This chapter deals with the aftermath of the fight in the dip, in the course of which Young discovers something interesting about his friend Hamilton. And Miles takes part in a little scientific research.
“Oi, Freaky! Come here!”
When Luke arrived at school on Monday morning he hadn’t been sure what to expect from Hamilton, but it really wasn’t this: this was exactly how he’d been addressed pretty much every day of the term so far, and it suggested that nothing had changed. He scowled and made his way to Hamilton’s desk.
“Sorry,” said Hamilton quietly when he got there. “But if I suddenly start calling you anything else people are going to wonder what’s up. Anyway, I’ve been thinking: how do we know you really did film us on Saturday? Maybe the camera wasn’t working and you were just pretending.”
“Thought you might say that,” said Luke, opening his bag. “So I made you both a copy.” He pulled a couple of CD-Rs from his bag and gave one to Hamilton and the other to Young.
“Okay,” said Hamilton, “I don’t want to see it,” and he handed the disc back.
“I’d like to check mine,” said Young, putting it away in his bag. “I reckon one of us ought to make sure it’s genuine.”
“Even if it is, there’s no way he’d put it online, though – is there, Sinclair?” said Hamilton. “After all, this sort of stuff is illegal – you’d get into deep shit if anyone found out.”
“I told you, it’d be encrypted.”
“It’d still be illegal. And when I thought about it yesterday I reckoned you wouldn’t risk it, so we could still give you a good kicking this evening. Except…”
“What?”
“Well, you took me on even though I’m bigger and stronger than you, and you kicked my arse properly. I respect that. So we’ll lay off you, like you said.”
“And of course if we didn’t he could simply give everyone in the form a copy of that CD,” Young pointed out. “Then it wouldn’t have to go online.”
“That, too,” admitted Hamilton. “But really it was the fighting that convinced me. Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“My uncle used to be a boxer.”
“Oh, right. He must have been good, then. Reckon he’d give me lessons?”
“What, so you can get better than me and then go back to beating me up? I don’t think so.”
“You’d still have the film.”
“True, but I don’t think it would be a good idea. You might use it to bully someone else.”
“I wouldn’t… but I get why you think I might. Okay, then, from now on I’ll leave you alone. But… is it okay if I still make comments for a bit? I’ll stop gradually, but… well…”
“You mean you told everyone in class you were going to give me a good kicking, and now you don’t want them all to find out you lost?”
“Well, sort of.”
“I don’t see why I should let you get away with that… but I will. Like I said, I didn’t do it to make you look stupid, so if calling me names for a couple more weeks will help you save face, I’m okay with that.”
“Thanks, Sinclair. We’ll wind it down over the next week or so, then.”
Luke went home on the same bus as Hamilton and Young. He thought this was the real test, because this was the first time the three of them had been alone together, so if Hamilton was going to do anything to him it would be now. But instead they left him alone completely, and when Hamilton got up to get off the bus he actually said “See you” to Luke as he walked past his seat. So it looked as if the battle really had been won.
Next morning Young, who got onto the bus one stop before Hamilton, came and sat next to him.
“I checked the CD last night,” he said, “so I know it’s genuine, and I’ll tell Matt that when he gets on. Is it okay if I keep the CD?”
“Sure, if you want. I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to let anyone see it, though.”
“I don’t, but it makes me look a lot better than Matt. He’d be even less keen to let anyone see it. I notice you cut out the bits with your loony friend in.”
“That was just in case I did have to post it. I mean, Hamilton’s right, it would have been dangerous, but if he’d decided to beat me up again I’d have done it, and I didn’t want Mars on screen. So it’s just you and Hamilton in the film.”
Hamilton got on and Young moved to sit next to him, and they left Luke alone for the rest of the journey. As the week went by they went on calling him ‘Freak’ or ‘Scarface’ occasionally, but they started calling him ‘Sinclair’, too, and by the end of the week this was the only name they were using.
During the Friday lunch break Young asked if he could speak to him privately, so they went for a walk around the tennis courts.
“Do you want to hear something funny?” Young asked him. “See, when you made me fuck Matt on Saturday it felt fucking amazing, so I wanted to do it again. So on Tuesday I got him to come round to mine after school – we do that a lot because we often do our homework together, so our parents are used to it – and once we were in my room I told him I wanted to fuck him again, and that if he refused I’d pass the first bit of your film, the bit with him naked on his own, round the form. I thought he’d just tell me to fuck off and threaten to kick the shit out of me if I showed anyone the film, and if he had said that I’d have made out I was just taking the piss and said we should get on with our homework. But instead he seemed to get all nervous.
“’Come on, Sam,’ he said, ‘don’t do that. It felt so weird…’
“So I thought, okay, he’s not exactly threatening me with murder here, so I just ordered him to strip. And I was gobsmacked when he just started to undress.
“’You swear not to tell anyone?’ he said. ‘If the rest of the class found out about this they’d kill me.’
“I just waited without saying anything and he stripped completely naked and stood there – and he had a boner! He was trying to hide it, but I could tell. I didn’t say anything about it, just told him to lie across the edge of my bed, and I went to the bathroom to get the Vaseline and the spare toilet roll. And then I undressed and did it to him, like on Saturday – except it was a lot better doing it in private and on a comfortable bed, of course. It took me a long time, but it was absolutely brilliant. Afterwards we cleaned up and got dressed and then just did our homework like nothing had happened – but the really funny part was that when he went for a pee just after we got dressed I noticed a little wet patch where he’d been lying, and when I looked more closely I realised that being fucked had made Matt come!
“Anyway, I still didn’t say anything, and we did our homework and he went home. And then yesterday he suggested we went to his house to do our homework, and almost as soon as we were in his room he said ‘You’re not going to fuck me again tonight, are you?’ which I thought was a complete give-away, so I said, ‘What if I say I am going to?’ and he said ‘Well, I can’t do a lot to stop you while you’ve got that film, can I? But please don’t – it’s really humiliating,’ and I said, ‘Well, it’s a lot less humiliating than it would be if the other boys in the form got to see that film, isn’t it?’ and he said that he supposed that was true. So I ordered him to strip, and he did it without arguing and bent over the bed again, and before I even asked he told me there was some Vaseline in the drawer of his bedside table.
“So this time I was sort of looking out for the moment he came, and I could tell when it happened because everything tightened up and he sort of froze for a moment – in fact he squeezed so hard I nearly came myself: it felt unbelievable. So when we finished I told him to face me, and I saw that his erection had disappeared but that the end of his cock was wet.
“So he likes it, Sinclair – Matt enjoys getting fucked! And I bet if I don’t mention it for a few days he’ll try to get me to do it again – he’ll say something like ‘I’m really glad you’ve stopped fucking me’ or something like that, just to get me to do it again.”
“Why don’t you just ask if he wants you to do it?”
“Don’t be stupid – he’d have to say no, because if he ever admitted it he’d be owning up to being gay, and Matt would never do that, even if he is really. Not that I care whether he is or not: as long as he likes it he’ll be happy to keep on doing it, and that suits me just fine because it makes me feel fucking incredible. But we have to make a sort of game out of it – he pretends he doesn’t want it and is only doing it because I’m forcing him to. That way he can pretend to himself that he’s not turning queer.”
“Okay. Why tell me, though?”
“I thought you’d like to know. And… well, since you made it happen the first time I’m sort of grateful. So if you want to come and watch sometime – or even join in – I’d be cool with that.”
Luke’s first thought was ‘no’, but then he thought some more and decided it might be interesting to watch his erstwhile tormenter allowing himself to be shagged. So he said he’d think about it, which seemed to satisfy Young.
Things were back to normal at Miles’s school, too: all the suspended pupils were back this week. The five of them seemed a little nervous around Toby at first, but he didn’t seem unhappy to see them – in fact his behaviour had become a lot less exclusive since his return to school, and he spent the ten minutes or so before Miss Steadman arrived perched on Twitch’s desk chatting happily to him and Miles.
On the Monday morning Graham went and stood at the front of the class, called for everyone to shut up for a moment and then said “I want to apologise to Miles and Twitch for putting that photo up. We played a forfeit game at half-term and when they lost we made them do that, so it wasn’t their idea. And I snuck a photo while they were doing it. And sticking it on the board was right out of order and I shouldn’t have done it. So I’m sorry, you two, okay?”
“What photo was that?” asked Toby, who of course hadn’t been in class the day the photo appeared.
“It was one of me and Twitch kissing,” said Miles.
Toby snickered. “I wish I’d seen that,” he said.
“I’ve still got it,” said Twitch. “Hang on a moment.” He scrabbled in his bag and produced the photo.
“I thought we threw that away,” said Miles, staring at him.
Twitch shrugged. “I decided to keep it. When I’m old and dying I’ll be able to look at it and remember that one person actually did once kiss me and live.”
Miles checked to see that everyone except Toby was looking somewhere else and then put his arm round Twitch’s shoulders and hugged him.
“You’ll have forgotten me by then, because there will have been hundreds of girls in your life,” he said.
“I don’t think so. But thanks for saying so, anyway.”
“I think he’s right,” said Toby to Twitch. “Everyone changes as they get older. I might get contact lenses, for a start. And maybe you’ll look sort of rugged and strong when you get older.”
“Not unless I have plastic surgery… though I suppose I could do that.”
“Don’t,” said Miles. “I like you being you, not a pin-up from a stupid magazine. And I keep telling you that it’s your personality that really matters: any girl who gets to know you is going to like you a lot.”
“As long as I keep a paper bag over my head. It’s okay, Miles, I’m not worried about it – or not yet, anyway. People like me and Toby are always going to find it harder than good-looking boys like you. Girls will be all over you in a year or so.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Toby. “At least I’m sexually mature, unlike you two.”
“Yes, but you’d have to persuade a girl to go out with you before you’d get a chance to prove it,” said Twitch. “Miles won’t have that problem.”
“I’m not interested in going out with girls, or at least not yet,” said Miles. “I’d sooner hang around with you two.”
And that made them both feel a lot happier.
On the Friday Miles got a rather unexpected invitation: Robyn came and found him at break and asked if he was doing anything the following afternoon.
“Well, not so far,” Miles told her. “Why?”
“Well… I was hoping that maybe you’d come round to help me and Jack with our investigations.”
“Really? Why me?”
“Because you and Jack are sort of different… you know, there, and I’d like to find out more about it.”
Miles was in two minds about it. On the one hand he wasn’t particularly interested in Robyn’s body – at least, he told himself, not until we both get a bit older. But on the other he did think he’d like another look at Jack, and as he had nothing else planned – Toby had rather vaguely said he was going to be busy that weekend, Twitch was going shopping with his dad to find some new stuff for the model railway and Graham was still grounded – he said yes.
“Great! Thanks, Miles. Come round after half-past two.”
So Miles did that, and once again he found Jack already in Robyn’s room. The difference was that this time Robert took him up to his sister’s room and then closed the door from the inside.
“My parents think that if we’re both here we won’t do anything we shouldn’t,” he explained. “I’m not quite sure why they think that, but still…”
“Like I told you last time, I’m interested in how boys change as they grow up,” Robyn told Miles. “Jack is already starting to grow up, and I think you are, too, and I thought it would be interesting to compare you. So if you’d like to get undressed we can start.”
“Hang on,” said Miles. “That hardly seems fair – me and Jack have to strip while you and Rob sit there giggling at us with all your clothes on?”
“I won’t be giggling,” Robyn assured him. “This is a serious study.”
“What about Rob?”
“Well… okay,” said Robyn. “Rob, since you’re here you have to undress too, or it won’t be fair on Jack and Miles.”
“What about you?” asked Jack.
“I’m conducting the study, not taking part in it. But I suppose I could think about getting undressed afterwards.”
The boys looked at each other, and then Jack shrugged and started to undo his shirt. And Miles decided that since he’d already agreed to come to help Robyn with her ‘research’ he might as well get on with it, so he sat on the bed and removed his trainers.
When he and Jack were down to their boxers he stopped. “Come on, Rob,” he said. “You, too, or we’ll lock you in the wardrobe.”
“Do I have to?”
“Of course you do. This is a study about boys; you’re a boy; so you get studied. Get undressed.”
Muttering, Robert started to undress. The other two waited for him, and only when Rob’s briefs came off did they remove their boxers, revealing that Jack was already stiff, and Miles felt himself beginning to get the same way as soon as he looked at Jack.
“Now that’s why boys are interesting,” commented Robyn. “I like the way they stick up without any obvious reason.”
“The reason is that you’re in the room,” Jack told her. “Girls have that effect on boys – at least, they do when they’re pretty.”
“Thank you, Jack. Okay, let’s get some details down. Jack, when’s your birthday?”
“November the twenty-eighth.”
“So you’re eleven and…nearly seven months. Miles?”
“July the twenty-fifth.”
“So you’re still ten – say ten and eleven months. And Rob and I will be eleven next week, so we can put him down as exactly eleven. Okay… I’d say Miles and Jack are about the same length…”
She picked up a ruler and measured. It was the first time Miles had ever been touched like that by a girl, and it was strange, but no more so than it had been the first time Twitch had touched him.
“Jack is maybe half a centimetre longer,” Robin reported. “And his is thicker, too, though that’s not so easy to measure. Rob, let’s check you – can you make it stiff for me?”
Robert was clearly embarrassed but he quickly declared that he could do it himself rather than getting his sister to try. And eventually he achieved the desired result.
“It’s still pretty small,” said Robyn. “Let’s see… I make it a bit over six centimetres. And your balls are a lot smaller than theirs, too. Now, you and Miles are straight, while Jack’s curves up a bit. Why is that?”
None of them were able to answer that question: all of them said theirs had always been the way it was now.
“And why hasn’t Jack got any skin over the end of his?” asked Robyn.
“It was cut off when I was a baby,” Jack told her. “That happens sometimes. The first time I noticed that mine was different from Jamie’s – we used to splash about in a paddling pool when we were really small – I asked about it, and my dad told me some families have it cut off their kids. Sometimes it’s because the skin won’t open properly…”
“Twitch had it done for that reason,” Miles put in. “Except he didn’t have all of it cut off, just the very end.”
“And sometimes it’s just because some people think it’s healthier,” Jack went on. “Boys with skin have to remember to wash underneath it properly, or they can get infections.”
That was news to Miles, who decided he was going to have to ask his father about that as soon as he got a chance to do so.
“Well, I think it looks nice without. Mind you, I think Miles looks nice with, so I suppose it’s okay either way. Right, now I’d better see how hard they are.”
She took hold of Miles and squeezed it gently, pushing it down to find out how far she could get it without hurting him and then letting it spring back up again. Miles felt strange: he decided that he preferred letting Twitch touch him, though he realised that part of the problem might have been the fact that Rob and Jack were watching and trying not to giggle.
Rob stopped giggling when his sister moved on to him. She handled him for a minute or so while he stood there blushing.
“It’s nice and hard,” she told him. “And it’ll probably grow soon – I think we’ll reach puberty in the next year or so. I’ll tell you why in a minute. Right, Jack’s turn.”
Jack showed no reluctance at all, and she seemed to spend longer handling him than she had the others. She also stroked his balls at the same time, and as she did so a small bead of liquid appeared at the tip of Jack’s penis.
“Are you going to pee?” she asked him, letting go smartly.
Jack shook his head. “That’s not pee,” he said.
“Oh, right. So… does that mean that your balls already work?”
“Well, I can’t get very much out yet, but I suppose they’re starting to,” he said.
“Wow! What about you, Miles – have you got any sperm yet?”
“Not yet,” said Miles. “At least, I’m pretty sure I haven’t.”
“Rob?”
Robert just shook his head.
“Well, that just proves it’s a good thing I wouldn’t let them make Jack and me have sex,” she said. “Jack’s got some sperm, so I could get pregnant. I mean, I probably wouldn’t, but it is possible, because I had my first period last month.”
Miles had obviously missed that bit in his H&R classes, or maybe he’d just tuned it out because he wasn’t interested in girls, so she explained it for him.
“So it means that Jack and I are both just about mature enough to make a baby,” she said. “And that’s why I think you’ll start growing soon, Rob – girls develop a bit earlier than boys, but we’re twins, so if I’m starting to mature, soon you will too.”
Rob looked a bit happier about that.
“You can tell Jack’s getting grown up because he’s starting to get some hair,” she went on. “I should think Miles will get some soon, too, and probably Rob and I will in a few months. Jack, can you get any more sperm out for us to see?”
“Well… would you like to try?” he asked her.
“Okay. What do I have to do?”
“First you get undressed, because it isn’t fair otherwise. Then I’ll show you.”
By this stage she was interested enough to accept these terms, so she undressed, and then Jack showed her how to hold his erection and what to do with. Then he lay back on the bed and let her get on with it.
Miles and Robert watched with interest, and Miles was surprised how little time it took before Jack gasped and clenched his fists and toes as a couple of little spurts of colourless liquid erupted from his penis. Robyn kept hold of him, still rubbing it until he told her to stop.
“That was really interesting,” she told him.
“I liked it, too,” said Jack, getting his breath back. “There’ll be more when I get a bit older, of course.”
“Then I think we ought to do that regularly, so we can monitor your progress,” said Robyn.
“That’s a really good idea,” said Jack immediately, taking a tissue from the little box beside her bed and wiping himself down with it. “Can I get dressed now, please? Only most boys feel a bit strange after that happens to them.”
“Oh. Okay, then,” she said, a little unenthusiastically. Then she turned to the other two.
“Do you think we should try that with you?” she asked. “Just in case you’ve started getting some?”
“No, thanks,” said her brother at once.
“Miles?”
“No, I don’t think so – not yet, anyway. Maybe when I get a bit older and start getting some hair, like Jack.”
Actually he didn’t think he’d really want Robyn doing that to him: at the moment it was on the list of things he’d prefer to keep between himself and Twitch, and maybe Toby, though he recognised that he might feel differently about it in the future.
They got dressed and Miles said goodbye and rode home. He liked the idea of regular checks on his progress through puberty, although he thought he’d probably choose Twitch to carry them out instead of Robyn. And when he got home he found that his brother had been thinking along similar lines. As soon as Miles put his head around Martin’s bedroom door Martin called him inside.
“You know we were talking about letting my fur… I mean, my hair grow?” he asked. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that. I think it would be really interesting to make a film of it. We’ll borrow Luke’s camcorder, or get one of our own if we can persuade Mother to buy one for us, and then every week I’ll undress and you can film me for exactly one minute. We can mark a big piece of paper with scales showing inches and centimetres and I’ll stand in the same place every week so you can see how tall I am, and I’ll say something – maybe I could say how much I weigh, or something – so that we can hear when my voice starts to change. If we filmed one minute every week we could probably get at least three years onto a DVD, and then we’d have a complete record of me going through puberty and growing up. What do you think?”
“I think that’s a really cool idea – nice thinking, Mars. We’d have to download it onto Luke’s PC until we get one of our own, but I don’t suppose he’d mind.”
“I really like the idea. Only you have to make me swear to keep going with the project every week even if I start getting all moody and bad-tempered later – that’s what Mother says often happens to teenage boys, so I suppose I’ll get like that, too. Oh, and when your body starts to change we could do the same thing for you, if you like.”
Miles wasn’t sure about that. “That won’t be for ages yet,” he said, in contradiction of what Robyn had told him. “I don’t think I need to decide if I’m going to do that for a long time.” Having Twitch check regularly to see if he had any sperm was one thing: having films of him naked on Luke’s computer was another matter.
Sunday June 22nd
This afternoon Luke came round to my house. He’s really happy, because everything has worked out perfectly: Hamilton and Young have left him alone all week, and in fact he says Hamilton was impressed with his boxing, and Young seems almost friendly, so it really looks as if his problem is over. He says now he should be able to settle down and enjoy school.
I told him about my idea for filming me as I go through puberty and he thinks it’s an interesting idea. He said he’d be happy to do the filming himself, and he won’t mind lending me the camcorder so that Miles can do it if Luke is away on holiday or something. We’re going to do the first minute next time he comes over, so I’ll have to work out exactly how we’re going to do it and what information we want on the record before next weekend.
You can just see the first little hairs coming back at the base of my penis now. I asked Luke if I should get rid of them before the first minute of the film, but he said it’s entirely up to me: he’d like to see what I look like once it’s growing, but he won’t mind at all if I decide to use the cream again – he reckons it’ll only delay things by three or four weeks at the most. (I asked Miles a bit later, and he said I should use the cream: he thinks it’ll look better if I start with no hair at all and then we can record it as it grows, so I’ll probably do that).
Then I took him downstairs and played the piano for him. First I played him my arrangement of the track 'Lucky' from the Radiohead album 'OK Computer', and then I played the first track from Anathema’s ‘Alternative 4’ album, which is fairly easy: on the album the first minute or so is just for piano, though when the guitars come in my version isn’t anything like as good as the original. Luke liked it, though, and he asked how come I was playing it without music, so I told him I’d learned it by listening to the album, which he said was quite impressive.
And then I asked if he would like to try singing something. My mother has a lot of vocal music – she used to sing a bit when she was younger – and so I found a copy of Handel’s ‘Ombra mai fu’ and asked if he could read music, and when he said he could I suggested we should try it. He wasn’t sure – he said he didn’t speak Italian, but I said that didn’t really matter and that he should just sing something, and it wouldn’t matter if he pronounced the words wrong. So I started playing and he came in in the right place… and he was really good. He had good breath control, and even the pronunciation was pretty good, though he used a hard ‘g’ instead of a soft one. But I don’t think that matters at all.
So then he had a go at Bach’s ‘Bist du bei mir’ – he doesn’t speak German, either, and so the pronunciation of the word ‘freuden’ was wrong, but even though the singer gets a lot less help in this than he does in the Handel he still didn’t do at all badly. I helped him out here and there, and his voice is definitely better than mine, even though I can sing in tune.
Then I decided to try a proper duet. It’s by Rossini, and when I got it out of the piano stool he said something like ‘Is it in Italian again?’ so I said ‘Not exactly’ – it’s the cats’ duet, where the only word is ‘meow’. The accompaniment is very easy, so I sang the first part – at least, I started to, but by this time we had an audience: Miles had come down from his room and my mother had come out of the kitchen, and a couple of bars into the duet my mother took over the vocal, leaving me to play the accompaniment. Luke got the idea fairly quickly, and by the time they got to the end he seemed to be enjoying trying to keep up with her as she added more and more ornamentation to her line.
We thought that would be a good place to stop, so we went back to my room to listen to the rest of the Anathema album. Before we went my mother said that Luke had a really good voice and that he ought to use it, but once we were back in my room he said that he wouldn’t want to stand up in public and sing because he’d feel too self-conscious about his scar. Miles had come upstairs with us, and he pointed out that a lot of the men who sing in the metal bands I like are as ugly as sin, but that it didn’t stop them performing in public. He said we ought to find a couple of friends who can play the guitar and start a band, which is when Luke surprised us by saying that he played the guitar himself, although he said he wasn’t very good.
‘Then you should definitely start a band,’ Miles said. ‘All you need now is a drummer and someone who can play bass. I bet if Luke asked around at school he could find someone. And the best way not to worry about your scar is to be completely open about it – seeing that’s it’s you two starting it up you could call the band “Scarface and the Alien” or something like that.’
Actually I think that’s a pretty good name for a band, and Luke said he thought it was a good way of being upfront about his face. Of course, it probably won’t happen – Luke hasn’t got a lot of friends at school, and Miles said that as far as he knows none of his friends play either the bass or the drums – but it’s a nice idea, all the same…
Another week went by. Things were completely back to normal at Miles’s school, though Graham still had some time to go before his grounding finished. This meant that he still wasn’t available for Miles to spend time with the following weekend, though instead Miles and Twitch both got an invitation to visit Toby on the Saturday afternoon.
“Should we wear our best clothes?” asked Miles, and Toby said, “Definitely not – I don’t want my parents thinking it’s normal to dress up like a Christmas tree just to go and play at someone’s house. And if you do turn up like that I’ll make you take all the fancy stuff off and spent the afternoon in your underwear.”
“I’d like to see you try,” said Miles, though he was pleased to know that his usual jeans and tee-shirt would be acceptable.
And when they got to Toby’s house they found that they weren’t the only visitors: Toby had found his new cards partner.
“Josh?!” exclaimed Miles.
“Why not? We sit together, he’s quite brainy, and he’s doing me a big favour at the moment. Tell them, Josh.”
“If he puts his hand up to answer a question twice in a row I whisper ‘Hermione’ at him,” Josh told them, grinning. “And if he does it four times in any lesson he has to pay me fifty pence. So far it’s cost him a pound.”
“It’s worth it, though,” said Toby. “If I stop doing the Teacher’s Pet routine maybe everyone will treat me normally. And it does seem to be working so far. Anyway, I’ve been teaching Josh to play cards, and now we reckon we’re ready to take you two on. Let’s play crib – losers get stripped.”
“Okay,” agreed Miles. “Just as long as you know you’re going to end up looking silly.”
But it turned out that Toby and Josh won, though whether that was due to more skilful play or just lucky cards was anyone’s guess.
“Come on, then,” said Toby, grinning triumphantly. “We’re waiting.”
So Miles and Twitch got undressed. Miles could see that Josh was staring avidly at their groin areas, so he was clearly enthusiastic about this sort of game, and when Toby said that the winners were now allowed to examine the losers Josh almost fell over in his rush to grab told of Miles’s genitals. And he wasn’t gentle about it, either – in fact it was really painful.
“Ow! Come on, Josh, you’re not allowed to try to hurt me,” he protested.
“Do it gently,” advised Toby. “If you just sort of tickle him it’ll make it go hard – see?” Twitch, whom Toby was working on, got an erection right on cue.
“Oh, right. Like this, you mean?” said Josh, delicately caressing Miles instead, and that very quickly had the desired effect.
“Wow, that’s big, isn’t it, Toby?” he said. “He’s miles bigger than you.”
“That’s me,” said Miles, who thought this was an absolute give-away. “I’m Miles, and I’m bigger than you.”
“He hasn’t got any sperm, though,” Toby pointed out. “Want to swap?”
So he and Josh changed places, and Toby played with Miles for a while, and it felt really nice, though Toby stopped before it got too exciting.
“Can we make them kiss each other, like in the photo?” asked Josh.
“We’re not doing forfeits,” Toby told him. “I mean, I know I can trust these two not to hurt me if I lose, but I’m still off forfeits a bit.”
“We’ll kiss each other if you like,” said Twitch. “But if we do you’ll have to do the same thing when you lose.”
“Okay,” agreed Josh, without hesitation.
“Not that we’re going to lose, of course,” added Toby.
So Twitch came and put his arms round Miles, who kissed him gently on the lips, and this time Twitch showed no signs of wanting to pull away, even though they were aware of being watched. And Miles thought it felt absolutely amazing, feeling his friend’s warm body pressing up against him, being aware of their erections squashed together and feeling Twitch’s soft lips moving against his own.
Eventually they came up for air, and saw the other two staring at them.
“Wow!” said Toby. “That looked serious!”
“You two really do like each other, don’t you?” said Josh, though it was obvious from his face that he wasn’t laughing at them – in fact he looked almost envious.
Miles shrugged. “He’s my best friend,” he said. “And he’s also the only boy I’ve ever kissed, so if we’re not doing it right, I’m sorry. We’ve only ever done it like that once before, the time Graham had his camera.”
“No, you looked good,” said Toby. “Okay, next game – except you two aren’t allowed to get dressed for it. After all, it’s obvious you’re going to lose again, so it isn’t worth you getting dressed again first.”
“Okay,” said Miles. “But if we do win we’ll keep you two bare all afternoon.”
“Dream on,” said Toby, shuffling the cards.
It wasn’t easy for Miles and Twitch to concentrate on the next game, because at every pause in play – when the cards were being shuffled between hands, or when someone was deliberating what to throw in the box – the other two fondled their genitals, making sure that both of them remained fully stiff throughout the game. But it seemed that Toby and Josh spent too long playing with their opponents’ erections and not long enough concentrating on their cards, because Miles and Twitch won the game fairly comfortably.
“Revenge!” cried Miles, grabbing his boxers and pulling them over his still solid penis. “Strip, losers!”
Toby immediately unbuttoned his shirt, but Josh hesitated.
“Are you sure we can trust them?” he asked.
“Absolutely certain. I’d trust these two with my life – they were the ones who helped me over… you know, what I did with the pills, and that. They’d never do or say anything to hurt me, or you, either.”
Which was a pretty fine testimonial, Miles thought proudly.
So Josh started to undress, too, though he hesitated once more when he got down to his briefs.
“Don’t laugh, or I’ll kill you,” he said.
He pulled them off, revealing a fairly small set of genitals, but one that was adorned with some pubic hair – not just the odd wisp, like Jack, but proper little brown curls, slightly darker in colour than the nondescript mid-brown of the hair on his head.
“Who’s laughing?” said Miles, staring. “The only person I know with as much hair as that is Kevin, and he’s thirteen. You’re really mature, Josh.”
“I’ve got a little cock, though.”
“So what? And, anyway, I reckon it’s bigger than Toby’s. Come here and I’ll see if I can make it any bigger.”
Slightly reluctantly Josh came forward and Miles caressed his genitals until he got an erection. He was right: it still wasn’t very big, though it was slightly longer than Toby’s. Then Miles went to his jeans – he was only wearing his boxers – and got his comb, which he used to fluff up Josh’s pubic hair.
“You look really good,” he said. “I don’t think you’ve got anything to be ashamed about. Except now you have to kiss Toby, which might make you feel a bit strange.”
“I don’t see why: we’re sort of friends now, and it didn’t seem to make you and Twitch feel ashamed. As long as you don’t tell anyone else about it, of course.”
“Of course we won’t.”
“Good. Take your glasses off, Tobes – I don’t want you to break my nose with them.”
Toby removed his specs and they began to kiss, hugging each other at the same time. And they kept it up for several seconds, too, and when they finally stopped they stared at each other.
“That was… God, I didn’t know it would be like that,” said Toby.
“Me neither. Shall we try again?”
So they did, and this time it lasted even longer.
“You look really good together like that,” said Twitch.
“It feels really good, too,” said Toby.
“It does, doesn’t it?” agreed Josh. “You feel warm and alive and really close… I’ve wondered what it would be like to kiss someone, but I would never have guessed it would feel like that.”
“Can we try something else?” asked Toby. “I’d like to find out if you’ve got any sperm yet. Can I?”
“Okay.”
Toby positioned Josh on his back on the bed, sat down beside him and started to masturbate him. It didn’t take long: Josh was soon wriggling about, his eyes closed, his entire body reacting to what Toby was doing to him, and then he gave a short cry and arched his back and a couple of jets of liquid spurted out of his penis – rather more than Jack had managed, and this even had a milky tinge to it.
“Looks like me and Josh are men and you two are still little boys,” Toby commented, finding a handkerchief to wipe Josh’s tummy with. “How do you feel?”
“Like we might have to duff you up,” said Miles, grabbing him. But instead of beating him up they pinned him down and wanked him until he got wet.
“Looks like Josh has got more than you, so I shouldn’t start shouting too loudly about who is mature and who isn’t,” advised Miles.
“I’ve still got more than you.”
“True, but not for long. And if you don’t shut up about it we really will make you stay bare all afternoon.”
Of course at this point Toby didn’t feel like staying bare, so sensibly he shut up, at least until all four of them were fully dressed once more.
They spent the rest of the afternoon playing non-strip games of one sort and another, and by the time he went home Miles thought that Toby had finally found himself a real friend, maybe even one who would become as important to him as Twitch was to Miles. And if that was true, maybe Toby’s previous unhappiness might have gone for good.
So Toby has found a like-minded friend, and Martin and Luke are thinking about making use of Luke's singing voice. And we'll find out more about that in the next chapter.
What I said at the end of the last thirteen chapters about the mail address gothmog@nyms.net – again.
Copyright 2009: all rights reserved. Please do not reprint, repost or otherwise reproduce this or any part of it anywhere without my written permission.
David Clarke