Sea Change

Sea Change, Pt 18

I wish to retain all rights to this story. However, I am delighted to grant permission for AwesomeDude, or any other person or entity, to publish this story as long as there is no charge to the reader and as long as no changes are made to the story.

Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserved.

SEA CHANGE

CHAPTER 18 — Houston

With professional movers, much of the work comes after the move. It’s all the unpacking.

Roger had found a professional maid service to help Mary, and they scrubbed down every shelf and cabinet in the house before the movers arrived. After the movers left, the house was wall-to-wall furniture and boxes.

Mary had Daniel and me dodging Cutter as we carried boxes to rooms and put away clothing, books, dishes, and things I didn’t even know they had. We loaded them into closets and cabinets as she unpacked each box. We also broke down and stacked the empty boxes out onto the broad front porch. The first boxes she tackled were those with the bedding, so we could make all the beds. The next boxes we dealt with were bath items and towels. The kitchen could wait. The next couple of days, we would eat mainly fast food.

The first night, we were dead tired, but Daniel and I managed to break in his new bedroom properly (rescuing each other, of course). The second night we weren’t so tired. After Roger and Mary retired to bed, Daniel and I decided to wash our sweaty bodies off in the swimming pool.

We left Cutter inside the house; he loved the swimming pool and we decided he’d make too much noise. Then we had to climb over boxes and outdoor furniture on the back porch to get to the pool. It was made more difficult because we turned on no lights, not even the pool light.

Once past the porch, we climbed the walk to the pool. The yard had pine trees and the air was thick with their the scent in the warm, humid night. The trees were tall and thick, making the yard dark. Only the city glare from the sky over Houston gave us any light to see by.

Daniel and I stepped down into the water. It was warm. I took off my swimsuit and set it up on the coping at the side. As I turned back toward the pool, Daniel’s wet suit smacked me in the face. I tossed it over to the side and chased him down, catching him as he tried to climb out of the deep end.

I grabbed him by the hips as his glistening butt was sliding up out of the water and buried my face in his ass to give him a huge raspberry. I blew hard, fluttering the skin in his crack. Pleased with the result, I was going to do it again when Daniel collapsed back onto me, laughing. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him farther back into the water, trying to give Daniel a crushing bear hug at the same time. I might as well have tried to squash a tree trunk. Nevertheless, I was able to wrestle him back to mid pool.

Daniel managed to twist in my arms and broke my hold by pushing my chin up and back with the heel of his hand. He pushed off with a knee to my stomach. But again I caught him before he could climb from the pool. For the next several minutes, we had a titanic battle as I succeeded in keeping him in the pool. When he finally escaped up the steps, I was too tired to chase him.

I lay back on my elbows on the steps at the shallow end and caught my breath. Daniel splashed down the steps and collapsed next to me. “It’s no fun when you don’t chase me,” he panted.

I reached over and grabbed his balls. “OK,” I said. “Make a run for it.”

“Don’t want to now. Think you could grab my cock like that?”

I did, rolling onto my side to face him. His cock was soft and difficult to stroke as it floated in the water. So I massaged it and his balls with the flat of my hand. “Not a bad home, huh?” I asked.

“No. It’s not bad,” Daniel acknowledged.

“Once we get unpacked, are we going to explore Houston?” I asked.

“Once we get unpacked, I’m going to explore you, and then we’re going to explore Houston.”

“Man, what’s left to explore on me. You’ve poked around every bit of me.”

Daniel turned on his side toward me and ran his hand slowly up my side from my hip to my nipple. “I’m memorizing you… your body,” he said softly. “I want to remember every freckle, every hair.” His eyes bore earnestly into mine. “We’re going to be apart so long, I want to remember everything about you.” He kissed my lips, lightly.

I slid closer and ran my hand over his side. “Yeah,” was all I could think to say.

We lay there, feeling each other’s bodies.

“When do you have to be back for two-a-day football practices?” Daniel asked.

“Your Dad said I could stay with you guys until the start of school. Do you mind?”

Even in the dim light, I could see Daniel’s eyes open widen in surprise. “What do you mean?” He asked.

“I mean, I’m not playing football this year.”

“You’re kidding. Senior year. You’re a starter, Sean. You might even get a football scholarship. We need you to get a scholarship so we can go to UT together.”

“There’s not much chance of that, Daniel. Can you imagine me going up against eleven guys the size of our cowboy, Richard? I don’t have the size for a football scholarship. At least, not at UT.”

“But you’re fast. And you have great hands.”

“You should know,” I chuckled, continuing to rub him.

“Be serious, Sean. You can’t miss football this year. Besides, after this year, we have all of college together. And more. Two weeks isn’t going to make that much difference.”

I frowned at him and he looked down. “After what you just said, I know you feel the same way as me, Dan. We’re going to be apart for months, and I love you a hell of a lot more than I love football. I’ll have a lot more fun here with you than I will back home doing two-a-days. Besides,” I said, squeezing his side. “I’m not leaving you until I absolutely have to.”

Daniel sighed. “You really need to think about this, Sean. You only have a senior year of football once.”

“I have thought about it. I talked to your dad about it before we even left on our bike tour.”

“Did you talk to your dad?”

“Yes.”

“And he’s OK with this?”

“Maybe not OK, but he’s going along with it.”

“You’re passing up a once in a lifetime opportunity, you know.”

“Yes. I know. I’m going for different once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Daniel reached out in the dim light and put his hand behind my head. Then he pulled me forward to kiss. As our bodies slid together, I said, “Of course, if you are getting tired of...” his lips met mine and stopped me in mid-sentence.

“I could never get tired of you, Sean,” he whispered. “Never.”

He rolled me onto my back on the steps, his body half floating, half lying on mine. “Shall we do our own two-a-days?” he asked. “I can work up quite a schedule.”

“Bump up the ol’ hormones again? Risk morning ‘Feed Me’ hard-ons?” I asked.

“I’d count on it,” he said, taking my right leg between his.

During the remainder of that summer in Houston, I became even better friends with Roger and Mary. The first few days, Daniel and I helped them set up the new home. At night, we played bridge together. Once they found out I liked Chinese food, we had it often. I was a good typist and helped Roger with some of his work. I liked grilling. With Mary’s help and mentoring, I began to prepare some of our suppers.

It wasn’t all work. Daniel and I hit the water park a couple of times and admired bodies together. We also went with Mary to the zoo, botanical gardens, and museums. We tried a few restaurants. And since I didn’t have my bicycle, we found a few places to run.

My Dad was right about one thing. Houston had a lot of places that could call out to a young gay guy. Without zoning laws, there were porn stores all over town. We found that Westheimer had a section of gay bars and bookstores. But we had each other, and many things to do.

Coming on the heels of our bike tour, that time in Houston made that summer the most incredible of my life. And as much as I loved my own family, that summer gave me my second family. And it bound Daniel and me even closer. As the days counted down to my return home, our lovemaking became more desperate, more intense.

Yet my last night there was almost anticlimactic. For much of the night, Daniel and I sat out by the pool, talking. At first, we just sat shoulder to shoulder on the edge of the pool. We talked about UT and our plans for the year until we were freshmen there. We adamantly agreed to a second bicycle tour after our high school graduations. And we talked about getting together on holidays.

I slid into the water and Daniel followed. We shed our suits and waded back and forth across the pool. And we talked about the summer; the adventures we had. We also talked about the summer before, at the island, when we became lovers. We talked about the future, about my writing and his psychology practice, and how we would have a house at the beach and a townhouse in the city.

We stopped to kiss from time to time, we held hands, we rubbed backs, and we talked until it was very late. Then we went into to the house and made love in Daniel’s room until the sun was rising. I dozed for a few minutes before we rose to eat breakfast, and Roger drove us to the airport. There, on the pretext of needing to go to the john, Daniel and I snuck into a back stall for a final desperate hug and kiss.

I did my own memorizing of him in those last few minutes, trying desperately to fix in my memory the way his long wheat-colored hair fell back to his shoulders, the way he always stood so ramrod straight, the depth of his blue eyes, the feel of his arms, the cool of his cheek against mine. And it was an effort not to cry.

But then, in our embrace, Daniel kissed me beside my ear and whispered, “Beloved.” And I lost it. Burying my face in his shoulder, I choked a sob and the tears came.

We clutched each other tightly, and I felt Daniel’s tears fall onto my hair and the side of my face.

When we finally came back out, Roger saw our red, wet eyes, and his mouth tightened. Suddenly, there were tears in his eyes and he pulled both of us close in an embrace. And I tried to think of reasons to stay. But in the end, I boarded the plane and tried to keep my weeping silent as I watched Houston, and Daniel, fall away under the wing.

FALL, Senior Year

Dad knew how desperate I was to go to UT with Daniel, and he helped me work toward the goal. He never said a word about my not working to save money during the last summer. Nor did he insist that I attend the local community college for my first two years, which had been Mom’s suggestion.

Academics would not be a problem for admission to UT. My academics were fine. But paying for UT was something else entirely. I needed to earn scholarship help.

At my Dad’s urging, I sat down with one of the coaches whom I liked, to see if he might have suggestions for a sports scholarship of some kind. Even though all the coaches were busy with football, he took time and I was grateful.

He was the same coach who worked with cross-country. I had actually run cross-country my freshman year, and liked it. He encouraged me that if I could do well at cross-country and kept up my academics, I might actually stand a better chance of getting a UT scholarship with cross-country than I would with football. There were far, far fewer cross-country scholarships, but also less competition.

My plan to room with Daniel proved to be a powerful incentive. I began cross-country training when the football season was just beginning. I trained hard. And I applied myself to my studies with a vengeance.

That’s not to say my life that fall was all work. Our dentist’s office had a large, eighty-gallon aquarium. A couple of times I had offered to buy it if they ever wanted to get rid of it. In September, the office called to say they were remodeling and would give me the aquarium if I would take care of moving it.

Ryan and I scrambled to find a place for it that my parents wouldn’t veto, which turned out to be in our entrance hall. We built a stand after school. Then we spent a Saturday emptying and moving the aquarium. The next weekend, we prepared the tank to be used as a saltwater tank.

I was grateful for Ry. He filled in some of the companionship I missed with Daniel. And though our togetherness was often charged with sexual tension, those first few weeks, we had no intimate time.

I knew that Daniel intended for Ry to take care of me, sexually, while Daniel and I were apart. But that wasn’t a simple thing. Though Colin and I got along fine, he didn’t visit my bed anymore, and I wasn’t sure how he’d react if I tried to do anything with Ryan when he was around. And since Dad knew about Daniel and me, I wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t quash my relationship with Ryan if I tried anything like having Ryan spend the night.

Stephan was out as a possible sexual release. He was going steady with a girl and I didn’t want him thinking that he and I could be lovers. And though I thought about our perpetually horny friend Aaron, he was heavily involved in football and had a girlfriend. Besides, it had been so long since we’d done anything, I didn’t know if he’d feel the same way.

Daniel and I were speaking by phone at least once a week and exchanging letters. Every time we spoke, he asked if I had rescued Ryan. Each time, I told him, no, but that Ryan was fine. I would ask him if he’d found anyone to rescue and he said no each time as well.

One night when my family was out, and Daniel was back in his room on his own phone line, we each sprung erections while we were talking to each other about how much we missed each other, and what we would like to do together. We wound up stripping and jerking off together over the phone. It wasn’t entirely satisfying, but it was something.

Usually, however, it was just me and my hand.

The last weekend in September, Ryan and I finally had the new aquarium ready. We decided to make a trip to the beach to collect specimens. Ryan flatly told Austin that he could not come. None of the rest of their family was going either.

Dad asked a lot of questions about the trip. I figured he was concerned about Ryan. But I responded to his questions casually, and let him know that I really was interested in collecting inhabitants for the new tank, and in using Uncle James’ boat.

Uncle James was trying to sell his pontoon boat. Dad knew that I loved that boat, though he certainly didn’t know about the memories that it had for me. I was looking forward to using it once more before it got sold. Uncle James gave us permission to use a portable aerator, and we gathered several ice chests.

Ryan and I treated it as a scientific expedition. My old biology teacher, a sweet older lady who loved me, loaned us a magnifying platform, a couple of field guides, and some other equipment.

We also each took a guitar.

Our plan was to go down Friday, right after school, collect specimens Saturday and return Saturday night before the specimens could die. That would leave Sunday to get the tank set up, and finish my school work. And though neither of us said it, our plans for Friday night included little sleep.

We arrived well before dark. As soon as I turned off the ignition, we ran up the stairs to the condo. And as soon as we closed the door behind us, Ry was in my arms.

He felt so good there, and not just because I was desperately horny. Ryan really was precious to me and every time we were together, I wanted to hold him. Now, finally, I could. And once we were in each other’s arms we kissed hungrily, passionately.

We managed somehow to get to our knees and then to the floor, but didn’t stop to even take off our shoes. We rolled on the floor, tight in each other’s embrace, our mouths locked together, our bodies entwined.

I was on top when he broke off from our kiss. “I’m gonna come in my pants,” he breathlessly warned.

But I didn’t want to stop. Daniel had been gone so long, and I had wanted Ry the whole time. His body felt too damn good in my arms to ever let go. My lips found his and I ground hard against him, until his moans signaled his orgasm. I signaled mine with small cries, which were stifled by his mouth.

Only then did we calm briefly and kiss more tenderly. There, on the floor, I undressed him, and cleaned his body with my tongue. Then he stripped me, and I worked us into a sixty-nine.

Daniel was my lover, my best friend… my beloved. And as far as I was concerned, we would be together forever. But I loved Ry. And there was always something about him that ignited me sexually in a way that not even Daniel did. And it was mutual. There was a hunger when me made love, and a fire.

As we lay there, holding each other by the hips, we licked, we sucked hard, we swirled tongues, and we came quickly again.

After unpacking, we slipped on our speedos and took our guitars outside so we could sit on the balcony and watch the sun set. At first, Ryan played a couple of his more classical pieces and I just listened. There was a light, cool breeze. Out on the bay, fishermen were returning home. A couple of gulls landed on the balcony railing, curious as to whether we had any food.

At Ryan’s insistence, I began playing my guitar with him. Or more exactly, Ryan played his guitar. I strummed chords. We played some popular songs and sang. Ryan was a little reluctant to sing out. He was still a bit of a boy soprano, but I encouraged him. Despite a few voice breaks, his voice was high and clear and pure. Once he relaxed, we sounded good together, a boy’s voice mixed with a young man’s.

The setting sun turned Ryan’s face gold. As he sang, all golden hued and looking out over the water, I wished I had brought a camera.

When it turned dark, Ryan set down his guitar, rose from his chair, and came to sit across my lap. He laid his head back on my shoulder and rested his hand on my chest.

I wrapped my arms around him and we sat there like that, quiet, unmoving, keeping each other warm in the light evening breeze. About the time I decided he had dozed off, he kissed my collarbone.

“If I go to UT,” he asked quietly, “and you and Daniel have an apartment, can I live with you guys? Like you guys will be seniors when I’m a freshman.”

I kissed the top of his head. “Guess we’ll have to see,” I said.

“You don’t want me to?” he asked quietly.

“No, of course I’d like that. Daniel would too. It’s just a long time from now.”

Ryan thought about it. “Are you afraid you and Daniel won’t be together?” he asked.

I didn’t want to answer that.

“Are you afraid,” he asked, “that Daniel will find somebody in Houston.”

I shifted uncomfortably.

Ryan looked up and kissed my jaw line. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Daniel isn’t going to find anyone like you.”

“There are plenty better than me,” I answered, half to myself; giving voice to my own nagging worry.

Ryan reached up and gently pulled my face toward him. “He loves you, Sean. He’s loved you for a long time. Don’t worry.”

I tried a smile, not too successfully.

Ry knelt up astride me; a knee on either side of my hips. With a hand on each of my shoulders, he put his forehead on mine. “Sean,” he whispered. “You’re special. There’s no one like you. Not for Daniel. He’ll wait for you.”

I was surprised by the tightness in my throat and the sudden blurring of my vision. And then tears were on my cheeks. “I miss him, Ry.”

Ryan took my face in his hands and kissed over me, kissing my tears. Then he rose on his knees, hugged my head, and kissed the top of my hair. “It’s OK, Sean. You don’t need to worry about Daniel.”

Holding him gently by the ribs, I rubbed my tears on his bare chest.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re doing exactly what Daniel did.”

“Huh?” I asked dumbly.

“The morning of your birthday, before you came over. He cried, too.”

“Really?” I asked, pressing my eyes to the flesh of his shoulder.

“Yeah. He did,” Ry said. Then he sat back on his haunches, his bottom resting in my lap, and once more took my face in his hands. “He said not to tell you, because he didn’t want you to be sad that day.” He kissed my lips.

I smiled and then gave him a grateful hug. At least the hug started as a grateful hug. But he felt so good in my arms.

Ry climbed from the chair and pulled my swimsuit down over my hips and then off. Then I watched him pull his off. His small, slender body was more attractive than ever, made so by the bond that continued to grow between us. His face, a mixture of hunger and concern was also a mixture of boy and young man. The upward tilt of his upper lip, which had been so cute as a kid, was now incredibly sexy and alluring.

As he knelt astride me again, I took that upper lip between mine and sucked it softly. He pushed me down in the seat and backed himself up to my crotch. We held each other’s eyes as he applied spit and then guided me into him.

We moved slowly, exploring each other’s bodies in the dark with soft strokes of our fingertips as Ryan rose and fell in my lap.

“Ry,” I said softly. “I love you, too.”

He kissed me. “Wait for me,” he whispered. “You and Daniel wait for me.”

Ry spent most of the night in my arms. I woke once, holding him, with the vague feeling I’d just had a bad dream. I wondered if I had dreamt again of the wicked doctor, blinding babies’ eyes. I stroked the soft skin of Ry’s back and tried to relax. Eventually, sleep took me, and we slept late. When we made love, we did it the way we did the first time, with him on his back and me laying flat on him, buried deep. Our eyes were at a level and his were happy.

“I love it this way,” he said, holding the sides of my waist as I pumped my hips.

“You can do me any time you want,” I said, and kissed his lips.

He wrapped his slender arms over my shoulders and moved his hips with mine. “I am doing you,” he said softly with a smile.

I rested my cheek on his and we tightened our embrace, moving slowly, rocking from side to side.

We had barely finished, and I was still hard inside him when he kissed my neck. “I’m hungry,” he said.

“Humph!” I mumbled. “First you make me feel like I’m becoming a bed for you because you slept on me all night. Now you want me to be your mama and feed you too,” I kidded as I pulled out of him.

“Mama!” Ryan cried with a chuckle, pushing me over and onto my back. He leaned up over me and with a broad grin said “Mama!” more loudly. “Mama! Milk! Suck titty!” Before I knew what was happening, he had locked his mouth around one of my nipples was sucking hard, like he really was going to try to get milk out of me. I tried shoving him back but he held me tightly and sucked harder.

“Arrrgh!” I cried, shoving at him. But he held tightly. I tried backing away and we both fell from the bed. When we did, he released his grip and I scrambled to my feet.

Ryan followed; hands stretched out toward me. “Mama! Mama!” he cried.

I backed from him, hands held up defensively, weak with laughter, and tripped over the edge of one of the chairs. Ryan was on me in a flash, trying to lock back onto one of my nipples, crying, “Mama! Mama!”

It wasn’t a fair fight. I tend to go weak all over when people tickle me, and Ryan was merciless. His hands poked into my ribs as his mouth latched onto the same nipple he’d abused before. My tits were rock hard, and I laughed uncontrollably.

I rolled him off and jumped to my feet, trying to back away. Ryan didn’t stop. He came at me again with outstretched arms, crying, “Mama! Mama!”

He pinned me to the wall and found a tit again. I don’t know what reflex it is that causes people like me to become powerless when they are being tickled, but I was almost helpless with laughter.

When I broke away again, I scrambled into a bedroom and locked the door. Ryan pounded on it crying, “Mama! Mama!”

Though he was on the other side of the door, it still took me a moment to catch my breath and regain my normal strength. “I’m not coming out unless you promise to leave my tits alone, Ryan,” I yelled through the door.

He kept pounding on the door and yelling, “Mama!” I sat on the bed and kept saying, “Not coming out until you promise.”

Finally he slowed down and got quiet. Then he said, “OK, I promise.”

“You promise to quit chasing me and calling me Mama?”

“Yeah.”

“You promise to quit sucking my tits?”

There was a pause. “For a little while.”

“Until I say you can.”

There was another pause. “OK.”

I stood up and walked over to the door. I opened it slowly, expecting a lunge at one of my nipples. Instead, Ryan stood there for a moment with a huge grin on his face, then lunged low, beneath my defenses, and crying, “Papa! Papa!” he grabbed at my cock.

We retrieved the boat from the boat service and brought it back to the house to set up our mobile lab. Once outfitted, we headed up the bay. Traffic was light and Ryan had us naked before all the houses were out of sight.

I showed Ry how to snorkel; how to rub spit in his mask and rinse, how to clear water from the snorkel when he came up, how to keep his snorkel above the shallow waves. Ryan’s naked body looked much bigger under water. But he swam like a boy, darting here and there, chasing fish, looking through sea grass, poking under rocks.

It turned out to be a bit of work, collecting specimens. We snorkeled, we used throw nets in the shallows, we used tiny piggy-perch treble hooks, we waded, and still we had only a few creatures interesting enough to keep.

After a late lunch of sandwiches under the boat awning, Ryan took a nap in my lap. I liked being Ryan’s lounge chair, especially when we were both naked. But I thought of Daniel and our time on that boat. I thought of Daniel and hugged Ry closer.

We called home that night to ask permission to stay over and try to find more than our meager collection of specimens to bring back. Ryan’s mom agreed easily. Dad, however, was cautious.

“Are you sure what you have isn’t enough for a start?” he asked.

“Dad, it’d be embarrassing. We hardly have anything.”

He was silent a moment. “Sean, I know you’ve been missing Daniel, and that Ryan’s a good friend to you, but he’s so much younger. He’s not going to be the same kind of friend that Daniel was.” The inflexion made the last statement sound more like an instruction than an observation.

“I know, Dad.”

“He looks up to you, Sean. You have a responsibility to protect him and be a good example for him.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I try to be,” I said.

Dad sighed. “Well you take care of him and yourself, and just be sure to be back in time to get your homework done.”

When I hung up the phone, I was troubled.

Again, we sat on the balcony and sang as the sun went down.

I provided dessert after supper as I got onto all fours in the living room. Ryan squatted at my butt, legs bent, and pressed in. His hands on my butt partly supported his weight as, like a pendulum, his pelvis pumped his cock in and out of my ass. I realized again how much he had grown. Not only did he fill me more, he no longer moved in the short jerks and jabs of a boy. His were the long strokes of a young man, fucking. Even as his pace quickened and he pounded my ass, his movements were smooth and pleasing. There was nothing tentative about him.

When he came, he groaned loudly and pounded until he was done. Then he laid his chest down on my back and kissed the back of my neck.

“You definitely have potential as a lover, Ryan. That was damn good technique.”

His arms wrapped under my chest and he hugged me hard. “You going to help me practice?”

Dad’s cautions came back to me, and the memory of having the dream of the doctor. I wondered if I was as bad as Austin; using vulnerable Ry for my own pleasure. All I could think to answer was, “When we can.”

We watched TV for a while before going to bed. Ry sat, and I laid my head in his lap. I could still smell our sex, but it wasn’t bad on him.

“Ry,” I asked quietly, “Do you ever look at girls?”

He stroked my hair. “You mean, like… at their tits and stuff… like for sex?”

“Yep.”

He considered. “Maybe sometimes. I mean, like when a girl is cute, I like looking at her. And I like girl’s tits.”

That, I thought, sounded good. Maybe Austin, Daniel, and me hadn’t turned Ryan completely gay.

“But I like looking at guys more,” he said. “I really like looking at you… at your butt,” he said with a grin.

I sighed, because for the life of me, I didn’t know how to protect him, how to be a good example. He seemed happy. Shouldn’t I protect that happiness?

That week, when Daniel asked if I had rescued Ryan, I had to admit that Ryan had been damn well rescued, and so had I. Daniel, however, had not.

Daniel’s Dad, Roger, called me shortly after that. He and Mary were concerned for Daniel. He had yet to make any good friends. Roger offered to pay my airfare to fly up for a weekend.

It was three more weeks before it worked out for me to go. The last Friday in October, I took a late afternoon flight for Houston.

Daniel met me at the gate as I deplaned. He damn near tackled me. I dropped my bag as he threw his arms around me and lifted me bodily from the floor, whirling us in circles as he hugged me hard. I hugged his neck as he spun me. We didn’t kiss, but might as well have. Everyone was staring.

No sooner were we in the car than we did kiss and embrace and shower each other with weeks of stored up longing. We held hands the entire way to Daniel’s home.

Roger and Mary seemed awfully happy to see me and I wondered how many new friends they had made yet. Cutter danced around me, and I was pleased that he seemed awfully glad I was there.

Daniel and I carried my bag back to his room. Cutter went into the room ahead of us but we ignored him as we closed the door. There we grabbed each other and tumbled onto the bed, mouths, legs, and arms all locked together.

Cutter jumped around us. It looked like play to him, and he wanted to play, too. I had to chase him off from licking my neck while Daniel kissed all over my face.

We took as long as we could, promising each other that later that night, we would have time. Then we returned to where Roger and Mary were waiting for us in the living room.

Cutter stayed by my side while we ate Chinese that night, and played a short game of bridge. I thought I would go mad waiting to get Daniel back to the bedroom. I could tell he felt the same way. His hands and feet groped me under the table every time his parents were away or looking elsewhere.

As soon as we gracefully could, we put Cutter out and retired to Daniel’s room, both pushing the door closed behind us at the same time so that it slammed. We chuckled. Then we flew into each other’s arms and worked off each other’s clothing.

As soon as we were stripped, I swept Daniel up in my arms and carried him to his bed. I laid him down on it and then dove into his arms. He sighed deeply as our hard cocks met between us, and our bare legs entwined. He grabbed my butt and I grabbed his, and we ground furiously against each other. We kissed, sucked, bit, and licked over faces, necks, and chests. We rolled back and forth.

I was whimpering; I wanted him so bad. Daniel made the same kind of sounds. Kissing on the lips wasn’t enough; not nearly enough. I had missed all of him. We moved over each other’s bodies with mouths and kisses. I reversed position on him, into a sixty-nine, and wrapped my arms around Daniel’s slender waist, and laid my cheek against the smooth curve of his hip. I licked the folds of his scrotum and buried my face in his smell, which I had missed for so long.

Our mouths found each other’s cocks at the same time and we locked into a sixty-nine, hands firmly clutching each other’s butts.

Those first orgasms came quickly, and we didn’t even stop. We kept sucking, keeping each other hard. I rolled onto my back and shoved a pillow under my butt. Then I spread my legs wide and held out my hands. Daniel piled onto me, driving his tongue into my mouth and his cock onto mine, grinding us together.

He reached for and opened the lube, slapping some into my butt and over his cock, and then he threw the lube aside and pushed my legs up. He guided the head of his cock into me, pushing in quickly.

As he hit bottom, he moaned and laid down on me. I wrapped him in my arms and legs and thrilled at the feel of his strong body, moving. Every thrust felt better than the one before, driving pleasure deeper and deeper inside me. Before long, I was furiously grinding my own cock up into his hard belly. He lay down on me and our mouths locked together hungrily.

Daniel grabbed the back of my shoulders for leverage as he pounded forward from his hips. And I rolled my hips under him, moving him inside me, moving me on him.

We ground and pounded and both came quickly again. As we lay panting, Daniel still thick inside me, he cleared his throat. “All night?” he asked.

“Hell yes, all night!” I answered.

We would have stayed in his room all the next day if we could have gotten away with it. Instead, Roger took us to show me his office and the campus where he worked. Mary took us to an incredibly high-scale supermarket she had found and we bought some Salmon she wanted me to grill for supper. Hell, I was with Daniel. I would have had fun touring the city dump.

Roger and Mary spent so much time with us and had so much to tell me about their own lives in Houston that I wondered again just how much they had been able to make friends. That night we grilled the salmon and sat out by the pool talking.

When it became late, we moved inside and watched television. Both Daniel and I yawned incessantly.

“Did you boys stay up all night talking?” Mary asked.

“Well, we had a lot of catching up to do,” Daniel said.

“Maybe you boys ought to try getting some sleep tonight,” Roger suggested.

We nodded and headed back to Daniel’s room. Daniel even let Cutter in before he closed the door and leaned back against it. I stepped up to him and with a kiss, began to undress him. He started undressing me. But we were tired, and we were more like two valets undressing their masters… sleepy valets.

As we draped clothes over furniture, Daniel said, “Speaking of catching up, tell me what else has been happening? You working to earn your scholarship?”

“Working damn hard,” I said, stepping up to him from behind to press my nude body to his. I wrapped my arms around his waist, cupping his butt with my lap, and kissed behind his ear. “I’m pulling A’s on all my assignments and exams. Coach says I should make state in cross country; no problem.”

“Training alone?”

“Pretty much. There’s one other guy. Do you remember Jorge Segovia?”

Daniel leaned back in my arms, twisting to frown at me. “You mean the really good looking, angel in a human body, Jorge Segovia?”

I laughed. Jorge had a distance runner’s body, slender with a butt that was a little flat. He had a long, attractive face. But it was his carriage and demeanor that were uniquely attractive. His mannerisms were just short of effeminate, but more graceful than boyish. His movements were those of classic youth, movements like you would expect from a boy painted by a renaissance master.

“Yeah. That Jorge Segovia.”

“Has he put a move on you?”

“How the hell do you know he isn’t straight?” I asked.

“Is he?”

“I don’t think so. He told me he wasn’t going to run this year until he heard I was going to, and when I started working out early, he was the only one who decided to start with me. Then, about the third time we ran together, he asked me how you were doing and said, sort of like he was teasing, ‘you know, there were rumors about you guys, always together.’ And he laughed like it was nothing.

Daniel nodded, knowingly. “Uh, huh.”

“Then,” I continued, “a couple of sentences later, he asked me if I wanted to come over to his house sometime. I started me trying to remember if Jorge had a girlfriend, or if he’d ever had a girlfriend.”

“Well?”

“I couldn’t remember any. So now I watch my backside in the shower—and no, I haven’t taken him up on his invitation. And I’m not gonna.”

Daniel pulled my arms tighter around him. “Is he a good runner?”

“He’s built like one and when he’s running, he looks good—good form, but he’s not actually moving very fast. I usually hang back with him for a little while when we start out and then I leave him in the dust.”

Daniel led me by the hand to his overstuffed chair. He sat and pulled me sideways into his lap, and Cutter was immediately beside me, wanting to be petted. So I stroked his fur with one hand while looping my other arm behind Daniel.

“Anyone else chasing your bones?” Daniel asked.

“Nah, I think Steph’s gone straight, and I wouldn’t want him to get any ideas anyway.”

“How about Aaron? You use to mess around with him.”

“Aaron? Naw. I think he’s trying to lay every girl in the school before he graduates.”

“Well at least you have Ryan.”

I leaned back on the arm of the chair and wiggled my butt in his lap. “One weekend at the beach. That’s all. We don’t ever get a chance to do anything. Besides, I need to be careful. I think he’s fallen in love with us.”

“With you,” Daniel corrected. “Don’t let him steal you away,” he teased, rubbing my stomach.

Stroking his hair back from the side of his face while still petting Cutter with my other hand. I shook my head. “Not a chance and you know it…. Damn, your gorgeous.”

Daniel chuckled and fondled my balls. “You like Ryan though, Sean. We both know that.”

“And he likes both of us. I told you he wants to move in with us when he comes up to UT.”

Daniel gave my pubes a rough scratching, like he’d give Cutter’s fur. “He could be our houseboy,” he said.

“I think he’d have something more in mind,” I said, and then gave Daniel’s scalp the same kind of rough scratching he gave my pubes. Cutter lifted his head, as if I should be giving him that attention with both hands. “How about you?” I asked. “Anyone trying to jump your bones?”

Daniel smiled. “You know, there are a couple of guys at school who have been really friendly. They act really cool, but they don’t have any girlfriends that I can tell. And they make wisecracks sometimes that can be taken two ways, if you know what I mean.”

Daniel returned to rubbing my belly and I felt him stiffen under me. I twisted a strand of his hair around a finger. “It may be a long time between visits, you know. If you find someone safe to get your rocks off with, I understand. You know that.” I assured him.

“What about you? Sounds like Jorge’s interested.”

I smiled. “You’ve spoiled me. No one else is going to measure up.”

Daniel’s cock twitched under my butt. “Measure up?”

“You know what I mean,” I said. “Besides, for emergencies, I have Ryan.”

“Well maybe after you, no one measures up for me either.”

“I’m just saying, Daniel, if one of these guys comes up to you and says, ‘Please, Please, can I suck your cock,’ I understand if you spring a boner and get your rocks off.”

“Speaking of which,” he said and grabbed my hip, pulling me tighter against him.

I quit petting Cutter and held my hand, palm up, under his mouth. “Spit.”

He spat into my hand. I added my spit to it and then lifted my body, using the arms of the chair for leverage. I spread the spit into my butt. Daniel held his open hand under my mouth and I spit into it. Then he added his spit and spread it on his cock under me, and I lowered myself down onto him.

My flight home was in the late afternoon. It was almost harder to leave Daniel that time than at the end of the summer.

The beginning of November was busy. Though my dad never complained about my phone calls to Daniel, I knew they ran up our phone bill. So I waited for Daniel to call and we went two weeks without talking. Then, a week and a half before Thanksgiving, I finally called Daniel.

The first call, on a Friday night, missed him. Roger said Daniel was out with some new friends. I called again Saturday night and missed him again. Sunday afternoon, he called me.

“New friends, huh?” I asked, not knowing whether to be happy for him, or jealous.

“Yeah,” he answered, strangely quiet.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Yeah, look, Sean. I… uh… well, I’ve sorta done a rescue.”

“Sorta?”

“Yeah,” he answered, and then told me about a guy he had met at school. And then about a party the guy took him to and other gay guys he had met there. “I sorta did a couple of other rescues,” he confessed. “I was a little afraid to call… are you mad?”

I had twisted the phone cord into a tight knot, every muscle was tense, and the bottom had dropped out of my stomach. “No,” I answered truthfully, I was more terrified than mad. “We did talk about you being able to rescue while you were up there. I just didn’t know you’d rescue all of Houston.”

“It’s not like that Sean. And it’s still you and me…” then he lowered his voice, “beloved.”

That didn’t really help much. “Well just remember,” I teased, “The whole damn city of Houston doesn’t need rescuing.”

“I wish you were coming up for Thanksgiving,” he said. “I’d like you to meet those guys. It’s so cool to find other guys like us and just be able to relax about being gay.”

“I wish I could come up Thanksgiving, too, but you know my folks won’t let me; not with my grandparents coming down.”

“We still have Christmas,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, we still have Christmas.”

It was hard to hang up that time. There was an empty feeling in my gut as I thought about Daniel getting it on with somebody I didn’t even know; more than one somebody. It was one thing to have told him he could go for it; it was quite another for it to actually happen.

My grandfather was the source of every headstrong gene in our family. He was a crusty old guy, but lovable. And loving. It was over that holiday that my granddad made me an offer. His alma mater was a private college in San Antonio that had been around since the civil war and had an excellent reputation, Trinity University. My granddad was an esteemed alumni (he donated a bit of money).

Granddad’s offer was that if I went to his school, and if they gave me any kind of scholarship help (which he seemed to think he could help with), he would pay the difference—a full ride, all four years.

The deal did not go for UT though. He despised UT.

If it weren’t for Daniel, the offer would have been terrific. A degree from Trinity in almost anything would be prestigious. It was also a smaller campus, closer to home, and I liked San Antonio.

Neither my Granddad nor my parents were happy when I declined. Mom talked Granddad into keeping the offer open for the time being though, and let me know she was unhappy with me.

The second week in December, Roger called to see if I was still planning on coming up at Christmas break, and offered to pay airfares again.

“Mom and Dad have already told me I can go, as long as I don’t leave until the day after Christmas,” I said. “Daniel’s letters and phone calls sound like he’s making friends. Are you still worried that he might be a little lonely?” I asked Roger and was ashamed that I hoped he was.

He was silent a moment, “Sean, you’re a good influence on Daniel. I think he needs you to spend a few days up here — get his feet back on the ground.”

“Dr. Reese, you do realize this is Sean that you called?”

He laughed. “Yes. I know whom I called. Mary and I miss you too, Sean. We’re looking forward to seeing you. And I want to tell you about my book. Psychology has really gone mainstream now. I’ve published a book that is starting to sell really well. We’ll have to do a little celebrating while you’re here.”

A week later, I received a letter from Peter at Inks Lake. He had gotten horny enough to finally try something with his brother. He woke him one morning by sucking his cock and now they were enjoying a more intimate relationship. Peter phrased the letter delicately, but I destroyed it and wrote him delicately phrased congratulations and best wishes.

The time should have flown by with my trip to Houston looming, as I worked hard on my studies, cross-country training, and Christmas shopping. But instead, it dragged out, and every day, I missed Daniel more.

As usual, emails are appreciated at btomandback@hotmail.com