Wally

by Rowan Massey

  The bathroom smelled like dirty toilets and toothpaste, but my nose would forget about it in a few minutes. He turned the water on in two showers next to each other and let the water run over his hand.

  “It’s warm,” he said in a little bit.

  “I might need it cold.” I put a hand over my mouth, trying to stop myself from laughing at my own joke, but he smiled showing all the teeth in his crooked jaw. His eyes glanced down at my crotch, and I felt electricity. Needing to hide a boner seemed less hilarious.

  I turned to the sink and quickly got rid of my hat and the bandage. We each put out soap in our shower stalls. When he peeled his sweatshirt and T-shirt off, I immediately did the same, so I wouldn’t freeze up and chicken out. We threw our things on a plastic lawn chair in the corner. We did the same with our pants. His skin was healthy brown with dark nipples and balls, and he didn’t look half-starved the way I did. I didn’t have time to stare too long. He disappeared into one of the showers, but not before I got a good look at his ass too.

  My hand went to my dick. I couldn’t help it.

  I heard him laugh.

  Fuck, he was peeking out at me. My body felt hot, and I laughed too, but I wanted to die. I hurried to the other shower where the water was still running, but stopped. He’d opened his curtain. He was standing there like it was nothing to show me everything. And I looked. We were both looking each other over. I was getting hard, but so was he.

  I inched my toes forward. Not even a step, just a test. He got out and turned my shower off. The knob squeaked each time he turned it, and the muscles in his back flexed a little. His ass was basically perfect. To me, anyway. I was close to saying so when he took my hand and led me into his shower and under the water. I was looking down at his body and the way his cock was stiff and touching my stomach, when he kissed me.

  It was my first kiss. The universe stopped existing, and his lips and body were the only thing left. Our faces were slick under the water. I felt his tongue warm on my mouth, moving slow. My chest pressed against his. Our dicks touched and brushed against each other.

  He stood back, breaking our kiss, and gave me a hot look for a split second before turning me around by my shoulders. I steadied myself, putting my palms on the tile wall in front of me.

  Fuck. Was he going to fuck me? Just like that? I didn’t know how things were supposed to go. Maybe this was the way people did it. Was I supposed to bend over?

  My mouth was open so I could breathe under the stream of water. I was a statue. There was a snap sound of his bottle of soap or shampoo opening. Would that make good lube? I had no idea. I should have tried to talk to more gay guys about this stuff.

  But he didn’t touch my ass. He touched my hair. I smelled the shampoo. He was softly working it into my scalp. I should have been using what Doc gave me, but the thought went away as fast as it came.

  “Got to get you cleaned up first,” he said. His voice was low and sweet. I could feel his heavy breathing against my ear. More importantly, his hard cock was touching my back.

  When his fingers washed the spot that was infected, it stung, but he was careful. The way he was touching me—slow and caring—was making my heart warm up and spread something around inside me. Every movement made me feel like I was on some kind of drug. I’d imagined getting naked with him lots of times, but I’d never pictured being treated like…like he had feelings about me.

  He took a bar of soap and started washing my neck with it while I leaned forward and got the suds out of my hair. I stayed facing the wall and enjoyed his hands on my back, then arms, armpits, chest. He pressed himself against me. I had to grab myself and start stroking. I felt him smile against the skin of my neck. A little moan came out of me when his soapy hands grabbed my ass and squeezed. His fingers slid down my crack until they met my hole.

  “Jesus fuck,” I whispered.

  His teeth scraped against my shoulder, and his hands moved to the hair over my dick. I watched him turn the soap in circles in one hand to get it sudsy, and wash my pubic hair with it, then move down to my balls, rolling them softly. I let go of myself and waited to see if he would wrap one of those amazing hands around my cock. He did. Giving it two, strong strokes, then letting go. It was so nice that I made a disappointed noise. I really needed him to keep going. I wanted to come.

  He took a deep breath and let it out, cooling the water on the back of my neck.

  “Take my keys,” he said.

  Keys?

  “Go to my room while I wash up.”

  Was he serious? I turned around, but he stepped back, almost touching his back to the wall. He was smiling like a devil. Our dicks were twitching in the air. No fucking way. Didn’t he want to keep going?

  I moved in close to him and kissed him. He kissed back but took my hips in his hands and tried to push me away. The push didn’t have any strength in it.

  “I want to do it on the bed,” he said against my mouth. “Go on.”

  He laughed when I whined and got out. I toweled off fast. It was freezing outside of the light steam in the shower. I was glad because it helped my dick to calm down enough that it was bearable to put underwear and pants on.

  I went down the hall carrying my shoes and pack, not wearing a shirt. I was walking funny, and I wondered how he could stop in the middle of it.

  In his room and on the bed, I stripped down naked again and waited with my hand on my dick. The wait was too long, no matter if it was just a couple minutes, and I was trying not to get too close to coming.

  I’d left the door unlocked. It opened and Nando stood there looking at me, smile crooked. He hadn’t gotten fully dressed either, but he hadn’t even bothered to put pants on. He was wearing just briefs, right out in the hall, with his dick still half hard. I lifted my eyebrows and laughed.

  He looked down at himself and bit his lip. In half a second he’d closed the door and jumped onto the bed. He was on all fours over me. The air went right out of my lungs.

  We kissed for a while and ran our hands over each others skin. He wouldn’t come down on top of me, and I kicked my feet a little. His tongue played with mine. It was warm, and soft, and made me crazy. He was touching me like he was thinking about every movement, wanting me to feel what he did.

  I kept humping, trying to get closer to him. Thumbs hooked in the elastic, I pushed his briefs down. Any shyness I’d had was gone. Things were way too urgent to hesitate. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him down on top of me. He was careful not to let go of all his weight and crush me. He didn’t want to hurt me. I’d never thought sweet things like that would be hot.

  We moved our hips together, dicks slick with precum. His dick and belly rubbing against mine made me feel good enough to almost cum. My head tilted back into the pillow. He sucked on my throat and moved his weight to the side to kick his underwear off and grab our dicks together. I saw his eyes squeeze shut, and he grunted. His hips sped up along with his hand. I looked down and saw him cum onto our stomachs and over his fist. Plenty of it got on my dick.

  Everything we’d done had been better than the little bit of porn I’d seen, or any stories I’d listened to. This was full of smell and taste. The heat of his skin and muscle was something I’d never bothered to put into my fantasies. The way he touched was like a conversation. Really sexy talk.

  He relaxed against my side for a moment but his hand was grabbing my nuts, tugging a little. It hurt, and I squirmed. When he lifted himself and crouched down over my cock, it hit me a split second after the fact that he was giving me my first blow job. He licked me from the base to the tip, pressing his tongue against the slit. I whined, and pushed my ass into the blankets, then up. His mouth closed over the head, and I could hardly look at him, even when he stopped to look up at me in the fucking hottest way possible. I felt his mouth open wider and take in most of my dick. He stroked me with his hand on the way up, sucked, and I came.

  It was like a big bell rang in my body and made me vibrate. He was lick
ing my cum off his lips, smiling like he’d gotten away with something, and bringing me through to the end with his hand.

  He leaned up to me and kissed me. I took his face in my hands and pushed my tongue into his mouth, tasting my bitter cum. He couldn’t kiss me right because he kept smiling. It was hard to let him go when he got up and grabbed one of the towels we’d just used. He quickly cleaned us off with it and fell onto the bed on his back, closing his eyes and letting out a breath.

  Turning on my side, I watched his face. My chest felt pulled from the inside, getting tighter and tighter. It was great, but painful. I thought it would ease up if we cuddled, so I scooted over and put my arm around his middle. He didn’t open his eyes but lifted a hand to touch my arm.

  “This your first time with a guy?” he asked.

  I laughed and smushed my face into his pillow.

  “I can’t tell if that’s a yes or a no.”

  “I never even kissed anybody,” I told him.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Not even girls?”

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t know that. I figured you’d fucked around with your friends.”

  There was a weird couple of seconds before he reached over and turned the lamp off. The total darkness was almost enough to make me jumpy. He laid on his back and moved the covers up to my chest. I kept my arm around him. We were limp and exhausted, but I didn’t want to sleep yet. I wanted to talk. I started telling him all about working for the doc. The dark kept me from seeing his reaction to anything, but his hand rubbed my arm in a rhythm.

  “I can’t believe he let you play around on his computers,” he said, when I’d run out of things to tell him.

  I shrugged a shoulder, and he pulled the blanket up a little more so that it was tucked into my neck.

  “The stuff about drugs and violence was the weirdest part,” I said. “Does that make any sense to you?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter. Just act the way he wants you to.”

  He moved around a little and got comfortable with both hands gripping my arm to his chest.

  “Let’s go to sleep,” he said. “I can bike you over there again tomorrow.”

  I didn’t want to sleep, even though my eyes were heavy, and the warmth of his body was making me relaxed.

  “Want me to sing?” I asked.

  “If you want.”

  Even my lungs were tired and my voice came out quiet and slowed down. I sang “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” but couldn’t remember all the lyrics. Sleep must have come over me fast, because I couldn’t remember finishing the song.

  Chapter Six

  Doc had left me on the same corner lot as the day before, but nobody was there yet. It was earlier in the day than last time. The sun was just starting to give up on pushing light through the clouds. I was bouncing on my toes, dying to tell Spitz everything about Nando and anxious to find out who had gotten sick.

  It wasn’t until I saw him coming towards me, hoodie up over his blond hair, head down, that I got really worried. Of course he was going to be tired and upset. He probably wanted to stay with Fiona, wherever she was, but had to go to the field.

  “Hey,” I said when he came close, “I’ve got money in my pockets these days. At least we don’t need to worry about scoring fielders. When was the last time you even picked up some plastic?”

  I grinned, expecting a grin in return and some appreciation, but he kept his chin down. Watery eyes glanced up at me. He’d been crying.

  I crossed the few steps of space left between us and pulled him close for a big hug.

  “Fiona’s not doing too good,” he mumbled into my neck. “She, uh…she had a mis…carriage.” He whispered the last part of the word, as if there wasn’t enough air. “She was pregnant.”

  “Oh shit, Spizzy.” I squeezed my eyes shut and let him lean his chest against mine. “Why didn’t you tell me you knocked her up? I would have tried to help. She’s not infected or something, is she?”

  We both knew I couldn’t have helped anything. Neither could he and neither could she. Health problems just did what they were going to do. Hospitals might as well have not existed for us. I didn’t know how it worked with all that girl stuff, but plenty of girls died trying to give birth or get abortions. Was it just as risky when the baby died by accident?

  He shook his head and sighed. His breath was shaky.

  “She didn’t know she was pregnant. And it just started happening. I guess it hurt really bad. Somebody let us stay the night in their hallway and use their bathroom, but it was fuckin’ horrible, Wally. It was all this…”

  He said it all against my ear, and I didn’t blame him if he didn’t want to tell me any details. I thought of the reasons I’d been dancing instead of being with them like usual. Wishing I’d done something different didn’t get anybody anywhere.

  “What now?” I asked. “Where is she?”

  He stepped back and wiped his nose on his arm a few times, sniffing loud and wet.

  “Veronica and this other friend of hers say she’s fine, but when we took her home, Jesus Christ.” His face scrunched, and he shook his head. “Her dad is a bastard. He said he’s done with her, and she’s out of the house by tomorrow night.”

  “You’re shitting me.” My eyes widened. Fiona on the streets with us? She’d been the safe one. “Fucking bastard.”

  “Yeah, this shit is really fucked. Can we just get out on the field? I feel like I’m gonna die before we get there.”

  When a fielder has a really bad day, it can all be made better, the trauma erased, after a dance. Back when Spitz had those problems with men, he danced more than once a day.

  We hung our arms across each other’s shoulders and started walking faster than usual. Getting there and taking our fielders was an emergency. The world was cramming in on us. My mind didn’t feel normal, and I knew he felt even worse. After a few blocks, he was walking behind me. I knew he wanted to get there but felt too awful to speed up. I wondered if he’d slept at all.

  On the edge of the field, we found Rydel, who took one look at Spitz and gave it to us without waiting for us to take out our money first. We both ate the pills like it was water in a desert. I didn’t have a razor, and I didn’t know if Spitz had one. Somebody would help us if we needed it, but the blade might not be clean.

  “Nando is straight over there,” Rydel told me, pointing through the crowd. I looked over and couldn’t see through the crowd.

  “Tell him I’ll catch him later,” I said, and led Spitz away. He could find out about me and Nando when the fielders were still strong in our heads.

  There was a spazzing feeling in a line from my eye to the back of my head. It was nothing as bad as the crawls, and I ignored it. We made it a good distance into the crowd before things took off.

  I was away like a kite caught on a burst of wind. The sky was open and tasted sweet. All the people around me were yesterday, Spitz was soaring somewhere nearby, and Fiona would finally join us in the dance tomorrow night. My life was telling a story for the eons, and I had only barely reached the middle of it all. Past and future held me from two sides, like being in the grip of a cosmic god. The present was a perfect dimension where the god had a friendly face.

  We had to share this with Fiona. She was going to feel so much better.

  Nando was pulling me off the field by the arm. At first, I wasn’t sure if it was him in the dim light, but I saw the familiar crooked jaw. How could something that was technically a flaw look so sexy? My feet were dragging, and I splashed into a small puddle. The ground was muddy again, but I was only a little damp.

  “You back?” he asked. “Something happen with you guys today?”

  “It’s okay. Fiona can start dancing with us.”

  “Who’s Fiona?”

  The sky caught my attention. It was dark and flat, no shine to it at all. It’d been my home for a long time, up there with the god, but I was back.

  Nando d
idn’t let me stumble from not looking where I was going. He slid his hand down my arm until he was holding my wrist, one finger on my palm. Walking was getting easier, but my legs were weak. My knees felt like they’d taken some punishment. We reached Rydel at the edge of the crowd. He nodded to us but seemed more interested in watching the dancers.

  “Look at me a sec, man.” Nando put his hand on the back of my neck, and we faced each other. I smiled and thought he wanted to kiss me right in public. But he just looked at my eyes the way Doc did when he was checking my pupils, like my eyes were just marbles. I slowly leaned in and took his waist in my hands. He looked at my mouth like he wanted to, his eyes getting soft, slowly blinking, but he moved away. I laughed. Poor guy couldn’t make up his mind.

  “Shut up,” he said, but he was trying not to smile. “Was your trip weird?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Look.” He turned me by the shoulders towards the dancers. “Notice anything?”

  We were on a higher spot in the field, and the lights from the that blinded my view, but I could still see that everyone was dancing fast. I put a hand up to my face to block the glare of light and have a better look. I noticed a girl who was always slow like a cloud in the sky. She was dancing much faster than usual, stomping her feet frantically.

  “That’s why my legs hurt.” I said, and shook my achy knees out.

  “Yeah, you were a maniac, but notice anything else? There’s almost nobody who cut themselves tonight. Just a few people who aren’t on the same batch.”

  “Wow, you’re right! That awesome!” Doc would be excited. I thought of the middle table in his lab and hoped he would start working there with me around.

  “And they’re not just fast. They’ve been falling over.”

  I put my hand up again when he pointed. A guy was on the wet ground kicking his feet like a baby throwing a tantrum. He was back on his feet after a few seconds. That wasn’t normal but didn’t seem like a big deal. Better than the crawls.