Copyright Alex Douglas 2009
Author's note: This is a revised version of a previous unfinished story. It's taken me six years to finish it, so finally here it is. All feedback greatly appreciated. Email me at alex_d0uglas@yahoo.co.uk and I'll do my best to reply.
It's a bit of a slow burner, so if you're looking for a stroke, this isn't the one for you. :)
Sean finished stretching, getting ready for his first decent walk since the last plaster had come off his leg. The painkillers were kicking in, settling on the ache in his bones like a warm blanket. His breath came in clouds. The paths wound off through the trees, the faint rush of the nearby river and harsh call of ravens the only sounds. He stood for a moment, closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of rain on pine leaves.
Rubbing his belly reflectively, he considered the route he was going to take. His flesh was soft and warm under his palm. Even after all this time, it was a surprise to feel it so pliant. Before, he would have probed the knots of the hard muscles he had earned from countless hours in the gym, feeling proud of what he'd achieved. He looked over the old blue Ford his sister had given him when it became too much to handle. It had been their family car, once upon a time when they had been a family. Megan had been planning to sell it for scrap, but Sean couldn't let her do it. There had to be hope, for broken bodies to be repaired and restored, whatever the cost. Learning how to mend and maintain the old heap had given him a new interest, now he no longer had a motorbike.
There was only one other car around, a black Audi sports car that he paused to admire. It was a good time to come; it meant the risk of getting run over by a cyclist was low. In another life, he would have been the cyclist, the runner, the tri-athlete, wobbling around hikers and dogs on his mountain bike, covered in mud. Now he was a thirty six year old with a crutch and the beginnings of a beer gut. The gravel crunched underneath his feet as he headed off towards the river. An interesting walk, and the flattest path. The silence and the smells of the forest, a lungful of clean air...he smiled again as a shaft of sunlight flitted across his path. He listened to the thud of his heart against his ribs and thought of the paramedics, soaked and kneeling in the muck at the side of the road, shocking the departing life back into his body.
January was his favourite month, sunny yet freezing, with a dusting of frost over the skeletal trees. Today, however, the ground was mushy underfoot, a misty rain spraying his face. It was nice to take the time to enjoy the forest instead of just running through it, watching muddy trainers pounding the gravel, headphones wedged into his ears pumping out the same tunes they'd played at the gym where he'd worked. This time last year, he'd been planning a snowboarding holiday in Austria with the guys from the skydiving centre. A life, snatched away in one split second by a wandering mind and a slippery road. His knuckles whitened around the crutch as a pain stabbed through the haze of the tablets. The physio wasn't going so well any more. He'd reached a plateau of sorts. It shouldn't have been hurting so much after so long, that was for sure. He closed his mind to the implications of that. The nightmares were also getting worse. It made no sense. Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on the walk, pushing the thoughts to the back of his mind. With so little to do, he feared his brain would start eating itself, if he didn't try to occupy it.
The silence was interrupted by the excited barking of a golden dog, galloping clumsily on its big paws straight at him. He tried to step back, but the dog's front feet hit him full in the chest and he fell backwards, his crutch falling from his grasp. His right hand broke the fall with a crack! as he collapsed onto a muddy verge. Watching the sky turn white for a second, he felt the velvety lapping of a long tongue at his ear. The world was spinning; a stabbing pain in his wrist dragging him back to the real world...and a face swam into view.
"Oh my god! Are you all right? Cassie, NO!"
Sean mumbled something incoherently as strong hands pulled him into a sitting position. A smell of leather and Calvin Klein aftershave, something familiar...he opened his eyes and tried to focus on the man before him.
"I'm really sorry," the man was saying, "she's only a pup, I can't believe...are you sure you're ok? You look awfully white..." and then his voice cut off and he sat back on his heels. Sean felt the man's intense gaze burning on his skin. "Sean?" The voice was faint. "Sean Rooney? I don't believe it."
"Help me" Sean muttered, holding out his good hand. The other man obliged, hauling him to his feet. Sean wiggled his fingers and winced. "Fuck! That hurts."
"That's broken." Brown eyes, full of concern. And something else...
"Cal?" Sean said, as if seeing him for the first time, his injury paling into the greater shock of seeing his former friend again, after so many years. "Bloody hell!"
"I'd better take you to hospital" Cal said, glancing at his watch. "Are you OK? Do you want my jacket? Here." He took off his coat and draped it round Sean's shoulders. "God, Sean...I don't know what to say. It's been...ages. I'm so sorry about Cassie, she's just a pup, really..." he stared off into space for a second and bit his lip. "We just got her six months ago and..."
Sean passed the crutch into his good hand. A big clump of mud and grass had collected around the end and he tried to shake it off. The dog appeared again, wet from the river, her tail flailing muddy splatters all over Cal's clothes as she dropped a stick at her owner's feet. Cal stared at the dog, his face ashen. Sean noticed for the first time the shadows under his eyes, the faint hollows in his cheeks, the prematurely greying hair. For one startling second he thought that Cal might be about to cry. "Look, no problem" he said quickly. "I don't really need the crutch. It's more for...well, security, I suppose. Was that your car in the car park?"
"The black Audi? Yeah, it's...mine."
Sean chuckled, pretending not to notice the pause and the ice started to thaw a little. "You always liked your posh toys," he remarked as they started walking.
Cal smiled faintly, staring at his feet. Still wearing Cuban heeled boots, just one of the many quirks Sean remembered. Hardly appropriate for dog walking. He had never seen Cal without them.
"So what's with the crutch?" Cal said eventually, looking up into Sean's face. The shadow had gone, replaced with the dimples Sean had seen so many times as they joked their way through GCSEs, A levels, rugby practice. His eyes followed the hypnotic tail of the golden dog bounding ahead. "Um. A bike accident last winter. I was going up north, up one of those country roads, you know what they're like... I was going too fast, I lost control going round a bend, couldn't stop. Ended up wrapped around a tree. About a year ago now."
"Bloody hell! And you're still walking with a stick now?" Cal's brown eyes were wide. "It must have been bad."
"Six operations later." Sean shrugged. "I won't be doing any more sky diving for a while."
They reached the entrance to the car park, and Cal took a lead out of his pocket, trying unsuccessfully to attach it to the dog, who was leaping and barking, enjoying the game. "Damn this mutt!" he cried, and Sean laughed. Eventually Cassie was subdued with the help of a few dog biscuits and bundled into the boot of the car where she whined through the bars as the two men strapped themselves into the front seats.
"I see you finally passed your driving test" Sean remarked, and Cal groaned.
"Don't talk" he said. "Fifteen times, I had to do the test. In the end I had to get an automatic, or I'd never have made it. Stupid gears."
"Fifteen!"
The car jerked forward, stopping an inch from the tree. "Oops! That wasn't reverse..." His eye caught Sean's, and he winked. They shared a brief smile before the car lurched back and out of the car park, rain starting to spatter against the windscreen as Cal fumbled with the controls, eventually finding the wipers.
Sean fell silent as he stared out at the council estate to his left, leaving the park behind. Years had passed since he lived there, and he was glad not to have to go back ever again. Cal had always been the lucky one, living in a big house full of brothers and laughter out on the edge of the city. He noticed the wedding band on Cal's finger and looked out of the window again, itching to ask who "we" were but his courage failed him. Cal too had fallen silent. For a second there, it had felt like their long-dead friendship had just switched back on. Perhaps Cal was remembering that night too. They had been driving along in a taxi and...
Cal had spent the whole taxi journey fixing his hair, and by the time they got to the club, Sean was restless with a feeling he could not quite describe.
Just as the taxi pulled up outside the White Horse nightclub, Cal said for the umpteenth time, "Do I look OK?"
Sean gazed at Cal's expectant face. Black hair sculpted into a style that would not come into fashion for years. Compulsively clad in black, as always. Leather jacket, snug ribbed vest and Levi jeans, cuban heeled boots shined up for the occasion. The slim body underneath, still toned after the end of the rugby season. The brown eyes, shining with excitement.
Sean swallowed and checked his watched. "Yeah, you look fine" he mumbled, fishing in his pocket for a fiver for the taxi driver. "She won't be able to resist you."
Cal laughed and clapped. "What woman could?" he said, stepping out of the taxi like a movie star on Oscar night. It was the night of the Upper Sixth years' final fling. All their classmates, barely eighteen, with real life staring them in the face as they prepared to go their separate ways. Just one more night together before it all came to an end. As they went inside, Sean spotted Julie and Heather Scott in the corner, identical heart-shaped faces peering out from under meticulously straightened red hair. He nudged Cal, who followed his eye line, coughed and started preening again.
"Targets sighted, Miss Moneypenny.You get the drinks in," Cal said, smoothing his hands down his front. "I'll entertain the ladies, get them all ripe and ready. Tonight's the night!"
"Which one's which?"
Cal turned and laughed, his teeth glowing in the ultraviolet light. "Who cares?" he said. "I just want to get laid."
The bar was crowded with his mates from the rugby team. By the time he got back to Cal and the girls, he was reeling from an impromptu tequila shot or ten, his back stinging with all the pats and thumps it had received. Stumbling, he sloshed Cal's pint over Heather's lap...or was it Julie's? and laughed as she flounced off to the toilets in a whirlwind of red hair.
"For fuck's sake Sean" Cal whispered in his ear, and judging by the smell on his breath and the slurring, he had been guzzling the whiskey from his silver hip flask pretty quickly `We're trying to impress them, not drown them."
"I'm not interested in impressing them" Sean almost said, the alcoholic haze making his teeth numb and his blood start to heat up. The scent of Cal's aftershave mixed with the leather smell of his coat was making his head spin. Taking a gulp of his cider, he tried to focus on what Heather...or was it Julie? was saying, acutely aware of how Cal's thigh was rubbing against his, the heat in his groin starting to build until he could feel the pressure pounding in his ears, almost in time to the music, and when Rhythm is a Dancer came on, she squealed and stood up and, taking their hands, started to lead them to the dance floor...
The antiseptic smell of the hospital jerked Sean back to the real world, and he realised that he had not spoken for the entire journey. They stood together in the waiting room as he tried not to notice how often Cal was glancing at his watch, and pulling out his mobile phone to check for messages when he thought Sean was not looking.
"Have you seen anyone from school at all?" Sean said, sitting down in one of the uncomfortable plastic seats. He was not really interested in the answer, just anything to ease the silence.
Cal eased himself into a seat beside him and sighed. "Not recently" he said, "although I did run into Jen Mackie a couple of years ago...in Thailand, of all places. She's out there, teaching English. Doing OK for herself, like. She was telling me about Damien, remember wee Damien Smith that set the biology lab on fire that time? Killed himself a few years after we left."
Sean stared at him. "Why? Bloody hell."
Cal's expression was unreadable. "Dunno really, he was doing pretty well for himself professionally. Like, you know he was gay, yeah? But he'd got himself married to some girl, kid on the way and stuff. Who knows, really, what was going through his mind. The stupid shit." He shook his head. "Life's too short as it is."
Sean was shocked. "Damien? No way."
Cal shrugged. "That's just what I heard from Jen. Anyway it was pretty obvious, I thought."
"I guess it's hard to be a good judge of ...what's obvious or not." It was the first time he'd found the courage to make even a veiled mention to what had happened before.
Cal rubbed his face, and the glint of his wedding ring caught Sean's eye again. "I guess you've got me there," he said with a wan smile.
Just then the nurse came up and called Sean's name. He stood up. "It is nice to see you again, though," he said.
"You too, Sean" Cal said. "I'll wait for you, take you home?"
"OK." As he followed the nurse, he glanced back. Cal was sitting with his head in his hands, shoulders slumped. He wondered if Cal ever had sleepless nights as he did, if in all the years that had passed he had ever felt the agony of rejection, or grief that their friendship had been destroyed by one drunken night out. The x-ray machine flashed, the doctor's words an incomprehensible babble. Sean had heard it all before. He shifted in his seat, suddenly desperate to go to the toilet, wriggling around waiting....
"The toilets are all covered in puke" Cal said, shouting over the music. "There's a queue a mile long anyway."
"Fuck it!" Sean shouted. "Do you think they'll let us back in if we go out the back?"
Cal shrugged. "Well there's no "if" about it unless I piss into a pint glass. And no way one's going to be enough."
Laughing and clutching each other, they staggered outside, ears ringing from the volume of the music. "Over here" Cal shuffled over behind the bins, out of sight from the car park. The orange glow from the outside lights was casting eerie shadows. The dim thud of the dance floor carried faintly on the cool wind.
"I see Julie's copped off with Declan," Sean remarked. "That narrows your choice a bit."
He heard the pull of Cal's zip, the sound of piss hitting plastic, and turned away, concentrating on his own relief.
"Heather's a bit boring" Cal confessed. "All tits and no brain."
Sean laughed. "Thought you were just interested in getting a shag. Sounds like the ideal candidate."
Finishing up, he tucked his prick back into his jeans, wishing the stiffness in it would subside, just for a bit. The frustration was almost unbearable. And with the toilets inside in the state they were, there wasn't much chance of a quick wank to sort out his predicament. He turned to face Cal, who was still pissing.
"Bloody hell" he remarked. "That's a long one."
Cal looked up, his face glowing from the street lights, his lips reddened from the wine he'd bought trying to impress Julie. "That's what all the ladies say" he slurred, winking.
Sean felt the wind calm the heat that rose into his face. "I was talking about..."
"I know what you were talking about" Cal said. Sean stared into his eyes. They were almost black in the night. The orange street light cast shadows under his cheekbone, glinting over his lips.
He shivered again as the sweat cooled on his back, and the tingling increased in his groin... Emboldened with alcohol, he stepped closer. Cal was leaning on the bins, eyes half closed, smiling faintly. He had finally finished pissing, but hadn't put his cock away. It hung there, semi hard, and Sean had to tear his eyes from it, his mouth suddenly dry. His heart pounding, he reached out a trembling hand and ran a finger down the side of Cal's face. The haze in his head made the love he felt almost impossible to choke back. He felt the warmth of Cal's breath on his face, as Cal took his hand. All higher functions in Sean's brain seemed to cease as their lips edged closer together and finally touched. He closed his eyes and savoured the kiss, the gentle touch of soft lips and the scratch of stubble. He felt Cal's tongue slide into his mouth, and thought he was going to die. As if acting on its own, his hand closed around Cal's cock, which was now rock hard and dripping. Slowly, he began to slide his hand up and down, and felt Cal gasp in his mouth. Nothing mattered any more as he increased his movements, and...
The plaster was finished and Sean flexed his fingers, putting all memories out of his head as he felt himself getting hard again and didn't want to be embarrassed in front of the doctor who was young and reasonably handsome. The doctor was looking at Sean's fat medical file, tapping perfectly manicured fingernails on the desk.
"You've been in the wars" he said, smiling. "Can't get enough of us, was that it?"
Sean grinned. "Yeah, I've got a plaster cast fetish." he said.
The doctor chuckled. "Well, this time, it's just a straight break. Right there, see? Three weeks, and we'll have it off! "
Sean smirked at the double entendre and the doctor flushed. If it were another day, he might chance his luck, but Cal was waiting, and something was making his heart beat harder. It felt like hope, and Sean shook his head, disgusted at himself.
The waiting room was still crowded, but Cal was not there. Sean scanned the waiting people, a young kid crying and cradling an arm, an old man grey-faced and coughing, a flushed woman resting her head against the cool marble of the wall. Coughs and wails, and in the middle of it all a little girl playing hopscotch on the black and white tiles. And no sign of Cal. Sean wondered if the whole thing had been a dream as he made for the exit to check outside. Then a hand fell on his arm.
"Your friend had to leave" said the nurse, handing Sean a scrap of paper and a ten pound note. "He asked me to give you this."
Sean stared at the note. "I'm sorry but I couldn't wait any longer" it said. "Use this tenner for a taxi and give me a ring sometime. Love Cal" There was no phone number on the note. Cal, ditzy as ever, had forgotten to write it. Frustrated, Sean crumpled the note into his pocket. Stepping outside into the misty rain, he got into a taxi, suddenly weary. "Just take me home" he mumbled to the driver. He thought of Megan and sent her a text. Usually her chatter annoyed him. But with the silence in his head, he welcomed the thought of filling up the space where stupid thoughts might form.