-ONE-

I sure don’t know why or how it happened. Maybe you can tell me.

Just another ordinary, deadly dull day at school. Until, that is, I turned that corner. Yes, I was going kinda fast… and I wasn’t looking forward, just back behind me to see if I’d really lost the stupid creep who was trying to ask me all sorts of questions about the test we’d just written. I mean, you’d think people would rather not dwell on the awful past instead of wanting to relive every horrible moment of it.

BLAM! Full throttle right into someone who exploded with an “Ooof!” and went down with a crash.

“Hey, man! I’m really sor…” and the words just died there and stuck in my throat.

Of all the fucking luck—Josh Barrett, the leader, the top money-man of the rich kids. And right in the middle of his usual crowd of admirers, toadies, yes-persons and general hangers-on. There he was in all his glory, flat on his ass in front of them.

The glare coming up from those cobalt-blue eyes was enough to crack an icicle. Then he was assisted to his feet by some of the aforementioned admirers, toadies, etc. He began carefully brushing the top-label shirt while still keeping the hairy eyeball firmly fixed on me. And my firmly-fixed feet didn’t seem in any great hurry to get me out of there.

Then, one of the girls came out with a breathless and horror-stricken “Oh my God, Josh! Look!”

In taking his tumble backwards, it seems as though the top-label shirt had caught the edge of an open locker door and had been ripped up along the side—a good big gash, too. Great. Fucking great.

Josh thought so too. As he pulled the shirt around to look and saw the damage he said, quite loudly, “Jesus Christ!!”

Now I couldn’t, if I’d had time to sit down and really plan it, have come up with a third and yet more grisly twist to this already completely god-awful scenario. Just as that oath left Josh’s lips, around the corner came Mr. Parker. Vice-principal in charge of discipline, and no respecter of persons. I mean, there are a lot of teachers who tread softly around Josh Barrett and the people like him, because of what he represents. Not Mr. Parker. No, sir.

“Mr. Barrett, if you’ll accompany me please.” Delivered in the usual flat, unemotional yet commanding tone he usually used. God, the man never even broke step—he just crooked his index finger as he went by and didn’t look back to see if he was being obeyed. He just knew he would be.

Josh fell into step behind him, all the while keeping the icy glare fixed on me until they turned the corner, heading for the main office. That left the assorted admirers, toadies etc. to continue a collective glare, accompanied by muttered comments of “Jerk”, “Creep”, and other assorted niceties. They couldn’t match Josh’s silent blast of eyes, however. My feet finally unstuck themselves, and with a helpless shrug I continued on to the cafeteria for lunch.

“David, what’s up?”

Great. “Hey, Willie,” I said, in a tone usually reserved for commenting on the death of an actually-loved relative.

Willie Drummond was what was popularly termed a geek. I mean, there oughta be a law against conforming too closely to a stereotype. This guy was tall, thin, wearing stupid-looking black-framed glasses… I mean, come on! Probably the only thing that saved him was that there wasn’t actually any tape on them. He did, however, every once in a while, actually use a pocket protector for a collection of pens and mechanical pencils which just about made me want to rip them out and fling them as far away as possible. Jeez, already!

Only problem was, he was one of the few people who would actually talk to me. And in addition to being a total geek, on his best days he was also three parts dork.

“Gee, why the long face, pal? Someone die?”

“Yeah, me.” I filled him in on the recent events.

“So?” Willie was never long on commentary.

“So, this is a disaster that will have long and unpleasant repercussions.”

“Come off it—it was an accident wasn’t it? So you bumped into him and he fell down. Happens a lot. Hardly comes into disaster territory.”

“Look, Willie, I could take a lot of time I’d rather spend eating my lunch—not that I have all that much appetite—and explain just exactly what the problem is. If you’d lift your head out of your computer screen every once in a while and take a look at real life, you’d be able to figure it out for yourself. But to reduce the thing to simplest terms, Josh Barrett fell down, but David Preston is the one who won’t get back up.”

Willie thought about that statement until his eyes almost crossed.

“Well, maybe you’re right after all…” His voice trailed off as he started to fit the factors together.

I left him to it and went off to afternoon classes. I can’t say that I remember any of them. All I do know is that during breaks between classes, I saw no sign of Josh Barrett.

Heading out the door, I caught sight of Willie making a bee-line for me. Here we go again, I thought.

“David! Wait up.”

I waited up.

“Have you heard?” he breathed, panting slightly from his exertions to catch me.

“Heard what?”

“Barrett got a three-day!”

We were outside the doors by this time, and I let loose with a teeth-clenched “Jeezusfuckingchrist!”

Willie looked pained. He is such a mild-mannered doofus. I’ve never heard him say so much as “Shit!”

“Yeah—apparently when they got to the office, he tried to go all high-handed on Mr. Parker.”

“He tried to bully Parker?”

I was so surprised, my voice actually broke at the end of the question. That hadn’t happened for a long time.

“I hear it wasn’t a pretty scene. I guess Josh was still so angry with you he couldn’t keep his head straight to deal with Mr. Parker.” Willie was one of the few kids who would give his teachers the honorific when talking about them out of their hearing.

“God, take me now!” I exclaimed, throwing my head back and raising my arms to the sky.

“Yeah, bummer!” said Willie.

I stopped walking, brought my arms down slowly, and turned my head towards the idiot who had just spoken.

“Bummer?” I repeated, leveling a gaze at Willie which I felt sure would at least shrivel one of his legs if it didn’t kill him outright. Sometimes he is so dense. Most of the time, actually.

“Well,” he said, uncomfortably shifting his weight from leg to leg. “I mean, yeah, I think I see what you mean.”

“You think you see what I mean,” I said, dragging each word out for maximum sarcastic effect. “Thank you so very much.”

And then I just left him standing there.

 

The fully aroused cock hovered, just barely beyond my lips. I’d never seen one so fully engorged before. It was straining toward me, the head purple with the blood pounding into it. I could see every individual ridge on its crest, looking almost like a mountain range of sharp peaks and deep valleys. The lips gaped open so far I was sure I could see almost to the bottom of the tube. I stuck out my tongue, but I still couldn’t reach it.

A pearl of precum slowly formed and beaded out. I pushed my tongue out even farther. I strained, but still no contact.

Whose was it? It loomed so large in my field of vision it seemed to block out everything else. I looked past and onto a washboard stomach, then up over two domed pecs to a strong chin. Then the face.

Josh?

I jolted upright, eyes blinking in disbelief.

I had come home thoroughly depressed to find the house empty, for which I was thankful. I didn’t want to have to explain myself to anyone else today. I had just gone into my room and crashed onto my bed. Obviously I’d fallen asleep.

Now, however, I was wide awake. Why in the fuck would I think about Josh in the way that I had? Jeez, my cock was even at full staff!

I unzipped my jeans, dug around in my boxers, and pulled it out. Lying back against the pillows, I contemplated my treasure. That’s how I think about it, actually. I mean, I’m nothing much to look at. Completely dull ordinary. Six feet, at least that’s what I always say. Less fussy than five feet eleven and three-quarters, which is what my height actually was last time I got measured. Brown everything, medium everything, way too smooth for what I think a guy should be. Christ, I was lucky to have a little hair at the bottom of my calves, hardly anything under my arms. I did have a reasonable bush, though. For a guy just a few months short of eighteen…

But my cock… that’s another story. It’s my treasure because it’s by far my best feature. Pity no one has seen it enough to realize it. Maybe if someone had, I wouldn’t be in the state I was in. Anyway, it’s a good six and three-quarter inches long, and from what I’ve been able to see in my locker room scopes, quite a bit thicker than average. Absolutely ruler-straight, in natural erection it rises at a proud 45-degree angle from my body. There aren’t any large, disfiguring veins to mar its smooth surface. The head swells beyond the dimensions of the shaft. Cut, dammit. I’ve always admired pictures of uncut guys. I think it would be so neat to have a skin. Never had any actual experience with one, of course. Dammit again.

Yeah, that’s the other feature I should mention. Gay. Have been ever since I can remember, actually. Oh, I know, you’re supposed to figure this thing out once you hit puberty or something. But I can remember back to age five, getting undressed for bed and bouncing around on my bed in my underwear pretending to be Tarzan or something. Thrusting my hips out and thinking far more of how that looked than I figure any five-year-old should. And in playing with the other little boys, I was always scheming how I could get our shirts off and then think of things that would allow me to snuggle up against one of them, bare chest to bare back. I grew up with it. Never had to figure it out.

My hands nestled flat against the insides of my thighs, and my two thumbs pushed against the base of my still-rigid meat. I made it sway slowly back and forth, watching the column of taut flesh. I always thought of my cock as something foreign to the rest of me, an appendage that had come to share my body but which had a life and a mind of its own. “Pleasure me,” it said, “and in return I will pleasure you!”

And it was certainly broadcasting that message now. Just from what I was doing, pushing it back and forth, it was strainingly erect. A pearl of precum oozed from the slit, and I took my finger and started to smear it slowly around the head. More joined it. I was leaking more than I’d ever seen before. Why was I so wound?

Josh? How could it be Josh? Sure, I’d checked him out. He was offensively good-looking. I mean, offensive in connection with how rich he was. No one who had all that should have a whole exorbitant heap of looks to go with it. Is there no fairness in this world?

Compact, about five-nine, muscled in a way that didn’t shout at you, but you knew it was there. He wasn’t into any sports that I knew of, so I don’t know how he came by the yummy bod he stuffed into those top-of-the-line clothes, but it stood out. I wasn’t too sure what he carried behind his zipper. He didn’t go for the real tight look in his pants, so that remained to be discovered. I didn’t share any gym classes with him, and I certainly wasn’t sports-minded, so I didn’t have any opportunities that way.

“Remained to be discovered?” Just how did I think I was going to pursue an interest in Josh? He sees me coming at him, he’s going to backhand me into last week if he doesn’t actually send a hit man after me. What was I thinking about?

Meanwhile my hand continued to smear precum all over my cockhead and then up and down the shaft. I grabbed it in full fist and began a very full, but slowly-paced, up-and-down stroke. Today I needed the full-force mode. Something really had me fully wound, and I needed release badly. The red, engorged head thrust out of my hand on each downstroke, then disappeared for a moment on the up. My hips started rising from the bed. My other hand pulled my shirt up above my nipples and grabbed one of them hard. Fuck, was I ever hot. It was like someone else was doing this to me!

The pace picked up. My whole bed was rocking. I was beating myself silly. Squishing noises came from my pounding fist, I was moaning to myself in short panting gasps. The pounding in my ears seemed to echo from outside my door…

The blast was sensational. First shot all the way up to my chin, just under my lower lip. Then floods more spattering my chest, my stomach, then pooling just behind my cock. My eyes were squeezed shut and my breathing was ragged and harsh. I slowly came down and sagged back into the bed. My hand continued to pull at my cock, but now more slowly and with a caress rather than a squeeze.

“Holy fuck!”

My eyes snapped open to see Willie standing at the open door.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelped. “What the fuck are you doing here?” I was trying, not very successfully, to get myself stuffed back into my pants and get my shirt hauled down. Not that it mattered a whole lot—he had obviously arrived just before the moment of truth. That extra pounding, now that I thought about it, had been his feet on the stairs. In the ecstasy of the moment, I hadn’t realized it.

Willie stood there, with a face as red as mine felt as I fumbled at my clothes, but… he just kept on standing there. Obviously acutely embarrassed, he just kept standing there staring at me. Most people, I guessed, would have turned and run as soon as they’d clued in to what they’d done. Not Willie.

I finally turned and fled to my bathroom, the feeling of masses of cum sticking to the inside of my shirt and drooling down my stomach finally telling me I couldn’t stay as I was with any feeling of either physical or mental comfort. I slammed the door loudly behind me, to see if that would shake Willie out of his trance.

What was he doing here, I wondered as I swabbed myself clean. The shirt was a disaster, so I tossed it into the laundry hamper. As I did my own laundry, I had no need to fear mom finding evidence of my sexual activities. I got my dick and bush cleaned up and rearranged my jeans. Nothing showed on the front. I leaned on the basin, head hanging down, and thought.

I heard nothing outside in my room after several minutes, so I opened the door and came out. Willie was standing exactly where I’d left him. “What the fuck do you want?” I fired at him.

“David…” He swallowed nervously.

“Willie…” I mocked. “Was it good for you? How many other people do you know you can do this kind of thing to? I mean, do you rush into peoples’ houses on spec just hoping you’ll catch them at something?”

“Man, I didn’t mean…” Again he ground to a halt.

“Didn’t mean?? What the hell did you just stand there for? Why the hell are you still here? Why the fuck don’t you just get out?”

His face was still glowing bright red, but he didn’t budge.

“David, listen!” In his agitation, his voice cracked on the last word.

I found I was trembling as I stood there, and to cover threw myself back onto my bed. I folded my arms across my still-naked chest and glared at my unwelcome visitor.

“I’m listening. And man, had this better be good. Creep!” I added the last word in spite of myself, without really meaning to stoop so far as insults in my agitated state.

Willie’s face changed from red to white.

“Sure,” he said. “Creep, geek, dork, doofus… Those are probably just some of the names you call me in your mind. This is the first time I’ve ever heard you say one of them out loud.”

I squirmed on the bed. That one hurt. I knew I’d gone way too far.

“Willie, I…”

“David, shut up!” barked Willie. My mouth just hung open for a moment in total shock. Was this Willie?

“Listen, David. I’m sorry I barged in like that. I’m really sorry for embarrassing you the way that I did. Like always, I wasn’t really thinking. But what I was doing was coming to see if you could use some company. Man, you were so… so… uptight or something about the Josh thing I thought I had to come see if there was something I could do.”

“Hey, I… “ was all I got up before Willie plowed on.

“Let me finish! Now I’m willing to catch shit for what I did to you just now, but I’m not going to be your punching bag because you’re all upset with your life right now. Jesus, man—who else in that school of ours talks to you, hangs out with you? Huh? No one I’ve ever seen. Just me. And now you want to put me down and throw me out?”

“Willie… you swore!” was all I could say. It dawned on me. “And when you barged in on me you said, ‘holy fuck’!”

“Goddam right I did—you’re enough to make anyone lose it. David, for crissake, can’t you see I want to be your friend? I hang around you all the time and all you ever do is give me that remote smile like you’re just barely tolerating me, and when you’re done with me you just walk off at the end of a sentence and that’s that! Shit, that makes me mad!”

He yanked the chair away from my desk, swung it to face the bed, slammed it to the floor and threw himself into it, glaring at me.

I figured if my face stayed as red as it felt any longer, it’d be permanent.

“Willie… can I talk now?”

“No! I’m not through with what I have to say, and if I don’t say it now I probably never will. And that’ll be too bad for you.”

He leaned forward in the chair, the intensity of his feelings making his body tremble. He put his hands on his knees, probably to try to control the tremors.

“David, I… I like you. God alone knows why, but I do. I’ve liked you ever since I first met you. All I’ve ever wanted to do since then was get to be your friend. You’re smart, you’re funny, you see the way things are so clearly, you’re good-looking…” He stopped as my head snapped up at that last item.

“Good-looking?? You have got to be kidding!” I snorted in disbelief.

Willie drew a deep breath. “I really didn’t mean to say that… it just came out. But,” he paused and took a breath. “But now that it’s out… yeah, you’re good-looking.” An even deeper breath. “And what I saw when I came in certainly added to that belief.”

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. All I could do is stare at Willie. Willie looked back at me, actually flinching a bit as though convinced I would come flying up off the bed to tackle him. I certainly was in no shape to do that. From their folded position across my chest, my arms dropped to my sides. I forced myself to sit up a little higher against my headboard.

“Wi…” My throat had turned so dry I choked. “Will…” Somehow, it didn’t seem right to call him Willie any more. “Will,” I tried for the third time, “man, you’ve… you’ve… you’re so… different all of a sudden!” was the best I could do.

“Well, you’ve driven me to it,” he returned, clenching and unclenching his hands on his knees. He rubbed them up and down his thighs, as though trying to rub the sweat from them.

“Will, I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know how you… felt.”

“When did you ever try to know?” he shot back.

That one hit me so hard I actually rolled over on my side away from him because I could feel tears starting to come. What the fuck was the matter with me? Nothing seemed to be normal today. I stayed like that for a minute or more, trying in vain to keep myself together.

After a while, I heard him move, then felt a warm hand on my shoulder. “David?” Will said in a timid, trembling voice.

That did it. The soft touch of his hand was like a bolt of lightning lancing through me, stabbing me to the heart. All of a sudden I was heaving with sobs, totally out of control. Will sat down beside me on the bed and pulled me gently but firmly over from my fetal position onto my back. I just lay there, tears pouring down my cheeks, my mouth open to allow the deep, gasping sobs to escape.

Will’s hands moved under my shoulders, and then I was pressed against his chest, my head over his shoulder. One of his hands gently held the back of my head and the other was pressed firmly against my back. My arms went around him and clutched him in return. Slowly, inevitably, the worst of my crying jag dissipated, leaving me limp and drained in Will’s arms.

As I calmed down, he tried to increase my comfort by stroking my hair and my back. The feel of his hand moving over my skin was so gentle, so loving, so caring, that I heaved a deep sigh, and murmured, “Oh, Will…” and clutched him tighter. We stayed like that for another few minutes as my mind feebly clutched at its shredded synapses and attempted to reconstruct itself.

It did the job only too well. Reality suddenly returned.

I pulled back sharply, putting my hands behind me and scooting myself away from him. I couldn’t look him in the face. I was confused, shamed, at a total loss.

“David.”

The voice was Will’s, alright, but it sounded completely different. Strong, confident, yet tender.

“David, look at me.”

Slowly, hesitantly, I managed to look up. Will had taken his glasses off while he was holding me. Without them, he looked really different. But you could tell he needed them.

I started to look back down and away, but he said again, just as before, “David.”

I brought my eyes back to his. It hurt to see the way he was looking at me. There was no anger there, no blame. Oh no, quite the opposite.

“Do you understand now?” he said quietly.

“I… uh… I…” I was choking again. I cleared my throat loudly. “I’m not sure what to think.”

“Do you understand that I care about you?”

“I guess so.”

“Do you understand that I’m here for you?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want me to go away and not bother you any more?”

That weird twist snapped up my head, which had started to drift back down with his questioning. Almost without forming the thought, I said forcefully, “No!”

“Well,” he said with a slight smile, “that was a whole lot better than ‘I guess so’ and ‘yeah’!”

“Will,” I responded, looking down between my knees at the bed, “I feel like such a complete jerk.”

He moved forward, placing his hands behind me on the bed so that once more my forehead was resting against his shoulder. “Well, that’s cause you are!” I could hear the smile in his voice. “But I think it’s curable. In fact, I think we’re curing it right now.”

I had to give him something. What? I leaned my head so that my cheek was just barely touching his neck, and brought my hands up and placed them on his shoulders. He stayed still for a moment, then slowly brought his hands up and placed them flat on my back, one below each shoulder blade. At the same moment each of us pulled in a little tighter to the other.

And there was perfect peace.

Turnabout, © 2000 cgalt08