The following contains descriptions of graphic sexual acts between consenting teenage boys. It is a work of pure fiction and has no basis in the real world. Any similarities between people and places is just simple and plain coincidence. Do not read this story if you are under 18 or the legal age in your area; or, if it is just down right illegal to read this material where you live. And, don't go any further if you don't want to read about gay/bisexuals falling in love and having sex.

The author of this story retains copyright to this story and its characters. Reproducing this story for distribution without the author's explicit permission is a violation of that copyright.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am so, so sorry it has taken me way longer than I said to get this last chapter on here.  Some unexpected angst and family drama has kept me away from my writing and pretty much everything else but work.  But here it is at long last.  I hope you enjoy.

Thank you so much for reading this strange and always evolving series.  It has been a long ride.  But like all good things, this too must come to and end.  Drop me a line or write me with your comments-good or bad : )  Sincerely.... J.  mavjk99@yahoo.com

Strangers on a Train

by J. A. Adkins

Part 25-Beginnings and Endings in Chicago

If someone were to ask me, when I was born-assuming I could not only understand what they were saying but also, you know, talk-which direction my life would go; what eternal path I could forsee myself wandering down, I never would have guessed the one I had found myself stumbling down.  I'd come a long way from everything only to see a wall just yards away.  Well, that's getting ahead perhaps.  Because, at the very moment I was beginning to think on these things and reflect on the maze of chaos my existence had been and was still becoming, all I could see were tracks.

And trains.  And train parts.  And buildings.  Lots and lots of buildings.

"Oh shit," Darren said breathlessly.  Was that panic?  Possibly.  I couldn't tell.  I was too busy starting to panic myself.

The three of us stared out the small viewports watching as the city of Chicago began to swallow the empty, glowing horizon.  Skyscrapers swelled around on both sides of the speeding engine car.  The industrial area outside whipped noisily past the open doors.  The car was picking up speed and there was no way to stop or slow it down.

"Well guys," Jake said without looking away from the windows.  "This certainly has been fun.  I don't know about you two but I'll certainly walk-"  He stopped suddenly and glanced around between us and his surroundings.  "Well... I'll certainly remember it."

"Likewise," Darren said.

"Yep."  I answered in response.

A strange silence filled the noisy cabin.  What else was there to say?  Any conversation would just have been a useless distraction.  We all knew the track we were on had to come to an end.  Either that end was in the for of another train, a very large building, or something else that was big, solid and generally didn't respond too well to a multi-ton steel train car slamming into it at high speeds.

Static crackled from somewhere nearby, making all three of us jump with a start.  I choked on the breath I was trying to take.  Jake and Darren looked around quickly.  "Here!" Jake yelled excitedly, finding a small radio.  He handed it to Darren.

"Come in?" Darren said into the small handset.

Static crackled and popped again.  This time a voice found its way through the electrical storm of white-noise.  "Yes?  Yes!  We hear you!  Can you hear us?"

"Yes, we hear you!  Over!" Darren said loudly.  "Who is this?"

"Special Agent Marius Duchet of the FBI!  Is this... Darren Brasier?"

Darren rolled his eyes.  "The one and only.  It's been a while, Agent Duchet."

Somehow, I could almost hear the man smiling as he replied back, his voice starting to skip and falter in the static.  "It's goo- to see y-'re no -ead!"

"Yet, anyway," Darren said without much humor in his voice.  "Which is why I might not sound as chipper as my usual self.  So unless you're going to tell me good news...I'm really not interested in catching up right now."

There was a short pause.  I looked out one of the open doors.  Flying perpendicular to the train at an even pace, a slender helicopter overlooked us.  I turned my head a little to the left, catching sight of two more choppers racing along behind the train just a few hundred feet above the tracks.

Finally, the agent's voice filled the cramped, windy cabin again.  "First of all... I've never -own -u -o be chipper.  And sec-dly, the only new I -ave for you you're probably not -ing to like any-"

Darren glanced at me.  I saw the fear flash in his eyes.  "Well," he said into the handset.  "Go ahead.  We're listening."

"There's no way to stop the train.  We know the brakes -re out a-d -ere is nothing the control tower here at the st-ion can do about that."

"The news, Duchet!  The station is getting awfully big in the windows!"

"They're going to try and reroute the train!"  Duchet responded hurriedly to Darren's frustrated call.  "They are going to switch the tracks and lead you guys to the roundhouse.  There is some construction there and tower is hoping it'll slow you down."

"And there's no people," I said, my voice low and unenthusiastic.

Darren nodded.  "If they can't stop this thing, then they'll just be minimizing casualties."

"To three," Jake said, sighing heavily.

"Do you copy?!"  Duchet's voice cracked from the speakers around the cabin.

Darren looked out the viewports and up toward the lead helicopter.  "Yeah," he said.  "We copy."

"Good!  So you guys just hang on tight!"

"Thanks.  We'll do our best," Darren said bitterly, dropping the handset onto the still smoking control panel.

"So..." I said, watching as Darren shifted his gaze hastily around the cabin.  He was looking for something to hold onto.  "I guess we just hold on, then?"

"Yep."

The engine cart rattled suddenly.  Jake and I looked at each other before following Darren's lead.  I braced myself against the back wall of the small compartment, grabbing onto a bar that curved down from from the ceiling, connecting into a small junction box above my head.  I looked at Jake, then Darren.  He smiled weakly at me.  I wanted to kiss him.  I should have kissed him.

The train jostled and shook startlingly, keeping me in place, however.  "Holy crap!" Jake yelled, pointing out the front windows.  I turned my head to see another train moving at a little more than an amble pace on the same track.  It flashed its spotlight and sounded its whistle in a flurry of panic-stricken warnings.  Our train just barreled toward it.  The shadows of the hovering helicopters danced across its top.  I could see the pale, twitching face of the frightened conductor through the opposing viewports.

He ducked.

We turned.  With a kick and a shudder that nearly sent the three of us to our feet, our train veered hard to the right of the opposing train at the last second before impact.  It's black armored body disappeared just as suddenly from view.

"Okay guys!  That was the last switch," yelled Agent Duchet.  I could barely hear his voice above the heavy rumble of my racing heartbeat.

Ahead of us, I could already see the tall warehouse-like structure eclipsed in the heavy shadows of the mammoth buildings that stood around it.  Already its fine details were becoming clear.  The flashing lights of police patrol cars blinked from between the armies of construction crew vehicles dotting the upraised urban landscape.  Workers stood watching near their equipment.  They appeared then disappeared from view just like that as we continued on our unstoppable path.

The engine glided swiftly under an overpass.  There was only a few hundred yards left.  The last hints of the fading sunlight bouncing off the windows of taller buildings flicked against the wiry network of scaffolding stretched across the outer facade of the roundhouse.  I only looked away when I saw Darren and Jake tighten their grips on what they were holding.

"Taylor..." Darren started to say, his voice trailing off.  I could hear it trembling.

"Yeah?" I replied quickly.

The walls of the cabin rattled.  The helicopters disappeared from view.  The wind howling past the open doors seemed to get louder.  I glanced at Darren.  He met my eyes for a moment.  Instantly I saw the fear in those icy blue spheres that had the ability to freeze my mind and melt my heart in the same second.  I saw the humanity in him, the vulnerability that made him normal and mortal.  I saw something that only made me love him more.

"I-"  His eyes darted toward the front windows for a heartbeat.  But that's when everything changed.

The wind outside suddenly went silent.  It was instantly replaced, though, by the deafening barrage of steed and wood grinding and cracking against the train's metal skin.  I looked ahead just in time to see us punching through the scaffolding.  Pipes and planks showered the train for barely a moment.  The hollow net of metal did little to slow the engine's momentum.  In the next second we met the roundhouse's thick exterior head-on.

The massive front doors gave-way but not without pushing back first.  The cabin jumped around us.  It took all I had not to loose my footing as gravity shoved its heavy hand against my body.  Dusty billowed in through the doorways in choking, round pockets.  It consumed the air and burned my eyes.

But the train marched on, continuing its rape of the roundhouse.  Debris shattered the glass of the viewports.  Something on the track made the car jump.  I felt the heavy beast hang in the air for that split second that stretched for infinity in my mind.  When we landed, there was no fighting this time.  The impact was tremendous.  Firelight suddenly illuminated the abandoned, dusty interior of the roundhouse from behind us.  It gave me a moment to see the building struggling against the steel intruder before I hit the floor.

The engine car pivoted to an angle it wasn't designed for, pitching onto its left side.  The sharp and awful cry of metal grinding and tearing dangerously against metal filled my ears.  The wheels had broken off.  I looked up towards Darren when I began to slide away.  He reached out, never hesitating.  The engine began to right itself.  But the cabin jerked and rattled again.  An image of girders in the path flickered in my mind.

Darren started to topple down.  Jake's hand gripped his pants.  I felt Darren's fingers encase mine.  There was no celebration though.  Something outside, something heavy and important snapped.  Debris scrapped and collided against the sides of the battered and breaking engine car as the train pitched again.  This time it was towards the sky and then to the right.  I didn't even bother to look out the viewports.

I could see the ground through the doorway.  With a CRUNCH louder and more haunting that any sound I can every remember before it, the train's side connected with the ground.  A shower of molten sparks jumped through the doorway.  Darren looked at me with panic, feeling the footing he had managed go loose.  He slid toward the fiery hatch for a split second before just as suddenly coming to a stop.  It took me another second to look up and realize I was holding the base of the engineer's chair.  Darren's grip on my ankle was a strangle hold... not that I cared though.

The sparks began to dissipate.  The barrage of ear-drum destroying noise began to slip away to quieter volumes.  The deluge of hot, acrid dust slowed to a stop.  A moment later, so did the train.  It was another several seconds before any of us exhaled.  Reality had to set in first.  I blinked and looked around.  Darren was still holding onto my ankle.  He smiled up at me, his expression one of relief and thankfulness.  I spotted Jake laying upside down near the back corner of the cabin just a few feet away.

He smiled too, his chest heaving as he breathed in each polluted but welcomed breath of air.  "Anybody want to do it again?"

I blinked, watching silently the wild scene around me.  The strobe-like effect the emergency and police vehicles' lights were having on the dim evening.  Hundreds of officials of all kinds were running back and forth between vehicles and the wounded roundhouse.  I glanced back at it, letting my eyes follow one police officer as he hurried toward the gaping hole that marred the front of the gothic building.

"Are you going to hold still?" hissed the paramedic who swabbed a little less than delicately at the small gash on my forehead.  I flinched, feeling the sharp and bitter sting from the alcohol all the way into my teeth.

"Sorry," I said, turning my head forward again.

"It's fine.  I'm done with you anyway," she said as she gathered her things.

I sat on the back of the ambulance as the paramedic finished packing her red bag and walked briskly away.  Quick flashes of another chaotic scene flashed out from my memories, blending with the one spread out before me.  Yet, they were no longer as intense.  They didn't stop my heart with an icy stab of pain.  They weren't noisy or rattling and paralyzing to my senses.  They were completely silent for the first time.  It only took another glance at the roundhouse, now being lit by a handful of emergency flood lamps, to give me a clue as to why.  I couldn't help but smile at the dusty wound on the hollow building.

I had come so close once again.  I had been running so hard from what I feared most only to race head first right back into it.  "Thanks," I said to no one around me but to ears I felt certain were listening.

"Taylor!"

I turned my head quickly, returning to the present at the sound of Darren's voice.  He walked past the wave of officials to where I sat.  At his side was a man a few inches taller wearing a stiff blue wind-breaker.  The flood lamps glinted off the expensive watch on his left wrist.  "Taylor, this is Agent Darius Duchet of the FBI." Darren said with a courteous smile, gesturing to the man in his shadow.

I nodded and shook Duchet's hand.

"Yes, Mr. Chapman.  I've read up on you.  I'm sorry about your parents."

I smiled weakly, shifting my eyes away for a moment.  "Thank you, Agent Duchet."

"Hopefully after this latest round of excitement you'll try to avoid it on such a..." Duchet circled the area quickly with his eyes, noticing the crowd of people being turned away on the overpass above them.  "...Public level," he finished.

"I'll do my best.  I'll just have to avoid making vacation plans with him," I said jovially, pointing at Darren.

Duchet smiled.  "You two behave yourselves.  And stay out of trouble and off my radar.  I mean it!"  With that, Duchet waved and walked hastily into the shifting tide of local and federal officials trying to bring order to the atmosphere surrounding the resting place of the Blue Sky Express.

I waited until he was well out of earshot before turning back to look at Darren.  "So...did Agent Excitement over there have fun catching up?"

Darren shrugged his shoulders.  "Eh.  He told me that they'd been trying to catch up with us since that bridge over the river where we met Cody and his friend.  In fact, they apparently had an agent tailing me when I boarded the train."

"Who were they after?  You or Devoy?"

Darren couldn't help but snicker.  "You know, I'm not really sure.  Duchet didn't elaborate either way.  Devoy was a federal fugitive.  That's just a fact."

I stared at Darren, my eyes slightly narrowed with curiosity that my crooked grin gave away.  "And you?"

Darren held my gaze and matched my smile.  "My family's just had a history of pissing off the right...and the wrong law enforcement officials."

I shook my head then suddenly remembered something.  It was the thought of family that made me think of it.  "Any word on Dewey?"

Darren laughed.  "Yes, actually.  He's doing fine, believe it or not.  Dewey's a tough old hound.  Duchet said he's recovering nicely and will back on his feet on a couple of weeks."

I looked at the ground.  "Good."

There was a heavy pause between us, each of us waiting for the other to speak.  I kept my eyes focused on the grease and dust-stained gravel under my feet.  Finally, Darren took a deep breath.  "So... umm... Are you ready to go home?"

I looked up at him with a smile.  "Absolutely."

Darren smiled back.  "May I escort you to your place of domicile," he said with strange and proper robotic voice as he bent his elbow outward, letting me wrap an arm around his.  He chuckled at himself.  I could only shake my head at his adorable strangeness.  "And we're off!" he said enthusiastically.

"Taylor!" an even younger voice called out to me through the dim light around us.  Darren and I turned our heads, spotting Jake as he rushed toward me.  He hugged, first me and then Darren, tightly.  "Are you guys okay?  Where are you going?"

"Home," I said, maybe a little too quickly.  "At long last."  I saw Jake look at Darren expectantly.  "Darren's going to go with me.  He wants to make sure I don't fall down or get lost or... something."  I couldn't help but smile.

Jake nodded his head.  "You going to be okay?" I asked, watching his smooth, dust-stained cheeks.  He was so cute.

"Yeah."  There was an awkward pause before he finally spoke again.  "You guys?"

Darren and I looked at each other.  I nodded my head, trying to read Darren's expression.  "Yeah.  I think so."

"Jake!" someone yelled from near one of the police cruisers.  He was a handsome young officer with a chiseled face and stark features.  He waved toward us.

"Mmm, Jake.  Who is that?" Darren asked, playfully.

Jake rolled his eyes and laughed. But even through the dim light of the waning evening and the constant flashing of the police and rescue lights, I could tell Jake was blushing.  "He's just a friend of my cousin."

"Ohh," Darren and I said together.  "Is he single," I asked, glancing at the young officer again.

"Yes he is," Jake said, looking at the boyish cop.  "Yes, he is."  His face grew a little more devious looking when he repeated his answer.

"You be careful," I said to him.

"You too."

I hugged him.  "I will.  And look me up when you get settled... wherever."

Jake smiled.  "I will."  He his eyes told me that he would miss me.  I would miss him too.  He had turned out to be a great friend and I knew that somehow he was always going to be.

I glanced back once as Darren and I neared the edge of the chaotic scene.  Jake waved from where we had left him.  I waved back, then turned when Darren tugged me gently, following him up the steep concrete steps and onto the street.  The sun had nearly completely set by the time we started the journey toward my new home.  Darren jokingly asked if I wanted to take the train.  I only responded with a hateful glare.  I turned down his offer for a taxi, deciding to take advantage of the opportunity to stretch my legs.

The sun had finally settled below the horizon and the cool, dark night was swiftly settling in by the time we reached the front steps to the old building I was now going to call home.  The last hints of the fading pink and purple had given way to a soft, mellow black sky dotted with the night's first stars.  I glanced up at them more than once as Darren and I trekked silently the dozen or so blocks from the wrecked train yard.  A heavy feeling of absurd awkwardness suddenly seemed to exist between us.  We were standing side by side, walking arm in arm.  But the young man who had become the closest thing to perfection in my eye-a beautiful soul that mine had learned to follow earnestly and honestly out of the shadows of its own miserable rut-couldn't have been less than a hundred miles away.

Maybe it was because even after all we had been through in the last few days, and despite how hard and deep I had fallen in love with him, Darren didn't feel like this-like we were anything to pursue.  Maybe Darren hadn't fallen for me at all.  And now the marker for the end of our adventure loomed over us.  A nearby street lamp and a muted ceiling lamp from inside one of the apartment windows were the only things keeping us from being consumed by the old building's moonlight-sharpened shadow.

The weathered and faded red brick facade stared blankly at us.  A pair of windows on the first floor on either side of the cracked granite steps glowed with soft, mustard yellow light that melted through the thin shades covering the inside of each glass rectangle.  I couldn't help but think how strange and out of place the building looked compared with the others surrounding it.  It was as if some freak tornado had made its way into Brooklyn, picked up this one building amidst its path of terror, death, and destruction and then flung it a thousand miles to this very spot in Chicago.

I fished the instructions my grandparents had sent me out of my pocket.  I was thankful I had kept the wrinkled piece of cutely decorated stationary with my luggage rather than on me.  I confirmed the building number with that in the note.

"So... this is it?"

I turned around at the sound of Darren's question.  His eyes darted between the building and myself.  I'm not sure which one he was trying to avoid staring at.

"I think so," I said after a moment.

"It's nice."

"Yeah," I said, looking back towards the building.  "It'll do."

"Good."

There was the awkward pause again.  It stuck in the air between us like a thorn from a vine.  I struggled for the right words to say.  I could only think of three, but suddenly they seemed far harder to say than firing a gun ever had.  I glanced up towards Darren's face.  His icy blue eyes, as beautiful and breathtaking as ever, met mine.

"Darren..." I started to say but stopped when he said my name at the same moment.

"Taylor... I..."  He paused and faltered completely, finally looking away.

I let go of the breath I was holding and grinned, defeated.  My heart, heavy and cracked, sank deeper into my chest.  I took a step closer to Darren and kissed him on the cheek.  He turned his head sharply, surprised by the small gesture.

"It's okay," I said softly, knowingly as I gazed longingly into his eyes.  "You don't have too."

With that, I started up the pale granite steps decorated with the spidery cracks spreading across the entire heavy, stone surface.  I reached the stoop and turned around.  Darren was still standing there.  His eyes were already one me, finding my own in a heartbeat.  There was sadness in his eyes, a pain I couldn't make out.  We stared at each other for a long time until finally he just smiled and started walking away.  He managed no more than two steps before I called out to him.

"Darren!"

The angelic face turned to look at me.

"Thank you... for everything.  You... I can't thank you enough for what you've done."

Darren's brow furrowed.  He couldn't understand what I was talking about.  "What do you mean?"

"You've shown me what it's like to be brave.  You've shown me what it takes to really step up and accept responsibility."

Darren just stared at me quietly.  I wanted to cry.  A quick glance at the ever-growing sea of stars above the jagged roof of the cityscape kept the tears back and my voice and thoughts moving ahead.  "You've shown me how to be a better person just by being you."  I looked down at him again, finding his eyes instantly.  "For that, I'll always be thankful."

He looked away then back again, smiling the weakest smile I'd ever seen.  "You're welcome," Darren said, his voice heavy and cracking.  He took a deep breath.  "You're welcome, Taylor."

And with that, Darren Braiser started an amble walk out of my life.  I stood on that stoop for minutes, studying his form as it slowly disappeared into the late evening.  I took another deep breath, not stopping the tear that rolled down my cheek as I unlocked the door into the building, stepping sadly out of the night.

An hour or so later, I pulled the water-kissed shower curtain closed, collected the dusty heap of borrowed clothes strung across my new bathroom floor, and walked out of the steamy bathroom.  Already, the wide-open studio flat-lit only by the almost tangerine colored shaft of light stretching past the threshold of the bathroom door-was starting to feel like home.  Traces of steam had collected on the far window that overlooked the street.  I had left the bathroom door open.  The front of the building was always locked and I hadn't even thought to lock my own front door.  But then, I wasn't all that concerned about a pop-in.

But maybe I should have been.

"You're going to have to tell your landlord to get that lock on the outside door fixed."

"HOLY HELL!!" I yelled-no screamed is more like it-throwing the dingy, soot and sweat smelling clothes at the boy reclining on his elbows as eh sat on the edge of my bed.

Darren smiled playfully at me, pleased at my startled state.  "Sorry.  Did I scare you?"  My famous, hateful glare was his only answer.  His smile only got wider.

"Yeah," he continued on with the news of the door downstairs.  "I had to jimmy the lock.  I think I over-jimmied it."  He glanced toward my own door.  "And you should really think about at least using your dead-bolt."

"Is there a reason I shouldn't shoot you right now?"

Darren sat up straight.  "Yeah," he said coyly.  "You don't have a gun, first of all.  And second, you're a terrible shot."

I put my hands on my hips, a look of defiance on my face.  "I've gotten better."

Darren stood up, taking slow and casual steps forward.  His fingers were tucked into his pants pockets.  He looked awkward and unsure of himself.  At the same time he still looked breathtaking.  It was that thought that made me suddenly remember I was only wearing a towel.

"Oh, I believe you," Darren said when he approached me.  He stood barely a foot away.  Through the dirt and grease-stained shirt he still wore I could make out his chest rising and falling with each shallow, quick breath he took.  He was nervous.  I looked up into Darren's eyes.  His own icy-blues were moving up from my toes to my knees to the edge of the thin, white cotton towel I had loosely wrapped around my slender waist.

"Darren," I said, drawing his eyes away from my midsection.  "What are you doing here?"

He bit his lip bashfully.  All of a sudden I had a glimpse of the innocent little boy hidden underneath this Hollister-meets-Wrangler twenty year old standing directly in front of me.  "Well..." he started to say.  "I had to come back and tell you that... well..." Darren hesitated again, his eyes staring hard and deep into mine.  "That you were wrong."

I narrowed my eyes.  "Wrong?  About what?"

"About me," he answered strongly.

I looked at him strangely, extremely confused by what he was saying and why he was standing in my apartment.  "I don't understand."

Darren closed the distance between us with more steps.  We were nearly right against each other.  His eyes held mine.  His face looked serious, even concerned.  There was a lot more on his mind than he was telling me.  But then he smiled.  I felt his fingers, soft and slightly coarse at the same time, touch my bare side, caressing m skin as he held me.

"I do have to," he said softly.  He leaned his face closer to mine.  "I do have to.  I'm nothing if I don't."

I couldn't respond with words.  His lips were already pressed against mine.  It took barely a second for my brain to catch up and I eagerly gave in to his tender kiss.  I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him against my nearly-naked body.  At the same time, our slow, loving kiss quickly grew hotter.  Our tongues met, embracing and playing excitedly around each other.

The excitement of the moment did not go unnoticed.  Through the thin towel barely clinging to my still damp waist, my own tightening erection pressed firmly against the heavy swelling under the fly of Darren's ash-stained pants.  We moaned softly together, grinding again and again our wild cocks so desperate to be untamed.  I broke our breathless kiss only to slide the tip of my tongue around his jawline to his ear.  As it made it's brief journey, I could taste the bitter soot and salty sweat caked lightly against his skin.

I reached his ear, spitting the muck off my tongue over his shoulder.  Darren chuckled, "Should I take that as a compliment?"

"No," I whispered, smiling widely.  "But you should take a shower."

"Okay," Darren answered.  "You'll have to show me how to work the faucet."  His smile did more than hint at his true intention.

The moment my hands were on the knobs I felt his at my sides, releasing the towel's grip on my hips.  It tickled my calves as the soft cotton slipped to the floor.  Yet, it was his lips against the back of my neck that made my body tingle.  It was his tongue tracing slow, precise laps around my back that forced the moans to slip out of my throat.  It was the sensation of his tender, masculine fingers kneading and massaging the muscles of my ass that made my pulsing member drip the almost endless stream of precum into the cascading waters splashing against the base of the tub.

I don't remember Darren getting undressed.  I just remember feeling his naked body against mine as the heavy steam wrapped around us, enveloping the shower stall.  The taste of skin was so salty and sweet at the same time under the water spray.  I let my tongue guide me, searching out the places only my eyes had briefly been allowed to savor.  I licked and kissed past his belly button, the only true indentation on his taut stomach.  I teased and tickled above and around his groin, licking in long, even lines the insides of his thighs, making my way to his perineum and then his balls.

I heard the flat of his hand slap wetly, desperately against the shower wall for support when the slick, mushroom cap of his penis pushed past my lips and over my waiting tongue.  I had been craving this.  For too long I wanted to know what he tasted like.  I lapped at the drops of silky precum that ballooned on the top of his steely, cut cock.  I wasn't satisfied yet though.  I wanted so much more.

And so did he.  The fingers rubbing the wet cheeks of his ass slipped down the crack dividing them.  I found the tight entrance into one of his most secret places and rubbed it hungrily, pulling his cock deeper into my mouth at the same time.  I could feel the heat from his boiling balls as I sucked Darren's juicy cock harder and faster.  He gasped again, much louder this time.  One of my fingers had slipped past his sphincter.  While his harder-and hotter-than-steel dick fucked my eager and hungry mouth, my fingers worked their own torturesome magic muscles desperate and hidden.

Before I knew it, we had switched places.  His mouth swallowed my heavy, bruised testicles.  His fingers played with the insides of my ass, first one at a time, then two and even three at once.  As he sucked slowly on my spit and shower-soaked hard-on, letting the fleshy pole slide oh-so-slowly in and out of his mouth, I knew without a doubt I wanted this boy inside me.  Darren's motions on both my front and rear had me at an edge I wasn't ready to pass.  My chest heaved the humid air in the shower.  With one hand gripping the shower curtain slipping off the antique rings spread across the a rusty pole, I used my other to hand to push my sex-starved angel off my prick.  He looked up at me hungrily.  Then, he smiled.

I blinked.

The next thing I knew we were on the bed.  The sheets were already tangled and wet, holding the essence of the sweat and steam from our shower.  We rolled over each other, grinding our slick bodies harder and harder against each other, putting more and more pressure on our throbbing cocks.  I felt his precum on my balls.  The cool air of the apartment made my nipples stand like tiny rocket ships Darren attacked and teased with tongue and teeth.  A brilliant red light suddenly burst through the window, flooding the entire room at the same moment Darren shifted around, putting us into a sixty-nine.

He bathed and massaged each toe on both feet, wanting to taste every inch of my body that he could.  Lost in passion and acting only on the heart-thumping instinct my brain and body were left to work with I began to repeat the same motions on his own downy soft feet and muscular legs dusted lightly with his dirty blonde hair.  I could only find them, taste them, and sense them in that strange red glow that stretched through the window from the building across the street.

Time seemed to freeze and vanish in the darkness that would consume the apartment between each bloom of that crimson light.  I would find myself looking back at memories fading fast and silent.  What once was horrible and would leave with shuddering in an empty house, now were fighting just to hold my attention.  By the time the light came back they were gone and Darren and I were in a different position.  He was treating my body to pleasures I had always imagined others would give me.  I was in heaven in a hellish light.  I was catching up to moments already long in action.  First my body on top of Darren's, his face moaning and groaning wildly into the pillow as I probed that sacred spot between his muscular glutes with my tongue and then my cock.

The shadows returned all too quickly, sheltering what we had from everything that I had once been as I let it all go one by one, memory by painful memory.  I saw the the cool Chicago night swallow whole the shiny new bike dying and rusting in the river on that summer day.  The haze of parties and the funeral that would become my punishment.  They all burned and melted away like film on a faulty projector.  The the light returned again.  The walls were rattling with my heavy moans as my nerves and muscles became more and more alive on each inward stroke of Darren's cock into my ass.  It felt longer, heavier, even hotter than ever before.

We were moving faster.  The red light seemed to be keeping time.  It was the racing pulse of our passionate, lust-filled world.  I wrapped my legs around Darren's lower back, dragging him deeper into me.  I wanted his whole body.  I wanted us to be on entity, to exist as one soul, one voice, one sex-racing heart to beat with heavy love.

I was almost screaming until his lips wrapped around mine.  In the new burst of red light I felt the waves of my orgasm and long last wash through my entire body with such feverous energy I could only compare it to a Japanese earthquake.  The world, the universe shook and trembled as my cock finally erupted its magmatic loads between us.  Darren was cumming at the same time.  He was moaning loudly into my mouth, matching my own high pitched squeals of supreme delight.  His limbs and torso trembled as he emptied himself into me, shot after heavy shot.

"Wha.... did... you say?" Darren asked, struggling for the breath to support his voice.

I didn't even realize I had said anything.  But I knew what I had been thinking.  Through the blinding stream of colors and emotions running in swift and rapid currents through my senses, nerves, muscles, and essence all at once, the only thing I had been able to think about was what had been in my heart since the first moment I opened the door to my cabin on the train and saw those icy blue eyes staring at me.

Now we stared at each other, our sperm-soaked chests sliding over one another's.  His still-hard cock remained nestled in my tightened muscles.  I could sense the comforting warmth of his cum in me.

"You..." Darren started to ask.  "You love me?"

I paused for only a moment, then blinked and smiled.  "Yes."

Darren tensed for a moment, his body easing away from mine.  I watched with a frozen breath as his eyes looked up the sweat and sex-covered length of my naked body still at his mercy. Against it in my mind, playing out in a continuous loop, was that first memory of him on the train.  He had looked me over almost the same way then as he was doing now.  I suddenly half-expected him to get up, to pull out of me, and then leave.  Instead, he found my eyes and smiled.  I felt his weight relax against my chest and legs.

"Good." he said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Do you love me?"

His lips grazed mine without any hesitation.  His ice-blue eyes stared into my own eyes, pulling me into this new world so I could never go back to the one I had at last left behind.  "More than you'll ever know."

We kissed.

I blinked again, finding a pale ceiling lit by the mid-morning sun filling my vision.  For an instant moment that made my heart stop and skip a beat, I thought it had all been a dream.  I worried that I was once again left with nothing but a barren and wasted reality.

But then I felt the weight in the bed that wasn't my own.  This was not my room in an empty house haunted by a silence that was now eternal.  I looked at Darren's sleeping form and smiled, knowing that this incredible sense of wonder and love were all true.  That this was real.

That he was real.

And we were together.

Not because we needed to be.

Because we wanted to be.

THE END.