Warning: the following story contains graphic descriptions of male/male sex between consenting adults. If that sort of thing bothers you, or you are a minor, or it is illegal for you to read this type of content under the laws of your area, don’t read any further.

This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

Accolades, encouragement, suggestions, comments, and corrections are welcome and gladly accepted. Flames will be utterly ignored. <lavenderquill@yahoo.com>.

Other work by The Lavender Quill can be found on the web at <http://lavenderquill.tripod.com/>.

Setting: Sacramento, California, 2002.

Chapter 3.

I was back installing doors with Brian again the next morning. I thought about my conversation with Uncle Don. I thought about telling Brian, and was contemplating how to go about it. On one hand, I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. Grand melodramatic declarations were not my style. On the other hand, it was not a trivial revelation. I imagined saying 'Brian, hold this frame while I nail it in place. By the way, I'm gay'. No, that was too off hand.

We had only been working for about an hour when my uncle came to find me. "Brian, see if you can find someone else to help with the doors. I got another project I want Kevin to work on." Uncle Don had a habit of doing that. He wanted me to learn as much as I could about construction, so he moved me around a lot, doing a lot of different jobs with different guys. We walked back down to the ground floor and outside. My uncle lead me over to a white van that I had not seen before. Probably a new subcontractor. I knew they would start the wiring and plumbing soon.

When we got around behind the van, there was a guy sitting on the back bumper looking at some blueprints. He looked up and smiled when he noticed us. I froze. He was a young guy. He looked younger than me. He was gorgeous.

"Kevin, this is Robby," said my uncle. "Robby, Kevin." Robby stood and shook my hand. I looked at my uncle. "Robby is going to be doing the tech wiring," he explained. "Remember, I told you that the developer is trying to make these fancy condos and sell them for a ton of money to techies?"

"Yeah" I vaguely remembered him saying something like that.

"Well, they designed in some fancy wiring for computers or some such. I understand the idea, but it is all voodoo to me. I hired Robby here to do it. He needs an extra hand, so I want you to help him. I imagine there will be more of this kind of thing in the future, so it is probably a good thing to learn about."

"Sure, no problem," I said.

"Let me know if you need anything," said my uncle, and he walked off.

I turned back to Robby. He really was cute. He had creamy white skin, like he never spent any time in the sun. His hair was dyed platinum blond, but he still had black eyebrows and long black eyelashes. I normally don't like dyed hair. It just looks fake, and I don't usually like fake. But on him it looked good. He wasn't trying to fool anyone. It was obviously fake. It was just a style, like wearing a bright shirt just for effect. He was a little shorter than me, but not a lot. Slender, but not skinny.

"So, you don't look like a magician," I said. "Do you really do voodoo?" We both laughed.

"Nope. It's not really all that complicated. It just intimidates most people over thirty. You're not so easily intimidated, I hope." He smiled at me.

I grinned back stupidly. His smile was beautiful. "I'll try to maintain," I said. "Tell me about this." I waved my hand at the back of his van. It had metal racks built on the inside, and it was full of electronics equipment. It actually was a little intimidating, but I wasn't about to admit it.

"Don't worry about all that stuff," said Robby. "Have you ever done any regular electrical wiring?"

"Yeah, a little," I said.

"This isn't all that different. You still string wires. You have a jack at the end in the condo. And you have to connect it to a source at the other end."

"That doesn't sound too intimidating."

"Good," said Robby. "I'd hate to intimidate you. I just met you." We grinned at each other. "Here, you take this." He handed me a metal box that looked sort of like a three foot by four foot circuit breaker panel housing. He slung two leather satchels containing some kind of electronic equipment over his shoulders, and stuffed the roll of blueprints under his arm. He locked up his van and turned to me. "I'm ready. Can you lead me to the easiest way to get to the basement?"

"Sure. Follow me." I lead him into the building. "We can either go in this way and down the stairs. Or you can go in through the parking garage entrance around the south end of the building. Later on we'll be able to use the elevator, but I think that is still about a month off."

We got down to the basement, and found the room that would become the electronics access room. There was a huge spool of wire encased in plastic shrink wrap next to the room.

"Hmmm," said Robby, putting his stuff down. I set down the panel. He walked in to the room and looked up. I looked up too. There was a three foot square shaft that ran up through all four floors. I remembered framing around it when we were working on walls in the units. I had thought it was going to be some kind of garbage chute or something. I guess I should pay more attention to the blueprints. "So what we are going to do," he said, "is run this cable up the shaft here, and branch it off at each floor to the units."

"Okay," I said.

"The trick is that this cable is very touchy stuff. Regular power cable has three copper wires, right? Negative, positive, and ground?."

"Right," I said.

"This stuff has lots of wires and fiber optic. It has to be able to do digital cable, DSL, T-1, networking, and fiber optic, all at the same time. It is delicate, and easily damaged. You can't bend it too sharply or twist it too much. You can't staple it, or kink it. You have to be careful not to damage the outside of it so you don't ruin the shielding."

"I think I get the idea."

"I told them they needed to design in this access shaft because in ten years, this will probably be obsolete. The owners then may want to run new wiring for whatever they come up with next."

"Sounds like you'll never be out of work," I said.

He grinned at me. "That's the idea." He showed me where he wanted the panel, and I started to work on installing that. He unwrapped the spool of wire, and hooked up some testing equipment to each end of the cable, then hooked it up to a laptop computer he had in one of his satchels. After he declared the spool of wire undamaged, we went back to his van to get boxes of conduit. We spent the rest of the morning installing conduit.

When we broke for lunch, we sat together and ate. "Robby," I said, "I've been wondering all morning how old you are. You look like you're younger than me, but you had to have gone to school for a while to learn all about that electronics stuff."

"I'm twenty one," he said.

"Shit. I can't believe you're two years older than me. When I first saw you, I thought you were, like, seventeen maybe."

"Seventeen?!" He dropped his head into his hands. "I'm crushed!" he said sarcastically. "How am I ever going to get a date if everyone thinks I'm still in high school?"

"Oh, sorry dude," I said. "I didn't mean anything by it."

"I know. A lot of people tell me I look a lot younger than I am. Sometimes I get a little self conscious about it."

"You shouldn't be." I waved my sandwich in the general direction of the rest of the crew. "I bet most of these guys are jealous. They probably wish they looked half as good as you." Robby gave me a quizzical look. I thought I'd maybe said too much, and decided to shut up. I stuffed my sandwich in my mouth.

I thought Robby was one of the cutest guys I'd ever met. I was beginning to wonder if he might possibly maybe be gay. We had been working together and chatting all morning. He seemed really nice, and didn't give off that excessively macho attitude that most construction guys do. He never once mentioned girls or a girlfriend, which was about all the guys on the crew ever talked about. That didn't necessarily mean anything. He could just be shy about the subject. A good friend of mine in high school had dated a girl hot and heavy for over six months before he said anything to anyone.

How could I let Robby know that I liked boys, and more specifically him, without offending him if he was straight? I could try to drop hints, without coming right out with it. I had just more or less told him I thought he was good looking. Not very subtle that.

We finished lunch and went back to installing conduit. It was time consuming, but not difficult once he showed me how to do it, and we chatted away the afternoon as we worked.

At the end of the day, I invited Robby to join us for our one beer, and he accepted. He walked over to his van, and brought back a digital camera. He got the whole crew to stand in a group and held out our beers as he snapped a picture. He popped a micro drive out of the camera and in to his laptop. In just a few seconds, the picture he had just taken was on the screen.

"Hey that's pretty fuckin cool," said Brian. All the guys gathered around to look. "You don't need no film at all?"

"Nope," said Robby.

"Cool!" said Brian. "Here, take one of me." Robby put the micro drive back in the camera. Brian sucked in his big gut and puffed out his chest. He struck an exaggerated muscle man pose. "Do I look like James?" James of the huge muscles.

"In your dreams," laughed my uncle.

"If you keep holding your breath like that, you're gonna have a stroke," said James. Robby snapped a picture, and Brian let his breath out in a whoosh. His face was turning red. Everyone was laughing.

"I'm next," said James. "Let me show you how it's done." He did more or less the same pose, and flexed his biceps. He looked considerably more impressive than Brian had. Brian stood behind him a aped at the camera with his eyes crossed. Robby snapped another picture. Most of the guys were rolling on the ground by then. "What?" said James. He didn't know that Brian had be been making goofy faces behind him. Soon Robby was snapping pictures of the other guys too. He loaded the micro drive back into the laptop, and the guys got a big laugh looking at the pictures before they tossed their empty beer cans and went home.

"I didn't get one of you," Robby said to me. I don't know why I'm shy around cameras. I don't think I'm all that self conscious. I have my shirt off most of the time when I'm working, and I know I'm decent looking. "Hook your thumbs in your tool belt and look macho." I did as he asked and he snapped a picture. "Kevin, breath. Relax." I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath. "You look fine. I'm not going to bite you." I laughed, and he took a couple more pictures.

By then most of the other guys had left. Robby shut off his laptop and put it away. "Do you have a computer?" he asked.

"Yeah." I had a computer that my parents got for me my junior year of high school. It still worked, but was getting a bit dated.

"Internet access?"

"Yeah." That was about all I used it for usually.

"Great," he said. "Give me your email address, and I'll send you the pictures." I told him what it was, and he wrote it down.

"Umm, Robby," I said. "If you aren't doing anything, you want to come over to my place?" There. I spit it out. I was nervous, like I was asking him out on a date. Which I suppose I was, in a way. "We can play some video games or something. I got a new game last week."

"Can't," he said, closing up the back of his van.

Damn, I thought. I hope I didn't sound like an idiot. Maybe I was trying too hard to read something into Robby that maybe wasn't there. "Yeah, okay then. Well, I'll see you tomorrow, I guess." Jeeze, how lame did that sound?

"We are having a big family dinner tonight," said Robby. "My sister is bringing her new boyfriend over for all of us to meet him. My parents are making a big thing out of it. I still live at home, so I don't have any excuse not to be there."

"Oh," I said. "That's okay." I was mentally backpedaling furiously, trying to sound like it was no big deal.

I went home to my apartment. As soon as I had started working full time for my uncle, I moved out of my parents' house. Not very far. My apartment was only a couple miles from their house. I just wanted to be independent. On the off chance that I might some day find a boyfriend, there was no way I was bringing him home to my parents house. It was a small cheap place, sparsely furnished with used furniture, but it was a place of my own.

I took a shower like I usually do. Only this time I jacked off in the shower thinking of Robby. After that I cooked a frozen pizza and watched a couple of movies on cable. I lead such an exiting life, don't I?

Before I went to bed, I logged on to the internet. Sometimes I go surfing around to try to find pictures of cute guys, but all I could think of that night was Robby. Sure enough, there was an email from him.

"hey kevin. sorry i couldn't come over today. maybe another day. i think it would be fun to play with you. there should be 2 pics with this email, 1 of you and 1 of me. laterz, roBBy"

I smiled at the way he typed his name. I opened the first attachment. It was one of the pictures he took of me that afternoon, only heavily edited. I must admit, in the picture he took, I looked pretty hot without a shirt. He had completely cut out the background of the construction site, and pasted me over a picture of a sunset. It looked nice. I wondered why he envisioned me like this. He must have spent some time manipulating the picture.

I opened the other file. It was a picture of Robby. I blinked. In the picture, he had his shirt off and was wearing tight pants that looked like they might have been leather. It looked like it was taken at a party or something. He looked like maybe he was dancing. It was done with a flash and the background was mostly all black. I thought he looked awesome. His chest was completely smooth. Even more, I thought he looked younger than I. His tight leather pants were cut low, and the top button or snap was undone suggestively, exposing him almost down to his pubic area. Still not a hair. His torso was slender, but his muscles were toned. I just wanted to lick him all over.

I sighed and turned my computer off, the image of Robby still burned clearly in my mind. I went to bed and jacked off again, this time to an even more powerful orgasm than I'd had a few hours ago in the shower.

* * * * *

The next day, I tried to act nonchalant. In reality, I wanted to rip Robby's shirt off to see if he looked as good in real life as in his picture. When we started running conduit away from the rest of the crew I asked, "How come you sent me your picture, Robby?"

He looked at me and grinned. "Well, I had a picture of you without a shirt. I thought it would only be fair if you had a picture of me without a shirt."

"Uh, huh," I said skeptically.

"You didn't like it?"

"I didn't say that. I just want to be clear about it. I don't want there to be misunderstanding."

"Okay," he said. He looked around then looked directly in my eyes. "I was looking at you all day yesterday. I thought you were good looking. I thought maybe there was something about the way you invited me over to play video games that made me think maybe you might like that picture. I was hoping you like the way I look too. I kind of like you Kevin. If I'm getting the wrong message, let me know. I won't bother you or send you any more pictures.

Oh, god. He liked me! I wanted to kiss him! I stood there stupidly for a minute. Finally I said, "No, you got the right message. And you can send me any more pictures like that you want." I grinned at him. He grinned back.

"We better get back to work," he said. "Your uncle is paying me a ton of money to do this installation."

So we got back to work. I was flying high. After a while, I took my shirt off like I always do, but this time I was conscious of Robby watching me. I was doing it partly for his benefit. I felt sexy.

Later in the morning he asked, "So, Kevin, are you seeing anyone right now? Do you have a boyfriend?"

I looked around. No one else was within earshot. We kept working. "No. I've been with a few guys, but never for more than a couple weeks."

"Me neither," said Robby. "My parents are very conservative, so it makes it pretty awkward living at home."

I was surprised. I thought he would have a lot more experience, since he was two years older than I. "Why do you still live at home then? Sounds like you make plenty of money."

"Yeah, but I have huge bills. That van and all the equipment cost a fortune."

"I thought you worked for a company. That's all yours?"

"Yeah. I went to a tech school for two years. There are only a few companies around that do this kind of wiring, and there is a huge demand for it. So I borrowed money from my dad and just started out on my own. I have to pay him back like a regular bank loan, though. In another three months I'll have part of it paid off, so I was thinking of renting my own apartment then."

We chatted the rest of the morning away as we worked. If I wasn't starved, I wouldn't even have noticed when it was lunch time. We ate and joked with the other guys on the crew. Robby broke out the laptop and showed them the pictures again from the previous day. I was trying not to act like I was too interested in Robby, but my uncle looked at me a couple of times in a way that made me think he suspected something. I'd have to talk to him later about it.

The afternoon sped by just like the morning had. I was thinking I could really fall for this guy. I thought he was the most gorgeous guy imaginable. But he was also nice, and funny, and kind of innocent, even though he was older than me. He seemed to have his act together, and knew where he was going with his life. How many people his age had started their own business?

At the end of the day, we had our one beer, and I all but demanded that Robby come over to my place. He laughed and said he would follow me. He did, and we arrived at my apartment building a while later. After he locked his van and set the security system, he pulled out a cellular phone, and called his mother. He told her he was going to grab something to eat with a buddy from the construction site and would be home later.

"Are you sure you're twenty-one?" I asked as I unlocked the door to my apartment.

"Mom still thinks I'm twelve. Now you know why I have no social life."

When we got inside I locked the door and we went in to my kitchen. My culinary skills leave a lot to be desired, and I didn't have much in the freezer. "Wanna order a pizza?" I asked. "I'm not the greatest cook."

"Sure."

I called a delivery place nearby. They guarantee a half hour delivery, but they have been as fast as fifteen minutes before. "So, you want a soda?" I asked. "I don't have any beer." I opened the refrigerator and stood back to let him look. "Grab anything you want." I realized I was babbling. I was nervous. Why was I nervous? I hadn't been nervous with Sam. It occurred to me that Sam was just sex. I hardly knew him at all, and what little I knew of him I didn't much like. I liked Robby and didn't want to spoil things.

He took a soda from the refrigerator and popped it open. "So, what do you want to do?" he asked me.

"You mean besides rip your clothes off and have wild sex?" We both laughed at my nervous joke. I stopped laughing. We were standing very close together. His arm brushed mine as he reached over and closed the refrigerator door. I imagined I could feel the heat from his body, though I don't think that was really true. My heart was beating fast. He was maybe an inch or two shorter than I, and his lips were tantalizingly close to mine. "Robby? Can I kiss you?"

"Oh, yeah," he said, and set his can of soda on the counter. "I think I would very much like you to kiss me."

And I did. Tentatively at first, experimentally. Exploring the feel of his soft lips against mine. The taste of his skin and his breath. He parted my lips with his tongue and we began to explore each other's mouths. I wrapped my arms around him and our kiss became more urgent. My cock was getting hard and straining against my jeans. My heart was racing and we pressed tight against each other, locking our legs together. I could feel the bulge of his crotch against me. He was as hard as I was. Mostly my eyes were closed, lost in my passion, but sometimes I opened them. When he looked into my eyes as we kissed, it felt like he was kissing me right to my soul. So intense was our kiss that I could hardly breath, and I didn't care. I thought I might come just from him kissing me.

Finally, I broke away. "Oh, God," I panted. "Couch… I can hardly… stand up…" I took him by the hand and dragged him to the couch. "More?" I asked.

"Hell yeah," he said, and his lips found mine again. We were a little slower this time, but not much. I slid down the couch on to my back. His lips never left mine as he moved on top of me. His tongue sucking the life out of me. His eyes filling me with such ecstasy. His weight on me was neither too heavy nor fragile, but intensely comforting. I should be tearing his clothes of, I thought, but I couldn't bear the thought of breaking that kiss for even a second. We got into a groove, a level of intensity where I was in absolute bliss, but not aching. I squirmed around a little to get my cock flat against my thigh up and to the side (I kind of hurts when it is all bunched up in my underwear when it gets hard). I could feel the bulge in his pants as he lay on top of me. God, he is so beautiful, I thought.

It was his eyes that proved my undoing. The way they bore into me with such longing, devouring me with his desire. Without even realizing it was immanent, my cock erupted into my briefs. I just kept kissing him, my back arched and my orgasm crashed through my groin. My lips never left his as I pumped again and again into my briefs. Finally I pushed him up a little and broke the kiss. I was getting dizzy and hyperventilating. "Oh God, oh God, oh God," I panted over and over. I couldn't believe I'd just come fully clothed just from kissing him.

"Think what might happen if we actually took our clothes off," he giggled softly at me.

"Oh God, I'm sorry. I didn't even know it was gonna happen."

"Don't be sorry, stud. I loved it too. Do you have any idea how good I feel that you came just from kissing me?"

"It was a pretty good kiss," I conceded with a smile. My breathing was returning to normal. "More," I demanded, and I pulled him down to my lips again. Spent from my orgasm, I could no longer match his intensity. He broke from my lips and began to kiss his way along my jaw till he reached my neck.

"Your neck is so soft," he whispered. I would not have minded him exploring further, but the doorbell rang. Robby nearly leaped off me.

"The pizza," we both said in unison. I got up and stumbled down the hall. I must have looked a sight as I opened the door. My erection had hardly gone down at all, and there was a big wet spot where my splooge was soaking through my briefs and jeans both. I was still breathing heavy. My lips and face were still wet with Robby's saliva. All that plus a stupid grin on my face would telegraph to the dead what had just happened. I quickly paid the guy, grabbed the pizza and slammed the door before my embarrassment got the better of me.

(To be continued.)