairing: BHD, Grimes/McKnight, Sanderson/Hoot, Sanderson/Hoot/Roe
Series: The Long Haul
Rating: R. NC-17 toward the end there...
Warnings: Long. Needlessly complex backstories. Excessive inner monologue. Easily distracted characters. Power imbalance. Kink, or lack thereof. Simultaneous, though not mutually aware, rimming couples.
Disclaimer: Invented personalities for characters from another's work based loosely on real people but having nothing to do with them. And that's not the way I make my chili, but I'd like to try it some time.
The Dinner Party
Grimes was not a great cook. McKnight thought Grimes was a great cook, but that was only because when McKnight was left to his own devices, he made sandwiches or heated up leftovers, and if it weren't for Grimes there wouldn't be any leftovers, so McKnight would subsist on nothing but ham and Swiss on rye with mustard. Consequently, Grimes' adequate skills in the kitchen seemed better than they really were. Grimes was not a bad cook. He was a good cook, in fact. He made good, healthy, tasty food and very good biscuits, but he was only a great cook by comparison. His cooking looked particularly good in comparison to the average mess hall fare. That's why McKnight thought he was so great.
Or maybe it was because McKnight tended to think Grimes was great at everything.
Grimes bit his lower lip and studied the salad. It was good, he decided. It would be even better when he added the tomatoes and dressing. He wanted it to be perfect, the way you always want everything to be perfect when you have guests over for dinner. In a way, he was glad he was not responsible for the entire meal. It took some pressure off. In another way, it worried him as much as the presentation of the salad did.
It worried Grimes that he was not cooking the entire meal. He wondered how the dinner party had become a potluck. He wondered if he could not, for some reason, be trusted with the entire meal. In fact, he wondered how this whole dinner had come about in the first place, because it was certainly not of his doing.
It had been McKnight's idea.
McKnight had been careful to suggest it in a totally nonsexual situation, so Grimes would not feel as if he were being pressured or taken advantage of. At least that had been McKnight's excuse for suddenly bringing up the idea of having Grimes' bosses over for dinner while Grimes was deadheading the spring bulbs.
Okay, so that wasn't a totally nonsexual situation, because Grimes had been kneeling, and had felt McKnight's eyes all over his ass, but it had been in the flower bed nearest the road, which was visible from the road, and they never did anything even approaching sex in public, or at least not in that particular public location. So it had been about as nonsexual as things ever got between them.
Grimes had stopped wondering a long time before about when the relationship would stop being so unrelentingly sexual. He knew it often happened in relationships, and he had tried to imagine it in his, but with little success. It was probably the absences. McKnight was gone often enough, on training programs or missions, to keep the two of them from ever tiring of each other. Maybe if McKnight ever retired, and they spent too much time together… no, Grimes didn't think about that.
What he did think about were the biscuits. He'd had to get up early to make them, because the thick stone wall kept the house cool, but the oven for even half hour in the heat of the day would have been unforgiving. There was a heat wave going on, and Grimes was not fond of overheating, especially not when he would have to remain fully dressed. The biscuits wouldn't be perfect, because they weren't fresh, but they would still be better than you could buy in a store.
There was a platter of sliced vegetables in the fridge – red peppers, zucchini and onion, skewered and ready to be grilled. There was beer in the fridge, butter in the pantry so it wouldn’t be too hard to spread, and the salad, almost complete. The dressing sat next to it. The sarn'ts would bring the steaks, and a pot of chili allegedly from a recipe belonging to Sanderson's mother.
Grimes had a tough time picturing Sanderson's mother. To be honest, he had a hard time with the idea of Sanderson having a mother. Everyone has to have a mother, but Sanderson seemed so… grown up. He suspected she might be tall and lanky, with big blond hair and bright blue eyes that always knew when you're lying.
But then, she could just as well be short. Or dark. Or pudgy. You never can tell with mothers. Matt Eversmann's mother was about five foot two, a tiny wisp of a thing, and had shocking black hair, although that might be from a bottle. Grimes had run into them one time when they were shopping. They'd tried to hide it, but Grimes could tell they were buying a present for Todd Blackburn. There was no way Eversmann could have ever squeezed into that teeny leather jacket.
Grimes wondered how he remembered when Blackburn's birthday was. Then he wondered why he was thinking about Matt Eversmann's mother. Probably because it was easier than thinking about the dinner guests who would be arriving in – he glanced at the clock – half an hour. He bounced a few times and shifted his weight, left to right. Everything was done. There was nothing to do. The house was clean, the garden was tended, the fire pit was ready to light – no crap gas barbeques for McKnight – the food was prepared, and Grimes was dressed in casual clothing, absolutely unprovocative. Jeans and a t-shirt. No one could take that the wrong way, could they?
Grimes wiped the top of the stove. There wasn't any dirt on it, but it was something to do. Then he went into the back room to make triple sure there was no lube or other overt signs of sex lying around. Then he went back to the kitchen to straighten the spices on the spice rack.
Grimes looked at the clock again. Twenty-two minutes to go. At times like this, Grimes wished he were a little less organized.
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Sanderson was a great cook. He didn't get time to do it often, but he knew he was great. It was a natural thing for him. Even so, he'd taken extra care marinating the steaks – secret recipe, if he told you the ingredients he'd have to kill you – and spicing the chili – not so secret recipe, since his mother got all her recipes from the Cleveland Mirror. But it was a family tradition, and Hoot loved it.
It had been a brilliant idea of his, to suggest the potluck thing when McKnight showed up at the office, that afternoon when Grimes was out, to invite them to dinner. He did not want Grimes to cook for them all. It would be too… servile. He already worked for them enough. Equally, he didn't want McKnight to be solely responsible for a barbecue, because that would be too much like the husband cooking in the back yard while the wife – not that he thought of Grimes as the wife, but if you were going to assign husband and wife roles you might be tempted, but he did not think of Grimes as feminine at all, even if there were aspects of him that were pretty.
Sanderson sighed. He remembered summer Saturday nights at home when he was a little kid, his dad in the yard searing the meat, mom in the kitchen making deviled eggs, both playing their roles that never changed. He'd always wished that for once his mom would go outside, tell his dad to move his pale ass over and let her do the cooking outside for a change. For one thing, the meat wouldn't have been so tough. For another, it was just wrong that she had to do all the cooking all week, and then when he had the day off he made it look like he always did his share, even though she worked as many hours as he did away from home and did all the housework.
After his dad died, his mom did everything, and she sometimes worried it made her less of a woman to do it all, but it was obvious it made her more, and it irked him to no end that she felt the need to worry about things like that.
Sanderson figured that was why he'd opted for a more or less male-only life, apart from his brief, at times spectacular, marriage. It was the easiest way to deal with sex differences - to not have any. No power to abuse. But then, he hadn't exactly chosen a profession bereft of power imbalances. He and Hoot were fairly well matched, though. And neither of them felt any need to exert undo power over the other, not to feel better about themselves or to keep up appearances. It was comfortable.
McKnight and Grimes, on the other hand, they seemed pretty comfortable with power imbalance.
Sanderson cleared his throat. It was unprofessional to contemplate power imbalances in his secretary's personal relationship. It was Grimes' business, and McKnight's business, and not his or Hoot's. No way.
But it was going to be damn near impossible to go to their house, to be on their home turf, to do something as intimate as share dinner in the context of something akin to a double date, without speculating at least a little.
He was hoping for clues. He couldn't deny it. He was hoping that McKnight would touch Grimes in a way that denoted ownership. More than that, he was hoping McKnight would not be able to contain his possessiveness. He was hoping Grimes would get a little flustered, because when Grimes was flustered Hoot got flustered, and that always made for fun when Sanderson and Hoot got alone. He was hoping, above all else, that Grimes would slip up and call McKnight whatever he called him in private.
Just the night before, he and Hoot had been discussing Grimes, even thought they weren't supposed to do that when they were in bed. They hadn't started talking about Grimes. They'd begun by talking about Eugene, Hoot's new favorite topic of conversation, especially when they were in bed.
Sanderson wasn't jealous about that. Getting jealous over Eugene would be like getting jealous over which one of them absorbed more sunlight. It didn't matter, in the long run, who did what to Eugene, because Eugene wasn't theirs, his or Hoot's. Eugene didn't belong to anyone. Eugene was like the sun shining on you after a rainstorm, and the rainbow, too. And that fresh, clean smell in the air. He happened and you were happy about it. Hell, you were even grateful. But he wasn't looking for someone to fall in love with. He had his work and kids in Africa and a hundred other things he'd want more than guys like Sanderson or Hoot being around all the time.
Eugene wasn't all about the sex. He was above sex. He enjoyed it – but how could he not? With Hoot licking him like that… all that slurping… and the noises Eugene made… Sanderson dropped the spoon in the chili. Jesus. Hoot going at anyone like that… but most of all Eugene…
"Are we going or not?" Hoot asked.
Hoot tried not to notice that Sanderson was already getting hard. Fuck, they weren't even there yet and Sanderson was growing, deliciously, making his khakis tent over his groin, and making Hoot's mouth water. He'd thought they would both be able to contain themselves at least until Grimes finally slipped up and called McKnight "sir" in front of them.
Hoot didn't call anyone "sir". Not anymore. And even when he'd been in the army he'd done it as infrequently as possible.
What he really wanted was to understand why Grimes would want to carry on with that sort of thing in his private life. He understood the play-acting element of dressing up and all that for the sex, even if he didn't do that sort of thing, but in your actual life you should be in charge of yourself.
There was the possibility that he and Sanderson had it all wrong. Maybe they'd assumed that McKnight was in charge because of his rank, and his size, and his age, and his general demeanor, and the way he'd showed up all calm and quiet and fucking scary when he'd told them to keep their hands off Grimes, and… fuck, wasn't it obvious that McKnight was the dominant one?
Hoot had looked, but he'd never seen a mark on Grimes, not beyond the odd, perfectly normal love bite on his neck. No marks on his wrists or anything weird. Never any evidence of any kind of physical aftereffect, except for Grimes sitting a little gingerly some mornings, but Hoot had to do that after having Sanderson's cock in his ass, so he didn't consider that evidence of anything kinky.
Hoot wasn't into kink. He knew that some of the things he liked might be considered kinky by some people, but he considered them perfectly normal. What was kinky was choosing to live your whole life according to the way you liked your sex. Not that he would criticize Grimes or McKnight for it. Who was he to make judgments about stuff like that? They were happy and they weren't hurting anyone.
But, again, he and Sanderson could be way off base. It could be that Grimes and McKnight were a completely ordinary couple, aside from the fact that they were both men and one of them was a US Ranger Colonel. They might be like fucking Ozzie and Harriet.
No. Grimes was not like Harriet. He wasn't like a woman at all. He was very clean, but that wasn't necessarily a feminine trait. Some people thought it was, but in Hoot's childhood home it had been his father who did the house cleaning. Grimes was very careful to present himself neatly, but that wasn't feminine so much as well-mannered, and maybe he only looked that good for work. He might slum around the house in crappy sweats and stained t-shirts.
Or not.
Probably not.
God, Grimes was so different from the way Hoot remembered him way back in the army. So much more… himself. That had to be, in part, McKnight's doing.
McKnight hadn't changed in all the years Hoot had known him. Not on the outside, anyway. He must have changed on the inside. He couldn’t live with Grimes for that long and not change.
Or maybe that was the big secret; McKnight hadn't changed at all.
"You're getting hard," Sanderson commented as he turned into the driveway.
Hoot rearranged himself to be more respectable. He carried the pot of chili, and Sanderson had the steaks and a bottle of wine. Grimes came out of the house.
Oh, yeah. That's what he and Sanderson had been talking about the night before. Shape. Size. Build.
Hoot had been trying to come up with a word for Eugene. Slender was okay, but it wasn't quite right. Not enough texture to it. Sanderson had mentioned that Grimes was slender, and Hoot had violently disagreed. Grimes wasn't actually slender. Parts of him were, but there was meat on him, when he was eating enough. He'd been working out a bit more lately, and his chest was bulked up a bit, arms nicely shaped, not too muscular but not slender. Hoot had come up with the word for him.
Spare.
Grimes was spare. Nothing extra. Nothing added on. Exactly what was needed.
And then Sanderson had come up with the word for Eugene.
Gracile.
It means streamlined, delicate without being fragile. Elegant. The opposite of Hoot and Sanderson. Not that Hoot and Sanderson were bulky and blocky and inelegant. There was a lot of elegance to Sanderson. A lot of grace, if not gracile-ness.
Not a lot of elegance to Hoot, Hoot thought. Unless he was on the move. He knew he could be elegant when he was in action, doing very inelegant things. The way he laid the fuse for explosives was elegant. The way he loaded his rifle was elegant. The way he took down a guard.
McKnight came out of the house. He was not gracile, or spare, or slender. The word for him was solid. Fucking solid. Grimes could throw himself at McKnight and the Colonel would not budge. He could climb all over him and McKnight wouldn't flinch. He could - and he probably did - do stuff like that all the time. Hell, he could probably sleep on top of McKnight and McKnight would barely notice.
Except if someone like Grimes was lying on top of you, you'd fucking notice.
Hoot tried to adjust himself again as he put the chili on the stove and accepted a beer from Grimes. Dinner was going to be interesting.
McKnight stirred the coals. He and Sanderson were shooting the shit, talking about the elements of the training program McKnight was running that could be talked about, about the new road going in by the base, about the baseball season. Easy stuff. Sports discussion was the refuge of strangers. Sports and the weather. McKnight was determined not to resort to he weather.
He couldn’t ask what he was really curious about. What the hell was up with these two? He couldn't figure out what their game was. Were they like a couple?
They'd both left the army, moved into Sanderson's house, started this company, slept with the same guys… McKnight knew that much. He knew about Steele.
Fuck, yes, he'd found out about Steele. Grimes had let it slip and that had been a highly enjoyable evening. No matter how much Grimes pleaded that he hadn't been aroused by it at all, McKnight had made him give more and more detail, until McKnight imagined he'd seen it himself, smelled the thick air, tasted the sex in the atmosphere. And until Grimes was begging to be fucked by McKnight.
McKnight loved the fucking, but he hadn't been turned on by the description. He wasn't turned on by Hoot or Sanderson or Steele. Especially not Steele. Too much like himself. He would not particularly want to see such a thing. He'd never liked big guys. Muscular guys didn't do anything for him. And it wasn't that he was particularly into small guys, because there were lots of small guys who did nothing for him. And Grimes wasn't all that small, either. He supposed any man could be attractive, but the idea of seeing three big guys having sex didn't do it for him. No more than seeing women have sex turned him on. He didn't really understand porn because porn had nothing to do with him.
Maybe he was irrevocably selfish. He only liked sex when it was about him. He certainly enjoyed having Grimes' full attention. And he would never get off on some of the things Grimes got off on, like when McKnight pretended to ignore him while he was sucking McKnight's cock. When McKnight sucked Grimes' cock, he wanted Grimes to be thinking only about him. See? Selfish. Self-centered.
But he did those things he didn't understand because he knew Grimes would get off on them. So it wasn't all about him, was it? So there.
But what was it about for Hoot and Sanderson? Maybe it was a matter of convenience. They were friends, had been for a long time from what McKnight knew. They worked well together, complimented each other's skill sets, and both wanted to work in the same field. Maybe the sex part of it was just for the sake of having sex. They were good-looking guys. Fit. Probably skilled. It was probably fun to have sex, to simply share their bodies. And if someone got between them, they'd share him too. Maybe even a her, if a her got between them.
Sex purely as recreation.
McKnight didn't buy that. He couldn’t imagine spending all that time with someone and having sex as a casual thing. Casual sex was something you did once, with someone you barely knew and weren't particularly interested in knowing more. It was physical release, but nothing more. You wouldn't want to use your friend for physical release, would you?
Grimes brought out some potatoes wrapped in foil and put them on the coals. McKnight watched Sanderson's eyes track the curve of Grimes' ass, even though he couldn’t see Grimes' ass himself. He didn't need to. He knew what it looked like.
It didn't bother him that Sanderson was looking. Looking wouldn't hurt.
But why the hell had Grimes worn those jeans? They looked ridiculously good on him. Was he trying to tease the guests?
But then, any other pair of jeans would have been worse. And some would have been devastating.
Grimes wiped the dirt from his knees and said something to Sanderson about the steaks and Sanderson answered him and Grimes wasn't teasing or coy or even remotely flirtatious. He was being one hundred percent proper. He was still ridiculously sexy, but it was not directed at anyone, not even McKnight. Best behavior. Impeccable behavior.
McKnight would have to reward him later…
But first, he had a meal to cook and guests to entertain and food to eat and a relationship to figure out.
And what the hell was up with this Eugene character? Grimes had come home so excited that he'd run into Eugene at work. Grimes had mentioned Eugene before. They'd met all the way back in basic training. They'd both had a tough time, but they'd slogged it out and become friends by the end of it, one of the few friends Grimes had ever made in the army.
Grimes had explained very carefully that there had not been anything between them. "I don't think about him that way at all, sir," Grimes had said. "And he would never think of me that way."
McKnight found that hard to believe. Everyone thought of Grimes that way.
That sort of made Grimes an object, didn't it? The object of desire. McKnight wasn't sure he liked that way of thinking about Grimes. Object, subject – those were dangerous words. No more dangerous than 'sir' or 'serve', he supposed. It all depended on how you use them.
"Eugene likes men," Grimes had said simply.
"You're a man," McKnight had said, cupping Grime's balls in his hand to prove his point. The conversation had been derailed by that, and it wasn't until some time later that Grimes explained what he'd meant.
"Macho," he'd said. "Manly. Big. Muscular. Powerful."
McKnight had come out from under the covers to look at Grimes and tell him to be more specific.
"That's what Eugene likes. Not me."
McKnight had run his hand over Grimes' chest hair. New chest hair. It was finally grown in to as thick as it had been before. Maybe even thicker. More lush. McKnight wasn't going to make that mistake again. The next time he shaved Grimes' chest, he was going to be home to watch it grow in, every step of the way.
He'd then slid his hands down to squeeze Grimes' ass. "You've got muscle on you," McKnight had said.
"Sir, be serious. I'm not powerful."
That was a lie. Grimes exerted more power over McKnight by simply smiling than anyone else had ever managed to exert on McKnight for the whole of McKnight's life.
"Big, sir. They have to be big. He likes big, very manly men. I'm not big, and I don't want to be big, because I don’t want to attract Eugene. I want to attract you."
The conversation had strayed again, but in time McKnight gleaned that one night, a week or so before the end of basic, Eugene had been close to cracking. McKnight knew that feeling. The Ranger course was tough, and he knew Delta was way harder, but there was nothing like basic training to separate the hardy from the inadequate. Grimes, close to breaking himself, had sat with Eugene and they'd talked it all out, and by dawn they'd both confessed to each other about their unsuitable and, at that time strictly forbidden desire for men, and vowed to keep them under wraps. Those desires were no longer forbidden, as long as no one found out about them, but they were sure as hell still disapproved of. Fucking don't ask, don't tell.
They had not got into specifics, but it had been clear to Grimes that Eugene had similar tastes to his own.
That morning at the D-Tech office, Grimes told McKnight, Eugene had filled in some of the details. He was not in it to serve, not like Grimes was. He was not in it to be used, as Grimes enjoyed in an abstracted way. He was not in it for cheap thrills, not that Grimes was. He genuinely enjoyed big, rough, tough men.
"And, sir, I think he might be like you."
McKnight had patiently explained that he did not enjoy big, rough, tough men. He enjoyed a slender, graceful, tough man.
And then Grimes had kind of blushed sweetly – not an easy thing to pull off when your commanding officer has one hand on your balls and the other rubbing between your ass cheeks – and said that he was pretty sure, after Eugene's description of the night before and his feelings about it, that Eugene enjoyed being licked but not fucked.
McKnight tried to forget that night and focus on what Sanderson was saying about the... what the fuck was Sanderson talking about anyway?
Hoot stood in the kitchen, at the kitchen sink, staring out the kitchen window. Grimes' kitchen window. Grimes peeked around Hoot to see what he was staring at. Sanderson and McKnight stood over the fire pit, discussing, Grimes presumed, steak. Hoot was trying to look like he was washing his hands.
"One minute," Hoot said quietly.
Grimes stood stock still for a minute and, sure enough, Sanderson's hands started moving, gesticulating. Hoot's shoulders relaxed.
"Chili powder, Mr. Grimes," Hoot said.
Grimes reached over and took the tin off the spice shelf.
"Cumin, cayenne, and do you have a cinnamon stick?"
Grimes gathered the spices.
Hoot began to throw stuff in the pot of chili simmering on the stove. "Don't get me wrong," Hoot said. "I like Jeff's mother. She's one helluva a lady. But she makes the blandest food on the planet, and she taught him to make chili the same way she does. She taught him how to make all the bland food."
Grimes tried to picture the tall blond women he'd pictured before, showing Sanderson how to make dry white toast and pasta.
"You got any cocoa powder?" Hoot asked.
Grimes fetched the can. Hoot was going to put cocoa into Sanderson's mother's chili. He'd already tossed in a cinnamon stick. Sanderson was going to kill him.
"What's she like?" Grimes asked.
Hoot stirred the chili. "Who? Oh, Jeff's mom. She's tough."
In the picture in his head, Grimes made the bright blue eyes steely.
Hoot put his hand at sternum level. "She's about yeah tall, kinda round all over."
Grimes' vision of Sanderson's mother began to melt.
"Big hair."
At least Grimes had got something right.
"Black," Hoot said.
"Oh," Grimes said. "Black hair." That wasn't at all what he's imagined.
"No," Hoot said. "She's black. Her hair's kinda red. I think she dies it with henna or something."
"What?"
"Something Sanderson's ex-wife showed her how to do."
Ex-wife? Henna? Black? What? "Sanderson's mom is black?" Grimes asked.
"Yeah, well, technically she'd be his stepmother, but she raised him up from two years old." Hoot tasted the chili. "Ah, much better. It just has to simmer for another twenty minutes or so." He looked out the window. Sanderson and McKnight had reached some sort of agreement. Hoot covered the chili. "And I think I'm ready for another beer."
Grimes got a beer from the fridge.
"Do you have a problem with that?" Hoot asked.
"No." Why would it bother him? Grimes was the host. He should get a drink for his guest. It wasn't like Hoot had ordered him to get the beer. Grimes was serving Hoot a beer, but he wasn't serving Hoot.
"That's good, because it's not a big deal, but I admit was a little shocked at first, mostly because Jeff didn't think to tell me."
Oh, right. His mom being black. "No, sarn't. I don't have a problem with his mom. But I do have a problem picturing anyone teaching Sarn't Sanderson how to do anything."
Hoot laughed. "He does like to make it look as if he was born knowing how to do everything, doesn't he?" Hoot uncovered the chili and gave it one more stir. "Look, Yolanda is a very impressive woman and Jeff has a boatload of respect for her. So do I. After his dad died, she finished raising all those kids – his, hers and theirs – she loves them all equally - and now she takes in kids off the street and fosters them, keeps them in school. She's an amazing lady. Just so you know - you don't ever say anything bad about Jeff's mom. You do not mess with Mrs. S."
Grimes pointed at the chili pot. "But-"
"You can mess with her cooking. Mothers may be sacred, but chili is chili."
Sanderson noted that Hoot had finished adding his spices to the chili. All part of the tradition. Sanderson made the dish and Hoot did his thing. Hoot's way was a million times better than the way his mom made it. But Hoot couldn’t touch her pancakes. She made the best pancakes on the planet.
The steak, though, was Sanderson's job. He'd learned the recipe form a Thai mercenary who'd spent a year at a Cordon Bleu cooking school before certain family matters had forced him into a more profitable line of work.
McKnight entirely approved of what Sanderson was doing to the steak, so he didn't interfere. He kept watch on the coals, and it was the best damn cooking fire Sanderson had ever seen. A little experience in the field teaches you how to do stuff like that.
The meat was done, there were grilled vegetables and potatoes, and Grimes was carrying out a salad that was state of the art. And biscuits. Steele had told Sanderson about the biscuits, from one time he'd had dinner at McKnight's sister's place. Sanderson figured Grimes must have made them, because Linda McKnight did not sound like the kind of woman who made great biscuits.
"Hey, Colonel, you should have invited your sister over. I'd love to meet her in person," Sanderson said.
McKnight looked at Grimes, split second. Very coupleish behavior. Nothing out of the ordinary. "She's not around right now. She's in Scotland."
"Scotland? You have relatives there?"
"She's looking at art," Grimes said. "The Scottish National Gallery is very impressive. And she's touring castles. She travels every summer."
Ah, now it made sense. Sanderson had tried to piece together the origins of this strange relationship, and he'd never been able too figure out where they'd found the time and place to start it. The sister being away for the summers explained it. He wondered what she must have thought when she returned home and found John Grimes.
He knew what he would have thought…
"Could you pass the pepper, please," McKnight said, and Grimes handed him the pepper without a word.
Sanderson watched Hoot's eyes narrow. They were both looking for clues, then.
When Grimes got up to get a corkscrew, Sanderson couldn't help watching. Damn. It was like he enjoyed having two ex-Deltas sitting around his back yard with painful erections. Why else would he have worn those jeans?
Sanderson made sure McKnight was engaged in conversation with Hoot before he took a closer look.
There was nothing special about the jeans. In fact, the jeans came as close to hiding Grimes' ass as any pair of pants could. It was the ass that was special.
The t-shirt was loose, plain, almost nondescript. He didn't think Grimes owned any loose clothing. Unless…
Heat spread over Sanderson's face. Damn Hoot and his spices!
…Unless the shirt was borrowed from McKnight so that Grimes wouldn't be wearing anything too revealing.
Sanderson tried to imagine McKnight ordering Grimes to make himself as plain and unappealing as he could. Grimes probably had to try on five or six different formfitting t-shirts and a dozen tailored, snug, body-hugging dress shirts before McKnight gave up, tossed him one of his own.
Or maybe Sanderson was projecting. Embellishing. Making shit up to serve his own purpose, which was to observe evidence of supreme kinky behavior, so he could think about it later.
"You want another beer, Danny?" Grimes asked.
"Sure."
Not a hint. Not a fucking hint of anything kinky.
Maybe it was all a mistake. Maybe Grimes was just being discreet when he called McKnight "the Colonel". Maybe he was just naturally coy. Maybe those snug clothes he wore at work were designed to make him look good, just like millions of other people dress up to look good at work, and it had nothing to do with him wanting to look his best for a particular reason. Maybe he was as boring and normal and bland as most people.
Maybe Sanderson and Hoot had imagined the whole submission and domination thing. Wishful thinking. Fantasies gone wild.
Damn.
That would be very disappointing, but really, it was the most likely reality. Most people are pretty average, otherwise there wouldn't be an average. Everything would be all over the map.
He and Hoot had fairly extraordinary sex lives. He knew that. There was no reason to expect that anyone else would be anything other than normal.
Grimes and McKnight knew each other from the army. After Grimes left the Rangers, they met up. By chance. They became friends. They hung out together. Someone had a little too much to drink – that's how it often happens. There was a gradual realization, a slow confession of desire. They had a few dates, or date-like outings. Sanderson himself might have witnessed one, early on. Eventually, probably when there was too much alcohol again, they ended up fooling around, and they liked it so much they kept fooling around.
That scenario was more likely than the perverted one he and Hoot had dreamed up.
Damn.
Hoot waited for it. The big slip up. The mistake that would reveal everything.
It didn't come.
McKnight stacked dirty dishes and carried them to the kitchen while Grimes showed Sanderson part of the garden. Not a blink. Hoot followed McKnight inside and helped him rinse the dishes.
"I can finish them later," McKnight said. "I feel like having a smoke."
They sat by the fire pit and smoked. "Didn't Mr. Grimes used to smoke?" Hoot asked.
McKnight nodded. "Yeah, but he quit. It's bad for him. Well, it's bad for all of us, isn't it? But John had some problems with his breathing a while back, so he quit." McKnight stared into the fire, tossed the butt onto the coals. "I don't smoke often now, but after a good meal like that…" He patted his stomach.
Hoot was pretty stuffed. It was a good, lazy feeling when he sipped his coffee and listened to Sanderson ask questions about the house. Grimes offered a tour and Hoot hauled his ass off the chair because he really wanted to look around inside.
It was an old house, with some old furniture but mostly unremarkable stuff. There was a particularly ugly sideboard in the parlor, and a big roomy couch Hoot could imagine having a lot of fun on. There were actual records by a real turntable in the living room, mostly older stuff and definitely not the kind of stuff he listened to. Nothing unusual, though. Nothing incriminating.
There were three rooms upstairs. One, the one that used to be the main bedroom, was empty except for a few boxes and a dressmaker's mannequin.
There was a small bedroom at the back with a bed that looked as if it had never been slept in, but there was a shirt on the bed, the only thing out of place. It looked as if someone had taken it off in a hurry, or it was arranged to look like that. There were clothes in the laundry hamper and toiletries on the bureau, but the plastic seal was still on the deodorant stick, and the keys were placed a little to perfectly in the center of the bedside table.
That was the fake bedroom.
And there was what was supposed to be McKnight's bedroom, in what used to be a sewing room, Grimes explained, which also explained the creepy mannequin.
The bed was big. Sturdy. With a barred headboard that made Hoot's hands itch. There was a dresser with a mirror, and that made Hoot's eyes ache. What that mirror may or may not have seen… McKnight's uniform was hanging behind the door, ready to go at a moment's notice. McKnight's duffel was on the floor beside a chair. Very practical. There was a freshly shined pair of boots on the other side of the chair. Hoot looked sideways at Grimes. Had he shined them? Grimes was pointing out the view of the front garden from the window. There was a lilac tree outside it. Evidently it was very beautiful in springtime.
All the windows in all the rooms, Hoot noticed, had blackout blinds.
But all the blinds were open, and the windows open too, so the air was fresh. Hoot could not smell so much as a dirty shirt. It was the perfect officer's quarters. That was the thing about guys in the army – they may have to live rough in wartime, but during peacetime they learn to be neat and disciplined and make a bed so tight a quarter bounces off the blanket and there wasn't a fucking hint that it was Grimes who made this room look like this. It could have been McKnight. It might as well have been McKnight. He didn't strike Hoot as a tightass, but he had probably been cleaning to army specs since before Grimes had learned to jerk off.
This could have been his parents' house. The second bedroom would have had his pa's clothes in it because he snored and it kept his ma awake all night, so she told him to move into the spare room.
If McKnight snored it didn't bother Grimes, because that spare room was not in use.
And if Grimes snored… fuck, who would care if Grimes snored? Hoot sure as hell wouldn't.
Hoot went downstairs to take a piss, and almost missed the toilet when he noticed the grab bar on the wall beside the big, claw-foot bathtub. He imagined Grimes standing beside the tub, reaching over the tub to grab the bar…
Naw. The grab bar was for getting in and out of the tub. He was imagining things. Crazy things. He wanted another smoke.
The evening was still warm, but it wasn't as stifling as the last few, and there was even a bit of a breeze coming across the water. The fire had died down, there had been wine with dinner, and now coffee after dinner, and they were talking about D-Tech and the plans Sanderson and Hoot had to expand it. They were looking for a tech guy, and Hoot had a friend up in New York, an ex-Ranger, interested in taking on some surveillance and research contracts. McKnight asked who that might be, and McKnight had heard the name.
"Didn't he get a dishonorable discharge a while back? I remember something about that," McKnight blurted out. That was fucking rude. He was too relaxed. No more beer for him.
Sanderson looked uncomfortable for a second.
"Fucking army," Hoot swore. "Sorry, Colonel, but he didn't do anything wrong. It was innocent."
Sanderson snorted. "I wouldn’t call that innocent. But it was consensual."
"But not entirely informed. He had no idea he was fucking a general's nephew."
That explained the dishonorable discharge.
"What's he up to now?" McKnight asked.
"Sixty days sober," Sanderson said wryly.
"He'll be out of his rehab program soon, and it was only the way he was treated by the army that sent him in there. He's a solid guy, but it crushed him. That was the ultimate rejection. He put his whole soul into his job, and was booted out, no pension, no mercy." Hoot must have had at least one too many as well. He was way too emotional. Or this was a sore point with him.
Grimes topped up Hoot's coffee.
"You must have thought about it, Colonel. You must worry about it, what would happen if…" Hoot said.
McKnight did worry about it. Increasingly. But he wasn't going to admit that. Not in front of Grimes. "We're careful. We're discreet," he said in his neutral voice.
"Yeah, but it sucks. It sucks to not be able to live your life openly. I hated it. I loved the job, and I love my country, but I hated having to hide who I was. I don't know how I did it for so long."
Grimes made a small noise. "Um, sarn't, I don't think you were hiding all that much."
Sanderson snickered.
The conversation moved on. They needed a tech guy, business was so good. They were going up to Toronto in a week to do a big job, and then they'd go into the next phase of the business. It felt good to be their own bosses. Grimes was terrific. Didn't know what they'd do without him.
Neither did McKnight.
The talk moved on to other things, and it was nice. McKnight liked this. He hadn't socialized in a long time. He'd only ever socialized with Grimes in the company of his sister and her girlfriend. They couldn't do anything else, could they? Even this felt slightly risky, but it was worth the unsettled feeling because they were talking and enjoying each other's company. It was all very normal.
A little too normal.
They were having to try too hard to be normal.
What the fuck was normal, anyway, and why was it worth worrying about?
Like Hoot said, it sucked to have to hide who you were. No one was pretending that they were four bachelor guys who happened to be having dinner together, but they were still pretending, weren't they?
"Grimes," McKnight sat up straight and said, in his usual tone of command.
"Yes, sir," Grimes said automatically. He turned, his back to Sanderson and Hoot, his eyes wide and anxious. Panic. He bit his lip. And then he licked his lips, and his eyelids drooped a bit, and he stood up.
"Come here," McKnight said.
Grimes slinked across the yard and sat on the chair next to McKnight's.
McKnight reached over and ran his hand through Grimes' hair. "Good boy," he said.
Hoot looked like he was going to shit himself.
Grimes face was still on fire. He was flustered. He was off balance. He was furious.
"How could you?" he asked. "Everything was going so well."
"You came over. You didn't look too upset."
"It was too late to be upset by then. I was salvaging the situation by staying calm."
He wasn't calm anymore, not now that Sanderson and Hoot had gone home. Now he was furious.
Mostly he was furious because he had a raging hard on, and McKnight was refusing to do anything about it until Grimes stopped being angry about the other thing.
Grimes played it in his head, over and over. The looks of shock. The attempt at ignoring the way McKnight had his hand on Grime's head, fingers twined in his hair. The inevitably hushed farewells.
"Sir, you humiliated me."
"That's what you like," McKnight said casually.
Grimes gasped, but he couldn’t storm out the way he wanted to. He was too fucking hard.
Okay. McKnight was right. It was what he liked. One of the things that he liked. But not in public. Never in front of anyone else!
"I gave you what you wanted, didn't I? A nice dinner, comfortable socializing, with everyone acting normal." McKnight was sitting in his chair in the back room. He'd gone around closing all the windows and blinds, and then he'd turned on the air purifier and sat down and was about to light a cigarette.
"'Come here' is not normal, sir! 'Good boy', in the middle of coffee, in front of other people, is not normal! Petting me like that… and patting my ass when I got up. That's not normal," Grimes fumed.
"It is for us," McKnight pointed out. His lighter flared.
"But not for anyone else, sir!" Grimes was starting to whine now. Unattractive. He tried to relax his vocal chords.
McKnight got up suddenly. He got his fingers twined in Grimes' hair again. "Calling me 'sir' isn't normal. The way we live isn't normal. The way your dick is hard right now isn't normal." He tugged, just a bit, and Grimes went down to his knees.
No, it wasn't. It wasn't fucking normal at all. He pressed his face to McKnight's crotch and rubbed his cheek against the heavy ridge of hard, thick cock.
It had been the biggest thrill of his life when McKnight used that voice and he'd answered without thinking. And then the order to sit next to McKnight, his commanding officer. He couldn’t refuse. He'd thought about it, for a second, for the second it took to realize that Hoot and Sanderson were watching him and had heard him say 'sir' already, and the logical part of his brain figured there was nothing to lose. They already knew.
They'd always known.
And McKnight's fingers on his scalp had been… adoring. McKnight's voice, when he called Grimes a 'good boy', had been so full of pride and devotion. The way McKnight had hooked his fingers through the belt loops of Grimes' jeans as they were saying goodbye had been downright indulgent.
"I am not ashamed," McKnight said in the most tender voice Grimes had ever heard. It made his ears burn. "I'm tired of hiding it. If I can't show it in front of those two perverts then I can never show it in front of anyone. I've got the best, most beautiful boy ever, with the prettiest mouth I've ever seen that sucks cock better than those two can even imagine."
Grimes' pretty cocksucking mouth was open and covering the shaft of McKnight's dick through his pants. He couldn't help it. He needed that cock in his mouth. It was the only way he would calm his racing heart.
"You want me to hide what gives me the most joy in my whole life?" His fingers danced in Grimes' hair.
"No, sir," Grimes said, breathing out over McKnight's cock, forcing hot air through the fatigues.
"You want me to hide that I'm the luckiest man alive?" He pressed the back of Grimes' head, turning it so his lips pressed against the head of his cock.
"No, no, sir," Grimes groaned. "Please, sir. I understand."
"No, you don't." McKnight yanked him to his feet again. "You don't see. They came here hoping for a show."
Grimes was stunned by the sudden withdrawal of cock. He latched his lips onto McKnight's neck instead.
McKnight stroked his hair. "They came here expecting to spy, to see private details that would help them imagine what goes on between us. They wanted to be able to imagine how you look when you obey me, and when you get on your knees and beg me to fuck you, and when you kneel on the floor at my feet and suck my cock."
Yesyesyespleaseyes, sir, Grimes thought as loudly as he could. I'll do all that. Now. Here. I wouldn’t even care if they were watching.
"I can't have that," McKnight said. "That's an invasion of your privacy. So I had to show them something they can't even dream of."
Grimes clung to McKnight's shirt and steadied his breathing. Strong hands stroked his back and shoulders.
"Shhhhh," McKnight said. Grimes realized he was shaking.
"Goddamn," Hoot said aloud.
Sanderson, who was lying on his back staring at the ceiling, grunted in agreement.
"He did that on purpose," Hoot said.
Sanderson sat up.
"He invited us over there for dinner with the intention of doing that," Hoot grumbled.
"I don't know. Seemed kind of spur of the moment to me," Sanderson said. He sure as hell hadn't been expecting it. Everything was perfectly normal and then, wham, out of the blue, the 'sir' they'd been waiting for.
"And now I can't do it," Hoot said dolefully. "I can't imagine what Grimes' naked ass looks like."
Sanderson sighed. "Neither can I."
"I used to be able to," Hoot continued. "I used to do it all the time. I could imagine what he looked like naked, and doing all kinds of things. And now all I can picture is McKnight touching his hair and calling him a good boy. I can't even remember exactly how he said 'sir'."
"The 'good boy' eclipsed the 'sir'," Sanderson agreed. Totally unexpected.
Hoot straightened out his legs and flipped over so he lay face down on the bed. "That dirty fucker," he said into the mattress.
It had been masterful. Lulling them into a false sense of disappointment like that, and then slamming them in the face with cold, hard reality. Good move, Colonel McKnight. Your boy is safe. Sanderson found himself admiring the sneaky bastard.
"You can't imagine it because there isn't a hope in hell of ever seeing it," Sanderson said.
"Not in a million fucking years," Hoot mourned.
"There never was a chance," Sanderson pointed out.
"Yeah, but now there isn't even any hope."
"There are lots of other asses," Sanderson said.
"I know."
"Lots of asses you do have hope of seeing."
"I know."
"Some are guaranteed."
Hoot lifted his head.
"Mine's guaranteed."
What the hell. Hoot needed cheering up.
Nothing ever cheered up Hoot as much as doing something incredibly, pornographically debauched.
So he would never see John Grimes without his clothes on. So what? So he couldn't even imagine it, because every time he tried he saw McKnight's smug expression of triumph.
That was harsh. McKnight wasn't smug. In fact, he'd been very dignified, quiet and matter-of-fact. Ownership claimed. Game over.
Not quite, though. He still liked the idea. He still liked the idea of Grimes naked and willing. He just couldn’t picture it in a visual way.
And if he blocked out the unavailability of Grimes, he could still gain a fair bit of enjoyment from knowing just how much bigger than Grimes McKnight really was, because he'd seen them sitting side by side. And he knew that when McKnight touched Grimes, it was with reverence as well as ownership, so he knew that no matter what Grimes was doing, no matter what Grimes was saying when he called McKnight 'sir', and no matter how kinky things got, McKnight was not abusing him. It was plain that McKnight felt privileged. And he treated Grimes like an equal, or better. And Grimes wasn't doing it because he felt some need to act out a fantasy, or because he felt a need to debase himself. He was fulfilling his desires the same way McKnight was.
That was good to know.
And it was normal. For them.
But they were used to privacy. Grimes had to have been a little embarrassed by that display. Humiliated. Hoot tried to imagine someone showing their ownership of him like that. He couldn't imagine it. He couldn't imagine getting off on it.
Not until Sanderson grabbed him and lay him flat on his back and rubbed his big, hard cock over Hoot's chest. Sanderson started to jerk off. Hoot watched Sanderson's hand, his bulging forearm, his hard cock, and the look of ownership, temporary as it might have been, on Sanderson's face.
"I just have to get rid of this load," Sanderson said. "Then you can get your mouth to work on my ass."
Fuck, yes. That would cheer Hoot up immensely.
"Open your mouth," Sanderson said quietly.
Hoot did as he was told.
"I want to see my come land in your mouth," Sanderson growled.
Hoot stuck out his tongue.
"You could have warned me, sir."
"It wasn't planned."
"Yes, it was. You would never do something like that unless you'd thought it out in advance."
Busted. "Okay. Maybe. A little. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I had to show them something that would make things very clear."
"Staking a claim, were you?"
"More like clearing the air."
"You still should have warned me."
"John, you're a terrible actor. It had to look real."
"It was real. Real humiliation."
"And that was a real erection in your jeans. God, did you have to wear such sexy jeans?"
"They're not sexy! They're the least sexy jeans I own."
Were they? Well, it wasn't the jeans that were sexy, anyway.
McKnight patted Grimes' spent dick. His own dick was limp as a noodle. A big, fat, wet, limp noodle. "Get up here."
Grimes climbed up and lay face down on McKnight's chest and sighed.
It had been fun. It had been fun to spend the whole evening like that, pretending to be regular people. It had been fun to imagine that he and Grimes were a normal couple. He tried to imagine what it would be like, how it would be different.
To start with, they would share all the housework. That didn't bother him. Grimes didn't do all that work around the house because McKnight was lazy. He did it because he took pride in it. And because McKnight liked to watch him. Especially when he was on his knees, scrubbing the floor or whatever. Grimes claimed he never did it on purpose – it just so happened that often McKnight would walk into a room to the irresistible sight of Grimes' ass up in the air. McKnight didn't care any more. All he knew was that the smell of floor cleaners made his dick hard.
If they were a normal couple, there would be no Grimes cleaning while McKnight watched him with hungry eyes. There would be no Grimes serving him dinner and sliding down to the floor to suck his cock while he had dessert. No Grimes licking him while he watched the game or just watched Grimes. No Grimes kneeling on the floor naked while McKnight stood over him in full uniform except for his dick sticking out.
That would be unacceptable.
And what would it be like in bed? McKnight wouldn't be giving any orders, and Grimes wouldn't be trying (and almost always succeeding) to anticipate his every desire. Instead, they would have to guess what the other one wanted, and hope the other one would guess what they wanted. How did people manage that? How did they let their desires be known without coming out and saying it?
They might talk. They might talk about their feeling and what they like in bed. They might hint at what they wanted. Wear or not wear something special to indicate they were in the mood. Turn out the light or close the curtain or do those tricks and habits that married couples do to signal they wanted it even though it was hard to say it out loud that they were in the mood.
Unless they were always in the mood.
But even he and Grimes weren't always in the mood. Sometimes they just lay together, McKnight stroking Grimes' hair or back, Grimes resting his cheek on McKnight's thigh or chest. And it was comfortable, to just lie there like that, just feel him and smell him and listen to him breathing and know that if he were to prod Grimes this way or that he'd have a hot, wet, very talented mouth on his cock, or a beautiful ass pressed against him, and knowing that made it okay to not do anything, because sometimes knowing is enough.
If they were normal, they'd have to find a whole other way to relate to each other in bed.
And why always in bed? He was assuming normal people only had sex in bed. He didn't know for sure. That might just be a stereotype.
He and Grimes did not confine sexual activity to the bed. They had sex in one of his chairs or on the floor or on the kitchen table or in the shower or in the garden or wherever they happened to be. He supposed normal people would do that too, but that would require some coordination. Negotiation. As it stood, all he had to do was make sure the blinds were closed, or that the sightlines were favorable, and issue the order, and they had sex. He assumed Grimes always wanted it. Could he be wrong?
"You like it, don't you?" McKnight asked. "When we have sex."
Grimes licked his neck. "Mmm. Yes, sir," he murmured.
"No, really. Do I ever… do I ever order you to do something you don't want to do?"
"Not so far, sir."
"But you said I humiliated you earlier?"
"And you saw the erection, sir."
"John, I'm being serious."
Grimes lifted his head and looked right into McKnight's eyes. "Danny, I wouldn't have things any other way."
Could he tell what McKnight had been thinking?
Jesus, he could. He could, and he'd been thinking the same thing. McKnight tried to think of it from Grimes' point of view. If they were a normal couple, Grimes would have an older, gruff lover who couldn't take him out anywhere. What good would McKnight be in a normal relationship? His job was stressful, and he needed help to unwind at the end of the day. He really enjoyed unwinding at the end of the day. Those lips on his cock, hot breath on his balls, tongue flicking out over his thighs – that was what made it possible for him to leave the workday behind. And even when he did leave the workday behind, the work itself was too ingrained in him to ever be left at the doorstep. He would be a commanding officer with no one to command, and that would make him frustrated.
And what about what Grimes wanted? In a way, it was selfish of McKnight to even imagine a 'normal' relationship, when that kind of relationship was obviously so far from what Grimes wanted.
"Sir, I love serving you. I love it when you order me to do anything. Yeah, I was humiliated when you called me a good boy in front of the sarn'ts. Like you said, it's what I like. And I'm glad you did it, because now they know for sure that you're more than just my lover or my boyfriend." He wriggled and, miraculously, McKnight's cock responded to the wriggling. After a sucking like that, he hadn't thought it possible, especially not after Grimes had asked permission to come on the floor.
The come was still on the floor. McKnight had ordered Grimes to leave it there. He wanted to watch Grimes scrub it in the morning.
God, he was fucking perverted. The idea of watching Grimes scrub his own come off the floor, even fully dressed, was getting McKnight hard almost as much as the way Grimes was squirming on him.
"Sir, you're my commanding officer. Don't you know what that means? You can order me to do anything you like."
"But you should be in charge of yourself."
"I am. I make all my own decisions. And one of them is to follow your orders."
McKnight slid his hands down to Grimes' waist to stop him from wriggling.
"If you were anyone else, that would be a dangerous decision, but I know I can trust you," Grimes added.
McKnight liked to have one hundred percent confidence in his decisions. Or he liked everyone to think that he had one hundred percent confidence in his own abilities. In this case, he wasn't one hundred percent sure until he took into account that half the time Grimes subtly, or not so subtly, told him what he wanted anyway. So really, McKnight only had to make the decisions half the time, because the other half of the time he was walking into a room to the irresistible sight of Grimes ass up in the air, or Grimes was shifting his eyes toward the bathroom door, or the back room, or the stereo, or the patch of grass where they usually fucked outdoors, or Grimes slid down to his knees and rubbed his face over McKnight's crotch and, really, when someone did that you didn't have to be a genius to say, "suck my dick," did you?
God, how lucky was that, for him to find a guy who liked sucking cock that much? He was fucking blessed, that's what he was.
"If it'll make you feel any better, sir, I could give you an order," Grimes suggested.
McKnight's cock thudded with the sudden influx of blood.
Grimes pushed the covers off them and turned around. He knelt on the bed with his arms folded, forearms on the mattress, and he looked into mirror over dresser. McKnight sat up and looked into Grimes' eyes in the mirror. Grimes smiled at him.
"I order you to fuck my ass, sir," Grimes said.
"I was going to do that anyway," McKnight said. When he knelt up he could feel and see that his cock was getting there, but it wasn't quite up to the task of fucking a tight asshole.
Grimes was staring at McKnight's cock in the mirror. "Well, then, I order you to think of something you can do to get your cock really hard, so when you fuck me I'll feel it everywhere."
McKnight looked down at Grimes' ass. Grimes' asshole. Yeah, he could think of a few things he could do to that asshole that would get his cock good and hard.
It was good to be in charge.
Back to Soldier Porn or read about Hoot and Sanderson’s adventures in Toronto in D-Tech: The Russian and follow the links, or read what happens when Hoot and Sanderson get home, in Spread'em
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