Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 00:24:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: erik ritler <erikritler@yahoo.com>
Subject: space ship boys - chapter 15

Author's Note

Here is chapter 15 - long, but hopefully entertaining. As always, the Yahoo
Group will be kept one chapter ahead. Anyone wanting to access the story
from there can join at the link below. I approve all request for
membership, but require approval because otherwise the group is besieged by
spam.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spaceshipboys/

Enjoy!


The tale so far:

Following his injuries, Devon adjusts to his new perspective on life. When
a Halloween party is thrown on the ship he finds it the perfect opportunity
to freely express the blatant sensuality of "New Devon," the more
aggressive, open, fearless part of his personality he's created since being
hurt. And it's working - after the party he winds up in bed with six of his
best friends, a night they're all sure to remember for some time to come.

Now Devon finds himself interested in revealing to Sneak that he knows who
he is. So when Sneak, otherwise known as AJ Mendell, is seen leaving the
flat early one morning, Devon follows, determined to confront his
friend. And confront him he does, cornering AJ in a storage room on one of
the farms, sliding up close to him, and pulling AJ's pants down to reveal
the rose tattoo that Devon knows lies on Sneak's hip.


Space Ship Boys

Chapter 15 - Something Of a Complete Idiot


New Devon was the order of the day.

"New Devon" - what I'd come to call the changes to my personality since I'd
faced my own mortality and walked away - was unapologetically bold,
outspoken, and fearless.

New Devon had worn one of the sexiest, most daring costumes imaginable to
the Halloween party, and I'd danced and drank and kissed random boys before
leaving the party to have sex with six of my best friends, a night of
slick, gorgeous passion and slow, sleepy blowjobs that, almost a week
later, still made my cock swell at the slightest memory of the events of
that night, resulting in more than a few "coffee breaks" that were, in
fact, quick trips to the bathroom for fast, frantic relief.

Now I was tapping into New Devon once more, this time to deal with Sneak,
the boy with whom I shared an oddly voyeuristic relationship. Our
friendship was a bit one-sided, I thought. I'd decided that I wanted that
to change, so I'd tried to confront him. This had met with little success,
meaning he'd outrun me when I'd tried chasing him down in the emergency
tunnels.

But I knew something Sneak didn't realize - I knew who he was. It turned
out that Sneak had been closer to me than I'd ever imagined - AJ Mendell,
one of my flatmates, a shy, somewhat lonely boy who kept to himself, was
who had been spying on me all this time.  AJ had made a fatal error one
afternoon while visiting me in the hospital. I'd previously left Sneak a
gift, a pair of underwear I'd picked up from Charlie. I'd caught a glimpse
of the unique undies when he'd reached up to retrieve something from a high
shelf. The jig was up, as they say.

I respected the guy, and his right to privacy, but New Devon had decided
that he didn't like the ongoing game, the pretend anonymity. I planned to
allow AJ to go right on spying, and I wasn't going to tell anyone in the
group about him, but I wanted to show him that I knew who he was, which was
why I'd followed him into a deserted farm area early this morning.

When he'd entered a storage alcove, I'd followed close behind, to his shock
and dismay.

Looking at the tall, thin boy, as I was now, I knew that I needed to do
more than confront him. I needed to prove to him that I knew he was Sneak,
and I knew how I could do this.  Months ago, when I first learned of the
boy's voyeuristic ways, I'd seen a tattoo of a black rose right below his
left hip. Which is why I walk up to AJ abruptly, drop to my knees, and then
pull the boy's shorts down, deftly sliding them over his slender hips and
down to his ankles.

AJ gasps, "Devon - what the hell?"

I take a close look at the other boy, now naked from tummy to shin. AJ's
cock sits long and slender over a set of low hanging balls. He's completely
smooth except for a small triangular patch of chestnut hair around the base
of his shaft, and I smell a faint aroma wafting from his private places,
gentle and subtle and sexy. It's moments like these, when you've just taken
a bold step like this, when you've stripped a beautiful boy of the
inconvenient clothes that cover all the best parts, that's when you learn
some of the most important lessons of your life. This was the case for me
now.

I'd just learned that New Devon was a fucking moron.

The thing was, AJ's dick was beautiful, long and brown and hanging nimbly
from his perfect tan body. The problem was, it wasn't Sneak's penis,
clearly. I'd seen Sneak in some of the jack-off movies he'd left me, and
his was...different. And now that I thought about it, I knew Sneak to be
generally fair-skinned, where AJ was moderately tan. Hmm, you'd think I
would have considered this before denuding my flatmate.

I look up at AJ, who still has a rather shocked expression on his
face. "Um...oops," I say.

AJ flashes an angry glare. At first I think he means to punch me, and I
flinch. But he just reaches down to hastily pull up his shorts. He responds
angrily. "Dammit, Devon. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you totally
retarded or something?"

I turn red, feel really small, and want to run out of the room to pretend
this never happened. That might lead to some later awkwardness,
though. "Uh...sorry," I say meekly.

This doesn't placate AJ at all. "Yeah, I'm sure," he says in a sarcastic,
angry voice. "I'm sure there's some understandable reason you came prancing
in here and fucking tore my clothes off. That's really embarrassing!"

Do I prance? I'll have to think about that later. In the meantime, I know
that I need to calm him down or this will get uglier, and I figure it's
time for the truth. "Look, AJ," I start, standing up so that we can look at
one another eye to eye, "I'm really sorry. Truth is, I thought you were
someone else. I mean, I knew it was you in here, but there's this other
guy...ugh, it's a long story. I'm an idiot."

AJ still looks angry, but curious. "You've been meeting other guys in the
farms to have sex?" I take this to mean he thinks I was coming down here to
meet someone for an illicit rendezvous.

"No, I don't," I answer, and then I think about that. "Well, yeah, I do,
but that's not what I'm doing here. Truth is, I've been fooling around with
this guy by cam, just I don't know who he is because he doesn't show his
face. I thought it was you, which is why I came in here and got all
pervy. I was looking for a tattoo."

I'm trying to be as sincere as possible, and it seems to work a little. AJ
lets me explain about Sneak, and although I heavily edit the story so that
I make it sound like Sneak and I were just occasional anonymous cam
buddies, I think it helps AJ understand why I thought it would be a good
idea to come down here and tug his pants off.

"And you thought I was this guy?" AJ asks.

I kick at a metal bucket laying on the floor. It tips over, spilling soil
everywhere. "Oops," I say, about the bucket, and then I address AJ. "Yeah,
I thought you were the one that had been sending me the videos."

AJ is a pretty mellow, level-headed guy, which I really appreciate over the
course of this conversation. "Why?" he asks, staring at me curiously. "Did
Zane say something?  Dammit, I knew he'd say something."

This throws me. I have no idea what AJ is talking about. I'd never
mentioned Zane as having anything to do with Sneak or why I was
here. "What? No," I reply. "Zane didn't say anything. I have no idea what
you're talking about. I thought you were the guy because of your
underwear."

AJ looks down at his waist, and then at me. "I'm not wearing underwear."

I try not to laugh at his confusion, not wanting to rile him again. "No,
not today," I explain.  "When you came to visit me in the hospital. You
reached up to grab something off a high shelf, and you were wearing these
navy briefs with a red rope that ties off on the side.  My other friend has
a pair like those."

"Oh. Yeah, I know the pair you mean." AJ has calmed down a little, maybe
because I've referred to my time in the hospital. I've found that I can get
a lot of mileage out of that, although the effect is wearing off. I'll take
this one last time, though.

I sit down on the edge of a low cabinet, playing with the fabric of my
t-shirt while I talk.  "So, yeah. When I saw those, I thought for sure you
were the guy. You came to visit me in the hospital, and a message from him
showed up right after you left. And it seemed to make sense. You're sort of
a loner, no offense."

AJ leans against a cabinet opposite to me. "None taken," he says.

"But mostly it was the underwear. I thought they were unique. Where did you
get yours?"  I ask. I can't help myself. If AJ knows Sneak by his "secret
identity," then maybe he got the underwear from him.

A sad look flashes across his face momentarily, and then answers. "I
brought those from Earth," he says quietly. I understand why he might be
sentimental about a pair of underwear. We all seemed to have a growing
attachment to things from our former lives.

"Oh. I'm sorry," I say. "I thought the pair my friend has were the only
ones. Charlie made them."

AJ laughs. I give him a curious look, not sure what's funny. He fills me
in. "That makes sense, then," he says. "Charlie saw mine a couple of months
ago. He really liked them, and wanted to base a new design on them. I let
him borrow them for a couple of days."

I shake my head. "Oh my god, I'm such an idiot."

AJ chuckles again. "Yeah, you sort of are. But it's cute...when you're not
molesting people."

I blush. I'm glad that AJ isn't going to attack me for my actions, but this
whole experience has been really humiliating. I learn something today -
something that's probably good to know: sometimes New Devon should be held
in check.

Still, something AJ said doesn't quite make sense to me, and then I'm
curious why he's being so laid-back about my weird behavior. "But what does
any of this have to do with Zane?" I ask.

Now it's AJ's turn to look sheepish and blush. I consider saying something
else, taking the conversation in a different direction because he's clearly
uncomfortable about something. But then he answers, sighing first. "I guess
it's not a big deal to tell you. I mean, it's not like we have any secrets
now that you've seen my wang." We laugh about this before he
continues. "The thing is, I caught Zane and Charlie in the library one
afternoon."

I can see where this is going. If Zane was in the library, it probably
wasn't to research French renaissance art. "And they were doing more than
studying?"

AJ offers a nervous giggle, and then starts playing with the drawstring to
his shorts.  "Yeah, a lot more," he confirms. "And it was...weird. No,
weird isn't the right word. It was cool. It made me...um..." He stops
speaking, as if there are no words left in his brain to continue with.

"Horny?" I ask, joking with him.

AJ's eyes dart to the drawstring he's playing with; he's looping it around
his forefinger and then unwrapping it. "Yeah," he says, and then
sighs. "They were fooling around down in one of the study nooks. At first I
had no idea what they were doing, but then it became pretty obvious. Then
they started getting undressed - your friends are completely insane, you
know that?"

I have to agree with AJ on that point. Maybe the wank club had loosened us
up or something, but I'd noticed that all the guys were a little more
daring, and that pants seemed to fly off at every opportunity. I'm a little
shocked to hear that my friends took off all their clothes right there in
the study area, though. And then AJ says he joined in, and I have to
interrupt him.

"You pulled it out too? No way. You must have been nervous?"

"You have no idea," he says, nodding in agreement. "But they were already
naked, and I figured no one would care if I joined in. And I was so
horny. It's been hard...living on this ship. I didn't date a lot before we
took off, but I was starting to. But even if I wasn't having sex regularly,
at least masturbation helped. Now I have four roommates, and twenty-three
flatmates. People are around all the time...it can make you kinda crazy."

I consider suggesting that if he got his roommates to join in for some
mutual wanking things would still be crazy, but a lot sexier. But I try to
rein in my sarcastic side. "Yeah.  Things were weird for me too before
I...well, before I found some other options." I think back to those early
days on the ship, when things had seemed so much more uncertain and sexual
frustration was the norm.

AJ looks me in the eyes. "Yeah, Zane told me about your club," he says
quietly. It surprises me, but it's not shocking. AJ seems to think he's
said something wrong, he gets wide-eyed and speaks louder. "I mean, he gave
me an overview. He didn't tell me who was in it. But with Halloween and
everything, I assumed."

"Yeah, we're not very subtle, are we?" I ask, trying to make him feel less
uncomfortable.

Truth be told, I wouldn't mind if Zane had told AJ everything. It wasn't a
huge secret, I guess. Besides, AJ had been on the first list of wank club
candidates Charlie and I had made. But we hadn't wanted to stir anything up
by offending any of our flatmates.

"It's no big deal," he says. "I think there are more guys doing that than
just you guys.  Zane told me to come along some Friday, and I have to admit
it's tempting. I mean, you know. I've wanted to start dating again. There
was a guy, back at school. He made it off Earth, but he was on vacation
when we evacuated. He's on the Manhattan ship."

My ears perk up. Charlie and I had pegged AJ as possibly gay. I guess we'd
been right.  "What was he like?" I ask.

AJ sighs, and then slides down the cabinet to sit cross-legged on the
floor. I follow suit.  "He was great. We were in chem together. He was
smart, and funny. He liked to surf."

I think back to all the afternoons I'd watched the surfer boys in San
Diego, salt water- slicked wetsuits shining in the afternoon sun, clinging
to toned, thin bodies. "Surfers are the best," I say.

"Yeah, they are," he agrees. "We went out a couple of time. Then...this. I
mean, I didn't know him very well so I got over it, but it's been
lonely. And weird."

I decide it's a good time for a joke. "I know what you mean by
weird. Perverts keep assaulting me in the farms." I absentmindedly play
with my cast, tapping a forefinger on its plasticine surface.

AJ laughs, and this may be the point where he and I become friends. I'd
been friendly with him before, sure, and seen him almost every day in the
flat. But I guess I never really made an attempt to get to know him. I do
now, and we talk for over an hour. I tell him about San Diego, and about
growing up. He tells me what it was like to grow up in Denver. We even get
comfortable enough with each other to talk a little about sex and love and
boy games.

"So, you think you'll come on Friday?" I ask, a little nervous to pose this
particular question. We're still sitting on the floor of the storage
alcove, which is starting to feel a little cold and hard against my ass.

"Not sure," he answers after thinking about it. "It sounds a
little...weird. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not judging or anything. It
would just be a little weird to come into a group where you know everyone
does...that. It would be a little intimidating. I don't know."

"I get what you're saying. How about I talk to the guys - if you come,
we'll make it a night with no nudity or anything. Just hanging out."

He looks at me, his intense eyes intrigued, a little relieved, but also a
little concerned.  "Really? You think they'd do that?"

"Yeah, totally. I mean, the playtime is fun and all, but it's secondary to
being friends.  Maybe it didn't start like that, but now I consider them
all like brothers. And it would be that way even if we stopped fooling
around. So I'm sure everyone would be excited to have you come."

He looks down at his shoe and notices that its come untied. While fixing
this, he says, "Cool. Yeah, maybe then. I don't know. Getting to know
people is...hard for me. But it would be nice to have more friends on
board."

"Totally."

And then we just sit there for a while, probably both wondering silently
why I'm such a freak. I yawn. It's dang early, which makes me wonder what
AJ was doing down here.  "Hey," I say, breaking the silence, "I know why
I'm down here being a dork, but why the hell did you come down here at
three-thirty in the morning?"

AJ rolls his head lazily to the side, sighs deep and then answers. "I guess
we're all friends here, right? You can keep a secret?"

I think about my recent obsession with discovering Sneak's identity, but
then nod. I think I'm pretty trustworthy. "Ok, cool," AJ says, standing up
and walking to the back wall of the alcove. "Check it out."

He scoots a table away from the wall, making a loud screeching noise that
has us both wincing before it's out of the way. He pulls a card out of his
wristcom, a key like the one I use to access the emergency tunnels. He
swipes it against a panel in the wall and a hatch silently slides open.

"What the..." I find myself involuntarily saying. The hatch doesn't open to
a tunnel, but rather a two-meter square compartment, which is currently
occupied by several instantly recognizable plants. "Are those?" I ask.

AJ nods. "Yeah. I'm not big on it, but some guys are. It's not illegal on
the ship as long as you don't take it into the military sections. I thought
I'd try and figure out how to grow it, which wasn't easy, but I've always
been into botany."

"Wow," is all I can say. "That's so cool. How'd you get the seeds?"

AJ smiles at the compliment. "Actually, I spent like a month asking around
to see if anyone had any at all. No one wanted to admit they'd brought any
with them, but I finally managed to get three small samples, not seeds,
just for smoking. So I had to figure out how to sneak into the gene labs to
make seeds from the DNA. It took a while, but I finally got it right. Then
I found this isolated growing chamber. I think they were designed for rare
plants, or maybe plants that need extra care."

"Cool," I say, wondering how much time and energy it had taken to build
viable plants from some loose joints. AJ really was a botanist - and maybe
also a mad scientist.

"Why do you hide it, though?" I ask. "I mean, if it's not illegal I bet a
lot of guys would help out."

AJ makes a sharp, snorting laugh. "Yeah, and they'd help themselves to some
clippings.  How long before my poor plants were all stripped and dead?"

"Point taken."

I compliment him on his work. I have no idea what a healthy marijuana plant
looks like, but these seem to be thriving. He explains some more about
them, and how he plans to get the crop yield big enough so he can supply
the ship-wide demand. Eventually he notices the time and says he has to go
clean up before an early shift. He hides his crop away, closing the hatch
and then putting the table back where it originally was, and then we walk
out together.

When we head in separate directions, my mind is racing. I'd dodged a bullet
with AJ - he could have been really angry. But I'd been so sure he was
Sneak. Just goes to show you, Devon is still a bit of an idiot.

It was exciting to think that AJ might come on Fridays. I mean, I never
lacked for someone to have fun with, but there's something about the
prospect of someone new.

I also had to think about Sneak. I'd been operating under the assumption
that AJ was Sneak for weeks. It had almost seemed a certainty, and having
that pulled out from under me was disconcerting. I felt like Sneak was more
of a mystery than ever. But the thing with AJ had tempered me a little. It
had been a mistake, approaching him like that.  And maybe following Sneak
around trying to discover his identity was also a mistake.  Maybe I needed
to just ask him. Yeah, that's what I'll do, I decide. I'll ask him to meet
in person and see if we can't be friends.

Unfortunately, I never get the chance. Three days later I stumble upon a
data chip in our usual hiding spot. This excites me - Sneak and I had
shared a few videos back and forth, and I was eager to see what he'd
left. I make my way right back to my room, which I find empty. I go to one
of the terminals on the rear wall and insert the chip, eager to see what
Sneak has added.

I'm confused when there's only one file on the chip. We'd been adding to it
as we relayed it between ourselves in our odd, clandestine manner. There
should be several files, but I find only the one. I open it, and my face
slowly falls as I read a message that Sneak has left for me.


Devon,

I'm sorry that I spy on you and your friends sometimes. That might be wrong
of me. But I thought we had an understanding. I thought you'd leave me
alone to let me watch. When you chased me, it was thrilling, but later I
got angry. It hurt my feelings that you tried to sneak up on me like
that. I know it may be retarded for me to gripe, considering.

I need to think about things. I think I'm messed up in the head. I'm going
to stop sneaking, and I'm going to stop writing. Don't bother looking in
our spot anymore, for me or for messages. I might feel better about all of
this someday and write you again, but for now I'm going to stop.

In a lot of ways, this is a good thing. Sneak was fun, but you taught me
it's better to just be yourself.  Maybe someday I can be that, like you and
your friends at the party. Or maybe not. I need to think about that. In the
meantime, thanks for letting me spy on you for so long.

Goodbye,

Sneak


I read the message three times before closing the file. I'm shocked, I
guess. I didn't mean to hurt Sneak's feelings, and I feel really bad about
that. And I'm a little angry at him. He was weird, sneaking around watching
my friends and me while jacking off in the tunnels. Being lectured about
friendship boundaries by the guy is a little insulting.

Still, I can't help but feel sad. My friendship with Sneak was weird, but
maybe it was because we didn't interact in person that things seemed more
intense, more real. I remember back to earlier messages he'd left, and the
way he'd told me about being abused as a child. I felt like I understood
why he was the way he was. It made me sad, to have lost a friend like this,
even if it was a weird friendship.

And I'm worried. Maybe Sneak wasn't totally stable. I mean, his behavior
was weird and we'd all been through a lot. Maybe if I'd been a real friend
to him I'd have talked to him instead of swapping dirty vids. I was a
little disgusted with myself.

I delete the message from the chip, and fight back tears as I do so. Sad,
confused, and angry, I take the now-empty chip from the computer and throw
it against the wall. It lands with a light tap and falls onto the floor
behind Reid's bunk.

I'm starting to feel truly miserable when I get a message from Patrick
asking me to meet him in the library.

I walk down to the library, huffing along the way, slightly annoyed at
myself for pushing things too far with Sneak. Patrick is in a far corner of
the library, and it takes me twenty minutes to find him hidden away in one
of the study alcoves.

"Jeez," he says when I plop down into the chair opposite him, "what's the
matter with you? You look pissed."

"I am pissed," I confirm. "Long day." And then I start babbling about Sneak
to Patrick. He knew about him - he was the only one of my friends who
did. I'd told Patrick months ago, and while I didn't keep him completely up
to date, it didn't take long to fill him in.

"Sorry, that's rough," he says sympathetically when I stop talking. Then he
thinks about it. "But it may be for the best. From what you describe, it
sounds like he just needs some time. If he figures things out, I'm sure
he'll want to be friends again."

"Maybe," I reply, not sounding very convinced. "Anyway, sorry about my
moodiness. You wanted to talk?"

Patrick looks around to make sure we're alone. "No one knows you came down
here to meet me?" he asks.

I sigh. "Patrick," I start, trying not to sound as annoyed as I was, "can
we not do the whole cold war spy thing right now? No, I wasn't followed."

He looks a little hurt. "Sorry," he says, picking up a pen to play with it
awkwardly. "It just took a lot to get in good with Steven's group, and I
don't want to wreck that. Sorry, by the way...about the thing at the
Halloween party."

Patrick had "fought" with Reid in public at the party. I'd known the two
were pretending, but to everyone else it had seemed an earnest falling
out. "Yeah, whatever. I knew what you were doing. But it's kind of sad in
the room with you gone."

"Sorry," he whispers. "I'm optimistic this will help fix things, and then
everything can go back to normal."

"I hope so. Is it helping you figure things out?"

Patrick thinks about this for a minute before answering. He'd taken up with
Steven Caine and his friends in order to figure out what had them so riled,
what was stirring them up and leading to things like the riot where I'd
been hurt. "I'm not sure," he says. "In some ways, yeah. They're all really
mad about the military presence, although I don't really know why. Mostly
the crew sticks to their areas."

It was true, the military personnel who had facilitated our launch and
transition to a long space journey were often to be seen in the lower areas
of the ship, where we lived, ate, played and, in the case of my friends and
me, fornicated with one another. But this was never in an official
capacity. It wasn't like the crew lorded over us, although they did enforce
things like shit detail.

Patrick continues, "They're also really angry about the work shifts, but in
talking with Steven alone...I don't know, I'm not quite getting what the
problem is. His guys do their jobs, mostly, but then when you get them
together it's like a nonstop bitch-fest. It's like as soon as there's more
than three people in the room it's all 'equity for the masses' and that
tired shit."

"Yeah."

"Anyway, sorry. You don't need to worry about all that. I just need you to
give something to Reid."

"Oh?"

Patrick reaches into his pocket and pulls out a data chip, not unlike the
one I'd flung against my wall in anger an hour ago. He hands it to me, but
not before looking around to confirm we're still alone in the
alcove. "Don't let anyone else have that, although if anyone were to get it
all they'd find are a bunch of Beck's MIPs."

MIPs were the digital files containing our movies, music and other
information. "You need me to give Reid your music collection?" I ask
uncertainly.

"It's more than that," Patrick explains. "He'll know what to do with it. I
just wanted to be extra careful and not give it to him in person. Sorry to
drag you down here, Devon."

The club had been great, but one consequence was that I had all these new
friends, and as a result Reid, Patrick and I no longer spent all of our
waking time together, like we had back at school. Over the past several
months we'd grown apart, a little, even though I still felt a close bond to
both friends. But now, with Reid and Patrick alienated, even if it was just
pretend, I felt a sense of loss. I hoped we'd be able to hang out together
again someday soon, and someplace other than a hidden library alcove.

"It's not a problem," I answer, although I was starting to feel like this
whole spying plan was becoming very much a problem for me. And my moodiness
over Sneak wasn't helping. I knew I was heading for a marathon moping
session, and before Patrick caught on to my downward spiraling demeanor, I
promised to take the chip right to Reid and leave him sitting in the study
nook.

Feeling increasingly cranky, I head to our unoccupied flat, which is
empty. I decide to take a shower, and then do what any warm blooded
seventeen year-old would do to relieve stress - I masturbate. Twice. Once
I've shot two loads onto the floor of the shower stall, watching as the
water rinses the semen down the drain, I do feel a little better.

I wrap a towel around my waist and head back into the living room, where I
run into Zane and Sean. "Hey Devon," Sean says, eyeing me in my towel-clad
glory. "We didn't know anyone was here. Zane was going to show me
something. Want to come with?"

They're walking toward the entrance to the club meeting bedroom, so I'm
pretty sure I have a good idea what it is Zane is about to show him. "Nah,
I'm good," I reply. "I had a long day."

Zane stops in his tracks, and then grabs Sean by his waist, pulling the
other boy into his body playfully. He looks at me and asks, "Everything
okay? We can stick around if you want."

I shake my head. "Thanks, no. I just need a nap. You two have fun."

Zane nibbles at Sean's ear, and the other boy giggles. Then they chase one
another to the bedroom door which, once closed, is probably obstructing a
very alluring view of two hot guys becoming rapidly undressed.

I'd used a nap as an excuse, but it was starting to sound pretty good. I
think about hanging out in Charlie's room, but then decide to use one of
the other rooms I sometimes bunk in when I'm crabby. An hour's sleep does
me good, and when I wake up I feel better.

I run into Sean again in the living room. This time he's the one wearing a
towel, obviously having just showered. "Feel better?" he asks, concerned.

"Yeah, I do," I say, meaning it. "You have fun?"

Sean is a muscular guy, and he looks great in just a towel. "We sure did,"
he answers. "I had no idea I could bend that far!" he giggles. It makes me
smile, and I make a note to have either Zane or Sean show me what he meant
by that later.

For now, I resolve to deliver the data chip Patrick has given me to
Reid. Reid is on duty - his work in engineering, not security force. It's
not uncommon for me to visit him at work. I message him to confirm that
he's available, and when he responds that he is I head toward
Bottomside. The engineering section Reid is assigned isn't located in
Bottomside proper, but near there.

Reid splits his time between security and engineering now. He probably
could have gotten out of his engineering duties, but he really liked
them. It wasn't carrying around wrenches and oiling gaskets and all
that. He was assigned to work with all the equipment we used on a daily
basis - things like our wristcoms and the tablet computers.

There are about ten guys on duty when I enter Reid's unit, and one of them
points me in the direction of a large workshop in the back of the area. I
find Reid here, swearing and messing with some sort of tall, tubular
looking robotic thing. It has six or seven "arms" extending from its
"body," and they appear to be covered in...blood?

"Um, what the hell is that thing?" I ask.

Reid looks up, noticing me in the room for the first time. "Hi Devon," he
says. He's sweaty, his blue t-shirt soaked through. He looks hot, even if
he is a little gross from work. "This is supposed to be one of the robots
that works the chicken farm," he explains. "It checks them on a daily basis
to make sure they're healthy. But it seems to be malfunctioning. Hey - can
you eat older, egg-laying hens?"

"Sure, I guess," I say. "Usually we only slaughter the younger ones for
food, but you can do some stuff to make the older ones edible. Like cook
them in wine."

Reid wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. "That's good, then. I'll
have them delivered up to you later. I think there are about two hundred of
them."

I look at the bloodstained robot, envisioning the horrible chicken
slaughter that must have occurred when it malfunctioned. I have to laugh at
the image - chickens are stupid and annoying, and one had bit me
once. "Ok," I giggle, "poule au vin it is." Reid smiles at me, particularly
when I start planning a whole menu around the unfortunate poultry.

When I tell him about my meeting with Patrick, he takes the data chip from
me. "Thanks for doing that," he says. "I know it's been hard on you. I miss
the three of us hanging out.  Hey, how about we get some 6-wall in
tomorrow?"

I lift my cast-clad arm. "Can't," I say, shrugging. "Not until the cast
comes off."

Reid looks sorry to have suggested a sporting activity to someone in a
cast. "Oh yeah.  Sorry. Maybe you want to come watch? We can get burgers
afterward. Or pollen and vines, or whatever it was you just said."

He's just humoring me, but it works and I laugh. We agree to spend some
time together the following day, and I tell him that I'll try and find a
6-wall partner to whoop his ass the way I always do.

Making plans with Reid reminds me about AJ. Leaving Reid's work, I walk
down to Bottomside. There's a football match going on at the large, open
field, and I sit in the stands to watch. While I do, I compose an e-mail to
the guys, telling them briefly about my encounter with AJ - although I
leave out the embarrassing parts - and asking if they'd be up for spending
Friday just hanging and having some new people over. I mention Ian and
Conner, although Ian has already said no. I figure I can ask again, just in
case his plans have changed.

When I'm done, I'm a little hesitant to send the message, but I do. I don't
want to deprive anyone of our weekly playtime, and I don't want anyone to
get annoyed at the prospect of new members. Turns out, I have nothing to
worry about. Zane, Charlie and Dog respond almost immediately, and agree
that we can forego sex for one week.

We all jump onto a group chat and discuss things. Zane tells us about the
library, and what AJ did that afternoon. Mike joins in after a couple of
minutes, and Zane has to retell his story, which seems even sexier the
second time. Plans are made, and when the chat session is over we've
scheduled the first no-sex-allowed meeting of the wank club.

When I finish with the guys, I message Conner and remind him about
Friday. He messages back, saying he'll be sure to make it, and then reminds
me about an appointment I have the following day for a thing with my
arm. He sends me a long list of instructions, always the doctor. I glance
through them, thinking more about new club members than doctor
appointments. And then I message AJ, this time being more explicit about
what Friday means. When I assure him that there will be no sex or nudity,
and that it will just be an opportunity to hang out with the guys, he
accepts.

* * * * *

The following afternoon I find myself in the hospital, one of my least
favorite places on the ship.

"You're sure about this?" Conner asks. He's holding what I believe may be
the biggest, sharpest needle in the history of the universe, and I have to
admit that my answer almost waivers.

But then I nod. "Yeah. Cast, bad. Needle, good. And...huge."

Ian smiles at the wide-eyed gaze of terror I'm making at Conner's
instrument of death and torture. "It's not the size that matters," he says,
making a lame joke of what I feel is a very serious situation. "It's how
you use it."

I shoot him an evil glare, and he quickly adds, "Oh, and also not tearing
into a vein or artery - that's important too because it makes blood spray
everywhere and really hurts."  This invokes a return of the wide-eyed gaze
of terror.

Conner pauses. "Ian, please," he says, slightly annoyed at the nurse's
joke. "Devon, I want to reiterate that we don't have to do this procedure
if you don't want it. The osteoblast formations on your fracture sites are
ideal. Your body will heal naturally, and in time the bones will be almost
as good as new. This compound is going to accelerate and maximize the
healing process, and I recommend it, but it's not necessary."

I look over to a table in the corner of the exam room. My sky blue cast,
now completely covered with signatures and well wishes, sits there, looking
somehow smug for having successfully chained me down for the past four
weeks. "The cast will go away if I get the shot?" I ask.

Conner nods. "Yeah. We do the shot, you'll need to stay here for two hours
and then you should be fine to leave without the cast. But I want to remind
you that the process can be a little irritating to the affected areas."

He'd explained all of this the week before when we'd set the appointment
for the procedure. And then again last night when we'd grabbed a late bite
in the cafeteria (ziti and strawberry shortcake!) When he explained it a
third time earlier today, he'd been a little annoyed, but that was probably
just because I showed up over two hours late.

I thought my reasons were good, as evidenced by a frowning Dog sitting
sulkily in the corner. "This is cold," he says, holding an ice pack against
his wrist, which he's cradling against his chest.

Ian is quick to responds in a joking, sarcastic manner. "Sorry, we're all
out of the hot, comfy ice packs. We just have those." Dog frowns at the
comment, and I feel bad for missing my appointment. Ian was forced to stay
an extra couple of hours because I'd shown up late, and I think the loss of
precious free time was making him uncharacteristically sarcastic.

The procedure I was now undergoing, performed by Doctor Conner and Nurse
Ian, and witnessed by the wounded Dog, was simple enough. My arm and
shoulder would be subjected to a series of injections around the fracture
sites that would introduce a compound into the healing bones. It would
expedite cell transformation and growth, and basically help my body perform
months of healing in a matter of hours. The only drawback was that it could
be an uncomfortable process.

It would also cause my body to burn through some vitamins and minerals as
it repaired itself. Conner had put me on a diet of increased calcium and
vitamin supplements, which for him had meant I take a lot of nasty tasting
pills. For me it meant mac and cheese every night - heavy on the cheese.

Still, the thought of injecting stuff into my bones, especially the ones
that had been consistently sore the past month, was alarming. This was
probably why I'd lost track of time watching 6-wall in Bottomside,
wondering if I'd ever get to play again. I'd been watching Dog cream Reid
when he'd injured his wrist on a particularly daring play. It had reminded
me of my appointment, and I'd hurried up here, Dog in tow whimpering about
his hand. This had earned me a lecture from Ian about showing up on time,
and Dog a lecture about being more careful in the gym.

I'd given Dog a bit of a hard time on the way up here. I was now regretting
this because any show of timidity on my part would probably result in
payback from the hurt boy. So I sucked it up. "Yeah. I'm sick of the
fucking cast. Let's do this."

Conner nods, and then steps over to me with his huge-ass needle. I take a
deep breath and look the other way, closing my eyes firmly. I feel Ian
holding my arm steady, and then a slight pinch where he's pressing my skin
between the fingers of his latex gloves.  They only examine the area, and
then move on to my shoulder. I feel a similar pinch from Ian here, and then
I take a deep breath, ready for the needlework to begin.

"Ok, all done," Conner says.

I look at Conner and Ian curiously. "We don't get to do the thing?" I
ask. "I wanted to ditch the cast."

"Um...I just did it, Devon," Conner explains patiently.

"Yeah, we're all done, bud," Ian agrees. Apparently the slight pinching was
the big, horrific deal I'd been afraid of.

"Really? That was...quick." I'm not sure if I completely believe they've
already administered the shot. But when Ian throws the empty syringe in a
biohazard bin, I realize they're being truthful.

Dog chimes in from the corner. "It probably helped that you were closing
your eyes and scrunching up so tight. Jeez, I thought your head was going
to explode." He smiles at me, and then sticks out his tongue. Great. So
much for avoiding an opportunity to be made fun of.

"So that's it?" I ask. Conner confirms we're done, now I just have to wait
a couple of hours while the compound takes effect. And then I'll be free of
the cast and sling forever.

Dog decides to wait with me, wanting to ice his wrist a little longer. "I
wish I'd brought some cards," he says.

After twenty minutes I start to feel a tingling in my forearm and shoulder,
as well as my lips. This was one of the common side effects, and it made me
happy to know the compound was working. At forty minutes my arm feels sore
along its entire length, another expected side effect. Dog tries rotating
his wrist and winces in pain. "Too bad it's the right hand. That's the one
you use for 'Dog time,' huh?" I joke.

He shrugs. "That's what I have Sean for."

"Lucky bastard," I gripe.

When my wristcom reflects that I'm halfway through the waiting, I start to
feel not-so- great. My arm really hurts - it feels like someone is running
very coarse sandpaper over my bones. "This is kinda uncomfortable," I say
when Conner returns to the room to check on me.

He looks concerned, walking over to me to take my arm into his hands to
look it over.  "You have some pain?" he asks. I nod. "On a scale of one to
ten, ten being agonizing, unbearable pain, where are we?"

"Ugh. Maybe a seven," I wince.

"Ok, let's give you something for that. I'll be right back." Conner leaves
the room, returning a moment later with Ian.

"Not feeling so good?" Ian asks. I shake my head.

Conner instructs Ian in his doctorly voice. "I don't really want to give
him duramorph, but let's get him some deltasone, just one unit should be
good."

"Yeah, ok," Ian says, walking over to a supply cabinet and preparing some
supplies.  When he's finished he presents me with a small plastic cup
filled with a red liquid. "This should help," he says kindly.

My arm throbs and I feel a little worse. "Yeah, ok. Thanks," I say. "Just
let me get a drink first." When I stand I feel a little dizzy, but I
collect myself and walk over to a small sink attached to the wall. I run
some cool water in my right hand and then lift it to my lips, drinking
slowly. I turn to look at my friends - Dog sitting in the corner looking
bored, Conner looking through a file on his tablet computer, and Ian
holding the medicine he's prepped for me.

"Hey guys," I say, feeling a distinct stabbing pain in my stomach and
side. "Can we all agree to not make fun of me for this later?" The three
boys look up at me curiously. I turn around, lean into the sink, and feel
my insides churn as the entire contents of my stomach make their way up my
throat and out of my mouth, landing with a sickening splat in the basin of
the sink.

I hurl again, chunks of mac and cheese returning into the world and proving
they're only good the first time. When I'm done, I feel a little
better. "Wow, that was gross," I say.

Dog smiles, but Conner looks less amused. He walks over to me, placing a
hand on my forehead. "It's not uncommon for this procedure to cause nausea,
but I'm a little concerned."

I fill a plastic cup with water, swish some around in my mouth, then
spit. "Nah," I say, "It's probably just all the mac and cheese I ate for
lunch. But my arm is on fire."

"Devon," Conner says, a frustrated tone tingeing my name as he says it. I
think I'm about to get into trouble for something. "Did you read the pre-op
instructions? You weren't supposed to eat after eight this morning."

"Whoops."

Ian shakes his head. "You're an idiot sometimes." He hands me the medicine,
which I take. I can't disagree with him, but he doesn't have to be rude
about it.

Eventually my stomach stops churning, my arm feels a little less on fire,
and my energy levels return to normal. Conner checks me over one last time
and then gives me the green light. "I think you're okay. Message me if the
nausea returns, but you look good."

"I'm done with the cast?" I ask, hopeful.

He smiles. "Yeah. You want me to destroy it?"

I look over at the sad pile that is my former cast and sling. I'd hated
being confined to the hospital for a week, and then I'd hated feeling like
a cripple wearing the thing. It had itched, been generally annoying, and
made my bedroom antics a test in creativity and endurance - and not in a
good way. Still, I looked at the signatures and silly messages written all
over the cast, a testament to the friendships I had developed on the
ship. I don't know, now that I was free of it, I felt a little nostalgic
about it.

"Nah," I answer. "I'll keep it. I like the artwork."

Dog complains about his wrist. While checking it for the twentieth time,
Conner turns to me and says, "I'd like you to do some physical therapy,
just to keep things from getting stiff. Ian and I do yoga Wednesday
mornings. How about joining us? You too, Dog - the wrist is fine, but you
could use a good stretch routine."

I'm wondering how to decline politely when Dog speaks up. "That sounds
cool," he says.  "You can never be too limber." He shoots me a mischievous
grin.

Conner immediately begins babbling about how great it will be to expand
their yoga group, so I don't have the heart to back out. I consider it -
particularly when Dog and I are informed to meet them in F117 at six
a.m. on Wednesday morning. Six a.m.? Six a.m.?! What the frell?

When my wristcom alarm vibrates me awake Wednesday morning at five-thirty,
I consider shutting it off, shooting Conner a nasty email about having the
decency to schedule yoga at a less ungodly hour, and going back to
sleep. But then I sigh, suck it up, shake myself awake, and crawl out of
bed, heading to the bathroom to splash some very cold water on my face.

Just as I'm trying not to scream in shock from the cold water, Reid comes
into the bathroom.

"Everything okay?" he asks, looking sleepy.

The new customary greeting when running across me seemed to be "Everything
okay?"  This started after my accident, and while I didn't mind the
attention I was hoping things would start to go back to normal now that I
was free of my cast. "Yeah," I answer.  "Conner has me starting some
physical therapy this morning."

"Wow," he says, looking sleepily astonished. "That must have gone over
well, having you report to the hospital this early. I don't envy the
crankiness that's about to descend on him."

I smirk at the insinuation that my crankiness is predictable like that. At
best it's erratic and completely inconsistent. "Actually, we're doing yoga
in F117. He says it will help my shoulder. But I think he mostly wants to
expand his yoga group. He conned Dog into going too."

Reid thinks about this for a moment, and then asks, "Hey, do you think I
could come?  I've been lifting more at the gym, and I don't think I'm
stretching enough. Yoga might help, but I have no idea what I'm doing."

"Yeah, sure - it's your funeral," I reply before splashing some more frigid
water on my still-sleepy face. "Crap, that's cold!"

Reid and I dress, and then head one floor down to 22L6, Dog's flat. I
message him along the way, and he meets us in the hallway outside the main
door to his flat, alone. "No Sean?" I ask.

He laughs, an abrupt mocking snort. "There's no way I'd get him up this
early," he says.  "Not even for a blowjob." Then he seems to realize what
he's said and looks over to Reid. "Oops, sorry."

Reid shrugs. "No problem, I can dig it." And then he adds, "I'd get up at
six for a blowjob." Dog and I simultaneously arch our eyebrows at him. Reid
blushes and clarifies, "You know, not from you. I mean...um...anyway." He
takes off, jogging out in front of us and takes a large leap that allows
him to slap the underside of one of the columns dividing sections of the
hallway. Dog and I laugh at his timidity.

F117 is a bit of a trek. We cut across the forward concourse, and then
enter the dorm sections on the port side of the ship. From there we catch
an elevator down into the lower areas. Because the gravity in the common
areas is set to "pull" toward the center of the spherical ship, the
elevator pauses once we reach our destination, flipping in a mechanical
ballet that was slightly dizzying when we first came to live here, but was
now quite routine. Dog yawns loudly while we wait for the elevator car to
finish maneuvering.  When we step out, we're oriented 180 degrees from our
original stance, but everything else is too, so there's no notable
difference for us.

We make our way through another series of hallways, Dog and I feeling a
little lost but Reid saying he knows the way. We eventually locate
F117. It's 5:59 a.m. Hooray - right on time.

The farm is one of the smaller ones, basically a fifty by twenty meter
space used to grow plants requiring beds, which sit in a square around an
open patio area. This is where we find Conner and Ian, both dressed for
yoga in athletic shorts and tanks, rolling out several rubber mats.

"Hey, there you guys are," Conner says. "Hey Reid. Devon get you to tag
along? Great, I have plenty of mats for everyone. We were just making a bet
about you standing us up."

"Who had money on us actually showing?" I ask, curious which of the two had
faith that I could make it this early.

Ian looks a little uncomfortable, and says, "Actually, neither of us. I
said you'd message right at six telling us you couldn't make it, Conner
said you'd wait until after six-thirty before flaking out."

"Lame," I say, picking up a dirt clod and tossing it in Ian's direction. He
deftly dodges the throw. "Wow, it's warm in here."

Conner finishes arranging his mat and picks up another, finding a place for
it before unrolling it noisily. "They keep it at twenty-seven degrees in
here. It's good for the herbs.  It's also good for yoga - that's why we
practice down here. Plus it smells nice."

He's right. I breathe deep, the air is humid and warm, but smells of
rosemary and thyme and basil. Looking around, I notice that almost all of
the plants here are herbs used in cooking. And they seem to have gone wild,
growing in colorful bushy clumps throughout the room. I observe movement
between two large rosemary bushes and look closer. A pair of yellow eyes
stare back at me.

"Hey, there's a cat in here!" I exclaim. And there is - a tiny black cat
with bright yellow eyes is hunkered down between the plants. Dog steps
alongside me to see what I'm talking about, but has trouble spotting the
hidden animal. I point it out to him.

"That's L.B.," Ian says.

"Elbie?" Dog asks. I start to wonder if my friend is going to take off in a
mad dash towards the cat, living up to his namesake. Probably not, but it's
a funny image and I giggle.

"Yeah, we call her L.B. She lives here, or around here. We're not sure, but
she's been coming here almost as long as we have - she likes the catnip. We
feed her," Ian explains. He reaches into a bag he's brought and retrieves a
small plastic container.  When he opens it, L.B. darts out from her hiding
spot, the sound of food being prepared apparently trumping any concerns she
has about the newcomers to the yoga group. She dives into the food Ian puts
down for her, munching away happily.

"She just roams wild?" Dog asks.

Ian shrugs. "I guess. We're not sure. She's probably supposed to be on one
of the farms, but she seems to do fine on her own. We don't really even
know where she goes when she's not here. She must get into the emergency
access tunnels somehow."

A silly picture forms in my head as I try to conceptualize what a cat farm
might look like. I see images of my shipmates dressed in chaps and ten
gallon hats, trying to work the cat ranch.

"Ok, we ready?" Conner asks. He's finished rolling out five yoga mats,
three in a row in front and two behind that. We all claim a mat, Conner in
the front center with Ian to his left and Reid to his right. Dog sits on
the mat behind Ian and I take the last one.

Conner turns to face us. "Ok," he says, taking command of the class, "I
assume none of you have ever done this before?" Reid, Dog and I shake our
heads. "That's not a problem," he continues in an authoritative voice, "If
you keep coming, we'll get into some of the harder stuff - more strength
and endurance building. But for today we'll keep it light and easy. Devon,
be really careful of your arm and shoulder. If anything hurts, let me
know. Dog, same thing for your wrist."

He goes on to explain the basics, about yogic breathing and movement. Once
we seem to have that down, we begin. Conner swivels back around on his mat
so that we're all facing the same direction, then he launches us in a
series of movements, starting with some basic side-stretching. They're not
overly strenuous, but I can feel where my body isn't as limber as it should
be, both from the injuries and because I've never done this type of
exercise before. Reid really gets into it, asking for tips and pointers
along the way.

We move into Warrior Pose, and then perform a series of Swan Dives. By the
time we reach Extended Side Angle Pose, the three rookies are breathing
more heavily, but through the nose as Conner insists. This is a light
routine?

Reid keeps getting tangled in his shirt, and he's starting to sweat. "Hold
on a sec," he says, taking a moment to shed the offending garment. Dog
follows suit, revealing his lithe torso.

We move into Up Dog Pose, and it's here that Dog and I discover that he and
I have selected good mat positions. I look up, my back arching, to see that
I have a really good view of the three front boys' asses, muscles flexing
tightly in their sheer workout shorts.  I'm actually daydreaming a little
about taking up bongo lessons when Dog coughs. I look over and he rolls his
eyes, clearly having noticed me perving on my friends. I shrug, at least as
best I can in Up Dog.

I soon learn that yoga can be sexy, even besides the hot flexing boys
around me. My body responds to the stretching with increased blood flow and
endorphins, and when Conner has us continuously slide from Down Dog into Up
Dog, my boy parts rubbing along the mat feels pretty good. As per usual, I
get a boner just as soon as I start thinking about my dick. This grows
worse when Reid asks about a pose and Conner responds by helping Reid into
the ideal position, running a hand over Reid's round ass in the process. My
dick throbs and goes up a little higher.

Dog seems to notice this, and a small game ensues. Whenever he's relatively
sure the others aren't looking, he takes the opportunity to point out that
I have a tent in my shorts, going so far during one pose as to reach over
and pinch my ass firmly.

"Let's make sure we focus on the breathing," Conner says. We try not to
giggle.

The Seated Forward Bend makes things worse. I hide my erection by pointing
it down and wedging it between my legs. Bending forward hurts a little, but
it also has the effect of thrusting my penis between my closed thighs. If
feels good - a little too good, and I go from that point of being
semi-erect to totally hard.

Camel Pose is therefore a challenge for me, since it would mean thrusting
my groin forward, putting my tent on display for the entire world to see. I
sit it out, saying I want to rest my shoulder. "You doing okay back there?"
Conner asks, his body arched back in a loop so that his palms are resting
on the soles of his feet.

"We're good," Dog replies, "It's just a little hard." He smirks at me,
knowing the real reason I'm taking a break. I try not to laugh at his
double entendre. Looking at Dog, whose long, lean body seems made for this
pose, his abs and chest pulled into an impossibly long arcing stretch, I
see the outline of his cock in his shorts, which is also hard. Because he
points straight up, however, it's reasonably well hidden from anyone who
doesn't know what to look for.

"I think it's getting a little hard for Dog, too," I say. Dog moves one of
his hands off his foot in order to flip me off, a maneuver we now refer to
as Aroused Angry Boy Pose.

Conner moves the group back into Cross-Legged Pose. "You guys okay? We can
stop here if you need to. We're about halfway through."

Dog and I have both positioned ourselves so that if the other three boys
were to look, our erections would be mostly hidden from view. But I'm
getting more aroused by the exercises, and I know I'm going to start making
a wet spot in my shorts soon. I think of a reasonable excuse to go splash
some cold water on my bone. "Um...no, we can keep going. But I want to take
a little break; my shoulder is just a little sore. Is there a bathroom in
here?"

Ian answers, "Over in F119, right side."

"We'll do some breathing until you get back," Conner says, instructing Reid
through a series of deep, long nasal breaths.

I get up and head toward the exit, padding along rapidly so that my three
straight friends won't notice my condition. Dog excuses himself and walks
toward the exit after me.  Once we're in the hall and out of earshot he
takes the opportunity to make fun of me, jumping around alongside me and
singing, "Devon's got a boner! Devon's got a boner!"  like a little kid. My
skinny friend hopping around wearing nothing by a pair of small shorts
doesn't help my predicament.

I interrupt Dog's silly song. "You have one too," I assert. "Yours is just
easier to hide, which isn't playing fair."

"It's really not," Dog agrees, slipping his shorts an inch or two
lower. The pink tip of his hard cock peeks defiantly out the top. "It's how
I got through middle school. Other guys would have to run off and hide; I'd
just slip it in my waistband. But yoga - wow, who knew it would be so hot?"

I laugh. "I know, right? My body is, like, on fire right now. It feels so
good."

"No doubt."

Dog and I locate the bathroom. I really do need to pee a little, but that's
probably an impossibility given my erection. I figure a couple of minutes
thinking pure thoughts and I'll be ready to get back to the yoga.

My friend seems to disagree with my strategy, or at least I'm forced to
assume this is the case when, no sooner has the bathroom door closed behind
me, he grabs me by the shoulder, spins me around and throws me against the
wall, pressing his hot, naked chest against mine and bringing our lips
together in a rough kiss.

Dog grinds his crotch into mine. I get more contact because of the way I
point out rather than up, but he makes up for it by pressing into me
harder. Dog surprises me with his boldness, but not too badly. Like Mike
and Charlie, Dog had an established agreement with his boyfriend that
allowed for certain activities, and this was one of them. Still, I'd never
had much alone time with Dog, so the kiss gets me instantly sex-crazed.

Three seconds later, two pairs of athletic shorts and sports briefs have
found themselves down around ankles, and two eager hands have wrapped
themselves around turgid cocks. Dog leans into me as we stroke one another,
biting at my ear and then whispering huskily, "You looked so hot in
there. I almost fucking jumped you then and there."

"You too," I reply, stroking his dick a little harder and faster. "You're
so hot. I love your abs. Oh...oh...fuck...I want to cum all over them."

Dog kisses me roughly, and then rubs his thumb vigorously over my tip. "Do
it," he says firmly. "Fucking come all over me. I want you smeared all over
me."

Dog's dirty talk just about does me in. It's so unlike his normal polite,
boyish demeanor.  We stroke harder and faster, our hands slipping on young,
stiff dicks. The yoga had already got my body primed, and Dog is really
good at this. It isn't long before I'm ready to take him up on his offer.

"I'm...uh...almost there...almost...almost...." I feel my blood boiling
down in my deep, secret places. I pull Dog tight into me, wrapping my right
arm around his tight, firm ass and pressing him into me as hard as I
can. He does the same, our stroking hands squeezed between our muscular
stomachs, working our cocks as best we can in the cramped space. I slip
over the edge and continue gasping, "...THERE!" I exclaim, moaning and
grunting and gasping.

I eject a first shot of hot, sticky semen and deposit it on Dog's lower
tummy, just as he'd asked. A second spurt shoots out and hits him, and then
I notice a hot sticky warmth in my pubic hair. Dog is whimpering and
moaning too, having reached orgasm shortly after me.

We eject our loads against one another, bringing our lips together as we
do. I feel the semen slide between our bodies, creating a slick of hot boy
juice between us. When we pull apart, both of our lower tummies are coated
in a thin, shiny film, globs of white here and there.

"Wow!" Dog exclaims, wide-eyed and gasping. "Yoga is awesome!"

I huff and pant as well. "Yeah it is!" I agree. "And you are too,
Doggie. When'd you get so freaking hot?" It's an earnest comment - Dog is
hot, standing there lean and smooth and panting, his pants still around his
ankles and our loads commingling on the skin of his tummy.

He blushes. "Thanks," he replies. "Here, let me get you a towel." He moves
to find me some tissue, a funny waddling walk because of the way his shorts
are sitting around his ankles. I get a really good view of his lean ass
trying to keep him balanced.

I think back to the first time I'd witnessed Dog in a sexual situation. It
inspires me. "No way," I answer, pulling my pants up, letting them sit atop
the sticky mess on my stomach. "I'm wearing your load for the rest of the
workout."

Dog turns to look at me, a little slack-jawed. His boner is still hard, but
has begun to make its descent toward a flaccid state. He looks at the way
I've just pulled my pants on over our mess, and then his erection twitches,
a final glob of semen oozing out and dripping to the floor. "That's so
hot," he says. I smile, knowing how much this seems to get him going.

We head back to F117, not wanting to be gone suspiciously long. We're a
little red- faced, and I smell the faint aroma of boy sex on me, but I
don't think anyone will notice.  Back in class, Conner is keeping the
others warm through some minor stretching. Very little time has passed, and
no one seems to think anything of our brief absence.

"Shoulder okay?" Conner asks when we seat ourselves back on our mats.

"Yeah," I answer. "I just needed to work it out a little."

Dog shoots me a goofy grin, and then we join our friends in completing the
workout. It really does make my arm feel looser and better, along with the
other benefits my friend and I have discovered. From then on, we both often
join the yoga group, although we do negotiate for some sessions at more
reasonable hours.

* * * * *

Friday nights are always exciting, and this week it's doubly so, even
though I know that my usual reason for getting excited - namely sex play
with my friends - wasn't on the menu this week. But we were having two new
guys join us, and the prospect that they might ultimately want in on the
naked group activities had me eager and anxious, almost to an intoxicating
extent.

It was because of this that I messaged Conner first thing Friday morning,
reminding him about poker night, which in this case was really going to be
a poker game. When he replied back, I discovered that he got off work
early, as did I. And because Reid had canceled gym time for this afternoon
- he wouldn't admit it, but I wondered if yoga had left him sore - I found
myself with some free time. When I mentioned this to Conner, he suggested
we hang out, which led me to suggest a swim. He cheerfully agreed, and we
met in The Commons after we'd had time to clean up and change after work.

"Good day at work?" Conner asks when we meet in the lobby, which is
moderately crowded being a preferred hangout place on Friday nights.

I am clopping along in a pair of flip-flops that are slightly too large for
my feet, a blue towel hanging over my arm. "Yeah, pretty good," I reply, "I
think I ruined the soup, though. It was ok, but a little weird."

Conner laughs. "Yeah, I wondered. I never...um...saw anyone put figs in
tomato soup before." We walk through the starboard concourse towards the
elevator bank that leads down into the wet farm.

I shrug. "I had all these figs, and I couldn't let them go bad. It was an
experiment. Like I said, it wasn't terrible, but..."

"...but at least it wasn't Tuesday Tuna Surprise," Conner finishes my
sentence for me.

I playfully punch him in the shoulder as we enter the elevator. "You know
what?" I ask feistily, punching a button for the lower floor we want, "That
was a one-time thing. And yes, the tuna casserole turned out more like tuna
rice pudding, but I think I'm a way better cook now."

I'm not truly offended, although I have to admit that everyone bringing up
that particular culinary mistake is getting annoying. Conner seems
conscious of this, and rather than continue jesting opts to stoke my
ego. "You really are," he says kindly. "I'm still dreaming about that
dinner you made. And oh my god, that pumpkin pie last week."

I'd made a rustic pumpkin pecan pie for dinner one night. It had taken me
all day - I'd made about two hundred pies, although Zane helped. There was
little wonder that Conner, whose favorite dessert flavor was pumpkin, took
to it. "Thanks," I reply.

We arrive at the appropriate floor and make our way to the end of the hall,
where the entrance to one of the largest farm areas is. Entering, we're
greeted by cool, wet air that has that oh-so-alluring tang of salt on it.

Area W4 is massive, taking up a sizable portion of one of the largest
floors on the ship.  It's tall too, the other farms on the levels around it
were stacked three or four high to W4's single floor. W4's size was for
good reason - it acted as a gigantic aquarium that housed several species
of whale, all of whom needed the space to swim and eat and breed while we
transported them across the stars.

For me, and to some extent Conner, W4 had become a gigantic swimming pool,
one that I preferred because it was the closest thing to the ocean on the
ship. I loved the salt water, both the way it felt when you were swimming
in it and how it made my skin feel afterwards. I also liked that it was
cooler than the pools for human use, kept right around eighteen degrees.

I walk over to the computer controls for the farm, a small monitor and
keyboard sitting next to the short ramp leading down into the water on the
shallow end of the tank. I always like to check things out when I come in
here; it may sound silly, but I'd made friends with one of the whales - a
minke whale we'd named Beau. I'd taken a special interest in making sure
the creatures on this farm flourished.

"How's the water today?" Conner asks, stepping up behind me. I can hear him
slipping off his t-shirt and shorts, preparing for our swim.

I look over the stats. "Really good," I answer. PH is good, oxygen is at
prime levels, nutrients look good. Beau is way the fuck over in the back
corner. Let's check in on him."  I pull up the status screen for Beau
specifically, and we see a computerized outline of his familiar shape pop
up on the screen.

Conner looks over the numbers. He's a medical doctor, and I assume a lot of
the info looks familiar. "Check it out," he says, pointing to the area of
the screen displaying Beau's current brain activity. "See how one side is
active and the other is almost flat?"  He points to two scrolling EEG
charts, one for each side of Beau's brain.

"Yeah," I reply, seeing what he means. One EEG line is somewhat active, the
other is barely moving at all. "Is that normal?" I ask.

"Totally normal," Conner says. "He's sleeping. Letting one side of the
brain relax while the other stays awake keeps him from drowning."

"That's so cool," I reply. I'd never thought about how Beau slept before. I
make a mental note to do some reading about it. I notice that he's located
near a very specific spot in the tank. "I bet I know what would wake him
up," I say, accessing the tank controls on a second monitor. I check a few
things, and then punch in some commands.

The console beeps, indicating that the machinery is operating
correctly. Although we can't see or hear anything from our position, deep
within the tank robotic mechanisms work away. Just on the other side of the
wall from where Beau is resting, hundreds of long clear tubes are stored on
a pulley system extending the length of the farm, something that looks like
a gigantic rack of science beakers stored underwater. Each tube is sizable,
though - about twenty meters in length - and acts as a smaller version of
the aquarium we're in now.

A robotic arm moves into position to pull the tube I've selected out of its
storage slot. It then carries it along the wall, ultimately arriving at a
port near the spot where Beau is sleeping. The tube is pressed into the
port, a seal confirmed, and then the computer opens the tube to the main
tank, the robotic arm applying pressure from one end so that the tube's
contents are forced into the main tank, in this case water and several
hundred herring.

"That got his attention!" Conner exclaims. I look over to see that, indeed,
Beau's EEG has changed, the little lines on both charts dancing around
excitedly.

"He loves herring. I think it's his mac and cheese." And it was true, the
guy was as nuts for them as I was for cheesy pasta goodness. On the other
side of the wall, the robotic equipment returns the tube to its storage
spot. It will be cleaned, filled with water, and restocked with fertilized
roe over the next couple of hours.

"I'm glad we got whales. My friend from Seattle - this tank on their ship
is filled with great white sharks," Conner says thoughtfully.

"Wow," I reply, "that would make swimming way more...bitey."

"Totally. Maybe something like...this!" Conner takes advantage of me
staring at the monitors to get his hands in under my radar - he lands ten
wriggling fingers right on my ribs, sending me into an immediate fit of
tickling-induced spasms.

"Whoa, heh heh, ok, enough, ha, wait...uncle!" I cry out, hoping this will
get him to stop.  It does, and without saying anything Conner looks me in
the eye, sticks his tongue out at me, and then makes a dash for the water's
edge, deftly diving into the tank.

I'm still wearing clothes over my suit, so I have to pause before following
him. "You are so going to get it..." I threaten as I undress. When I'm down
to my suit I jump in, the cool salty liquid enveloping my body in a
sensation that is slightly shocking, but then very comforting.

There's almost nothing like a swim to get me in a good mood, and this is
the case today.  We splash around for a while, sticking primarily to the
area at the head of the farm where the water depth decreases to about five
feet before dropping off a ledge into the main tank. And then I retrieve
some body boards we store here, and we swim out to the far end. Beau finds
us, breaking the surface in what I take to be a show of appreciation for
the fish.

Time seems to pass differently when swimming here, and although the water
is relatively warm, equivalent to the ocean at San Diego in May, it isn't
long before my fingers are wrinkly, my toes feel a little numb, and my
balls have pulled up as far into my body as they can go - poor guys.

When Conner and I climb out of the water, it's almost nine. We retrieve our
dry clothes, first shedding the wet swimsuits. Although I'm not one for
modesty, on this occasion I turn around, not really liking it when people
see my assets after a swim. I don't care about size that much, but I'm
still a gay guy - if I'm going to show it off, let it be after sunbathing
while having a semi-arousing dream or something.

"Wow, this was a good idea - I feel great," Conner says. I pull shorts up
over my bare ass and then turn, zipping them up as I do. Conner is already
fully dressed somehow, his usual cargo shorts and raglan tee covering his
lean frame. I don't think I've seen him in this shirt before - it's an
athletic cut in dark grey with black sleeves, but this one has a white
swirling tattoo pattern on the sleeves. It's a little hipper than Conner's
normal, plainer shirts.

"Yeah, I love the way I feel after a swim, especially in salt water." I
notice how the cut of the shirt makes Conner's wide shoulders appear even
wider, and his torso longer. "Hey, nice shirt," I comment.

Conner looks down at his chest, as if surprised I'd notice what he was
wearing.  "Thanks," he says, running a hand down his chest, smoothing the
cotton fabric out. "It's new. Charlie made it for me, actually. I think
because I told him mine were getting ratty.  He's a really nice guy."

"Yeah, he's really sweet," I confirm.

Conner and I make our way to the dorm areas, wet towels bundled under our
arms and flip-flops clacking away on the hard floor. When we reach the
forward concourse, Conner turns to me and says, "Hey, I want to thank you
for inviting me tonight. Truthfully, I've been so busy studying and working
lately that I hardly have time to hang out with friends. In fact, I think
that goes all the way back to launch. I always knew med school would
be...tough, I just didn't know it would be like this."

Conner does seem like he lives, eats and sleeps his studies. He takes time
to hang out with me occasionally, but that's only the odd afternoon here
and there. Usually he's to be found in his office at the hospital, either
on shift or studying. "You're welcome," I reply.  And then I add, "You're a
great doctor, Conner. I know it's been a lot of work. I hope I expressed
that I don't know what it would have been like if you hadn't been there
when I got hurt. Zane and the guys say so too - the way you were with them
that first night. I really can't thank you enough."

Thinking about all that Conner had done for me makes me a little
emotional. Almost involuntarily, I slow my pace and reach over to give him
a firm hug. He stiffens up, caught off-guard by my physical show of
appreciation, so I make it a short one, letting him go and continuing our
trek to the dorms.

When we reach the middle of the concourse we exit the main room and walk
the short hallway to a bank of elevators, which we then take to Area
24. Exiting the lift, we're greeted by the cool air and dim light of the
unoccupied floor.

"This isn't your floor, is it?" Conner asks.

I realize that he's never been to the unoccupied flat. I'd become so
accustomed to using it that I sometimes forget our use of it isn't exactly
official or sanctioned. "Actually, we have a flat on this floor we've sort
of...taken over, I guess. I don't really remember why, it just happened
over time."

This isn't exactly true - I remember precisely why. Charlie had first
started coming here as an alternative to our more crowded flat, and
eventually it came to serve as HQ for our wank club. He and Mike now
practically lived in the second bedroom, and I'd taken to sleeping in the
third on occasion. The fourth room served as a workshop for Charlie's
clothing business, although it was mostly empty now that he had his
shop. The fifth bedroom was largely unused, although I swore I caught Sean
and Dog sneaking in there one night, probably for some private boy time.

"That's so cool," Conner replies. "I wish I'd known earlier. You have no
idea what it's like trying to cram four years of college into six months,
especially when you have all these stupid, noisy roommates. Sometimes I
practically live in my office, and you have no idea how sick I am of those
nasty yellow walls."

"Aha!" I exclaim. "I knew someone else had to hate them. I kept saying how
gross they were when I was in the hospital, and everyone kept looking at me
like I was a weirdo."

We come to 24E5 and enter, making our way to the living room. Although the
flat wasn't fully occupied, the atmosphere was quite different from that
first night I'd found Charlie here. Bit by bit, possessions had made their
way into the room, and in typically boyish fashion they'd ended up strewn
everywhere. Three or four cartons were sitting next to the doorway to
Charlie's work room, probably filled with prototypes he wanted to show
us. Zane had dragged a twenty kilo bag of soil up here and left it sitting
next to the couch - nobody knew why. But perhaps the biggest difference was
the temperature. Where most unoccupied rooms were kept right at fifteen
degrees, Mike had used his position in engineering to set this particular
flat to twenty-two, explaining that he was tired of cold toes in the
morning. Poor guy. I told him I'd suck on them for him, along with anything
else that was cold, but he still had the temperature raised.

The flat is quiet and empty. We didn't really have a designated meet time
tonight, although I knew that Zane was working a little late, scheduled to
help through the entire dinner rush.

"You guys hang out here every Friday?" Conner asks.

I sit down on the couch, slipping my feet out of my flip-flops. "Yeah," I
answer. "We play poker, goof off, and drink sometimes, amongst other
things." I think about those other things, which included hand jobs,
blowing each other and lately a profusion of anal sex.  My dick twitches.

We hadn't exactly perfected a method of inviting new members into the
club. Nick had been the only one to join since the first time, and that had
happened because he'd somehow known what we were up to and blatantly asked
to get in on the sex play.

Conner always struck me as shy, and perhaps a little proper, so I planned
to use tonight to introduce him to the group. Later I'd explain the extent
to which we were all friends, and offer to let him either join in or just
hang with us other times. Either way, I hoped we could help the guy expand
his social activities. Being a doctor on this ship was a lot of work, and
also a little lonely.

"That's cool," Conner says. "My roomies are pretty dull. I wasn't close
friends with any of them back at school, but I knew Eden. We got assigned
shit detail together early on, and became okay friends. But then my medical
stuff took off and he was elected - we barely see each other anymore."

"That's too bad," I reply.

Conner shrugs. "Not really. Eden is a great guy, but he's also a little
weird. Occupied with his work all the time, you know? He was like that at
school too, all he was ever into was politics and business and all. We
don't really have a lot in common."

We chat, and when we've been sitting for fifteen minutes without anyone
else arriving, I suggest showing Conner around. I particularly want to show
off the "meeting room," where Charlie and I spent a lot of time recently
working to get the adjustable bunks back into a configuration that Zane had
seen fit to mess up. They were now arranged in a circular formation that
created a ring of seating in the middle of the room. We'd even improved on
our original design, bringing some additional bunks up around the ring and
manipulating their shape and height so that a king-sized bed sat on either
side and behind, lifted high enough to give the illusion that the heads of
the couches transitioned seamlessly into the surface of the beds. It was
awesome, if things got hot while you were fooling around on the couch you
could just roll right up into bed - perfection!

I lead Conner to B-Room, open the door and flick on the light.

As it turns out, the problem wasn't that we'd arrived too early, it was
that we'd arrived after the others, and therefore apparently missed out on
whatever led to the scene in front of us.

"Um...oops," is all I can say.

Quite a sight greets Conner and me. AJ, the shy boy who wanted to come
tonight under the condition that everything remained non-sexual, is seated
at the far end of the ring, completely naked and erect. At least, I assume
he's erect - I don't have a good view of his cock since Charlie is attached
to it by the mouth. Mike is sitting on the other side, stroking the new
boy's chest gently. He's wearing a t-shirt but nothing else, his curved
boner arcing gracefully out from under the yellow fabric of the shirt,
where Charlie is dressed solely in a pair of green briefs. Nick is seated
up on the new bed-ledge, naked and stroking his large erection.

"Um...oops," I say again, rather lamely. Mike and AJ look up at us,
noticing the two newcomers in the doorway. I flash Conner a graceless and
inelegant smile, shrugging my shoulders as if to say "Well, what can you
do?"

Conner looks from my stupid grin to the group and then back at me again,
shaking his head. "Gross," he states calmly and coldly, heading back into
the living room.

I follow him. "Look, Conner," I say. He doesn't acknowledge me, and
continues walking for the exit to the flat. I don't really want him to
leave until he gives me a chance to explain. "Hey, wait up," I speak
again. He spins around and looks directly at me, clearly angry. I notice
that his green eyes seem considerably less friendly when he's annoyed,
suddenly they remind me of the hue of a very unfriendly lake on a cold fall
night.

"What?" he asks in a voice even more glacial than before. It sends a shiver
down my spine, and I realized I'm going to have to really dig to get myself
out of this one.

"Look," I explain, "it wasn't supposed to be like that. You weren't
supposed to walk in on that. I'm sorry."

Conner folds his arms and shifts from side to side. His mouth is pursed and
I feel like I should continue apologizing and explaining in circles, but he
takes up the conversation.  "And what was I supposed to walk in on? What
exactly were you planning tonight, Devon?"

I look at the door nervously. I know that the guys in the room can probably
hear everything we're saying out here, particularly since Conner's voice is
raised. I walk toward the rear of the flat and motion for Conner to follow
me. He stays put so I make a firmer gesture and he gives in, clearly
reluctant to do so.

We enter Charlie's room and I close the door. I don't really know where to
start, but I guess answering his question is a good place to begin. "Some
of us have a club," I explain, "and we fool around. I thought that might,
umm, interest you." My words are completely ineffective. I could have said
almost anything else and gotten a better reaction.

"You thought it might 'interest me'? It's completely disgusting." I've
never seen my friend earnestly mad before, so this angry, annoyed Conner is
foreign to me.

"No, Conner, it's not like that," I say, trying to clarify. "It's just
play, you know? I mean, I don't know what to say about it." Conner's stance
is hostile and aggressive, and I'm not great with hostile and aggressive,
to be honest.

"Well, I do know what to say. I'm not stupid - you invite me down here for
cards, maybe some drinks, then you and your stupid friends were going to
pretend the whole evening took a sexual turn unexpectedly, right? And I get
to be the clueless new guy who is led on until we all end up screwing. Does
that about sum it up?"

Wow, he has our number. That is how we usually do it, but in all fairness
it wasn't the plan for tonight. I shift around uncomfortably and look
ashamedly at the floor. "No, not at all," I say, speaking about ten times
quieter than he is. "There wasn't supposed to be any nudity tonight. AJ is
new too, and we were just going to all hang out. I was going to tell you
later that sometimes we fool around."

Conner's face lightens a little, but not much. "I'm not sure I can believe
that, Devon."

I feel like he's listening now at least, even if he's not exactly buying
it. "It's totally true, Conner - I'd never try to trick you. Our club
thing, I know it's weird, but life on this ship is weird, and it just sort
of...evolved. I won't lie - we fool around. Pretty much like what you just
saw. It's a great release, and it's made us all closer friends."

Conner looks dubious, but less angry. "It's kind of disgusting, Devon."

I sigh deeply, about as deeply as I can. "No, it's really not," I say. "Or
maybe it is. I don't know. I really like it, and being close to the guys
like that feels...great. It's hard to explain."

"I can see how it would be nice to be close to someone," he says slowly,
and then he seems to get angry again. "But I'm not sure...like
that...yuck...I mean, how many guys do you sleep with?"

It's my turn to be a little offended. I don't like his attitude, and I try
to indicate this by putting a little chill in my voice. "That's not any of
your business," I say. And it wasn't, especially if he was going to be all
preachy about it.

"Well, I think it is, a little," he says. "We're supposed to be friends,
but you kept this whole part of your life secret. I knew you were gay,
Devon, I just didn't expect...I don't know what I expected."

I take advantage of him being a little calmer. "I know the group aspect may
seem, I don't know...weird, but we really do have fun together. It makes
life on the ship seem better."

"I guess," he says skeptically.

"And maybe I should have told you everything before inviting you. I'm not
really good at this sort of thing. I see you working so hard, studying all
the time. It seemed like maybe fooling around would be good for you."

"Oh?" he replies, somewhat indifferently.

I sit down on Charlie's bed, which is strewn with blankets and sheets. I
pick one up by the corner and twirl it between my fingers. "Yeah, totally,"
I say. "Zane is crazy good at sex. We could toss you two into a room, and
then two hours later - poof! - a totally relaxed Conner emerges, ready to
take on another day. Trust me - he does it for me every time."

I laugh at my joke, but stop when I look up to see that Conner is not
amused. He looks angrier than ever, and I'm about to ask what I said
wrong. Before I can he says, "That's really offensive, Devon. I don't
appreciate being talked about like that behind my back, especially by you."

"I never..." I start to say, but Conner cuts me off.

"And I knew you were up to something, you know? The way you prance around
the ship.  I just didn't know that you were so fucking dirty." He grows
louder as he rants, and paces. I realize that I hadn't been pacifying
Conner with my words, just making him angrier. I've gone from explaining
myself to taking a complete Devon bashing. I may deserve it, to be honest.

"The fact that you feel like you can treat me like you have tonight says a
lot about you.  You think you can just push me into bed with Zane - it's
obscene, and gross. I mean...Zane? He's so rancid, yuck. I'm just so
fucking annoyed by you right now. I knew you were immature, but I didn't
know that you fucked everyone you knew. I didn't know you were such a
fucking slut."

And that about does it for me for the evening.

My emotions are usually sitting just below the surface. It's good to be
able to tap into them. And then other times it's a problem, because it
doesn't take much to make them spiral out of control, which is exactly what
happens when Conner admonishes me.

"That's not fair," I protest, and despite trying to control myself I feel
the first tears roll down my cheeks. "If you don't like what I get up to,
that's fine, but you don't need to call me names. Maybe I do fool around a
lot, but I like my friends, and I like messing around with them. It's not
disgusting to me. I like making them feel good."

Conner looks slightly remorseful over what he's said, and maybe I should
stop speaking here, but I don't. I continue, "And Zane isn't rancid. He's
sweet. He's nicer to me than anyone's ever been. If I ever need him, he's
right there for me. Where are you all the time? We barely ever hang out,
and I know if I really needed you the medical stuff would totally take
precedence."

I'm not sure what I'm saying is true or makes much sense - I'd just
recently had it out with Zane because he hadn't been there when I needed
him, and in fairness Conner had. But I'm hurt and angry about his comments,
and rubbing my friendship with Zane in his face seems like a good idea,
even though I know deep down it's not.

Conner looks furious, and then hurt, and then furious again. "You know
what, Devon, I tried to be a good friend to you, but obviously I failed. I
don't know why you thought it was a good idea to trick me into this whole
poker night thing. And you're right; I have to work really hard just to
keep my head above water. If I don't people might die - you might have
died. I thought you understood that, and I thought you liked me. I was
obviously wrong."

"Conner, I..." And I stop there. I don't know what else to say.

Conner takes a deep breath, and then seems like he's about to start
speaking but doesn't. A full minute passes before he says anything, and
when he does his words sound terse and measured. "Look, I think the best
thing is for me to leave," he says. "I feel really betrayed by you, and I
don't think I can overcome that. Maybe we're just too different from each
other. Just leave me alone from now on, Devon - stay away from me."

This pronouncement is unexpected, and I don't know how to react. Conner
waits a minute to see if I'll say anything, and when I don't he silently
turns to leave the room and, presumably, walk out of my life.

A monumental sense of loss settles slowly onto my shoulders, encompassing
me like a vicious black shadow. A new wave of tears arrive, and I lie on my
side, letting them streak across my face and drip onto Charlie's pillow. I
can smell his scent dancing faintly on the fabric of the pillowcase, and it
makes me feel a little better.

I was a total screw-up, that was for sure. I'd blown things with Sneak by
being too aggressive, then I'd almost totally fucked things up with AJ
before moving on to wreck my friendship with Conner - one of the most
important friendships in my life.

About five minutes after Conner leaves, I hear the door to the bedroom
open. I look up to see Charlie, Mike and Nick stepping into the room, now
wearing pants, although Nick and Charlie are still topless. I consider how
hot the guys all look, and then I feel bad, remembering Conner calling me a
slut. Maybe I am.

Mike walks to the bedside, and then gets down on his knees so that he's at
my level. He moves very slowly, wary for the slightest indication I don't
want him here. Charlie moves into position next to his boyfriend, reaching
out to stroke my blue bangs once he's also seated.

"Needless to say, that didn't go so well," I comment dryly, resorting to my
old, reliable sarcasm to help me through this conversation. My voice sounds
soaked with sadness, and a little hoarse.

Charlie speaks to me softly. "Devon, we're really sorry. I mean, about
being like that when you came in. We were all okay with the 'no nudity'
thing, but then AJ got to asking about the club, and things got...out of
control, I guess."

I sigh deeply. "It's not your fault. I shouldn't have invited Conner. Or I
should have told him about the sex. I just didn't think about how he might
react to, well, you know."

"Yeah, but I don't think the orgy helped," Charlie says.

I laugh, just a little, but it feels good after the relentless rush of
negative emotions.  "Yeah, not really. Still, it was hot to me. So don't
take Conner's criticism as meaning anything." I tussle Charlie's hair, just
to show there really are no hard feelings between us. "Did AJ leave?" I
ask, concerned that the whole fight with Conner might have messed things up
with him too.

"Nah," Nick replies from the doorway. "He's in the bedroom still, I think
waiting for round two. For all the precautions, he sure didn't wait long
before losing his pants."

I look at Charlie and Mike, who are both clearly concerned. Their eyes are
large, pupils dilated in the dim light of the room. They look like gay
anime angels, actually - two totally hot boy bookends sitting side by
side. "That's good," I say to Nick, then my mind wanders back to the issue
at hand. "I can't believe how bad I screwed things up with Conner. He was a
great friend. I should have known better than to have invited him here."

"I don't know," Mike says, "you couldn't have known he'd react like
that. Conner is pretty laid back, it's weird he was so offended."

"Yeah, I guess," I say. "I just feel like such a worthless loser. Maybe
Conner is right, maybe all I do is spend my time looking for new
hookups. Maybe I really am a bad friend." I sniffle, and some snot leaks
out of my nose onto the pillow. I notice that between mucus and tears I've
left a considerable damp spot. I look at Charlie apologetically. "Oops,
sorry," I say.

"It's ok," he chuckles, and then adds, "It's not the first deposit you've
left on my pillow."  This gets a wan smile from me. Charlie takes my hand
in his, and then he says, "Hey guys, I need to talk to Devon alone for a
minute, if you don't mind. Here, Devon, come with me."

He stands, tugging on my hand. Without saying anything I get up, and let
him lead me out of the room. I'm surprised when he leads me by the hand to
the flat's bathroom. The lights come on when we enter, white and unbearably
bright. Charlie pauses in the doorway to turn them down, reducing the light
to a comfortable level before pulling me along once again.

He leads me through the communal shower, and then past the private shower
stalls. In the rear of the bathroom we come to a small offset area
separated by a tiled wall and curtained doorway. Inside we find a small
sink next to a yellowish plastic bench that folds down from the wall, along
with the one bathtub in the flat.

"Does this place hold any special meaning for you?" Charlie asks. I'm
confused; I have no idea what he's talking about.

"Well," I make a stab in the dark, "I was in the showers here when I
decided to sneak into bed with you and Mike."

Charlie shakes his head. "No, I mean this room." His words are slow and
deliberate. I can tell he's very serious. "Does this room in particular
have any special meaning for you?"

I'm slightly frustrated. "No, sorry. It doesn't Charlie; at least I don't
think so. I don't know what you mean."

He pulls the bench down from the wall, snapping it into place before
sitting slowly. "It shouldn't," he says, "But in another world it has a
special meaning for me. Do you remember the night that you found me
sleeping down here?"

I nod. I know he's referring to the first night I'd come here, when Charlie
had been drunk and sleeping it off in the other room. That was the first
night we'd fooled around, although it was mostly me doing the fooling.

"I never told anyone this, and I probably never will - not even Mike. I
need you to promise that you'll never share this, Devon - no matter what."
I nod again, not sure what else to say. Charlie and I have an established
trust, and he knows that I'll keep my promise, just as I know he'd keep one
for me if I asked.

"That night, when I was drunk like that, that was supposed to be the night
before I killed myself."

Charlie's words are shocking, and my eyes widen in response. He continues,
"What I'm about to say is totally true, I want you to understand that. I'm
not exaggerating or making anything up just to prove a point. I would never
do that, you know?"

"I do." My voice is dry and quiet in the empty room.

"That was a different time. God...it feels like such a long time ago. It
was hard. I didn't have any close friends. My roommate from school,
Harrison, was my only real friend there. He was away the weekend we
evacuated. Back then I thought he'd died - this was before we had complete
manifests, so I didn't know he'd made it aboard another ship. I felt
totally alone and depressed, and all I could do was think about what had
happened, and how many people had died. And how there wasn't a future for
me here."

"I'm sorry," I say meekly, feeling genuine pain for my friend.

He reaches out and takes my hand. "I know you are, Devon, and you're the
one who changed everything for me. But before that, before I knew you, I
was just lonely. I couldn't take it anymore. I decided to end it...here. It
was during that god-awful heat wave, remember?"

Again I nod. Charlie says, "I don't know, something about that day did it
for me. It wasn't the heat. It wasn't you guys. I don't know, I just
felt...off. And it made me sure of something - I wanted to end my life. I
decided that by the end of the weekend I would be dead."

It's hard to hear this. I want to ask him to stop, but I sense this
confession is as much for him as it is for me. "I already had everything I
needed," he says, standing. "I brought it up here with me that night."

Charlie opens a small cabinet above the sink. In it sits a silver razor and
some surgical tubing. Given the conversation, I don't have to ask why
they're here. "I feel really stupid now, trust me. I hope we can forego a
lecture. That's a part of my life I've put away...forever. But back then -
it ate at me. I couldn't stop thinking about it, obsessing about slitting
my wrists and watching the blood seep out, my life slipping away and
everything feeling better." He turns his wrists upward and holds them out
toward me; they're uncut, of course, but I can't help seeing an image of
them sliced and bleeding.

"Charlie..." I say pleadingly, shaking my head, trying to convey that I
want him to stop talking.

He interrupts me. "I want you to hear this part. I'm sorry, Devon, but I
need you to hear this. Because in another world - in some alternate
timeline - I never show up again after that night. I'm eventually missed,
of course. My wristcom is tracked, leading to the place next to Beck's
computer where I left it. A search is made. Chris and Peter joke about how
hard they're going to pound my ass when I'm found drunk, sleeping it off
somewhere quiet.

"This reminds Beck that I like to wander up to the unoccupied floors. He
mentions this, and the search begins on this floor. Each flat is checked,
and then each room. Someone comes into this flat...it's quiet, and dark,
and like all the others.

"Someone enters the bathroom - maybe it's you. The smell is...off, but you
don't really notice. You check the showers and the stalls - they're
empty. Annoyed, you come back here. When you open the curtain, you find
me. My body is lying there, in that tub. I'm pale and cold. You look into
my open eyes - they're lifeless and glazed over, like a car window on a
December morning..."

"Charlie, stop! Please!" I beg. I'm not surprised to find that tears are
streaming down my cheeks again, the image of my friend pale and dead too
horrific for me to deal with.  Charlie's face is also stained, two lines
extending down his cheeks where tears are now falling.

He walks over to me, again taking my hand into his. Our eyes meet and I
gaze into his, those deep brown eyes that have always been kind and gentle
and slightly sad. I see more mournful now than I've noticed before. "I'm
sorry, Devon. I don't want to hurt you, but I want you to know. That
universe, the one where you find me like that, it never happened. You need
to know why."

"Ok," I say, sniffling.

"It was you. And I think you know that, I think you've always known
that. That night when I was drunk - what could have been my last night
alive - you came and found me. I woke up that night, and there you were,
feeling me up like it was going out of style...."

"Charlie, I'm sorry about that," I say. And I was - now. I'd never have
fooled around with him if I'd known he was that fragile at the time.

"No, no, no," he says in a reassuring voice. "That's not the point. That
night, when you did that, it changed things. It changed me. You made me
curious, Devon. I mean - I had to be, right? Waking up and finding this boy
jerking me off, and jerking himself, it was...unexpected.

"The next day, I thought about you. I spent all day wondering why it had
happened, and what it meant. I thought about you, and about what kind of
friend you might be. I wondered if you did that with Reid and Patrick, or
if you had some sort of thing for me.

"The point is, I didn't think about suicide that day." He points to the
implements in the cabinet, and then closes the door. "At least, I didn't
think about them in that way. Ever again. You got me thinking about you,
and then the night after the party...life changed. I changed, mostly
because of you."

Charlie steps over to me, standing inches away. He reaches up and runs his
fingers through my bangs, perhaps thinking about how they'd been brown the
night I'd first played with him, not blue as they were now. "You'll never
have to worry about finding me like that, Devon. Not ever. I want you to
know that. I want you to feel how full of life I am now."

Charlie leans over, and then kisses me. Not a peck, nor a kiss on the
cheek. He kisses me, taking my mouth deeply into his, moving his body up
against mine. I part my lips and feel him, taste him, touch him. It's not a
sexual kiss, but it's more intimate than most any kiss I'd ever
shared. Charlie slips his tongue between my lips, meeting mine and gently
caressing me. There's a tangy taste to him, and a salty residue from the
tears on our lips. Our mouths locked together, I do sense how full of life
he is. I can feel his heart beating deep in his chest, and I can taste the
life on his lips.

When we break our embrace a full minute later, I'm reluctant to do
so. Charlie takes my hand once again. He sighs deeply. "I don't know if
bringing Conner here without explaining everything in advance was right,
Devon. But I do know that who you are - that boy who is always so curious
and mischievous and ready to fool around - is the sole reason I'm still
here. I don't want you to ever change, or to feel sorry for being true to
who you are. You saved me, truly. Maybe knowing about this place will help
you understand how much you mean to your friends, especially to me."

I smile at my friend, glad for his counsel. "Thanks," I say, hugging
him. "It really does."

He squeezes my hand. "I'm sure things with Conner will work out, you'll
see. He's a good friend to you, Devon. I'm sure he didn't mean whatever he
said."

I sigh. I appreciate Charlie's perspective, but I'm not sure he's
right. Conner seemed rather like he did mean those things. Still, I
nod. "We should get back," Charlie says, "I'm not sure I trust Mike around
AJ. He gets so randy if there's a new dick to blow - that kid, I swear." I
laugh - I'm pretty sure Charlie has no problem with Mike's randiness.

We walk out of the bathroom together, feeling a certain glow from the
conversation. A couple of weeks later, I return to the bathtub stall and
look in the cabinet again, finding it empty. I never see Charlie's suicide
tools again, nor do I ever ask about them. I understand that our talk
transformed the room, and that instead of a place of tragedy it became a
place where Charlie Barrett and Devon Chasen shared a special moment, and
kissed, and knew that they would be brothers until the day they died, which
would be a long, long ways away.

When we enter the living room, we find that Zane and Dog have arrived. From
their concerned expressions, I assume Mike or Nick have told them about
Conner. I feel better, but I'm hoping I don't have to relive the evening
over and over.

"Hey," Zane says, his expression showing concern. "You okay?"

I shrug. "Not sure," I say quietly. "I probably should have been more
upfront with Conner, but I didn't think he'd be so offended I was gay, or
about the group. Sorry guys, I screwed that one up, and I guess it might
make things awkward for you too."

Zane puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'm really sorry things went badly,
Devon. This may not be the time to say this, but I don't think Conner was
bothered by you being gay."

"No, he really was - he said as much. And you know what? Screw him," I
reply.

Zane sits in the oversized chair next to us and looks a little unsure of
what to say next.  It's an unusual expression for someone who mostly talks
without thinking.

"Look, Devon, I don't really know how to say this. But it's like, sometimes
you don't always see things that maybe you should. Usually I try to let you
discover them for yourself, but maybe this time I shouldn't. And maybe this
is a private conversation." He eyes the others in the room - Charlie, who'd
come out of the bathroom with me, and Dog, who I assumed had arrived with
Zane. Nick had also wandered in, although Mike was suspiciously missing. I
look at the door to the club room and wonder if, like Charlie suspected,
he's trying out his oral skills on our newest member.

"No, whatever it is, you can tell me. And the others can stay," I say.

"Ok, dude," Zane says. "Well, the thing is, I'm pretty sure Conner isn't
offended you're gay. I mean, you know he's not straight, right?"

"What?" I ask incredulously, "Why would you think he's gay?"

"Uh, maybe because he's totally open about it. I was in his year. He never
had a boyfriend that I could tell, but he's one hundred percent gay and
always has been. Did you ever ask him?"

I get a little defensive. "No, it's not like I ask every guy I meet." I
think about what Zane has said. If he's wrong, that's one thing. But if
he's right, that feels like another negative mark on my friendship report
card. Then I realize something. "But if he were gay, he wouldn't have been
so upset by walking in on things. I mean, unless he's a total prude," I
reason.

Zane arches an eyebrow at me.

"What?" I ask.

He arches it further.

"What?!" I ask more emphatically.

Zane explains. "Dude, you're so fucking blind. Cute ass, hot body, and a
great lay, but completely clueless. Conner is totally in love with
you. He's been totally in love with you for weeks, maybe months. He never
stops talking about you. And if I have to listen to one more story about
that fucking whale...."

I'm shocked. Completely shocked. Zane is starting to make sense, but what
he's saying is a revelation to me. I give Charlie my best clueless airhead
moron look. He shrugs at me, as if to say he suspected Conner was crushing
on me but wasn't sure enough to bring it up.

Zane continues, "And in case you don't understand why tonight went bad,
Conner was pissed because he likes you and you brought him here. He
probably thought you were asking him on a date, but then he found out it
was our club - I'm sure that had to bother him, and it probably hurt
him. Like I said, sorry to have to say it like this - I assumed you two
would figure things out and get together on your own. If I'd known you were
going to go all Armageddon on each other, I'd have clued you in weeks ago."

I sit down on the sofa, totally stunned. "You think he...likes me?" I ask.

Zane tosses his hands up in frustration. "Oh my god, you can be so
dopey. Of course he likes you. Right guys?"

"Now that you mention it, Conner was pretty attached to you when you were
in the hospital, maybe more than just as your doctor," Nick says. "I mean,
working twenty hours straight so you can watch over a guy has to mean
something, right?"

Charlie adds, "I think I started to suspect after the whole skinny dipping
thing last month, you know?" I nod; Conner and I had had so much fun I'd
told most of the guys about that afternoon. "But then, I didn't want to say
anything because I wasn't really sure how you felt about him."

"Sean and I sort of thought you were already fucking Conner," Dog says,
patting me on the shoulder. "I mean, I wouldn't blame you if you had been
and didn't say anything. It was hard for me to talk about Sean with my
friends at school. So...yeah."

I feel pretty freaking stupid, and say so.

Zane sits next to me. "Dude, you can be a little obtuse at times, but don't
beat yourself up. We've all been there."

I look at Zane doubtfully. "You've sabotaged one of your best friendships
because you were a complete moron?" I ask. "Somehow, I don't see that
happening to you."

He laughs. "You're right, it hasn't. But I've messed things up by being too
aggressive before, and believe it or not, once or twice by being too
timid."

I have a hard time believing the timid part, but I'm more concerned about
the situation with Conner right now. I take a deep breath. "So jeez, what
do I do now?"

"I guess that depends," Zane says. "How do you feel about Conner?"

I feel like a complete idiot saying so, but I have to admit that I'd never
thought about it before. I'd always viewed him as a platonic friend. And I
think I want things to stay that way. I say so. "But I don't really
appreciate being called a stupid slut," I add.

The guys commiserate with me over the harsh words, and then Zane says,
"When he calms down, you should tell him you just want to be friends, but
you should do that sooner rather than later so things don't fester."

Zane's right. I slap my hands on my knees, and then stand up. "You know
what? I'm going to go find him tonight. I think I owe him an apology, and
right away." I think about the voyage we're on. Eighteen years is way too
long to spend on a ship, large though it may be, with someone who hates you
because you acted like a moron.

Before leaving the flat, I change into some spare clothes I keep here -
jeans, a nicer shirt, and some more comfortable shoes. I check myself out
in the mirror. Yep, these seem like better "apologizing clothes."

On the way out, I notice that there are fewer shirts being worn by the
guys, Zane and Dog have joined Nick and Charlie in being topless. I feel a
twinge in my pants. Sigh - will I ever learn to stop letting my hormones
control me? My mind wandering, and my feet in a hurry to leave, I almost
run Sean over on the way out. He's carrying a large flat of what appear to
be strawberries.

"Whoa!" he exclaims, almost dropping everything.

"Sorry. I'm in a hurry. Conner's pissed at me, and maybe in love with me,
and AJ is more horny than we though. And everyone's inside."

Sean looks confused, and then shakes his head, probably figuring that I'm
just being Devon. "Hey, but check it out before you bolt," he says, "I got
some new lube. It's slicker than anything. I take a small bottle from his
parcels, wondering why he's carrying around strawberries and lube.

No time to ask, though, I'm determined to find Conner and set things
straight. I have no idea where he went after our argument, but how hard can
it be to track him down? I quickly do the math in my head...hmm, the ship
is roughly 133 billion cubic meters inside. Great. Well, he's probably not
in the fusion core or the girls' locker room - that narrows it down.

I head to the forward concourse and then climb to the third floor, looking
down into the main floor as I walk the length of the ship. There are a
couple hundred people milling about - it's not late yet, and people love
hanging out here on Friday nights.

I don't see him in the forward concourse, or the main lobby. I stay up on
the third floor so I have a better view. "You are a stupid fucking rail,
you know that?" I say as I walk past the point where I'd fallen into the
main lobby. The rail doesn't respond, but I do get a suspicious look from
two guys walking in my direction. "Sorry," I shrug. "It's a really bad
rail."

I try the hospital next. It's pretty deserted, and I find Conner's small
office empty. Wow, he's right - the walls are flipping awful.

"Devon, what are you doing here?" a voice asks behind me. Startled, I turn
to see Ian in a set of navy scrubs that tell me he's either on duty or just
finishing a shift.

"Sorry," I reply, "I was just looking for Conner. Seen him?"

"Yeah, I have," Ian says. My ears perk up. "And he's in an awful mood. You
should avoid him until he's less cranky, trust me."

He's probably right, but since I'm to blame for his mood I feel like my
Conner quest should continue. I ask Ian if he has any idea where he might
have gone, but he doesn't.  "I thought you had softball tonight," I say
before leaving, remembering that Ian belonged to one of the teams on the
ship.

He sighs. "Yeah, I did, but that's the life of a nurse. If they ask you to
work a double, you work a double." I sympathize with him, and then leave to
continue my search.

I spend the next two hours looking around the ship, determined to find my
(former?)  friend. I start composing an apology in my head, repeating it
over and over until it starts to sound right. I walk down to Bottomside,
finding the area packed, as it usually is after work hours, especially on
Fridays. Conner isn't at the field, where one football match is ending and
another about to start. He also isn't at the gym, where dozens of guys are
blowing off steam by lifting weights, running on treadmills, and working
out.

I run into the scrubs, who are currently being overseen by Kevin, one of
the guys assigned to them in addition to Charlie. They don't need constant
supervision, but they tend to get shuffled aside in the recreational areas
if they don't have an older guy looking out for them.

"Hi Devon!" one of the scrubs, Jason, greets me. He's wearing workout gear,
including the computerized weight lifting gloves used in here.

"Hey," I reply, stopping to catch my breath. I'd been walking a moderately
fast pace for the last hour.

Jason takes my pause as interest in their activities. "Kevin is teaching us
bicep curls," he explains. "Check it, I can totally lift a ton." He enters
a number into the numeric keypad on the wrist of the glove. It isn't quite
a ton - far from it, actually - but when he hits enter I can see that the
glove has activated, manipulating gravity to approximate the amount of
weight he's requested. His hand is pushed toward the floor, and he grunts
and turns red as he tries to lift his hand in an arc.

"Wow, that's really cool," I say, not really paying too much attention to
the kid. Then I consider how he always seems to notice everything around
him, and ask, "Hey, you haven't seen Conner McLaglen, have you? Tonight?"

Jason finishes his rep, huffing and puffing. I get the feeling he added
more weight than he should have to impress me. "Doctor Conner?" he
asks. "No, he hasn't been down here. And we've been here all night."

I swear under my breath; Jason giggles at my language. I say goodbye to the
scrubs, and head back up to the center sections of the ship. I stop off at
the library, wondering if maybe Conner went there to mope and brood, but a
quick survey of the carrels proves fruitless.

The Conner search is starting to feel hopeless, and my resolve wanes a
little. But then I have an idea. Working in engineering, Mike had access to
the computer systems that others didn't. I message him, asking if he would
be willing to put a trace on Conner's wristcom. I feel a little stupid - I
should have thought of this before.

I don't really like asking this of Mike. The ability to track coms is for
emergency use, and having him get into the system to do this is a bit of an
abuse. He doesn't gripe, though - I get a response to my text message only
moments after I send it. "Let me go see what I can do," he writes. "You
have to make sure to be here next time. AJ tastes...really good.  Charlie
thinks so too. Sean brought strawberries."

I'm pretty sure Mike is taunting me a little. I remember seeing what was
under AJ's shorts that morning on the farm, and I feel a little left
out. Five minutes later, I get a second reply, this time just two words:
"his room."

"Oh my god, I am such a fucking idiot," I groan. Why didn't I try there
first?

As I take the elevator to Conner's area in Topside, I notice that my feet
are getting pretty sore. I head to Area 6, and then enter Conner's flat. I
find the living area empty, which makes sense. Most guys take advantage of
Friday nights to get out and about.

The door to Conner's bedroom is closed. It doesn't lock, but I knock, not
really wanting to disturb anyone. I knock again when I hear someone moving
around inside, this time a little louder. After I knock a third time, I
hear someone approach the door. I take a deep breath, ready to get my full
two-thousand word apology out in five seconds or less.

Only it's not Conner who opens the door.

Instead, it's Eden Stranton who greets me. Eden is in a pair of
loose-fitting gym shorts and nothing else, his perfect body a little
flushed. I immediately notice two things - there seems to be a bulge in his
shorts, and his hand looks a little...hmm...oily or something. I feel
myself start to blush. There really wasn't any question what this perfect
guy had been doing before I rudely interrupted. He looks a little
tired. "Oh. Hey, Devon," he says.

"Um...Uh...Hi," I stammer. "Sorry, I know it's late. I was looking for
Conner," I explain. It wasn't really that late, but it sounded like a
reasonable thing to say.

Eden yawns. I'm not sure that he's truly tired, or if he's trying to make
it seem like he'd been sleeping. He puts his right hand around behind his
back. "Sorry," he says, "I haven't seen him. I got home about an hour ago,
he hasn't been here."

I can see past Eden to Conner's bunk, where a wristcom sits exposed on the
surface of the perfectly-made bed. Dammit. Conner must have come up here,
but left after ditching the com. Wonderful. I also notice a bottle of what
I take to be lube next to one of the other beds, which makes me blush. "Uh,
thanks," I say. "Sorry to bother you so late."

"Everything okay?" he asks.

I think up a quick, reasonable excuse for disturbing him. "Yeah. I was just
feeling some pain in my shoulder. I thought he might want to know. I'll go
have Ian look at it."

Eden yawns again. "Ok," he says. "Sorry about the shoulder. Feel better."

I thank him, and then leave, feeling a little mortified and really
frustrated.

I'd been wandering the ship for hours now, and my efforts had resulted in
little else than a grand tour that had left me tired and cranky. I look at
my wristcom, and then punch in some commands. Fuck, I'd walked over fifteen
kilometers looking for Conner. No wonder my feet are sore. I take the lift
back to the main lobby, which is considerably less crowded than when I'd
first looked here a couple of hours ago - it's just after midnight. I sigh,
feeling tired and frustrated.

I don't really want to head back, although I'm sure a solid tumble would do
me good. The idea of finding Conner is still alluring, but since that
doesn't seem possible I just want to be alone. I head to the rear section
of the main lobby and the empty restaurant space located there. I knew no
one would be inside, which suited me just fine.

Entering the empty restaurant, I'm greeted by a blast of frigid
air. Damnation, that's cold!  I don't really have to wonder why - I head
back into the kitchen and locate a spot along the bottom of the rear wall
where a large hole opens into another area, one considerably colder. The
crate I'd wedged there had been moved, probably by one of the teams
assigned to assess this area for use. Frigid air flows in through the
gap. I push the crate back into place, creating a firm seal.

I putter around in the kitchen for a while, thinking and rehearsing my
apology for Conner.  While I do that, I organize things a little. Someday
this might be opened as a secondary eating area, although the kitchens
upstairs were generally well-stocked. And they were sure as heck warmer, I
thought. It was warmer than when I arrived, but I could still see my
breath.

Eventually I yawn, and notice that it's past one. We've already come to a
new day, one that hopefully won't be as awful as the last. I exit the
restaurant, locking the door behind me. The main lobby is mostly totally
deserted now, and the lights have gone from "evening" to "nighttime." I
pause to wonder if all of the ships set their twenty-four hour clocks the
same. Is it just after one everywhere? Are mom and dad nestled into bed
together on the San Diego ship, or is it morning there? I'll have to ask
someone who would know that.

As I'm leaving, I notice the entrance to the tunnel leading to the Rear
Observation Deck, which, when not housing parties, was just a large empty
room with huge windows.

The deck had been one of the most popular hangout locations when we first
left Earth.  There was something therapeutic about being there - it gave
you a real sense that you were going somewhere. I remember going there
myself, staring out at the stars, thinking about what we'd left behind and
where we were going. And then our lives on the ship had taken root, and one
by one my shipmates stopped spending so much time there, perhaps more
interested in the present than either the past or the future.

But Conner hadn't.

Conner had always kept on hanging out there; he said he found the view of
the stars peaceful. But it's late, I'm exhausted, and the forty-seven great
ideas I've had tonight for finding Conner have been a bust, so I call off
the search and walk in the direction of my room, my bed calling to me
softly on the breeze. Reid would probably be sleeping over the covers when
I got home, and I'd be greeted by a view of his perfectly rounded ass
before bed.

I make it halfway across the lobby before making an abrupt u-turn and
heading for the entrance to the rear deck.

I'm a bit obsessive, and figure I should at least check this one last place
out before calling it a night. Despite sore feet I make my way to the
tunnel entrance, and then down the long space leading to the deck. I take
advantage of the moving sidewalk, adding its speed to my own locomotion so
that it feels like I'm really zooming down the tunnel.

Everything has been cleaned up since the party, the colorful murals that
decorate the walls now unstained by images of ghosts and goblins. When I
reach the main space of the Rear Observation Deck, I notice that there is
music playing, a sad, harmonic tune.  The room is quite dim, the light from
the stars are the sole source of illumination. I walk into the center of
the room; it feels massive and lonely when no one else is here.

Except I'm not alone. When I get halfway across the room I can make out a
darkened silhouette at the bottom of the center window, the unmistakable
outline of a boy sitting on the ledge that ran under the windows. It's a
familiar outline sitting in a familiar pose, and I don't have to strain
hard to see that it's Conner. He's changed clothes, and is now wearing a
grey hoodie and jeans, but it's definitely him.

I take a deep breath, and then another. I walk over to the sitting boy,
ready to take my lumps and try to fix things.

The music that's playing is beautiful, although I don't know the song. I
assume Conner chose it, since he's the only one here. It ends and begins
again, so he must have it playing on a loop.

He doesn't seem to notice me approaching, even when I come up right next to
him. He looks thoughtful and sad, staring out the window. I get ready with
my two thousand word apology, a comprehensive essay on why we should remain
friends, taking a deep breath before I launch into the words I'd been
practicing in my head for the past several hours.

"Hey," I say, stopping there, apparently deciding that a last minute
one-thousand nine- hundred ninety-nine word trim was appropriate.

Conner keeps on staring out the window. The stars are beautiful - there are
far, far, far more of them than could have ever been seen on Earth. I
prepare for the worst - another word bashing by Conner, or perhaps a solid
punch in the nose, but it never comes. Conner remains silent, as do
I. After a couple of minutes I wonder if my presence is annoying him, and
if I should leave.

"Did I ever tell you about my parents?" he asks quietly.

I think about it for a minute. "Um, I don't think so. Maybe a little. I
don't think so. Sorry." I waffle with my answer because I don't remember
him ever talking about his family, but there's a distinct chance he had and
I'd forgotten. I didn't need to do anything else tonight to provoke or
annoy the guy.

"They were great," he says. "My dad was military, and we moved around a lot
when I was a kid. But the place I remember most was this house we had in
Cambridge. It was small, but perfect, you know? It was cold in the winter -
I mean really cold, but somehow that made springtime seem even
better. There was a program at the college, my mom worked there and so I
got to use the pools during the summer. It's where I learned to swim."

"Sounds nice," I say. And it did, I could easily envision a ten year-old
Conner excitedly biking to the college pool the first afternoon after
school had let out, ready to while away the days swimming and playing.

"It was," he agrees. "My mom was sick a lot when we were kids. It was a
genetic thing, nothing life-threatening, but she'd get tired sometimes and
have to take a week off to rest."

"I'm sorry," I reply, feeling like it's all I can say.

Conner sighs, and then looks at me, the first time he's done so since I'd
come in here.  "No, don't be," he says. His voice sounds earnestly
reassuring, and I take it to mean he's not going to yell at me. Still, I
resolve to be very, very careful with my words. "Those times when my mom
was sick, they were actually some of the best times. She'd need to take it
easy, but for us kids that meant she'd spend a week at home, and we'd all
play board games and make cookies and do that sort of thing."

"You had brothers and sisters?" I ask, immediately regretting using the
past tense so carelessly.

He doesn't seem to notice. "Yeah, an older brother and an older
sister. They were pretty cool. We had fun, especially when we lived in
Cambridge."

"Cool."

"And I've never really told anyone outside the family this, but it was
mom's illness that made me want to be a doctor. From the time I was seven
or eight, I was sure that someday I'd grow up and cure her. I guess as a
kid it was scary - her being sick.  Everything like that seems like a big
deal when you're a kid, you know?"

I thought back to my own childhood. I didn't have any similar experiences,
but I could see what he meant. "Yeah."

Conner looks back out the window. "My parents are dead," he states
matter-of-factly.

I had gleaned this from the conversation already, but it didn't stop me
from being sympathetic. "I'm really sorry," I say.

He smiles at me. "No, it's okay," he says, in the way people do when
something isn't.  "Mom didn't die of her disease - well, not directly. She
wasn't sick like that, but we knew she'd never make it onto one of the
ships if the evacuation occurred. My brother and sister wouldn't either,
they had the same recessive genes that caused her health issues."

I think about our egress from Earth. The capsules that we took to board the
ships also tested us for a variety of medical issues. Anyone failing this
test would be left behind, the precious few slots on the ships being left
for the healthy. Most ships were packed - it was a fluke of timing and
geography that ours was only half full.

"We talked about it from the time I was really young," Conner says,
thinking back to his childhood as he gazes out into space. "Every year when
the evacuation unit came around in school, we'd talk about it at dinner,
although I don't think it was until my brother and sister were adults that
we were told about their status. But anyway, because my mom would have to
stay behind if the evacuation happened, my dad volunteered for a position
in Space Force."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I remember visiting the base when I was a kid. Well, a lot of bases,
actually. Dad was assigned to help with launch control. I remember when I
was little he would show me all these computer simulations, and explain how
he'd be one of the guys helping the ships launch without smashing into each
other or crashing into the moon. I was so proud, knowing my dad would be
right there in the middle of things if the end ever came.

"And then it did, you know? We were at school, and those horrible sirens
went off. I knew right away what it meant, and I've never stopped having
nightmares about that day."

I sit on the ledge next to Conner. His story is moving, and I feel for him
immensely. I guess I'd never been a good enough friend to ask if he had
family.

He continues speaking, slow and deliberate. "And you know, from the time I
was a teenager, every year when the conversation came around my mom would
take me aside, and she'd make me promise something. You know what that
was?"

"No, what?" I ask.

"She'd make me swear that if the sirens ever went off, I'd head straight to
the ship - no stopping, no delaying. She said it was my one job if that
ever happened. I don't have the gene, you know. They knew I wouldn't have
problems with the screening."

He holds up a wrist, as if I can sense his genetic wellness just by
looking. "Oh my god, Conner, I'm so sorry."

He shrugs. "I thought about staying behind. My family was stationed in
Cheyenne, and I figured I could drive out and be with my parents for...you
know. I called right away when the sirens went off, and got through before
the systems went down. My mom answered..." Conner is visibly emotional now,
tears welling in his eyes. Mine follow his example, his story too horrible
to hear.

"Conner, if you don't want to talk about this..." I start.

He takes a deep breath. "No, no, I do. I'm sorry to be so emotional. My mom
answered, and the first thing she said was, 'You remember your promise,
Conner. You're heading for the ship, right?' I knew then that that's what I
needed to do. I went to my car, and told her I was driving to the evac
site. I know the lines got jammed, but our phones stayed connected until I
was in the lobby of the evac center. I got to say goodbye, and she knew
that I was okay. My mommy knew I was going to be okay."

We're both crying, but trying not to show it too much. Wow, it's a sad
story. I had no idea.

"I don't know why I'm talking about this now," Conner says. "You must think
I'm pretty lame, to have yelled at you and then laid this on you. Wow, I'm
really sorry."

"No...it's okay," I say.

He wipes his nose on his wrist. "The thing is, I think about them a
lot. About what it must have been like to stay behind. And every time I do,
I feel just as proud of my family as I did when I was a little kid. They
were great people. I wish you could have known them."

"Me too," I say, putting a hand on Conner's shoulder.

"But oh my god, that's not even what I meant to talk to you about. Wow. I
don't know where that came from," he says. "Look, Devon, about earlier
tonight..."

Now it's my turn to interrupt him. "No, let's not even talk about it. It's
not important. I obviously screwed up, and I'll apologize for that later."

"You didn't screw up."

"Huh?"

He repeats himself. "You didn't screw up. I mean, maybe you didn't tell me
as much as you should have, but you didn't do anything wrong, not
really. If you say you weren't going to try anything tonight, I trust
you. I owe you that, at least."

I look him in the eyes. "Conner...I wasn't going to try to trick you, I
swear."

He smiles a little. "I believe you," he says, and then looks back out into
space. "Do you remember that pigeon back at school?" he asks.

I know instantly what he's referring to. I'd met him on a terrace in front
of the physical sciences building, where I had an afternoon class. A lot of
older students hung out there, and I found most of them
unapproachable. Conner, however, was a slightly nerdy boy perpetually
surrounded by a pile of books, and I'd been excited to discover he'd
actually acknowledge me, an underclassman without a clue.

Over time, I'd taken to spending the hour break between my midweek classes
on the terrace. It was where our friendship was born, innocuous comments
passed between two students on Wednesday afternoons. When winter came, we
took to hanging out in the large lobby of the science building, and then
when spring started to return we moved back out onto the terrace.

One afternoon, he had a doughnut box with him. He'd offered me the last
one, and I'd been happy to discover it was a personal favorite - a cake
doughnut covered in cinnamon sugar. Unfortunately, I'd proven as clumsy as
usual, and dropped the ill-fated cake before I'd had a chance to taste
it. It had dropped to the ground, bouncing off the stone bench under our
table and rolling off into the courtyard. Conner had tried not to laugh at
my misfortune.

While I was griping, a pigeon had excitedly approached the dropped doughnut
- and who could blame it? Cinnamon sugar cake doughnuts are the best. The
bird had started eating it, and Conner and I had watched in complete awe as
the pigeon finished the entire doughnut. No shit, it ate the whole fucking
thing! We'd discussed saving the bird from itself, but somehow our horror
prevented us from acting. Once the doughnut was gone, the bird, distended
horrifically, had waddled off, either to die tragically or pass the biggest
bird shit in history.

"Yeah, I remember," I answer.

"That day...the day that stupid bird ate that doughnut, I had my first
date."

I tilt my head in curiosity. "Your first date? With?"

Conner chuckles. "Well, actually, the point of this story is that it was my
first date ever, but his name was Dave Bowman. He was a fellow med
student. I met him a year before, and I liked him right away, but it took
me the whole year to get up the courage to ask him out."

"Aww, that's cute...but why?"

Conner looks reflective. "I've never been that good at socializing. When I
was younger I was two grades ahead of the guys my age, so I was always
around older guys. I always felt weird about that. College was supposed to
change that, but by then I was so determined to be a successful student I
didn't have time for dating. And I've always felt inept at making friends."

I think about my friendship with Conner. He's always had a big smile for
me, and interesting things to say, and he's always been helpful, kind and
cool. I tell him so. "I guess I don't see you that way," I say.

"Well, thanks," he replies. "Maybe I'm a little better at that stuff now,
but it took a long time to learn. I spent high school looking at other
guys, never daring to say anything. I totally lusted after this guy Grant,
but there was no way I was going to do anything about it. Dave was the
first guy I actually asked out."

"Cool," I say. "So how'd it go?"

"Good actually. That night we went out, had coffee. I liked him, although
we were both really shy. But I invited him up to my apartment, although it
was just awkward - neither of us knew if that meant we were supposed
to...um..."

"Make out? Snog? Kiss? Mouth-screw?" I interject, trying to be helpful.

"You're such a dork," Conner smirks. "Yeah. I mean, we didn't really know
what the other one wanted. We did end up making out a little, but then had
to call it an early night. After that, we decided to wait until after
midterms to go out again. That was a couple of days before the sirens,
so..."

"Yeah, wow," I say, and then realize he may be hinting at something. "Oh my
god, Conner. You don't mean he...didn't make it?"

Conner's eyes go wide. "No...No, not at all. He was just away from
school. He's out there somewhere, on one of the other ships. We write each
other sometimes. The funny thing is, I don't really miss him. I mean, not
in that way."

"Okay." I'm not really sure about the direction of this conversation, but
Conner is at least speaking with me, so I guess "mission accomplished" and
all that.

"The thing is," he continues, "even way back then...that night we went out
for the first time. It was fun, but the thing is...I don't know. It feels
weird talking to you about this."

I arch an eyebrow. "Conner, I took you to a wank club without telling you
what it really was. You can talk to me any way you want. I mean, maybe we
can keep the name calling to a minimum, but other than that - whatever you
want."

Conner flashes a fearful look. "Oh my god, Devon, I totally forgot I said
that to you. I'm so sorry. Oh my god, that was so mean. I'm sorry, I was
angry. I don't know how I could call you that."

I shrug. "I've been called worse, but thanks for apologizing. You were
saying? About your first date?"

He looks bashful, but continues. "Oh yeah, that. What I was about to say
was that my first date with Dave...he was cute, and fun, and smart. But
even back then, that whole night, all I could think about was...you."

It takes a moment for what he says to register, and when it does my
response is eloquent, as usual. "Oh?" I ask, cocking my head. Then I get
what he's saying. "Oh. Oh!"

Conner laughs at me. "You can be dense, you know that? Anyway, Dave was
great, but he wasn't you. You know, after that night I resolved to ask you
out the next time I saw you. Then I chickened out, and said the next
time. Then the next and the next. That continued after we left Earth, and I
think we're on time four hundred sixty-seven, or somewhere around there."

"That's a lot," I point out, not really knowing what to say. Wow, has
Conner been into me that long? I must be the densest guy in the world.

"Yeah, it is," he agrees.

We sit in silence for a moment. Later I reflect that Conner was probably
spending this time to decide how to take our friendship. He could either
try and return things to the status quo, or he could take a risk.

"Devon," he says, "you're just about my perfect guy. I'm sorry I never
asked you out properly. Please believe me when I say I tried, I really
did. A lot of times I'd ask you to do stuff, and I was totally sure you
knew it was supposed to be a date and not just hanging out."

"I can be a little dumb," I say, trying to be helpful.

He ignores the self deprecating remark. "And the thing is, no matter how
attracted I was to you...am attracted to you...I didn't want to mess up our
friendship. My family is gone, and most of my friends are on other
ships. You're the best thing about living on this stupid ship. Everything
else is studying and feeling pressured not to kill anyone.

"When you were hurt, it made me a little crazy. I swear, I was going to
fucking murder Steven that day he came to the hospital, all smarmy like he
is. But as horrible as you being hurt was, I felt like it brought us
closer."

"It did," I agree. "I remember you there with me, from the first time I
woke up."

"Cool," he says. "Then after you got out of the hospital, you made that
dinner for me. I'm stupid sometimes, Devon, but I kind of thought..."

He trails off, but I know what he's going to say. He thought I was asking
him out, not just a dinner with friends. "You thought that was a date."

"Yeah, I thought that was more than it apparently was. The whole time I sat
there wondering if you were flirting with me, or if maybe I was misreading
things. I never quite got what was going on, so to figure it out I tried to
ask you to the Halloween festival."

I think back. I don't remember Conner asking me out that night, but I'd
been a little distracted by trying to acclimate back to real life, plus the
whole New Devon thing was taking up the front parts of my brain. "I'm
sorry," I explain, "I didn't realize."

"I know," he says. "That's the story of my life. I'm too quiet and shy to
be open and honest, and the guys I like slip through my fingers. But you've
been the toughest, Devon.  I had a mega-crush on you, and there were times
I was totally sure you were inches from figuring things out. I was excited
about poker night because, like an idiot, I thought maybe you asked me
out."

I feel terrible. I'd never considered that Conner might be this
complex. "I'm really sorry," I say for about the millionth time tonight.

"It's okay," he says. "And the thing with your friends - that's great, I
had no right to be so offended. I've never had friends like that, and it's
not right to judge you. You know, that night at the Halloween party? You
were hotter than you've ever been before. I was totally glad I wore a long
coat, you know? That was probably the first time I saw that side of you,
and I really liked it. I really...I think I really wanted to be at the
party with you, you know? That's why I hung around, being dorky, while your
friends were all being so cool and sexy. And then you left that night with
Zane. I think yelling at you tonight was me being jealous."

"Jealous? Of me?" I ask.

"Yeah. Of Zane, and of you. Well, of anyone who can love and lust on that
level. I've never...I mean, I guess you'd know from this talk, but I've
never been with anyone...like that."

"Oh."

"Yeah, I know. A twenty year-old virgin. Kinda pathetic. But like I said,
always a couple of grades ahead, awkward in my own skin, bad timing and
even worse social skills. You're everything I'm not, Devon."

"I don't know if I'd say that."

"I would, and I do. The guys you hang out with...damn. I've never got one
guy in bed - you got all of them? Wow."

I laugh. It still seems like he's suggesting I'm slutty, but this time he's
phrasing it as a compliment. "It's not like that," I say, then correct
myself. "Well, it is. We all fool around.  But I don't fuck any of them. I
mean, not that it makes much difference, I guess."

"Not even Zane?" Conner asks, an edge to his voice. Wow, I sure pushed the
wrong button earlier.

"Nah. Zane is super-sexy, don't get me wrong. But he and I are way beyond
that. I want to be honest with you...we fool around, but we don't do the
whole penetration thing. I've actually...I've actually never done that."

"But you want to?" Conner asks.

I've been pretty good tonight, so I don't feel bad about the cheap shot I
take. "Sure, but this bench is a little hard. Wouldn't your room be more
comfy?" I say slyly.

Conner blushes. "No, I mean...I, um...what was I even saying?"

I love that I can get him so flustered, but it's late and I'm getting
tired. "You were talking about me dating. I think that's a conversation for
another night, though. It's been a long day."

Conner takes a deep breath. "Yeah, it has."

I get up to leave. As I'm standing, he says, "Before you go, I have to ask
- do you think you'd ever want me to be a bigger part of your life?"

I know that I'm treading some really dangerous waters here, and dealing
with fragile feelings. I think about what I'm about to say, and then when I
start speaking I phrase my words very, very carefully. "Conner, I'd love to
tell you that I've thought about that, but I haven't. Truthfully, I've
always thought of you as a friend. I think that speaks more to my stupidity
than your social skills. It's been a long day, and I don't have an answer
to that. I need to think about everything."

He looks downcast in response to my speech, which sounds as much like a
rejection as a request for time to think, even to me. "Oh," he says, not
bothering to hide his disappointment.

"But I promise I will," I say quickly. "Until then, friends again?"

I'm pretty sure "friends" isn't a word he wants to hear from me, but he
smiles anyway, albeit it sadly. "Of course," he says. I motion to him to
stand, and when he does, I embrace him in a firm hug. He feels warm and
comfortable against my skin, and he smells nice.

Then I say good night, and walk away. The song that had been playing when I
arrived is still playing in a never-ending loop, but it's tranquil enough
that it hasn't become annoying. Still, it's a sad song, and as I exit the
massive deck I can't help but think about Conner's story. Dang, the guy had
had it rough. His family dead like that...then his love life, wow.

In some ways, Conner and I were exact opposites. Where leaving Earth had
taken everything from him, it had offered me a whole new life. I'd made
closer friends than ever before, and made love more than ever before, and
each night I went to bed knowing that the things that were most important
to me were safe, flying across the stars to a new home. My parents had even
thought to take my favorite childhood toy with them, a plush elephant with
sandy blonde fur. I'd be reunited with it one day, along with mom and dad.

For Conner, the trip meant leaving everything behind. He was an orphan now,
and that made me sad. I step on the moving walkway, letting it carry me
along at its measured pace.

I thought about my friend. I'd promised to consider where to fit him into
my life. Conner was a great friend, sure. He was sexy, despite what he
might think, and I'd been eager to invite him to the wank club.

But he was a friend, and there are just some mental blocks that are hard to
overcome.  Besides, there was a part of me that had listened to his story,
sad though it was, and considered that part of Conner's attraction for me
was because I was the last thing he had left from Earth, and though it
seemed cute when someone developed an unnatural attraction to a sock or
comic book or pen, if Conner was expecting me to replace his family...

And there was the "b word." I'd wondered about whether or not I'd ever find
someone for so long that I'd sort of shoved it to the back of my mind. It
had been a while since I'd considered anyone as a potential boyfriend.

I'd once thought Charlie was the one, but that just didn't click. Mike
wasn't quite right, always the little boy, and Zane was...well, we'd been
down that road. Sean and Dog were perfect for each other, and I thought
about this almost any time I saw either of them. I knew I wanted that
someday.

I reach up to brush my bangs out of my eyes, and realize that Conner's
scent is still with me. I smell my fingers, my friend's aroma fresh on my
fingertips and somehow familiar. I can almost place it...

And then a million images flash through my mind all at once. Summer days in
San Diego, and visiting UCSD on a field trip one spring. Playing tennis on
an open court near our house when I was a freshman in high school. The
scent on the air the night I'd received my college admission letter.

Eucalyptus.

Conner smells like freaking eucalyptus.

The trees grew all over San Diego. They were like a weed, in tree form. And
they smelled great. The smell on my fingers, Conner's scent, was just like
that - but what did it mean? Nothing, right?

I look behind me. I'm almost exactly halfway down the tunnel. Behind me I
can see the darkened entrance to the deck, where Conner still sits looking
at the stars, perhaps more despondent than ever. In front of me, I can see
the exit to the tunnel, the light from the main lobby shining brightly into
the tunnel.

I hop over the rail along the moving sidewalk so that I'm standing still in
the center of the tunnel. I feel like I'm at a crossroads, of sorts. What
am I thinking? Suddenly I'm really confused, and I don't know why.

Behind me there is nothing but Conner and an empty room. In front there's
the rest of the ship and all my friends and my whole life. I know that I
don't have to choose between the two, but somewhere in my mind something is
telling me that I should, at least choose which is more important. That
doesn't make any sense, does it? I mean, I have both...I can keep both. But
still, I feel like something is holding me here, making me think about my
lonely friend sitting in his window seat gazing at the stars.

I remember something I'd thought about earlier - Conner sharing his last
doughnut with me. And then I remember Conner sharing the last peanut butter
in existence with me.  "Wait, am I hungry?" I ask aloud. Then I start
babbling to myself like a crazy person.

"No, that's not it," I say. Doughnuts and peanut butter are fine, but they
don't mean anything, do they?

Turns out they did, at least to me, and suddenly I figure it out.

Conner had always been there for me, whether it was on the ship or even
before that.  He was always thinking about me, always there to offer me his
last doughnut or the last of his peanut butter - that's what made these
things special. It meant something. I think it proved he didn't want to
date me because I was the last thing left from his former life - he'd
always wanted me, even back then before all of this when he could have had
anyone. Everyone was right, I'd been blind, and that extended back to long
before living on this space ship. Conner had always, always, always wanted
me.

And it was this revelation that triggered something inside me. I thought
back to the early days on the ship, Conner's easy smile and kind green
eyes, the way he brightened up whenever I walked into the room. I had to
wonder now why he didn't seem depressed, considering all he'd lost, and the
answer comes easily now that I get him a little better.  He didn't seem
depressed or sad then because he wasn't depressed or sad whenever I was
around. Everything horrible that had happened to the guy, somehow the idea
of someday asking me on a date trumped all of that. Conner's life had been
horrible, but somehow me just sitting next to him always made him smile.

I thought about the shared peanut butter, and afternoon video games. I
thought about how Conner listened to me, and was always in tune with my
moods. He swam with me in a whale tank, and chased me when I proclaimed him
"it." He smiled at me freely and often, and sat by my side around the clock
when I'd been hurt. He'd leapt to my defense at the party. And although I'd
hurt him tonight, he'd forgiven me without hesitation.

I was an idiot. I'd never clearly seen what all of that meant before.

All this time I'd been distracted, by sex and boys and music and work and
life. I'd missed the one obvious and simple truth that seemed to be
continually hitting me in the head with a hammer - what I was looking for,
the loyal, loving, sexy, smart, funny boyfriend I'd always wanted, and
spent a fair amount of time moping about not having, had been there the
whole time. It was Conner. It had always been Conner. He loved me, I think.
And when I thought about it, when I saw past all the other garbage I spent
my days obsessing about, I realize something monumental:

I love him back.

I really did, I'd just always had a block in my mind that prevented me from
seeing it.  Maybe it was that Conner was too comforting, too good to me. He
made things so easy that I never had to spend time obsessing about him. Or
maybe he was right, maybe sex with the guys had distracted me from noticing
him the way I should.

I stood at a crossroads. Suddenly, my future seemed clearer than ever
before, and I didn't need to tell my feet which direction to move. Without
even thinking about it, I was heading back toward Conner at full sprint.

I leap over the rail and onto the moving sidewalk heading toward the
deck. I land funny, and fall flat on my face. "Ow," I moan. "You're okay,
no one saw that." Standing, I wiggle my ass; nothing feels broken so I
continue my dash for the end of the tunnel.

As I run, I pull up a program on my wristcom, trying not to trip again. I
find a favorite song, one that reminds me of Conner, and push it onto the
sound system in the main room. I hear Conner's slow, lilting tune stop,
replaced by a happy synth riff and the sounds of kids at play; the
beginning of the song I've selected.

Entering the room, Conner is still sitting in the window where I'd left
him. I run toward him, which he doesn't notice until I'm right upon him,
probably because he's trying to figure out why his music has randomly
changed. When he notices me, he jumps, clearly startled.

"Jesus, Devon! You scared me. I though you left, and I was just about
to..."

I don't let him finish. I'm winded from my sprint, and adrenaline is
coursing through my veins. Without saying anything, I grab Conner's hoodie
by the collar and lift him up off his seat. He makes a funny little sound,
probably wondering what the hell I'm doing.  When I pull his lips into
mine, he goes completely stiff, a gasp crossing his lips before he realizes
what's happening and relaxes a little.

Our kiss lasts for some time, although it's mostly me kissing him. I open
my eyes to see his looking back at me, slightly glazed, but also fearful
and confused. His eyes are beautiful - the little brown flecks swimming on
orbs of green, but I'd never been this close before, so I'd never noticed
that the brown parts actually formed a star-like pattern around his
pupils. Cool. I wanted to wake up looking into these same eyes tomorrow
morning.

I pull away from him slowly, letting our lips linger together as long as
possible before separating. Conner looks quite concerned, as if this might
be the one final mixed signal that pushes him over the edge.

I cut straight to the point. "You're the one. You've always been the one,
Conner. You were right about me, I can be stupid and I can be slutty. I'm
not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm dense. I never
realized...about you. Wow, I'm dumb. But I realize it now. I want you...I
need you. Maybe it's too late, but if not then..."

This time Conner cuts me off, abruptly wrapping his hands around my head
and pulling me into a second, deeper kiss.

And then I'm kissing him, and then he's kissing me back. I won't say that
either of us are experts at this particular craft, but it's the first time
I've kissed someone I was in love with, and I think the same is true of
Conner, so it's one of the most memorable, tender moments of my life.

And then I want more. Pushing him gently down to the window bench, I sit
next to him before moving my lips down his cheek and across his neck. I
smell him, and kiss him gently along the soft skin of his neck. Although
this is our first intimate contact, his taste is somehow...familiar, as
though my body knows it already and has been waiting patiently for my mind
to catch up and sate its appetites. I kiss a spot just below his right ear
and he giggles. I pull back, but go right back to that spot when he calms
down. He starts giggling again, this time squirming in his seat. "Like
that?" I whisper in his ear.

He blushes, deep enough that I can see it in the starlight, and I swear I
feel his cheeks radiate more heat. "It just really...tickles." he says
timidly. "Sorry."

I kiss the spot below his ear again, and again he giggles before
apologizing. "You don't have anything to be sorry about," I say
reassuringly. He smiles at me appreciatively, and I move my mouth back onto
his, biting at his lower lip.

I run my fingers through his hair, which is longer now than I'd ever seen
it, his sandy blonde locks hanging straight and long over his ears. It's
thicker than I would have thought, and extremely soft.

I move my body into position next to his, and press him down into a lying
position so that I can stretch across his chest to connect with his
mouth. We kiss again, and again, and again, two young men exploring each
other for the first time, our hunger for one another growing.

We make out for over an hour, never tiring, each kiss feeling like the
first. I'd kissed all of the guys in the club, but I didn't do that a
lot. It had just never felt like this - not even a little. When Conner does
something right, I moan lightly, which visibly excites him. When I do
something right he squirms a little. Once we get used to feeling one
another with our mouths, there's a lot of moaning and squirming.

After the longest make-out session of my life, I pull away from Conner,
ready for more.  He starts talking, and it doesn't take me long to
understand that he's mistaken me taking a break to mean that we're done for
now.

"That was so...cool. Thanks. Wait, that's lame, that's not what I mean to
say. I guess that's not a 'thank you' kind of thing, like 'hey, you brought
me muffins, thank you.' Not that I'm not thankful. I mean, wow," he
babbles. I smile at him, satisfied in knowing that my affections have this
effect on the boy. I unzip his hoodie while he speaks, pulling it over his
shoulders and off his arms. He looks at me appreciatively. "It's really
warm in here. I mean...wow, I'm sweating."

"Yeah, it's a little steamy," I agree, dropping his coat to the floor.

He sits up on his elbows. "So, this may seem forward," he says shyly, "but,
um...can we go out sometime? Like on a date? I mean, I know you probably
want to take things slow."

I tilt my head at him, and then can't help but laugh, which I immediately
feel bad about. It doesn't seem to hurt his feelings, although he does ask
me what I'm giggling about. "At you, silly," I reply. "I just told you that
you're the guy for me, and then I furiously made out with you. Does that
normally mean you have to ask permission to call the guy?"

Conner blushes and offers a silly, shy grin. "I don't know, maybe." He
sounds like a little boy. "This is all new to me. I really like you and
this is...unexpected. I don't want to offend you."

I laugh again, but then stop myself. "Sorry, I don't mean to laugh,
really. It's just been a long night. Conner, Conner, Conner, let me make
this easier for both of us." I sit up on my knees, and then slip my shirt
up over my head to reveal my naked torso. "I've been ambling around for
months wondering if I'd ever find anyone. The guys - they're great, but
they're just friends. It wasn't until tonight I realized how clueless I've
been, or what you mean to me. I'm sorry I put you through that, but I'm
done with that now. You have me, I'm yours."

I tug at Conner's shirt, and then pull it up off his stomach. He gets the
message and sits up further, raising his arms so I can take it off
completely, the fabric slipping over young, smooth skin. When I drop it to
the floor, allowing it to join my own shirt and his coat, he gulps, as if
realizing for the first time what the phrase "you have me" really means.
"Um...ok," he croaks.

I lean into his body, again pressing him down into the pliable material
covering the window seat. I kiss him, this time our naked chests coming
together so that I feel his warm skin against mine; his heart is pounding
in an intense, steady rhythm. I put my hands on his shoulders, feeling the
firm muscles there, toned by years of swimming. My lips connect with his
hungrily, and we pick up our French kissing where we left off. I tilt my
head right, and then left, experimenting with how Conner's face feels
against mine.

There's a part of me that still can't believe we're really doing this. My
love for Conner - and I knew now without a doubt that I truly loved him -
had developed somewhere in the back of my mind, independent of my lusty
urges. It felt like my body had waited until the very last possible moment
to make me aware of my physical feelings for him, and when it did - BAM!
Now I couldn't get enough of his scent, or his taste.

He giggles again, tickled by my upper lip brushing his a little too
softly. "Sorry," he says when I pause.

I smile. "If you're going to apologize for everything we do, it's going to
be a really long night," I say, looking into his eyes coyly.

"Sor...mrph," he says, my mouth connecting with his before he can apologize
again.

Although I'm sitting right next to him, leaning over his chest to kiss him,
somehow he's managed to position both arms about as far from my body as
possible, spreading them out to his side. I notice that every time I move,
he shifts out of my way politely so that I am in complete control of the
physical contact between us. But eventually my kissing seems to distract
him enough that his right hand wanders to my side, brushing against my body
just below my rib cage. He retracts it swiftly and immediately, as if
shocked by some invisible Devon defense mechanism.

I lift my head and look into his eyes knowingly. "What?" he asks, a little
self-consciously.

I run my fingertips down his chest, causing him to moan lightly. "You
really don't get the whole 'you have me' thing. You're allowed to touch me,
Conner. Anywhere - everywhere."

He smiles, and then I kiss him again, our faces slightly numb from the
making out and our lips slick with one another's saliva. Conner's hand
slowly makes its way back to my side, and when it comes into contact with
my skin I sigh, making sure he can feel my light moan against his lips. Our
tongues exploring eager mouths, and I feel his hand slide lower, moving
down my side and coming to rest on my left hip just above the waistline of
my jeans.

I make sure he knows his touch is welcome here; the lower his hand moves,
the more I squirm and moan. Perhaps I exaggerate how pleasurable this light
touching is, but it is pleasurable, and I want Conner to know it. He thumb
moves under the waistband, and this time I don't have to exaggerate
anything at all. His touch, now that it's so low on my body, drives me
wild. I gasp, not completely sure if Conner is arousing me or tickling me.

"Like that?" he asks.

I nod, and bite my lower lip before saying, my breathing elevated, "I want
to feel you touching me, Conner. I need it."

My pleading takes things to the next level. Conner takes command, pressing
his hands against my body and guiding me onto my back. At first I'm sitting
up slightly, but he tugs at my legs so that I'm lying flat. He climbs
between my legs and slowly lowers his body into mine.

"I just never thought..." he says, trailing off. He's more frantic now,
touching my stomach and chest with enthusiastic fingers. When he kisses me
again, it's firm and lustful and anxious. I feel the weight of his body
press down onto me, a heavy but comforting sensation. Very slowly, he
allows our tummies to slide up against one another until his full weight is
on me and we're lying crotch-to-crotch.

Conner is hard. Like really, really hard.

Feeling Conner's stiff dick against my body causes a sequence of almost
involuntary reactions. My legs wrap up around his butt, squeezing his body
between my thighs, and my hands wander down into the back of his pants, my
palms running across the muscles of his back and then all the way down to
his ass. Conner's eyes open wide, an almost shocked expression, and then
soften in a haze of lust.

We roll around in this position for a while, growing more frantic and
sloppy with our kissing. My pants start to pull down off my butt - I think
assisted by Conner slightly - and when we roll onto our sides I take a
moment to slip them down off my body so that I'm only wearing underwear. I
pause briefly to be thankful it's a sexy pair - some trunks Charlie had
recently made me, navy blue with a pale blue crotch that made my bulge look
bigger, not that it needed help tonight.

Conner looks at me, his expression happy and boyish but seething with an
intense longing. I wonder how many times he's fantasized about this moment,
how many times he's come, touching himself pretending it was me. Needless
to say, these thoughts don't calm me down, not even a little.

I reach for the button to Conner's jeans, deftly unfastening it. "Um..." he
says uncertainly.

Looking up into his eyes, I see that the look of concern has returned. "Too
much too fast?" I ask, not wanting to push him too far this first time.

"Um, no," he replies. "That's not it at all. I mean...if it's too fast for
you..."

I shake my head, and then rest my palm right on the crotch of his jeans,
where an obvious hardness is straining to get out. "It isn't," I say.

"Oh! Cool. Um, it's just...uh...I'm just, you know..." he trails off,
blushing a little.

Conner isn't just hot, I discover, he's also freaking adorable. I finish
his sentence for him, "Overly happy? Experiencing localized chronic
swelling?"

He laughs. "No, no. Well, I mean yeah. But that's not what I was going to
say. It's just, I'm not wearing underwear, in case you needed to know
that."

Like I said - freaking adorable. "Cool," I shrug, pulling the zipper to his
jeans down slowly. And then I add, "Hey, Conner?"

"Yeah?"

"Just so there's no confusion - in about two minutes, you're not going to
be wearing pants either."

"Um. Ok, cool...OH!" he exclaims, an appropriate reaction considering I've
shoved my hand into his pants and found what it was I was looking for.

Feeling Conner up for the first time is...awesome. He may not be wearing
underwear, but his boner sure is wedged in his pants really good - poor
guy. I pull it out through the open fly, careful not to be too rough. And
then there he is, pointing out of his pants in happy, glorious proof of his
masculinity.

Conner's dick is long, and beautiful - slender, long, straight and...well,
long. "Wow, that's a big one!" I say involuntarily and somewhat
stupidly. Sheesh, I'm glad he's not tiny - who knows what I might have
exclaimed if I'd pulled out a nine centimeter boner. He smiles bashfully,
but I can tell he's happy for my praise. And praise isn't the only thing
his dick is going to get from me tonight.

I slowly wrap my hand around his shaft, feeling the steel-hard firmness of
it beneath the velvety soft skin. Conner gasps. "Oh, jeez. Wow...um...wow!"
I can't help but flash a big grin - I'd put a lot of practice into giving
hand jobs. And this wasn't even an earnest get- you-off attempt - I was
just feeling him up.

Conner's dick extends perfectly straight from his body, later we measure it
- at my insistence and with my assistance - at just over twenty-one
centimeters. I'm seventeen, so I find it a little confusing that his seems
so dang long. I guess the four centimeters makes the difference between
"sizably above average" and "wow, that's a big one!" Or perhaps it's
because it is so very straight - protruding proudly from his crotch like an
arrow.

"What?" Conner asks sheepishly.

I realize that I'm staring at him rather intently, making him
self-conscious. "You're just really hot," I say. "Take off your pants."

He complies, sliding his jeans off so that he's completely naked. "What if
someone comes in here?" he asks, laughing nervously and looking around the
huge empty room.

I shrug. "Then they'll see two naked guys falling in love, no big deal."

This argument proves a winner, probably because I maneuver myself over him
and start gently caressing his cock. The tip is the same width as his
shaft, a cute pink head capping the long shaft. Now that he's naked, I see
that his balls are large and smooth, hanging delicately from the root of
his shaft.

I explore his naked body with a childlike wonder, fingering his dick and
then feeling the heft of his sack. He lies back, letting me touch, explore,
play. This is just all so...weird.  Here was this guy I'd known forever,
one of my best friends, and now he was naked, and hard, wanting me - and I
was in love with him, and he with me. The world had changed, and everything
was different now.

Conner reaches up to massage the lump distending my trunks. Charlie was
good about providing plenty of space in his underwear, and he was also
great at accentuating a guy's assets. There's a pretty huge baby blue tent
drawing attention to my happiest parts, and Conner has little trouble
finding them, swirling his fingertips across the tip of my cock through the
fabric.

"Uh, that feels so good," I groan.

"What you're doing is...ugh...really nice too. You like this?" He massages
my tip between his fingers, the fabric of my underwear slick from my
natural lubricants, which have begun flowing freely.

I buck my hips, pressing my crotch into his hand. "I do. I really, really
do."

Conner's green eyes stare into mine deeply. "Do you want out of that
underwear? It looks...confining."

I repeat myself, "I really, really do."

He reaches up and very gently pulls the waistband of my trunks forward and
away from my body. My cock immediately rejoices at being freed, and despite
being pretty boned throbs and expands a little more. I help Conner slip my
underwear off, and then marvel at the sensation of being completely nude
out in the open like this - completely nude with him like this.

Conner looks my body over appreciatively, and I lie back to let him explore
me with his fingers. He takes his time, stroking my torso lightly and
feeling the lines of my muscles.  He tickles the hairs along my inner
thighs, and just when I think he's going to touch my naked dick he passes
it by, instead feeling where my hip bones press against my young skin. I
writhe in anticipation for each touch - has he seriously never done this
before?  He's pretty freaking good at it!

I've closed my eyes when he says, "Devon?"

I look up at him, his green eyes sparkling in the starlight. "Yeah?" I ask.

"Whatever happens - whatever all of this means...I just want you to
know. Right now, tonight, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in
my life." He leans in and kisses me, simultaneously wrapping his hand
around my penis. I feel hormones flush through my entire system, and my
eyes go wide - the room looks considerably brighter, so I'm sure my pupils
have just dilated as large as they can. I moan, a loud, lusty sound that is
drowned out in his mouth. I feel Conner smile as he kisses me, enjoying the
way his compliment and his touch are making me feel.

And then we go at it.

I grab him, and stroke that long, beautiful cock to the best of my
abilities. He strokes me, and we kiss. Then we actually take our hands off
each other's dicks for a while, feeling an urgency that demands we suck and
lick at one another's lips with hands wrapped around each other's heads. I
love the feel of his hair between my fingers, and I love the feel of his
fingers running through my hair.

There's something about this being more than just play that makes us
last. I feel that I could explode at any moment, but I don't, which is
pretty notable considering my age.  Each time I feel myself wandering close
to the edge, I back down, moving on to touch, taste, feel another part of
Conner's body, or him mine, so that we explore and moan and touch for
hours.

"Oh my god, oh man, I never imagined...this," he grunts as our explorations
grow more frantic.

I laugh. "We're going to have to make up for lost time."

He inhales sharply, wincing in what I take to be a seductive mix of
pleasure and pain.  "Yeah...what you...uh...just said. Yeah, let's do
that."

We eventually wind up seated face to face, legs wrapped around one another
in the lotus position. Our dicks are mere centimeters from one another, and
we're slowly stroking away staring into each other's eyes. The intimacy I'm
experiencing with Conner tonight is beyond anything I'd ever experienced,
in many ways beyond anything I'd ever imagined.

"This isn't a dream, right?" Conner asks.

I shake my head, answering with a voice slightly shaky from light sexual
gasps, "No way.  But if it were, I'd wake up and head straight to your
bed."

"Mmmm...me too. Do you like this?"

He's very lightly stroking me, letting his fingers run up the sides of my
shaft. "Mmmm hmmm. But I may need to cum soon. How long have we been doing
this? I'm starting to get...I don't know, frenzied or something. Can you
die from not coming for too long?"

This earns a somewhat loud laugh, which echoes in the empty room and
startles Conner despite the fact he's the one making the noise. He answers
in a whisper. "No, I don't think so. At least, I hope not. But let's not
tempt fate."

"Totally." Conner's cock is hot in my hand, and right now it's pretty
slick. I love feeling it, and resolve to spend a significant portion of my
life with Conner's hard dick around my general person.

"You're so cute, the way you're always thinking," Conner says. "God I love
you." It's an off-handed comment, one that might have embarrassed him if he
hadn't been so soaked with lust and sweat and sex. Sitting here, our young
love blossoming for the first time, it just feels really nice.

"I want to get off too," he says, after gasping at a long stoke I've made
down his dick, "but I want to ask you something...no, wait, maybe it's too
weird. Never mind."

It's funny that he can be bashful even in this position, our young bodies
nude and inches from each other. I decide not to let him off the hook. "No
way, you can't say that and then 'never mind.' What did you want to ask
me?"

He thinks about it for a minute, and then starts speaking slowly and
deliberately.  "Tonight has been...wow. Perfect. Well, this part anyway. I
want something from you, but I don't really know how to ask for it. I'm
sorry, I'm kind of a loser about some things."

I run my hand through his hair. "Aww, Conner, you're not a loser. And you
never have to worry about asking me anything. I'm very open-minded. Just
blurt it out."

"Uh...ok. Well...I guess then...um...tonight is really perfect, you know?"

I smile at the way he's waffling. "Yeah, you said that already. And?"

"I was just thinking, and you can say no if you want...I mean, of course
you can. You can always say no to anything, Devon. I would never get
angry. I mean, I don't think I would..."

I grab his cock firmly, both to be erotic and to be silly. "Conner, sheesh!
Out with it! The sun's nearly up and my balls are about to explode."

"Iwantyoutofuckme," he says in one long word - and I stop to think that
this really should be an official word, playable in Scrabble and
everything. Then I consider the implication of what he's asking. He
apparently does too. "Sorry, maybe it's too soon. I'm sorry, forget I said
that. I made you angry."

I think about it, and then smile at him. "Conner, I'm sooooooo not angry
right now. Why would I be angry? Tonight has been perfect, and you're
perfect. This is all very sudden, but it's awesome. It's a big thing, doing
that together. I've dreamed about my first time, you know? And it's never
been this perfect in my imagination. The stars behind us, you here naked in
front of me. I'm a little scared by how perfect everything is, to be
honest, but if you want that...if you're ready...yeah." My voice trails off
to be very small and meek at the end.

Conner takes my head in his hands and kisses me deeply, for about the
three- thousandth time tonight. When he pulls away, he stays very, very
close to me so that I can feel his hot breath on my lips as he
speaks. "I've never wanted anything more in my life. I've been trying to
figure out how to ask you for the past two hours. I think the only reason I
actually got up the courage was because I was afraid our dicks were going
to fall off. But I want it. I want you in me. Make me yours, Devon."

What can a guy say to that?

I say yes, of course, but not before blushing furiously, and not before
telling Conner I didn't know what I was doing. "I really don't know quite
how...I mean, mostly it seems pretty obvious, but you know. I don't even
know what position is best to start with."  Suddenly I feel very inept and
somewhat ashamed at my ignorance about such things.

Conner places a palm against my cheek reassuringly. "Hey, calm down. It's
okay. We have to start somewhere. And I watch a lot of porn. I think I know
where to start." He flips over onto hands and knees so that he's facing the
window. The position allows him to drop one leg to the floor, and this does
make his most secret place more accessible.  "See - like this. Try slipping
it in."

He doesn't have to ask twice. I gulp and then rummage through my discarded
pants, taking the small bottle of lube Sean had given me and slicking some
onto my shaft.  Almost as an afterthought, I squeeze a little into the
crack of Conner's ass and then swirl some around his hole with my
finger. I'd played with this spot on the other guys, but never in
preparation for fucking them, and somehow that made this feel really
different. I slip a finger in, feeling Conner's heartbeat way down inside
his body.

"Are you sure you want me to try this? It might hurt." I say, trying to
slip two fingers into the tight space.

Conner grunts, but I can tell it's in approval at what I'm doing. "Yeah,
I'm sure. No offense, Devon, but it won't be the biggest thing that's ever
been up there."

I raise an eyebrow, which he can't see since he's facing away from me. I'll
have to ask about that one later. I step up behind him, my mind hesitant
and a little scared, but my dick very eager. The height of the seat is
perfect; Conner easily lifts his ass to exactly the level of my erection. I
press my rock-hard helmet against his anus, and with just a little pressure
it pushes past the sphincter, sliding slowly into him.

"Ohhh...yeah. That's...yeah...it's good, Devon. Just take a second...let me
get used to it, but it's good," he grunts and reassures me.

For my part, I'm a lot less concerned about hurting him. I'm less concerned
about everything. I've discovered a new, unbelievable sensation. Never,
never, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that this would feel so
very different from everything I've ever done before.

Conner's flesh envelopes me, hot and slick and wonderful. My body responds
with surge after surge after surge of hormones - pulsing, hot, wet, sticky
lust dripping down my body in waves. I'm trying to hold perfectly still,
both because I want to give Conner a second to acclimate to this and
because it won't take very much to make me cum, and although my body really
wants to cum, I want to last at least a little.

"Ok, I'm ready," Conner says, "Go ahead and thrust some. But go slow."

"Does it hurt?" I ask.

"Uh, it's more like feeling, um...really full. But it's good. How is it for
you?"

"I see stars," I respond in a goofy, lusty voice. But I'm telling the
truth, and I swear some of them aren't the ones outside the window.

I do as Conner says and push all the way into him. OH MAN! Then I pull out
- wow! I work in and out, placing my hands on his hips to steady him. He
lifts his torso higher, which offers even better access, and pretty soon
we're together discovering what we later proclaim the meaning of life.

As I slide in and out, Conner starts making louder moaning noises. I'm
concerned that they're partially in pain, but my body is completely
consumed with lust so I don't stop. My muscles work in perfect harmony, my
buttocks and legs thrusting into my lover. And the sensations to my cock -
indescribable. It's like getting twenty blowjobs at once.

I feel like closing my eyes, but I can't. I want to see everything - my
dick moving in and out of Conner's ass, the way his buttocks flex and move
as I thrust into him, the arch of his back. My senses are on fire.

"Uh...how...uh...you...uh...doing?" he asks, placing his words between
grunts of pleasure.

I run a hand down my chest - it's like stroking myself with liquid
pleasure. "I think...ah...I really like this. You're so...ah...hot."

"You too...uh...wow...that feels soooo good."

"I'm uh...almost there," I say, warning Conner in case he wants me to pull
out.

I'm disappointed when he asks me to do just that. "Ok, ok," he says, "Wait,
here, stop a second." I reluctantly pull out of him, my dick throbbing with
pleasure and lust. "Sorry," he explains, "I want to see it when you
come. Here, try this position."

Lust glazes over my eyes when I realize he just wants to shift
positions. He rolls over on his back, allowing one leg to fall to the floor
and raising the other up onto my shoulder. I get what he's trying to do and
prop that leg up so that, again, his asshole is more accessible.

I enter him again and begin my thrusting anew. Conner seems to know what
he's doing - this position allows me to maintain leverage by holding onto
his thigh, and again he's at exactly the right height. And being enveloped
by his body feels just as wonderful in this position as the last - maybe
even better. From here I can reach down to stroke my panting friend, who
has remained hard.

I'd love to do this for hours on end, but I am a teenager, and all too soon
the pleasure is too much for my young body.

"Oh my god, fuck me Devon...that's so...fuck...yeah, do it right like
that," Conner encourages me.

"AH! Ah, I'm about to...Conner...I'm going to..."

"Look at me...here, look at me," he pleads. I have no problem complying,
opening my eyes to see him staring into mine. He's completely flushed, his
eyes glazed with young lust. Seeing him smiling at me, waiting for me to
come deep in his body, it pushes me over the edge.

"I'M, I'M, I'M CUMMING!" I yell, way too loud for the empty room. My words
echo back at me just as my cock erupts. Later I swear that I came within
inches of dying from pleasure, my body pushing into Conner for all it's
worth and the sensations paralyzing me with my climax. Conner's ass tenses
and flexes, and I wonder if he can feel my cock pulsing and shooting my
spunk into him. Probably, because he's moaning along with me.

And then Conner's eyes cross slightly, an expression of extreme ecstasy
crossing his face. He moans, and then despite the fact that I'm only very
lightly touching him, he yells as he starts coming, albeit not as loud as I
had. "OH! Devon! Devon! Devon!" He gets bonus points for calling my name.

Conner's cock erupts, first shooting a long, solid stream of semen into his
face and then pulsing a second and third shot onto this pecs. Three more
shots cover his tummy. Each time he shoots he tenses the muscles of his
lower body, almost murdering me with pleasure as my overly sensitive cock
is squeezed hard deep in the confines of his ass. In the end, his penis
erupts with ten sizable shots, and he winds up covered in cum.

When he finishes his mega-orgasm he looks at me and smiles. "Feel good?" he
asks once he's caught his breath a little. I'm also panting, and give him a
very lame thumbs up.

Conner's dick is still hard, so I grab it, sliding some of his semen over
the tip. He shudders and yelps. "Ahhh...heh...ok, ok. Wow...OW! Ok, too
much...you're too good at that...chill," he begs once the
extreme-sensitivity sets in. I release him, his long, slender cock standing
proudly at attention, although it's starting to droop a little.

I look down at my own. It's...flaccid. "Hey, that's weird," I say.

"What?" Conner asks, still out of breath a little.

"My dick went down. Usually it doesn't do that until I've come at least
twice. I always need seconds. I guess you wore me out," I explain.

"Cool," he says.

"Wow, you were messy," I say, and then add, "And if you even dare say
'sorry,' I'm never doing that with you again."

"Then that's good, cause there's no way I'm apologizing. It was a fun mess
to make."

"Yeah, it really was."

Soaked with endorphins, I push Conner over so that he's lying parallel with
the window, facing into the room. I slide up against him, face to face,
wrapping my arms and legs around him so that we maintain as much body
contact as possible. I have no idea what the future may bring, but for now
I have him in my arms, and I'm not letting go.

As if reading my mind, he says, "I want for life to always be like this."

"Me too, Conner."

"Devon?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I call you sometime?"

I thump him on his chest for the joke, my finger landing in a cold glob of
his spunk. And then reply, "You can do anything you want."

"Devon?"

"Yeah?"

"Promise me this isn't a dream."

This time I pinch his butt, which earns me a loudly exclaimed "Ow!" and
then a chuckle.  "You're not dreaming. See, fully awake," I say. "But it
feels like a dream."

"It does," he agrees. "Thanks for holding me. It feels nice."

It does feel nice, and I'd almost done it subconsciously. It was like we
belonged together this way, and I wanted to stay here forever. "The stars
are beautiful," I mention, looking out into space. It's a bit dizzying,
lying next to the window like this.

"Beautiful and infinite," Conner says, looking into my eyes. And then he
yawns, and I yawn too. And then we both fall into a peaceful sleep, two
naked boys, having found one another at last.


To be continued



Author's End Notes

Soundtrack: I associate a song with each chapter. Compile them, and you'd
have a soundtrack to the story. The song for chapter 15 is Hide and Seek by
Imogen Heap. It has been Conner's song from the day that I imagined his
back-story, and it's the song he's playing on the deck in the story. As a
side note, when Devon runs back and changes the music, I imagine him
switching it to Kids by MGMT. This was a song I'd associated with Devon and
Conner, and it's come to be a sort of theme for them as I'm writing.


This chapter has been with me since I first conceived the story. Much of
the tale has developed as I've written it over the past two years, but
there are three or four elements that have been there since day one. The
most important, to me, was the image of two boys finding each other, one
having lost everything, and one looking for something they haven't quite
figured out.

So if you were to delve into my original notes, before there was ever a
wank club and before Devon liked mac and cheese and before Zane even
existed, Devon was going to end up with Conner, and the two were going to
get together on a large deck next to a window looking out onto the stars
after having a fight, and after Conner explained the sad circumstances of
his life. I always wanted this point in the story to be sad, happy, sexy,
and romantic. I hope the finished scenes live up to this.

In many ways, we could end Devon's story here. He's happy, and we can
imagine that he has a long, happy life with Conner and his friends. He's
had a lot of fun along the way, and he's had a lot of sex too. As an
author, it's an alluring prospect, to leave the boys sleeping there
together, knowing they'll forever be young, happy and in each other's
arms. It's also a lot less work to leave them there.

But Devon's story isn't over. He's still on a long interstellar voyage, and
there is still a lot to write about. What's the deal with Steven Caine, and
the escalating tension on the ship? How will having Conner in his life be
different for Devon? How will it change the other relationships he has on
the ship?

When I wrote chapter 15, I asked the members of the yahoo group whether
they wanted the story to continue. They said yes, and so it has, and
continues to do so.

Erik