Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 11:23:31 -0700
From: qwb224@gmail.com
Subject: '52 Panhead Ch 7

'52 Panhead

Chapter 7


What was it with the bar? Couldn't be someplace him and Luke had hung out
cause they hadn't been of drinking age when Luke was killed. Was it near
the site of the accident? He'd never said where it happened, so I had no
idea. I blew out a breath and dropped my head back onto the cushion with my
eyes closed. Why couldn't anything be easy? Something so simple as what the
fuck to have for dinner turned into this emotional event. I pushed to my
feet and rubbed the knot on my head as I went to find Evan.

When the Chinese arrived, we ate potstickers, General Pao's Shrimp, pork
with green beans, and fried rice sitting barefoot at his kitchen table,
passing the containers back and forth. When we got down to the last shrimp,
I speared it on a chopstick, bit off half, and then held the rest out to
Evan. He watched me as he opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue a
little, just like he did when I was about to stick my dick in his mouth. I
stared at his open mouth for a few seconds, and then fed him the shrimp. We
were just cleaning up when his cell phone rang; his side of the
conversation went like this.

"'Lo?"

"Hey, man."

"Not tonight, I got somethin' going on."

"Yeah, yeah..." He chuckled.

"Uh-huh."

"'K, see ya Thursday."

He flipped his phone shut, jammed it into his pocket and cut his eyes to
me. When I raised both eyebrows, he waved it off. "Just a buddy."

A buddy from the bar where he didn't want to go for dinner, maybe? A buddy
he was gonna see Thursday when I was safely 100 miles away again? I wadded
up the plastic bag from the Chinese place, lobbed it at the trash can, and
stalked into the living room.

Jealousy is such an attractive emotion, but at least it's its own
punishment - I felt like shit.

I was slumped on the couch channel surfing when he came in and sat down
next to me. We stared silently at the TV as I flipped past drag racing,
bull riding, baseball, and the moronic canned laughter of sitcom after
sitcom. Finally, he took the remote from my hand and hit 'mute.'

"I didn't flip out when we ran into your buddy Mark at the dog park. Why
are you pissed?"

"He's not my buddy, and I'm not pissed," I said churlishly, trying to grab
the remote back from him.

"You're something," he replied, switching the remote to his other hand so
that it was out of my reach.

"No, I'm not. Give me that Goddamn thing."

He rolled quickly off the couch and moved to the far side of the coffee
table. Leaning forward, he waved it in my face, then shoved it down the
front of his pants and thrust his crotch out at me. "Come and get it, hot
shot."

I watched him for a moment, waiting till his weight shifted to his near
foot, then launched off the couch and caught his ankle as he turned to
flee. His bare foot slid from my hand before I could get a good grip, and
then he was up and running for the kitchen. I sprinted after him, getting a
hand on his shirt as he rounded the table, but he ducked away. We dashed
around the condo for a couple minutes, swearing a blue streak and laughing
like hyenas, until I finally caught him in the bedroom, tackling him onto
the bed and pinning him with my weight.

He was still fighting me as I wedged a hand between us. "Now give me the
motherfucking remote," I growled at him, wiggling my fingers into his firm
belly.

He thrashed and yelled, but I was stronger, heavier and more determined,
and pretty soon he gave up and let me yank it out of his jeans. I flung it
across the room, grabbed his wrists and bore down until he was flat beneath
me, gasping as he tried to stop laughing. I waited until he was quiet
before I spoke.

"I'm not pissed, okay? A little irritated, maybe, but..." As I stared into
his eyes, the fight went out of me, and I rolled off him to lie on my back
with a sigh.

"About what?"

"Why didn't you wanna go to that bar? And don't give me that `Chinese
sounded better' bullshit."

The silence seemed endless as I waited for him to reply, which he finally
did in a wary tone. "I didn't wanna run into anybody I knew."

I mulled over several possible reasons for that before I said, "Why the
fuck not?" trying hard to keep the hurt out of my voice.

"Oh, for Christ sake, it isn't you." He sighed in frustration. "I just
wanna keep this.... us.... to myself for a while, until...."

I rolled to my side facing him. "Until what?"

"Until... until I'm more sure."

"Of what? Of me stickin' around?"

"All of it, the whole thing," he said defensively, waving his hands around
in the air above us. "You. Me. Everything." He lowered both hands to cover
his face and was quiet for a bit, then said, "I was in therapy that first
year after the accident, before I went off to school. My folks were worried
that.... I wouldn't be able to accept Luke's death. Survivor's guilt. I
kept telling the shrink that I'd never be able to love anybody like I loved
Luke." He turned to look at me for a second before going back to the
ceiling. "Remember, I was still operating under the `one' theory back
then. He told me I was right, that it would never be just like it was with
Luke, but that I could love someone else, eventually. But I always argued
the point with him, and for a long time, I was so sure I was right. You
know everything at eighteen." He stopped for a moment, and when he spoke
again, his voice was very soft. "It's just really scary to find out that
maybe he was right. Good scary, but scary, and I just need some time, ok?"

I rolled to my back again, joining Evan in examining the cracks in the
ceiling. I really needed to remember that even though ten years had passed,
he had a lot of leftover shit to cope with from the accident. There was
nothing in my life to compare with what had happened to him and his
friends, and dealing with it was going to require a whole new depth of
understanding and compassion from me that I wasn't real sure I possessed. I
didn't have a problem with Evan's reluctance to go public right away;
paranoid, self-absorbed me had thought he didn't want to be seen with me
for some reason. Me, insecure? Nah.

"C'mere." I scooted up a little and jammed some pillows behind my back as I
tugged on his shirt. It took a few tugs and a "Come here," but finally he
rolled over and put his head on my stomach with an arm across my legs, his
hand tucked around under my butt. I cupped the side of his head, pressing
him closer to me for a second. "I'm sorry, man. I just... I want this, you
know? It fucks me up when I think something's wrong, cause I want it to
work."

Evan nodded against my belly and I heard a muffled, "Me, too."

"Ok, then," I said, patting his shoulder like that settled the
matter. "Ok."

We stayed there for quite a while as I fiddled with his hair and rubbed his
back with my other hand. Evan hummed little sounds of pleasure now and
then, and squeezed my ass occasionally, but otherwise we were quiet,
thinking our own thoughts, I guess. Last weekend I'd still been somewhat
uncomfortable with the silences, afraid that maybe we had nothing to talk
about, but this silence was anything but empty. It was close and intimate,
laying there on his bed, even with all our clothes on. Maybe because we had
all our clothes on. My chest tightened as a swell of affection moved
through me. I was beginning to really like Evan, to enjoy just being with
him as an end in itself, not merely a prelude to getting laid.

Around nine, I had to take a leak. He got up when I did, and when I came
back from the john, I found him looking out the living room window at the
dark neighborhood. I came up behind him and looped my arms around his
waist, bumping into his butt and kissing the side of his neck when he
dropped his head back onto my shoulder.

"Whatcha thinkin'?" I asked him softly.

He shrugged. "Too much shit to even process. How `bout a walk?"

"Sure."

It had cooled off some, so he tossed me a dark blue Patterson High Phys Ed
hoodie from the coat tree behind the door, and I pulled it on as we trotted
down the steps. Evan headed off down the street like we were late for an
appointment, hands shoved into his pockets, his limp a little more
pronounced than usual, but slowed down after a block to a more sedate pace,
commenting on a house or yard as we walked.

"My 9th grade teacher lives there. I paint his house every few years," he
said softly, nodding at a small gray home with white trim and shutters,
ghostly in the dark. "He's the first adult I ever talked to about being
gay, or thinking maybe I was."

"Was he?"

"I don't think so, although he never married. No, he's just a really decent
man. Non-judgmental, easy to talk to. At least he was back then. He's older
now and kinda crotchety."

"What'd he tell you?"

"Nothing monumental; just that it wasn't wrong to feel that way, and to
listen to my heart. To be true to myself, I guess is what he meant." He
shrugged one shoulder. "It helped."

We walked another block in silence, but Evan was still thinking about high
school, because the next thing he said was, "Do you remember what it was
like, looking at the boys, wondering if it was normal? I mean, I looked at
girls, too, cause that's what you were supposed to do, but... And you
couldn't fuckin' ask anybody, cause what if you were the only one doin' it?
The only one who got off lookin' at the smooth, hard bodies in the locker
room, bodies that looked just like your own?" He paused and shook his head
in bemusement. "Do you remember? Or wasn't it like that for you?"

"Fuck... Yeah, it was pretty much like that for me, too. Lookin' and
wonderin'. Beatin' off five times a day. There was this one kid I jerked
off over the whole way through high school. Ronnie Anderson. Closest I ever
got to him was about three showers away in gym class." I laughed at the
memory. "Jesus, he was hot."

"He's prolly bald and fat by now."

"Actually, he's married with three kids and an ugly wife. Still hot,
though."

Evan chuckled. We went another couple blocks before he said, "Do you ever
wish you weren't queer?"

His voice was very quiet, and the question left me momentarily
speechless. The implications of Evan wishing he weren't gay were something
I didn't even want to think about. But I knew how I felt about his
question.

 "No, never. Even before I really figured it out and hooked up for the
first time, I didn't regret liking boys. They seemed so much
more... familiar than girls, easier to be with. I felt like I'd know how to
touch them, what to say, when I finally got the chance, whereas girls were
pretty much a total mystery. Still are," I added.

"You never fucked around with girls?"

I shook my head. "Never had enough curiosity. Or time," I chuckled. "I was
too busy jerkin' off and chasin' boys to bother. You did, though, huh?"

"Yeah, in college. No one knew me there, so I started dating girls. An
avoidance thing, I suppose."

"And...."

Another one-shouldered shrug. "It was all right. I wasn't ready to get
serious about anyone, which for me meant boys, so girls were safe, you
know? No emotions, just a warm hole."

"Jesus, dude."

"Cold, huh?" He laughed humorlessly. "It didn't last long. I finally hooked
up with a guy in the library; the blow-jobs were great, but I couldn't fuck
him, and after that my dick quit working with the ladies, too. So.... I
went back to boys."

I couldn't think of any intelligent reply to that, so I kept quiet. We'd
covered a lot of ground by then, emotionally and geographically, turning an
occasional corner, and now I recognized the opposite end of Evan's
block. We strolled past my Jeep, and up the steps to Evan's front door. He
paused on the porch, turning to me with a smile. "That was nice. My mom
walks a lot, and I used to go with her when I was a kid." He chuckled at
some memory. "But then I got busy with my friends, and it wasn't 'cool' to
do anything with your parents."

We went in to bed, kissing at first, but ending up head to toe sucking each
other off. It didn't take us long, being so new together still. I tickled
his hole with a wet finger, trying to keep my mind on the job while he
licked my balls and worked my dick with one hand. When I quit sucking his
cock to pant, he intensified his efforts until I rewarded him with a thick
load sprayed all over his chest. When I could breathe again, I finished him
off with my finger in his ass and his prick buried in my throat.



Evan was up before me Sunday morning. I heard the clickety-click of his
keyboard as I got up to piss and pull my jeans on. When I found him, he was
sitting at his desk in boxers, scratching his chest and reading email. He
was in profile to me, so I could see only the side of his face,
concentrating as he read. I stepped up behind him, dropped my arms around
his shoulders, and kissed the top of his head. He gave a pleased 'mmmmm'
and tipped his head back into my chest as I kissed my way down the side of
his face.

"Morning," he said. His voice was gravelly with sleep, his hair stuck up on
one side, and my gut tightened with a sudden, sharp longing for this to be
the start of every day. Let it always be this good, this — vital.

I wasn't even sure that was possible. Maybe time and familiarity always
dimmed the first flush of new love, the surety that you're the only two
people who've ever felt this way, that the angels in heaven must sigh with
envy when they see how in love you are.

"Hi," I replied.

"I'm about done here. You hungry?"

"Mm-hm," I mumbled as I started gnawing on his bare shoulder.

He began to giggle, trying to shove me away, which only made me go after
him more. I didn't quit until he fell out of the chair onto his back, knees
drawn up, laughing wildly and trying to cover his stomach with his arms. I
let go of him as I sank down straddling his hips, leaning back against his
bent legs and settling down into his crotch. I watched him as he regained
his composure, scrubbing his face with his hands. He finally blew out a
long breath and opened his eyes to me as he gripped my thighs. His eyes
were smoky gray, full of emotion, and his voice was a little tentative when
he spoke.

"This is so good. Are you... Does it seem like that to you?"

I took a loose hold on his wrists, sliding my hands up and down his
forearms as I replied. "Yeah... yeah, it is good, Evan. Real good."

I released his arms and ran my hands up his bare torso, spreading my
fingers across his chest so that, one by one, the fingers of each hand slid
across his nipples. As they tightened, so did his expression, until he was
staring at me with narrowed eyes and clenched jaw. I put some weight on my
hands, leaning forward to kiss him lightly, barely brushing his mouth. He
lifted his head to increase the contact, but I moved away just enough that
he couldn't reach me. When he relaxed back down, I kissed him again,
tickling the corner of his mouth with my tongue, then sliding it along the
seam of his lips. He didn't come after me that time, just closed his eyes
and moaned softly. His cock began to fill, pushing my balls aside as it
thickened. I rose slightly on my knees to give him room, grinning when he
lifted his hips to grind against me.

I scooted back a little and pulled the front of his shorts down, letting go
of the elastic an inch or two below his nuts so that it snapped up under
them. His body jerked slightly, and he groaned then - a long, low noise
deep in his throat that wiped the smile off my face and fired up my dick. I
sucked his cock into my mouth, swirling my tongue around the head, slurping
a little as I let my spit spill down his shaft into my fist. I twisted my
grip back and forth as I followed my mouth up and down his steely hard
cock. In under a minute he was pumping into it, his hands clenched on my
shoulders, eyes shut tight, teeth bared.

I edged him right up to it, then released him entirely and sat up. He
thrust into empty air a couple times before he realized I wasn't there. His
expression was tortured astonishment when he raised his head to look at me.

"What the fuck are you doin'? Don't quit now!" His voice was desperate.

"I'm hungry," I whined, trying not to smile.

"I don't give a fuck – you can eat later. Pleeease," he begged when I just
sat there. "Oh, God," he moaned as he gave up on me and grabbed himself,
stroking quickly, "I gotta cum." I pulled his hand off, replacing it with
my own, as he groaned in relief. "Nnnnh, yeah."

I brought him back up with my hand, teasing him with a loose grip and slow
strokes mixed up with some serious pumping. When his nuts were pulled up
tight to either side of his cock, almost out of sight, I bent to engulf him
again, coming up off the tip of his dick each time until he exploded in my
mouth. If the noises he made were any indication, it was a great orgasm. He
thrashed around beneath me, bucking up off the carpet as he shot all over
himself.

I watched him as he lay there getting his breath back. After a few minutes,
a slow smile started on his mouth, spreading until he was grinning at me as
he opened his eyes. I smiled back as he put his fingers in my belt loops
and pulled himself to a sitting position.

"That was great, thanks," he whispered against my mouth. "But I gotta get
ready."

He kissed me, then pushed on my chest until I stood up, grabbing my hands
to get to his feet. We showered, and I put my stuff in my bag as I watched
Evan get dressed and pack. He seemed to already have his mind on business,
methodically folding shirts and tucking socks and shorts into his suitcase,
his face sober and thoughtful.

"How you gettin' to the airport?" I asked as he tucked his shirt into his
slacks.

"The other guy who's going is gonna pick me up."

"I can take you. It's on the way."

He studied my face for a moment before nodding, and then made a quick call
to cancel his ride. Eventually we were headed out the front door. I tried
to stay up, but leaving Evan was really difficult, and I was pretty quiet
on the drive to the airport. He didn't say much either, just put a hand on
my thigh and stared out the window until we pulled up in front of the
terminal. We sat there for a second, neither of us wanting to make the
first move at getting out of the car. If we stayed right where we were, we
could pretend the weekend wasn't over.

But it was, and after a minute or two, he sighed heavily and stepped out
onto the curb. We met at the back of the Jeep, taking his bag and briefcase
out and setting them on the sidewalk between us. Our eyes met then, his
dark in his pale face, mine trying to memorize his features. Were we gonna
shake hands? Hug?

Evan gave me a sweet smile, just one side of his mouth curling up in a way
that squeezed the breath out of me. Then he stepped over the luggage and
pulled me into a full-body hug. I grabbed him tight, and buried my face in
his shoulder, startled by the emotions pouring through me. He patted my
back as he held me.

"I'll see you Friday," he said softly into my ear. "Thanks for coming down
here on such short notice. It was really good to see you." Then he kissed
my neck, released me gently, picked up his bags, and turned toward the
terminal. I remember Callie telling me it was bad luck to watch a departing
loved one until they were out of sight, so I turned away and climbed back
in the car.

Chewy was glad to see me when I got home, and Callie gave me a container of
cookies and a sympathetic smile. It was only early afternoon, so I hit the
gym hard, did laundry, cleaned up the house some, washed the Jeep, went to
the grocery store - everything I could think of to keep myself busy. I was
just settling onto the back deck with a couple cookies and a book when my
cell rang.

"Hi." His voice was quiet and a little breathless.

"Hi. Where are you?"

"Hiking through the terminal. Our flight was delayed, so we just got in." A
PA announcement blared in the background and he paused till it finished. "I
just wanted to hear your voice. That's all," he added, sounding a little
embarrassed.

I was grinning into my cell. Yeah, Callie - he likes me.

"That's enough," I replied. "Thanks for callin'."

"Yeah." He hesitated before adding, "Miss you already."

"Me, too."

"Yeah, well.... Bye."

"Bye."

I snapped the phone shut, and stared out into the yard as Evan's words miss
you.... warmed me. Chewy barked then, a quick, sharp sound that brought me
out of my reverie. He was facing the side of the house, and as I glanced at
him, Mark came into view. He stopped at the gate when he saw me.

"There you are," he said. "I rang the bell a few times, then figured you
might be back here."

"Hey." I didn't want company, his particularly, so I wasn't pleased when he
came through the gate and up the steps. Chewy backed away a few feet,
growling deep in his throat as the ruff on the back of his neck stood up.

"What's the matter with your mutt?"

"Chewy, c'mere." He sidled over to press against my leg, the growl still
rumbling in his chest. I petted him as I turned back to Mark who had helped
himself to a seat next to me, and was sending his smarmy smile my way.

Why had he looked so good that one night? What's that country song? Even
ugly girls look good at closing time? Guess that applied to dudes, too.

"So...." he began, "You ain't been around much lately, thought you might
like some company."

I couldn't plead anything urgent since I was obviously relaxing, so I said,
"Well, I've been pretty busy, and I was just gonna hang out here tonight
and go to bed early."

His smile widened. "Excellent."

"Look, Mark, I'm involved with the guy from the dog park."

"You tellin' me you aren't interested?" He clamped a hand to my crotch,
massaging my dick with the rough competency I remembered from our one night
together.

I stood up abruptly, knocking my book to the deck. Chewy barked. "Get the
fuck outta here."

He stood to face me, his expression cold. "What, are you in love or
something? Get real, Caldwell, you're the biggest cock hound I know."

"Not anymore." It was an effort to keep my voice steady. "Get outta here."

"'Not anymore,' my ass," he mimicked me as he strolled down the
steps. "Well, you know where to find me when you come to your senses and
want some dick."

When the gate banged shut behind him, I sank back down on the bench,
pulling Chew into my lap. As I hugged him to me, I stared unseeingly
through the deck rails, thinking about what Mark had accused me of.

I used to be a cock hound, pre Evan. Now I was almost a boyfriend.

Wasn't I?



Writers live for feedback. Well, maybe not the Steven Kings of the world,
but the rest of us need to know that somebody's out there, reading this
stuff. If you like this story, or any story on Nifty, let us know.

Thanks to David of Hope for editing chores.