Better Days

Shoved almost up against the headboard, Alan wants to scream out for satisfaction, but he doesn't. He fears that any word from him—any sound—will shock Denny back to reality, burst the bubble of fairy dust in which they float, and bring them both crashing to the ground. So instead he tugs the pillow more tightly against his front, bends his head down into it, takes a bite of it, and holds on tight.

They have been too free with the Scotch tonight, or perhaps not quite free enough—should one look at it from a different point of view—as now sometime later cold sobriety returns and Alan is again fully aware. He is aware of the pressing weight of Denny's thighs against him; the twitch of muscles and limbs moving in rigid concentration; and of the exquisite aroma that is only produced when sex and prolonged desire are combined, stirred and slowly simmered together.

He is aware how much he has wanted this, and he is aware of how he and an unprincipled bottle of Scotch told Denny so.

"Denny, I want you to fuck me."

"All right."

And they had—for better or for worse—drained their drinks and subsequently, the bottle of Scotch, and adjourned to the bed.

But more so than that, Alan is aware this has not been a good day for Denny. He'd slipped in front of a client in a matter that was neither cute nor easy to explain away. He'd slipped so badly that even Paul hadn't the heart—or the lack of one—to comment.

Denny had mostly good days, but this had not been one, and Alan would rather continue the longing self-torture of his unconsummated fantasy world until the sun burns out than to live with the knowledge that he and an amoral bottle of Balvenie had taken sad advantage of one of Denny's not-so-good days.

Alan may be a despicable manipulator who would do anything he didn't think he would be discovered in order to achieve what he—as self-appointed judge and jury— had already decided was proper justice served, but he would never knowingly do that to Denny.

Speaking of being taken and of being taking advantage of, Denny teases his slippery dick over Alan's ass. They've been liberal with the gel; it's everywhere—­­ as Denny's hands have been everywhere and as Alan's mouth has been everywhere. Everything has been everywhere but for the one thing they (allegedly) came in here to do.

Alan thinks he will go insane if he has to wait a minute longer. Yes, his conscience hurts him, but not near as much as the empty ache deep inside his gut. "Denny please, put it in." It's not like him to grovel, Alan thinks. He'd like to blame it on the Scotch, but as he's already noticed, that's long since evaporated from his blood.

As Denny's dick slides in, Alan's eyes fly open wide into the inutile blankness of the pillow. He'd forgotten. My God, he'd forgotten! Dear Lord, how could he forget?

Alan has been laid so many times he's lost track, and they have all been—in their own unique details and specifications—magnificent. But this is the first time since his wife died that he has made love, and he has forgotten what an earthmoving experience that can be.

Alan tries to soak it all in: the burn, the spasms, the fullness, the joy. He tries to assimilate all that is Denny Crane live and real inside of him, but it is all too much and as Denny loses himself inside and the cramp in his gut falls away and opens to unmitigated pleasure, Alan comes even before he can remember to touch himself.

He's a little sorry, a little embarrassed, but mostly he is relieved as he is not confident that his aging and wizened heart could have lived through much more of that ineffable joy.

When Alan can breathe again, he focuses on Denny, slipping in and out, each time paying an indulgence to his equally empty and happy gland. It's nice. The urgency gone from inside of him, he would gladly live this way forever. He's relaxed. Too relaxed? Denny is still hard at work. Alan squeezes his muscles down; he's heard (actually, an entire partners' meeting heard) Denny say that he likes his women...tight.

Now Denny sucks in his breath and speeds up. The slick of the gel accentuates every slap of balls against balls, hips against ass. Alan squeezes again. It's the same feeling he gets when he delivers a point, and it's clear that the entire courtroom credits that he has just won his case.

"Denny Crane, Denny Crane. Denny Crane—" The chant begins to build to a crescendo. It's neither a surprise nor an irritant.

Why would it be? It might be the sweetest absurdity Alan thought he would never have a chance to hear.

Denny's thrusts are uneven and flagging now, and Alan fears for both for Denny's pleasure and for himself. Scotch soaked buddyfucks for kicks and giggles are one thing, but if Denny doesn't... If he can't...

Well, some things men can look each other in the eye over the next day and some they can't.

If in the morning Denny can't tell himself that this was nothing more than a means to an orgasm, there may not be much eye looking in their future.

And Alan does want that future. He arches back and rocks his ass.

"Denny Crane. Denny Crane. Denny Crane!" It's now a howl that would do a Jungleboy proud. Denny pounds his ass, and now Alan fears not so much for Denny's pride or blustering sexual identity, but for his cerebral cortex and vasculature.

Denny Crane—famed Boston attorney—died of a stroke last night while boning his long-time friend and partner, Alan Shore, up the ass...

Calling on a trick he learned from a hooker with three nipples, two sets of fur-lined handcuffs, and the patience of a saint, Alan tosses one leg over Denny's head and rolls over on his back, keeping Denny inside him all the time.

Alan throws his own hips and legs up as far as he can, spreading and offering himself. Denny has always gotten off on power trips.

"Come on, Denny. Screw me like the whore I am."

Denny's eyes light up. "If you insist." He readjusts his dick and slams it in so far that it makes Alan's liver jiggle.

"Hold my legs up, and spread your knees further apart," Alan whispers between breathy gasps.

Denny pauses in mid-stroke. "You've done this before."

"Never like this. Please don't stop."

Denny takes none of the suggestions (what else is new?), but scoots in closer and begins to find his rhythm again. Alan watches Denny's face, every nuance, and he sees the expression change. Denny's eyes roll back, and Alan feels the cock flare even thicker inside of him; he's sure that this is it. Or could be.

Alan reaches to the nightstand and grabs a cigar. No, that Lewinsky bit is so passé. Instead he fumbles for the ice cubes from an abandoned drink. Purposefully, he rubs them over Denny's balls.

Denny comes in three hard spurts, and Alan concentrates so that thirty years from now he might still remember exactly how each one felt.

Alan lets drop his legs, and Denny falls forward onto his stomach. Alan catches him. It's nice; the urgency gone, he would gladly live this way forever.

"Denny Crane." But it is Alan who says it, not Denny, for Denny is lost to words. Denny is curled up—almost fetal—on Alan's stomach, while Alan waltzes fingers through his hair.

"That's nice," says Denny.

Nice. Yes, beyond anything more carnal, convoluted, or complicated, it is simply nice.

"I love you," says Alan as the perfection of the moment overrides his better sense. It doesn't happen often, but neither do perfect moments.

The worst part is not that he says it—as a lawyer he says many things that aren't true. It comes like breathing these days. At first blush, one might not think it was a major gaffe. Lawyers pay little attention to words from other lawyers, except as hints as to what deception they might be being used to cover.

And Denny Crane was the man who once said that the truth may be one option, but seldom a good one and almost never a winning one.

The problem is that is that it is true. He could hope that Denny won't realize that—but lawyers who can't tell the difference between a truth and a lie don't have an unbeaten court record, do they?

Denny stiffens. Alan doesn't apologize or retract the words. He's not that kind of a man. Instead he rolls of the bed and to the bathroom. He hopes that if he's not there to watch Denny leave, he will be able to resist the temptation to throw out whatever lie he has to in order to make him stay. In that case, he can remain the kind of man he wants to be.

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In the bathroom there is soap and water and his sweaty, rumpled clothing. He avails himself of all three and emerges feeling both cleaner and dirtier at the same time. It is not a problem for him; he's used to it. It's not unlike the sense that goes with having reached some of his more...unconventional settlements.

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Upon stepping out, Alan looks to the bed. It is empty. That is not a surprise. What is a surprise is finding Denny sitting on the balcony—butt naked—in front of all of central Boston. The naked part is not the surprise, only that Denny is still here.

Alan addresses Denny's back. "I thought you would be—"

"Gone?"

"Elsewhere."

"Same thing." A cloud of smoke billows out from Denny's cigar.

"No, Denny, I don't believe that it is." It's the same voice full of a lawyer's purchased $500/hour sincerity that Alan finds convenient to use for just about everything these days, but something about the timbre makes Denny turn and look.

As their eyes close the distance between them, Alan knows that while he may have blown his chance for them, he has not blown their friendship, and that is one of two things he will be forever grateful for about tonight—regardless of what else happens.

Alan takes the other chair.

Denny unintentionally fellates his cigar and Alan watches in fascination. Alan accepts that he is a pig. Here he sits sexually and seminally depleted, only seconds out from a near catastrophic loss of his best friend, and yet his overriding thought is how Denny's lips would look and feel wrapped around his phallus, sliding up and down, licking and caressing, bathing it in tepid, sticky man-mouth love.

Alan shuffles and angles his chair in. If he is predestined to be a pig, he might as well be a pig with a good view.

"Want one?" asks Denny.

Alan blinks. "Pardon?"

Denny pulls the cigar from his mouth and waves the offer again.

"No thanks; not right now. I have a headache."

"Ah." Denny nods. "That was a lot of Scotch."

"Was it too much?" Alan asks. Lesser men might have—with relief and gratitude—allowed such a near miss slink away forgotten into the night, but Alan Shore has never been the type to duck as so many opposing counsels have discovered too late and much to their chagrin.

"Apparently not. The blue pills work wonders, and I get the highest dose there is."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant."

"You said you weren't having sex with me."

"I've said a lot of things. Some of them I've meant, some not. It's getting more difficult for me to remember which is which." Denny rolls the cigar between his fingers, thumb sliding delicately up and down the shaft, and for the millionth time Alan questions the intentionality of Denny's unintentional little sideshows.

Alan stands. "I think I will have a cigar.

"Headache better?"

"Much."

"Help yourself." Denny cocks his head toward the humidor.

"Denny, they're my cigars! This is my hotel room."

"Right."

Even after all the years, Alan has no idea whether or not this is a joke. He lets it go. It doesn't matter. It won't change a thing.

Alan selects, cuts and lights a Montecristo, breathing in the familiar routine. It feels good, he thinks as he steps back outside. Nothing has changed between them.

Except that Denny is still naked outside on the balcony in front of central Boston. One must acknowledge that that is a slight variance from their norm.

On second thought, Alan decides to bring the Scotch as well.

"Refill?"

"Don't mind if I do." Denny holds up his glass.

Alan pours two modest fills, and they sit as they have most nights. Except for the naked part.

"Denny, as one of the few men who I consider to be my equal in sundry sexual encounters of immense immediate, although fleeting, urgency and pleasure but negligible long-term significance, I am certain that there is no need to rehash tonight's events. But it did concern me that when I said I loved you, I may have destroyed something very precious to me."

The traffic rolls on beneath the balcony.

"I said, I thought that when I said—"

Denny stares straight ahead. "I heard you. It's my mind that's going, not my ears."

"And?"

"You didn't ask a question."

"Perhaps your ears are going. I most certainly did. I simply phrased it in an indirect manner designed to increase your options for a less awkward response if you so choose. And if I have earned nothing else of a personal nature from you, I do think I deserve a response—however awkward you choose to make it."

Denny shifts in his chair. "I used to think. Caused a lot of trouble. Do it once, and everyone expects it of you over and over and over. Mostly I just—" Denny ripples a hand in the air. "—'do' now. I recommend it highly."

Alan takes a sip. He supposes it's as much of an answer as his statement was a question. He'll take it. Of course he will. There's not very much he wouldn't take from Denny Crane when they are alone like this.

"In that event, I would like to state for the record—should it ever be of import to you in the future—that what I said was not the mere endorphin-laden babble of afterglow—although the endorphins, the after, and the glow were all present, accounted for and spectacular. It was, in fact, the truth. And I don't mean 'love you' in the way Paul or Edwin or Lori or Shirley or Brad—Well, maybe Brad—"

Denny balks.

Alan continues unfazed. "—mean it. I mean it in a way I haven't meant for a alarmingly long time. Do you mind very much?"

"No. Denny Crane is used to it. The question is, do you mind?" Denny catches Alan's eye, and Alan startles—albeit in a marvelous way—to see all the old sharpness and clarity there again.

Alan offers an attempted smile. "I'm not Denny Crane, but I'll muddle through."

"Mm. Let me know if you need help; I'll be here." Denny puffs again and closes his eyes.

The traffic rolls on below.

"How long do you think they last?" Denny asks.

"They?" Knowing Denny, he could mean anything from the stars, to the skyscrapers, to the people, to the monsoons, to German measles.

"Blue pills. The doctor says the half life is five hours, but what does that really mean?"

Laying down the cigar, Denny reaches for a test. Within a few seconds, "Still works," he pronounces proudly.

Alan's eyes are for Denny's lap. "'Work' is what day laborers do. Those who erect architectural wonders may be said to 'create.'"

"You don't have to flatter me. I'm already having sex with you."

"Sorry."

"Don't be; I liked it. I didn't say you shouldn't flatter me, just didn't have to."

Alan stands and pulls Denny to his arms, naked and erect in front of all of central Boston. They breathe chest to chest. He palms Denny's dick. "Magnificent."

"It's Denny Crane."

"Of course." Alan moves closer, his own clothing now a distinct nuisance separating skin from skin. He massages his hand over the smooth length of Denny's cock and presses it up against the incipient bulge working its way through his own shorts.

"That's nice," says Denny.

"Um." Alan moves in closer. Their lips, their faces are so close, and there is no clothing between them there. Alan's heart thrums hard in his throat and he leans in because he has no choice but to go where his body wills. "Denny, would you mind very much?" Their lips are all but brushing now.

"No tongue."

They kiss. At first there is no tongue, but after a while there is.

They break apart, Denny's dick still in Alan's hand, Alan's other hand stroking Denny's nipples. "Denny, I consider myself obliged to caution you that should you be made aware of the full extent of the manifold things I wish to do to you and with you—in bed and out—even you might become alarmed."

"I'm not worried. Just remember before you get too kinky—or too sentimental—that outside of courthouses, I'm never more than six feet away from a firearm. Let's start in bed. Bring the drinks. But Alan, this time, skip the ice."