Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 14:20:25 -0400
From: EleCivil <EleCivil@gmail.com>
Subject: Leaves and Lunatics - Chapter 5

Intro/Disclaimer:

The response from Chapter Four was amazing.  Thanks, seriously.  Anyway,
you probably want to get on with it rather than listening to me talk about
whatever the hell it is that I'm talking about, so here's the deal: Don't
read it if you're underage.  Don't blame me or anyone else if you get
busted for reading it while underage.  Don't steal it.  These characters
and locations never existed, so don't go looking for them.

From now on, the new chapters will be hosted at www.AwesomeDude.com first.
Nifty'll get them later.  My suggestion?  Go to www.AwesomeDude.com, and
check out this (and other) stories.

-----------------------------------

Leaves and Lunatics by EleCivil (EleCivil@gmail.com)
Chapter Five

-----------------------------------

Cam leaned over to say something, his lips close to Nathan's ear, but was
cut off by an obnoxious tickling sensation.  He reached down and scratched
at his legs, but it didn't seem to have any effect.  He leaned forward,
looking down at his legs.

"Oh, son of a..."  Cam jumped to his feet, shaking one leg, then the other.
Nathan just stared at him from the ground, confused.  "Fucking ANTS!"

"Wha...damn it!"  Nathan jumped to his feet as well, just now taking notice
of the small army of insects marching up his own pant leg.  They both shook
around, swatting their palms against their legs, trying to knock off the
bugs.  Cam was getting frustrated.  He had even more of them on his shirt,
which he ripped off and started swinging against his legs.  Nathan followed
suit, thrashing his shirt against his legs and screaming some
indecipherable battle cry.

All the screaming had gotten the others too curious to stay put.  A quick
glance at one another was all it took to send them up the hill and back to
the other side of the train tracks, where they stood staring down at the
clearing.

"Um..."  Andrew's eyes shot between the others.  "My eyes aren't playing
tricks on me, are they?  'Cause from here, it really looks like they're
doing some kind of shirtless rain dance."

"I was hoping it was a guy thing," Jill replied, "But if you can't explain
it either..."

"Hey, whatever.  Looks cool to me."  Jerry pulled off his own shirt and ran
down into the clearing; screaming, jumping, and whipping his shirt around
in imitation.

"You going to join in, too, Jill?"  Andrew asked, smirking.  He got a punch
in the arm as a reply, and held up his hands in mock surrender.

By now, Cam and Nathan had noticed that the youngest member of their group
was now with them, thrashing around the way they were.  Once they were more
or less ant-free, they slowed down and finally stopped.

"What was that about?"  Jerry asked, stopping himself.

"Ants." Cam said, out of breath from all the jumping and screaming.

"Yeah.  Ants.  Lots." Nathan confirmed, sucking in air himself.

Jerry gave them a funny look, shrugged, and pulled his shirt back over his
head.  It was a lot more fun before he found out that there had been a
reason for it.  Cam and Nathan started shaking out their shirts to make
sure there weren't any of the exoskeletal invaders left.  They were just
putting them back on when Andrew and Jill joined them.

"Ants."  Jerry told them.

"Huh?"

"We fell on an ant hill, I guess."  Nathan explained.

"Fell, huh?  Both of you, on the same ant hill?  How'd you manage that
one?"  Andrew asked.  Of course, he had watched them fall to the ground
with their arms around each other, but he thought it would be funny to
watch them squirm for an answer.

"Uh...I guess I fell into Cam and knocked him over with me.  Into an ant
hill.  So the ants got us both.  Heh."

"But if you just fell...how did they have time to swarm you?  Seems like
you would have had to be laying there for a while..."  Andrew was trying
his best to hold a straight face, even with Cam and Nathan glancing
nervously at each other and Jill shooting him the evil eye.

"Hey, the fireworks ended a few minutes ago." Jill interrupted, breaking
the tension.  "We should get back home before the parents think we've
been...I don't know, kidnaped by 'sex pree-verts', like old Mrs. Gibson is
always talking about at church."

Andrew snickered.  "Yeah, we all know how many 'sex pree-verts' there are
in Gordon."

"Look who's talking, mister 'Aren't-you-going-to-take-your-shirt-off-too?'"
Jill said.

"Hey, I take offense to that.  If wanting to see a girl topless is
perverted, than there isn't a guy on Earth who isn't a pervert.  Well, then
again, maybe one or t- OW."  He glared at Jill, who had elbowed him hard in
the ribs.  "Jeez.  Even if I was a 'sex pree-vert', I wouldn't try
kidnaping you.  You'd just beat the hell out of me.  Which, by the way,
wouldn't be too different from our current relationship."

"As I was saying, I've got to go.  See you guys later."

The group started to disperse in the directions of their own houses.  At
the last minute, Cam called to Nathan and motioned for him to wait.

"Uh, I'll catch up with you in a second, Jerry." He called to his cousin.
Jerry nodded and kept walking, his brain abuzz with fireworks, ants,
pree-verts, and about a dozen other things all at once.

As soon as the coast was clear, Cam grabbed Nathan's hands and pulled him
in closer.  "You doing anything tomorrow?"

"I don't think so."

"Want to come over to my place?  My parents leave for work around seven."

"Yeah I do, but I really doubt I'll be awake that early."

"Yeah, same here.  See you tomorrow, then?"

"Definitely."

They both knew that they had to leave, but it was still hard for Cam to let
go of Nathan's hands and walk away.

---------------------

"So, what do you make of this?"  Jay Jeffries motioned to the kitchen
table, where his son was asleep on top of a half-finished jigsaw puzzle.

"Looks like it'll be a scene from Jurassic Park to me, though it's hard to
tell without the box."  His wife replied.  She moved around the table and
turned on the coffee pot, going through her normal morning routine.

"When was the last time he fell asleep at the table?  For that matter, when
did he start doing puzzles?  I didn't know we still had any puzzles."

"I'll admit it's kind of odd, but if he's got to do something, better
puzzles than drugs."

"Mary...how is it that you always manage to jump to drugs?"

"Blame drugs, and if it's not drugs, we get to be relieved until the next
time he does something weird, and then we blame that on drugs, and so
forth."  She threw a lot of breath behind these words, as if she were
sighing with every one.  "It's simple parenting, really."

"Before we became parents, we made a lot more sense."

"We did more of a lot of things before we became parents."  She gave him a
quick wink before turning back to the coffee.

"Funny.  That's exactly how we became parents."

--------------------

Cam woke up around ten in the morning.  Groaning, he stood up and stretched
out of the uncomfortable position he had fallen asleep in.  He had been up
until four a.m. thinking about Nathan.  And putting together a puzzle,
apparently.  He gave it a sideways look and swept it off of the table and
into its box, which was lying on the floor.  A jigsaw puzzle?  Talk about
lame.  Still, it was something that he could do with his hands while his
brain was occupied.  Looking down, he noticed that he was still in the same
clothes he had been wearing the night before.  He could use a shower, too.

Grabbing some new clothes from his room, he rushed to the bathroom, hoping
that he could get ready before Nathan came over.  The hot water woke him up
quickly, and soon enough he was belting out some off-key song over the
rattle of the water.  By the time he was out and drying himself off, he was
feeling more energetic than he usually was after just waking up.  He heard
a knock at the door and jumped.  Just in time.  He threw on his clothes as
fast as he could, nearly tripping himself over his pant legs before running
for the door.

Nathan was almost ready to give up when he heard the lock click open in the
door.  It swung open to reveal Cam, who was standing there in bare feet
with his hair dripping and his lips pulled back into a grin.  About a dozen
fantasies blasted rapid-fire through his brain at this sight.

"...in?"

Oh jeez, he had been saying something.  Pay attention.

"Huh?"

"I said, want to come in?"

Nathan nodded enthusiastically, taking the stairs two at a time.  As soon
as they were inside, Cam slammed the door and locked it, leading Nathan to
the living room.

"So, about last night..."

Oh jeez.  Was Cam having second thoughts?  Say something.  Diffuse it.

"Uh...yeah, about that...I'm really sorry if that creeped you out or
anything."

"Creeped out?  Naw.  Besides, I've been sleeping too much, anyway.  Staying
up all night thinking about you was a good change."  Cam groaned at himself
mentally for laying it on so thick.  He really didn't want to scare him
off.

Nathan, meanwhile, was practically melting into his sneakers, wishing that
he could think of something that sweet to say.  Ugh, how did Cam always
manage to do that?

"Um...Cam, I..."  His lips had started moving before his brain told them
what to say.  Not good.  Not good at all.  "W-would it be okay...I mean,
can I..."  He cleared his throat, feeling it tighten.  "...can I kiss you?"

"You did once yesterday.  Do you really think I'd turn it down this time?"

"No, I mean...really kiss you.  On the lips."  His voice cracked a bit, but
it wasn't too noticeable since he was practically whispering at this point.
He wondered if it was possible to die from blushing too fast.  All the
blood rushing to his face...what if it just kept going, and started
spraying out everywhere?  Not a comforting thought, seeing as since he met
Cam, he'd felt like he'd been blushing so much that the heat from his face
could make space heaters obsolete in Gordon.  He turned his head, trying to
hide it.

Cam had seen enough movies to know what he was supposed to do now.  He
stepped over to Nathan and pulled him into a kiss.  Nathan, not sure how to
react, twisted his head awkwardly.  This position combined with Cam's
nervous rushing lead to them being rather off-target, so to speak.  His
lips were pressed firmly against the underside of Nathan's nose.  Not quite
like the movies.

'Good thing I didn't try to do any of that fancy tongue stuff everybody
always talks about,' Cam thought, pulling back. 'Otherwise, I would have
ended up with my tongue clear up his nose.'  He burst out laughing at that
image, leaning into Nathan for support.

"Wow, I kind of blew that one, huh?"  Cam said between laughs, his head
against Nathan's shoulder.

"Um...maybe a bit slower this time."  Nathan said, lifting Cam's head to
his own and snapping him out of his nervous hysterics.  This time they both
leaned in slowly and carefully, their lips touching for the first time.

The initial contact ripped through Cam like he had just kissed an electric
outlet.  He gave a short, strong shudder, which Nathan responded to by
wrapping his arms around Cam's shoulders and squeezing gently.

Cam couldn't even guess about how much time had passed.  To be honest, a
street gang could have driven a bulldozer through his living room and he
wouldn't have noticed.  He eventually had to stop, realizing that he hadn't
been breathing the whole time.

"Oh...wow."  Nathan breathed.  It was times like this that he wished he was
the poetic type.  He felt almost cheated that he could be allowed to feel
something so strongly and not be able to put it to words.

"Yeah.  Wow."  Cam's knees felt wobbly, and he let himself fall back into
the couch.  His lungs were on fire, like he had just run a marathon.  He
let his breath escape in a deep sigh.

Nathan did the same, falling next to him and throwing one arm over his
shoulders.  Cam sucked in some more air.

"I'm never going to catch my breath if you keep doing that."

"Oh, sorry."  Nathan said, pulling his arm back.  They sat apart in silence
like that for a few seconds before Cam starting breathing normally again.
He turned and looked at Nathan; his black hair falling across his forehead,
his chest rising and falling under his shirt.

"You know," Cam said, "Breathing's way overrated."

Nathan grinned, practically tackling Cam and pulling him into another kiss.

---------------------

Jay Jeffries, having finished his day's work early, pulled into his
driveway at just past five o'clock.  He stepped out of the car, twirling
his key ring on his fingers and adjusting his sunglasses as he stepped up
to the door.  When he opened the it, he heard the TV click on in the other
room.  Strange.  His wife was still at work, and Cam was almost always out
when he got home.  Well, whatever.

He stepped inside, pulling off his sunglasses (always done with a needless
flick of his wrist, just for the sake of looking cool) and throwing them,
along with his keys, into the basket that they kept next to the door.  He
was passing through the living room on his way to his bedroom when he saw
that Cam was sitting with another boy on the couch, watching TV.  They both
looked kind of pale.

"Hey guys."

"Hi dad.  Home early, huh?"

"Yep."  He turned to Nathan.  He had seen him (and the rest of Cam's usual
gang) hanging around the house before.  "Uh...Clint, right?"

"Yes sir."

"No need for the sir.  Never has sounded right to me.  Hey, was that you
doing the juggling on stage yesterday?"

"Yes s-...er, yeah."

"Well, you know what that means?"

Nathan and Cam both looked back blankly.

"You're the closest we've come to having a celebrity in the house."

Nathan blushed, but smiled none the less.

"So, you staying for-" Jay was cut off mid-sentence when he noticed what
they boys were watching on TV.  "Wait...the weather channel?"

"Er...yeah!"  Cam stuttered, looking over at Nathan for a second before
turning back.  "Uh...we were just going to see if it was...going to rain
any time soon."

"Right!"  Nathan added.  "Um...you know, to see if we would have
to...reschedule anything.  Because of the rain."

"Oh.  Well, you'll probably have better luck with the local news.  I mean,
I'm pretty sure that isn't even our country."  He motioned to the screen,
which was currently displaying a map of Argentina (which was, apparently,
in for some rough times as that warm front swept in from the East).
"Anyway, Clint, you staying for dinner?  Looks like I'm home first, so I've
got chef duties tonight."

"Um..."  He looked to Cam, who shot him a quick grin.  "I'll have to call
my Aunt first, but if it's okay..."

"Sure, sure.  Like I said before, it'll probably be the closest I come to
cooking for a celebrity."

"Come on, Dad, you're embarrassing him."

"Right.  Well, I'm sick of this suit already, so I'm going to go change."
He started off in the direction of his bedroom again.  "Oh, Clint - phone's
on the counter in the kitchen.  Cam'll show you."

As soon as he was gone, Nathan turned to Cam.

"You don't think he suspects anything, do you?"  He whispered.

"Relax.  He already knows about me.  My mom knows, too.  They're cool with
it.  At least, in theory.  I don't know how they'll take the actual
practice, but I don't think it'll be a problem."

"Yeah, but...I don't know if I want them to know about me yet.  I mean, no
one does, other than you."

"I think it might have been just enough to make him suspicious, but I don't
think he knows what he's supposed to be suspicious about yet.  No need to
worry just yet."

Nathan was visibly relieved by this.  Cam showed him to the phone, where he
called his Aunt.  A few sentences into the conversation, Nathan pulled the
phone away from his face and covered the receiver with his palm.

"She wants to know if I'm staying overnight, too."

"Want to?"

"'Course I do.  If it were up to me, I'd never leave."  He added that last
sentence is a conspiratorial whisper.

"One second, got to go ask my dad."  Cam took off for the stairs, which he
attacked with a certain vicious disregard for safety.  He came back down
less than a minute later and flashed Nathan a thumbs-up.

Some more conversation on the phone, and everything was set.  The boys
retired to Cam's room, where they decided to hang around until dinner.  Cam
sat cross-legged on his bed, while Nathan sat on the floor and leaned
against the wall on the other side of the room.

"So..."  Cam started.

"What?"

"Um, well...I've been meaning to ask you..."

"What?"  Nathan asked again, starting to get worried by the tone of Cam's
voice.  Had he said something that could be taken the wrong way?  He
started replaying their conversations from that day in his head.

"Why does everybody call you Clint, anyway?"

He nearly fell over with relief.

"That's it?"

"Well, whenever I asked Jerry or Andrew, they'd just say that I'd have to
ask you myself.  I just assumed it was something that you weren't too happy
about, so I didn't want to ask until I got to know you better...and then I
just kind of forgot about it for a while, but it's been driving me crazy
the last few days."

Nathan laughed and leaned back against the wall.  "Should have just asked
me, man.  My nickname...it didn't start until I moved here.  It started
when I was first learning how to juggle clubs.  One of the first tricks I
tried was an under-the-leg throw...and, well, I wasn't too good at
controlling my throws yet, and ended up clubbing myself in the groin a few
times."

Cam snickered at that, but still didn't quite make the connection.

"I was walking bow-legged for about a week."

"A week!?"

"Well, I was determined to learn it, and I had to stop practicing every
time I made one of those groin-throws, so it took a while."

"You mean to tell me that you cracked your crotch with a club - numerous
times - and still kept trying?"

"Aye, we jugglers are a crazy bunch."  Nathan said in a terrible attempt at
some kind of accent that Cam couldn't place.

"You're lucky you're not a sterile bunch."

"I'm not too worried about whether or not I can have kids.  After all..."

"Oh yeah.  Still, though...you never thought of buying a cup or something?"

"You want to hear this or not?"

Cam motioned for him to go on, clamping one hand over his own mouth.

"So anyway, I was walking around bow-legged at school for a week.  I bumped
into this guy in the hall.  I'm not sure who he was, really, but that's not
important.  Anyway, he yells out, 'Watch where you're goin' there, pardner.
The ranch is that way.'  So everybody starts laughing-"

Cam, currently laughing into his hand, tried his best to stifle it.

"And before you know it, everybody's saying things like 'Howdy, pardner'
and 'Hey there, buckeroo'.  Eventually somebody said 'Hey, Clint Eastwood -
how you doing?  Good?  Bad?  Ugly?'"

Cam was cracking up now, picturing it in his mind.

"So anyway, I was getting kind of sick of fighting it, you know?  So I
thought, maybe if I go along with it for a little while, they'll get bored
and forget about it.  So I turn to him and say 'Why?  Do you feel lucky,
punk?'"

"But...that line wasn't even from one of his cowboy movies, was it?"

"I don't know.  Doesn't matter.  The point is, from that day on, I was
Clint to everybody in school.  Even one or two of the teachers started
calling me that.  And you know, I'm kind of shy as it is-"

"Sure, 'kind of'."

"Yeah, screw you.  Anyway, it was a new school, and I'm kind of shy, so I
was quiet most of the time, and I guess that combined with the nickname
made people think that I was more the strong silent type than the scared
quiet type.  Everybody pretty much left me alone, so I went along with it.
I even started introducing myself that way to people.  It seemed to make it
a little easier to talk to them."

"Oh, I get it...like when you signed up for the talent contest.  You said
that signing up as Clint made it easier to keep your nerves.  You don't
feel as shy if you're talking as someone else."

"Yeah.  But I didn't tell anybody about that part.  Until you, that is."

"So, do you want me to call you Clint?"

"No.  I don't think so.  With you...I don't feel like I have to be someone
else.  Oh man, that sounded really sappy."  Their eyes locked, and Cam felt
something jump in his chest.

"You know what?"

"Hm?"

"I didn't want to start anything with my dad in the house, but you're not
making it easy for me."

Nathan smiled and made his way to Cam's bed where he sat down next to him.
He positioned himself so that he was perpendicular (a word he had picked up
in last year's math class, and would no doubt forget in time for next
year's math class) to Cam's shoulders, wrapped his arms around him, and
pressed his lips softly against his cheek.

"I love you." He whispered into Cam's ear.

Cam's head filled with contradictions.  Was this right?  Was he really in
love with Nathan?  He had only known him for a little more than a month,
and had only just begun to really know him.  Every logical part of his
brain was screaming 'stupid teen crush', but as he looked back at him, the
way his heart felt like it was about to bruise his chest from the inside
out...he just couldn't logic his way out of this.

"I love you, too."  He whispered back, no uncertainty in his voice.  "Oh
man, I really didn't want to start anything just now..."

"Well, technically, I think I started it."

"Yeah, but now I've got a...situation on my hands, and it's going to be
really hard to look innocent if my parents call me down for something."
Cam thought he saw Nathan's eyes flash down to his 'situation' for a
split-second, but wasn't sure.

"Well...maybe we've just got to make sure your situation is rectified, so
to speak."

"Uh...it already IS rectified.  That's the problem."

"No, no...rectified.  It means straightened out, taken care of, that kind
of thing."

"Oh.  Yeah.  I knew that.  Rectified.  Of course."  Cam's eyes shot to
about twice their normal size.  "Wait, did you just offer to-"

"Um...well, I mean...if you want to...but, that should probably wait until
later."

"Oh, yeah, sure, I'm all for taking things slow.  Real slow.  Like, school
zone slow.  Snail in January slow.  In fact, my teachers always said that I
was sl-"

"Well, I meant like...waiting until later tonight, so that your parents
don't walk in on us, but if that's too fast..."

"Not at all!  I can do fast, too!  Faster than a speeding bullet.  I mean,
yeah, fast, but not too fast.  That is...aw hell, I'm bad at this."  He
sighed, throwing himself off of the bed in exaggerated frustration.

-----------------------

Dinner that night was uneventful.  Cam tried his best to avoid making eye
contact with anyone, acting as interested as possible in the bowl of soup
in front of him.  His parents did their usual "getting to know who our
son's friends are" routine, grilling Nathan about school, his Aunt, and the
town in general.  Cam didn't catch any of it.  He was too focused on
pushing around the various ingredients of the soup with his spoon.  He
wasn't interested in eating.  Not at all.  Still, he knew that if he didn't
hurry up and down this stuff, he'd be here all night.  Not to mention that
his parents would most likely blame his lack of appetite on drugs, as they
had been known to do.  Combine that with the way he had been unable to
focus on anything, the funny haze that seemed to surround him wherever he
went, and they would have a pretty good case.  He was pretty sure he had
never done anything stronger than aspirin, but damned if he didn't feel
like he had been pegged with a tranquilizer dart.

He spooned the stuff down as best he could, his stomach fluttering as he
thought about the boy sitting next to him.  This worried him a bit - not
eating, not sleeping...if it continued for too long, he could get pretty
messed up.  Everyone at the table was looking at him.  Uh oh.  Caught
daydreaming.

"What?"  He asked.

"I asked if you were feeling alright."  Jay replied.  "You've been pretty
quiet tonight."

"Yeah, I'm fine.  Just...thinking about stuff."

Nathan's spoon clattered against the table and bounced to the floor.  He
made one of those "Oh, clumsy me" expressions and leaned over to pick it
up.  On the way back up, he brushed his fingers against Cam's hand.

'Bless the guy who invented tablecloths.' Cam thought, giving Nathan's hand
a squeeze before bringing it back up to the table and turning his attention
back to the soup.

---------------------

No one there.  Good.  Maybe.

Andrew made his way into the clearing.  Good timing - everybody else was
probably eating supper at home right now.  The whole day had been
confusing.  He hadn't seen Cam or Clint at all.  That wasn't anything to
get worried about - it's not as if they all met up every day or anything.
He would usually see one of them in passing, though.

'Probably off doing...I don't know.  Something.  What do gay guys do,
anyway?'  From what he had seen on TV, they redecorated houses, dressed up
really fancy, and marched in parades.  He had seen their rooms, and they
weren't exactly neatly decorated.  Cam's room was still full of
half-unpacked boxes, even a month after moving in.  Clint's had a sort of
impersonal Spartan emptiness to it, like he was trying to make it so that
if he left, there would be no proof that he had ever lived there.  He had
never paid attention to their clothes, but they sure didn't dress all...you
know, like that.  And as far as he knew, there weren't any parades going
through town.

'Why would they do anything different, anyway?  Jeez, you know what they're
into.  Clint likes juggling, music, horror movies with a lot of blood n'
guts.  Cam's into books, video games, The Three Stooges.  Just because they
decided to start being gay...'  Start?  Yeah, start.  They weren't gay
before, right?  Cam slept over at his house the day before they all met,
and he didn't seem gay then.  But...if he wasn't acting different now, how
could he tell?  God, this was weird.

He wasn't one of those...what do they call 'em?  Homophobes?  At least, he
didn't think he was.  He still liked Cam and Clint.  He just didn't know
anything about them now.  'No, no, I do know about them.  They didn't
change.'  Yeah, except that now they're like...a couple?  Boyfriends?
What's the right term for it?  He really didn't know.  And how would this
effect his friendship with them?  He could always try joking around about
it whenever it came up - his usual tactic for dealing with things he didn't
quite understand.  'But what if I go too far and say something that hurts
them?  How do I know how far 'too far' is if I don't know...well,
ANYTHING?'

'Got to find out about this.  I don't want to say something stupid and
screw everything up just because I don't know...'  Yeah, but how to find
out?  He couldn't talk to Cam and Clint about it.  That'd be too...awkward.
You can't just go up to somebody and say "Hey, I hear you're into drillin'
other dudes.  'Sup with that?"  But he didn't feel right talking to Jerry
or Jill about it, either.  Talking about them behind their back like that
wouldn't be cool.  'What about the internet?  Or a book or something?'
Yeah, right.  Just walk up to the check-out counter with a stack of books
about homosexuality.  That sure wouldn't earn him any weird looks from the
librarian (who just so happened to be a hot college chick, thereby making
the library an extremely popular place for college guys looking to score
some points with her).  Internet was no good, either.  His parents had
installed one of those stupid parental block things that kept track of
every site he went to.  All he needed was for them to see that he had been
searching for stuff about being gay.

Damn it.  Stuck.  Stupid.

"So, how much did the pirate charge for piercings?"  He said outloud to
himself.  "A buck-an-ear!  Stick around, folks, I got a million of 'em.  A
pirate walks into a bar.  Bartender says 'Hey, you've got a steering wheel
in your pants.'  Pirate says 'Arr! It's driving me nuts!'  See that, ladies
'n gents?  What I lack in common sense, I make up for in pirate jokes.  Of
course you don't see, you're a bunch of trees.  But I won't hold that
against ya.  You're still the best audience I've got.  So, a pirate, a
ninja, and a hooker are on the Titanic, when the Captain says..."

He wasn't sure how long he was talking to the trees.  All he knew was that
as long as his tongue was twisting, he didn't have to think.  Based on the
kind of thoughts he had been having all day, he figured that was for the
best.

----------------------

Cam and Nathan had gone straight up to Cam's room after dinner, but decided
after a few minutes that staying alone like that was just asking for
trouble.  They didn't want to get caught up in the middle of something with
Cam's parents right downstairs.  On the other hand, they didn't want to go
downstairs with them and go crazy trying to not look suspicious, thereby
looking extremely suspicious.  Finally, they settled on taking a walk.

"How long do you really think we can keep this up?" Cam asked as they
rounded a corner.

"You mean staying together, or hiding it?"

"Hiding it.  I mean, it's not like we hang out with a huge group that
wouldn't notice that we're missing.  A few days of not showing up and
they'll start to wonder what's going on.  And then if we do show up...well,
they're not blind."

"Yeah.  And Jerry...jeez, I live with him.  There's no way that he won't
find out.  And he's not exactly the secretive type, either."  Nathan turned
around to face Cam.  "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know.  If you want to stop..."

"No."

"Then I guess...we've just got to take it.  Roll with the punches, or
something like that."  Cam said.  "So...the question is, do we do it quick
and get it over with, or do we wait for one of them to find out and slowly
turn the rest against us?"

"Don't you think we might be being way too hard on them?  I mean...'turning
against us'...it just doesn't sound like them.  Isn't it possible that they
wouldn't care?"

"I don't know.  Maybe.  Maybe we should just get it done with.  Like, now.
At least then we won't have to worry about it."

"Have you ever done this before?  You said that your parents knew, but did
you ever tell anybody else?"

"Um...yeah, I did tell somebody, once."

"Well?"

"It went...okay."  Cam threw on his best poker face.  He didn't want to
scare Nathan with his horror stories.  The time he had spent hiding had
been even worse than finally coming out, and he didn't think he could take
that again.

"Oh.  So it might not be too bad.  Still...I don't know.  Maybe we should
wait a little while.  You know, until..."  He trailed off and nodded in
Cam's direction.

Cam looked down at his chest, thinking at first that there was something on
his shirt.  Then he turned around and saw that Jill was behind him, walking
in their direction.  He raised his hand and waved.  She nodded to them,
smiling.

"Hi guys.  What's going on?"

What was that supposed to mean?  That tone...it was somehow set off alarms
in Cam's head.  It was like she was implying something.

'Got to be my imagination.'  Cam thought.  'She couldn't possible know.
Not already.  It's impossible.  I'm just paranoid about it.  Deep breath.
Now, say something.'

"Nothing.  You headed for the tracks?"

"Where else?  You too?"

"Guess so."

Now that Jill was there, the conversation swung back to less controversial
topics, and stayed that way until they hit the clearing.

"So then the pirate wench says, 'Is that a mast in yer pile o' doubloons,
or be ye just happy to-" Andrew stopped mid-sentence and turned to the
others, who had just caught him in the middle of his stand-up act.  "Oh,
hey.  Heh.  Just, um...talking to myself."

"Right..." Jill said, "And you usually talk to yourself in a pirate
accent?"

"Uh...doesn't everybody?"

"Can't say I do.  Cam?"

"Nope.  Nathan?"

"Nope.  Looks like you're alone on that one."

"Bah, you're just jealous of my amazing vocal stylings, and you know it.
Go play with your balls, Clint."

"Alright, man.  That was your first reference to juggling and testicles for
this week."  Nathan held up two fingers.  "You know the rules.  Only two
more, and then I get to smack you for 'em."

"Well, why waste time?  You know, you've got to respect a man with five
balls."

Nathan lowered one finger.

"One more, huh?  Hm.  Jugglers do it with their balls in the air?"

"Damn straight we do."  He lowered his hand.  "You know, one of these
weeks, you're going to actually use one that I haven't heard before."

"You bet your balls I am."  This was answered with a punch to his shoulder.

"Ugh.  I've got to get some female friends."  Jill muttered.

"You'd be back in a day.  Face it, talking about lipstick and boy bands
just can't compare to our three-balls-and-you're-out rule."  Andrew
grinned, tightening into a ridiculous pose and lowering his voice so that
he sounded almost like a TV voiceover guy.  "Besides, no one escapes the
Rowan charm, fabled in song and story."

"Such songs as 'Walk Away, Renee'..." Nathan said.

"And such stories as 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'."  Cam finished.

"Solitude this."  Andrew said, maintaining the voice and holding the pose,
but flashing a rather unwholesome gesture in their direction.

"Guys!"  Jerry came crashing through the trees and into the clearing.  "Oh
good, you're all here."

"Yeah.  What's up, Jer?"  Jill asked.

"Oh man, I found the coolest things!"

Andrew broke his pose, leaning in like the rest of the group.

"I was at the gas station, getting some batteries, right?"

"Batteries.  Gas station.  I follow you so far, but slow down, this is
complicated business."  Andrew said.  Jerry ignored him and continued with
his story.

"And I was going up to pay, I get out my wallet..." He pantomimed this with
his hands, as if there were no way the rest of them could grasp the concept
of taking out a wallet without a visual aid.  "But then I drop it, so I
kneel down to pick it up...and then I saw it."

He was on his knees now, holding his hands in front of him as if he were
both reaching for and bowing to whatever was in front of him.

"It was like...the most perfect looking-"

"Jerry."  Jill interrupted him.  "If the next word out of your mouth is
'ass', I swear to god, I am never sitting though one of your stories
again."

"Seconded."  Nathan added.

"Motion carried."  Cam said, banging his fist against a nearby tree.

"Guys, come on!"  Jerry got back to his feet.  "It was this display of
pins.  You know, the small, cheap ones that they sell at gas stations.  I
saw these really cool ones.  Like, gold buckeye leaves."

"You're impressed by buckeye leaves?  Man, this is Ohio.  You can't take
three steps without seeing a buckeye leaf.  Look, that's a buckeye tree
right there!"  Andrew was right, it was.

"Yeah, but these...I don't know.  They're the five-point kind.  And there
were exactly five of them.  And you know, I was thinking...there's five of
us, five of them, five points on each leaf.  It was like fate or
something."

That was one thing Cam had noticed about Jerry.  No matter what he did, it
always had to be epic.  If it was boring or even average (for instance,
buying batteries at a gas station), he'd find a way to make it interesting,
or he just wouldn't do it.  His mother had become aware of this when his
teacher called to inform her that the margins on Jerry's math homework were
always crammed with small doodles of the numbers getting into knife fights
and shootouts.

"So I checked the price, and you know how much it came to when you added in
the batteries I was there to get?  Five dollars.  Almost exactly.  Fate,
like I said.  So of course, I had to get 'em."  He reached into his pocket
and pulled out a handful of the pins he had described.  Five gold buckeye
leaves (not real gold, of course), each about the size of a nickel.  He
held out his hand motioning for everyone to take one.

"You sure you just want to give these to us?  I mean, I could pay you back
however much it was..."  Cam said, taking one.

"Nah, they were like fifty cents.  No big deal.  I just thought it would be
cool if we could all wear 'em.  Like a club, or something."  He pinned one
on to his front pocket.

"These are kind of cool."  Andrew said, turning one over in his hand.
"Good find, Jer."

Jerry was practically beaming at this.  Though no one ever came out and
said it, it was fairly obvious that he looked up to Andrew.  He saw him as
most people did - Easy-going, athletic, always ready with a sarcastic
comment.  Plus, as a ten year old boy, he couldn't help but respect a guy
with such a large stable of off-color jokes.  Nothing too dirty, or course,
but the kind of things that were just racy enough to get girls to roll
their eyes and groan when he repeated them.

Once they all had them pinned in varying locations, they stood and admired
the accessories.  They were big enough to see, but small enough that they
could get away with wearing all the time without calling attention to them.
Plus, the fact that they were buckeye leaves gave them the excuse of being
proud Ohio citizens if anyone asked.  Luckily, these were shaped so that
they were obviously buckeye leaves.  Cam had seen some buckeye leaf designs
that he could swear looked more like pot leaves, and he knew he wouldn't be
able to get away with wearing something like that.  Not even if it was in
support of the state.

"So...what do you guys want to do now?"  Jerry asked.

"I brought a deck."  Jill said, reaching into her back pocket and producing
a worn box wrapped in a rubber band.  "Up for some poker?"

"Sounds good to me.  What kind of an unruly teen gang would we be without
gambling?"  Andrew said.

"So, do we have to start dealing drugs and stealing hubcaps now, too?"
Jill asked, shuffling.

"Nah.  The drug market's already covered by the high school kids, and I
don't know about you guys, but I don't know how to take off a hub cap.  I
guess if we have to, we can start up a prostitution ring, though."

"Oh, sure.  Like we don't know who's going to be doing all the work there."
Jill started dealing out the cards.

"I think you underestimate my whoring potential."

The others just watched.  Andrew v. Jill was always a good spectator sport.
Even when they weren't fighting they always had to one-up each other, even
if that meant something as seemingly innocent as building on each other's
jokes.  Occasionally one of the others would get in a line, but it was
always buried under an avalanche from the two main competitors.  They
commenced playing hand after hand of cards, substituting pebbles from under
the train tracks for poker chips and philosophizing about whatever topics
came to mind.  It seemed like no time at all when they heard a train
coming.

"Oh man, that's the nine o'clock."  Nathan noted.

"Yep.  Time for another showing of the Gordon Mobile Art Gallery."  Jill
said.  This was a city-wide in-joke of sorts - the idea that Gordon's
culturally elite could make up for the lack of a real art museum by
watching the graffiti-covered trains going by, decorated with such
beautiful works as "fuck the government!" and "suck my cork" (occasionally
sections of the paint wore off, leaving chunks of letters missing) written
in five-foot tall letters.  "But as much as I'd like to stick around and
watch the ol' profane train make its rounds, it's getting late."

"Yeah, we'd better get back, too."  Cam said.

"We?"  Jill asked.

"Er..."  Cam looked over to Nathan, unsure.

"Clint's spending the night at Cam's place."  Jerry said.

Nathan's head spun toward his cousin.  "How'd you know that?"

"Mom told me.  You know, since we do kind of live together, she figured I
should keep up with everything."

"Oh, right."

"Uh, yeah, I should get going, too."  Andrew said.  Cam could swear he
looked really uncomfortable all of a sudden.  He slipped out of the
clearing and went on his way.

------------------------

"Watch this."  Cam motioned to his bedside alarm clock.  "Almost 10:03."

"What happens then?"

"Watch."

Just as the clock clicked over to 10:03 pm, they heard a knock at the door.

"Come in."

Mr. Jeffries stuck his head into the room, said good night, and disappeared
just as quickly.

"10:03, every night.  It's like it takes them exactly three minutes to turn
off all the lights and get to my room."

"So, they're going to be asleep soon?"

Cam grinned, standing and walking over to Nathan, who stood up as well.
The only word Cam could think of to describe the kiss that followed was
"passionate".  At least, he assumed that it fit.  He had heard the word
before, and had even seen it used in some of books that he'd read, but he
had always skimmed past those boring romance scenes.  After all, he had
seen his parents kissing before, and that was nothing too fascinating.
Definitely nothing worth writing or reading about.  At least, not before...

He gasped, feeling Nathan's cool hands slipping under his shirt and moving
across his back.  He was pressing into him forcefully now, like he was
trying to borough his way though Cam's chest.  With a little mutual
assistance, they were both shirtless.  As they broke apart, Cam felt
himself shudder as he looked at Nathan's form.  His shirt had messed up his
hair as it slipped over his head, and it was now sticking out wildly.

"Looks like your, uh...situation's come up again."

"Likewise."  Cam said.  "But I've got the cutest guy on Earth just a few
feet in front of me.  What's you're excuse?"

"If you're just going to steal my answer like that, I'll need more time to
think about it.  Maybe if I did some research..."  His hands reached Cam's
waist, a few fingers slipping under the fabric of his jeans.

Cam was breathing heavy, his mind reeling.  Nathan's forwardness was
surprising.  Maybe he really did feel more confident with him.

Nathan let out a frustrated sigh, fumbling with the button on Cam's pants.
"Um...little help?  I don't mean to break the mood or anything, but I've
never had to unbutton one of these from this side before."

Cam probably would have laughed at that, but right now he couldn't really
do much of anything but nod.  Even with his hands shaking, he was able to
quickly unbutton himself.  Nathan got back to work, unzipping him and
pushing him back toward his bed.  Cam barely noticed he had been moving
when he felt the edge of his mattress against the back of his legs.  Soon
he was off his feet, his pants around his ankles.  He kicked them off,
leaving him in his socks and boxers.

"Dude."  Nathan snickered.  "Sorry, sorry, broke the mood again, but..."

He motioned to Cam's boxers, which were currently feeling extremely tight
on him.  Cam looked down only to remember which ones he was wearing.  A
pair of novelty boxers he had gotten for his birthday a year ago, black
with a Three Stooges pattern across the front.

'Not the opportune choice for such an event,' Cam thought, noting how
ridiculously Larry Fine's grinning persona was being stretched and starting
to laugh himself.

"Guess I should've gone with some plain ones for today."

"Hey, they may not be the most romantic things ever, but they're a tension
breaker at least."  Nathan leaned in and kissed Cam, his hand sliding
across Larry, Curly, and Moe.  He pulled back, eyes watching intently as he
started pulling down his boxers.  His hand was on Cam as soon as he was
free of his constraints.  Cam was shaking, supporting himself with his arms
behind his back, trying to keep his eyes open and his mouth closed as
Nathan's hand was slowly sliding up and down.  Finally, he couldn't take it
any more.  He let himself fall backwards, and in his last seconds of
sanity, he reached for his pillow, which he pressed hard over his face.  It
did a decent job of muffling the sounds he made as a series of explosions
ripped through him, his legs kicking out as bombs went off behind his
eyelids.

He lay there for a few minutes, the pillow over his face leaving the world
dark.  As he finally pulled it off, the first thing he saw was Nathan
standing over him.  The light from his lamp stung at first, but he couldn't
look away.  Now that he had had some time to recover, he pushed himself up
and grabbed Nathan lightly by his shoulders, spinning him around and
switching places with him.  He mirrored Nathan's actions, lips busy while
his fingers worked simultaneously on his pants.

No weird novelty boxers.  Instead, just a plain grey pair of boxer-briefs.
That did nothing to reduce the amount of time Cam stood staring.  It took
him a while, but he snapped out of it and gently pushed Nathan back onto
his bed, kneeling in front of him while he stripped him of his remaining
coverings.

"Whoa."  Cam looked up.  "You're...you're not, I mean..."

"Oh yeah.  Guess I never mentioned it.  Yeah, I'm blond.  Dyed it black a
while ago.  That is, the stuff on my head, not..." He trailed off.

"Had no idea.  Whoa."  Cam repeated, running his fingers through the sparse
light colored strands that adorned the area above Nathan's soldier,
currently standing at attention.  At the thought of that analogy, a half
dozen "private" and "rifle" jokes flashed through his mind, but none of
them stuck around long enough for him to really realize it.

His fingers wrapped around it slowly, working their way from the base to
the top.  Nathan's face twisted, and he reached for the same pillow that
Cam had used.  Soon he was on his back, the pillow pressed against his
face.  Cam's eyes were glued to the business at hand (so to speak).  He had
a sudden urge to lean in and kiss it, but was to nervous to try.  Then,
Nathan's legs bucked and his hips shot up, a few modest squirts of fluid
landing on Cam's hand.

He waited a few seconds, watching Nathan's chest rising and falling,
listening to his breathing.  He looked at his hand.

'No, don't be stupid.  That's way too weird.'  He thought in reply to the
ideas running through his head.  'But he's got a pillow over his head.  No
one's going to know...'

He sighed, giving in.  He lifted his hand to his mouth, slowly, nervously,
his tongue slipping out and barely touching the liquid.  Weird.  Not bad,
really, but weird.  He nearly had a heart attack when he looked up to see
Nathan watching him.

"Jeez!  Um, I...there was..."  He stuttered, not able to think of a single
excuse.

"Don't worry about it."

"I'm sorry.  I didn't want to freak you out or anything."

"Who's freaked out?"  Nathan shrugged.  "Besides...what do you think I was
doing while you had the pillow over your face?"

"You're amazing, you know that?"

"Nah.  Just lucky."  He reached out and took Cam's hand, pulling him onto
the bed and kissing him.  "I really do love you."

"You ever get that feeling like you just got punched in the stomach and
beaten over the head with a shovel at the same time?  Like if you don't
grab on to something, you'll fall clear off the planet and burn up in the
atmosphere like in that movie about the space shuttle?"

"Constantly."

"Well, if that's what love feels like...then I'm way past that.  I don't
know if there's a word for that yet, though, so I guess I've got to stick
with saying that I love you."

"Fuck man, you always have the best lines.  Do you write these in advance
or something?"

"Actually, I was thinking most of that last night.  I was about to say it,
too, but the ants got me."

Nathan snickered.  "No wonder you were so pissed."

"Speaking of pissed...as much as I'd love to fall asleep in nothing but my
socks with you, I think it'd be a lot easier to explain being in boxers.
You know, just in case."

"You could explain boxers?"

"Not easily, no."

"Alright, just so we're clear."

They located their shorts and semi-clothed themselves.  Cam climbed into
bed, motioning for Nathan to join him.  It wasn't really big enough for two
people, but they weren't planning on having a lot of space between them
anyway.  Cam flipped off the bedside lamp, noticing the way their clothes
were scattered all across the room.

"Yeah, like that's not obvious."

"Hm?"

"Nothing."

---------------------

That's it for this time.  Comments?  Constructive criticism?
EleCivil@gmail.com