The Boys From Tennessee

The Boys From Tennessee
Rating: NC17 M/M, Warning: Heavy angst, discussion of childhood abuse, incest, attempted suicide.
Author: Chissy_Rose
Author’s Notes/Disclaimer: They’re not mine, I don’t own them. No infringement intended.

The Boys From Tennessee
Chapter 23 (23/60)
Your Past – My Past

They had sat in quiet for a long time on the moonlit hillside, each lost in thought. Finally Peter broke the silence, “I think I need to talk to both of you for a while. And we’re alone here – it’s a good spot. Libby’s been saying that I need to be up-front and tell you about my past.”

“This sounds a little heavy to me,” Sawyer said quietly.

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” Jack asked. “Every time you’ve talked to Libby you’ve basically come unglued. Do you think it would be any better with us?”

Peter turned around and sat down facing them both. He reached over and took Sawyer’s hand in his right hand and Jack’s hand in his left hand and put both their hands down on his legs. He wanted physical contact with both of them. “I think I’ll be able to tell you cause I love both of you and I know you both care about me. I need to get some things more out in the open and see if we can’t come to some sort of understanding. I love both you guys – you’re both unique and different. I know you both want to be with me, and I know you’re both alpha males who are used to being in control of your lives and those around you. I’m definitely not, I’m more submissive and I look to stronger men to guide me in both love and sex. Because I care so deeply about both of you, I’m not willing to give either one of you up and I don’t want you fighting because of me.”

They were both quiet, thinking about what he was saying. “That’s one reason why I built my shelter away from the others, so I could have either of you or both of you to stay or visit with me. Or I could come and stay with you. There’s got to be a way we can work this out. The sex is wonderful with both of you. I want you both to think about it over the next couple of days and see if we can work something out between the three of us. I’ve watched you both interacting over the last 40 something days. You argue and poke each other with sticks and try to rile each other up, to the point of physical blows. I think you’re both extremely physically attracted to each other and you feed off all the strong emotions as sexual release. I think that we need to get you two together or the three of us together and fuck each other’s brains out. I think your hostility towards each other will basically disappear if we can just burn it off with sex. Of course, we’d have to do this as discretely as possible. Jack’s still the only MD, and sorta the unofficial leader. I just want you both to be open-minded at this point and just don’t tell me no yet. I’m also gonna tell you both in a little while why I’m like the way I am and why monogamy is something I may never achieve even if I want it more than anything on earth… First Sawyer, I think we need to tell Jack about what we figured out on the first morning I was in the hatch.”

Sawyer frowned immediately, “Why do you think we need to do that? It’s nobody’s business.”

Peter shook his head no, “We’re talking about a first rate sexual triangle here, and I think this is something basic that someone’s gonna figure out sooner or later. I think Jack should know… and I think all three of us should agree right now to keep anything that’s said on this mountain confidential. Can you both agree and swear to that? No talking with anyone about whatever we talk about here. No sharing of secrets.” Both men hesitated a moment before agreeing. Peter said he also swore to keep anything said confidential.

“Sawyer came to the hatch a couple of hours after you left and stayed with me that first night. My shirt got removed in the dark during the night and in the morning Sawyer woke up and saw the whip marks and knife marks on my back. He asked me how I got them and I told him my old man did it to me, Johnnie Lee Ford. Sawyer looked like he had been hit with a 2x4 board. He was totally shocked. Did you know what my full name is Jack? It’s Peter Lee Ford. All the men in our family carry Lee as their middle name. It’s a tradition. Anyway, Sawyer tells me Sawyer’s not his real name. People will know it eventually because it’s on the plane manifest. His real name is James Lee Ford. We’re from the same county in Tennessee and the same family. Out granddaddy’s were brothers and we’re both cousins.” Jack’s mouth was hanging open. He was stunned. “James doesn’t want people to know his real name – he’s got his own reasons which he hasn’t shared with me. And I’m more than a little nervous about people knowing we’re second or third cousins and we’re fucking each other.” Sawyer wasn’t offering up anything at this point.

Jack shook his head and smiled, “Well that explains all the similarities between you two, and those dimples.”

Peter looked into Sawyer’s eyes now. “You love me Sawyer? And do you at least trust that Jack is a man of his word and won’t talk to anyone about what’s said here?”

Sawyer looked conflicted and unsure, “You know how I feel about you. And even though Jack and I are like fire and water sometimes… I do believe he keeps his word when he gives it.”

Peter continued, “I need you to be as open with us and I’m fixin’ to be with the two of you. I’m younger than you are and I don’t remember what happened in your family that’s hurt you so bad all your life and that still twists you. I’m asking you to tell us, to tell me, what happened when you were a kid.”

“Fuck,” Sawyer answered, “you’re putting me in a hard place.”

“I’m gonna be in a worse one in just a few minutes. I need to know. I love you. Be open and honest with us. You keep telling me I’m not at fault for what happened to me, well you’re not at fault for what happened to you…Please I need to know.”

Sawyer’s eyes were glistening as he looked out at the ocean with the moonlight glazing across it. He breathed heavily and tighter. “Okay,” he said finally. “But no talking with anybody about this. Period.” He looked Jack in the eyes and Jack nodded. “When I was a little kid, my mom got conned by a smooth talking con artist. He would seduce a woman and trick her and her husband into giving him all their money and then skip out. He seduced my mom, took all their money and disappeared, leaving a mess behind him. His name was Sawyer. My old man found out about the affair and that he had lost everything and came home drunk looking for my mom. She hid me under my bed and made me swear to not come out no matter what. There was screaming. My dad broke in the back door, shot my mom dead, and then walked into my room thinking I wasn’t home, he sat down on my bed and put the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out.” Peter wiped away tears, Jack looked upset too. “I was just a kid but I swore I would find him one day and make him pay for what he’d done to me and my family. Sad thing was years later I got in trouble with some bad men and owed them a lot of money. They’d have killed me if I didn’t pay up. I managed to con a woman and her husband out of their money and paid off the debt. It was so easy that I did it again. It was like I became the man I was searching for. I became Sawyer and I took his name as an alias.”

Peter held onto Sawyer’s hand tightly and whispered, “I’m sorry. I knew it was something awful but not knowing made it unbearable. I…I still feel the same about you.” Sawyer was ashamed because he felt so emotional about it but he knew what Peter was gonna talk about was worse. Jack looked away at the ocean, he understood why Sawyer was the way he was now – and why he had goaded him sometimes into hurting him. Sawyer hated himself for what he had become, and Jack had been a pawn in his pathos. Jack took the bottled water out of his backpack and handed each one a bottle and they all drank some.

Finally, Peter spoke. “I’ve got one request. Give me as much support as you can. I’m gonna need to know you both are with me to get me through this. You’re gonna understand why I’m so fucked up.”

Jack said quietly, “I don’t think either one of us is going anywhere – don’t feel any pressure to tell us anything.”

Peter nodded and looked so sad. He wanted to hold it together so he could get it all out and get on with his life. He tried to breathe slowly and calmly as he started talking. “I remember when I was a little kid that my old man was god-awful. He beat the shit out of my mom a lot and they were always arguing about something. My mom died with my older sister in a car crash when I was almost seven years old. The police suspected he had tampered with her car brakes. He was a backyard mechanic, but they couldn’t prove he did it. He was threatening to kill her and us and she had to leave the house. He only let her take my older sister. The roads were icy and she literally drove off the mountain with no brakes. My next nearest kin were on the other side of a mountain ridge – Sawyers’ side of the family. There were no other adults there with me. That’s when my life went totally to hell.” Peter stopped; he was crying but trying to hold it together.

“My old man was an alcoholic and incestuous pedophile…He came to my bed on my seventh birthday – I was just a little kid. He was drunk, he started abusing me, telling me I was his property and he could kill me if he wanted to. And then he sodomized me!” Peter was crying heavily now and fighting to talk. “He had sex with me three or four times a week, every week until I was 16 years old and he almost killed me. It was awful.”

“Damn, what a terrible thing to do to your own son.” Sawyer shook his head. Jack looked like he might be sick.

“When I was a teenager, he would stalk me sometimes and grab me from behind, handcuff or tie me up and hold a razor sharp knife to me and cut me sometimes when he raped me. He always threatened to kill me or one of my friends at school if I ever told. So I never did… until they arrested him for raping and almost killing me with the bullwhip when I was sixteen… Oh Christ…” Sawyer reached up and wiped Peter’s tears away, caressing his face. Peter continued, “There’s more still. The son-of-a-bitch was not only a pedophile, but a pornographer too. He had other pedophiles to come to the house and the SOB took pictures and video and sold them! This went on year after year. The emotional abuse was just as bad as the physical. I tried to do everything I could to keep away from him. I ran away several times, but either the sheriff brought me back or he always found me. When I was fifteen it got really hard on me. I never knew when I was gonna get fucked by him or one of his friends. I got real depressed and didn’t want to live any longer. I left school one day after lunch and ran all the way home. I prayed I’d die before he got home. When I got there I cut both my wrists. Oh God, I did the only thing that made any sense to me.” Peter took his hand away from Sawyer and removed both the wide black leather wrist straps he wore. He turned his wrists over and held them up for them to see the slit marks over both wrists. There was more than one set of marks. “I don’t even remember cutting them. My old man came home but it had only been a couple of minutes. He took me to the ER where they managed to save me. But then they put me in the juvenile unit of the state hospital for a while because I had tried to kill myself. I cut my wrists another time but I don’t wanna talk about that any. There was a third time about a year ago I tried to OD on pills and whiskey. Julie found me then and called 911. They pumped out my stomach.”

Peter stopped for a moment and tried to regain his composure. “I think you both have the picture now. My old man thoroughly screwed me up. He passed me around and I had more male sex partners before I was 16 than probably most prostitutes have their entire careers. My psychiatrist said that’s why I am so promiscuous now and why I have such problems sticking with one person. I’m basically sex addicted and prefer gay sex. It’s what’s most natural to me. It’s why I like BDSM too – the bondage, the domination and the pain. I associate it with sex. I’m masochistic and I have to fight it. I didn’t want either of you to know. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to have anything to do with me if you found out what had happened to me.” Jack felt like his heart was breaking for Peter. He’d had the worst childhood and teenage years of any man he’d heard of. Jack reached over and smoothed his hair on his forehead and told him how sorry he was – that no one should have to go through what he’d been through. Sawyer told him it was over and that he was brave for telling them about it. Peter wiped away his tears again, “I’m glad I’ve finally got it out in the open so I can get on with my life here.” They sat over a half hour just looking out over the island and the ocean. All lost in heavy thought. Finally Jack suggested that they head back to the caves to sleep since it was getting late and they all agreed. Jack stood up first and extended both arms and helped them both to their feet. It was a subdued walk back to the caves.