by David Connor
Funeral days were long. First the grave had to be dug, as the sun was just starting to rise. It was bright that morning, the air quite crisp after the tumult of the night before. Once the hole was finished, then Frank had to shower and dress more formally to drive the hearse and deliver the casket. It was important that he look nice, even though he usually made certain he stayed well hidden. After the service, it was back into dungarees to fill in the pit. Vaughn usually dug as well. He always greeted the bereaved and made all the small talk too—thank goodness.
Frank only now realized how he'd been left to do most of the manual work alone of late. Vaughn's weakness was suddenly evident in retrospect. And as Frank watched his mentor—his second father—throughout the long day for more signs, they were there. It seemed as if Vaughn had aged a decade in one tenth the time. The loss would be devastating, for Marion, for Liam, and for Frank.
More sunrises came, and sunsets. More days and more funerals, and nothing changed except the weather. Darkness settled in earlier and held on longer. Mornings and nights were quite cool. Frank stretched to relieve the tightness of his muscles brought on by many hard days in a row before entering the trailer. It was late. He was dirty and very tired. Liam had prepared supper, as usual—and had already eaten his, it seemed. That evening, it was hot dogs and beans. Frank shoveled it all down greedily while Liam bathed.
"Fank?" Liam called from the john.
"Yes, Liam." Frank answered from the table in the kitchen.
"You come b-bathe n-now, s-so I can w-watch."
Frank pushed his plate back. He made his way to the bathroom—a couple of steps, really—where Liam stood in the tub shower with a towel around his middle.
"I'll shower later," Frank said.
"Fank… kiss."
"Huh?"
Liam leaned closer. "Fank… kiss." Liam's tummy stuck out a bit now. The roundness, brought on by spaghetti sandwiches and huge bowls of ice cream over a very short period of time, was sexy and adorable.
"Liam… you know we can't."
"Fank… kiss." The towel came off.
Frank rolled his eyes. "Fank cannot kiss Liam, Liam." He tugged at the denim covering his crotch. His rather excited body was fighting his slightly perturbed intellect and stunningly weak will every step of the way. "Besides, I'm disgusting."
"Come here." Liam brought the towel to his lips. "Kiss me."
"Through a wet towel? I don't think so. Sorry, Liam."
"A d-dry one, then."
So many words at once. Had more come back so suddenly, or was he just in the mood to use what he possessed?
"It's not safe."
"Cate-pillars and ants... you t-ouch them."
"Because other than a moment of sorrow and a bit of surprise, what is the real harm if that experiment goes awry? I know sometimes, Liam, I am safe to touch small living things. Larger beings, with more… biological circuitry, if you will, the risk of bringing them harm is too great."
"No s-storms."
Frank let out an exasperated breath. "Fine." He took a dry hand towel from the rack, folded it over several times. Careful not to touch him, he placed it over Liam's mouth and offered a quick peck. In the end, the act lacked any sort of romance in Frank's eyes. It seemed more one of suffocation than lovemaking.
"Nice. And see… nothing h-happened."
"Nothing. Yes." Frank was in a mood again, as the line between joy and agony was becoming more blurred with every urge unfulfilled. Spending the day dealing with the rituals of death and facing Vaughn's illness weighed heavily on his mind as well. "You've rather well described it."
As Liam got out of the shower, Frank found himself pressed against the sink vanity to avoid him. The bathroom was tiny. He could feel the warm steam coming off Liam's body. He could have caught the water dripping from the tip of his erection if he'd wanted to. And he did want—but he didn't dare.
"You bathe. I s-sit and w-watch."
Liam sat on the commode. With a resigned sigh and an engorged sex organ, Frank got in the shower and stripped. There was no room to do it anywhere else in the room.
"I used m-mostly cold to s-save the hot f-for you, Fank." It seemed by now the dropped R was intentional. A pet name, perhaps.
"Thank you." No matter how annoyed Frank got, Liam always said or did something so incredibly endearing he could not hold the feeling in totality. "You are extremely thoughtful, my Liam."
Frank tossed his garments, one at a time, at Liam's feet. Liam picked up the T-shirt and one other, the two pieces closest to Frank's body all day. He scrunched them in both hands and brought them up to his face, inhaling desperately, as Frank had his, the day of the storms. Frank's hard-on grew. He pulled the curtain closed, but Liam stood and pulled it back.
"We'll make a mess." Frank took ahold to close it again, but Liam, also defiant, grabbed just below his hand. "Okay. Put down some extra towels, though, will you?"
Liam did as asked. Watching him bend with his back to Frank was an added bonus, as Frank was offered a glorious view of the newly squeaky clean orifice he'd love to fill. "Let's just get this done." Frank hated the attitude he'd developed. Though he vowed every other moment not to let it take over, in the next one it did. "Enjoy," he said. Though he hardly saw how that was possible.
After turning on the water, Frank picked up the soap. He always started with the back of his neck, where the hair was prickly, cut shortest with the electric clippers he was still a tad nervous using. As he rubbed the bar of Ivory there, Liam put his hand to the same spot on himself, beneath his wet, stringy, much longer hair. When Frank rubbed the soap over his shoulder and down his left arm, Liam touched his. "Have you done this before?" Frank tried to keep the tone light, maybe sexy. "With some other guys? For real, maybe—both in the shower together?"
Liam giggled softly when Frank washed under their arms. "It t-tickles." He ignored the question.
Frank stopped washing, even as the water was already getting colder and colder. "You can tell me. It'll turn me on to hear about it… since I've never been able to. Tell me all about the men you've… Tell me about the guys you've… fucked."
"One guy. Now s-stop t-talking."
Frank shivered, not because of the temperature of the spray from the nozzle. "Did he have a big one? As big as yours? What… what was his name?"
Liam turned his back. He put a hand to his forehead. Was he angry or thinking? Frank's nagging doubts would always be a third party in their relationship, a terribly disappointing ménage a trois.
"I told you about my first kiss," Frank said. "Who did you share yours with?"
"You, Fank."
"Aww. But you had sex before." Frank put on his very best teasing tone, even though he felt more like crying.
"W-with D… DJ."
"DJ. Was he… handsome?" Frank asked softly, his chest tight, his marred jaw clenched, his heart—or brain, or whatever—suddenly jealous.
"The m-memories ar-are not g-good ones."
"I'm sorry."
Liam turned. "B-besides, only your f-face is w-orth remembering n-now."
That was the kind of answer one gave in order to encourage the sex to continue, Frank thought.
"Wash your d-dick," Liam said, when apparently it didn't continue quickly enough.
Frank smiled. He relaxed a bit, even as he tried to think of all the boys in his and Renny's graduating class whose name started with "D". Yes. He was back to that. He came up with two Davids. Then he forgot about them, when Liam spit in his hand and rubbed it on the head of his penis.
"I'm d-drying off out h-here. Wash… your dick."
The borderline vulgarity was arousing. Frank ran the soap down his torso, stopping just above the area where suds would be easiest to make, in the mass of tight curls topping his stiffness. He went whichever way his ambivalence took him. It was in charge. He was powerless.
Liam didn't stop where Frank had. He grabbed himself.
"Uh-uh," Frank chastised. "Not yet." And then Frank
chuckled when Liam raised his hands as if under arrest. "You got ahead of me, Liam. Tsk tsk."
Liam smiled.
"Keep doing what I do." Frank turned to the side, his lower half more than the top. He made thick, white foam in the crack of his buttocks.
Liam touched himself, following Frank's directive. The expression on his face, it had started as uncertain, but soon melted into pleasure. Was it the first time Liam had explored himself there, Frank wondered, or did he just have selective sexual amnesia? Either way, as Frank dug deeper with a slick, soapy finger, Liam attempted to do so with a dry one. He picked up the soap from the dish on the sink, and lathered up as if washing his hands. That allowed his digit to go in more smoothly, and brought forth some stuttering sounds made with only breath. Then he said words.
"Fank. Fank inside… me. I want you inside me."
"Or you inside me, Liam," Frank answered, over the rushing water. "God! If you could fuck me!"
"I want to f-uck you, F-fank! I love y-you. And not just b-because w-we are naked."
It was a smart thing to say, and also quite meaningful. Liam was promising affection beyond lustful feelings. He had to know its importance to someone unable to ever feel the flesh of his lover. Frank raised his palm. "Don't let them touch. No matter what." He put it to Liam's, a fraction of an inch of space and the minute thickness of the shower curtain between them. "Are you sure… that you love me?"
"Yes."
"One hundred percent, no matter your past, no matter who you are?"
"Yes, Fank."
"I love you too. I love you so much, Liam."
"Come for me."
Frank turned to face Liam full on. He wrapped his fingers around his swollen shaft. It was hot in his grasp, hotter than the room, with all the steam and two large, nude, aroused men crowded into it. Liam started stroking as well. He used a different technique, pulling from the front, mostly with his thumb and index finger. "Come closer, Liam. Let me feel it on my body when it comes out of you."
Liam's toes almost made contact with the tub; that was how close he came. Frank could smell him, soapy cleanliness, shampoo, a little bit of manliness when he raised his arms, or maybe from when he had toyed with his opening. He heard Liam's breaths. He would have sworn he heard him blink. They were as close as they could possibly get without touching. Frank might have thought it was a fantasy, if he hadn't caught sight of his reflection in the mirror behind. If he had been dreaming, he'd have made himself better looking.
When Frank felt Liam's eruption, hotter than the water now reheated, hotter than his tender, ready member against his wet palm, he cried out. "Oh, Liam!" Each new blast pinging and dripping down his wet leg brought him closer to his own release. Liam fell back against the sink once spent. He panted there. His beautiful rounded belly heaved. Frank stepped one foot out of the tub, stood on tiptoe, and expelled his sticky, warm liquid into the fur there, all over Liam's tummy. "I love you," he said on staccato exhales.
"I love you," Liam said, as clear as day, with no stutter between words.
As Liam played in the creamy deposit left in his fur, Frank collected what Liam had given to him. He placed it in his opposite palm, and then brought it to his mouth. He kissed the inside of his hand, as if it was the lips he so wanted. "I love you, Liam," he said again. "Have I said it too many times now?"
"No. I will n-ever tire of h-hearing it."
Frank left Liam to the bathroom while he cleaned up in the kitchen. Once the sexual euphoria had subsided, the bleakness of his circumstance returned. He hated the roller coaster—the seesaw of emotions. After reading to Liam, and Liam reading a couple of sentences to him, after the news, after each had chomped down an apple fresh from the orchard that week, Frank sent Liam off to bed. He took his place on the couch right after, as usual, alone.
Two people in love, living in the same home, were forced to sleep apart. For every way life was better, it was also worse.
Chapter Nine
By late October, the grass was often white with frost in the morning. A chill in the air and emptying gardens, the disappearance of hummingbirds and decaying wildflowers, all signified winter winds and snowy days to come. Liam professed his love daily, and Frank said it back—and felt it, to his continuing dismay.
The sexual play moved out of the bathroom and all throughout the trailer. Liam loved to be nude. His obvious intelligence led to more creative ways for him and Frank to engage without touching. With crafting prowess that went far beyond heart-shaped centerpieces and napkin rings, Liam invented a dual pleasure sex toy. It was a long phallic device he had fashioned from thick tubing found somewhere around the house. He promised he had sanitized it. Smooth, fat, rounded tips, like curtain rod finials, were added at each end to approximate the head of the male organ. With the orbs inserted inside one another, Frank and Liam could almost pretend they were making love. Almost.
Frank enjoyed the sensation but loathed the emotion that came. The literal lack of any personal connection between two bodies was all the more obvious with a length of rubber pipe between them. Liam seemed bound and determined to make it all work, however, even with the limitations, and Frank loved him more for it.
One night, after reading, Liam pulled up the covers, several layers thick. "Sleep with me t-tonight," he said.
Frank shook his head. He fought the urge to yell, to remind Liam for the one millionth God forsaken time why he couldn't. "Good night, Liam."
"Atop the c-covers." Liam knew. "So I can… feel your… w-eight atop me. I used… extra b-blankets, Fank."
Frank thought a moment. "Is it safe?"
Why the hell was he asking Liam? How would Liam know? "The t-towel kiss means… we can. I sh-should have thought of it b-before, Fank. It should have come t-to me that n-night."
Frank considered the precedence. "We've been closer, with less between us, I suppose." He stepped toward the bed. Since they'd once touched shirt sleeves with no harm, this should work.
"No clothes," Liam said. He slipped off his own pajama pants and the thin shorts he wore beneath them. He pulled them from under the sheet and blankets and dropped them deliberately to the floor with fanfare, a bit of a show.
Frank couldn't logically imagine what difference being naked could make with all the bedclothes stacked between them. Still, logic lost the battle. "If you say so." He voraciously ripped his shirt off over his head, and then yanked off his pants, nearly falling in his haste to remove them. His underpants still hung from one ankle as he knelt onto the foot of the bed and leaned forward.
"You're b-beautiful," Liam said.
Liam was right, not about the beautiful part, but the naked part. Frank was glad he had insisted they both be nude. Even with nearly every sheet and blanket in the trailer as a barrier, it still felt quite intimate, the most intimate anything had felt between them yet. As Frank let his weight settle onto Liam's body, he could feel him breathing, his gut moving up and down. He could feel his outline, where the arms and legs were. He could feel his excitement halfway down the bed.
"Mmm." Frank ground his into it, careful to hold his head up, which had his neck already sore. "Can you feel me?"
"Yes."
The enticement was thrilling and too heightened to ignore. "Turn the other way for me." Frank climbed off. "Roll over, so I can take you in the only way I will ever be able."
Liam flipped to his belly, flashing his backside, its opening, before fixing the abundance of bedclothes around himself again. "I'm r-ready."
Frank felt his way up, beginning all the way at Liam's feet, damning the cotton, the quilting, and chenille impeding his palms from feeling Liam's flesh. He savored every curve and concave along the way, kneading deeply when he arrived at the one most pronounced.
"Mmm."
"Yes."
Frank separated the mounds, working several layers of materiel in between with the ends of his fingers. When he mounted Liam, pressing his hardness into the barely visible indentation he'd made, he was close t
o orgasm in no time at all.
"Oh! Fank!"
Grinding into Liam, Liam grinding into the mattress, both left wet marks, Liam on his pillow from his mouth, Frank on the very top layer from where he already leaked his male juices.
"I would never have thought this could be so intense, Liam, so ultimately satisfying." Frank threw his head back, sliding himself along the shallow fabric crevice he soon filled with an explosion of thick, sticky fluid still warm against his bareness when he collapsed atop it. "Did you come?" Frank asked, and it bothered him a little that he had to.
"Yes," Liam told him.
"It was the best ever for me. The most pleasurable," Frank said, and it was true. "The most meaningful."
"For me t-t-oo." Liam seemed unable to catch his breath.
"Should I get up? Would it make your breathing easier?"
"Please d-don't."
Frank thought about Liam's previous words. The most meaningful for him too. Of course it was, if Liam now considered himself a virgin again. "I need to know, Liam. Who are you?" Frank damned the fact that every new act of closeness brought the same old questions. He hated himself too, for having them, more so for asking, especially right then.
"Who am I?" Liam asked.
"Yes."
"What do you m-mean?"
Frank slid down the top quilt—down and off Liam, actually. Liam rolled over. "Come back to m-me." And Frank obliged. He placed his cheek on Liam's chest, on the blanket there. His feet dangled off the bed. It wasn't terribly comfortable, but that was okay. "Just… tell me what is in your mind. When you are waiting to fall asleep at night, what thoughts play in your brain? If I wasn't here, what would you be thinking now?"
"About y-you."
"Yes. But…" Frank kissed the blanket at his cheek. He listened for Liam's heartbeat a moment. "Hmm."
"What?"
"Too much fabric. Too muffled." Frank wrote the odd rhythm off to that. "What I wonder, though, are there things that plague you as you try to drift off, or memories you love to revisit?"
"Songs."
That made sense. Frank had forgotten half of everything he had learned in high school and college, but could recollect every lyric to every song he had ever memorized by heart. "What songs?" he asked.