Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2022 19:16:58 +0000 From: Neo Subject: "Backseat passenger" The wet tarmac crackles under the tyres, ejecting a razor-sharp mist that hums in the air. If you cut the lifeless grey-white sky with a knife it would be the same colour and texture all the way down forever. It could be any time of day, any season of the year. This is an in- between place. The car in front is a Toyota, according to the sticker in its back window. Its dark green silhouette is quite familiar now, in that temporary sort of way that the car in front becomes familiar after miles in unpunctuated convoy. "Pom, pom pom POM pom," proclaims Dad quietly from the driving seat. Classic FM is playing The Barber of Seville overture. "I'm finding the music a bit oppressive," says Mum apologetically from the passenger seat in front of me. "Is it okay if we have it off for a bit?" It's not really a question. The radio goes off. "We could play a game?" Mum suggests instead. "How about I Spy?" Again, she doesn't need a response. "I spy with my little eye... something beginning with... 'C'." The Toyota in front brakes a little, slowed by a line of lorries as the road bends slightly uphill. The red rear lights mix with the wet road. "Car," Dad guesses. "No." "Um... cloud?" I offer after a while. It's not a very good guess. A bit like looking at an omelette and saying you can see an egg. "No." I don't know how much time goes by between the guesses. The point of the game is to pass the time, after all. The heavy 'tick-tock' of the indicator is the next thing to interrupt the road hiss, as Dad lifts us into the middle lane. The long grey hum climbs half a semitone as he accelerates slightly to overtake the Toyota. I turn instinctively as we draw level with the other car. It's human nature: I want to peer in at the other travellers temporarily trapped in the in-between place with us. The eye contact is sudden and absolute. My fellow back-seat captive is a boy of twelve or thirteen. I recognise the expression on his face, because it's the same as the one on mine. The intrepid indifference of a passenger. He's come from somewhere, and he's going somewhere, but for now, he's nowhere, just like me. I take him in quickly, knowing I won't see him again. His hair is mid-length and blond. Darker at the roots where the sun hasn't kissed it. The sort of light, silky hair that rests naturally straight and close to the face. It makes slanting turns around his head: alternating strands of gold, silver and bronze, perfectly framing his eyes. His expression doesn't change, but he doesn't break eye contact. I try to make out his eye colour. Brown, perhaps, or could it be green? The two panes of glass that separate our different spheres make it hard to see clearly, and our car is pulling ahead now. I turn my head further as we pass, but I can't see him anymore. The interior of the other vehicle dims with distance like stage lights going down after a play. "It was 'cone'," Mum declares. "Cone?" "Yes, like a traffic cone. The orange ones? There was a line of them in the middle of the road." "Traffic cone would be 'T', not 'C'." "Well, it was 'cone'." The sky darkens above us as we draw in behind a towering lorry. Its huge rear wheels spin furiously, kicking back spray that streams in rivulets from every part of the mechanical beast. Dad's indicator clunks on again, preparing another punctuation mark in the journey. But the lorry has the same idea, signalling its intent and pulling out into a thundering overtake of its own. Like a great frigate hauling into the wind, it seems to lean slightly as it sails dizzyingly between the lanes. Dad follows, and his turn signal stays on: he'll take the fast lane and overtake both lorries. The air strains around us, filled with noise and spray. The indicator light's metric clunk is only barely audible. The nose of our car edges closer to the lorry's sphere of influence. Catapulted water drops clatter suddenly on our windscreen. The engine whines in protest. Mum draws in a breath. Her hand lifts just barely in an interrupted gesture. The indicator goes off; the engine relents. Dad's not in a hurry. "Is it raining again?" That's my sister, in the seat beside me, woken from her doze by the angry splatter of water on glass. "Not much," Mum reassures her. "Just the spray from the lorries." The air gets a little brighter, and a little quieter, as we fall back further behind the lorry and return to a more settled pace. It's a moment or two before I realise that our slowing down has left us level with the dark green Toyota again. I take a breath before I deliberately turn towards it. Is he looking at me? His stare forces a breath into my lungs, even though I'm expecting it. Brown eyes, I decide, before I burrow my gaze into his soul. The connection is by agreement. We observe each other urgently, searchingly, carefully. No words pass; no clumsy gestures or expressions: we already know everything that matters about one another. I don't know how much time goes by. The point of the game is to pass the time, after all. He has the faintest suggestion of freckles just below his eyes. Someone who doesn't know him as well as I do might not even notice them. My favourite thing about him is his eyelashes, though. They start dark and then fade into the same two-tone gold as his hair, disappearing into a haze of electricity that makes his eyes fairly sparkle. I wonder what kind of underwear he's wearing. "Eighteen miles," announces Dad, as the sign for the ferry terminal rises into view beside the motorway. "How are we doing for time?" he continues, to no-one in particular. "We can eat on the ferry," replies Mum. "I hope it's not too expensive." "My treat," Dad says, smiling as he catches my eye in the rear-view mirror. At the junction Dad aims the car expertly through the mounting traffic towards the slip road, slowing down once or twice to look for a gap to pull in. I can't see the Toyota. I think it was ahead of us. "It's getting busier," says Mum. "Quite a few lorries about," Dad agrees. "Slows the whole road down a bit." "It'll be getting dark soon too." "Mm." The quiet feels unfamiliar as we reach the top of the slip road and slow right down for the roundabout. Mum's right: the impression of twilight is starting to coil in the air. We snake through the evening streets, skirting the city. I'm disoriented after the first turn, and apparently I'm not the only one, because before long Dad pulls into the side of the road with a sigh. "Need to look at the map," he says. "These roads all look the same. Can you pass me the road atlas? In the seat-back pocket." I fish out the well-used coil-bound book from in front of me and pass it forward. Cars flow past us, their noise insistent and incessant. I wonder where the Toyota is now. With a sad smile I picture it gliding onward along the motorway towards the night, its passenger watching the road through the window. I wonder if he's thinking of me. "So if we're here..." Dad says. "Okay. I know where I went wrong. Let's try this again!" He passes the atlas back and starts the engine once more. It's easy to tell when we've arrived. The ferry terminal has a heavy silence about it, like a great drum consuming all the sound from its surroundings. There's still daylight, but the entrance is already orange-argon lit, trying to absorb the colour from the air too. We roll slowly past concrete pillars and add our splash to the roadside puddles. Silence as we stop at a barrier. Muffled conversation through the driver's side window: words I can't make out. Then we're moving again, the tyres playing a different tune as they encounter unfamiliar metalwork in the road. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when we're on the boat, but the light has changed from blue-orange to yellow-white and the car seems suddenly startled, caught in an indoor world where it doesn't belong. I can hear other cars all around us, or it might be the echo of our own engine-noise. A high-vis orange jacket waves us forward. The engine dies with a sigh of relief as we park up under the low ceiling of the boat's stomach. I open my door first, eager to shake out my too-long compressed creases. The crunch of the door's metallic release is amplified by the walls, and I realise too that there's a background bustle, a hum of travellers and crew both seen and unseen. We brought the silence with us in the car; it wasn't really here. The air smells of cigarettes, petrol exhaust and movement. There's an unrehearsed pause as we each stretch and get our bearings, adjusting to the surroundings. "Ready to find the restaurant?" "Let's look for the cabins first. There wasn't much choice when I phoned, I'm afraid. Your mum and I have a double berth, but I had to take what I could get for you two." "I don't get a private room?" I joke. "On this tin can? You'll be lucky! Better than sleeping in the car, though." We queue single file to pick our way past the unconscious cars on our mission to find our quarters. I make it all of three steps before I'm brought up short by an instantly recognisable dark green shape. The car in front is a Toyota. My heart stops beating while I ransack the vehicle with my eyes. But the seats are empty: no trace of its inhabitants. Yet I know it's the same car. I recognise it intimately. He's here, and the spinning dynamo in my chest races with silent energy. He's here, and I'll see his face again, and brush my mind along his barely-freckled cheeks, and let my thoughts play between his eyelashes. He's here, and I'll inhabit his world, and feel the burning glow of him from across the room. I can already feel it through the walls; I just need to follow it, to focus in on it, divine its source and find him. I know I'll recognise him. Will he recognise me? Where will we be when we see each other? How I want to know his voice, or the soft sound of his breathing disturbing the atmosphere of my planet. "Coming?" "Coming." I find the shared cabin more quickly than I expect. Four neat white beds, one already claimed by a black canvas holdall. It gives off an aura of stale cigarette smoke. Not his. I take stock of the small space only briefly before turning to drop my backpack on the bed at the opposite corner. A square window looks out across the port, and the sky is a little darker now, ultramarine and deep enough to gratefully soak up the lights of the city that flood the middle distance. The cafeteria, when I reach it, is a wide, flat space with too many windows and not enough walls. A great glass curve makes up half the room, tables next to each pane. Squat round pillars lift the ceiling not quite high enough above the floor. The room tries to reflect back in on itself against its angled surfaces, but the remains of daylight still fight their way in and make the reflections ghostly. I cast my eyes around for my family, but I see him first, of course, because he is magnetic and the light-rays curve towards him. He is facing the glass, his back towards me, so I know he wasn't expecting me, or he would have seated himself with a view of the door. He leans forward, arms folded on the table-top, a little bored perhaps. Mum and Dad aren't here yet, and there are plenty of free tables to choose from. But none where he can see me. I pause, weighing up the options, and suddenly lock eyes with him as I stare absent-minded. How? Of course: the reflection. He instantly turns, disoriented, to see if I'm really there. "Picked a table?" comes Dad's cheerful voice from behind my shoulder. "Yes." My calculation works: I can see my blond-haired hero perfectly in the oblique glass just over Dad's shoulder as we take our seats by the window. But the view is short-lived, as a well- meaning crew member inserts himself bluntly into my line of sight. "Thank you for travelling with us today. Can I bring you something to drink? We'll be serving food at the counter as soon as we get underway." "Coke for me, please," I say when it's my turn, prompting a slight eyebrow-raise from Mum. By the time the drinks-server leaves the boy has found me, and his eyes are waiting for mine. I settle into them easily, wishing I could smile more without drawing attention. He sits upright now, his boredom forgotten. I wonder if he's happy to see me. The ferry's engine starts like the opening chord of a grand symphony, though I feel it more than I hear it. The great thrum of power spreads through the floor and up into my seat, where it strains for several long moments before finally we start to break free from the shore. The dimly-visible port lights and city-haze slowly travel the length of the ship and then move steadily further away without seeming to grow any smaller. And then, after a long time and all of a sudden, they're swallowed by the horizon, and all I can see in the window is the blond-haired boy, and the reflection is absolute. About halfway through our meal I see him get up, heading, maybe, to the toilets or to the small counter of cutlery and condiments at the other side of the room. I feel his presence disturb the earth's gravity as he makes to pass behind me. But as he does so, a tall trolley bearing used trays sails the other way, and the boy moves to one side to let it pass. And so it comes to be that he's standing in the too-small gap right next to my seat, so close that if I move even an inch I will touch him. I can feel his warmth igniting the hairs on my skin. There's no eye contact now: I'm looking down at the table; but somehow my focus on him is more intense than when I was looking right at him. Like staring into the sun, transfixed and unable to look away. "Thanks," says the crew member pushing the trolley. "Aye no problem," breathes the boy, inches from my ear, and I'm instantly in love. Irish or Northern Irish? I can't tell. And then he's gone, and I can't sense him without turning my head. The space beside me feels empty. "How's the food?" asks Dad. "All right." "I wish these places wouldn't play music," laments Mum. "So tinny and repetitive. It's giving me a headache." There's music? I hadn't noticed. I feel somehow unsettled until the boy is back. As he sits down in his seat again I look at him closely, wondering if he knows what he just did to me. His hand goes to his face and moves his hair slightly away from his eye as he glances back at me. I can read everything and nothing in his look. Later, when he finishes eating, he looks at me again, for a moment. Putting down his fork, he lifts one finger to his mouth and licks the very tip of it before he turns his eyes away. Deliberately suggestive, or just an accidental coincidence of eye contact as he instinctively cleans up a stray morsel after his meal? I'm not sure it matters, because the effect on me is the same. His group gets up to leave before us, and as I watch them retreat into the window-reflection I suddenly feel the size of the room. I imagine him disappearing somewhere beyond my reach within the ship, and I can bear the feeling in my stomach only a moment before getting up. I need to be with him again. "I'm going to explore for a bit before I go to sleep." "Okay," says Dad. "Don't get lost!" he laughs. "Have you got a coat? Don't get too cold if you go out on the deck," Mum frets. I can see him through the window as I leave the cafeteria. He's drenched in gold by the overhead lights that illuminate the outside walkway. His back is to me: he leans on the railing, looking out towards the invisible sea. He picked this spot because he knew I would see him, says the narrator in my mind. I follow through the exit that he must have left by, imagining that I can feel the warmth left by his touch on the handle. The door opens onto ocean air, but there is no temperature, at least none that I can feel. The boy is moving now, away from me, but slowly. Leaving? I wonder whether to speak, to call him back. What words could I say to break the invisible silver glass and pull my dream into his reality? But he is not going. After five or six deliberate steps he turns towards the rail again and resumes leaning. He's less illuminated now; more ghostly, further from the brightly-lit doorway that leads back into the real world. I follow him, and he comes more sharply into focus as I step out of the light-glow too. I reach him, and I stop and lean against the railing next to him. Too close to him and yet too far away as well. He doesn't turn his head. We look out to sea, side by side. Or rather we look out to nowhere, because the daylight is gone and the once-white cloud has cooled and hardened into thick black tar where the stars and moon should be. If there is a world beyond the boat, it is not this one. "Hello," I say, forcing the word past the heartbeat in my windpipe. "Hello." His voice sounds like a smile. Moments pass, or maybe minutes. We're the only two people in the world. Should we talk? I'm not sure what to say. I realise I don't really want to say anything. Words are made up, and nothing but the truth will do for him. And we're both here, and we're both real. An unseen ocean thrashes blackly beneath us, silent and seething, determined to catch the boat's attention. With all the honesty I can muster I shift my position and rest my hand at the midpoint of the railing between us. It's a question. His fingers answer in slow motion, so that I can feel each tiny spark as his skin comes to rest against mine. In the world on the other side of the door, all the car windows shatter, and the reflections in the cafeteria splinter into shards of reality. Our hands touch lightly at first, and then more urgently as we start to believe. We turn our heads towards each other at the same time, so that I'm not sure which of us initiates the motion. I'm lost in his eyes, as if I'm seeing him for the first time, but he doesn't stop turning, and he's taken my hand and he's leading me away, and my legs have melted and I have left my thoughts at the railing. I follow his fingers through the gap between the ocean and the sky and wonder which way is up. He walks me to a door and pulls me inside. A cabin. The same as mine, four beds in a small space, but these are all empty and unclaimed except for the one he is guiding me down onto. A lock of blond hair escapes from the corner of his face and floats suspended in front of him as he leans forward. I shudder, intoxicated, as my head falls back on the pillow and I find him atop me, his knees either side of my waist. Then he lowers himself, pressing deliberately against my agitated shorts, and my muscles tense instinctively against him in response. A pause. He looks down at me, uncertain. The contact-force between us pulses with wavering anticipation. I need to grab him, take hold of his body and pull him closer into mine, but I wait. He hovers at the boundary between this world and the other. "What are you thinking about?" I ask him. "Whether this is real." He breathes the last word quietly, a touch of sadness creeping into it from the world where it comes from. I move to roll onto my side, wriggling backwards slightly in the too-small bed to make a boy- sized space beside me. Still kneeling astride me, he senses the motion and rolls into the gap to face me, his body taut as he straightens his legs. The friction of my hips against the sheets tugs at my waiting waistband, but I can ignore it for now. We're facing each other, our heads side-by-side on the pillow, held close together by the lack of space. Gold-silk hair spills across his face and pools on the white cotton. His hand travels momentarily to his face to brush back the locks from his eyes so that there's nothing between us. Our bodies are so close to touching that I can feel his warmth in every inch of me. I see his eyelashes quiver when I breathe: a tiny shockwave that travels the length of my body and out through my toes. I'm going to kiss him now. His lips are softer than I had dreamed. No electric skin-on-skin friction of hands and bodies: I'm a butterfly landing silently on a leaf. His reaction is barely perceptible; he waits, letting me experience him. I breathe in through my nose, absorbing what it's like to be him. He smells like warm vanilla and soft brown sugar. After some uncounted number of seconds I turn my head just slightly, my lips seeking out their natural position against his, increasing the area of contact. The movement catches slightly, our surfaces not sure whether to glide silky smooth or cling together. Instinctively and at the same moment we move a millimetre apart to reset the connection. My tongue darts out to prepare the ground just as his does the same, and now I feel the electric charge as our two tongues accidentally touch. My head jumps back against my will, and the kiss is over, broken by the sudden static shock. We lie side-by-side for a while, looking into each other's eyes. His irises are the same colour as his eyelashes, I realise: deep bronze brown fading into streaks of gold. But the colours in his eyes go on forever, like two parallel universes. "Well, you definitely taste real," I can't stop myself from saying. He breaks into a perfect laugh that lights up the edges of his eyes and ripples down the faint freckles on his checks. When it reaches his mouth it scatters his hair in a spray of little golden feathers on the pillow. I feel his body relax across the chasm between us. I kiss him again, aiming lower this time, enfolding his lower lip. There's more pressure this time; more urgency. Our bodies snap together like magnets, suddenly needing to be connected at every point. His arm is resting against his side: my hand dives beneath it to find his back and pull my chest into his. Caught by a wave, the boat changes its gravity, pushing me into him, and I clutch him tight so that I don't fall away again when the sea-swell drops us. My hand climbs up his back to the velvet warmth of his neck. I draw tiny pictures there with my fingertips, tracing love letters in weightless sun-sugar sand. His next movement is too deliberate, as if he's been planning it his whole life. With one hand he pushes my shoulder so that I roll onto my back. The other hand supports him as he shifts his body lengthways down the bed so that his head draws level with my navel. Instinctively I lift my weight off the bed to help him as his hands go to my waistband. My shorts slip off easily: they were only being held up by indecision. The stretch white cotton of my underwear shapes itself to the insistent outline of my erection, its meaning unmistakeable. He looks at it for a moment. Is that admiration in his eyes, or something else? Then his earnest fingers are at my waist again, finding their warm grip on the elastic and guiding it away. My cock spills out into his world in a burst of pent-up heat. I feel my legs drawn together slightly as he places an elbow on the bed either side of me to support himself. The bed shifts under his weight, lowering me, and my hips lift automatically to close the distance between us. I can feel his breath alighting on each of my excited nerve endings. His head moves lower. I'm straining to lift my neck so I can maintain the eye contact. I can see my future sparkle in his eyes. His lips close with fulfilled purpose around the uppermost inch-and-a-half of my dick. His mouth feels like a mirror-image of the world: both cooler and warmer than the air outside. His arm tremors slightly under his weight, the movement traveling through his tongue and straight into the sensitive nexus under the head of my cock. I relax my neck and shoulders, falling softly back into the pillow with a silent sigh of pleasure as I close my eyes. The airtight seal of warmth encircling my cock moves down a faltering centimetre or two. I don't think he's done this before; though it doesn't matter: I was in ecstasy the moment our bodies made contact. My closed eyes conjure an image of the beautiful backseat passenger boy, framed in the car window where I first saw him, his gold-flecked eyes lighting up the dreary motorway. My body starts to tense; a catapult winding itself up to fire. But I feel it strain against a weight in my chest as if a sort of longing is there. My eyes have been shut too long, and I need to see his face again. I lift my neck again, moving my elbows backward to raise my shoulders from the bed. I feel a sort of comfort wash over me as my eyes take him in again and confirm that he's still here in the room with me. He senses my movement and raises his head, his position awkward as he supports himself on his forearms. My foreskin feels suddenly cold, the wetness of his mouth suddenly parted from its home, and the tingling chill sends another tiny spasm shooting through my body. The blond-haired hero looks up at me with hesitant wide-eyed eagerness. "Come here," I reassure him. I want our eyes to stay locked together forever. He shuffles back up the bed obediently, and I kiss him once more, though that's not why I wanted him here. Wordlessly I use my hands to guide him to an upright kneeling position so he's looking down at me from above. His eyes widen slightly as I move to undo the button at his waist. The zip slips open easily and I hurriedly pull down his cargo trousers and underwear at the same time. My own hard cock is still twitching impatiently, missing its briefly-tasted boy-mouth warmth. Boy dick bounds into view like an unleashed puppy leaping at a doorway, frustratingly out of reach, and I drink it in with my eyes. The faintest suggestion of hair has started to grow around it, golden-blond and almost invisible. I pull down at his waistband, but I haven't thought it through: his knees are either side of me and there's nowhere for his suddenly superfluous clothing to go. Sensing what I want, he swings his legs suddenly into the air and slips his trousers and underwear off in one fluid teen movement. His jutting dick carves a slice out of the air as he moves above me. Then he's back, kneeling over me once more, waiting for my next move. I know exactly what I want, and I guide him into position with both hands on his sides. Our eyebeams are permanently joined now, and I see another flash of worried hesitation cross his retinas behind the nervous excitement. His body lowers tamely towards me, not sure where I'm leading him. Then he gasps with realisation as his dick makes contact with mine. I feel his body relax as he shifts his weight off his knees so he's sitting on my legs. I wrap my hand around our now combined hardness, pressing his dick against mine to absorb its firm heat. A connected heartbeat travels through us both at the same time, pulsing in my hand and setting fire to my palm. Purposefully I move my hand downward, feeling his skin move next to mine in exact harmony. My mind starts a countdown, anticipating the six or seven deliberate movements that will launch me over the cliff-edge. Suddenly I feel his fingers pushing mine away. In his eyes there's a hidden wildness that I have not seen in him before. His hand takes over the task and moves frantically, driven by teen testosterone to carry us both faster and further than I had expected. I'm already over the edge, I've broken through the atmosphere and am waiting for the thunderclap to catch up with the supersonic speed of his flying hand. The springs in my body are coiled as tight as they can get, and yet they keep tensing tighter as his hand climbs unrelentingly into space. I study his breathless face, waiting for a signal. His hand keeps moving for far too long and then stops at exactly the right moment. Cum shoots the length of my torso and past my shoulder almost before I'm ready for it, and I'm not sure if it's mine or his or both at once. Pulse after distinct red-hot pulse, but I don't know if I'm feeling them in my body or his, and they come so fast one after the other that the pressure-jet pushing them through me doesn't have time to finish each one before the next one is upon us. His eyes are a wide smile of disbelief. His hand still holds his cock against mine, his firm grip all that's holding us back from taking off into the centre of the sun. Then he leans forward and kisses me again, his warm contented body relaxing onto mine and closing the gap that shouldn't exist between us. I shut my eyes and let his soft hair stroke my face, a curtain between us and the world outside of him. A wave crashes against the side of the boat, throwing spray high into the air. Falling water clatters too close to my ear on the car window beside me. What? I open my eyes stiffly, unsure of the dim light. Dad's eye catches mine in the oblique cafeteria-glass of the driver's rear-view mirror. "Sorry," he says with a reflection of a grin. "Big puddle caught me off guard." "More of a flood than a puddle," remarks Mum to nobody in particular. "It's good timing you woke up when you did, though," Dad continues. "We're nearly there." Blinking, I scan the world outside the windows, adjusting to the suddenly incorrect surroundings. The ferry terminal looms darker than I dreamed it, as if it's casting shadows against the city sky. A line of waiting vehicles sends shards of red light skittering down the wet road towards us. We pull unhurriedly in to the back of the queue and I lean against the window, watching and waiting. A light flicks on inside the vehicle in front, turning the world inside-out and lighting the scene in perfect detail like a photograph of a journey. The front-seat passenger adjusts a bag, double-checking preparations for the overnight ferry ride. A flash of bronze-gold boy in the back seat suddenly etches its instantly familiar silhouette onto my eye-line before the yellow-white light snaps off again. The dim evening reasserts itself, bringing the rest of the world back into view. I search the image through the front windscreen, looking for confirmation of what I already know. The car in front is a Toyota. *** Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story. I love getting feedback and you can reach me at hello_neo@protonmail.com. You might also like my other story on Nifty, which you can read at https://www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/young-friends/will-you-be-my-boyfriend/ Don't forget to support Nifty with a donation. Your friend, Neo.