Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 08:20:26 -0400
From: Bear Pup <orson.cadell@gmail.com>
Subject: Canvas Hell 17

Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/camping/canvas-hell/)
for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights
reserved. Includes sex between young-adult men. Go away if any of that is
against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if
you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to
Nifty **TODAY** at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.

*****

Karl's voice was next, deep and hard and cold, from just outside the
tent-wall behind me. "Good job, Patrick. Really, really good job." I heard
him turn and walk away.

*****
Canvas Hell 17: Freezing

By Bear Pup

T/T; self-discovery; no sex (all plot)

My next session was a Free Period, but the very idea of staying in the tent
repulsed me. I looked carefully out of the tent and found that no one was
near, most especially not Jim or Karl. I practically ran to the treeline
and until I was well out of sight of Camp Sin. Like I'd done a week before
and for similar reasons, I just let my feet take over.

I was finding that my mind was a strange thing. It could neither understand
nor leave alone the stuttered phrase, "I thought you loved me." Every few
minutes, Jim's voice would come back but my mind fled from the idea as
quickly as the memory surfaced.

In fact, anything with Jim's voice or face seemed to send my thoughts
scurrying for safety, or at least something, anything else. In contrast,
Karl's' voice and his looks of shock and betrayal and disgust refused to be
banished. Two phrases would arrive to ambush me anytime I thought I was
finally processing the beauty around me: "...you're just Winner in a
different package," and, "Good job, Patrick. Really, really good job."

Still, though, tears eluded me, were beyond me. I physically ached, and not
just the handprint plastered across my cheek. I'd walked perhaps two hours;
occasionally I'd hear voices of other campers off exploring as well and
would scurry to avoid any contact. That was until I heard a
far-too-familiar voice, Karl's.

"I'm sorry, buddy. I know you hurt. I... Well, I guess I could kiss you
again if that will help."

"NO!" Jim's voice was a sob, "That's what started this. I never should have
asked."

I froze. All of my habits and experience told me to wait, to listen. But in
the space of that brief exchange, I lived through an hour's worth of
thoughts. What I'd heard Karl say that first night and whether he'd have
said it if he knew I was awake. How betrayed he felt when I told him I'd
heard. How every time this trip that I trusted my 'instincts' and my
'experience', I'd hurt someone. How I could not bear to hurt Karl. How I
could not survive the thought of further hurting Jim. Sealing the deal was
the soft and deeply disappointed voice of Dr Eaglas, "You are also the only
one who can fix this...  you have two really good friends, and all three of
you are in a lot of pain, Patrick, and I can't fix it."

I tried to take a deep, bracing breath to steel my courage, stiffen my
resolve. I found that I couldn't breathe had no courage to steel or resolve
to stiffen. I deliberately scuffed my feet as I came around the tree, then
froze in absolute horror as I realised where I was.

Karl was sitting with his arm across Jim's shoulder, nestled on the moss in
the arms of the tree where Jim and I had... had... Jim had obviously been
crying on Karl's broad, strong chest. They both looked up at me. Karl was
incredulous; Jim was heartbroken; both were appalled that I'd found them
here.

Karl was up first, as if spring-loaded. He positively bristled as his
muscles flexed and hands clenched. Jim stood and looked from one of us to
the other then simply... fled. I simply stared, still not breathing, still
not moving. Karl started to shoulder his way past me then stopped, jaw
working, and suddenly POW! I was on my ass, nose gushing blood, glasses on
the ground. Karl was stalking off, shaking his hand. He didn't look back at
all, just headed in the direction he'd seen Jim move.

And the floodgates opened and I cried... No, actually. I sat and stared at
the blood on my hand and then pinched the bridge of my aching nose like
they'd taught us in school. If anything, that punch -- the immediacy and
shock and power and emotional release behind it -- that punch snapped my
broken-record thoughts. Karl's accusations faded because I suddenly
realised just how wrong he was.

Winner hurt people because he enjoyed it. Because it made him feel less
weak, less afraid. I was not Winner; I was a sort of an upside-down
Winner. I was afraid, sure, and probably weak. But I kept hurting people
because I was working so hard to either not hurt them, or not get hurt
myself. It honestly took Karl decking me (and man did it hurt!) to wake me
up to what Dr Eaglas had been telling me, what Jim had been telling me,
what I knew and kept running from. I suddenly knew what I needed to do.

My glasses miraculously survived. Of course, this was the 70s, so kid's
glasses were designed to survive a nuclear war, and looked like it. On the
way back to Camp Sin, the bleeding finally stopped. I used my canteen and
my already-spoiled t-shirt to remove the blood from my face, and tucked the
shirt into my pocket. I chucked it into Tent Canvas Hell as I passed; the
tent was empty. I grabbed a couple of handkerchiefs just in case. The
triangle rang and I headed to the Mess Hall.

I was rather shocked that the main hot dish was... edible. It was thin
strips of beef in a creamy gravy with mushrooms, served over noodles. Beef
Stroganoff was something that my Mom made, and Chef had produced a passable
imitation of real food. A kid at the table behind me leaned to his left and
asked his buddy, "What is this? I've never had this before."

"Masturbating Cattle," the kid whispered back.

"What?"

"Duh. You know. Beef Strokin-Off!" The entire table burst into snickers and
giggles except for the one who asked. He let out a long "ew" noise.

I snorted in laughter, which was a serious mistake, as my nosebleed started
up again. I froze for yet another time today, and again at Jim's voice. "Do
it, Karl, and do it now." His voice was low and harsh.

I was a Boy Scout briefly; perhaps six months when I was 12. I left when
they started to become insistent on involving my father (the drunk). For
reasons I cannot even imagine, what stuck was the Boy Scout Law, that I
would be "Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient,
Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent." I still think I did pretty
well on those, but Jim's voice, my still-smarting cheek and my throbbing
nose pushed Cheerful and Brave right off the damn cliff. I was out the door
in a flash, hardly even slowing to dump the remains of my dinner in the
bin.

I made myself scarce for the next 45 minutes until guys started to converge
on the cabins for campfire practice. Karl and Jim arrived at Cabin 4 later,
but by that time the leaders had already started organizing all of us. We
were doing a song from The Sound of Music which got a lot of groans about
'girly' and 'dumb' that the leaders were carefully deaf to.

They arranged us by pitch, something that only about three of the guys
understood (I was not one of them). Jim ended up about six guys in from the
left, I was a little to the right of dead centre and Karl was near the
right-hand end of the line. I thanked all of the Gods I could think of as I
kept seeing looks from them. Neither seemed hostile, more worried (Jim) or
sullen (Karl).

This song would be hard, as the Leaders segmented us and each group was
given a 'note'. Karl was in "Do", Jim's sweet high-tenor was in the "La"
group and I was part of "Fa". We spent the night doing nothing but the
scale central to the tune. We were supposed to come up on our toes when we
sang, so it was like The Wave that we'd started seeing at sporting events
over the years right after our time at Camp Sin.

The kids with the hardest jobs were those who at the 'edge' of their
group. Natural boy behaviour was to move when the guy next to you did, so
chaos ruled for the first half hour. Finally, the leaders stretched the
line so there was an arm-span gap between each group and things settled
down. After the session, I lingered talking with Willie and Orson trying to
delay the inevitable until Jim came up and quietly said, "We just want to
talk, Patrick. Come on... Back to the tent. Okay?"

The first time we'd left Cabin 4's fire ring together, we were
elated. Tonight could not be more different. Karl never looked up from his
shoes, I was skittish as a rabbit and Jim had a near-terminal case of
jitters. We finally made it back to Tent Canvas Hell. Jim tied the flaps
and then turned to Karl.

Jim's voice shook, but was quite hard and direct. "Now, Karl!"

Karl scuffed his shoes together and told them, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have
hit you." He glanced at Jim, who was clearly unimpressed.

"You're not apologising to your shoes, or to me, Karl."

Karl grudgingly looked me full in the face. "I'm sorry, Patrick. It was
stupid. It's just--"

"NO! No 'buts' or 'justs' or excuses, Karl."

Karl rolled his eyes and huffed a sigh. "Okay. Patrick, I am really sorry I
hit you."

Jim turned to me, "And you, Patrick? Do you have something to say?"

I looked at them both. They deserved an apology from me, both of them. They
were good guys, and I kept fucking things up, and they deserved better. I
took a deep breath, steadying myself for my apology.

"I love you, Jim."

Huh? What? I said WHAT? Silence descended and stillness ruled the
universe. Nothing moved except eyeballs as all three of us flicked looks at
each other. I was busy searching every corner of the tent, looking for
whoever just said that.

As per usual, it was Jim who first found his voice. "Um, what, Patrick?" I
finally met his eyes from the corner of mine. They were wide and his face
flushed. I looked at Karl who, quite frankly, seemed locked in the
horrified fascination normally reserved for a train derailment.

"I'm so, so sorry! I don't know why I said that! Oh my God!" I had gone
from not breathing straight to hyperventilating in the space of seconds.

Jim's voice quaked, "Um, Karl?"

"Yeah, um, I'll be back..." dopplered off to nothing as he fled at extreme
speed, the tent flaps already settled back before the forest swallowed his
last words.

I still couldn't turn to face Jim, and watched him askance, frozen in
place. I am not certain to this day that I could have moved if I'd tried. I
learnt the real meaning of 'petrified' that evening.

Since it was clear I wasn't going to turn toward him, Jim moved until he
was in front of me, still across the tent.

"Patrick?" I expected horror and revulsion, or at least recrimination. What
I heard there instead was a mix between hope and heartbreak.

"Patrick? You still there?" I just stared at him, then found myself nodding
almost-imperceptibly.

Jim was shaking now as much as his voice. "You really said that, right
Patrick?"

Again the tiny nod.

Jim drew a huge breath and just stared. "Patrick, this is important. Did
you say that because of, of wh-what I said earlier or b-b-b-because you
mean it?"

I found a tiny sliver of my voice and whispered, "Because I really, really
mean it, Jim. I'm sorry. I know you'll hate me and that Karl is going to
beat me to death. It's okay. I had to tell you th-that. I n-need to kn-know
what you want me to do now, Jim. Do you want me to...?" That tiny voice of
mine finally tapered to nothing at all.

"Can I sit by you?" Jim's voice was hardly more than mine had been. I
nodded spastically and he moved forward like a man navigating a live
minefield, slowly, fearfully, hesitantly.

He reached me and touched me cheek where his handprint had faded
away. Finally, the tears that had been absent throughout the day exploded
from me and I curled into his chest and simply wept.

It was a reverse image of the morning I held him following the Bugger
attack. Some part of me realised it was for similar reasons. I was as
terrified as he had been, and part of that terror was from realising
something I never wanted to know about myself. I looked up at Jim and
realised he was crying as much as I.

Suddenly, we launched into a mad, passionate session of lovemaking... No. I
reached out and brushed a tear away from his face. He smiled and did the
same to me. We didn't kiss, we just looked at each other. Yesterday had
been a burst of need and passion. Tonight... I think I was just coming to
terms with the idea that all of this was real. I swam in the deep pools of
his eyes for the longest time, and he seemed content to look into mine. I
held on of his hands in mine and used the other wipe away his tears, as if
they were the hurt and I could remove the pain with the moisture.

<eof>

*****
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay...
Karl & Greg: 19 chapters .../incest/karl-and-greg/
Canvas Hell: 16 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/
Beaux Thibodaux: 9 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/
The Heathens: 9 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/
Mud Lark Holler: 8 chapters .../rural/mud-lark-holler/
Babe in the Woods: 2 chapters .../rural/babe-in-the-woods/
Off the Magic Carpet: 3 chapters .../military/off-the-magic-carpet/