There was a distinct change in Greg over the coming weeks. Once again his rehabilitation came first. He spent much of each day working out and testing his muscles. Along with his determination was a distinct change in his attitude. The long absent impishness that once defined Greg's personality had returned. There was no telling what he might do for a laugh but in general he was cautious not to risk his legs in any ill-conceived attempts at getting a laugh out of me.

I was called to come to work in August and picked mornings on a part time schedule that got me home in time to play tennis with Greg. At first the one and two steps he could take added a step and then two until he started moving better, bending his knees, and requiring less recovery time between serves. He liked to fake like I was wearing him out and then when I had him where I wanted him, he'd smash one of my serves back at my head.

Toward the middle of August both bikes reappeared in the driveway, awaiting my return from work one day. Greg had rigged up a holder for the tennis rackets and rode his bike around the yard to prove to me that his leg would now bend far enough to ride comfortably.

It was impossible for me to see him on the bike without hear that foreboding noise his leg made that first day he tried to ride. Luckily, there was no repeat and we started riding to play tennis for two and three hours a day at the local park where there was little competition for the courts.

Along with Greg's impishness came an awakening of his amorous side. I'd get home at one in the afternoon and we would exercise in one fashion or another until dinner time, when we'd go to the house and eat. Then, he wanted to ride bikes until almost dark at which time we'd go back to the house for dinner again. He never seemed to get enough of anything but he was wearing me out.

I'd get up at six in the morning to go to work, after Greg had kept me up half the night having sex with him. By the start of September I was starting to fall asleep at the dinner table, which was about the first time I sat still for any length of time all day. By then I'd worked six hours, rode bikes a couple of hours, played tennis for a couple of hours, and spotted him lifting weights for an hour or so. By the time dinner was done, Greg would be wanting more and that was always one thing that woke me up fast. There was no sleeping any time he was interested in me.

Being with him was like this totally other zone. There were no times like it. I came completely alive when maybe I was half alive the rest of the time. His lips and his solid body set me on fire as he worked overtime keeping me awake. I'm sure that he thought, sooner or later I'd have to quit work, and I was just as determined I wouldn't. I still had the idea I could go to college and become someone.

At the end of the first full week in September we rented a room in Ocean City, Maryland for the weekend, and I walked with Greg to the water's edge. He was still limping noticeably and partially dragging his bad leg, but we walked the quarter mile between the boardwalk and the beach. It was maybe sixty-five degrees out and the water was always cold to me. I stepped into the ocean with him but let him do the rest by himself. Just being up to my ankles in the brown ooze was plenty for me. This time he didn't insist I accompany him. This was his mountain.

I watched as he threw himself into the water once it was up to his waist. He swam a few strokes, stood back up, walked back toward me with his tan body having a slight blue tint to it and goose bumps finished the look. He was all smiles, once he'd accomplished what he set out to do. I guess he had every right to be proud of himself. Even his physical therapist doubted he'd accomplish this task up until the final visit with him. Of course it might have been a way of motivating Greg to prove everyone was wrong. Whatever it was, it worked.

While I was hoping this event would calm Greg's constant need for more, it seemed to trigger a never ending quest for total healing. A new leg press machine joined the other weights in the living room. He'd do 10, 20, 30, and then 40 reps before adding another twenty-five pound plate to the mix and then start over again. His legs joined his arms and chest in growth spurts. His thighs bulged with their new vitality as the sweat rolled.

One day I came in from work just after two and he was naked and doing leg exercises. He was covered in sweat and bulging everywhere he could possibly bulge. As he got to the far end of his reps I couldn't help but notice his cock was standing straight out of his golden pubes. He pressed the weights out as far as they'd go, holding the sides of the contraption for leverage.

"Greg!" I said, quite fascinated and hot, seeing the muscles ripple as he strained to keep the weight at bay.

As hard as his bulging thighs were, his cock had them beat all to hell. It was rigid from the tip of his brown cock where the pee hole stood wide open down to where the fat shaft entered his wiry pubic hair. I could feel its hardness as my mouth slipped over the helmet and my lips felt the steel in the ridges of his swollen cockhead.

He blew out hot air and the weights rattled as his legs started to tremble. Looking up at his straining face, his shinning arms and chest bulged with the strain as he lifted his ass up toward my mouth. I shoved my hand under his stone hard butt, only then getting the idea of thrusting a few fingers up where they'd do the most good.

He winced on entry and shivered, which made the weights jiggle louder as he strained to hold them, his load, and the torment I was putting him through when I used my teeth on the head of his cock. I already knew there would be no time to work on swallowing, because the telltale clear nectar started bursting vividly onto my taste buds.

At first is was the sweet clear precum and then it became the thick burst of cum that jolted him while showering the back of my mouth and starting down my throat as the weights clanged, the air all came out of him, and every muscle in his body relaxed as he reached for my head, pushing my mouth deeper onto his dick.

"Oh shit!" He gasped, holding my face down on him and letting loose with another blast of cum that was followed by three short squirts and then the usual dribbling on my tongue as his cock lost a little of its will, making it possible for me to get my mouth into his damp pubes.

"Shit!" he said, shaking for longer than usual as I sucked and licked each drop as it presented it self.

He stood up and was wearing only two dirty white tennis shoes and two royal blue sweatbands, one around each wrists. He looked royal to me.

Instead of going to ride bikes or to play tennis, he started tearing at my clothes, finally ordering, "Take them off will you."

As horny as Greg always was this was even unusual for him. His need to be worshipped and loved constantly had always been a byproduct of loving him, and I'm not complaining here, but suddenly he was kissing me and feeling my body.

I was more than happy to go along with most of his demands. I must admit that I'd come into the house dreading the next six hours of exercise, but before I knew it, I was never more awake and anxious to workout with him. The usual test of my endurance had gotten to the good stuff early, and I couldn't help but think I'd get some sleep that night if I did good this afternoon. Even Greg had to stop some times.

We rolled on the floor and made out as our bodies rubbed together. My body fit within his arms and up against his chest with ease now. A few months before my chest almost equaled his, my arms weren't all that much smaller, and my legs were massive compared to his bad leg. Now, he was half again my size, his old body coming back in a few weeks and then the layers of muscle were added week after week with relentless exercise bulking him up.

I felt comfortable and safe in his arms. I could kiss him and touch him anywhere now, without a protest. Greg and I were at peace with one another, trusting, loyal, and hungry. I don't recall ever getting enough of him. Seeing him lit me on fire and I was hot for him whenever I was with him. His passion drove my passion crazy and in turn, I drove him crazy, and I had learned most of his secrets and applied them often and greedily to keep his lust alive, which had never been a problem, but I didn't want to take a chance on it.

We ended up mouth to cock and while he wasn't presenting me with the endless steel of his first offering, he was still up for the occasion in a big way. The quickness of his orgasm surprised me, because he usually liked to make it last, but he had other ideas, never getting me close. I couldn't match his frequency of orgasm, so he knew what he was doing.

It was then he rolled over onto his stomach so that I could feel the muscles in his shoulder and back, while laying on top of him. I reached under him to feel his chest, while I kissed his neck. He moaned and wreathed in my arms, but he kept his muscles taunt for me. He knew I liked his steel feel. It excited me and him as well as he felt my hands touching and tracing each muscle.

I was already resting on his crack, waiting to see where we were going from there, but his legs opened and the solid flesh became pliable and his hand reached back threw his legs until he had me where he wanted me. "Fucker's getting fatter."

"That too," I agreed, leaning hard on his ass as the furtive hole started to yield to my blunt cockhead probing ever onward as he guided me there.

Greg liked the entry best of all. That's the part I usually had to brace for when that fat fucker of his was breaking through, but with Greg, he got hardest when his hole was just starting to spread open to accept the offering that was forcing its way inside him. I always held his dick as I slid in, because he pulsed and swelled wonderfully in my fist.

"Oh!" He said, coming up on his elbows as my face rested between his shoulder blades. "God that's nice. Go ahead. Fuck me."

Going ahead was problematic. I was so freaked by getting what I wanted so badly for so long that I'd built up a fantasy over fucking him, when he wouldn't even tolerate me touching him, so, now that I could fuck him, doing it got me so hot so fast that I could hardly hold back, and some times I didn't, just going up to full speed and blasting his ass full of cum right off.

At those times he'd keep me inside until I had gone soft. I think he liked being penetrated. There was this tender time, when he was full of me, just after my entry. Perhaps it was our joining as one that he liked, because I knew, as uncomfortable as he could make it when he fucked me, there was always a period when we were as united as anyone ever had been, and we both lie there, silent and taking it all in. We became one with each other and loved it as much as anything else.

As great as sex was with him the tenderness of the linking together almost always got a similar response, if only for a few seconds as we adjusted to one another. All the rest involved friction, heat, and a driving desire, and I must admit that I wasn't always so considerate once my cock was piston fucking his tight hole. The steel in his buns didn't do anything to calm down my response to his body. It had never changed and every day I still wanted him as badly as I wanted him that first day we met and maybe even more.

We stopped in the woods on the way back from playing tennis and had another go around on the dried leaves of so many autumns past. We lay together as the sun went low in the sky and we listened to the kids coming from the high school after football and soccer practice, just out of our sight.

We were lucky no one took a detour in our direction. They certainly would have been surprised.

That night Greg wouldn't leave me alone. The idea that I might get a full nights sleep was quickly lost once he woke me the third time. As he fell asleep and started snoring, I could see the first signs that night was giving up to the day. I sighed and resisted any idea of closing my eyes. I'd fall asleep and be late for work and probably get fired and that's what Greg wanted. I had defied him and gone against his wishes. He hated that as much as anything. He saw no reason why we weren't together every minute of every day, but I lived in the real world, and one day we'd have to earn a living and support ourselves, although he didn't seem to be aware of that.

I carried my shoes down the stairs and listened to the colonel and Greg's mom starting to rise. I looked out the large dinning room windows and it still seemed dark, but the day was on the way and I needed to be at work early. I got into the car and sat pondering going back up to bed. I tied my shoes and started the car as the dinning room light came on just above and beside the car. I put it into gear and moved toward the street.

The rest is conjecture as I have no memory of it and have only heard the story. As I came through the pillars and entered Old Branch Avenue, I didn't see the car, but I must have pulled out right in front of it. The south bound car was left going north as mine came to rest across the road after pin wheeling a few times for good measure.

There were sparks and faces that might have been there or might not have been. I think I remember Greg's mother's face and then Greg's, staring in at me with hard worried looks. It was daylight. Greg's mother should be at work or on the way. I heard the colonel's voice, yelling orders, asking for more help.

I was left with a floating feeling that made it all seem unreal. It was like the 4th of July, except after the fireworks, everything turned white in my brain. There were people all in white, a white room, and white thoughts and then there wasn't anything at all for how long I can't be sure. Too long.

I remember hearing Greg's voice, my mother's voice, strange voices, and people pushing, pulling, and pricking me with sharp objects. I was in and out of a coma for ten days, or so I'm told. Even when you aren't in a coma, after you've been in one, things are a bit disorganized inside my head. I wasn't sure which was night and which was day, literally. I was confused. I was even confused by the sound of my voice, like someone else was talking through me. I was very confused by seeing my mother sitting by my bed. I never recall my mother ever sitting by me, ever.

Then I recognized the doctor with a large round silver disk on his forehead, and he'd stare deep into my eyes and ask me questions that I had no answers for. Some I heard, some I didn't, and some times I just went to sleep on him. He had that affect on me, but Dr. Lapin was a trooper, and he didn't give up on me, always coming back.

Then it became apparent to me. No Greg. It took quite some time for me to consider the lack of him.

At first I had this longing and need for him that I couldn't tell anyone about. As my life came back to me in small ways Greg's absence from my hospital room became a source of anger and hatred.

How could he not be there? What was the deal with that? I'd spent most of a year sitting by his bed and now that I was the one in the bed, where the hell was he? I could not hide my discord with this turn of events. The accident, the damage done, and my confinement to bed were of no concern, only Greg's absence mattered, nothing more.

I was in the hospital a total of three weeks. One day after staring into my eyes for an unusually long time, Dr. Lapin said, "It's looking very good. I think you can take him home today.

...And so my mother took me to the house I had deserted months before. I walked to my room and laid in my bed and cried. It was only after I'd been home for a week that I asked the question that was always on my mind?

"Didn't Greg come up?" I asked my mother as she sat in her robe at the table one morning.

The first time my mother went back to work, I dialed the phone at Greg's house. It was just after noon. He'd be lifting weights. The phone rang and rang and rang but nobody picked up. The anger surged through my entire being and it burned my face. I slammed down the phone and cracked the cradle all the way across. I picked up the phone and smashed it down again and again until my hand stung and the phone was in fifty pieces. I went to bed and cried myself to sleep.

I told my parents I had dropped the phone, and my father looked at me with this very weird look, but he dared not question me over the insanity of smashing a phone until it was beyond recognition.

The phone would not be the last victim of my rage. I broke everything in my room that was breakable. Everything I owned was cracked or rendered useless but nothing could compare with the fracture of my heart.

How could he do this to me? I was beyond consolation. Actually it was then I wanted to die. I didn't want to live without Greg. I wouldn't live without Greg. The only thing that kept me alive was the idea that I wanted to spit in his face and tell him what I thought.

My medication was changed and I slept for ages it seemed. I finally could sleep but I had no desire to be awake any longer. My parent's presence wasn't even a factor. Suddenly they were attentive and concerned for their son.

My mother started talking about me going to college, when I'd come out for dinner. I no longer had to worry about work. They wanted to send me to college as long as I was living at home now, but they didn't know I wasn't living any more.

It was November by the time these conversations started, and I was able to walk around without getting severe headaches by December, and college would start in month. My rage had been stilled somewhat by harder medications but it was still alive and well deep inside my belly, twisting and tearing at my insides, during dreams of the dead and the dying.

I kept hearing Greg's voice inside my brain and one day it came to me, during sleep. I sat straight up in the bed when I heard it loud and clear. It was real.

It was real. He had been there. He had been in my room. He had spoken to my mother and she never mentioned it once. It was late afternoon and I dressed and walked up Mimosa Avenue and down Woodyard road until I reached Old Branch where my accident had happened.

The fire department was only a half a mile away. They arrived five minutes after the crash. They had cut me out of the car. I was at the hospital in another five minutes, and therein was the difference in life and death in a small town, but without Greg, why live at all? There was nothing for me if there was no Greg. I loved him with all my heart and soul and I didn't want to live without him.

I checked both ways before jogging across the street. I walked up the horseshoe driveway and looked up at the windows of the house. I remembered the lights coming on that morning over two months ago. I walked to the backdoor and opened the screen, walking by the freezer and stepping into the kitchen. There was some music playing in the distance. I stepped into the dinning room and there he was, sitting on the couch with his head leaning back and his eyes closed.

"I wondered how long it would take for you to get up here," he said, like he was expecting me any time.

"I don't know," he confessed. "I don't know what I'm doing. Waiting for you, I guess."

"What's wrong with your leg," I asked, seeing the white elephant back on his left leg.

"Couldn't happen to a nicer guy," I said dispassionate, without adding two and two together.

"Told me what? What are you talking about?" I asked, moving closer, but not too close.

I knew there was nothing he could say to take away the pain he'd caused me. I didn't expect him to make an effort. There was no excuse.

Perhaps if I hadn't been so self-centered and pissed off at the world, I might have figured it out on my own but no one ever accused me of being a great thinker.

"I rode my bike up to the hospital the day you were in the accident. I'm sorry about that," he said, looking as though he was ashamed of himself. "I know it was my fault, Martin. I don't blame you for being mad. I knew it when I saw you in the bed like that. I wouldn't let you sleep because I thought, well, it doesn't matter what I thought. What I did was pathetic and I'm sorry you got hurt."

"Yeah, she was. She said you were in a coma and they didn't know anything. I rode my bike out in front of car on the way home. Right in front of the fire department in fact, or so they say. I don't remember it. They told me about it later on. I was in your hospital for a few hours. Then my parents had me shipped back to the base. Your doctors said you shouldn't know that I was hurt. They said that it could make your recovery go badly if you knew I was hurt, since we were so close."

"You bastard," I said. "I broke everything in my fucking house being pissed off at you, and now you tell me it was for my own good? You bastard."

"Hey, don't take it out on me. The doctors said you shouldn't know. How could I talk to you and you not know. Your parents told my parents when they went up to the hospital. He isn't to know Greg's been hurt, they said. They knew if you asked them about me, they'd have to tell you the truth, so they didn't go back up to see how you were. They both checked on the phone every day until you went home. After that your parents said you belonged home and they didn't want you to know about my accident."

"I'll be a son-of-a-bitch. I've wasted all this time, being mad at you," I said.

"Hey, I just got home yesterday. They said you still couldn't drive, and that reminds me, you wrecked my fucking car? See if I lend it to you again."

Greg started laughing and I started laughing. It was like a huge weight had been lifted off me. Suddenly life was good again. I hugged and kissed him and he held me, wincing a few times when I made his leg shift. I had wasted all that time being mad at him, when it wasn't his fault. I couldn't believe it.

"Well, look whose here? You must have radar, Martin. We only brought him home last night. He was under orders not to call you. Told you he'd be around, Gregie," his mother said, setting a bag down on the table and taking off her coat.

"You staying for dinner? You better not say no. This one has been a sour puss ever since he got him home. In fact, he wasn't much better over at the hospital. The nurses kept asking if we couldn't get you to start coming up again. I understand he drove them crazy but the colonel doesn't tell me everything my son does."

"Yeah, dinner sounds fine. I feel like I'm home," I said, squeezing Greg's hand and quickly becoming lost in his eyes.

"You are, Martin. This is your home for as long as you like. We aren't under orders up here."

"I'll have dinner ready in an hour, boys," his mother said, going into the kitchen.

"No hurry, mom," Greg said over his shoulder as his arm rested across my shoulders as we took one hobbling step at a time together.

"Not long now that you're here. Cast comes off next month. They kept it in traction just to be sure, but it's looking good. Oh yeah, did I tell you, I love you."

THE END

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Discovering Love

Written by Rick Beck

Chapter 62

Stand By Your Man

THE END