Hobbled

by John Inman

  Danny supposed he would have to stop calling it the vacant house. Didn’t seem to be vacant any longer. No sirree. Danny had a new neighbor, and he was cuter than crap. Woo hoo!

  Listening to his own thoughts, Danny just shook his head. God, he was pathetic. He really had to get laid. He really, really, really had to solve this virginity problem and come out as a proud gay man and simply get laid. His dad would be surprised he was gay, he supposed, and his mom would throw a conniption fit, of course, but sometimes a guy just has to do what a guy has to do, and Danny’s dick was screaming at him to just get the job done already.

  Danny wondered if he could get the job done with the cute new guy next door, but even he had to admit the odds of that happening were pretty slim. First of all, the guy would have to find Danny attractive. And Danny would have to not make a fool of himself the first time they met. And then they’d probably have to get a friendship going, and Danny always had a problem with friendships, he was so damned shy and all. And then, of course, the guy would have to be willing to overlook the cast on Danny’s leg and the ankle monitor courtesy of the San Diego Police Department on the other leg. And then he’d have to overlook the fact that Danny was a criminal. And on top of all that, the guy would also have to be gay. Duh. Jeez, the longer Danny thought about it, the slimmer the odds became of getting it on with his new next-door neighbor at all. And wasn’t that a depressing realization.

  Danny was pulled out of his reverie by the sound of barking. A dog poked his head through the truck window like maybe he had just woken up. It was a big dog. The dog had reddish-blond hair, just like the guy. It was a golden retriever. Beautiful. Also just like the guy.

  The dog leapt through the open truck window and bounded through the back door of the house, which the guy had left open. Danny trailed his binoculars from one window to the next until he found one that seemed to look into a parlor, or a den, although it was hard to tell since there wasn’t any furniture in the house yet. There, Danny saw the guy down on his knees, giving the dog a hug. The dog was eating it up too. Tail wagging, tongue lolling, butt swinging back and forth.

  Danny supposed his tail would be wagging, too, if the guy was down on his knees in front of him and petting and cuddling him like crazy.

  Danny wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe he heard music all of a sudden. Like, you know, a love song. Playing somewhere in the back of his head. God, that guy was hot!

  And while Danny was thinking about love songs and being petted and all, his dick, unencumbered by clothes, woke up and lifted its little head to see what was going on. As it looked around, the little head got bigger and bigger.

  Not knowing what else to do, Danny took a firm grip on his cock with one hand, continued to watch the cute guy through the binoculars, which he held with his other hand, and before he knew it, his knees were shaking. Of course, once a guy has a hard-on and his dick’s in his hand and his knees start shaking, that’s about it. Danny suddenly found himself groaning and shooting a torrent of come across his bedroom window like a fire hose.

  Lord, it hadn’t taken two minutes.

  When his heart stopped hammering and his dick stopped squirting, he went to fetch the Windex.

  Oy. What a pervert he truly was.

  But at least the music stopped.

  THE next morning at the crack of dawn, Danny was up and about, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, so to speak. He showered so long he began to prune, and afterward he styled his hair properly, with gel and blow-dryer, taking infinite care in placing each hair exactly where he wanted. Then he headbanged and tossed it around to add volume and messed it all up again. Perfect. He used cotton swabs on his ears, brushed his teeth until he foamed up like a rabid dog, gargled three times, and even flossed between his toes with the towel on the one foot that wasn’t entombed in concrete. On the other foot, where his toes barely stuck out beneath the cast, Danny swabbed those toes with a washcloth liberally splashed with alcohol. After that, he clipped his toenails and fingernails with the nail clippers. He even trimmed the hair inside his nose with a tiny pair of scissors his dad used for the same thing. Then he smeared an itty-bitty dab of zit cream on a spot on his neck that looked like it was thinking about blossoming into a full-fledged fucking pimple and topped it off with just a speck of concealer.

  Nothing gay about that, he reassured himself. Every teenage boy in America had a bottle of concealer stashed away somewhere for moments like this. They might not admit it, but they do. Cover Girl wasn’t just for chicks. Uh-uh.

  Danny applied deodorant to his armpits twice because he forgot he had already done it once, then he tugged on a sexy pair of gym shorts and a muscle shirt that (he hoped) showed off his pecs and biceps, what little there was of them, since he was so damned skinny. And lastly, because he flat-out refused to wrap his legs in pink trash bags on this all-important morning, he dressed up his one foot that was available for public viewing with the right half of his best pair of sneakers and a brand new ankle sock.

  There wasn’t much Danny could do about the ankle monitor or the cast. They would just have to be taken at face value. Hopefully, his new neighbor wouldn’t be hypercritical in the matter of broken bones and/or electronic detention as it applied to the criminal justice system.

  Danny decided to skip breakfast because he was so nervous he figured he would probably throw it back up if he ate anything. He studied his reflection for five full minutes in the bathroom mirror to make sure everything was copacetic, and even he had to admit, he looked pretty darned good. He prayed to God the guy next door would think so too.

  As soon as the sun crested the rooftops across the street, Danny was positioned at the westernmost edge of his property, clippers in hand, trimming, yet again, the hedge he had just trimmed the day before. This time he trimmed it like a neurosurgeon removing scar tissue from a damaged, but still living, brain. Carefully. Very, very carefully. Leaf by leaf and stem by stem. Once in a while, he would step back and study what he had just done, like an artist examining his latest brushstrokes on canvas. Then Danny would trim a little more. Snip snip—snip.

  Danny trimmed and retrimmed the hedge so many times he began to wonder if there would be a hedge left by the time the guy showed up.

  Of course, what Danny was really doing was killing time, waiting for the gorgeous guy who just moved in next door to step outside his house to either walk the dog or start unloading his truck. Danny had the whole “accidental introduction” scenario down pat inside his head. In fact, his bravery in the matter pretty much astounded even him. He must be truly smitten to be so determined to meet this guy. Good grief, the truck had been driven into the driveway barely five hours earlier. Danny supposed this was what his father would call “thinking with the little head.”

  And yep, he had to admit, that’s pretty much what it was. If he hadn’t been under house arrest and unable to leave the property, Danny would have probably baked the guy a cake and delivered it to his door like Beaver Cleaver’s mom working for the Welcome Wagon. Of course, Danny would have to learn how to bake first. And then he’d have to somehow trick himself into not eating the cake himself.

  Still, there was no getting around it. Danny was determined to come out. Coming out required having sex. Gay sex. And if he had his druthers, he’d like to come out with the new guy next door as his first conquest. If Danny could shoot sperm all over the bedroom window just by looking at the man from thirty yards away, what might happen if they actually came into physical contact with each other?

  God. Danny blushed and suffered a flurry of heart palpitations just thinking about it.

  Something cold touched the back of his leg. The clippers flew out of his hand and he squealed like a toddler. Whirling around, he saw a golden retriever. The golden retriever.

  And behind the golden retriever, a guy.

  The guy.

  He was holding Danny’s clippers in his hand and grinning. Danny wasn’t sure, but he thought maybe the dog was grinning, too.


  “Caught these in midair,” the guy said. “We should start a circus act.”

  Danny touched the back of his leg. “Was that…?”

  The guy looked fondly down at his dog. “Yeah. That was Granger. His nose is cold, isn’t it? He likes saying hello like that. Does it to me in the bed every morning, pressing that coldass nose to some body part or other. I don’t usually squeal though. Nice touch, that.” And the guy grinned even wider. There might even have been a chuckle or two in there somewhere, trying to get out.

  Danny was still imagining what it would be like to press a cold nose to a few of the guy’s body parts. Jesus, that was one lucky dog.

  Up close and personal, the guy was even cuter than he was the night before. While Danny floundered around trying to think of something intelligent to say, Danny checked the guy out, all the while trying not to look like he was checking the guy out.

  The young man’s hair was ginger in the morning light. Redder than how it had looked in the moonlight the night before. It was cut shorter than Danny’s, and it was curlier. Thick, lush, and sexy. Danny hadn’t even known he liked redheads until he saw this one. Boy, he sure liked redheads now.

  The redhead’s face was a collection of clean, crisp lines. Sharp handsome nose, lightly sprinkled with freckles, neat jawline, firm little chin with the hint of a cleft in it, and finely delineated lips that seemed to smile an awful lot. There were two tiny commas at either side of his mouth. Dimples. And between the dimples was a beautiful array of small white teeth. At the moment, since the guy was grinning, those teeth were on brilliant display. Behind the heavy black glasses, which on this guy somehow managed to look chic instead of geeky, his eyes were cornflower blue. They were surrounded by long pale lashes that seemed to catch the light when the sun glinted across them just right. In the middle of the cornflower-blue irises, there were tiny streaks of gold. Like sunbursts.

  The face, over all, was open, friendly, amused, and cuter than hell.

  While the guy was shorter than Danny, he was better muscled. And since he was dressed almost exactly like Danny, in shorts and a muscle shirt, Danny had a bird’s-eye view of nicely constructed arms and legs, all four of the little devils sprinkled with a pelt of reddish-blond hair that almost took Danny’s breath away, he so wanted to run his fingers over it. Or his tongue.

  There was just a hint of blond chest hair peeking out of the top of the guy’s muscle shirt, and Danny could see his nipples poking up against the fabric.

  Casting his eyes a little lower, not that he thought he should, but because he didn’t know how to stop himself, he detected a promising bulge in the front of the guy’s running shorts. That gave Danny food for thought; don’t think it didn’t.

  And looking ever farther south, Danny saw the young man was standing on Danny’s lawn barefoot. Even his feet were cute. Strong, pale, competent looking. They were wet from the dew and speckled green with freshly mown grass clippings.

  With a start, Danny realized that the guy was on the same side of the hedge as Danny was. Danny had been hoping that on their first meeting, the hedge would hide some of the hardware strapped around his legs, at least long enough to let Danny explain it all first. He guessed that wasn’t going to happen now. Although, if the guy had spotted Danny’s cast and ankle monitor, it didn’t seem to bother him much.

  Besides Danny’s clippers, the young man was also holding a plastic bag full of dog poop, which explained everything. In one motion, he handed Danny the clippers back and flung the bag of dog poop over the hedge and into the yard next door. His yard.

  “So,” the redhead said, sticking out his hand, “I’m Luke Jamison.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Danny stammered, taking the hand and holding onto it for way too long because he really, really liked the way it felt. Then he came to his senses and realized how long he was holding onto Luke’s hand, which made him drop it like a live grenade. And that made him blush. He could feel the blood infusing his head all the way up to his cowlick. Christ, he hated that feeling.

  Luke seemed to enjoy it. He blinked back a laugh. “Nervous?”

  No, just head over heels in lust, Danny wanted to say, but of course he didn’t. Instead, he started jabbering. And once he started, he couldn’t seem to stop. He became more horrified as the seconds passed and he just kept blathering on and on and on, but still he couldn’t seem to make himself shut up.

  “You’re probably wondering about my ankle monitor and the cast and everything. It’s like this, see. My boss pissed me off, so I flipped the ice machine over to get back at him, and then I wasn’t watching what I was doing because I was busy throwing all the hamburgers out the drive-thru window and I slipped in the ice and broke my leg and the judge thought it was pretty funny but he didn’t think it was funny enough to let me off the hook scot-free so once my dad talked him out of making me go to jail, the judge slapped this monitor on my ankle and told me I have to wear it for six weeks and since this is just the second day I’ve still got nearly six weeks to go before it comes off but I’m not dangerous or anything so you don’t have to worry about living next to me and even if I was dangerous I can’t leave the yard or the red light comes on and then ten thousand cops will come and beat me to death with night sticks so you’d be safe anyway.”

  Danny finally managed to force his mouth shut by sheer willpower, sort of like closing a rusty gate. Then he said, conversationally, sanely, nonchalantly, and as if he hadn’t been mindlessly jabbering for the last forty-five seconds like a lunatic, “And how about you? Moving in, huh?”

  Luke gave a little headshake. “Wow. That was a whole lot of information there.”

  He stared at Danny for a minute and finally seemed to come to the conclusion that Danny was normal. Danny couldn’t imagine why.

  Without answering Danny’s question, Luke dropped to his knees and took a closer look at the monitor around Danny’s ankle. Him and the dog both checked it out. While he was checking it out, Luke cupped Danny’s calf in his hand and lifted the foot up closer to his face to get a better look.

  Danny gasped at the feel of Luke’s hand on the skin of his leg, then he gasped again because he started to lose his balance, and when he started to lose his balance, he dropped the hedge clippers and reached out for the only thing available to brace himself against, which happened to be Luke’s head.

  With his hand in Luke’s hair, and Luke’s hand on his bare leg, Danny thought he had died and gone to heaven. When Luke looked up at him with his face no more than a foot away from Danny’s crotch Danny figured this was a major improvement on heaven. Heck, heaven was probably nothing compared to this. Heaven was probably Newark compared to this.

  Luke smiled up at Danny. He seemed to be inordinately amused by Danny’s wide, wide eyes looking down at him. “You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”

  Danny could only nod.

  Luke stroked the back of Danny’s leg. He didn’t seem to be shy about it either. “So do you have a name or are you just known as the criminal mastermind of the neighborhood?”

  That made Danny laugh. “Danny,” he sputtered, still engrossed with the feel of Luke’s hair between his fingers and Luke’s fingers on the back of his leg. “My name is Danny.”

  Luke patted Danny’s calf and gave it a couple of strokes before releasing it and hauling himself to his feet.

  “Well, this is going to be fun, Danny. Let’s get to know each other, what do you say?”

  Luke looked down at the monitor on Danny’s right foot. He cocked his head to the side and stared at it for about five heartbeats, like he was thinking things over. Then he looked like he had thought things over long enough and had finally come to a decision.

  “Your place it is then,” Luke finally said. “My place seems to be out of your, shall we say, comfort zone. Plus it doesn’t have any furniture in it. Plus they haven’t turned the water on yet.” Luke took Danny’s hand and pulled Danny in the direction of his front door.

  Tail wagging, tongue
lolling, Granger padded along beside them.

  Two minutes later, they were drinking Cokes at Danny’s kitchen table. Except for Granger. Granger was having water and a bowl of cat food. It was the only pet food Danny had in the house.

  Frederick was hissing from the top of the fridge at the fucking dog because the fucking dog was eating his fucking food and drinking out of his fucking dish. Frederick wasn’t big on sharing. Canine intolerant. That was Frederick.

  Both Danny and Luke thought the cat’s reaction to Granger was pretty funny. Granger didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He was too busy scarfing up the cat’s Meow Mix to worry about the cat.

  By the time Danny and Luke had drunk their first Cokes and scrambled around in the fridge for seconds, they were friends. Sometimes friendship just happens that way, Danny figured. Then he wondered if people ever fall in love that fast.

  While trying to make sensible conversation and trying not to say anything stupid, and also trying not to get lost in Luke’s cornflower-blue eyes, which was a constant hazard, Danny was too busy and too inexperienced to know love sometimes does indeed happen that fast. In fact, it had already happened to him. He was just too untested in the ways of love to know it yet. When he did figure it out, it would either make him the happiest guy on the planet, or it would break his fucking heart.

  Danny was also too inexperienced to understand that universal truth.

  Chapter 3

  LUKE was sitting at the kitchen table next to Danny, looking down at Danny’s cast. “So does that thing hurt?”

  It did hurt a little, but Danny thought he would make more points by being stoic. “Nah. Itches though. Itches like crazy.”

  Luke scooted his chair around until he was in a position to pick up Danny’s leg, the one with the cast on it, and place it in his lap.