FOR LOVE OF A DREAM - 2

Copyright 2012 by Carl Mason

All rights reserved. Other than downloading one copy for strictly personal enjoyment, no part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, except for reviews, without the written permission of the author. However based on real events and places, "For Love of a Dream" is strictly fictional. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Further, as in real life, sexual themes unfold gradually. Comments on the story are appreciated and may be addressed to the author at carl_mason@verizon.net

If you would like to read additional stories by this author, please turn to the "Authors/Prolific Authors" link at the beginning of the Nifty Archive.

This story contains descriptions of sexual contact between males, both adults and teenagers. As such, it is homoerotic fiction designed for the personal enjoyment of legal, hopefully mature, adults. If you are not of legal age to read such material, if those in power and/or those whom you trust treat it as illegal, or if it would create unresolvable moral dilemmas in your life, please leave. Finally, remember that maturity generally demands safe sex.

CHAPTER 2

(Revisiting Chapter 1)

"I'm sure you're exhausted," Sears continued, "but is there any chance that you could run through a couple of the more successful plays for me?" "Sure thing, dad. Bill, throw your shirt off and help me show dad how we worked the plays that set up those headers." For the next half hour, the floor of the Sears library became the field at Crocker Memorial - the field that had recently witnessed one of those moments in time that no one who loved soccer was ever likely to forget. At the end, Nels sat down on the rug in front of his rather while Bill crouched beside his chair. The brown haired one could hardly believe the sensations that were shooting through his whole body as the elder Sears used one hand to massage his thick neck and shoulders. After promising Nels that he would stop by the next day to look at an application in which his buddy was involved, the young man sadly went to his car and left the great house.

(Continuing Our Story: The Team)

It couldn't have been later the 8:45 the next morning when the brown haired one returned to the house in a cloud of dust and exhaust. Assume that he didn't know Nels would be sitting down to breakfast at just about that time. (Well, one can assume almost anything!) Naturally, the cook was happy to fix another omelette with all the extras, and he and his buddy were soon munching away happily together. Having worked his way through the second omelette, Bill finally looked up with great satisfaction and asked Nels what was on tap for the day. As he finished off a final glass of milk, Nels looked at him and mumbled, "Gotta finish an application for this summer. I'd appreciate your taking a look at it and helping me eliminate any bullshit." "Can do," retorted his best friend. (Bill's chief claim to fame in junior English was that he was able to spot affected verbiage and turn it into straightforward, powerful language.)

A bit later in Nel's room, Bill looked up from the long paragraph he had been closely examining and grunted. "Wadda you think, Bill?" his buddy asked anxiously. "Well-l-l," the powerful athlete said meditatively, "I think you'll pass Tuesday's English test with flying colors." "No, dipshit!" Nels snarled. "Stop screwin' around! What do you think of the paragraph?" "Oh, that?" the brown haired one answered innocently. "Outside of a couple of commas, Blondie, I think it's a winner. Nice and tight...lots of relevant detail without showing off... Tell me though, I've known since we first got together at the academy that you were interested in mountain climbing. I just didn't know that you had done so much of it with your dad." A note of envy crept into his voice.

Visibly relaxing, Nels laughed and responded, "Yeah... Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower forty-eight, Mounts Hood and Rainier in the Cascades, Mt. Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, and the Matterhorn in Switzerland." "Wow," breathed his friend, "but you didn't start out on anything like those monsters, did you?" "Nah," Nels chuckled. My first climb was up Half Dome in Yosemite when I was still twelve." "How did this record of yours develop from there?" Bill persisted. "As usual..." Nels answered, stretching his big frame to the max, "Dad saw that I was seriously interested and told me that I would have all the support I wanted...as long as I wanted it. That same summer we climbed Mt. Shasta up near the Oregon line. More challenging, but not all that bad... We also took part in several mountaineering skill programs...and in some warm ups for higher peaks. I liked it, he liked it, and we've had a ball together... all through high school." "And you're not through yet, are you, Nels?" Bill muttered. "The paragraph I've been reading is part of an application to climb Mt. Whitney or "Denali", as it's known in Alaska, the highest peak in North America. Over twenty thousand three hundred feet...man!" "Oh, that's not all!" Nels chuckled. "Next year, following graduation from the academy, Dad and I plan to climb the highest peak on the good old planet Earth, Mt. Everest. That's over twenty-nine thousand feet!" "Thank you, Sir Edmund Hillary," the brown haired one gasped.

A knock on Nel's door interrupted the conversation. In answer to his son's call to enter, Jason Sears' head popped in. "Good morning, boys," he said pleasantly. "Mrs. Benson told me you were here, Bill. I assume that's why I didn't get an omelette for breakfast!" Grinning widely, he added, "No matter... My waistline didn't need it! Say, I've got to be in the City by one o'clock. Would you like to join me for a little workout before I get myself together?" Enthusiastic "Yeahs!" saw the boys begin to throw their clothes onto Nels' bed. Soon Bill, naked as the day he was born, and Nels who had pulled on a jock followed the bathrobe-clad Mr. Sears down the rear stairs to the gym. (As the elder Sears hung his robe on a hook, Bill noted that there were few coaches at Crocker Memorial who appeared to match the physique of this forty-one-year-old!) Having worked out together before, they wasted no time and began their routines efficiently. Later, sitting on the edge of the large pool, Mr. Sears jokingly asked Bill if the golden one were bugging him about the Denali application. "Not really, Mr. S. I'm really interested and happy to help," Bill replied. "I'm a little surprised, though. I thought all applications today were filed online. Isn't a written application a little...old-fashioned?" "In this case, no," Sears answered. "I've already sent mine in. In the past, it's true, I've usually filed the mountaineering application for both of us online. Due to his age and the severity of the climb, however, our prospective Denali guides required a more complete personal application from Nels. My guess is that we'll hear further from them in due course." And hear they did. In the meantime, however, all three of the men enjoyed their time in the gym and the pool and continued the day in the best of spirits.

(Six Weeks Later)

Nels and Bill were both registered for Dr. Samuel's elective AP Organic Chemistry course immediately before lunch. Bill's lab station, however, was in a different part of the room. Thus, he had to wait before he could discover what was up with his buddy. Obviously, he had something like red ants in his pants from the time he roared into the classroom immediately before the tardy buzzer.

Collecting their lunch selections, the boys headed for a table where they could have a little privacy for a conversation. Nels' mood was ecstatic! "Bill! Damn! Dad and I are gonna climb Denali in June! Once they received my application, I talked with two of their top guides...and I had to go into the City for a medical exam by one of their doctors. This morning, just as I was getting my act together, the owner of the guide company called. Real nice... He complimented me on my recommendations - as well as on my physical condition which he said was "awesome". Before he signed off, he added that he looked forward to greeting us personally on a three-day pre-climb warm-up on Denali right before the big one! Oh man, Bill, can you believe that! Dad had spoken with them previously, but hadn't said a word to me. When I pounded on his bedroom door, however, he yelled for me to come in, leapt out of bed, and met me in the middle of the room with a bear hug. I think we wrestled for an hour. My ribs are still sore! We ended up swimming for a while and then showering together before I had to get ready for school...again! Whoops! I almost forgot to ask you something. If you're interested, Dad and I would like you to take a short climb with us once school has started. Nothing major...but a lot of fun...a three-day weekend sort of thing."

Was he interested? Was he interested! Bill Strayer came so close to overturning the table that the faculty monitor showed his fangs and quietly snarled as he looked their way. The boys hurriedly got up from their table, scraped their mostly uneaten lunches into the garbage cans, and quickly made their way towards the lawns and trees near the stadium! ("Beast" McCollum, a good friend, asked Nels later if the cafeteria food had finally gotten to him and he was heading to the john to hurl! "Delicacy" was never the Beast's middle name, but this didn't seem to affect his game as the varsity football team's starting right guard!)

(Tattered Dreams)

After supper - trying to keep dad off his back - the brown haired one was mowing the small lawn that fronted their small house. His dad suddenly appeared at the front screen door and shouted for him to come in. Evidently, there was something special on his nightly local FOX News. Bill couldn't believe what several announcers kept telling him. The long and short of it was that Nelson Sears, 17, the son of the fiancier Jason Sears, had died in a fall on Mount McKinley in Alaska. Additional information would be made available as soon as it was received.

When Bill contacted Crocker Memorial's Headmaster in the morning, the Head indicated that he wanted to hold a public memorial service for Nels. He only awaited an opportunity to speak with Mr. Sears before convening the Board, setting a date, and beginning to make arrangements. After several days had passed, Bill, as Nelson's closest friend, asked him how things were going. Visibly upset...and frustrated, the Head said that Mr. Sears had returned home from Alaska, but as yet he had been unable to arrange an appointment.

Feeling compelled to do something, Bill drove up to the Sears estate that afternoon. There was a chain across the entrance, and a guard, whom he had met in Sears' office in the City, was on duty. Hesitating for a moment, the young man peered closely at him before finally unhooking the chain and waving him through. The approach to the house was downright eerie. It always seemed so...alive. Today, it appeared to be deserted...and stone dead. The light breeze was even blowing little bits of weeds and paper around the courtyard's cobblestones as in a classic horror flick. Beneath a lowering sky, the windows that faced the fields and live oaks seemed to be sightless and, yet, to promise danger. Bill shook himself, muttering, "Get a grip on yourself, Mr. King! You're not writing a Halloween story for Junior English!" Unfortunately, the walk up to the front door did nothing to drive the unsettling images from his head. Indeed, the sight of the heavy door gaping open two or three inches almost drove him back down the steps!

Forcing himself to open the door a little further, Bill called out. There was no answer... only a hollow silence. Holding Nels' image in his mind's eye - much the same as potential victims in vampire flicks hold crucifixes - Bill took a couple of hesitant steps into the foyer. Faintly, he heard sounds that seemed to be coming from the open door to the library. Carefully, the young man looked into the library. Mr. Sears was seated on a sofa, several photo albums spread out around him. Deep sobs were shaking his body. He appeared to be completely spent, physically and psychologically. Quietly, the brown haired one knocked on the heavy redwood door that stood open between the foyer and library. "Mr. Sears?" he inquired softly. Sears neither answered nor did he even lift his eyes. Rather, he seemed caught in the deadly web of depression. Slowly, Bill padded over to where the powerful man sat in the midst of his crushed dreams. Even more tentatively, he sat down on the sofa beside the man who now looked more like 71 than 41. Reaching out a large paw, he gently wiped away the tears that were trickling down the older man's face. His voice cracking, he said boldly, "I loved him, too, sir. Even though I never got to show him all of my feelings and he never knew, he was everything to me since we were 12." For the first time, the man lifted his head, expression beginning to come back into his face. "Oh, no, my young friend. Nelson knew how you felt about him. In fact, he said on a couple of occasions that it was what kept him moving forward when things got rough. I remember one horrendous afternoon on Mount Alberta..." (His voice gradually faded.) The man put his arm around the sobbing boy and drew him into his chest. "He knew, Bill. Believe me, he knew."

Slowly, Jason Sears drew back from the precipice. "I guess you have a right to the details," he finally murmured faintly. In response to Bill's faint nod, he continued. "We were easily a third of the way up the massive, snow-covered "High One," as the natives call Denali. We had just approached an area of loose rock (known as talus or scree) that seemed to go on forever when the guides led us to a rock ledge. Perhaps a bit less than two feet wide, it angled around to the right and upwards. Even though the ledge's right side frequently appeared to drop straight down for thousands of feet, the wall with its occasional overhang on the left gave the climbers considerable protection against some rather nasty weather. Furthermore, the head guide told us that at its end we would have climbed at least 800 feet and passed beyond the talus fields. At that point, we would break out our ropes and begin our first serious climb of the day. (Inasmuch as we were all experienced mountaineers and were still fresh, we didn't lash ourselves together as we moved up the ledge.)

Reaching a slightly wider spot on the ledge, a spot well protected by both wall and overhang, the head guide called a halt and announced lunch. We all sighed our relief and backed up against the wall before relaxing. Looking out on the wildest mountain scenery imaginable, we were able to get some fantastic pictures. The head guide obviously didn't plan to tarry long. Indeed, he was already rising to his feet when my boy stood, reached down to me, and said, "Come on, old man, it's time to hit the trail!" (Mr. Sears swallowed noisily and forced himself to continue.) "Taking his hand, I received a powerful pull upwards. With a push forward from the wall in back of me, I was nearly able to get my feet under me when Nelson grunted and seemed to slip on something. A smooth rock? ...a bit of ice under the snow? Or was it the fact that he was just thoroughly off balance? I just don't know, but I never found anything foreign when I examined the area later. All I remember is my son's look of complete surprise. In one motion he staggered backwards, progressively lost balance, stumbled over his own feet, and with a long, drawn-out wail fell off the rocky ledge into the mist and snow thousands of feet below. The whole process probably took no more than two or three seconds. Alaskan officials mounted major search and rescue/recovery missions. Although I made it possible to conduct three additional searches, his body has yet to be found. It's real wilderness, Bill; it's some of the wildest country you can imagine.

Sears leaned down and kissed the top of Bill's head that was still burrowed into his chest. "Let me rub your back for a little while, Big Guy?" he asked weakly, but with great affection. "Oh yes, sir! Please!" the athlete moaned and rose to remove his shirt. Without thinking - seemingly in a thick fog - Bill didn't stop there. Before he was finished, the rest of his clothing lay with his shirt. Naked - completely consumed by mental and emotional chaos...a deep sorrow and sense of loss growing like a cancer inside him - he moved the photo albums to the large coffee table and lay down on his friend's legs. Never had he been as aware that this was his place of refuge, understanding, and acceptance. The first movements of Jason's fingers as they carefully untangled the brown haired one's upper spine elicited a moan of delight that reverberated throughout both their strong bodies. The big jock almost entered a mildly drugged state when, using a little oil, Jason worked his thumbs into the muscles on either sides of his spine. Continuing on his unorthodox massage path, Jason next worked his fingers deep into Bill's magnificent glutes. Smiling to himself, Jason thought that working the glutes of a young athlete was often something like taking a young man's virginity. Like the muscles of the lower abdomen, it takes real effort and skill before the strong, resistant muscles give way, become flexible, and send vibrations through the entire body when stroked. It was when the elder Sears moved to the youngster's muscular thighs that Bill realized he was quietly crying. Licking the back of Bill's neck and his ears soon produced a few laughs. (Jason simply commented that there was nothing wrong with weeping for a departed friend, but when one had done as much good as Nels, one had to be careful to work in a few laughs as well!) This reminded the elder Sears to ask Bill to let the Headmaster know that he would call that morning. A memorial service had to be arranged for the wider community.

(The Path of Recovery)

Bill did not leave the Sears estate until the light of the next day was just beginning to soften the eastern darkness. Once again, the night had seen him and his host giving themselves to each other several times, a step that Jason was never able to face discussing with Nels. It set them both firmly on the path to emotional and physical recovery, as long and difficult as that path often is when it involved the death of a father's beloved son - or a young man's first experience with the death of someone whom he held especially close.

The cooperation of the elder Sears, the Headmaster of the Crocker Memorial School, and Bill Strayer produced a wonderful program to honor Nels' memory. The school auditorium's stage were literally covered with the flowers of early September - and the cavernous seating areas were packed. The youngsters and adults who took part in that program were introduced to the massed choirs of the area schools, as well as a relatively small number of speakers (the Headmaster as Master of Ceremonies, Mr. Sears, Bill, and the extremely powerful, inspirational owner of the company that provided guides and instructors for climbs on the giants of the mountaineering world).

Slowly, Jason Sears regained his emotional and physical footing in that he began to get involved in projects (inc. work and charity) that took him outside himself. In this he was aided by Bill Strayer who stayed close by. Not even his wife's filing for divorce permanently returned him to the depths of depression. [Author's note: The literature suggests that many marriages, even when they have lasted for years, flounder when visited by such a tragedy. Man, wife...parents...often part civilly, assuring each other that they'll remain "friends".] As his interest in the world around him slowly returned, Jason actually involved the boy in one of his oldest hobbies, landscaping. At another time, Jason commented admiringly on the work of chiefly Japanese scientists who had been making great strides in their work on robots, especially robots with industrial applications or robots that might make housekeeping chores less burdensome. He noted that one of the leaders in this work, the Nobel Prize winning Dr. K. Ishikawa of Tokyo, had been in Washington, D.C., and New York City to present their findings. Bill felt that this interest was solid evidence that Jason Sears was coming out of a deep and serious depression.

(To Be Continued)