Rebel Yells (Apishipa Creek Chronicles)

Chapter 27

 

They were in the shower when Rebel looked down and got quiet. Jack lifted his chin, kissed him and asked, “What’s up?”

 

Rebel shrugged. “I would like to…shit I am still getting used to this okay?”

 

Jack waited patiently knowing this wasn’t the time to push. Rebel needed to sort his needs and the words to express them. He figured it wouldn’t take his sub long and it didn’t.

 

“I need to ask permission I guess to take off today by myself.”

 

Jack’s heart fluttered. “Well it’s something we can talk about for sure. Where is it you want to go?”

 

Turning and leaning his shoulder on the tile he said, “That’s the thing. I’m not sure. Well that’s not true either. I know but I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone and I’m not ready to talk about where yet. I’m doing this all wrong.”

 

Jack pulled him close and kissed him. “No, you are doing fine. You can go do what you need to do. Go figure out things and when you get back I hope you feel okay to talk to me about them.” He kissed his gorgeous sub again and said, “There will be rules though.”

 

Rebel’s eyes looked into his then narrowed as he asked, “What rules?”

 

“Well, you have to wear the belt for one.”

 

Rolling his eyes he said, “I’m not going out looking for dick I get plenty of that here.”

 

Jack stepped back a moment. Rebel hadn’t gotten smart assed with him for weeks. “That’s not my concern Rebel. It’s a symbol to me. It reminds you as you wear it that you are mine. It started out only stopping you from touching yourself but I trust you won’t do that either.”

 

Rebel shook his head. “Of course not but I’m still not real sure about why I can’t.”

 

Rebel was pushed against the wall then and Jack reached down to grip his sub’s cock. “Because this is mine. It’s mine to touch. I say when it’s touched and how. That is part of my being your Master. You know that. What is with this back stepping? Is something wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

 

Rebel wrapped his hands around Jack’s neck, his thumb rubbing across his jaw. “No, no, I’m sorry. I just have a lot on my mind. I need to get out and think.”

 

“Then alright Rebel. I understand. We all need our time alone to think and be alone.”

 

Rebel stepped out of the shower and Jack looked out over his dripping body as he reached for their towels. His ass was still pink from the morning’s discipline, the rest of him flushed from the hot water. He wanted to reach over to him and make love right there but Rebel needed to keep his train of thought. Jack just hoped the rules he was setting down would be enough to keep his mind clear of anger and pain while he was gone.

 

In the bedroom, Rebel dressed after Jack attached the belt. In his jeans and black t-shirt, his hair down and wild from the towel drying he’d given himself. He reminded Jack so much of the first time he’d seen him on the road. It worried him and turned him on at the same time.

 

“The other rules are that you take your phone with you. No calls accepted or sent unless it’s me.”

 

Rebel sat on the bed and took the phone Jack handed him after getting it from the dresser. “That’s fair. Can I take your truck if I leave you the keys to the van?”

 

“Of course, anytime you need. The last rule…remember that I love you. Don’t get out on your own, away from me and forget that.”

 

Rebel smiled and said, “I couldn’t if I tried.”

 

Jack watched him leave standing in the doorway drumming his fingers on the doorjamb. Worry gripped him and he had the intense impulse to drive off after him.

 

“Let him go. You are going to have to trust him eventually,” Martin said as he sat on the chair reclining back on two legs.

 

Jack glanced his way for only a split second then looked back away. “Haven’t seen you in a while. I thought you were gone.”

 

Martin chuckled and Jack’s heart hurt from hearing it. “I will be around as long as you need me. Until you are whole again.”

 

Jack walked back into the house after closing the door a little too hard and passed him. He hoped he would stay in the kitchen or at the least not follow him but he wasn’t surprised when he saw Martin sitting on the arm of the chair in the living room, waiting for him with that mischievous little glint in his blue eyes.

 

Jack rounded the coffee table to sit on the couch, not looking at his husband, the love of his life. At least he was. Then Dennis’ words came to him and he looked at the apparition who was staring at him and asked, “Are you real or are you in my head?”

 

Martin chuckled and it sounded like music. It made his fucking heart hurt. “Maybe both? Maybe neither.”

 

Jack rolled his eyes and got up storming out of the room but no matter where he ran to Martin was there. Martin was everywhere he tried to escape. When Jack had run out of places to run to he turned in the bedroom and roared, “What the fuck do you want from me!? I’m in love again! I moved on! Isn’t that what you wanted, made me promise?”

 

The smile faded on the beautiful face of the man he had loved most of his life. Martin lowered his head and then as Jack watched, he went down to his knees and…it was impossible of course…tears fell from the man’s eyes.

 

“I want you to be whole. I want you to have the love you deserve. You were my Master and I am linked to you in more ways than one. Until you are whole I can’t leave you. I will follow my Master until he is complete.”

 

This didn’t seem like a fucking thought in his head anymore. He never thought this way. Even when Martin was in submission, he always had the feeling that his lover was just playing along. The lifestyle had been more of a game for them, for Martin.

 

“No Master. It was real for me. I worshipped you, I loved you and that can never die. My body is wasting away in the cemetery but the love I felt for you can never leave.” Martin got up then and spread his hands out, a smile returning but not the wicked smile, another one. One Jack had only seen after fights when Martin had done something to piss him off and he was sorry. “It’s okay to be afraid even for a big badass Dom like you, my love. It’s okay to want what you want and who you want. You helped Rebel. Right now he’s out on his own and doing great. You should see him. Right now there is someone else who needs you. Someone else who loves you just as much as Rebel and just as much as I do.”

 

Jack didn’t want to hear this. “I can’t give up Rebel. I don’t care if I’ve cured him of ever being angry or hurt again, this would hurt him. I love him with all of me.”

 

“Of course you do. It’s the only way you know how to love.”

 

oooOooo

 

The world was coming into focus just enough to see the bathroom but then it would shift again and he lost his footing…again. Fucking long hallway! Well, that made him giggle! The house was just a little bigger than his old apartment and he was glad to have the room out back…who was he kidding it was a shed…to live in. Well at least the old carpeting was comfortable.

 

Three hours later he woke up next to the couch. At least he thought it was the couch. He sat up, his stomach giving a defiant lurch but he didn’t puke. He was getting better at not puking. Looking around the room he saw he was alone and that was a feeling that was getting more and more commonplace for him. There was only one cure, well two but the other was impossible, and he went to his pocket, the only safe place in the house for it, and pulled out his bottle.

 

It was only a pint and it was half empty, kind of like his life. Half, fucking, empty and the only thing that could possibly fill it up was gone. The half that was there was a ragtag group of alcoholics who accepted him into their world easily, no pressure, no questions. It was pretty nice to have that after all this time. In Colorado all there had been was pressure. Make something of yourself Lonnie, find where you belong in the world Lonnie. Well now, he had. He’d found exactly where he belonged in the world. Here with his family.

 

Unconditional love…and lots of fucking booze.

 

The swig did nothing for his queasy stomach but he knew that would pass, and if not he would vomit and take the worst of it away then he’d drink after that and it would hit his empty stomach full and hard and burn there until it happily hit his bloodstream and took all the pain away.

 

“Blackbird.” The voice came from the doorway. Lonnie looked up to see his mother there. She’d been visiting a lot. Man the alcohol messed with his head. “Blackbird.”

 

“What Mama? I told you I won’t talk to you. You’re a figment of my drunken imagination. Give me ten minutes for the whiskey to kick in and you’ll go away anyway.”

 

“Blackbird!”

 

Lonnie sat down on the floor and looked up into her eyes. They were beautiful, almond shaped and dark, but there was such a love there in them that it took his breath away. “Yes, Mama.”

 

She floated over to him and that had nothing to do with her being a ghost. She always floated. She was skinny, always had been, and when she walked she seemed to not touch the ground. Or maybe that was just the way a kid who was totally enamored with his sweet and wonderful mother had seen her. At least until she was too drunk to be much more than a lump under the covers of her bed.

 

“You are becoming like your father.”

 

Lonnie pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, then swallowed another gulp of whiskey, this one going down much easier. “You loved Daddy. Still do or so you say.”

 

Her voice was like the sound of the wind through the trees. “I will always love him but I love you more. Don’t end up like me. Go home.”

 

His eyes felt like the heavy pieces of sandstone that were in the Hidden Bear Valley back in Colorado. Big, rough, gritty…and hard to keep open. They made him wish for tea bags, his mother’s old cure for sore eyes. “This is home Mama.”

 

He lay back on the floor and drank down the rest of the bottle, fishing in his jeans for the last five dollars he had. Now if he could just will his body to move he could get down to the liquor store. He heard footsteps then, a bunch of them and as hard as it was he sat up. It was his cousins, Chewy and Mel and Mel’s girlfriend Rhonda.

 

“Hey guys. You got a beer or something?”

 

They looked sheepishly at Lonnie and Rhonda started to say something but Mel shut her up with a glance. Lonnie felt the tension in the room finally and looked to the three of them, one face more embarrassed and nervous than the other.

 

“What’s up?”

 

He started getting nervous then as Mel and Rhonda looked to Chewy who was their undesignated leader. The three were never apart and sometimes wondered what would happen if Chewy got a girlfriend or if Rhonda and Mel broke up. Would they would all three self-destruct?

 

Chewy didn’t look at him as he said, “Cuz, we gotta talk man.”

 

Lonnie pushed himself back so he could lean on the couch, the whiskey starting to dizzy him just nicely. “So talk cuz.”

 

Rubbing his hands together and swallowing Chewy finally said, “Tell me you were just all fucked up last night.”

 

Lonnie laughed. “I was all fucked up last night.”

 

The three looked relieved and even though the booze was dulling his senses, it couldn’t dull the fact something was up beside them wanting to know if he’d been drunk. His being drunk was no real question; he had been every night since he’d come back to New Mexico. “What’s going on?”

 

Mel laughed and blurted out, “You were crying in the corner and Uncle Charming asked you what was wrong you told him you were in love. Well everyone was all happy for you until you said you were in love with some guy.”

 

Rhonda was nodding through all of this and chimed in, “Yeah we know all about that shit, but Chewy told us it had to be the whiskey talking so we just laughed it off. Charming made us all leave though, so we never got to hear the punch line ya know?”

 

Lonnie felt his insides chill and he started to shake. He pushed himself up somehow and took off out of the room, leaving three curious faces behind him. He went down the short hall and the room across from the bathroom, pounding once on the wall then he pushed through the blanket that was the makeshift door of his uncle’s room.

 

His uncle was there on the mattress on the floor and he fell to his knees beside it, reaching over and shaking his uncle hard. “Please wake up Uncle.”

 

Charming moved the layers of white hair from his face and he smiled. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

 

Now that he had the man’s attention, he had no idea how to broach the subject. “Uncle I…just…it’s just…-“

 

“You don’t remember last night do you?”

 

Lonnie shook his head and felt his stomach lurch again and it had nothing to do with the liquor. “No.”

 

Charming sat up and reached for the ashtray to find the half-smoked cigarette he had left there from the night before and plucked it up, then grabbed for the matches and lit the nub, taking a long drag before he blew it out and said, “You are a two spirit. I knew this long ago but you said it in front of others.”

 

Lonnie knew what the term meant. In old times the Native people revered homosexuals, calling them two spirits. “Uncle I was just drunk, I didn’t mean it.”

 

Charming chuckled and said, “Yeah you are, but it’s okay. You just might get trouble from the younger people. They have no respect, no sense of tribe. You should be praised but you won’t be.”

 

Lonnie closed his eyes. What had he done? “Uncle it’s not right. I’m not…-“

 

Charming held up his hand and shook his head. “No, my sweet nephew. You are too good to lie. You are a two spirit and I’m proud to have you in the family, but you may have some trouble is all.”

 

Fuck, well, he couldn’t care too much about that at the moment. He wanted a drink. Needed a fucking drink. “I’m going to the store now. You need?”

 

“I need. Give me a minute I’ll go with you.”

 

There was no way Lonnie wanted to wait until Charming took his patented five minute piss and looked through his piles of clothes to find the things that were the least dirty.

 

“Nah, Uncle I will go. You stay here. Rest.” Charming started to protest but Lonnie stumbled up and out of the room before he could get very far. Lonnie went to the bathroom and washed up a little, vowing to shower when he got back and headed out, covering his eyes from the sun that threatened to burn holes right through his skull.

 

The liquor store was just off the res, three blocks down. He had always wondered if his Uncle had got the house for that reason. He shook his head as he thought of it and walked slowly, trying to keep the dizzy spell from getting the better of him.

 

One block down, two to go and he passed the alley where he and his cousins had played in as kids, the one on the side of the bakery where it smelled so good all the time when they came at him. Lonnie turned just in time to see the fist coming at his face.

 

 

 

 

 

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