Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 14:31:21 -0600
From: Charles Hughes <the.empty.room@hotmail.com>
Subject: JUST ORDINARY GUYS - Chapters 4 & 5

This story is fiction, describing the developing friendship of two young
boys, including their sexual experiences.  If you are not 18 years of age,
or if it illegal for any reason for you to read such material, you are to
leave now.

Copyright 2008, Charles Hughes  All rights reserved

I will try to answer all emails:  the.empty.room@hotmail.com


JUST ORDINARY GUYS - Chapter 4


None of the guys at school was surprised when James tried out for the
Summer League baseball team on one of the Saturdays right before school
ended.  The seventh graders went outside during gym class in the spring
to play ball, and James had become known as a good pitcher, and he
was even better at bat.  So at the tryouts, he was chosen right away.

Danny, in a different gym class, had decided to improve his skills at
baseball during those games with his class, and James had begun to help
him with some batting practice at the park once the weather got better.
At the tryouts Danny wasn't placed right away, but he wasn't one of the
last, either.

When they were walking home after the tryouts they were both excited.  As
soon as school was out, they'd get uniforms.  And they didn't mind the
dust and grit on their jeans and t-shirts from the tryouts, even though
they both knew they'd hear about it from their moms.

"Hey, James," Danny said.  "Why do they call it 'tryouts' when everybody
who shows up gets on the team?  It's not like anybody's not going to get
on the team."

"Don't know.  I guess the coach is trying to see what everybody can do.
Steve will be a starting pitcher, you wait and see," James answered.

Steve had been in the seventh grade with them the previous year, though
they'd not had any classes with him.

"He looks like a ballplayer!" Danny said.  "Those shoulders give him that
swing..."  Danny stopped before he said too much.  He wondered what Steve
looked like under those jeans and t-shirt.  Too bad the league teams
couldn't use the school showers.  Didn't make any sense to any of them,
but they would play on the middle school ball diamond but weren't allowed
to use the school locker room or showers.

James was thinking about Steve, too.  In his mind he ran through the boys
who had been there.  There were a couple of cute guys just out of the
sixth grade... Whoa.  What's this "cute guys" shit.  I can't think like
that!  I got to stop this!  But running the catalogue of faces and bodies
through his mind had made his dick start to stiffen.  Glancing at his
best friend beside him and hoping he didn't notice only made it worse.

They parted as Danny went into his house and James continued down the
street.  No sleepover tonight, Danny thought.  He wasn't finished reading
that book for English, and his mom wouldn't allow it.

Danny stripped in the bathroom and looked at himself in the full length
mirror on the back of the door.  Well, he was dirty, all right.  But the
body under the dirt had started growing a little.  Hadn't it?  The
boys were almost exactly the same height now.  Danny flexed his arms and
grinned.  No Mr. America yet, but there were some muscles there that had
gotten a little bigger during the school year.  Gym class probably helped
with that, he thought, all the exercises and climbing they had to do
during the winter.

He turned so he could see his back and tried to see some muscle there.
Maybe.  His butt, he grinned to himself, was nice and round.  Maybe the
exercises in gym had helped with that.  He turned to face the mirror
again.  His dick had stiffened, and he got it fully hard with a few
strokes.  A little over four inches now.  He'd measured it a couple of
times.  He would have been embarrassed for anyone to know that, but no
one did.  Least of all James.

He grinned again.  Maybe the exercises with my hand had helped there,
too, he thought.  He couldn't tell from the locker room and showers just
how long some of the other dicks were.  When they were floppy they came
in all different sizes, which had surprised him.  A couple of guys looked
kind of long when they were soft, so they'd probably be really long when
they were hard.  So, what did four inches mean?  Was that... normal, or
what?  What size would James be?  Had he ever measured his?

And some of the guys in his gym class who were in the eighth grade were
starting to get hair down there.  When would his start?  Did James have
any hair yet?

He didn't even bother with feeling guilty for thinking about James -- or
other boys -- now.  He stepped in the shower and began to lather up.  He
was gay.  So what?  He's just an ordinary guy who happens to be gay.
That's just the way it is.  He knew it.  Danny could never ever let
anyone discover his secret, but it was true.  He really liked thinking
about good-looking guys and what they might look like, what they might
do...

He ran through his head some of the dicks from the shower room in gym as
he stroked.  Damn it.  What would James look like?  He tried to keep his
jacking slow, but that point came when he just had no control over it.
He had to pump fast, need to, couldn't stop it...  His dick shot out a
nice stream of it this time, followed by a couple of drops.  It never
lasted long enough.

By the time school was over for the year it had already gotten pretty
warm.  But that's the way they liked it.  They biked with their shirts
off and sometimes shot hoops or joined a pick-up game at the park where
almost everybody took his shirt off.  It was just what ordinary guys do,
James told himself.  He really liked being shirtless, but he'd never said
anything about it.  It just felt so good!  Besides, he thought, he looked
pretty good from the shoulders down to his waist.

"You always tan better before I do!" Danny called over to James as they
pedaled around at the edge of town one day.  "How come?"

"I don't know," James shrugged back.  That was a lie, he knew.  His
mother was fair-skinned, but his father had had a nice deep complexion
that made him look tanned all year round.  He had gotten his father's
complexion, so he tanned quickly. His dad had been filled in a car
accident when he was 10.  He had told Danny what had happened, but he
just didn't like taking about his dad.

His dad was late coming home from work one Friday evening, and his mom
was starting to worry.  She and James were sitting on the front porch
when a police car pulled into their drive.  She told  James to stay on
the porch and went out to talk to them, and when she came back she told
him what had happened.  They cried together.  James didn't even remember
the funeral very much.  He remembered that he had spent a lot of time in
his room crying.

Summer meant time to ride longer.  There was an old factory at the edge
of town that had been empty for years.  The boys didn't know what had
been made there, but the big empty parking lot was a great place to ride
around and try some fancy bike manouvers, and a loose fence in the back
made it easy to get into the grounds.  They weren't supposed to be there,
they knew, so they had to keep it a secret.

When they were poking around the previous summer they had found a broken
door and gotten into the building to look around.  This time they went
straight to the building to see how things had fared during the winter.
The bottom floor had some old rusting equipment sitting around, and the
other two floors were just littered with junk.

The rusting machinery on the first floor didn't really interest them much
anymore, so they carefully went up the concrete steps to the second floor
where there were rooms that had probably been offices.  Last summer Danny
had sat at one of the old metal desks and pretended to be the boss as
James reported on all the fantastic creations that were being
manufactured below.  But that had kind of been kid stuff.

It all looked pretty much the same, except maybe there were a few more
windows broken out.

In one of the rooms, however, they found something that had not been
there before.  A mattress was lying on the floor, and some beer bottles
were scattered around it.

"Whoa," James said.  "Looks like somebody moved in."

"Looks like they moved out again, too," Danny said.  "Hey, look here."
He pointed to the floor at one side of the mattress.  "What's that?"

James came over to see.  Danny was pointing to a used condom.  "That's
a... a rubber," James stammered.

Danny had heared the word at school and knew what it was for, but he had
never seen one.

"Used, too," James said.  There was clearly some dried cum inside it.

"That's cum," James said.  He immediately blushed.

"That is?"  Danny asked, stooping to look closer.  He'd seen his own
dried cum before, sometimes on his belly if he fell asleep before he
wiped it off, and sometime on his boxers.  He tried to wash those out
before his mom got to them.  He wondered what his cum would look like if
there was a whole puddle of it.  He leaned a little closer, wondering
what a whole lot of cum together looked like.

"Don't touch the fucking thing!" James said.

Danny looked at him and started laughing at his choice of words.  James
had a blank look on his face for a second and then he got it.  He
laughed, too.

"Oh, damn -- fucking thing!"  Danny was giggling almost uncontrolably.
"Fucking... thing..."

"Fucking... aw shut up!  Fucking thing..."  James backed over to the wall
to keep from falling over.  "Well," he said, "at least we know... why
there's a mattress here." He finally calmed down.  "Who do you think it
was?  Maybe some high school kids?"

"Don't know.  But they've been long gone," Danny said.

"Not too long gone, though," James said, picking up one of the bottles
next to the mattress.  "Not as much dust on this one."

"Fuck!" Danny said.  "Put that filthy thing down!"

James held it up.  "A toast!  Here's to the visitors in our factory.
Hope they had a fucking great time fucking!"

Danny laughed.

James tipped the presumably-empty bottle in front of his face, pretending
to drink from it, and almost half of the bottle spilled out onto his bare
chest and his jeans.

"Aw, shit!  Aw fuck it!" James threw the bottle into a corner.  And
slapped at his chest and belly trying to get it off.

Danny was laughing again, so hard he could hardly speak.  "Oh, man... you
stink of the stuff.  Your mom... is going to kill you!"

"It's not funny, damn it!  Help me get this stuff off."

Danny stepped over and ran his hands down James' chest and belly.  He
realized they were just pushing the remaining beer down to his waist and
into...  Suddenly Danny stopped laughing.  He was touching James in a way
he never had before.  He stepped back and turned his face away to hide
his embarrassment.

James had hardly noticed.  "And it's on my jeans...!  Aw shit!  What am I
going to do?"

Danny turned back.  "Your mom will still be at work.  You can go home and
take a shower, and even wash your clothes.  Dry them, and she'll never
know the difference."

"Can't," James.  "She took a day off today.  She's home."

Danny shrugged.  "Then you can do it at my house.  No problem."

They went back downstairs, James' jeans swishing wetly as he moved.  They
got back to their bikes and went to Danny's house.   By this time the
jeans had partly dried, but in the heat and sun the smell was just as
strong.  They dropped their bikes in the backyard, and James rushed to
little porch at the back door.

"No!  Wait a minute!  You can't go in and stink up our house," Danny
said.  "You may be okay, but I won't!  Mom will kill me, not you.  Gotta
take them off out here."

"But the washing machine is just inside the door..."

"And so'll be the stink if you go in there," Danny said.  "Just take them
off and leave them out here.  You go up and take your shower, and
I'll throw the jeans in the washing machine real fast and turn it on."

"Yeah, okay."  James kicked his shoes off and pulled his socks off.  He
dropped his jeans and stepped out of them and started to turn to the
door.

"Oh, damn, no!"  Danny saw that James' boxers were soaked now, too.
"They'll stink just as bad."  And they were sticking a bit to his
groin... Was that his dick through the wet cotton?

"I'm not going to get naked out here!" James said.

"Nobody can see anything -- look around," Danny pointed.  It was true; no
neighboring windows overlooked the yard.  "Look, open the door, drop
them, and run to the shower.  You can't go in there stinking!"

James turned to the door and hesitated for a moment.  He pulled his
boxers down and quickly stepped out of them, dropped them next to his
jeans, and ran inside the open door.

Danny stood for a moment.  James had been naked.  Those nice round
butt-cheeks.  His tanned back... He'd been naked, completely, totally
naked.  He felt a strangeness in his stomach.  Naked, in the sun...

He slowly picked up the clothes and went in, dropping the shoes on the
floor.  He stuffed the jeans and socks into the washer, holding the
boxers in his hands a minute.  He looked at the crotch of them.  He
smelled there.  It was stale beer.  What would it have smelled like
otherwise, he wondered.

He put the detergent in and started the washer.  It was a small load, so
it didn't take long for the washer to fill enough.  The agitator inside
started working, swishing and moving the clothes around.  And making
the machine vibrate.  He pressed his groin against the vibrating
maching.

Danny had discovered this before, but this time it was James' clothes
inside.  When he opened his legs just a little, the machine was pressed
right against his dick, already hard from the scene at the back door.  He
could feel the vibrations... oh fuck yes, that was so nice...  James'
clothes inside...  from his body... his boxers...

He kept pressing hard and clamped his lips together with his teeth so he
wouldn't make a sound.  Still, he started moaning quietly as his dick
responded to the humming and vibrating machine to which it was pressed.
He wiggled his hips a little.  He was moving the underside of his dick
with the inside of his thighs while the other side was massaged by the
machine.  Danny groaned a long and satisfied sound as his body was racked
with a wonderful cum, not really like any he'd had before.

His knees were weak, and he had to hold onto the washer for a minute.
Then he realized his boxers were wet with cum.  He went into the
half-bath next to the laundry room, lowered his pants and boxers, and
cleaned off with a couple of paper towels.  There might be a few darker
hairs starting down there.  It was about time.  He put his boxers in the
dirty laundry bag and pulled out a dirty-but-dry pair to replace them.

And upstairs in the bathroom, James was jacking his dick with the soapy
suds.  He had been naked, and in front of Danny.  Outside, sort of.  What
had Danny thought of his naked body?  What if it had been Danny who had
spilled the beer, had stripped at the back door, had gotten naked right
there...

He had run to the shower with his hard dick bouncing in front of him, but
Danny wouldn't have been able to see that.  Just his ass...  He groaned
as his dick responded.

"SSssssssssss..." he hissed quietly though his teeth as his dick
stiffened even more and then thrashed in his hand.  The tightness inside
him exploded with the overpowering pleasure he loved, and he finished
with a soft "Mmmmm..."

As he was rinsing off, he thought, That doesn't mean I'm gay.  I'm just a
boy like all the guys I know, he thought.  Even straight boys jack off in
the shower.  He wouldn't think about the fact that he'd been picturing
Danny in his mind. The whole time.




JUST ORDINARY GUYS - Chapter 5


Their moms were downstairs playing cards, and the boys were up in James'
room trying out his "NFL Live" video game.  Danny laughed and said he
thought it was funny that they were playing a football game and talking
about their baseball team.

"Fuck football when it comes to real life," James said.  "It's baseball
for me."

"Well, you're good enough you can say that.  I really think we would have
lost last weekend if you hadn't hit that last one."  Danny thought James
was the best on the team, but James would always insist that Steve was
better.  And he'd insist it was a team sport, with a place for everybody.

"Okay," James said, "I hit it, but it wouldn't have done any good if Phil
hadn't already gotten three guys in from the bases with that line drive
they messed up.  That game was won in the sixth inning, not the ninth."

He gave up on the video game after a while and decided to "practice"
their poker.  They had taught themselves to play, with the help of a
couple of books.  They knew they weren't too good at it, but they liked
playing cards and assumed they'd get better as they played.  They liked
"Go Fish," too, and poker was a lot more complicated.

Soon Danny's mom called up that it was time for them to go.

"Can't you stay over tonight?" James asked.

"Naw, not tonight.  Mom says she's going shopping in the morning and I
have to go with her.  She wants to get an early start."

"Okay, Danny.  See you at practice tomorrow afternoon?"

"Sure.  Nite."  Danny went down, said good-night to James' mom, and left
with his mom.

James' mom came up and peeked in the door.  "Think I'll go to bed,
Jimmy."

"James," James corrected.  Sometimes his mom just forget; he always
reminded her and assumed she'd eventually remember, at least most of the
time.

"Jaaames," his mom grinned, stretching the name out. "Don't stay up too
late, Jaaames."

"All right, maaaawm," James grinned.  She closed the door, and he
gathered up the cards and put them back in the box.  He decided to read
for a while.  The boys read to each other a few times during the school
year when they had books assigned, and they had continued now and then
when one of them found something really good.  James had decided to
try "Murders in the Rue Morgue" tonight.  He thought Dupin had been a
pretty cool detective in "The Purloined Letter" they'd just read to each
other the week before.

He decided to forget the shower this evening, stripped to his boxers, and
carried the book to his bed, propping up the pillows.  Before he started
reading, he wondered where he would hide something so no one would find
it, like in that story.

"You'll never find it, Danny Dupin," James thought in his mind.  James
imagined the "amateur detective" ransacking his room, opening drawers and
looking under the mattress, frustrated at finding nothing.

Glancing at the small stack of papers with his school books, Minister
of... (What would he be minister of?  Defense) ...
Defense James gloats at the detective, "Not ever."

But the clever Inspector Danny has seen the glance; he says, "Aha!  I
have foiled you, you dirty blackmailer.  You see, I've read 'The
Purloined Letter', too!"  The Inspector quickly leafs through all the
papers.  "Homework?  This is all nothing but your old homework?"

"And most of it graded 'A,' you'll note, my dear detective."  (This is my
daydream, James thinks to himself; I can put any grades on them I want!)
"Perhaps, Danny Dupin, you're not quite as good as you think you are."

"You scoundrel.  I know you've been blackmailing the Queen, and I will
find that letter!  Even if I have to strip search you."  The detective
stands over the Minister of Defense James, lying helplessly on his bed.

The detective is a very strong man, and he yanks James' shirt from his
body, popping the buttons off.  He pulls James' jeans open at the waist
and yanks them completely off.  James is shocked at this quite improper
behavior of the famous, strong, and very handsome detective; he can
hardly move.

Danny Dupin slowly moves his hands up the inner legs and thighs of his
suspect; he reaches for the hems on the legs of James' white boxers and
yanks them down to his ankles.

"Yes!" Danny says triumphantly.  "I've wanted to see you that way for a
long time!  Now you can hide nothing from me!  I can see it all!"  He
looks down at James' hard dick, its smooth, round head, big and red and
pointing to the ceiling.

James reached down to his dick as he imagines Danny reaching out for
it... James' hand strokes it faster.  It feels like a red-hot poker in
his hand, hard and strong, and he wants Danny to admire it.  James' face
contorts in what might have looked like pain, but it was that most
intense pleasure deep inside him, a pleasure increased immeasurably by
the imaginary Danny's admiration of his proud sex.  James' gut clenched
and his legs tensed.

The heat of his boyhood raced from his insides to his dick, up the hard
shaft, forcing the little pisshole open... And he...

"Ahhhhhhh fuck ooooooooooooo..."  James tried to keep quiet, but his
whispers echoed in his room.  When the surge of pleasure subsided a
little, he looked down at his dick.

Oh my god!

He had really cum.  It wasn't a daydream.  The light above him reflected
off the drops of whitish, watery cum on his fingers!  He moaned in the
afterglow of the pleasure.  He brought his fingers to his mouth and
licked it, real cum, his first cum.  It was good.  It was his.

He pulled his boxers up and lay still for a while, the taste of his sex
in his mouth.  He felt completely drained.  And Danny must never know he
was part of the fantasy that helped him cum for the first time.  He
felt... he had done something he shouldn't have.  Not the jacking off;
surely ordinary guys did that.  Not the cumming; they did that, too.
Well, when they were old enough.  (Is Danny?)  It was that he had made
Danny a part of this.  Boys did not dream of boys when they jacked off.
That was what girls were for.  That had been made fully clear in the
locker room at school.

He felt his mind wince at the possibility of what he didn't want to think
about.  He couldn't help it.  Thinking the way he did, imagining like he
did, looking at them the way he did.  It was a nasty thing, to be a
queer.  They all said that.  It was clearly wrong; boys were supposed to
dream of -- have sex with -- girls.  Marry them.  Make babies.  Boys and
boys... it wasn't right.

But what if you couldn't help it? he wondered.  What if it was so...
wonderful thinking of boys, looking at them, wanting to... do things with
them.  No.  With Danny.  He needed Danny in his life, he knew that.
Without Danny, he'd go back to being that quiet, isolated, lonely boy he
used to be in grade school.  He couldn't lose his friend.  He couldn't
let him know that when he... pretended sex, it was with Danny.

He slept and dreamed troubled dreams that left him tired the next
morning.

They biked to the movie theater a couple of afternoons later to catch a
matinee.  James paid little attention as he sat in the dark next to
Danny.  He glanced at his face now and then in the fickering light.  And
for the next several days he was cautious in what he said and did around
him.  Would Danny suspect something?  Now that he could cum, was there
something that would give him away?

He refrained from jacking off for a few days.  Then he woke early one
morning at the end of his first wet dream.  He had been dreaming, and
there was pain...

He was fully awake quickly, even as his dick shot out the last of a
small load of cum.  It had rushed out so quickly it had actually caused
just a little pain in his dick.  Was that normal? he wondered.  Was
something wrong with him, to do it without his hands and in his sleep?

He went to the public library that morning.  He knew his way around
enough that he only needed to ask the librarian for help once, and he
kept that in very general terms.  Eventually he found a whole shelf of
books on adolescent sexuality.  He wouldn't check them out; that would be
too embarrassing.  The librarian probably wouldn't even let him have
them!  But he took them to a corner table and spent a long time reading.

There were sections in some of the books on homosexuality.  He read those
carefully, too.  By the time he finished reading, sometime after lunch,
he had learned a lot about himself.  And it was not all just about what
sex was and how the body worked.  There was no question now, he
supposed.  He was different.  He wasn't just an ordinary guy anymore.

He was gay.

He had to rush to get to practice and didn't have time to run home to
find something to eat.  And he was in trouble from the first.  He was
late, for one thing, and the coach did not tolerate that.  Three laps
around the perimiter of the field -- and it was hot!  He just wasn't
paying attention, the coach said, when James missed catches, struck at
balls obviously too far out.  The coach finally told James to just sit on
the bench and watch for a while.

Watch! James thought to himself.  Just what was it he was supposed to be
watching?  Boys, of course!  He wished he could be different than the
different he knew he was!

The coach had no idea.  He watched Steve for a while, built perfectly to
be an athlete.  The coach wouldn't let them practice shirtless, but James
had seen Steve shirtless at the park a lot during the summer.  He had a
perfect build for someone who was thirteen -- going on 18!  He was
beautiful.  That was the word: beautiful.

Phil was almost 11 and among the youngest on the team; in fact, he was on
the team only because the coach stretched a point; you were supposed to
be 11 already.  And Phil was just plain cute.  That was the word, James
thought: cute.  And fuck all, there was nothing wrong with his saying...
well, thinking it.  Phil's baseball cap shaded his face a little, but his
cheeks and lips were visible.  When he swung at the ball his little body
was a demonstration of what "cute boy" really meant.

James held his cap in front of his face for a minute and wiped a tear of
frustration from his eye.  Can you be anything else than what you are?

Sammy, at 14 a year older than James and very tall, had a walk that said,
Come see what I've got.  James wanted to see it.  It probably had lots of
hair and could cum buckets.

Bobby Lee was either 12 or 13, James wasn't sure.  He wasn't cute, but he
sure had nice smooth skin without a blemish on it.  Now there was a boy
James had seen naked.  They'd been in the same gym class, the same locker
room, the same shower.  That smooth skin was just as nice on his chest
and around his hairless dick and around his smooth, round butt...

Neal was the same age as Phil but smaller.  Not yet cute, but soon.
Except for his pert little round ass.  That was cute already.  Well, his
eyes, too.  Okay, his grin, too.

See, James said to them all in his mind.  It's just me, guys.  Just your
ordinary guy.  Just your ordinary seventh grader who happens to be
queer.  Who will never fit in.  Just your ordinary gayboy...  Oh, fuck!

He slapped his cap back onto his head. He decided to get a drink from the
fountain and stood up. Suddenly, everything blurred, and he got dizzy.
He staggered once and then fell to the ground.

When he awoke just a minute later, everyone was standing around him, and
the coach was washing his face with a wet cloth.

"Jason, go get a bottle of water out of the cooler over there," the coach
directed.  To James he said, "Take it easy, James.  You just got too
hot.  Shouldn't have made you run those laps.  What did you have for
lunch?"

"Uh..." James started.  His voice was weak and sounded tiny.  "Uh, I
didn't have lunch... missed it..."

"Empty stomach, too," the coach said.  "Now, Steve, go over to my duffle
and get a couple of power bars.  Here, James, let's get you over here
where there's shade."

He walked James over to a picnic table under a small tree, and all the
boys followed along.

"Somebody sit here with him for a while..." the coach started.

"I will."  James heard Danny's voice.

"...and just sit with him.  Get him more water after he eats those power
bars.  Okay, Danny, you stay here with him.  Make sure he drinks that
second bottle of water.  And the rest of you guys, let's get back to
practice.  Come on."

The boys followed the coach out onto the field, some looking back over
their shoulders.

Danny sat next to James.  "Hey, James, are you all right?  What
happened?"

"Just like he said, I guess," James answered slowly.  "Just too hot."

Danny took a towel that had been on the bench and started to wipe James'
face and neck.

"Don't!" James said.  "I don't need that.  Just let me... sit."

"There's something wrong, James..."

"Yes! There's something wrong!  Wrong as hell!  Wrong as in 'all fucked
up'!"  James voice was weak but angry.  Then, beyond his control, tears
came to his eyes.  He grabbed the towel from Danny and tried to wipe his
eyes, but he gave up and just held the towel over his face.  And he
cried.  He wasn't loud, but his shoulders shook.

"Oh, James.  What's the matter?  Don't.  James, what is it?"  Danny was
frightened.  What was going on?  He'd never seen James cry.  Ever.

"Nothing's... nothing's wrong," came James muffled voice.

"But you said..." Danny started.

"No, no, nothing.  The sun.  Just got too hot.  No lunch.  You heard what
the coach said."

Danny sat with him for a while, and eventually James wiped his face with
the towel.  His face was red, his eyes swollen.

"James," Danny said quietly.  "I'm your best friend.  I'm your brother.
I just want you to be... okay."

"I know," James sighed.  He gave Danny a weak smile.  "I'll be okay in a
minute.  Just... Just stay with me here for a minute, will you?"

"Sure," Danny said, placing his arm around James' shoulder.

James stiffened for a moment, and then he relaxed.  The two boys sat
there in the shade until practice was over.

They walked their bikes home, since James wasn't sure he felt like
riding yet.  They didn't speak, James because he didn't want to and Danny
because he didn't know what to say.

They stopped in front of James' house, and he turned to Danny.  "Danny,
you're my blood brother, and blood brothers are for ever.  Right?"

"Uh, yeah.  Sure," Danny said.

James turned and walked his bike around into his backyard, Danny staring
at him until he turned the corner of the house.

James was never like this, Danny thought.  Something was wrong. He felt
that feeling in the pit of his stomach that he got when something was
wrong.  And he didn't like it.  No, he didn't like it at all.