Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 23:23:36 -0500
From: Writer Boy <writerboy69@hotmail.com>
Subject: boys of summer - part 9

Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:

1) 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.

2) 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.

***

Going past him as I went through the door, being that close to his body and
catching the slightest wisp of his smell, that slightly musky but still
clean scent that I'd thought I could catch on myself before I got in the
shower this morning, I felt my already thumping heart pound even
more. There was tension between us, and it seemed to buzz, to ratchet
itself up even more as I passed just inches from him. I recognized that it
was the same tension I'd felt since the moment that I'd first seen him, the
pull between us, the attraction that I could admit, now, was sexual
attraction. It was the feeling of my body reacting to something, someone,
that it wanted, and the energy almost seemed to crackle between us.

I couldn't tell if Casey was feeling it, too, though.

His face was completely impassive. My eyes darted over the firm lines of
it, noticing that he hadn't shaved today, that a thin dusting of dark
stubble covered his chin, the space above his lips, and shadowed his
cheeks, climbing up toward those firmly jutting cheekbones. His body
language gave no clues, either. He'd stepped back to let me in, and he just
stayed there, motionless, one arm holding the edge of the door, causing the
plain white t-shirt he was wearing to pull tightly across his chest. There
was a sense about Casey, every time I'd seen him and been near him, of
something hidden beneath his surface, something buried under those thick
muscles and that soft, tanned skin, but I wasn't even getting that from him
now. I couldn't tell if he was angry, or happy, or feeling anything at all,
and I wasn't sure how to respond to it. There I was, wanting him, wanting
to make things right and try to figure out what it meant, and I had no idea
how I would be received.

I walked into the front hallway, knowing where I was going even though I
hadn't been in the Beckers' house for several years before last night,
since the layout was basically the same as ours. I wasn't sure where he
wanted me to go, though, so I moved inside enough for him to close the door
behind me. He didn't slam it, so again I had no clue what he was thinking,
and after he shut it he just leaned back against it, his thumbs hooked in
the pockets of his shorts, his blue eyes staring at me as I stood by the
stairs with my hands twisting together uncertainly. With no idea what he
was thinking or what he would do, all that keyed up energy inside me was
just feeding back in on itself.

Really, though, could I blame him for being quiet? What would I have done
in his shoes if I'd just been incredibly intimate, incredibly close to
someone, and they had basically run out without even a thank you? Not only
that, but after having the whole day to dwell on it and beat myself up over
it, I knew that wasn't even the worst part of what I'd done.  The worst had
been when he'd tried to kiss me and I'd turned away. Most of it was from
shame, and confusion, and even fear, but he'd probably read it as disgust,
and really, could I blame him? I was lucky he'd even let me through the
door, and now I wasn't even sure what I should say.

"I wanted, I, um," I began. Looking at me feet, looking at the wall,
looking anywhere but at his eyes. His hair was tucked behind his ears, the
ends of it curling up a little, and I wanted to touch it, to run my fingers
over the tips and see if they were soft or bristly. Oh, Jesus, my mind was
wandering again. Why did this always happen around him?  What magic power
did he have to turn me stupid? "I wanted to talk to you."

Which I already said.

"About last night," I added, as if he couldn't figure that out. Wait, no,
maybe he thought I wanted to talk about the weather. Thank God I'd
clarified it for him, since there were so many other things that he and I
could have discussed that I really desperately needed to narrow it down
like that. I was lucky not to be carrying a handgun, because at that moment
I really wanted to shoot myself.

"You don't have to," he said quietly, looking down. My head snapped up, but
he appeared to be contemplating his bare feet.

"I don't?" I asked, confused. Yes, I did. I had to talk to him about all
the things I'd been thinking all day, and for the past several days. I had
to talk to him about what we'd done, and how I felt, and what we were
supposed to do now.

"No," he sighed, still looking down. "I know what you're going to say."

"You do?" I asked, feeling really lost at this point. I didn't even know
what I was going to say, so how could he? Wait, of course, it was because
he'd been through this! Casey was exactly the right person to talk to,
because he knew exactly what I was feeling and thinking and going
through. He must have done this, too, sometime in his past, so he must have
known what was going on inside me and what I needed to say and needed to
know. Everything was going to be fine, and I felt myself starting to relax
again. I wasn't sure how, but this was all going to work out, and whatever
he was going to say was going to help me.

"Yeah, I do," he answered, still looking down. His voice was flat,
toneless, but I thought I could detect a little bit of hurt, or maybe just
resignation. "I've heard it before, Nate. You were just drunk, and it was a
one time thing, and you don't know what happened, and it'll never happen
again."

No, that wasn't what I wanted to say. That wasn't it at all. Last night,
maybe, when I'd been raw and opened and vulnerable and reacting, maybe. Not
now, though. I was shaking my head, the words stuck in my throat, but Casey
couldn't see it, still looking down at the floor. Why didn't he want to
look at me? What was he afraid that I'd see?

"And you don't have to tell me not to tell anyone, because I won't," he
continued, still not looking up. "And yeah, you're probably going to tell
me that we're still cool, and you want to still be friends or whatever, but
you're not really going to be comfortable with that and you're not really
going to talk to me or want to hang out anymore, and I guess that's
fine. Like I said, I've heard it before, and I guess, you know, since
you're so nervous, I'll save you the trouble of actually saying it, and
I'll let you go home, ok?"

If I hadn't been so upset by what he was saying I would have been amazed to
hear so many words come out of him at once. Not only that, but it was also
dawning on me that even his voice was sexy, and I could have listened to it
for hours. Why didn't he talk more? Wait, I could worry about that later.

"No," I said simply, and now it was his turn to snap his head up in
surprise. His eyes were wide, startled, but the rest of his face looked
wary.

"No?" he asked, as if he hadn't heard me correctly.

"No," I answered, shaking my head. "I wanted to say that, I, well, I wanted
to say that I was sorry for the way I treated you last night. I didn't mean
to just, I don't know, run out of here, but I didn't know what else to do."

"You could have stayed," he pointed out, but he didn't sound angry.

"I couldn't," I said, shaking my head. "But I didn't want to hurt you. I
didn't mean to, and I didn't want to, and I want you to know that I'm
sorry. I am, Casey. I didn't know what to do, but that wasn't what I wanted
to, and I wanted you to know that, and maybe this isn't making any sense at
all because I don't even know what I'm saying, but I thought, maybe, you
know, I thought we could talk."

My voice was trailing off a little toward the end of it because I still
couldn't tell what he was thinking. He was just watching me, his mouth
pursed tightly and his eyes scanning my face. I saw his throat working as
he swallowed and then he straightened up, no longer leaning on the door,
and gestured down the hallway toward the kitchen.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked finally.

I nodded, and he walked past me toward the kitchen. I felt that wave of
proximity again, that sense that my whole body was kind of reaching toward
him even though I wasn't moving, and then it was gone as he walked away. I
followed him, watching the swing of his back, the way his shoulders
shifted, and the way his ass, so firm and tight, pressed against his
shorts, flexing and unflexing as he walked. I realized that I hadn't seen
him naked yet, still hadn't gotten a glimpse of what was under his shorts
even though I'd felt it last night, pressed up against me. I also realized,
looking him over and wanting him naked, that I'd come a long way in the
past several days.

"I have water, and some juice, and I think Uncle Art has some beer in one
of the vegetable drawers if you want," Casey said, his back to me as he
stood in the open refrigerator door. Seeing him standing there like that,
rummaging through the fridge while he held the door open with one hand, I
wondered what he would do if I did the same thing he had, and rushed across
the kitchen to slam myself into him and do what I wanted. I could see it
all in my head, the way it would play out, as I rubbed my hands all over
him, sliding them under his shirt to feel his rippled abs and his hard
chest, to feel his pecs jump under my hands and to rub my fingers over his
brown nipples.

I couldn't do it.

I wanted to, more than anything. My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry
and my dick was so hard I felt like it was about to tear right through my
shorts, but I couldn't move. I couldn't do what he did, couldn't act on
what I wanted, especially when I didn't know what he'd do if I tried
it. Casey turned around, his eyebrows raised, but he was luckily only
looking at my face, and didn't notice my other, more obvious mood
indicator.

"Nate? Did you want something?"

Oh, hell yes.

Wait, he meant from the fridge.

"Water," I rasped, sitting down hard in one of the chairs. Casey turned
back to the refrigerator without glancing at my crotch, and I took the
moment to hastily rearrange things down there. Laying my hand on myself,
even for a second, was almost too much, because everything that had
happened in here last night was running through my head on an endless loop
and Casey was right there and the bottles in the fridge kept shifting and
tinkling and I heard gasps in my head and then suddenly there Casey was,
right in front of me, holding out a bottle of water like the one Sam had
found underneath the table this morning. "Thanks."

"Nate?" Casey asked, squatting in front of me, leaning in close. He was
staring into my eyes, concerned, and I wanted to drop mine down to his legs
to see if his thighs were stretching out his shorts to the limit, but
figured that now might be a bad time. Thinking again of Sam, though, I
realized that there might never be a good time, not for me. "Nate, are you
ok?"

I looked at Casey again, swallowing, not really sure what to say. I needed
someone to talk to, someone to help me work through this. I wanted it to be
a friend, needed it to be someone that I could trust, and I'd only known
Casey for a few days. Still, in this one area of my life, I was closer to
him than anyone else, and after I'd carried this inside for so long, tried
so hard not to admit this to myself and not to disappoint everyone and
everything else, denied what I was feeling for years and even managed to
convince myself that I wasn't really doing that, after wrestling with it
all day and feeling like I didn't know who I was or what I wanted, I just
couldn't hold it in anymore.  If my life was a story, I would have burst
into tears right then, and Casey would have held me and rocked me and
somehow managed to convince me that everything would be fine, but instead I
just swallowed numbly and admitted the truth, finally, to someone.

"No, I'm not. I'm not ok right now."

Casey put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it, and I sighed, feeling all
the tension drop out of me. When he'd touched me before last night, in the
pool, all I'd felt was lust, but now I felt comforted.

"It'll be ok, Nate," he assured me, his voice quiet. He stood, letting go
of my shoulder, and pulled out the chair next to mine. Sitting down, he
folded his hands in front of him on the tabletop, and his wide, dark blue
eyes fixed on me. "You can talk to me."

I really felt like I could, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Rather
than stopping to actually consider it, I just blurted out the first thing
that popped into my head.

"Have you slept with a lot of guys?"

To say that Casey was shocked would have been an understatement. He let go
of my hand immediately, leaning back in his chair, and looking at his face
was like watching some door inside of it slam shut. His eyes narrowed a
little, his jaw got a little firmer, and his lips thinned into a tight
line, the color going out of them and verging on white. I watched his hand
slide across the table and realized that my blunt stupidity had hurt him,
even though I hadn't meant to. If nothing else, I'd proven really good at
that for the past day or two, and was probably about five minutes away from
getting dumped back out onto the sidewalk.

"I didn't mean that to sound judgmental or anything," I said quickly as he
scooted his chair back. "Casey! I didn't. I just, I don't know how to talk
about this, and sometimes I don't say the things that I'm thinking the
write way, and the words just kind of fall out before I stop them and I
sound like and idiot and I keep hurting you and I keep having to apologize
and I just, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Please, just, I'm trying
so hard, and I've been thinking about this so much, and I just, everything
keeps coming out wrong and you probably think I'm either a real dumbass or
a real asshole or maybe both, and I don't want you to think I'm either."

His face had softened while he listened to me, and I felt a blush creeping
up my neck as I realized that I'd had yet another of my floods of
words. Why? Why every time I talked to him did I either become a
monosyllabic knuckle dragging half wit or a babbling airheaded space cadet?
Why couldn't I find a happy medium? I'd been fine the other day when Sam
was around, but when it was just me and him it was like all the wires
between my brain and my mouth shorted out and caught on fire.

And yet, when I looked up, Casey was smiling.

His lips were curving upward at the corners as he settled back into his
chair, and even though I couldn't see any teeth his eyes sparkled at me. I
couldn't get over the way the color in them seemed to change, sometimes the
blue very, very dark, as if dipped in shadow, but other times it seemed
warm, almost navy. Maybe it was just the way I chose to read into him, or
to project what I hoped he was feeling onto his face.  Either way, I
started to feel a little more at ease.

"Was that really what you wanted to know?" he asked. "That's what you came
over here for? Because if you're worried about what we did, I'm clean. All
my tests are clean, and really, it's not like you got any, you know, fluids
from me."

He was blushing! He actually blushed a little, his face looking the
slightest bit pink under his beige tan, and that, combined with his
expression gave him a look of boyishness that was entirely incongruous with
his body. Wait, maybe he was a boy. Oh my God, maybe he was some sort of
extremely well developed sixteen year old, and I was cradle robbing some
barely legal kid! Why hadn't I stopped to think about that? I didn't know
anything about him, other than that he was hot and I wanted him.

"How old are you?" I asked.

God damn it, brain, just stop talking. Seriously.

"That didn't come out right, either," I said, rolling my eyes at the
ceiling before he could ask what I was thinking now or if I was thinking at
all. Here he'd just told me this tremendously personal thing, this
information about himself that was usually only shared between people who
planned to continue being intimate with each other, and before I could even
consider the implications of that I'd followed it with cafeteria
chatter. "I guess I just, I don't know you. I don't know anything about
you. I don't know how old you are or where you're from or what you're doing
here or even what the hell your last name is, and right now I don't feel
like I know who I am, either, and I just, I don't really know how to deal
with this, with any of this, and I don't know if you have or if not or if
you're just looking at me and laughing because this is all old hat to you
or anything. You know?"

"What are you trying to deal with?" he asked, and I gaped at him. Wasn't it
obvious?  "I'm serious. I don't really know that much about you, either,
Nate. I don't think you've ever done anything like that before, have you?"

"No," I answered, shaking my head. I might as well go for broke, though,
and tell him the rest. Maybe if I kept it to little pieces I could keep
myself from saying something else stupid. "But I've thought about it."

"I know," he said, sitting back and grinning. I'd so rarely seen him give a
full teeth smile that I was taken aback. What was he grinning at?

"How did you?" I began, but then I remembered something he'd said last
night. "You said you saw me watching you, and you knew. Is that it? Is that
how you knew?"

"Kind of," Casey answered, stretching. I couldn't help but drop my eyes
down the front of his body, looking at the way his shirt clung to him and
the way it rode up at the bottom as his arms lifted above his head,
revealing a little glimpse of his stomach and the tiny little path of dark
brown hair leading down from his belly button, and then I jerked my eyes up
to his as I realized that I was doing it again, and he'd just stretched on
purpose.  He was grinning, still, and I couldn't help but smile, too. "See?
You stared at me the day I pulled up like you wanted to walk over and throw
me down right there on the pavement.  I wasn't sure, at first, but then
you, well."

He looked a little embarrassed, and I saw his face starting to color again.

"What did I do?" I asked, trying to think. All I'd done was stare openly at
him with my mouth full of drool and a hardon throbbing in my pants, right?
I mean, it was probably a little obvious, but not a definite selling
point. "I mean, I just stared at you a lot, but, well, look at you. People
probably stare at you all the time. You're like a big piece of candy or
something."

I clapped a hand to my mouth, stunned that I'd actually said that, but he
just kept smiling.  This grinning thing was a whole lot awkward than the
blurting stupidity thing. Maybe we could stick with this for a while.

"Thanks," he said, flexing his arms out in front of him, fingers
interlaced, to crack his knuckles, his face mock-smug. "Thanks for
noticing."

"I can't believe I just said that," I said, holding my face in my hands for
a second. He patted me on the shoulder.

"Would it make you feel better if I said you were really hot, too?" he
asked quietly, leaning in. My whole body seemed to shiver at once. I don't
know how he did that thing with his voice, that making it really husky for
a second so that it was almost like a growl, but it was like my eardrums
were connected to my dick, and I was glad the table was blocking his
view. "But, thank you. I mean, I'm not that hot, but."

"You?" I asked, my head snapping up so fast I almost cracked it into his.
"You're not that hot? You have mirrors over here, right?"

"I'm not saying I'm ugly," he said quickly, leaning back. "But the way you
look at me, the way you stared at me, I'm not that hot."

"But it was the way I looked at you that did it?" I asked again. He started
to nod, his face sliding into a weird expression, and I cut him off. "And
something else?  What else did I do? Oh, God, was it that day at the pool?
Did I do something then? Because I really didn't think I did anything then,
and I stayed in the water the whole time, so you really didn't, you know,
see anything, if there was anything to see, but was it at the pool? Or in
the driveway? Did I say something really dumb, or, I guess, more dumb than
usual when I was in the driveway with you?"

"No," he answered, shaking his head. "But it was right before that."

"What happened right before that?" I asked, thinking. I'd gotten up, seen
him in the driveway washing the car, and then. "Oh my God! Oh my God you
saw that?"

"You were right up against the window!" he said quickly, holding up his
hands. "I mean, Nate, they're drapes! They might as well be made of
cellophane."

"Oh my God, you saw that?" I repeatedly stupidly, unable to say anything
else. I hid my face in my hands again. I wanted to fall through the floor
and die. It was bad enough hearing that I'd apparently been quite obvious
about drilling holes through him and all of his clothing with my eyes, but
now to hear that he'd seen me jerking off at the window, watching him? Oh,
God, I wanted to die. I really did. He must think I was a total perverted
freak, some kind of neighborhood lech or something. I was lucky he was
still talking to me at all.

"Yeah, I saw it," he answered, his hand on my shoulder again. Instead of
pulling it away like he had before he started to rub it in a circle around
my back, lightly.  "It was quite a show."

"Huh?" I asked, my head snapping up again.

"It was quite a show," he repeated. "I mean, I'd seen you watching me, and
I looked at you a couple times when you left the house. I was starting to
wonder about you, and you're, like I said, you're really good looking, and
then all of a sudden I looked up, and there you were, naked and jerking
off."

"Oh, God," I moaned again, feeling my face burn as it turned brick red. I
started to drop it into my hands again, not wanting to meet his eyes, but I
jerked to a stop when I felt his hand on my cheek, his fingers catching the
edge of my jaw and holding my head up. I felt myself leaning forward,
leaning into his touch without even thinking about it, unconsciously
wanting to be closer to him.

"It was really fucking hot," he said softly, his voice slipping into
sex-mode again. I found myself staring into his eyes, falling into
them. "It was all I could do not to just drop the house and come over and
break down your door."

"You're shitting me," I said, no doubt stunning him with my vocabulary.

"You think I give myself a bath with the hose every time I wash the car?"
he asked, his voice hinting at a chuckle, his eyes locked onto mine. "I was
just trying to cool down, and then, after you came out to talk to me, I
still had to go back in the house and jerk off."

Time stopped in the kitchen. I couldn't possibly have heard that right. I
tried to speak, and my mouth was completely dry again, the water bottle in
my hand so forgotten that it might as well have been in another state. I
swallowed, my throat clicking, and tried again.

"You, you jerked off?" I asked, my brain almost overloading at the thought
of him on some bed upstairs, his shorts open, his chest still wet with
sweat and soapy water from washing the car, hand jammed inside and arm
flexing and his head thrown back with his eyes squeezed shut, the only
sound in the room grunts and moans and maybe the squeaking of
bedsprings. "Over me?"

He leaned in even closer, and I could smell him now. My cock was leaking
against my boxers, and I was afraid to look down and see if there was a wet
spot on my shorts. A lock of his hair slipped out from behind his ear,
falling forward, and the end of it brushed against my cheek. I could feel
his breath on my mouth, and his eyes were so close to mine, and so very
blue, like an ocean I could get lost in and drown.

"I came so hard it hurt," he said, leaning forward.

His mouth brushed against mine, his lips sliding softly over mine, and our
eyes were open the entire time. I realized that he was watching me, waiting
for my reaction, but I couldn't move. The best I could do was to kiss back,
my lips pressing forward against his, my tongue a lot bolder than I was as
it tapped lightly at his bottom lip, tasting it. His chair scraping back
broke the spell, kind of, and I let out a soft little whimpering noise of
disappointment as he stood, taking my hands. The chair slid back as he
urged me up, lightly tugging my hands toward him, and then I was on my
feet, still staring into his eyes.

"Come here," he said, his voice almost a whisper, his eyes still fixed on
mine as he stepped to the side of the table.

"Casey?" I asked, not even sure of what I was asking. His chest was heaving
under his shirt, and his hands on mine were so soft and firm, his fingers
lightly stroking the backs of my hands. I realized, looking at him, that he
was as turned on as I was.  I had no idea how we'd gone from zero to sixty
in under a minute, but all I wanted right now was to throw myself against
him and go to town.

"Come on," he urged, pulling me toward him. My eyes ticked down to the
front of his shorts, and I wondered if they would just drop out of my head
and onto the floor. I'd felt him pressing against me last night, felt his
cock grinding against mine when he slammed himself against me, but the
kitchen had been dark, and there'd been a lot of fabric there, so I hadn't
really seen anything. I hadn't noticed how big it looked, pushing out the
front of his shorts, bending down his leg in a way that was probably
painful. It looked so. I don't know, so substantial, so present and thick
and very urgent through his shorts, and I froze.

Did I want this?

"Wait," I said, my body stiffening, my hands tensing in his. "Casey?"

"I don't want you to do anything you don't want to," he said quietly. "I
won't do anything you don't want me to, either. I wouldn't ever, ever do
that to someone."

He looked down, just for a second, when he said that, his face revealing
something else, but when he looked back up it was gone. I was reminded
again that I didn't know anything about him, except, apparently, that he
was clean.

"What about the rest of this?" I asked, afraid. I wanted him so badly, but
I was so afraid to take him, even though he was right there for the
taking. Last night, he had been the aggressor. If I did something now, I
was an active participant, and that was crossing a line, no matter how fine
a line it might be. "What about what this means?"

"Why does it have to mean anything?" he asked. I wondered if he was making
fun of me, but he looked serious.

"Because there's all this stuff," I said, shaking my head. "There's you,
and me, and Sam, and my parents, and all this other stuff, and I can't, I
can't even wrap my head around it. I don't know what I am and I don't know
what I'm doing and I don't know what any of this means at all."

"And why does it have to mean anything?" he asked again, still holding my
hands. "I like you. You like me. We're the only people here right now. Did
you like what we did?"

I looked down. It couldn't be this easy.

"Nate?" he asked, not forcing me. I could tell by his tone that he would do
whatever I wanted, that he had meant it when he said that he wouldn't do
anything I didn't want him to do. "Did you like it?"

"Yes," I answered finally, looking up again. It was true. I liked it.

"Did you want to do it again?" he asked. His face was so smooth and open,
his eyes warm and kind. I could trust him, I could be with him, and he
wouldn't hurt me.

Time stretched out waiting for my answer. Empires rose and fell. Ages
passed, and still it was just me and Casey in the kitchen. He was right. It
was just me and him.  Fuck the rest of the world.

"Yes," I answered, squeezing his hands, my voice a little firmer.

"Come upstairs with me?" he asked, so innocently, like he was inviting me
on a sleepover.

"OK," I answered, nodding.

He turned, still holding one of my hands, our water forgotten as he led me
toward the stairs.

I wouldn't realize until later that he had never answered any of my
questions about him.

***

To be continued.

Again, apologies for the amount of time this has taken. I do want to say
that I don't start a story without finishing it, so even if it takes me a
month to get a chapter out, they will keep coming until you see "Concluded"
at the end of one of them. I promise.