Hobbled

by John Inman

Nope. That smile was there because he was wondering when he and Luke would get together again. And what they would do when they did. And how many times they would do it.

  After all, for the first time in his life, it wasn’t only his own come he was washing off his long, lean body, now was it?

  And those thoughts were so delicious to contemplate, Danny broke into song. And he sang so loud, and it echoed so horrendously between the shower walls and out the bathroom door, that Frederick made a chuffing noise and stalked off down the stairs to get away from it.

  Damned humans anyway.

  Chapter 7

  ONCE Danny was dried off and dressed in his customary shorts and T-shirt, he headbanged his hair into place while grabbing the binoculars to see what was going on next door. Luke had only been gone for twenty minutes, but already Danny missed him.

  Aiming the binoculars at Luke’s bedroom window without even trying to be sneaky about it, Danny saw Luke drying off with a towel as he meandered around his room stark naked with Granger padding along behind. The two of them seemed to be exploring their new domain, peeking into closets, switching lights on and off.

  Danny grinned when Luke looked up and spotted Danny spying on him from across the way. Luke gave a sexy little striptease bump and grind for Danny’s benefit, and still drying his hair with the towel, Luke slid the window all the way up and leaned out to yell, “The water’s on! Yay!”

  Danny laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. Then Danny stepped back from the window and grabbed his heart. Lord, that little bump and grind routine of Luke’s had sent the blood rushing to Danny’s groin like the levee in his diaphragm had burst. Suddenly Danny wasn’t sure which was worse: wanting something you’ve never had, or wanting something again you’ve only had a couple of times. He was referring to sex, of course. Well, no. He was referring to sex with Luke.

  Then Danny remembered the two of them, him and Luke, crying out like lunatics as they happily shot come all over each other’s faces, and a bit of the blood that had just sluiced down to Danny’s dick, sluiced back up again and burned his cheeks. The memory made his heart start hammering even louder. He decided on the spot it was his brand-new favorite memory, that one. None of his other memories even came close to that one for sheer stopping power because it really did stop him cold every time it entered his head.

  Danny gave himself a shake and stepped back to the window to see what Luke was doing now. But Luke and Granger were gone. Off to begin their day, Danny supposed. With a sad little exhalation of breath, Danny decided he should do the same. And using every ounce of willpower he possessed, he turned away from the window, set the binoculars aside, and headed for the stairs.

  Today, to do his dad a favor (and also to maybe take his mind off sex for a bit), Danny decided he would clean windows. Inside and out, upstairs and down. It was a job he and his dad both hated, which was all the more reason to do it. Danny sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything now to get himself sent back to Indiana to live on the farm. Hell no! Unless Luke moved to Indiana, which seemed highly unlikely, Danny was staying right here. And the trick to staying here was to keep his father happy. Thus the windows.

  But first—breakfast.

  While Danny chomped his way through another humongous bowl of Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries, he pondered life. And the first thing he pondered about life was the fact that now he thought he was pretty sure why people were always talking about and obsessing about and dreaming about and reading books about and watching movies about—wait for it—sex.

  Danny couldn’t stop reliving every single moment of the night he had spent with Luke. At one point, he even caught himself just sitting there at the dining room table, spoon hanging forgotten in his hand, while he remembered the taste of Luke’s lips. The heat and pressure of them. Luke’s velvet tongue trying to worm its way inside Danny’s mouth, and then Danny doing the same to Luke. Their arms drawing each other close, hands exploring, cocks rubbing together. Cornflower-blue eyes studying him—studying him—

  Then Danny remembered Luke flipping him onto his stomach and touching him there with that heavenly mouth of his. Just the thought of it made Danny’s hands tremble so badly he dropped his spoon in the cereal bowl, splashing milk halfway across the table.

  Oy.

  Danny made a concerted effort to eat the rest of his Crunch Berries without thinking any more about last night because he was never going to finish breakfast this way. Afterward, he slurped down his daily cup of coffee, still trying to block those memories from his mind, but without much success. Luke and his scrumptious body were everywhere inside Danny’s head and there was just no getting away from it.

  So with his poor besotted skull still filled with last night’s wonders, Danny finally went to work. He gathered up rags, window cleaner, and a stepladder. And all the while he was lugging stuff to the front of the house, he was hoping he wouldn’t break his neck trying to maneuver with the damn cast and ankle monitor hindering his movements. Frederick wasn’t helping either, getting underfoot, winding in and out between Danny’s legs, wanting his head petted, wanting to play.

  Danny was in the mood to play all right, but not with the cat. It took him about twenty seconds to figure out that sidestepping a needy cat and lugging a clunky old stepladder across the yard while balancing a shitload of cleaning supplies and sporting a hard-on all at the very same time was a recipe for disaster. Something had to go before he broke his neck.

  So he shooed away the cat and gave his dick a friendly pat on the head instead, after looking around to make sure no neighbors were watching. Then he girded his loins, so to speak, forced himself to ignore his erection from that point on, and went to work in earnest.

  By the time the sun had climbed up toward noon, and the temperature had climbed up right along with it, Danny was finished with all the outside windows except for the ones in the back overlooking the pool.

  He gathered together all his cleaning crap one last time, and dragged the ladder around the final corner of the house.

  Then he stopped cold.

  Behind the pool, in among the towering hibiscus plants that blossomed by the back fence, he saw a pair of legs sticking out along the ground. Little legs. They were wrapped in little ratty blue jeans, and the little feet sticking out the end of them were shod in little ratty tennis shoes.

  Looking closer, Danny spotted another pair of legs a few feet over under another hibiscus plant, sprawled out in the opposite direction. They looked like book ends.

  “Hey!” Danny bellowed, and all four legs jumped. Then all four legs wiggled into the shadows and disappeared.

  A moment later, two young boys stepped sheepishly into the light, rattling the hibiscus blossoms and looking guilty as hell. They were the same boys Danny had seen arguing over the basketball in the driveway down the street two days earlier. They were also the same boys he had given the finger to after they ragged him about his pink plastic leg warmers that day they roared past on their skateboards.

  Danny grinned when the two kids glanced at each other as if to say “Busted” then turned to face their fate. Danny bit back a chuckle. They looked like Danny was going to stand them up against the fence and call in the firing squad or something.

  “You guys were going to sneak into the pool, weren’t you?” Danny said, trying to look stern but not really pulling it off very well. The kids looked so guilty, it was actually pretty funny. Still, neighborhood kids trying to take a swim in Danny’s dad’s pool was a common enough problem, and one Danny’s dad tried desperately to control. Nothing could wreck a guy’s standing in the community like letting someone’s kid drown in his backyard.

  The two boys looked to be about eleven years old. One was black and the other was white, and they were both about as cute as they could be. Once they got a good look at Danny standing there with his cast and his ladder and his ankle monitor with the green light blinking over his right foot and the cleaning rags draped all over himself, they started looking a little
less guilty and a little more defiant.

  “What the hell are you supposed to be? A mummy?” the white kid asked.

  “Yeah, man. What the hell are you supposed to be? A mummy?” the black kid echoed, and Danny watched as the two kids sort of giggled and snorted and nudged each other.

  Danny propped the ladder against the side of the house to get it out of the way; then he dropped his cleaning supplies in the grass and tugged a dozen or so rags off of different parts of his body, glad to be rid of them. They were cramping his style. And probably did make him look like a mummy.

  He tried to salvage his dignity by assuming the pose of a proper adult. Hands on hips, head cocked to the side. All that grown-up shit. Then he said, “I’m the guy who’s going to keep you from drowning in this swimming pool because nobody’s around to watch over your little asses when you sneak in for your sneaky little dip thinking you’re cool.”

  “We weren’t going in your pool,” the black kid said.

  “And we weren’t sneaking,” the white kid said.

  Danny didn’t believe either one of them. “So what are you doing in my backyard, then?”

  And suddenly the two boys glanced at each other all shifty-eyed, looking guilty again.

  “Well?” Danny prodded. “Out with it. What the heck are you doing? And don’t tell me you weren’t being sneaky. Good lord, you look sneaky right now.”

  From the other side of the back fence, just behind the two boys, Danny heard a car door slam. The kids obviously heard it too, because they both jumped about two feet into the air before whirling around to look behind themselves. Danny had never seen two kids look more startled in his life.

  “It’s just a car door,” Danny said. “Nobody’s shooting at you, you know. Don’t be so nervous.”

  “We’re not nervous,” the black kid said, and Danny laughed.

  “Kid, if they had a picture next to the word ‘nervous’ in the dictionary, it would be a snapshot of the two of you taken right this very minute.”

  “We’re not nervous,” the white kid said. “We’re scared.”

  “Scared of what?” Danny asked. “Me?”

  And there was a beat of silence before both boys laughed. It wasn’t a very flattering laugh either.

  “Man, you’re about the last thing we’d be scared of,” the black kid said, bending down and slapping his knee like some old guy laughing at his own joke.

  And the white kid echoed him, bending down to slap his knee. “Yeah, man, you’re about the last thing we’d be scared of.”

  “So what are you scared of then?” Danny was getting hot. And not just hot under the collar. Physically hot. It was broiling out here. Sweat was gathering inside his cast and his leg was itching like crazy. He wanted to finish the windows and get inside out of the sun and take a shower and dig around with his curtain rod for a while and hope to hell Luke would come back over and do that little strip tease of his again. Danny didn’t want to spend the rest of his life talking to these two brats and melting in the sun. Actually, he sympathized with them completely for wanting to jump into the pool: the water was so damned inviting. Danny wanted to dive into it too. And if he hadn’t had one leg encased in cement, he would have.

  He jumped when a hand came down on his shoulder. It was his turn to whirl around, and when he did, he saw Luke standing there. Luke had a grin on his face that made his dimples really deep. And really cute.

  It was all Danny could do to drag the word out of his mouth. “Hi.” God, he was smitten.

  Luke was staring at the two kids. To Danny’s surprise, he broke into a pretty fair Irish brogue.

  “What’s with all the wee laddies? Leprechauns? Garden gnomes?”

  Danny giggled. “Trolls. Trespassing trolls.”

  The black kid stuck an elbow in the white kid’s ribcage. “So says the convicted felon under house arrest for vandalism and throwing a hissy fit in public.”

  “Not to mention assault and battery on two hundred cheeseburgers,” the white kid added with a smirk.

  Danny laughed. That was actually pretty funny. It also proved word of his escapades was indeed out on the street. If these two kids knew about his little meltdown at the hamburger joint, then everybody in the neighborhood did. Oh, well. Not much he could do about it now.

  “What are your names?” he asked, not even trying to look serious any more.

  Luke still had his hand resting on Danny’s shoulder. He was standing real close to him, too, Danny noticed. Danny liked having Luke snuggled up next to him like that, but he was beginning to wonder what the kids might think of it. Obviously, Luke didn’t care what the kids thought. And after Danny thought about it for a minute, neither did he.

  “Yeah,” Luke said, “what are your names? And what are you doing on my friend’s property, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  The white kid giggled. “More like boyfriend.”

  Luke leaned forward and stuck his face two inches from the white kid’s nose. “And that would matter why?”

  The black kid broke up their little staring contest by stepping forward. “My name’s DeVon.” He aimed a thumb at his buddy standing next to him. “This is Bradley. He’s white, but don’t hold that against him. We don’t care if you’re gay. We’ve got other fish to fry.”

  “Who said we were gay?” Danny asked. He wasn’t sure if he was bothered by the fact these brats thought they were gay or not. Basically, he just wanted to know why they thought it.

  “Hey,” the black kid groaned, “if you don’t want us to think you’re gay, then fine, we won’t.”

  “Even though you are,” the white kid added with a twisted little smile.

  Danny was getting a headache thinking of them as the black kid and the white kid. He made it a point to try to think of them by their names. DeVon and Bradley. DeVon and Bradley.

  DeVon decided to clear the air. “It’s no skin off our noses if you like to chew the dingdong. Hell, I got an uncle that’s queer. He chews on dingdongs, too. He gave me a bicycle last Christmas.”

  Whatever that had to do with it, Danny thought.

  Bradley threw his two cents’ worth into the pile. “Yeah, and I’ve got two aunts that chew dingdongs. And a gardener that does, too. The gardener’s name is Raul.”

  DeVon turned to Bradley with a scathing grimace on his face. “If your two aunts chew on dingdongs that don’t make them gay, you idiot. The gardener, yeah. But the aunts, no.”

  Bradley blinked and his ears turned red. “What does it make them then?”

  “Sluts. To be gay they’d have to like licking pussies. That would make them lezbos. Which is Latin for gay.”

  “Oh, yeah. I knew that.”

  “No, you didn’t. Anyway, eating pussy is a long way from chewing on a dingdong. Although I guess from a distance they look about the same.”

  Luke and Danny both laughed at that.

  Danny decided to get back to the single statement in this entire conversation that he had actually found interesting. “What was it you boys said you were scared of?”

  Both DeVon and Bradley cast nervous glances at the fence behind them. Suddenly they were speaking in whispers.

  “Nothing,” Bradley hissed.

  “Nothing at all,” DeVon added, barely audible. “Can we go now?”

  Luke and Danny glanced at each other, then they stared down at the kids.

  “Sure,” Danny said. “But don’t be sneaking around the pool any more. You could fall in and drown and I’d have to fish your smelly, lifeless black and white bodies out of the water, and then we’d probably have to drain the water and sterilize the fucking thing before we refilled it. Our water bill is high enough as it is.”

  “Yeah,” Luke added. “And by the way. What was the name of your gardener again?”

  Danny poked an elbow into Luke’s gut to shut him up. He knew the guy was joking, but still, was that a pang of jealousy Danny felt? Good lord, he really did have it bad.

  They watched as DeVo
n grabbed Bradley’s shirttail and dragged him around the corner of the house where the two boys gave a hasty wave, called out, “See ya!” and finally disappeared altogether.

  “Cute kids,” Luke said, watching them go.

  “Not as cute as you,” Danny heard himself say.

  Two minutes later, they were in Danny’s room closing the drapes and pulling off their clothes. And a mere two minutes after that, DeVon and Bradley, and yes, even Raul the gardener, were forgotten completely.

  Tumbling into each other’s arms, they did not think to look out Danny’s south window that overlooked the pool in the backyard. If they had, they might have seen their next door neighbor, Mr. Childers of the sexy (but older) ass and chest, pulling weeds on the other side of Danny’s back fence. He looked hot and sweaty and kind of cranky, as if maybe he had been out there quite a while.

  And even if Danny and Luke had spotted Mr. Childers by the back fence, slaving away under the burning California sun, they probably wouldn’t have thought anything about it.

  They were too busy to think of anything but themselves.

  And rightly so, since they were both coming to some fairly astounding conclusions about how they felt when they were in each other’s company.

  And especially when they were in each other’s company naked.

  DANNY felt a little uncomfortable. “Let me shower. I’ve been working all morning.”

  But Luke was like the mailman. He would not be deterred from his appointed rounds. And at the moment, his appointed rounds centered on Danny’s crotch.

  “No,” Luke said, without much finesse. He was too turned on for finesse. Didn’t have time for it at all. “I want to smell your sweat.” He lifted his lips from Danny’s balls and gazed across the gorgeous flat plain of Danny’s tummy and chest, still shiny with perspiration from his hours in the hot sun washing the fucking windows. Luke skated his hands across Danny’s sweaty skin as if he loved the feel of it. “That doesn’t make me weird or anything, does it?” Luke asked, looking remarkably young and innocent considering where he was positioned and all, with his chin resting lovingly against Danny’s sweaty nuts. His cornflower-blue eyes were so bright with passion, Danny thought he might get lost in them forever and never find his way out. They were a hazard. Yes indeedy.