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.
I had thought that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, that after the close call with Sam and the almost but not quite funny scramble to get from Casey's back over to here before I got caught that my nerves would be too keyed up to let me drift off, but that wasn't the case. I'd thought about Casey, about his dark eyes and the way that they could look completely flat sometimes but completely warm and caring at others, and I'd thought about how much I wanted to see him again and how soon it would be, and before I knew it, I was out.
I couldn't say the same for Sam, though. Whatever was bothering him must have been keeping him up, because he got out of bed not an hour after we turned in for the night and went to the bathroom. Normally I wouldn't notice that. I was used to sharing a room with Sam, and while I was the kind of heavy sleeper who dropped into bed and just crashed there, hardly turning, not waking up for anything short of an explosion, he was the kind of person who tossed and turned all night long. When I woke up in the morning, usually before him, I could guarantee that when I looked over at Sam's bed the sheets would be twisted everywhere, wrapped around him, with parts of his body hanging off the bed and his mouth hanging open like a flycatcher.
Once, when we were in junior high, he'd even managed to fall out of bed completely, the sound snapping me awake. When I looked over, he was blinking up at me with the most confused, uncomprehending look on his face, like he couldn't imagine how it had happened, sheet twisted around his leg like a mummy wrap and a shock of blond hair standing straight up as if it were as surprised as he was. We'd both burst out laughing so hard and so loud that it woke my mother, who came in to check on us and ended up laughing, too, when we finally managed to explain between gasping and snickering, sitting down on the bed and rocking back and forth, her shoulders shaking. As the years had gone by, I'd just gotten used to the amount of shifting and turning and noise that Sam made, and hoped that his roommate at college had managed the same trick.
Now, though, I guess I wasn't quite as settled as I thought, or maybe Sam and I were just so attuned to each other that his turmoil was spilling over onto me. After the mood I'd been in for the last week, though, I guess it was only fair. As soon as I thought that, though, my brain made the connection between the two, the thought that I had been trying to avoid surfacing like the bubbles in an aquarium, inexorably rising to the top and bursting. What if Sam was upset because he knew something? Had I slipped somewhere? Had he figured something out, or had he seen something?
It was my nightmare all over again, except this time I knew that I was awake.
The toilet flushed down the hall, and my eyes tracked Sam as he walked back into the room. It was still dark, and the moon must have been behind a cloud, because I could barely see him. I tried to read his body language, to tell by the set of his shoulders or the swing of his arms or the crease between his eyebrows what he was thinking, and what was bothering him, and if he knew, but I couldn't see him. He was a moving shadow in a dark room, a silhouette that I could really only make out because he was darker than the wall. As he turned to climb into bed, though, some light somewhere in the room must have caught my eyes, because he saw me.
"Did I wake you?" he whispered, his voice concerned. I'm not sure why he was whispering when we were the only people home, but there's something about darkness that just makes you want to be quiet.
"No, it's ok," I whispered back, listening to the bed rustle as he slid back between the sheets. The room seemed unnaturally quiet, as if the whole world was listening. Sam's voice hadn't betrayed anything, or hadn't seemed to. Was he just pretending, or did his problem not have anything to do with me?
"OK," Sam whispered. "You going back to sleep?"
"Yeah, I guess," I answered. Did he know something or not? I didn't want to force the issue. Before we went to bed, he'd said that we would talk in the morning, and as a friend I should respect that. At the same time, though, not knowing where we stood or what he knew or what he was going to say was gnawing at me now that I'd thought of it. From the second it burst into my head I couldn't push it away, couldn't distract myself. I'd gone from drowsy to fully awake, and I knew I wasn't going to get back to sleep unless I at least tried to get to the bottom of it. I was still torn, though, about putting myself before Sam. It felt like crossing a line, but I said something anyway. "You ok?"
It wasn't much, but I still felt like a heel for saying anything at all. What the hell kind of friend was I?
Oh, yeah, the kind who lied to his best friend about who he really was.
Sam's only answer to my question was a sigh, a long, low exhalation that seemed to sum up a lot without really saying anything. I could tell that something was worrying him, something was really stressing him out, but I guess he still wasn't ready to talk.
"Yeah, I guess," he answered finally. "Goodnight, Nate."
"Night, Sam," I answered, smiling. "Again."
I heard a snicker from the other bed, but it was half hearted, and didn't really reassure me. Sam was going through the motions, but he wasn't doing a really good job of it. I thought that would be it for the night, and that we would go back to sleep, but Sam kept tossing and turning for a few minutes. I listened as he fluffed the sheet, then punched the pillow a few times, and then turned over, sighing again. I waited, having already given one push, for him to come to me, and, after a few minutes, he did.
"Nate?" Sam whispered. "Are you still awake?"
"Yeah," I answered, hesitant. Did I really want to get into this now? I thought I did, but now that the moment was here, did I really want to face it?
"Can I talk to you about something?" he asked. "I mean, I know I said we could talk in the morning, but I just, you know, I can't sleep. I gotta get this off my chest."
Oh, shit. First he was nibbling at his thumbnails, and now he couldn't sleep until he got it off his chest. How long had he known? It couldn't have been more than a day or two, since there wasn't really much to know before that. Was it the night of the party? Last night? Maybe Sam hadn't been as drunk as I thought. Maybe he'd seen something, or heard something, or woken up and noticed that I wasn't there. Maybe he'd seen me coming back across the yard, or maybe he'd seen something today, tonight, during my scramble across the yard.
My brain immediately began to formulate elaborate scenarios, scenes of Casey and I in the Beckers' kitchen and Sam's face pressed against the window, his mouth hanging open in shock. Maybe he left his keys at the house and had to come back for them, or his phone, or something else, and then he'd come back, and I was gone. He'd probably walked around, checking upstairs, looking in the bathroom, maybe even checking to see if my swim bag was here or if I'd gone to the pool. Then maybe he'd look around the yard, to see if I was out back, and would he see something, some movement? The kitchen wasn't all that private. I'd been able to see into their kitchen that night I'd spotted Casey, naked, stealing that drink from the refrigerator, which meant that Sam would have been able to look right over and see Casey and I talking, or maybe kissing, or maybe peeling clothes off of each other.
"Nate?" Sam whispered again.
"Yeah, sorry," I answered. I had to pay attention right now, had to focus, rather than drifting off like I tended to do. Fortunately my brain had apparently figured out a way not to lapse into stupidity the second I thought about Casey. Maybe actually seeing him in the flesh, touching him and talking to him and being with him, had quelled some of that inner turmoil. "What's up?"
"I don't know," Sam sighed. Oh, that was helpful. I felt so much better now that I knew Sam had no idea what was wrong. "I mean, I just, it's complicated."
Complicated? He had no idea how complicated it was. He was just watching from the outside, and had no idea what was going on inside me.
"OK," I said, not really sure what to add. Maybe whatever he saw wasn't as bad as I imagined it could be. Maybe there was a way to convince him he'd seen something else. "Are you sure you want to talk about it?"
Or maybe you'd rather just drop it until some time when I could answer better? I really couldn't have this discussion right now. I still didn't know what I was doing with Casey, if it was just a passing thing. I mean, yeah, I'd been pretty sure that I was, you know, gay, but maybe that was just a temporary thing, some kind of weird hormonal thing that I would get over. As bad as I thought things could turn out right now, wouldn't it be a hell of a lot worse if I told Sam, or anyone, that I was gay, and then I wasn't? It seemed like the kind of thing that would be a little difficult to take back, and Sam was the kind of friend that I knew I wouldn't be able to lie to. I'd been able to put him off, telling him I'd talk about what was bothering me later, but if he asked straight out, I couldn't lie to him.
"No, I do," Sam sighed again. He shifted on the bed again, and I wondered if he was about to turn on a light. This would really be a lot easier if he left them off, though. That way, I wouldn't have to see his face when I told him. "It's just, well, have you ever felt like someone's lying to you?"
I didn't think he'd say it straight out like that. I couldn't answer him for a second, because there was suddenly this hot ball of acid in my stomach pushing up toward my mouth. Sam didn't seem to notice my silence, though, and just kept talking.
"I mean, you think that you're so close to someone, that you're being completely honest with them, and then things just, I don't know," Sam said. I couldn't see him, but I knew the look on his face would be an introspective frown, half consternation and half looking inside, like whatever was wrong was automatically his fault. Since his parents had broken up, Sam had taken everything to heart, like everything that went wrong in any relationship he had with anyone was his fault, even if a thousand signs pointed otherwise. This time, for example, wasn't Sam's fault at all. It was mine. "It's like everything you ever said, all the times you talked to each other and told each other things and opened up to each other and trusted each other, it's like all of that was just one big lie, like they were just lying to you all long."
Oh, Sam. I wanted to tell him I was sorry. I didn't mean to lie. All the times we talked to each other I was being as honest as I could be, sharing as much as I could. It wasn't easy to tell the truth to someone else when you spent so much time not telling it to yourself, hiding from it, keeping yourself from admitting things. Sam was right. I had lied to him, all along, but it wasn't out of spite, or mistrust, or anything else. I was lying to myself at the same time, all along, and just like Sam, I'd believed it. I'd made myself believe, but could I make Sam believe that? I opened my mouth to say something, I don't know what, to start pleading my case, but Sam just kept talking. I guess he'd been holding this inside too long to stop now.
"I thought we were close, that we had something special," Sam continued, his voice cracking a little. I wanted to turn on the light, to go over and comfort him, but at the same time I didn't want to see any of it, didn't want to see what I was doing to him. It wouldn't be just Sam, either. All of my other friends, my parents, everybody. It would be this same scene over and over again. It was like getting punched in the stomach and kicked in the balls at the same time, a dull, hard, throbbing ache. "I've never felt that way about someone else, someone who wasn't part of my family."
That hurt even more. I considered Sam my brother, and knew that he felt the same way about me, or, at least, that he had before now. I thought we really were family, but now I was an outsider. I tried to speak again, but my tongue was frozen. I couldn't breathe, couldn't get any air into my chest, couldn't even think. Sam and I had always been Sam and I, maybe not for my whole life, but long enough for me not to be able to imagine a world without him.
"It's not like with me and the twins, or me and you," Sam sighed again. Wait, what? "I mean, they're my brothers, and you, well, there's always me and you."
Other than reading my mind, what the hell was he talking about? If it wasn't about me and Sam, what the hell conversation were we having?
"I just, I trusted her," Sam said, his voice rising a little.
"Her?" I asked, completely lost. Hey, I'd finally managed to squeak a word out.
"Jen!" Sam answered. His voice sounded a little confused, and now I imagined him with his head cocked to the side in his typical Sam way. "Who did you think I was talking about?"
"I don't know," I answered quickly. I worried for a second that maybe it was too quickly, too defensive sounding, but Sam was completely focused on the problem at hand. "Maybe I just wasn't really awake yet."
"Sometimes I wonder if you ever really are," Sam said, and I could hear the smile this time. It was genuine, unlike his fake chuckle earlier. In the face of any problem, at least Sam and I had my space cadet status to fall back on.
"So, what's the problem?" I asked, happy to have something else to fall back on. I wasn't happy for Sam, since Jen clearly had him very upset, but I was a lot happier to know that, at least this time, none of this was about me. Besides, Sam and girl trouble was pretty familiar territory. I'd sat through countless hours of Sam dissecting each and every relationship once they were over, what had happened and hadn't happened and should have happened and whose fault it as. I spent many of those conversations convincing Sam that whatever happened wasn't all his fault, as, like I said, he tended to take any kind of broken relationship personally.
"Well, like I said, it's hard to explain," Sam sighed again. Between the sighing and the indirect answers I wasn't getting much of anything from him. I hadn't even known what we were talking about for the past couple minutes. If we were ever going to get back to sleep, I might have to help clarify a little.
"Did you guys have a fight?" I asked. Wasn't that usually the problem with girls? "Did you forget an anniversary or something?"
"No, no, nothing like that," Sam answered. Yeah, now that I'd said it, it didn't make much sense. Sam, the social butterfly, was almost a genius at remembering birthdays and anniversaries and stuff like that. He was always the perfect boyfriend as far as stuff like that went. "We didn't even have a fight."
"Then what's wrong?" I asked. I remembered what he'd said before, when I thought he was talking about me. "Did she lie to you about something?"
"Yeah," Sam answered, but immediately followed it with, "No. I don't know. I don't think so, but she just, things are really weird, Nate. There were little things, you know, stuff that I thought was kind of normal since I'm here and she's working at that camp and we're not going to see each other again until August, but the past week or two it's just been completely, I don't know, it's like we're falling apart. We just, we haven't been talking, and when we do, it's just weird. I write her all these letters when I'm at the store, but she only writes me like one a week, and I only get to talk to her for a couple minutes, because she's always working, and I just, there's other stuff, too."
I'd always heard that long distance relationships could be trouble. I had friends at school who had come to college with boyfriends and girlfriends back home, or at other schools, and most of them had broken up before Christmas break. The ones that hadn't spent most of their money on huge phone bills, or on bus tickets to go visit or have them come visit. I knew a few people who seemed to make it work, but they were people who had been dating forever, like for years before they got to school. Sam had only known Jennifer this year, and not even the whole year. Maybe they just weren't as compatible as Sam thought they were.
"Well, did she get that card and stuff we got her at the mall last week?" I asked. Girls liked presents, right? I'd never had a serious girlfriend, but the nonserious flirtations and quick relationships had given me a few pointers. Did Casey like presents? Wait, were guys supposed to treat other guys like they would a girlfriend? No, wait again, Casey and I weren't anywhere near that kind of relationship. But did I want to be? Sam. We were thinking about Sam right now. The weird, wildly swinging barometer of my feelings about me and Casey could wait.
"Yeah," Sam answered, but didn't elaborate.
"Did she like it?" I asked. Jesus, Sam, don't make me pull teeth. First he can't sleep because he needs to get it off his chest, and now he can't talk about it because it's "complicated".
"She said she did," he answered, his voice trailing off.
"But?" I supplied, since that seemed to be what he was missing.
"I don't know!" he burst. He sighed again. "I'm sorry, Nate. I know this doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's not like I can just point at something and say, `Hey, this is what's wrong.' Feelings aren't like that, you know?"
Did I ever.
"Yeah, I know," I answered.
"I just feel like, I don't know, I really care about her," he said earnestly. I was suddenly glad the lights were off, since I knew I was smirking. I'd heard Sam say that about quite a few girls before this one, and that was kind of Sam's eternal fallback. He really cared about everybody he knew, and when he was dating somebody it was even stronger. "And I know what you're thinking. I know the smirk on your face right now, but I mean it this time. I really care about her, and I just feel like she doesn't feel the same way about me. She said she did, and we promised that being apart this summer wouldn't change anything, but it just, I don't know. It's just not working. I feel like she lied, like she didn't mean any of it. I still care about her, but I don't know if she's still in love with me."
"Because she only writes once a week?" I asked. "Sam, you said she's really busy, and, you know, working at that camp she's probably with the kids all the time and barely gets a chance to do anything. Maybe it's not as bad as you think."
"It's not just that," Sam said, his voice hardening a little. OK, now we were getting to the real issue. "There's this guy."
"She's cheating on you?" I burst, sitting up in bed. That bitch! I'd kill her. It was that simple. Sam thought she walked on water, wrote her all the time, called her almost daily, raved about her for hours on end, and she treated him like this? Nope. Uh-uh. Not my Sam. He wasn't going to be anybody's doormat while I was here for him.
"No!" Sam said quickly. He flicked on the lamp on his side of the room, and broke into an easy grin when he saw me sitting up. "See? This is why I didn't want to bring it up. I knew you'd do this."
I looked over at him, sitting up, the sheet puddled around his waist, a shock of his hair already stuck up, just like when we were little, and couldn't help grinning too. Sam's grin, as always, was infectious.
"Do what?" I asked, shrugging. "Be concerned? Worry about you? Look, Sam, if she's cheating on you."
"If," he said, raising his hands, cutting me off for a second. He swung around on the bed, his feet smacking onto the floor, and I did the same, so that we were facing each other across my room, leaning forward, our elbows on our knees. We'd had a lot of talks like this, smirking at each other from opposite sides of the braided rug on my floor, thrown between the beds so that we didn't have to put our feet down on cold floors in the winter. "If she's cheating on me. There's no proof, Nate, so you can pull your claws back in for a minute."
"My claws?" I asked, holding out my hands. "Funny, they don't look like claws. They're hardly even talons."
"Listen to you with the big words," Sam snickered. "Talons. Do you want your fifty cents now?"
"I'll take a rain check," I answered, shaking my head. "So, if she's not cheating on you, what's the deal with this guy? Who is he?"
"There's this other counselor she works with," he began, his smile dropping into a slight frown. "His name's Jason, and apparently he's great with kids, and he's great to talk to, and he's just all around great. I mean, first she just kind of mentioned him, like, `Oh, hey, there's this guy I work with,' but then she started mentioning him every phone call, like on their weekends off they all go into town together, but it sounds kind of like it's not always just all of them, you know? And then today I called her when I got to the store, like we agreed on, because we were supposed to talk about stuff, and when I called she said that she had to go because her and Jason were going canoeing."
"And that was it?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"Well, no, not completely," he answered, shrugging. "I said I loved her, and I missed her, and she said she missed me, too, and that she'd talk to me soon, and that was it."
"She misses you, too," I pointed out, nodding my head encouragingly. Missing him had to be a good sign, right?
Sam shook his head, looking at me seriously, his face letting me know that I just didn't get it.
"I told her I love her, and she said she misses me," he said evenly. "She didn't say it back."
Oh.
"Shit," I sighed. Sam nodded, looking at the floor. "So what are we going to do?"
"I don't know," he answered. "I've been trying to figure it out all day."
We both stared at the floor for a minute, looking back and forth between my feet, his feet, and the rug, not spotting any answers. After a few seconds that seemed like ten minutes, I gave up, and swung myself back into bed.
"Maybe we'll have some better ideas in the morning," I suggested.
"Maybe we'll at least have ideas," Sam agreed, flicking the light off. I heard him settle back into bed again. "Nate? Thanks for listening."
"No problem," I said, trying to get comfortable again. I felt completely relieved now, knowing that my secret was still safe until I was ready to share it. Not only that, but I also felt better knowing what actually was bothering Sam. Now, at least, we could work on it together. "You know I'm here for you."
"Yeah, I know," he answered. "I'm here for you, too, Nate."
The silence stretched for a minute, empty, waiting. I could have said something, could have taken that chance, but I didn't. I couldn't, and right then, I wasn't even sure I wanted to.
"I know, Sam," I said finally. "Good night. Again."
"Night, for real this time," Sam answered, and we finally fell back to sleep.
In the morning we didn't really talk about it. Instead we got up and muddled our way through breakfast, Sam producing fairly decent scrambled eggs (you really couldn't do much to screw those up besides burning them, though) while I, despite following the explicit directions on the side of the Bisquik box, turned out a succession of pancakes that were either doughy and gummy or flat and totally dry. Sam gamely tried to eat a few of them, but the second I gave up on them he admitted that he was only eating them to spare my feelings, and we scraped our plates into the garbage disposal. Since my parents were coming back sometime in the afternoon, and Sam had to work the night shift again, we spent a couple hours cleaning ourselves up and then cleaning up the house a little.
By lunchtime, after a couple sandwiches, we were in the backyard tossing a baseball back and forth with a pair of old gloves from the garage.
"So," Sam sighed, underhanding the ball to me.
"So," I sighed back. "About your chick problem."
"Yeah, that thing," he smiled, backing up a little, tossing the ball a little harder.
"I was thinking," I began. Thwack! Catch, step back, return the ball. "She gets weekends off, right?"
"Yeah," he answered, rolling his eyes. "Plenty of time to go canoeing around the lake with Jason."
"Or you," I pointed out. Sam got this blank look on his face, like the idea had never occurred to him. You could almost see the light bulb going off over his head, and I had to giggle. "She's allowed to have visitors, right?"
"Yeah," he answered, grinning. "Yeah, I probably could get out there this weekend. You know, take the bus or something."
"Exactly," I agreed, nodding. "Get out there, remind her what you look like, how cute you are, why you're her boyfriend."
"Yeah," he repeated, warming up to the idea. We were almost at opposite ends of the yard now, Sam all the way back by the house where my mother would go ballistic if she saw him, reminding us both that glass breaks and costs money, and me all the way down at the far end by the trees, trying not to back up any more so that I wouldn't be trying to catch the ball through the branches. Sam puffed up his chest a little, standing with his feet apart. "So, tell me again how cute I am."
"Shut up," I said, rolling my eyes as I threw the ball back to him.
There was a rustling off to my side just then, and I turned my head, my eyes falling right into Casey's.
Mmmmmm. Casey.
Whatever resistance I'd built up to thinking about him was gone now that he was in front of me, in the flesh, again. In the space of a second my eyes seemed to dance all over him, sliding across his face, running along his jaw, falling into the dark blue of his gaze. The sun, coming through the branches, fell in dapples on his long hair, leaving some of it dark brown, almost black, and lighting the rest a bright amber gold that I wanted to run my fingers through again as it fell down to his chin. I'd run them past that, along his neck, the cords straining in one of those little white shell necklaces all the guys were wearing, matching the clinging white t-shirt he wore. His shoulders rounded it out, stretching it a little, but not as much as his firm pecs were. It clung to them like water, and seemed almost as thin. I could pick out his nipples though it, tanned brown, and I knew if I touched them again they would be a little bit rubbery but in seconds they would be hard, like rocks, and he'd be moaning against me, and rubbing against me, and my hands could go lower, and now his hand was reaching out for me, his arm flexing, the muscles seeming to dance like some exotic ballet as his mouth opened to say something, something...
"Hey!" Casey barked, plucking the baseball out of the air right before it smashed into my teeth. Stunned, I staggered backward half a step, tripping over a root somewhere behind me and crashing down into the bushes. Yeah. That graceful move was certain to impress him. The only thing that could have made it worse was if I landed in a big bed of poison ivy, and smeared it all over myself.
"Nate?" Sam yelled, charging down the yard toward me.
"Nate?" Casey asked, smiling down at me, standing over me in his cargo shorts, legs wide, his fat, packed basket right at my eye level. My brain suddenly seemed to be filled with jello, the whole world moving in slow motion, and I slowly lifted my hand, wanting to reach up there between Casey's legs and cup him, to feel his cock all coiled up and ready in there. I wanted to do the things to him he'd done to me, to know what it felt like from the other side, and I wanted to right now.
"Nate? You ok?" Sam asked, as Casey took my hand and pulled me to my feet. I couldn't take my eyes off of him, staring into his, my brain still stuck. "Jesus. I thought I hit you."
"No, I think he's ok," Casey said, letting go of my hand, and I blinked, realizing that they were both staring at me.
"I fell," I blurted, pointing over my shoulder at the tree behind me, and Sam snickered while Casey's lips curved up in a small, toothless smile.
"Yeah, we got that," Sam said, rolling his eyes. "Are you sure you're ok?"
"I'm fine," I answered, brushing the seat of my shorts off, my eyes darting toward Casey again. Oh, wow, he'd shaved. That five o'clock shadow that I'd gotten used to was gone, and now I wanted to know what his face felt like when it was this smooth.
I couldn't stop staring at Casey, and Sam was right there.
I was in terrible, terrible trouble.
Sorry for the extremely long delay. Not only is my schedule as hectic as always, but between the last chapter and this one my laptop fried itself, taking this chapter with it. Not only did I have to wait for the new laptop to arrive, but then I had to rewrite the whole chapter from scratch. Many thanks to all those who have written in the meantime (I'm trying to answer it all, I swear, so if I haven't gotten to yours, I will), and you'll probably be pleased to know that I've already gotten started on the next chapter.