Nightfall

by John Inman

  Joe stepped back, the move mirrored by Ned as if by a prearranged signal, and Joe took Ned’s hand and led him up the trail in the direction of home. They followed the beam of the flashlight as it bounced around in front of them. Now and then Joe sent the spear of light shooting off into the trees to illuminate every questionable shadow he spotted along the way.

  “Are you really tired?” Joe asked quietly. The darkness and the hush of the old trees beneath a lightless sky was enough to dampen anybody’s conversation.

  “No,” Ned answered, his voice as breathless as Joe’s. “I’m not tired. I’ve never been more awake in my life.”

  Joe tightened his grip on Ned’s fingers, and Ned stepped closer to Joe as if once again offering himself up for Joe’s protection. Maybe that wasn’t what Ned was thinking at all, of course, but Joe didn’t care. His heart swelled at the idea anyway. He wanted to be Ned’s protector. He wanted Ned close.

  Having Ned next to him on the trail was one thing, but the prospect of having Ned next to him in his bed for the rest of the night was almost more than Joe could bear to contemplate. Already his heart was hammering like a bass drum, and it was taking every ounce of willpower he possessed not to touch his cock as it lengthened in his pants.

  For the first time since the world fell apart, Joe was thankful for the dark.

  His thankfulness evaporated immediately when Ned roughly grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stop.

  “Listen!” he hissed, and Joe obediently froze.

  Somewhere on the trail up ahead, he heard cursing. Grunts and groans. Male voices. Then came the unmistakable sound of a fist striking flesh. There was a fight going on. Two guys. Maybe more. It was hard to tell the way the noises sifted through the trees and the way the unnatural darkness muted sound. There could be five or six guys duking it out up there for all Joe could tell.

  “You think people are going crazy too?” Ned asked in a breathless whisper. He didn’t sound as if the idea pleased him.

  Joe didn’t like the idea much either. “I hope not,” he whispered back. “Seems to me people are crazy enough on a regular basis. They don’t need to be any more nuts.”

  Joe switched off the flashlight and tugged Ned close, still speaking softly. “Come with me into the trees. We’ll go around to avoid them.”

  Only inches away in the shadows, but absolutely invisible to the naked eye, he could hear Ned swallow. Ned clutched at the hem of his coat, gathering a fistful of it to hold on to. “No argument here,” Ned whispered back. “Lead the way.”

  Keeping Ned close, clutching a clump of Ned’s jacket sleeve so they couldn’t wander away from each other in the dark, Joe ushered Ned off the path and ducked into the pitch-black shadows beneath the pines.

  They circled far around, groping along from one tree to the next, carefully planting their feet so they wouldn’t make a sound. The pillow of pine needles on the ground helped. Also, there wasn’t a lot of undergrowth to have to claw their way through. For both those things, Joe was intensely grateful.

  Minutes later, the sounds of fighting seemed to come from behind them rather than in front. Joe could see glimpses of streetlights now, so he knew the woodsy part of the park was coming to an end. They would be on the open lawns soon, and from there they could make a dash for their apartment building. Joe didn’t know what those people were fighting about, and he wanted to keep it that way. Ned had suffered one close call already tonight, what with the attacking dogs. That was pretty much all the excitement he needed. Joe didn’t think either one of them could stand much more.

  Besides, he wanted to get Ned home and into his bed in one piece. That was tantamount to everything else. It didn’t matter what happened once he got him there. Anything, everything, nothing. He just wanted Ned safely in his arms.

  Next to him, he felt Ned breathe a sigh of relief. “I don’t think they’ll bother us now. I can see our building.”

  “Me too,” Joe said, spotting the dim glow of a streetlight up ahead. He sputtered up a weird little laugh, which was sort of like opening a sluice gate to run off a few extra gallons of adrenaline.

  Ned giggled beside him. “You sounded scared back there.”

  “I was scared. Weren’t you?”

  Ned still hadn’t finished giggling. “Shit, yeah. I’m a nervous wreck.”

  Taking a firmer grip on Ned’s hand, Joe tugged him out of the trees, and side by side, laughing like loons now from relief more than anything else, they took off running across the dewy grass toward the lights up ahead. They swerved around the bocce courts and the horseshoe field like the boogeyman was after them.

  Breathing hard, they flew across Sixth Avenue, where there wasn’t a single car coming in either direction. A second or two later they flung themselves into the yard of their apartment building. They hurried past Ned’s apartment with its darkened windows, one of which still had a pigeon’s feather stuck to the glass, and flew up the stoop to Joe’s front door.

  With a trembling hand, Joe extracted his key from his front pocket and rattled it into the lock.

  “Come inside,” he said, a sappy grin still lighting his face. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

  “And away from the crazies,” Ned added, looking bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked from either the cold night air or the remnants of fear, Joe wasn’t sure which.

  A moment later, they stood together in Joe’s living room. Still clinging to Ned, Joe extracted one hand from Ned’s and turned to lock his front door, sealing them inside, safe and sound. When that chore was out of the way, he flicked on the lights.

  Only then did they step back and study each other with shy, eager eyes.

  “WANNA BEER?” Joe asked, casting his gaze around his own apartment as if he had never seen it before. He was afraid to settle his eyes on Ned for fear Ned would see the hunger in them.

  “Sure.” Ned smiled. He ran his fingers through his pale hair and looked down in surprise when they came away wet. In their time outside, dew had settled over both of them. Their shoulders sparkled with droplets of moisture, their hair shone damp on their heads. Add to that a goodly amount of nervous sweat from having been attacked by a pack of crazyass dogs, and Ned felt like he needed a bath.

  “Can I take a shower? I feel kind of funky.”

  Joe was relieved. He needed a shower too after working all night. The last thing he wanted to do was crawl into bed with Ned while smelling like a goat, even if all they did was sleep. “Sure. You shower first, then I’ll go. We’ll have our beers after. Throw your wet clothes out the bathroom door, and I’ll hang them up in the kitchen to dry.” He saw a flash of concern cross Ned’s face, and he grinned. “Don’t worry. I won’t leave you naked. I’ll lay out something for you to wear.”

  Ned’s face turned as red as a brick, but all he said was, “Okay. I won’t be long.”

  He ducked into the bathroom. He was no sooner gone than Joe yelled through the closed door, “Clean towels are under the sink!”

  “Thanks!” Ned yelled back, and with that out of the way, Joe peeled his own damp clothes off and tossed them in a hamper. He donned a ratty pair of lounging pants and a T-shirt and padded around the apartment barefoot while waiting for Ned to finish.

  Remembering what he’d said, he dug through his dresser in the bedroom and found an old pair of pj’s he had purchased long ago but never worn. They were still in the original packaging. He tore them out of the plastic and tried to shake the store wrinkles out of them, which didn’t work very well. They had been wrapped up so long, the wrinkles were pretty much impervious.

  He held the pj’s at arm’s length and frowned. They even looked too big for him. Ned would probably disappear inside them entirely. Well, hopefully not entirely. Joe prayed there would be a smidgeon or two of Ned left for him to ogle. At that thought, he grinned to himself. God, I’ve got it bad.

  He could hear the shower running, so he tapped lightly at the bathroom door. When he didn’t get an answer, he peeked in. The bathroom was mi
sty with steam. Through the opaque shower curtain, he could see a vague outline of Ned’s naked body twisting under the stream of hot water. Joe’s heart practically skidded to a stop. After all, the mere sight of Ned’s belly button the night before had activated his slut genes. The sight of Ned standing naked in his shower catapulted him onto another hormonal plane altogether.

  Not wanting to be caught snooping, Joe quickly hung the pajamas over the towel rod and quietly closed the door.

  At the last minute, after he’d tossed an industrial-sized bag of potato chips onto the coffee table in case Ned was hungry, Joe hurried into the bedroom to change the sheets. He had barely finished when Ned stepped through the bathroom door.

  His blond hair was still damp, only this time from the shower, not dew, and as Joe suspected, he looked like he was swimming in the pj’s Joe had given him. His hands were lost in the sleeves, his bare feet buried in the clumps of leg fabric that puddled on the floor. The tail of the pajama shirt fell to six inches above his knees. Ned was using a free hand to hold the pants up.

  He was the cutest thing Joe had ever seen.

  Ned looked less than happy. Once again his face was as red as a brick, and Joe didn’t think it was from the hot shower.

  “Maybe naked would be better,” Ned said while some sort of internal battle between laughing at himself and dying of embarrassment showed on his face.

  Joe shot him a lascivious wink. “Then by all means, naked it is.”

  Ned looked down at himself and the twenty or thirty yards of extra pajama fabric pooled around his body. A doubtful grin won his internal battle. “Well, maybe not.”

  Joe made a big show of looking hurt and disappointed, snapping his fingers in disgust and pouting like a six-year-old. “Well, darn,” he grumbled. And at the expression of horror on Ned’s face, Joe burst out with a howl of laughter.

  Taking pity on the poor guy, Joe ducked into the bedroom and snatched the belt out of his bathrobe. He passed it to Ned. “Here. Tie your pants on with this so you won’t have to hold them up all night. I won’t be a minute.”

  With that, Joe slipped into the bathroom and stepped under his own steaming shower. He was grinning like a sap, his head still filled with the image of Ned standing there embarrassed while Joe’s pj’s hung all over him.

  Joe ducked his head under the spray and laughed at himself. God, I really, really do have it bad.

  NED WATCHED Joe leave the room.

  When he was alone, he glanced around Joe’s apartment. He had been here before but had certainly never stayed all night. He contemplated what wonders he might experience by morning, if any. Or was Joe’s invitation to spend the night nothing more than an innocent attempt to keep Ned safe and unafraid after what had happened to him out on the trail?

  He spotted the humongous bag of chips on the coffee table. He also noticed that Joe’s bed looked neater than it had when he stepped through the door. From the floor of the closet, spilling through the not-quite-closed door, he saw a tangle of sheets and realized Joe had changed the bedding while Ned was in the shower. Ned considered slipping over to his apartment to grab his own pajamas, which weren’t a gazillion times too big for him, but decided against it. Ned sort of liked having his naked body swathed with clothing that belonged to Joe, even if it did make him look like a twit.

  Dutifully, he knotted the belt around his waist and tucked a few rolls of material from the pajama pants around it until they were short enough he could see his feet. It left a bulge around his waist and made him look like a turnip, but at least he wouldn’t trip on the pant legs and break his neck.

  He heard the shower running and tried not to imagine Joe’s naked body slathered with soap suds while rivulets of steaming water sluiced down his strong legs. Ned had partaken of Joe’s mouthwash while he was in there, so he knew his breath was okay. Still it would have been nice to have a toothbrush.

  He gave his head a long shake to dry his hair and, finally tired of standing, dropped onto Joe’s couch and waited for him to return. He didn’t want to dig around through Joe’s fridge for a beer. Joe might think he was being pushy. But as quickly as the thought came, it was derailed by the certainty that Joe wouldn’t think any such thing.

  Ned dried his hands on his pajama legs. They were clammy again, not from fear this time, but from—well, okay. Maybe it was fear. Fear of his own lack of control once he and Joe were in that bed together. If only he knew whether Joe wanted the same things he did. If only Joe would come right out and tell him exactly what he expected from Ned.

  Ned touched the scar at the side of his head. It was quiet at the moment. It wasn’t singing its sometime song of pain. But still it was there. And just by being there it reminded Ned why it had been inflicted to begin with. It also reminded Ned that because of that scar, he had not really acted on his “special desires,” as he called them, since he was sixteen years old. He had been living a lie for more than a decade! But lately he had known a change was coming. He couldn’t live that way much longer. Not since the day he met Joe, in fact.

  Ned clasped his hands together, making one big fist. After a minute, pain from the tension in his fingers began to awaken. It was a trick he had learned to draw his thoughts away from himself, to make the bad memories go away. Tonight, though, it didn’t seem to work. He relaxed his fists and let his mind run free. It was a guilty indulgence usually reserved for those nights when he lay alone in his bed. Those nights when the burning desires simply couldn’t be ignored. God, he hated those nights. Hated them and loved them. He loved them because on those nights he could finally let his imagination run wild, filling his brain with thoughts of Joe. Always Joe.

  He sighed and gazed around at the apartment. Joe was a better housekeeper than he was. His apartment was spotless. Ned’s apartment was kind of a mess.

  Ned wiggled around, getting comfortable on Joe’s couch. He rested his hands on his knees and stared at them. His heart was dancing a jig, and his imagination was executing somersaults inside his head as he wondered what Joe was doing on the other side of that bathroom door. And how he was looking while he did it. And how he might feel—how he might taste—if Ned should somehow step into the shower with him and drop to his knees at Joe’s feet.

  That thought came with such a rush of desire, Ned had to squeeze his eyes shut to fight against it.

  Ned froze when the sound of the shower stopped. The shower curtain rattled as Joe stepped out of the tub. Joe was softly humming to himself, and that made Ned feel a little better. It was good to know that Ned was the only one having a nervous breakdown here. It was good to know that Ned was the only one envisioning things he shouldn’t.

  His gaze skittered back to Joe’s bed. It was a bigger bed than his own. Ned had a single, Joe a double. It took up a lot of space in the little studio apartment, and Ned found it hard to tear his eyes away from it. Soon the two of them would be in that bed. Together.

  Christ knows where that will lead.

  Once again, Ned squeezed his eyes shut and waited. And while he waited, he stroked the scar at the side of his head with a trembling finger. He pictured Joe standing naked at the side of the tub, toweling his body dry. Ned squeezed his eyes shut tighter, trying not to imagine how Joe would look, how Joe would smell all soapy and clean. He sighed and reached for a chip.

  BACK IN his ratty lounging pants and threadbare T-shirt, Joe switched off the light on his way out the bathroom door, shot Ned a wink, then headed straight for the fridge to pluck two beers off the shelf. He twisted the caps off and tossed them in the sink, then carried the bottles across the apartment to hand one to Ned before plopping down on the couch at Ned’s side. He propped his bare feet on the coffee table, and Ned followed suit. Joe lifted the bag of chips off the table and tucked it between them so they wouldn’t have to stretch to grab a bite.

  He took a long sip of beer and turned to Ned. It wasn’t easy thinking of Ned sitting there beside him naked under those ridiculous pajamas, but Joe did his best. He tr
ied to focus his thoughts on Ned’s face. He figured he wouldn’t get in too much trouble that way. “You’ve had a hell of a night,” he said with a tsk. “Are you really okay?”

  Ned tugged at his shirt, neatly arranging the folds of the damn thing around him as if reading Joe’s mind about his being naked underneath. He cast Joe an awkward glance; then his lower eyelids flicked upward a fraction, which Joe knew was a sure sign that Ned was about to say something serious.

  “My night might have had a really different ending if you hadn’t come along when you did. That big dog was about to pull me down.”

  Joe’s face sobered. “I hate to think what might have happened if it had.”

  Ned nodded and plucked a chip from the bag. In the midst of crunching it to mush, he said, “You and me both.”

  “He had hold of your foot,” Joe said. “Did it break the skin? Let me see.” And without asking, he set his beer aside and bent over to pull Ned’s pajama cuffs away from his ankle. He slipped a hand under Ned’s leg and lifted it off the table so he could see the heel. While his fingers slipped through the soft hair on Ned’s calf, Joe studied Ned’s skin for a wound but didn’t find anything. Just the feel of Ned’s leg hair on the palm of his hand made his breath catch.

  “Looks okay,” he managed to say in a throaty voice.

  Ned flexed his toes and stared at Joe’s hand cradling his leg. When he spoke, his voice was just as breathless as Joe’s. “Told you.”

  He hated doing it, but Joe released Ned’s foot and replaced it gently on the table. He sat back, tossing the bag of chips on the table so he could sit closer to Ned. He suspected they were close enough when their shoulders and legs touched and there was barely enough room to insert a potato chip between them.

  Joe retrieved his beer. Hoping for levity, he said around a smirk, “I had to rescue your puny ass. You’re the only friend I’ve got.”

  He turned his head to see how Ned accepted that statement. He found Ned staring at him with a wide, sweet gaze. Ned took a moment to lick his lips, as if it would give him just a split second more to think about what to say. “You’re my only friend too,” he finally answered.