Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
-
If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
-
This story isn't based on anyone in particular, alive or dead, so any resemblance to anybody is unintentional.
Questions and commentary can be sent to "writerboy69@hotmail.com". I enjoy constructive criticism, praise, and rational discussion. I do not enjoy flames, and will not tolerate them. Unless I often hear from you and would recognize your address, please put the story title in the subject, or my junk mail filter may screen you.
Thanks to everyone who has written so far. To answer a frequent question from those who are unfamiliar with my other stories, they're called "Brian and Tommy", "Thieves", "JC's Hitchhiker", "Tangle", and "Rebound", and they can all be found in the Boybands section, which is a subset of the Celebrity section of the Nifty archive, for those of you who have not been there.
It was still dark when I opened my eyes, but I didn't need to see the room. My other senses were alive with the feelings around me, so I didn't need to see. I could feel the breeze drifting in through the open windows, and hear the soft gauzy whisper of those thin drapes brushing against the windowsills. I had forgotten that Casey had most of the windows open when we came upstairs, but it came flashing back to me suddenly, the way the setting sun had colored everything red and orange, the room blazing as if it was on fire while he and I dropped to the bed. I could feel him against me now, still asleep. His arm wrapped around me, warm and heavy, draped over my shoulder and across my chest. I slid a hand along his forearm and felt him shift a little, the muscles flexing beneath the thin dusting of cottony soft hair that I couldn't see but knew was brown lightening to almost gold from the sun.
The ends of Casey's hair, long and curling up just the slightest bit, brushed my shoulder as he pulled me against him, his face nuzzling my back. He was asleep, the gesture purely reflexive, but I settled into it, letting him crush me back against his chest. He murmured possessively against my back, and I wondered what he was thinking. I could feel the warm lump of his penis, his cock, against my leg. He wasn't hard, but he still felt big, full, brushing against the back of my thigh, close to my ass. Earlier the thought of anything against my ass had scared me, had pressed against a boundary inside that I didn't think I was ready to cross or even to look at head on, but now I wasn't afraid. Now it felt right, the same way feeling him breath against me, air rushing across my shoulder blade, chest pressing and retreating lightly against my back, felt right.
It was like I'd waited my whole life to be here, to rest in his arms, to lay naked with him on a bed, covered only by the sheet and darkness, and now that I'd gotten here I just wanted to rest, to recover and relax and revel in the feeling of his warm, strong, but still somehow soft body resting against me.
Something had awakened me, though. I squinted in the darkness, listening, trying to figure out what it had been. A door, maybe? The bedroom door, squeaking softly open?
Bright lights flicking on answered my question, the fixture in the ceiling blinding me. I sat up, the sheet falling to my waist, my chest bare, whatever marks Casey may have left on it out in the open for all the world to see. It wasn't the whole world in the bedroom, though. Instead it was just mine.
"Nate? What are you doing?" my father asked, stepping toward us, his hand reaching out to touch the end of the sheet as if he was going to pull it away. I grabbed my end, squinting, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
"Oh my God," my mother wailed into her hands, standing behind him, the two of them leading the crowd.
Crowd?
The Beckers stared over my parents' shoulders, their mouths hanging open, wondering what I had done to their nephew, what I had corrupted him into doing, what I'd made him into. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry, my head spinning. My teammates crowded in behind them, thin, good looking kids, all with short hair, the guys with bare arms gleaming, teammates from high school and from college, coaches, judges, classmates. My prom date stood, inexplicably, in her dress, corsage on her wrist, gaping at me, at my nakedness, about to be revealed by the sheet my father would not let go of. The room was very small, suddenly, the walls very close together, the ceiling dropping down, even as more and more people crowded in from the hallway, whispering, pointing, judging. This couldn't be real. The air couldn't be this thick and heavy and hard to breath. There couldn't be this many people in the house, much less in the room. It couldn't be real, but it was.
And they knew. They all knew. It was right here, right in front of them.
I was here, naked, in bed with another naked man. Everyone could see.
Everyone knew.
I couldn't feel Casey behind me any more, couldn't feel him supporting me, couldn't feel his arm around me, protecting me. I couldn't feel his chest, or his breath, or his hand. I didn't know where he was, and I couldn't do this alone, couldn't be this way without someone else here, someone to tell me that it was ok. I reached behind me with my free hand, unable to call out, not wanting to let go of that sheet with my other hand. Maybe I could explain, maybe I could say something, I don't know what, but something, maybe I could tell my parents something and my friends something that would make this all right, that would make this not be what it looked like, except that it was what it looked like. Everyone could see it. I didn't know what to say, or who to say it to. I needed Casey, needed him to tell me this was right, this was ok, this was who I should be.
I turned, letting go of the sheet, but he wasn't there.
Sam stared back at me, his eyes hollow and empty, unshed tears standing in them as he stared at me, betrayed.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
I snapped awake, my heart thumping, my chest covered with sweat, sitting bolt upright in the bed, gasping. A hand touched my shoulder and I jerked away, too fast, too far. The sheet rushed past me and before I could get my bearings the floor was rushing up at me and oh fuck did that hurt!
"Nate?" Casey asked, leaning over the end of the bed, staring down at me, his face hidden by his hanging hair. If it had been me staring down at him, watching him lay on his back on the floor after he fell out of bed trying to catch his breath, I probably would have laughed, but his voice was calm, tentative, and maybe worried. "Are you ok?"
"Ow," I answered eloquently, reaching for his outstretched hand. He pulled me up to a sitting position, somehow sliding gracefully off the bed at the same time, like a snake, so that we were sitting side by side on the floor, our backs against the mattress and bed frame. He touched my face, my shoulders, running fingers over my forehead. We were naked, but I hardly noticed. He was here. He was here for me.
"What happened to you? Are you all right?" he asked quietly, his voice soft, his hands slowly stroking the sides of my face, soothing me.
"I had this dream," I began, realizing how stupid it sounded. At the same time, it had scared the hell out of me. "I just, this sounds stupid, but there were, these people were all here."
"Shhhhhh," he whispered, rubbing the top of my head, ruffling my short hair. He pulled my head against his shoulder, and I realized I was shaking. It was a dream, it was a stupid dream, I'd know it was a dream while I was having it, but I was shaking, and I couldn't stop. My parents, the looks on their faces, the looks on everyone's faces, I couldn't deal with it. It wasn't real, but at the same time, it was. "It's not stupid. I have dreams sometimes, too, and they're so real, when they happen. It's not stupid."
I felt his lips on my forehead, not passion, but comfort, a short, dry kiss letting me know he was there.
"It's ok now," he whispered, cradling me against him. "You don't have to talk about it."
"It was just weird. I can't believe I fell off the bed," I said, shaking my head, leaning against him as he chuckled. His body was warm against mine. Seeing us side by side like that, my legs and chest and arm right next to his, I realized that I measured up pretty well. I wasn't as thick and beefy as he was, and the hair on my body, the little there was, remained stubbly, but I was built, too, and I had killer abs. I kept trying to let my hair grow back in, since it was summer and I wasn't competing, but after a week or so I would get itchy and off it would all come again. "It was just, all these people were in here, and they all knew about me. It was all people I knew, my parents, my friends, the people on my team, Sam."
Casey nodded, and I remembered that the whole reason I'd come over here was that I thought he could help me, because he'd been through this.
Well, that and that I wanted to hook up.
He started to speak, maybe to reassure me, and I cut him off as something clicked in my head.
"Sam!" I blurted, standing. Where were my clothes?
"Sam?" Casey asked, hoisting himself up in one smooth move, his whole body unfolding, limber and graceful. If I wasn't in such a panic, I would have probably gone into another slack-jawed stare, but I had bigger problems.
"What time is it?" I asked, spotting my shorts on the floor. I grabbed them, not worrying about anything underneath, and stepped into them. Fuck! I put my shorts on backwards!
"A little after midnight," Casey answered. His hand settled onto my shoulder, steadying me as I almost fell over. I was half balanced on one leg as I stepped out of my shorts and tried, storklike, to step back into them without falling over. Shirt? Where the hell was my shirt? Did I need it? "What's wrong?"
"Sam!" I answered, looking around. Shoes! I had shoes when I came over here! Throwing your clothes off the side of the bed might be a great idea when you're trying to hurry up and get busy, but when you're trying to get dressed in a hurry in the dark in a strange bedroom it doesn't really work so well. I tried to remember where my legs had been without remembering the superhot sex that would only distract me, and it sort of half worked. I was getting hard again, my dick getting fat in my shorts, swinging free without my boxers, but I could still think, which was a change. "Sam's on his way home from work!"
"Oh, shit!" Casey blurted. I'd never seen him lose his composure, never heard him sound anything but calm and collected and careful, except for when he'd been whimpering and panting and moaning earlier. He jumped up, understanding immediately, and tossed me a shoe. I hopped on one foot, pulling it on, as we both swung our heads back and forth, trying to spot the other. Casey pointed. "There!"
We both lunged for it, bending, and cracked our foreheads together. I staggered back, holding mine, as Casey lurched forward, his momentum dropping him to the floor.
"Ah, God," I hissed, eyes closed, palm pressed to my forehead.
"Son of a bitch!" Casey grunted, his hand clapped to his forehead as well. The whole night was taking on the tone of a bad Three Stooges film. Casey grabbed my shoulder and thrust my shoe into my chest. "Here. Jesus. Your head is fucking hard."
"Both of them," I snickered. The look on his face, the sudden pause as he cocked his head to the side, was comical, but there wasn't time for us to get started again, no matter how hot he looked standing naked in front of me, close enough to touch, close enough to, well, to do lots of things. No! Bad thought!
I hopped into the shoe as I half staggered down the hall, heading for the stairs, and he was right behind me, bare feet thumping on the floor, dick flopping around between his legs, hair swinging. I caught his scent again, and realized that it was on me. I was smelling him on my skin, on my arms and my neck and my chest, where he'd rested against me, rubbed against me, put his hands all over me and had his way with me. I jerked to a stop at his back door, not knowing what time it was or how long we had or if Sam was even in my house already as he crashed against my back. I had to do this. I couldn't get it out of my head, and I couldn't just run out on him again.
"Nate?" he asked, stepping back as I turned.
I grabbed his head, my fingers sliding into his hair, his stubble scraping my palms, and fastened my mouth over his, brutally grinding my lips against his as my tongue sought him out, sought his taste and his touch and just fought to be inside him. He grunted into my mouth, surprised, but he opened to me, his head tilting back, his hands gripping my bare shoulders tightly. My tongue slid against his, the two of them fighting in and out of our mouths, back and forth, wrestling with each other. My hands slid down his back, feeling it curve as he arched his chest toward me, pushing into me, and then they were on his ass, on that rock hard ass I'd already touched but couldn't really seem to stop grabbing. I felt his cheeks dimple under my palms as he clenched, grinding his now hard cock into mine through my shorts, his hips jerking forward, and it was like granite under my fingers. I pulled him against me as hard as I could, not worrying about bruising him or hurting him or anything else, just wanting to show him in some numb animal way how much I wanted him and how badly I needed him.
My hand caught in his hair, jerking his head back, and he gasped as our mouths separated.
"I have to go," I groaned, kissing his chin, his cheek, down toward his neck. His pulse jumped under my mouth, his throat vibrating from his moans as I sucked at it. He must have been shocked at my sudden lust, because I was surprising the hell out of myself, but damn was he responding. I felt the hard spike of his cock jerking and pushing into my stomach, the head sliding wetly up and down my abs, and mine, pointed down the leg of my shorts, trapped, throbbed painfully in response.
"Nate, I," he began but we both froze as we heard a garage door opening. Fuck!
Or, more accurately, no time to fuck.
We certainly were screwed, though.
I still had his head in my hands, and I looked into his eyes, locking mine on them, making sure he was with me. I needed him to understand that this wasn't yesterday. Things were different now.
"I'll be back," I whispered, and then, letting go, not looking back or even looking down to see the rest of him because I knew it would doom me, I was gone into the night.
The garage door hadn't come down yet, which meant that Sam was still stowing his bike. He would most likely come in through the garage, which would put him in the hallway between the front door and the kitchen. I didn't have time to sprint around the house to go in the front and up the stairs, because the main hallway connected to the little side one he was going to use, and he'd spot me, so I had to go in the back door. If he looked into the kitchen on his way to the stairs, or came in to get a drink or something, I'd be screwed, because there was nowhere in there to hide, but a quick plan came together in my head as I pushed through into my backyard, almost slipping on the grass, lunging for the back door. I jerked it open as I heard the garage door rolling back down, and darted into the kitchen as quietly as possible, ready to pretend I'd gotten out of bed and come downstairs for a drink. It was totally plausible.
Except that I still had my shoes on.
Why was this happening to me? Why was the best night of my life turning into slapstick vaudeville horror?
Closing the back door with my ass, I hopped on one foot, and then the other, jerking the shoes off, thankful that I hadn't laced them, but where could I put them? The door between the garage and the house clicked open. Sam was in the hallway! I was nowhere near the fridge! I had shoes in my hands, not a glass! Opening the closest cabinet, I jammed my shoes inside, realizing that I'd have to wash all those pans later when Sam wasn't around, and I darted toward the refrigerator as I heard Sam walking up the hallway, heading right for me. I reached out and grabbed the handle as I attempted to skid to a stop in front of it, but my bare feet slid across the waxed floor (What the hell was my mother waxing it with? Vaseline?), ripping the refrigerator open as I tried to steady myself and keep from falling on my ass in the middle of the kitchen. Bottles rattled alarmingly on the door shelves as I realized I was about to pull the entire thing down on top of me. Sam would walk into the kitchen and find me crushed to death beneath the refrigerator, and then, later, they would try to figure out why my shoes were hidden in a cake pan.
"Nate?" Sam asked, walking into the kitchen.
"Hey!" I yelled, popping up from behind the refrigerator door like a jack in the box. Sam took a half step back, and I realized I'd been entirely too loud. "I'm not doing anything!"
"Uh, ok," Sam said, starting to smile. He walked over and rested his hand on top of the door, smiling at me in the light from inside the refrigerator. "What, exactly, are you not doing here in the kitchen in the middle of the night?"
"Drinking!" I blurted, sticking to my cover story. Sam looked carefully at me, his nostrils flaring delicately, and I realized that he thought I meant drinking alcohol. Looking at my behavior in the past twenty seconds, it wasn't a bad assumption, but I didn't want him to think I was just sitting at home alone boozing it up all night. I didn't want him to know what I'd really been doing, of course, but there was no sense leaving him with a cover story that was equally disturbing. "I mean, you know, I came downstairs to get a drink. Of water. That's all I was going to drink."
"OK," he said, rolling his eyes and patting my shoulder. He leaned back on the counter as I pulled out a bottle of water and then stood uncertainly. On the one hand, I kind of needed to drink it to explain my presence in the kitchen, but on the other.
It probably sounds stupid, but I was sure that I could still taste Casey in my mouth. I could still feel the way his lips had crushed against mine, the way his chest had pressed against me, that hard wall of muscle that drew the eyes and the hands and, maybe someday, the mouth. Oh, God, the mouth. In my minds eye I could see myself licking his chest, dragging my tongue across his pecs, feeling the hard muscle and the way they would curve under my mouth. I was fascinated with the way he smelled, and with the way his mouth tasted, and suddenly all I could do was wonder if his skin tasted the same way. I'd kissed his mouth, and his cheek, and a little bit of his neck, but why hadn't I done more? Why hadn't I done everything I dreamed about when I'd had him right there with me? My mouth watered, filling with drool, and my cock throbbed in my shorts, sliding roughly against the zipper since my boxers were gone, making me shudder for a second, caught between rough pain and tickling pleasure.
"You gonna drink that?" Sam asked, snapping me out of my thoughts, nodding his head toward my water.
"No," I answered, shaking my head. "I guess I'm not really thirsty."
"Weirdo," Sam snickered. He smothered a yawn with his hand, and I remembered that while I'd been out doing unholy things, he'd been at work all afternoon. Not that the video store was especially strenuous, but still, I could see that he was tired. Normally bouncy and full of energy, Sam was leaning against the counter like he was ready to drop, and I realized that his giggles and smiles, usually so natural and unselfconscious, were a little tight.
"Hey, Sam, you ok?" I asked, closing the refrigerator. He sighed, a very un-Sam-like move, and when he spoke his voice sounded completely exhausted.
"Can we talk about it in the morning?" he asked, not looking at me.
It had been years since I'd seen Sam like this, looking this depressed, and I wondered how I could have missed seeing it the minute that he walked into the room. I was so wrapped up in my own issues, in getting into the house before he discovered me, that I hadn't stopped to really look at him, to really see him, until now, and all of my thoughts and worries and internal struggles immediately fell onto the back burner in my head. Something was wrong, really wrong. His shoulders were down, and his hair was messy, like he'd been running his hands through it. I looked down at his hands where they were gripping the counter and saw that his thumbnails, both of them, were bitten all the way down to the pink beds, a condition they hadn't been in this afternoon when he left. He wasn't looking up at me, instead studying his shoes, and I wondered if his eyes would be red if I could see them better in the dim light coming in from outside. I hadn't seen him look this down since his father left, and I wondered what was wrong and how I could help.
"Yeah," I answered, nodding, putting a hand on his shoulder. "You wanna just go up to bed?"
"Yeah, thanks," he answered, nodding. He turned and started walking away, heading for the stairs.
"Hey, Sam," I called down the hall, walking over to lock the back door. "Maybe it'll look better in the morning?"
"Maybe," he answered, starting up the stairs. I listened to him walk toward the bathroom as I locked the back door.
Turning away, I glanced out the window, the one where I'd seen Casey grabbing a drink, naked, in the middle of the night. It seemed like it had been a million years ago, now, that I had looked up and seen him padding naked through the kitchen over there, drinking in front of the open refrigerator, the windowsill just high enough to cut off the sight of anything good but just low enough to tease. Staring across the yard between our houses, I was surprised to see Casey looking back at me. The kitchen over there was dark, and the only reason I could see him was that he was so close to the glass. His normally tan skin was pale in the moonlight, and as he leaned forward, a curved mottle of shadows where they dripped across his rippled skin, I saw one dark nipple, looking almost black. From here I could still see his twinkling eyes, his hair pushed straight back even though it would fall forward the minute he moved his head, that natural cowlick betraying him. As far as I could tell, he was still naked, the way I had left him a few minutes before, and now that he saw me he raised an arm to wave. I waved back, and he smiled, stepping back into the darkness.
He'd waited up for me. I felt a wave of warmth wash over me as I realized that he had stayed in his kitchen, watching, to make sure that I got home ok, and that there hadn't been a scene with Sam. Now that he had done that, he was ready to go to bed, but still, he'd waited. He'd wanted to make sure that I was safe, and I found myself comforted by it. Too many times I'd heard that being gay was all about sex, that it was just fucking and slutting around and spreading disease and taking drugs and all kinds of other things, none of which sounded good, but seeing Casey, standing alone in the darkness of his kitchen watching me, concerned and worrying and wanting me to be safe, all of that seemed to melt away. I was still scared, still unsure of where I was going or where this road I'd started on might lead, but I felt better knowing that Casey was with me, and wouldn't let anything happen to me. He didn't have to say it, because actions spoke louder than words.
Since Sam was still in the bathroom brushing his teeth and flossing when I got upstairs, I had plenty of time to change into a pair of boxers and then to mess up my bed, climbing in and shifting around a lot to make sure it looked like I'd been asleep for a little while before I went downstairs for my drink, which I set on the nightstand. As soon as I settled into bed, rolling onto my side, trying to get comfortable as I fluffed my pillow, Sam came in, shutting off the light in the hallway as he pushed open the bedroom door. There was a small table lamp on by his bed, the twin to my own, and I felt my stomach knot up as he sat down to take off his shoes, recalling the dream I'd had of Sam, naked, in bed with me, questioning me, betrayed by me. As Sam kicked off one shoe, and then the other, trying to be quiet, thinking that I was already drowsy and starting to fall back to sleep rather than wide awake, wired, and just pretending, I felt doubt and fear claw at the bottom of my stomach.
Now that I'd allowed myself to look at Casey, to touch him and revel in him and do all the things I'd dreamed about in the back of my mind but had been completely unwilling to admit, I was worried that I would look at all guys that way. I was scared that I would look at Sam and not see a brother anymore, that we wouldn't be able to just casually be naked or nearly naked around each other anymore. I was worried that, now that I had changed, things between us would change, too, and I didn't want that to happen, not now, not when we'd been so careful not to drift apart in college, not when we'd worked so hard to make sure that things between us stayed the way they'd been and the way that they, honestly, should always be. I didn't want to feel things like that for Sam, didn't want to think of him that way, and I was afraid that if I did the only thing I would be able to do was push him away.
I couldn't do that. I wouldn't be able to handle it, in the long run, and neither would Sam. Even when we'd had fights, the few times that we had disagreed through adolescence and junior high and high school, growing up and changing and trying to figure out the rest of the world, we'd never gone more than a night without speaking. We'd seen other people let their best friends come and go, let them fall along the wayside for a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a sports team or any other kind of petty high school bullshit, but Sam and I never had. We were important to each other, were part of each other, and I couldn't imagine life without him, especially if it was my fault. I couldn't let that happen, so I watched. I had to know how I felt. I had to know if things were still ok.
Sam didn't seem to notice, preoccupied with his own thoughts. He sat down on the bed to pull his socks off, and I let my eyes slide over his lanky, runner's legs, tapering down from his shorts to his ankles, dusted with blond hair turning almost white from the summer sun that he was getting whenever he wasn't in the video store. They were strong legs, the muscles in his thighs and calves cut and defined, and they flexed as he shifted to pull his socks off. Sam was flexible, trained for it early by one of his first track coaches to keep himself from getting brittle, to help prevent sprains and muscle tears, and sometimes, drunk at parties, he would put his ankles behind his head, laughing and rocking back and forth while kids cheered.
He peeled his shirt off now, and I let my eyes play over his stomach. Sam was thin, and his metabolism burned off everything he ate in a way that I envied, which left him with abs that you wouldn't believe. Not just a six pack, he had two tiny little bumps up at the top that almost made an eight pack, and his muscles tapered into a V leading into his shorts, which he kicked off as he peeled his sheets back. He turned to pull the bed down, and I let myself notice the way that his butt held his shorts up, sticking out, as firm as Casey's if not more so. He had a nice basket going in the front, too, and I'd seen him naked enough times to know that he wasn't at all lacking in that department. When he turned back around to shut off the lamp I took in the way his chest fanned out, his pecs smaller than Casey's but still defined, covered with the finest dusting of thin hair, his brown nipples so tiny that they almost weren't there. Above it all was his face, handsome, classically attractive, capped by that smile and his sandy blond hair.
It was the kind of body anyone would want, male or female, but looking at him, watching him get undressed right across from me, I felt nothing. He was still my brother, and looking at him, all I saw was the same old Sam.
Thank God.
"Good night, Nate," Sam said in the darkness, the mattress and springs squeaking as he tried to get comfortable.
"Good night, Sam," I answered.
In my head I added a silent good night to Casey, as well, and began counting off the minutes until I would see him again. I was still counting as I fell asleep.
To be continued.