Goose and Patrick

by David Connor

  “In this?” Patrick held up the towel, exposing his nakedness.

  “Uh-huh. Just follow close behind me.”

  We kept contact with the wall, Patrick and I, but not Wilbur, who ran in zig-zags and in circles. He was too short to be caught by the prying lenses on duty anyway.

  Patrick had wrapped the towel around the back, which meant his hard-on was out in the open the whole time. I reached back to press it against his tummy. “The way it’s sticking out, it might trip the security lasers.”

  “I hope to God you’re kidding.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I wanted to avoid leaving ass prints on the windows,” he said.

  We were up front, so I could grab some snacks from the display at register four, dangerously close to the camera above the front door. “I’ll clean any ass prints before we open day after tomorrow. Well, tomorrow. I guess it’s today by now.”

  “Still, I’ll keep back there covered.”

  “As you wish. Stay there. I’m gonna get us some candy. And…I’m gonna do it without being recorded. The snow angel thing might embarrass me slightly. If my towel were to fall off while I was reaching for Goobers, I don’t think I could come back from that.”

  I did a Matrix move to get past the end of the checkout lane, even though no one would likely be looking at security footage for at least another twenty-four hours, which meant it wouldn’t be there. “Snickers or Milky Way? Hell,” I didn’t wait for an answer, “one of each, and a few more for good measure. We’ll need the energy. Back the way we came.”

  “Grab my satchel, first, will you?”

  “Camera shy?”

  Patrick looked up. “I can’t even see them.”

  “But they can see you. You should have used two towels,” I said with a smirk.

  “Now you tell me.”

  “Ha! Here you go.” I handed off his bag. “Three or four towels, even. You’re cold. I see goose bumps.”

  “I don’t have goose bumps.”

  “Yes, you do.” I ran a fingertip up his bare arm, hopefully bringing out more.

  “You have goose bumps. I have Patrick bumps.”

  This time, I laughed, and my goose bumps multiplied. I knew Patrick well enough to put words in his mouth, cheesy, silly ones, and that made me happy, happy and some other emotion I couldn’t put to words, one I’d never felt before. It might have been contentment, comfort, and peace of mind.

  “It wasn’t that funny,” Patrick said, kissing my expressive mouth as I chuckled some more.

  “It was. I’ll tell you why once we get in bed. Come on.” I tugged on the arm I’d caressed.

  We ended up near the back of the sales floor, where the Christmas clearance items awaited someone’s interest. The trees were aglow in multicolor magic. “Merry Christmas, again.” I opened the storage room doors and fixed their stoppers to keep them that way. The bed fit in between, leaving a little bit of room for us to crawl in and out. Though a football field-length away, with only security lighting here and there, I could still see the window and the wild spiraling, sideways, lacy effect of the snow outside, where the parking lot was still fully lit. “I had a fantasy about making love to you on Christmas Eve.”

  The pump that inflated the mattress reminded me of my lawnmower. Wilbur wasn’t a fan. He stayed where I could see him but was keeping his distance for sure.

  “I could have made that come true, had I known.” Patrick held the towel in front of his pelvic region again, for what little good it did. He’d been hard the entire time, eager and ready. “It would have been fun to put the underwear I got for you on you…and then take them off.”

  Among other gifts, he’d presented me with two pair of boxer briefs, one with ghosts all over them and another pair with acorns. I wished I’d worn one of them that night.

  “I didn’t want to keep you away from your family,” I said.

  Patrick had a large brood—parents, stepparents, siblings much older, siblings much younger he was helping to raise, some adopted or fostered. There were more than fifty people at the O’Hanlon’s for Christmas, he had told me. I had also been invited but couldn’t bring myself to be around that many strangers at once. Patrick had offered to bow out early. I’d told him no way.

  “You’re a very considerate soul. I can’t wait to show you off to everyone.”

  “Family is everything. Hey. Don’t let me forget to leave the candy wrappers and money for Carrie, so she can ring them up.”

  “Tell me about her,” Patrick said, as we waited for the mattress to fully inflate.

  “I don’t know much, really.” I told him the story about the toy for Wilbur, the price tag, and the locker. “The name Carrie sounded friendly. She’ll be surprised how many things I bought tonight.” I smiled, imagining the look on Carrie’s face. “Halloween costumes and candy. I’ve told her to keep the change, but she won’t. Hers is the locker with the unicorn and rainbow.”

  “I’m assuming she’s a teenager.”

  “I figure. Oh.” I turned to face the store.

  “What?” Patrick asked, sensing my concern.

  “I, uh, don’t have condoms in my locker. I wasn’t expecting this tonight. Or any other night. I don’t think I want to leave the UPC code from a box of those in Carrie’s locker.”

  “Ah. Well, would you believe I have several boxes in my satchel?”

  I smiled. “I’ll believe it. I’ll probably also ask you why.”

  “Well, on Saturday, I usually drop off a hefty supply at the health center in Litchfield County. A lot of teenagers go in there, teenagers, who, despite their bravado about sex and life in general, are sometimes too shy to buy condoms.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “You think sixty are enough?” Patrick opened his satchel to show me half a dozen boxes with ten in each.

  “Depends how good you are.”

  He was good. More importantly, he was careful and tender once we got onto the bed. Side by side, our naked bodies molded together. The kisses he offered were noisy and wet, with his mouth on mine the whole time, his arms around me, and my toes at his shins, because he was taller.

  “Do you remember your first time?” I asked him.

  “I do, but I really don’t recall it as anything special, not my first time ever. This, right now, tonight…this I’ll remember as special.”

  “Yeah. I get it. My first time was prom, 2004. I wish it was a better memory. It was a lot like the night Jefferson first went to Thomas to reveal his affection, except Tom and I actually had sex, and then he…”

  Patrick pulled me closer. “I’m sorry that’s still up here.” He kissed the top of my head. “Hey. How about this?” He got up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Not far.”

  I took his hand to join him when he offered it.

  “What was your prom theme?” Patrick asked.

  “Titanic.” I rolled my eyes. “I mean, romantic, maybe, but it was one of those things that really didn’t end well, not a particularly positive harbinger of the future for a bunch of sixteen-year-olds, you know? Why not Romeo and Juliet?”

  “Dance with me.”

  We ended up just behind the bed. Patrick began to sing Celine Dion, mercifully pausing to ask, “Does it feel like prom? What am I missing?”

  “Hmm.” I rubbed my chin with my thumb and index finger. “I had clothes on, best as I can recall. And we had a disco ball.”

  “Oh. I remembered something. Stay here.”

  I spun around to watch Patrick run naked back toward the other end of the storage room, then smiled when I realized what he’d gone after.

  “May I put it on you?”

  A random box of bowties had called to him. I’d forgotten they were there. He’d chosen powder blue for me, as if it was 1979. “Yes.”

  Our bodies came together, even closer when I had to get on tiptoes to do his, which was red. “Clothes are overrated, but bowties are a must. Now, about that disco ball
…”

  Patrick spun us around toward the light switch, belting out another several measures in a key that didn’t exist in the world of music, adding words that proved he probably didn’t know the real lyrics, either.

  “Ti…Ti…Ti-tan-ic,” he sang, “Titanic. We hit an iceberg and sank.” His warbling came while he flicked the fluorescents off and on. Every note was dissonant. “Jack and Rose. Was that her name, Rose?” And we barely moved, our dance steps a bit like marching in place, as he kept at the lightshow and sang even louder. Back to the real words eventually, he never did get anywhere near the right pitch.

  “Hoooooowelllll!”

  When Wilbur joined in, I laughed my bare ass off. “Perfect. He won’t sing with just anyone, you know. He loves you.” I gently pulled Patrick closer by his beard. “And so do I.” After a kiss, I proclaimed it the prom night all horny teenagers dreamed of, as we moved back to the bed. Instead of initiating sex, though our bodies showed readiness, Patrick suggested we recreate the yuletide we hadn’t spent together.

  “Here. Merry Christmas, Goose.”

  My Santa with a red beard presented me with a Snickers bar. “The wrapping sort of gave it away,” I told him. “But it’s just what I wanted.”

  “I’m stumped.” His eyes sparkled behind his lenses, bouncing back points of color from the tree nearby, as he tore into the candy I gave him, as if it really was Christmas morn. “A Milky Way! I thought it was golf clubs.”

  Naturally, New Year’s Eve followed.

  “Three, two, one!”

  We kissed, of course, but I think Patrick was stalling the actual sex, to make sure I was okay.

  “A toast,” he suggested.

  We’d celebrated the real start of 2019 together on the phone just a couple weeks earlier. For our second go round, we made our “out with the old and in with the new” salute with paper cups.

  “Clink,” Patrick supplied the sound.

  We guzzled water collected from the fountain just outside the bathrooms, pretending it was the finest champagne, there in our birthday suits and bowties, and our torn-up candy wrappers made the perfect confetti. This time, I sang, “Auld Lang Syne,” of course, vowing to forget the bad stuff in my life and concentrate on the good.

  “From this moment on, it’s all about how lucky I’ve suddenly gotten, and how wonderful you are.”

  “Ditto. Can I make that sound more romantic?” He thought a moment. “Ditto, mi amor. My Italian accent is as good as my singing, no?”

  “Every bit. The end of 2018 was pretty special,” I told Patrick, walking my fingers up and down his hairy legs. “Meeting you, meeting Jefferson and Calvin was amazing, and I think…” I got to my knees and fell against him, tossing my paper cup back over my shoulder. “I think I can’t wait any longer to get this going.”

  My lower legs hung off the bed as I flipped around to put my face at his hairy crotch.

  “Orange you glad I love your hairiness?”

  “I’m glad you love anything about me,” Patrick said with my cock in his mouth.

  The truth was, I loved a hairy man. A hairy, redheaded man was even hotter. The fur that dusted the crack of his ass got darker as I mouthed him there, leaving behind a lot of spit I played in as I teased his tight hole with my fingertip.

  “You bottom for real?” I asked him. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, either.” I forgot whose turn it was to talk when he took my dick all the way down to my bushiness. “Damn! What were we saying?”

  “You asked if I bottom.” He slurped up some spit of his own. “And the answer is I want this cock in me real fucking bad.”

  I rolled on a condom, and then slipped gently inside him, watching his facial expression to gauge how fast I should go. His opening was tight. My cock was thick. Each time his grimace melted into a euphoric smile, I pushed it in a little farther, until the fattest part was past the most sensitive area of his ass.

  Reaching for his lips with mine while I thrust in and out and rubbed my lower gut against his balls was difficult, but I wanted to take in his breath as he took my throbbing cock.

  “Mmm.”

  When he groaned against my open mouth, I pulled his thighs tighter around me, in case he’d been keeping them apart to soothe my anxiety. “I want as much of you touching me as possible,” I said.

  Closeness wasn’t enough after a while, though, I wanted to feel him inside.

  “Annnnnddddd switch!”

  Patrick played behind his balls when I pulled out, rubbing himself with his long, slick fingers, slicker now than they’d started. When I threw a leg over him to get into position, he used his wet digits to prepare me. One, two, and then three, that one bringing a groan from me up toward the acoustic tile. The ceiling in the storage area was different than it was in the store section. I was going to point that out, but Patrick, already slipping the condom down his stiff shaft, likely wouldn’t have cared.

  I rode him, like a red merry-go-round horse. That simile was his, not mine. I was too busy reciting alphabetical fruits in my head to hold back. Apple, banana, cumquat. Does cumquat start with a C or a K? Stop saying cum, dude! You’re gonna finish too fast!

  I was close to orgasm without even touching my dick. Every time Patrick reached for it, I took his hand and put it somewhere else, against my lips, on my sweaty chest, and then around back, where he arched up to go deeper and deeper as we curled up smaller and closer.

  I wanted the moment to last, but finally had to give in, as his thickness touched just the right spot inside me and my cock slapping noisily against his gut made me lose all control.

  “Fuck!” My expletive was held longer than any note in “My Heart Will Go On.” Patrick matched its length and volume when he finished, the heat of his cum noticeable to the sensitivity inside my ass.

  We stayed coiled up, wound together, folded around one another, like a croissant. Damn, I wanted a croissant, but I wanted to be right where I was even more.

  The explosion from the tip of my cock had coated Patrick good. G, I wrote it over his heart once more, through it. Then he took some from around it to monogram mine. P. “I want to be in your heart forever.”

  Lying back in his arms afterward, stretched out but still close, our cum and sweat, our hair and our flesh were all smooshed together, as the hands on the clock overhead tick, tick, ticked away time.

  “That’s not a very romantic word,” I said after quite a few seconds.

  “What’s that?” Patrick asked.

  “Were you sleeping?” I thought he was.

  “Uh-uh. I was listening to you hum.”

  “I was humming?” I snuggled in. “What song?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, it was ‘I Feel Pretty,’ from West Side Story.” He laughed. I cringed.

  “Oh, good God!”

  “I’m glad you feel pretty, with your hair all mussed, your body all naked, your bowtie crooked. Phew.” Patrick wiped his brow. “They do keep it warm in here, or maybe it’s us being all smooshed together.”

  “Smooshed! Ow.” I’d cracked my head on Patrick’s chin in my excitement. “That was the word I was thinking, the one I said wasn’t romantic.”

  “It sounds romantic to me,” he said. “A little birdy put it in my head.”

  “A little birdy or a Small Jefferson?”

  “Hmm. Now that you mention it, I don’t see any birds.”

  “Stay right there.” I hopped up. Actually, I stumbled, like a fool, and fell face first into Patrick’s crotch. There wasn’t much room on either side of the blow-up mattress. All in all, I didn’t hate what had happened, but I had something in mind. “I want to draw you,” I said, once steady on my feet.

  “I probably look pretty awful.”

  “Uh-uh. You’re pretty, too, with my mark all over you.”

  I got the sketch pad from my locker but struggled to find the right vantage point. I wanted to capture Patrick O’Hanlon from the tip of his pinky toe, to the tip of his thick, salty dick, to the ti
p of his nose and above. Up high on the ladder we’d played on earlier, seated partway up was just right.

  “Get down from there.”

  I stuck out my tongue. “No. I have nothing on to trip over. Throw me a towel, though, so I don’t get rung prints on my ass.”

  “I wish I could draw,” Patrick said, lying on his back with his hands under his head. “You look amazing up there.”

  The look of him made me smile. The green eyes, the glasses he’d left on during sex, the big ears their limbs curled around, and the perfect nose they sat on. His naked body reminded me of the statue of Poseidon in Copenhagen Port, all deep sculpted roundness with hard and soft fleshiness and muscle, much of it dusted or covered in orange. “Here.” I ripped off a sheet of paper that floated down to the bed once I’d released it, like one of the snowflakes outside. “Try.”

  “It’s going to suck.”

  “I’m sure I’ll love it. Maybe Jefferson will help. He drew me, remember, when I thought I was drawing him?”

  “I’m going to need all the help I can get.” Patrick reached for the paper. “And a pencil.”

  I tossed him one he caught like a pro.

  “We’re back to Titanic,” he said, “except I see a much happier ending for us. We can swim better than Jack. Oh! There! Your smile.”

  “You make me smile.”

  “That’s the best compliment anyone could give me.”

  Within another twenty minutes, I’d finished my drawing, at least well enough to allow me to get back beside Patrick, where I still yearned to be. I handed it to him.

  “Nice. I like the way you see me.”

  “Can I see yours?” Both hands were planted firmly atop it. “Please.”

  “I worked really hard on it.”

  “I want to see.”

  He took a deep breath. “Here.”

  “Aww.”

  He’d drawn two hearts with our first initials inside of them. “You in my heart, me in yours.”

  “Perfect.” I clutched it to my chest and put my head against his. “You captured this night in its entirety.”

  We fell asleep that way, under one of the blankets I’d brought from home. I was out about two hours, which was pretty damned good, considering what a lousy sleeper I was. I hit the shower, slipped on the plaid sleep pants from my locker, then sat at the edge of the bed to draw Patrick again. He awoke before I was finished.