by Aiden Bates
Greg started to trail off, he was getting emotional. Jeff finally stopped his ruse and came down off the ladder. Glenn was holding Greg’s hand, and Jeff brought the bowl over and crouched down next to Greg.
“You’re thinking Sam, then?” Jeff asked. “You’re going to ask him first and not just jump him, right?”
“It’s not like I’m trying to trap anyone, Jeff. I’ve got legal papers in my bag right now that he could sign if he wants to make sure he’s absolved of financial responsibility, I’m not asking for anything more than a willing donor.”
“But you’re not asking me?” Jeff said. Without a doubt he’d sign onto that, because as a personal rule, Jeff never turns down sex. Mostly because he doesn’t get offered sex that much, though he’s always available and happy to let everyone know about it.
“No, Jeff. It’s a big decision, and a very personal decision, and it just wouldn’t be right if it was with you.”
“Ah, but Greg! You break my heart!” Jeff grabbed Greg’s hand and started to perform like some big, aching-with-love Romeo, kissing up his sleeve and then swooning back on his own heels. “I’m wounded!”
“You’re late for your date, aren’t you, Mr. Lothario?” Glenn said as Greg playfully shoved Jeff off of his arm.
“Oh, shit!” Jeff was late for his date, and for a much better opportunity to get laid since it probably wouldn’t come with any legal papers, and he tore out of the kitchen as fast as he could, and pressed the speed limit all the way to New Hampshire and How’s Your Onion? But still he was late.
“Julian went home,” the cook said, after unlocking the door only because he recognized Jeff from the other day, and wanted to come deliver the bad news to him personally. “He looked really sad. He even brought a nice outfit to change into after his shift but you didn’t show. Now he’s probably at home sleeping in his nice outfit, tired from working all weekend, and tired of waiting for you slick out-of-towner assholes who like throwing fries and promises at boys like him.”
“Come on, man, I didn’t want to stand him up, do I look like I’m not desperate?”
The cook looked him up and down and raised his eyebrows like, You’ve got a point, there.
“Bring your sorry ass in here and call him,” the cook said. “Get his address and go make it up to him. Like I don’t have enough trouble watching Sweet Young Thang flirt, I want to deal with him moping around heartbroken too? No fucking thank you. His number’s on the employee roster. You’ve got five minutes before I’m locking up.”
The cook went away about his business grumbling about how he wouldn’t hesitate to lock Jeff in here all night, in here until Wednesday when they open again, goddamn tourists, something about writers too thrown in for good measure. Jeff wasn’t listening, he was only calling Julian’s number on the restaurant’s landline, getting no answer and no answering machine either, and wondering what the hell he should do now until he remembered that he had a cell phone, and the ability to Google Julian’s phone number and full name (which he had off the roster, Julian Peters), and find him that way, like a real gumshoe.
It didn’t take long to find an address, and while his friends are back in Vermont having after-dinner drinks without him, Jeff is crawling slowly through Derry trying to find this guy he met.
Jeff arrives at Julian’s house and in knocking frantically at his door, accidentally wakes up his grandmother instead. Julian apparently lives at her house. She is wary to left Jeff inside.
“Hi, I had a date with Julian, I’m so sorry I’m late, but … is he here? Will he talk to me?”
“He’s here,” the woman says. “You can talk to him but he’s asleep, and he’s a pretty heavy sleeper, so good luck waking him up.” She’s squinting at Jeff through the cracked door, a chain still across it.
“But I can try? You’ll let me in?”
Her squint narrows, but she does indeed let Jeff inside.
“Julian was really happy about the idea of you this morning, but of course when he came home he wasn’t so keen anymore.”
Jeff understands: Grandma disapproves. It’s not the first time he’s been on a parent or guardian’s shit-list, though, so Jeff doesn’t worry about it, he just goes straight to Julian’s room while granny wanders back to her TV set.
Julian is lying tangled up in what looks less like sheets and more like a bunch of light sarongs and shrugs, a lot of lace and clashing patterns. Jeff walks into the room, which has more clothes than can fit in the closet, so they’re hung on two extra racks that really crowd the room.
Jeff walks in and sits on the side of the bed to start nudging Julian. He nearly has to bounce on the thing to make him rouse, but when he does wake up, Julian isn’t so bad about putting things together.
“You’re here,” he says, and Jeff nods. “You were late, and I was worried about you, like maybe you were in some accident, but you’re here now.” Julian’s red hair is gleaming even in the dimming evening light coming from outside the window. He doesn’t have any hair on his chest, which Jeff knows, because Julian appears to sleep in the nude, and his scarves and whatnot that he uses for blankets are barely covering anything.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you,” Jeff says. “It’s the last thing I wanted to do.” His eyes must be roving pretty obviously, because Julian starts to curl his fingers in his coverings and slowly pull them away. He’s revealing himself.
“You didn’t forget about me?” Julian shows him a nest of red hair around his cock, which isn’t at all as sleepy as the rest of him seems to be. Jeff picks up his hand, but doesn’t know if he can dare to reach for it yet.
“I forgot … about the time. I forgot when I’d have to leave to get here on time, and I . . .” Jeff stops talking when Julian takes his hand and sets it over his cock. Jeff can feel it, thick but soft to the touch, for just a moment before Julian whispers at him.
“Go close the door.”
Jeff does this, and when he returns, Julian has opened up his knees, opened up himself, and Jeff nearly falls over trying to get his clothes off so he can join him. Finally the string of condoms he keeps in his wallet where normal people keep cash is going to serve a purpose! He rolls one on a dick that is already rock-hard just for looking at and briefly touching Julian. He kneels on the bed, and as soon as he’s close enough, Julian lifts up higher, like he’s about to do a reverse summersault, putting his hole at the same level as Jeff’s belly button. Jeff whets his finger like he’s about to test the air for a breeze and presses it into Julian.
“It doesn’t bother you that we just met?” Jeff asks as he strokes the boy’s insides. An odd time to have this conversation, but he is curious.
“We met two whole days ago,” Julian says quietly. He’s got the most innocent face, guileless, he’s just telling the truth as he understands it. “And don’t you believe in love at first sight?”
“There’s no way you can love me already,” Jeff says. Really, he can’t believe it. After all the first sights in his life, no one’s ever seen him and thought love, the best they’ve ever seen in him is he’s not so bad, I guess, why not? That’s happened maybe a handful of times, and the rest of the time they roll their eyes and look away.
“Don’t worry about what I saw,” Julian says as Jeff puts the head of his dick against Julian’s hole and looks down at him to get his nod of permission. “How’d you feel when you first saw me?”
“Ahh,” is all Jeff says in answer as he sinks himself inside of Julian. He felt like he could do this to Julian all day when he first saw the boy. He felt like if only he could fuck this kid, he do anything else for him: live, die, rob, kill, embarrass himself, spend all his money, quit everything or build anything, whatever this sweet little fox-boy asked him to do, whatever Jeff himself could invent to do in the hopes that it would please him. And what’s the first thing Jeff actually did? Missed their date! And yet still Julian has welcomed him inside.
Jeff tries not to make a lot of noise as he fucks Julian, holding him
up by the hips and driving down into him, it’s a good position. It lets gravity do the work of getting him deep inside (Jeff can just let go of his weight and fall into Julian, onto him, over him), and if the blissed-out, eyes-rolled-back look on Julian’s silent face is any indication, this position also lets him naturally hit the sweet spot.
When Jeff finishes, he grabs himself by the base of the condom and pulls out, only to fall back onto Julian, to take his cock into his mouth so he can make love to that part of him too. It fills up his mouth with its fullness and shape, and Julian’s legs wrap around his head and shoulders to pull him in tight as the boy cums.
Jeff swallows. He’s still trying to drink Julian in when the well is dry and the sun’s coming down on this unlikely day when somewhere else in the house a phone rings, and Julian shoves him off saying, “Oh no, Grandma’s not good with the phone, I usually answer it, shit.”
Jeff is up first and zipping up his pants as Julian is still trying to get out of his scarves and veils, and grandma comes knocking at the door with the phone. Jeff steps around the door (he’s at least got his pants on), and holds out his hand for the phone.
“I’ll hand this to Julian … right away.” Jeff promises her. Grandma finds this promise to be good enough and goes back to her TV.
“Hello?” Jeff asks the phone.
“I had to call you, it's … it's happening!”
“Are you trying to reach Julian? Or … Grandma?” Jeff asks stupidly.
“It’s going to happen on Sunday, can you believe that? This is for real, it’s not a drill, we’re talking Tango Alpha ZZD, they’re not going to stop, can you believe it, Dad? They’re really going to blow up the whole world!”
“Hey, this isn’t your dad,” Jeff says. “This is the Peters’ residence, and I’m Jeff, I don’t know who you’re looking for.”
“Are you kidding me? What number is this? Oh my god, this was my last call, man! I just wanted to say goodbye to my dad before they come through and clean house on us! Oh my god! Listen, my dad, his name is Chip, Charles Towner in Saskatchewan, okay? Please find him and tell him to stock up! You stock up, too, man whatever, but tell my dad I’m sorry about that summer, he’ll know what I mean, and that I love him.”
“Is this some kind of prank or a scam? You shouldn’t be scamming old women, that’s some evil shit,” Jeff says.
“This isn’t a prank, asshole! We’re about to shoot our wad within the week, okay, this is nuclear fucking war, we’re going down. All the assholes who did this to us are already en route to save their own horrible skins, the best the rest of us can do, if people even hear about this shit before it’s too late, is to find the old fallout shelters and take cover. We never learned anything from the Cold War, man. Maybe the world’s better without us, fuck.”
“Hey,” Jeff says, a tremor in his voice. This is starting to freak him out. “This really isn’t funny.”
“Who the fuck’s laughing?” says the voice, suddenly cold before he freaks out again. “Oh shit! I think they heard me, shit! They’re looking at me on the monitor. They’re coming for me right now!”
After that what Jeff hears on the phone is two new voices, one asking, “What are you doing?” The other grabs the phone and says, “Who is this?” while in the background a volley of gunfire goes off.
“I’m nobody,” Jeff says, his voice flickering as Julian comes out of his room, dressed and frowning. He’s been listening. “I'm just a guy who picked up a phone.”
There’s silence for a moment, and Julian’s head is tilting around looking at the phone, at Jeff, towards the living room, trying to figure out what’s going on.
At last a voice says, “Forget everything you just heard and go back to normal.” The line goes dead and Jeff looks up at Julian.
Back to normal is not possible.
5. Kevin Discovers the Truth
Kevin is awake when Jeff comes back late on Sunday night, so late that it’s technically Monday morning, three AM. He and Glenn just tried to reconnect, physically, and they did, but … there’s so much more between them these days than there used to be, and it’s not all good.
Having his college crew around him again has Kevin remembering, quite fondly how easy and hopeful everything used to be, especially his relationship with Glenn. He remembers the first night they were confident with each other, not the first night they had sex (that was half terrifying just because of the tension), but the first night they both knew what they were doing and how well the other one liked it.
Though his curly, blond hair is so tantalizing to grab a handful of, Glenn doesn’t really like hair-pulling that much, what he does like having grabbed? His wrists. Glenn can be doing just about anything—cooking, his taxes, folding laundry—and if Kevin comes up behind him and grabs his wrists, and pulls them behind his back like Glenn is under arrest, his chore is immediately forgotten. One night in college, about a month or so after they started sleeping together, Kevin surprised him with a pair of handcuffs and fucked him standing, holding on to the chain between the cuffs at the time, and they both loved it. That was a good day.
There was also the first day they were both mutually frisky after the first baby was born. That was a strange welcome home, but it was wonderful. As soon as the baby came they were both going by Dad suddenly, and then one day they finally felt like Glenn and Kevin again, like they suddenly remembered their true names. They woke up one morning before the baby did, and in the strange dawn of that peace and quiet, they looked at each other and knew. It was like, Hey stranger, I remember you, where have you been? That morning Glenn tucked his arms under his back and they fucked face-to-face, morning sun coming in through the window, and kissing as they came, that was a good day too.
But in the past few months it’s all been strained. They both hoped that Alex living here would bring a new spring to everyone’s step, like a big adult sleepover! Well, they’ve got that sleepover now, but at too high a price: Alex was too far gone to come back. Now that he’s dead everyone’s here for him, a few days too late.
Glenn has been the saddest of them all, and Kevin has a special grudge against the dead that he wishes wasn’t in his heart: why did Alex die here? Why did he come into this house, where only Glenn, or god forbid, their kids, would find his drained body and have to clean it up? Why not go into town, buy a gun, and blow his brains out in the woods to feed the bears? Why not overdose, leave everyone believing that it could have been an unfortunate accident. Clarkie would have come home to a cold Alex and come to the house to phone an ambulance, and by the time the paramedics arrived everyone would have said, Wow, what a shame, but they wouldn’t have been this traumatized by it all. Glenn especially; he said it was the smell that lingered with him for longer than possible, like it had gotten into his mind, not just into his nose. Not the smell of decay, but the fresh, almost mouth-wateringly metallic smell of blood. Glenn was paranoid that the other parents could smell it when he went to pick up the kids that day. He wondered if the kids might ask him why the bathroom smelled funny, when of course all they could smell was bleach. The kids were told that the bathroom was broken that day or something, and they accepted that. They were also told that Alex had an accident and they wouldn’t see him again. They accepted that pretty gracefully too, because who was Alex to them? Just some other adult in a world full of them, no one particularly special to them, or even to Glenn at a certain point. Alex was the same friend to Glenn that Jeff is, just a buddy from the old days, but he was once Kevin’s best friend. That relationship had soured in the past few months too. Is this the mid-life crisis Kevin will get? Suddenly everything he’s bet his life and future on will turn out to feel foreign to him, his husband, his best friend? Will he invest in his kids full time just to give himself some purpose, until of course they naturally outgrow him and leave Kevin as empty as he’s ever been before? Ugh.
Alex worked in technical security too, him for the U.S. government, Kevin for a private firm that provides protection
to the government and its allies. They met in the same classes, went into the same field, and Kevin thought they’d be friends for life, unique friends, that Alex would be the kind of friend who would always understand the one or two things that Glenn can’t, the person he talked to when he couldn’t talk to Glenn, the buddy that would keep his life full, balanced, and complete. When he showed up a few months ago, however, it was because he’d quit his job in a dramatic way—angry with his superiors, escorted out by security, and threatened with serious punishment if he said one word about it outside the walls of the office where he was never welcome in again. So Alex didn’t talk about it, not even with Kevin, and Kevin didn’t know what to talk about himself when he came up against that silence. He wouldn’t talk about work either, and in the face of Alex being suddenly unemployed, after a lifetime of being perfectly competent and secure in his career, what did Kevin’s concerns about a slightly stale marital plateau compare? What did that matter when clearly Alex was living a life the likes of which most people only manage to read about?
Kevin only saw Alex about twenty times, on the weekends since Alex moved in. Saw him, and did not speak to him for most of those occasions either. Kevin tried not to let that bother him, he told himself, Don’t worry about it—let Alex finish the garage, we’ll celebrate, he can be our first tenant until he wants to move on, and someday we’ll both look back on this extended visit and think isn’t it wonderful to have friends that are more like family? The end of the construction project never came though, only the end of Alex, and of any future they’d share.