Alexander Wept
By Taz

"I'll think it over, Mr. President,"

"Tom, you only call me Mr. President when you're pissed," Michener said. "I knew you would be, but you have to understand how critical this is for the future of the county. The Chinese are ahead of us. Demographics don't lie. I'll need a preliminary proposal on my desk by next Thursday."

"You'll have it." Chandler stubbed the better half of a fine Cuban cigar out in one of the brass cigarette stands. This meeting of the President and his Secretary of Inland Security was over as far as the Secretary was concerned.

There was no getting away without shaking hands, though, and Michener, consummate politician that he was, pulled that trick of covering their two joined hands with his free hand, and squeezing. It was a trick he'd picked up from Bill Clinton. The warmth of his touch conveyed understanding, while the pressure communicated implacable resolve. It was an effective trick.

The ritual was completed with a clap on the shoulder and, at last, Chandler was released from the presence of the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the provisional government of the United States of America, and free to go home.

He didn't bother stopping by his office, Kara had already left for the day and he didn't want to take a chance of running into anyone else.

Exiting the former St. Louis Magnolia Hotel, now the United States Government Office Building and Presidential Residence, Chandler could have stopped on at the security desk in the lobby and requested the limo that his status entitled him to. But his apartment wasn't that far, and he had a surprising amount of rage to walk off.

Out in the street, rafts of vending carts and bicycles glided by—there were even a few licensed motor vehicles—all trying to get home to a warm meal and a little TV before the Summer Hours Electricity was turned off. It was the new normal.

He had meant to be home hours ago, after picking up a couple of six-packs and a gallon of ice-cream, but the day's meetings had lasted longer than he had expected, and then the President had asked him to stop by for a chat. Just a friendly chat...

Reflecting on what the president had said, he stepped off the curb at the next corner without looking right, and was nearly hit by an ice-cream cart. Fortunately, the teenage driver managed to swerve at the last minute and the ding-a-dinging of his bell, might as well have been curses on his head.

God damn the man! Didn't they understand how this proposal could upset the power balance between the American Regions. Michener had to be an idiot if he didn't realize that neither New England nor California would go along with… No!

It was too much. It was not the way he wanted to think about the President of the United States. He took a deep breath and pulled himself together.

Looking around, he was only a few blocks from home, and surrounded by mid-century apartment buildings. Most of them had their windows open and there was an old song leaking from someone's sound system:

…you're my castle, and my cabin, and my instant pleasure dome…

A passing beer cart dinged a come-hither 'Last Call'. He was very tempted but his profound sense of discipline kept him from waving the guy over.

He resumed walking, keeping a weather eye out for the uneven places where tree roots were pushing chunks of concrete. Up ahead, block by block, he could see the street lights going out, and then he was surrounded by darkness, and it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the moonlight, and the red LED corner markers.

Outside his own building, he exchanged goodnight with the Neighborhood Watch Officer. "Ten o'clock," she said. Yeah? So? he was tempted to mutter. It had been five years since the official end of the epidemic, and the Civil Emergency laws had been relaxed. There was no curfew any longer.

It wasn't so bad, the new normal.

Even in the darkest streets St. Louis was, for the most part, a safe city. There was universal health care, finally, if you could get in to see a doctor, and universal employment, if you had skills, if you could hold a gun, farm, swap out a transformer, write code, hold a screwdriver, push a broom, drive a backhoe, stand up, sit down and shut up…

It's what happens when 80% of the world's population has died.

It was five stair flights up to his apartment—no electricity, no elevator—and dark inside, so that he stumbled over a heavy duffle bag that had been abandoned in the entryway.

He pulled a small Maglite out of his pocket and surveilled the floor ahead of him, in case there were any other booby-traps had been set. Seeing a line of scattered clothing—boots, a sock, another sock, a blue camouflage pattern blouse and trousers—his spirits began to lift, and he followed the trail down the hall to the bedroom.

A small oil lamp had been left burning on the bedside table. Its soft light cast a gold glow on Mike Slattery's sleeping face. Home after a three-month assignment with the Western Reserve National Guard's Lake Erie Fleet. Chandler took a moment to listen to the sound of his lover's steady breathing. Then, as quiet as he possibly could, he undressed and slipped naked between the sheets.

Even asleep, Slattery sensed he was there. "G'any ice-crem?"

"Forgot. Sorry."

Slattery rolled over on top of him, and gave him a drowsy kiss. "What am I going to do with you?" he murmured, before falling asleep again and beginning to snore.

With Slattery's face tucked into his neck, Chandler could feel the rumble in his gut. He could also feel the damp cotton-covered bulge pressing against his crotch. He smiled and flexed his hips. There no response. He did it again, with more emphasis on the flex.

"Huh?!"

"That's a hint."

"Mmm…?" Slowly, Slattery began to nuzzle his ear, and then moved, with more enthusiasm, to his cheek bone and, at last, found Chandler's mouth. The kiss was more focused this time, and much, much more intense. When the broke apart, oxygen being a requirement of life, cheek scrapped against cheek. Slattery was humping against him. "What? Oh, yeah… Now, I remember what I meant to do."

"Bastard." Starved for the feel of skin, Chandler began clawing at Slattery's undershirt. Even trying to be careful, though, he managed to knuckle a sensitive spot over Slattery's ribs. He knew he'd hit it when, Slattery yelped, and began to wrestle him, only half playing. But, soon, they were panting with the struggle, and laughing themselves silly and Slattery's undershirt was in a tangle in which his head and shoulder were trapped. "Careful!" Cotton clothing was expensive, and getting harder to come by. "Let me…"

There was a ripping sound.

"Dammit! You're going to pay for that!"

"Make me!" Chandler laughed. "I told you to let me do it."

"Come here, you." Slattery took advantage of his height and weight to press him into the mattress. He corralled Chandler's arms and legs, locked between his thighs, and sat back. "Not so tough now, are you?"

Successfully pinned, Chandler watched Slattery pull the undershirt over his head. The flickering light gilded the muscles of his arms and chest. Chandler, transfixed, called his name. "Mike."

Slattery stopped, and smiled down at him. "See something you want?" The neck of his swollen prick was poking through the vent of his shorts. The russet tip was close to Chandler's mouth and Slattery gave a little bounce. The delicate suedey flesh brushed Chandler's parted lips, but he turned his head away like a sulky child.

From the beginning, more often than not, sex between had been surprisingly tender—fondling, frottage, tonguing, sucking— relief from the pain of all the losses they'd endured since the world changed. Tonight he needed something else.

"What is it?" Slattery understood. "Just say it."

Chandler tried to speak but found himself choking on the answer. Slattery squeezed hard then with his thighs, making the point that he could squeeze the life's breath out of Chandler, if he wanted to. "Tell me what you want!"

Chandler managed to wrench one of his hands free, and get a grip on one of Slattery's wrists. "Fuck me!" he shouted. "Fuck me! Fuck me, you big bastard! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!"

"Hey! Hey!" Slattery soothed. "There's no need to get all shouty about it. There's nothing I'd rather do. In fact, I brought you a present."

In reaction to the feeling of exposure, and to frustration, Chandler tried to buck him off, and was again subjected to the rib crushing pressure of Slattery's thigh muscles.

"Is this how it's going to be?" Slattery said. He then pressed again. "Talk to me!"

"Yeah. That's how it's going to be," Chandler growled.

"Then don't say you didn't ask for it. Look at me!" Slattery ordered. Chandler looked. Slattery holding up the partially torn undershirt. "Waste not, want not," he said. And then ripped it in half, and with the pieces methodically tied Chandler's hands to the headboard.

"Don't go anywhere," Slattery and got up off the bed. After checking that the oil lamp was away from the edge of the nightstand, he vanished in the direction of the bathroom, leaving Chandler doubly frustrated, in that he was unable to touch himself.

Not that he tried very hard, after testing the bonds; cotton knit, after all, didn't make for serious restraints. It was an illusion, but it was an illusion that allowed him to let go of some of his emotional commotion and await Slattery with a sharping sense of anticipation.

It wasn't long before Slattery was back. He's lost his shorts but had brought a towel, wipes, and a small plastic tub that he set on the bedtable.

"Spread your legs, babe." Chandler complied.

Slattery climbed on the bed in between them. "Lift." Chandler lifted, and Slattery slid the towel under his ass. "You're going to get to open your present now."

"What is it?" Chandler said.

Slattery held up the black plastic tub.

"My God, where did you find that?" Chandler forgot he was tied up, and set the headboard thumping against the wall when he tried to take it.

"Don't break the bed. Found it in an old Rite-Aid outside of Wheeling. Stockroom hadn't been cleared out." Slattery scooped some of the lube, dense as cold cream, with his fingers, and proceeded to spread it over Chandler's cock and sack. "See, some of us look out for out for our friends."

The cream had a warming effect, that was both relaxing, and intensely arousing.

"How does that feel?"

Under Slattery's slow stroking, he opened wide, and forgot to be ashamed and began to beg, showing Slattery exactly where he wanted that thick prick to go. Home. Bring it home to me! When it seemed to feel it pressing for admittance, Chandler arched his back to receive it.

"God, you're a tight-ass son of a bitch."

It was only Slattery's finger, with more lube, preparing him.

"You promised…" Chandler hissed, threw his head back, twisted, and almost kicked Slattery in the head.

"Give me that!"

His leg was hooked over Slattery's shoulder. His ass went up, and then the other leg went over the other shoulder. His ass was lowered, finally, there was the hotter and thicker meat, parting him with a blooming burst of pain, and sliding deep inside. He took it. He took it all, and the drops of sweat pattering down on his face, and Slattery groaning, crying as he came, and a hot stream that filled him, so that his ass began to throb and pulse, and he burst his own banks.

When it was over, they were a tangled knot of limbs and sticky parts.

Yet it was the most profound intimacy. As far as he was concerned, if it hadn't been for the cramp in his left calf, he could have stayed like that forever, or at least until breakfast. But his calf was cramping, the towel under him was wet, and Slattery was on top of him, and Slattery had never been a lightweight. And now he was starting to snore so deeply it might have been the sound of tectonic plate subduction.

Chandler pulled his right arm free and gave him a poke. "Mike?"

Slattery gave a snort, "Huh…uh." The snoring resumed."

"Commander!"

"Whu...?!"

"Get off of me.

"'Mz…leep." Like any career military man, Slattery was able to respond in his sleep to simple questions.

"And I, your superior officer, whom you have just screwed, am leaking like a sieve."

"No res' for the weary." Slattery rolled over and rearranged himself. Like any career military man, he was able to cover his ass in his sleep.

"No, stay where you are. What did you do with the wipes?"

"On th' floor."

And so it was the United States Secretary of Inland Security who cleaned them up, and threw the towel in the laundry hamper.

Tomorrow, Chandler thought as he climbed back into bed and fitted himself to the angles of his lover's body. Tomorrow…

They could talk about the progress of the situation up on the Ohio. The news media were calling it the 4th Whiskey Rebellion.

"Oh, the Hatfields and McCoys, they were good old mountain boys…"

Except now the Hatfields and McCoys, they shot AR-15s instead of rifles.

Tomorrow, they would talk about the president's new proposal—the Universal Marriage Mandate—increase America's birth rate—keep up with the Chinese in the Baby Arms Race…

All part of the new normal.

Finish
7/13/2016

Author's Note:

Fans may attribute the title to the villain in Die Hard, Hans Gruber, who said something to the effect that Alexander wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. Gruber's line is great, but it only ever happened in the movie.

The original is from Plutarch:

"Alexander wept when he heard Anaxarchus' discourse about an infinite number of worlds, and when his friends inquired what ailed him, "Is it not worthy of tears," he said, "that, when the number of worlds is infinite, we have not yet become lords of a single one?"