Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2023 19:33:05 +0000 From: shorty123456 Subject: Driving Home Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is not true. Characters: Man (in his 20s) and Boy (11yo) Story codes: Mb cons anal mast Author: Shorty Driving Home The drive home is gorgeous. We're on a narrow two-lane highway that follows a deep river valley as it curves toward the coast. The road winds for miles through the rugged, remote forestland just east of our hometown, and at our present location is cut into the hillside a few hundred feet above the canyon floor. To our left is a wall of dirt, the edge of excavated land that was moved out to flatten the roadway. A thin gravel shoulder to our right is all that separates us and a terrifying near-vertical drop down the steep hillside. Way down there at the very bottom of the drop is the river, the roaring erosive force that shaped this landscape. Above us is a blanket of clouds, dark and grey, bulging and muscular. Sitting next to me, in the passenger seat, is the boy. He's dressed in a youth soccer uniform made of thin, stretchy, synthetic fabric. An hour ago it was wet with sweat and rainwater, but it's dry now. The shirt is blue and the shorts are mostly white, streaked lightly with stains of dirt and grass. Underneath the waistband is a form-fitting pair of boxer-briefs, and underneath that is the boy's hand. I look at my watch and announce: "Two minutes." On our right, across the canyon, the slope is at least as steep. It's densely forested with straight, tall fir and pine trees, and we can occasionally see oblong trenches filled with rust-colored dirt - the scars of old landslides - though our view is mostly obscured by the blur of passing trees. We're on our way home from the boy's tournament. He played well, and his team finished second. He's in a good mood; loose, cheerful, carefree. A car passes going the opposite direction. "You think they could see me?" He asks as he looks downward. "No. Not down there. The dashboard is way up here." I stick my hand over to measure. "They can't see much below your shoulders. Oh, and three minutes." I fiddle with my own hard-on, swiveling it into a more comfortable position. "What's my record again?" He asks. "Six forty-eight." "I feel like I can beat that right now." He pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. "Focus," he whispers. This is bold for him, to be doing this kind of stuff without being totally shielded from the outside world. Without anything covering the windows. Probably too bold, but I'm letting it slide. A couple more curves in the road and we're passing through a town. It's a small town, the kind that lacks small-town charm, the kind you drive through without stopping. Boarded up buildings line the sides of the highway, the remains of a logging economy long past its prime. On our left we pass a bar with neon beer logos in its windows, its weathered wooden walls grey and splintering. Further down and to our right are residential lots, sloping downhill from us, lined with chain-link fence. Blackberry bushes grow through the wheel wells of abandoned cars. "Getting closer," the boy informs me. "Remember, no faking it." He snickers devilishly. It's been less than an hour since he was on the field. Since I packed up my folding chair and ushered him to the car. My little taste of suburban motherhood. I spent three hours sitting there under an umbrella watching hordes of boys run back and forth like puppies in a dog park. Of course, it wasn't completely boring for me. I spent half the time leaning forward, letting my hoodie hang loosely in front of my crotch so people wouldn't notice how excited I really was to be there. "Seven minutes," I announce. "Ugh!" The boy throws his arms sideways, exasperated. "I thought I had it!" "Bummer. You can still finish," I suggest. "No, I think I'll try again later." "Whatever floats your boat." It starts to drizzle. I focus a little harder on the road now, which has begun a steep descent. Shit, this drive makes me nervous even when the road is dry. I grab the plastic Crystal Geyser bottle from the cup holder and take a sip. It's a bottle I bought a while back in one of those big packages at the supermarket, and I've been reusing it ever since. After I set the bottle back down, the boy reaches for it. I grab his wrist. "You don't want that," I tell him. "Why? I'm thirsty." "I'm getting a cold," I lie. "You don't want my germs." "Fine." "You've got water in there, don't you?" I motion toward his backpack, lying behind us in the back seat. "Fine," he groans. The drizzle turns to rain. The trees have become denser on both sides of the road, their trunks unnervingly close to the pavement. I'm riding the breaks pretty hard now, and for each turn in the road I imagine the tires on my little four-door sedan losing traction, sending us skidding off the edge of the road, tumbling and ping-ponging off trees on our way down to the river below. Would we drown? Or would we be dead by the time we hit the water? Fuck, I'm not in the mood to be this anxious. I grab the plastic bottle again and take another swig. It burns as it goes down, and I do my best to hold back a grimace. I flip the windshield wipers to full speed as the rain suddenly turns to a pour. Though the driving demands the vast majority of my concentration, I can't help but look occasionally over to my right, where the boy is sitting. It's a blissful image. He's got one of his feet up on the seat, his heel pressed against his butt, his knee pointed straight up. He looks completely relaxed, staring out the passenger-side window, watching the trees whizz by. His soccer shorts hang loosely underneath his propped-up knee, revealing the end of his skin-tight underwear. The road takes us down to the bottom of the valley. The river is just down and to our right, looking swollen and turbulent. "Where's the part of the river we camped at last summer?" The boy asks. "We just passed it," I respond. "Oh, dang. Remember that jumping rock there?" "Yeah, that was fun. Should we get your parents to let us go back there this year?" "Yeah, definitely," he says. "Remember how cold the water was?" I nod. "Imagine how cold it is now." My mind wanders. We swam for hours that day. I chose a campsite at the end of the loop and cooked us hot dogs on a Coleman stove. We spent the night in the same tent, flashlights off, whispering. The shoestring belt on his board shorts was double-knotted, and it took me a good five minutes to untie it. My daydream ends as a squirrel scurries onto the road. I slam the brakes. The boy nearly jumps out of his seat, extending his arms forward. The squirrel stops and doubles back, avoiding us. I see its tail in my rear view mirror as it disappears into the bushes on the side of the road. Jesus. Luckily the rain has slowed, and the road isn't quite as wet as it was, or else we might've slid. The boy points his finger at me and shakes his head. "No killing squirrels." I chuckle, trying not to let my voice crack. "Got it," I respond. I take a deep breath, exhaling slowly, letting my heart rate drop back down. The rain has subsided, but it hasn't stopped. I can still hear the hiss of water spraying from my tires. We pass a sign on our right. I crane my neck as I try to make out the words. RIVER ACCESS NEXT RIGHT As we come around the next bend in the road, I take the right-hand fork that diverts us off of the highway. "Are we stopping here?" The boy asks. The road drops down and further right, ending at a small parking lot. I pull into a spot and park. We're the only people here. "Yeah," I answer. "Let's stretch our legs." I turn the engine off and bust out of the car and into the cold, humid outside air. I close my eyes and take another slow, deep breath in. The boy steps out of the car too, still in his shorts-and-short-sleeves uniform, arms crossed tightly and already shivering. His shirt flaps loosely in the wind, and his brown hair whips back and forth across his forehead. The river is flowing high. The rainfall has raised its banks and turned its water a murky grey-brown. "I bet the water's a lot colder now," the boy speculates. "I bet it is." I take a moment to soak in the beauty of our surroundings. The misty rain is casting a haze over the steep landscape downstream of us. Conifer forest blankets the hillside so neatly and geometrically, with its layered gradient of green, it almost looks fake, like someone painted it. And the thunderous, frothy rapids flow through the center of it all, looking strong enough to carry away an apartment building. "You wanna find out?" The boy squints at me. "Like feel it with our hands?" I shake my head. "Let's jump in." The boy squints harder. "Are you joking?" "Are you scared?" I smirk and raise my eyebrows. I pull off my sweater and t-shirt to prove I'm serious. "You're crazy. Did you bring a swim suit?" "Who needs a swim suit? We have spare underwear..." I sit sideways on the car seat so I can pull off my shoes and strip down to my boxers. As I'm sliding my clothes off, I notice a smile grow slowly across his face. I think I've gotten him on board. "It's so cold, though," he says, hopping on one foot, pulling his first sock off. "Good thing we're not wimps," I respond. I gawk at him shamelessly as he sheds his clothes. He's kind of dancing around in an attempt to keep his bare feet off of the cold, rain-soaked concrete. "Aaah! The ground is freezing!" Once he's down to his underwear, we tiptoe across the wet pavement towards a boat ramp on the edge of the lot. It slants down and meets the river at a calm section of its bank. We walk down and stop at its edge, standing with our feet only a few inches from the water. It's exhilaratingly cold out here with so much exposed skin. Each raindrop sends a shockwave through my nerve endings, and each gust of wind makes half my body numb for a moment. I look over at the half-naked little boy beside me in his blue and white pinstriped boxer-briefs. There's not so much of a bulge down there, only a barely noticeable bump in the fabric. I bring my gaze down and toe at the water, getting a sense of what I've gotten us into. "Ok, the trick is not to think too hard about it. I'll count down from three and then we jump." The boy nods stiffly, his arms wrapped across his chest, still shivering. His skin is so pale it's almost blue, and he has goosebumps all up and down his arms and legs. I'm cold, but not like he is - probably because I've actually got some body fat on me. I pat my soft, hairy belly in gratitude. I'm also a little buzzed, which helps. "When we get out, we run as fast as we can to the car and I'll blast the heat. Back seats, so we don't get the front seats wet. Ok?" He nods again, impatiently. I count down: "Three, two, ONE!" And we jump. The water is stinging cold. We both surface, gasping for air, and kick frantically back to shore. We crawl up the ramp and scurry towards the car. The boy is mumbling to himself. "So cold so cold so cold." He hops into the car and slams the door. I run around to the driver-side door to turn on the engine and crank the heater, then join him in the back seat. We're both shivering like crazy now, using our clothes to dab at our wet skin. "I think we should take our wet underwear off," I tell the boy. He nods, and we both slide our boxers down past our feet and toss them aside. "Oh man, that was cold," the boy says. I grin at him. "So cold." He's like a wet puppy. He's got water droplets hanging from his hair like beads, and more clinging above his eyebrows and resting on his freckled cheeks. His nipples are shrunken and rigid. His legs are clamped together, squishing his mini-package, and he's squeezing his elbows tightly into his body. He looks cold, like really cold, so I reach my arm around his shoulder and pull him against me. "Have some of my body heat, little dude." We sit there for a while as our bodies slowly warm. It's a rejuvenating experience, the sensation of heat flowing back into the skin, regaining feeling after cold water makes you nearly numb. I keep the boy squeezed against my side and try to savor the moment. I think about the fleeting nature of it all. Of me and him. Of boy-loving in general. A few years from now, this little dude's body will be a wasteland, unshapely and missing that youthful smoothness, hair in all the wrong places, bone structure all adult-sized and filled out. So much changes in a few years of childhood. Sometimes I miss the early days with this kid, chasing him around his back lawn on warm summer evenings while babysitting, kicking dandelions, sending their seeds scattering. His compulsive, helium-balloon laugh. I miss feeling him up for the first few times in the corner of the sectional couch in his family's living room, talking him into shyly pulling down the elastic of his shorts and underwear. But then I remember how perfect he is now. He's in his prime. Tweenhood is in full bloom, but puberty is nowhere in sight. He swears loudly while playing Minecraft, but only when his parents aren't around. He rocks khakis with holes in the knees, t-shirts with logos of bands and musical artists, cool fashionable hoodies, but still gets his clothes dirty at recess. He's a tween boy to the core. The inside of the car is warmer now. The boy's skin is damp and sticky against mine. I'm getting hard, slowly. How could I not be? "Should we finish you off?" The boy nods. I slap my thigh to beckon him up to my lap. He climbs on. I squeeze him in close with one arm, and drop the other hand down low. "Should we time it?" He asks. I tap his little hard-on with my thumb. "You're supposed to be soft when we start, remember?" He looks down. "Oh," he says, sounding genuinely surprised. "When did that happen?" I grin and squeeze him tighter. He's so damn cute. Two fingers and a thumb fit nicely over his foreskin. I start jerking him off. Sometimes when I'm by myself, like at night before bed, or when I'm sitting in traffic, or whatever, and I'm deep in thought, I have these moments where I feel like I'm waking up from a dream. And it's like I have to remind myself that this is all real. That I'm a pedophile. Of all the things I could be in this universe. How the fuck did that happen? Not only that, but this boy. My god, this boy. I'm having sex with him. I'm a grown man. He's a prepubescent little kid. He's eleven. Last month, I fucked him after picking him up from elementary school. He told me about playing dodgeball in P.E. that day on the drive home. I came inside him in his bedroom and afterwards we worked on his fifth grade math homework. And now I'm fondling him in my car on the way back from his youth soccer tournament. His naked butt is on my right leg, and I've got one hand lightly clutching a skinny little bicep and the other pulling at his foreskin. I'm rock hard now and his butt cheek is pressing my boner into my left thigh. He's got a hand there, balancing on my leg, and my face is in his hair. This fucking boy. He was still wearing the clothes he wore to school that day. His whole bedroom smelled like semen after I pulled out, still dribbling. He stumbled and fell over clumsily before yanking up his khakis from around his ankles as I wiped away a couple loose pubes and a wet spot I'd left on his bedsheets. It takes me a good ten minutes to get him off. Maybe he's a little uncomfortable in the tight, stuffy confines of my compact car. "Oh, oh," is the only warning I get before he tenses up and pushes my hand away. Soon after, he relaxes, and his head falls back onto my chest. I toy with the head of his little erection. "Still dry as the sands of Egypt," I declare. "Dang. How long before I can squirt like you?" I laugh. "Honestly dude, it's hard to say. Everyone's different, you know that. But I wouldn't be in a rush if I were you." "Why?" "It's messy. Imagine having to find something to clean up with every time you jack off." "Oh, right." "Plus, you don't have to worry about getting anybody pregnant." He pauses. "But I'm not doing it with girls yet." "True, but who knows, that could change. And trust me, you don't want a kid. Kids are annoying." The boy laughs and jabs me with an elbow. I drive a finger into the side of his ribcage. He squirms. This kid truly has a massive head start on sex ed. I'm sure that, when I was his age, I didn't know a fraction of what he's learned from me on that subject. Not to toot my own horn, but I've been a pretty good teacher. At home, I like to give him my laptop so he can browse through porn sites while I molest him. I'll help him with all the words he doesn't know. Hymen, incest, cuckold, creampie. He's got quite the vocabulary at this point. It's become almost too warm inside the car; our bare skin is getting slippery. "I'm going to turn the heat down a bit," I tell the boy. He slides off me and onto the upholstery. "Are we leaving?" He asks. I open the door and step outside. There's a moment of shock as the cold breeze hits my naked body, and the roaring of the river seems ten times louder than it did before. Suddenly, I realize I'm in a public space, naked and fully erect, so I whip my head around to size up the scene. We're still alone. I open the front door to turn the heat down a few notches, then pop the trunk. "Stay there for a sec." I slide over to the trunk, find my bag, and dig through it. The Vaseline. I grab the container and shut the door. As a side note, there's a special kind of thrill you get when a supermarket cashier rings you up for a bottle of lube that you know you're going to use on a little boy. I hop back into the back seat. "What if someone comes?" The boy asks. "Don't worry kiddo. Nobody else wants to be out here in this weather. We're alone. Plus, even if there were people here, they wouldn't be able to see us through these foggy ass windows." He chuckles. I hand the boy the Vaseline, and he knows what to do with it. Oh man, I can only pray that every boy-loving pedo, at some point in their lives, can behold the sight of a naked little soccer boy who knows exactly what to do with a bottle of lube. Slouching in the back seat of the car, legs up, fingers probing in and out. And then it hits me. I'm being too risky. Way, way, way too risky. We're in a public place. We shouldn't be doing this in a public place. Snap out of it. It's too late to stop now. I can't physically bring myself to stop. I sweat when I'm nervous, and it's gotten so hot and humid in here. I scoot my butt forward so I'm slouching a little. "Put some on here." I motion to my hard-on, sticking upwards, feeling like it's about to explode from all the blood pressure. Every time the boy takes his hand off it, it snaps back to the same position. "Boioioing," he says, then giggles. I laugh with him, but with one eye I'm nervously peeking out the window. Nobody's here. We're good. "Hold it," I say to the boy. I gently push the boy aside so I can lean forward and reach to the cupholder up front. I grab that spicy Crystal Geyser and give myself a couple more sips. Then I set it back down and return to my slouched position in the back seat. I beckon to the boy. "Up here, facing me," I tell him. I hold his waist as he climbs on top of me, knees straddling my hips on the car seat. His junk dangling. "Like this?" "Mmhm." I slouch back even further to help with the ergonomics. The boy twists and reaches backward to grab my lubed up cock. "You got anything left in here?" He asks. "Any what?" "Didn't you, you know... squirt everything out this morning?" "There's more now. I'm not some old grandpa." "There was a lot this morning. Like, A LOT." I laugh and pull down on his waist. For the record, he knows I can go multiple times in a day. In an evening, even. "I'm sorry. There will be less this time, probably." "Probably?!" I pull down harder. The boy rolls his eyes. "Okay, okay!" He lines himself up and sits. "Almost there," I say. He used to be convinced there was no way I'd fit inside him. To be fair, I wasn't sure either. He was pretty little when we started this stuff. It's not like I'm huge - but I'm not tiny either. "You start," I tell him. "Like, up and down?" I nod. "We can go slow at first." I sit there and let him go to work on me. His little dime-sized nipples in front of my face, surrounded by pale winter-time skin. It's clearly been a while since he's been shirtless on the beach. I run my hands from his armpits down to his hip bone. I press my thumbs into the skin between his belly button and his boyhood. Where his pubes would be, if he was older. Before long I join in and start thrusting with my hips. Though it's not blasting anymore, the heat is still on. The windows are completely fogged up now, and it's getting even more stuffy. I'm pulling his hips down against my upward thrusts, making sure I get in there deep. He's grabbing my shoulders and holding on tight, letting me fuck him good. "Harder?" I suggest. "I'll cum faster if we go harder." "Ok," he responds. So we pick up the intensity. And I'm thinking, damn, I'm really talking to an 11-year-old boy about how to make me cum. In reality I'm actually trying my very best not to cum so we can keep doing this for a minute longer. My mind runs through the possibilities. Is there enough room in here to lean him over on his hands and knees and fuck him doggy-style? Should I finish inside him? Or should I fuck him on his back and cum on his belly? As I work it harder he gives my shoulders a squeeze. "Ow," he says. "Sorry, I'll slow down." He's good at taking it, but he's still a little kid, after all. I slide my fingers down so I can pry open his butt cheeks, hoping that will loosen him up. As I begin going at it again, I marvel at my own sexual progress. Back when he was eight, I couldn't last more than a couple minutes. I felt like I could cum just by pulling his clothes off slowly enough. "Should we change positions?" I ask. He shrugs. My thrusts are slow now, long and deep. "That water was so cold," he remarks, out of nowhere. "Freezing," I respond. "I think that's the coldest I've ever been." "Good thing the heater in the car works, huh." "Yeah." "I don't think anyone else has seen me naked," the boy says, looking down towards his belly. "Hmm?" "Like, besides my mom and dad. I've never thought about that before. Isn't that weird?" It is weird. It's all weird. I'm banging a fifth grader. "Not even a friend?" I ask. "No way!" "Yeah, that's funny. I'm one lucky guy." He opens his mouth to respond, but I cut him off by fucking him harder again. I watch his little abs take form as he tightens his core. I feel his fingers tighten, they're holding my biceps now. A few blissful seconds pass, and then I let out a breathy moan and pull him firmly down by his thighs. I hold him there and raise my hips so I'm as deep as I can get. "Are you... finished?" He asks. I respond with some sharp exhales through the nose and a couple more moans. He knows what that means. "Was it good?" My orgasm begins to taper and I regain my composure. I give him a smile and tousle his hair. "So good." His hair is still damp and a little stiff from having not been washed since soccer, so it stays all messy when I take my hand off. He fidgets absentmindedly, coaxing the last of my sperm to ooze out inside of him. I stare blankly at his balls, pressed against the curly hairs below my navel. There's a pause, a period of silence as I reel in the aftermath of ejaculating inside a prepubescent boy. The kid breaks the silence with a question. "It's a good thing I'm not a girl, don't you think?" I furrow my brow. "Why?" He sticks out his belly. "I'd be pregnant, right?" I snort and pin down the corners of my mouth, in attempt to hold back a smile. "If we used the other hole, I mean," he adds. I'm somewhere between amused and horrified. "Yeah, a long time ago, kid. We'd be making a younger sibling by now." I rub his belly and he giggles. "It looks big," he tells me. "I think it's twins." "Ok, ok," I say pleadingly. "Let's get our clothes on." My dick falls onto my belly and makes a wet little noise when the boy lifts himself off of me. We start moving to clean up. Again, the boy knows what to do. "What are we using for a towel?" He asks. He's on all fours, hands and knees on the seats. "We'll use this," I say, showing him my damp boxers. He squirms as I dab at his butt with the cold, wet cloth. We both have clean, dry underwear in the trunk, thankfully. My philosophy is to always pack extra. "It's not coming out," I tell him. "I'm pushing!" He's talking to me through his legs, head upside-down. "Still nothing." "Are you sure you squirted anything out?" "Pretty damn sure," I say. The boy sighs impatiently. "If it's not coming out, should I still put my underwear on?" He asks. "Yeah, I think that's fine." "But what if it leaks out later? Like at home?" "Just be careful. Hide it from your parents if it feels like there's a lot." "Is there a lot, you think?" The boy's eyes go wide. "Not sure." "Did it... feel like a lot?" I shake my head. "No, I think it was probably just a little. Usually there's less if it's the second time of the day." I adjust myself, and God, I can't believe I'm getting hard again. "But if you're worried about it, put your shirt on and do the rest later. No problem if it leaks out on the car seat." I dress myself sans-underwear and take a deep breath before heading outside to dig through our duffel bags. I only open the door at the minimum width to fit my body through, just in case someone's out there watching. We're, of course, still alone here. The lot is still completely empty. There are no sounds of passing cars on the highway, even. Just the intermittent whistling of the wind and the steady thundering of the river. I know we're alone, but my mind feeds me a stream of paranoid thoughts. Like, maybe there's someone I'm not seeing. Someone who followed us, perched up in the branches of one of these hundred-foot-tall trees, spying. Camo, binoculars, and all that. It's a ridiculous thought, but still anxiety-inducing somehow. I toss the boy his clean undies and slide into the driver's seat. "What about you?" He asks. "I'm going commando." "What's that?" "When you don't wear underwear," I respond. The boy climbs through the gap between the seats and maneuvers himself into the passenger seat, wearing only his soccer shirt, leaving his shorts and underwear behind. "Me too," he says. "You're just naked," I tell him. I pinch the hem of his shirt and pull it up to prove my point. I flip the defroster on and we wait for the fog to dry. The boy props his bare feet on the dash. "What time do you think we'll get home?" He asks. I look at the clock. "Another hour or so. In time for dinner." I know he's probably hungry. It's about that time. He ate all the snacks his mom gave him on the drive up, and we haven't stopped for food since we left the fields. I open the center console and dig through it. I find a granola bar I stashed in there a while back, take it out, and toss it to him. He smiles at me. "Thanks!" He's got a classic preteen smile - bright, charming. Big adult teeth in front with one missing on the side, remnants of baby fat in his cheeks pushing up towards his bright blue eyes. I pull out my phone to update his mom with our ETA. As I'm texting her, I ask the boy to check for signs of leakage on the seat. Nothing there. I send the text, and a moment passes while we sit and wait, listening to the white noise of air blowing out of the defroster, the boy munching on his food. I watch as his gaze drifts to the passenger side mirror. "Hey, look," he says. I twist to get a look through the back windshield. It's another car. "Shit," I respond. It's a white SUV, one of those outlandishly large ones. The boy whips around so he's looking backwards as well. "It's coming towards us." It is. "Where did you put your undies?" I ask, trying my absolute best not to sound panicked. "They're back there somewhere!" I turn back around, and to my horror, the car is pulling up directly beside us. It parks on our right side. The boy's side. He's got both his feet on the car seat now, tucking his knees into his shirt. Not an unusual way for a boy to sit, right? "It's Nate!" The boy says in a loud whisper. One of his soccer teammates. And his mom. What are they doing here? I hit the button to lower the passenger-side window as the middle-aged woman beside us rolls down hers. "Hi!" The woman greets us cheerfully. "Hi there," I respond. The boy waves shyly at his friend Nate, who's smashing his face against his window and making funny faces against the glass. Nate is sitting behind his mom and has the familiar blue and white uniform shirt on. "You two doing alright?" She asks. "Great." Why wouldn't we be? "Are there bathrooms here? He's gotta go." She points backward with her thumb. I shake my head. "We didn't find one." "That's ok," she says, half to us, half to the child behind her. "You can use a tree." Nate's face lights up and he opens the door, jumps out, and runs to the edge of the lot. The woman turns back towards us. "How did your windows get so foggy?" I freeze for a second. "I guess we've been breathing too much." I make eye contact with the boy. "I think we'll just have to hold our breath until we get home." The boy raises his eyebrows, and Nate's mom smiles faintly. "That might be unsafe," she says. Her son finishes his tree pee, trots over, and hops back into his seat. "We'd better get going." She lifts a couple fingers up from the steering wheel. "Drive safe." Nate makes more funny faces through the window as their giant vehicle pulls around and toward the parking lot exit. As they round the corner and move out of sight, the boy turns to me with wide eyes. "That was close," he says. My heart rate is still sky high. "Good thinking with the shirt," is all I can think to say, in the moment. The boy nods. "I think it came out," he tells me. He leans over and lifts his leg, and sure enough, there's a little wet spot on the seat. "Let's clean that up," I say. "Ok." I hand him a wet wad of underwear from the back, the same pair I cleaned him off with earlier. He wipes the seat clean, tosses my underwear to the back, finds his dry clothes, and dresses himself. He buckles his seatbelt and suddenly he's a normal, innocent little soccer boy again. Here's one thing about this kid: no matter how weird I make it, no matter what kind of fucked up situation I put him in, he takes it all in stride. I shift the car into gear and pull out of the lot and onto the highway. The clouds are breaking, but the winter sun has already dropped below the high walls of the river valley. The light is dimming, it's almost dusk. A pocket of steam rises from the forest across the valley from us - the rainwater from earlier, evaporating. The boy looks ready to doze off. He's slumped in his seat, limp, motionless, staring blankly out the windshield. He's looking especially young, especially delicate. His clothes are baggy on top of his slender frame. His eyes are droopy. The freckles on his nose are just barely visible in the fading light. His hand is supporting his head, his short little fingers buried in his messy hair. "Remember to shower when you get home, ok?" I say to him. "And wash your butt." "Ok." "Just to make sure, you know." "Ok," he sighs. He blinks slowly a couple times, tilts his head, and yawns. This little guy goes back to school tomorrow, so he needs his rest. He'll probably be dragged out of bed tomorrow morning by his parents after sleeping through his alarm. He's a heavy sleeper. He'll probably eat his cereal at the dining room table, shooing away his begging dog and arguing with his mom as she packs his lunch. That's how his mornings normally go. He'll hop on his bike, helmet buckled, backpack on, and ride away. He'll do all this without giving the slightest hint of what goes on when we're alone together. Or at least I hope to dear god he will. Who knows how long we can make this last. For now, I'll just do my best to enjoy what I've got. The boy falls asleep with his head against the window. The road guides us onward, still curving towards the coast.