xxx keith’s POV xxx

The music is cranked almost as loud as it will go and I’m belting out lyrics along with it as loud as I can, filled with a giddy sense of freedom and energy. I love this album, it's one of my favorites, so conceptual and cheap and twangy. Coy’s singing as well, quietly, eyes stern and on the road; he’s trying to convince us that he’s a good driver. He is, kind of, just distracted most of the time. I look over at him, his hair pulled up into a fluffy ponytail of dirty hair, his irises the lightest of blue, dark pupils shocks against them. His nose that still manages to be charming even with its size, with that heavy slope. His mouth. His jaw, darkened just slightly by his lack of shaving this morning.

I reach across my seat to him, touching his arm. He jumps a little in shock before turning to look at me with a quirky little smile. “Hey, love.” He winks comically cheesy. “What’s up?”

I giggle, rubbing his arm once. From the back seat, I catch Cam giving me a dirty look that I ignore. “Oh, nothing. Just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

He looks back at the road, running a hand back through his bangs as he sighs laboriously. “I’m a little tired, I guess. I miss couches and our bed.” His eyes droop for a moment. “Not long till Lomoni now.”

“Do you want me to drive?” I offer. I’m not the most experienced driver, but I can do it if I concentrate. At least we aren’t going through a city with stoplights and turns and stuff, that’s tougher; Coy seems to have no problem with it, though.

“Do you want to?” He looks skeptical, drumming his fingers against the wheel. “I wouldn’t mind taking a break ...”

“Oh yeah, I can drive! You’ve been doing it all week, you poor thing,” I grin. “I can at least take over for a while, you didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Yeah ... Cool, thanks! I’ll pull over.” He looks happy, which is worth hours of driving and more. He finds a little dirt bit on the side of the road to stop at, near the smallest little steel bridge I’ve ever seen, all broken and rusted and crossing a little river-creek. It has no bottom anymore, just steel a steel frame, and I look at it and think it’s cute until Cam climbs onto it and pisses off it into the creek. I glare and turn away, not wanting there to be any chance of me seeing his gross little dick.

We stand around and stretch our legs a bit, but when I hear a loud creaking, I whirl my gaze to the bridge, swaying. Cam surfs it, looking quite alarmed, but not as alarmed as Phil.

“Careful!!” He yelps in a moment of shocked panic, hands fluttering near his mouth. Cam, with his pants now securely up around his waist, bows down and grabs two of the vertical bars jutting out of the horizontal one his feet are on. When he’s sure he’s steadied himself, he gives Phil a raised-eyebrow-what-are-you-doing look, and Phil promptly turns around and leaps back into the van.

I notice now that Cam is glaring at Coy, who leans on the hood of the van looking spectacularly sexy in a relaxed beach-trash sort of way. Cam hops off the metal frame of the bridge with just a bit of a wobble upon landing. He stalks up to Coy with quick purpose and leans in close. I’m just near enough to hear, and I move closer. His voice is low and hisses. “Did you tell him what I fucking said?”

“What?”

“Phil,” he snarls, casting a wary glance to the tinted windows of the van. “You told him what I asked you last night, didn’t you, you fucking cunt!”

“Calm down!” Coy puts his hands up to ward him off. He doesn’t answer right away, and knowing him, it’s because he’s thinking of a way to lie. He definitely told Phil. “Don’t you say a word to him, got it? I don’t care what the fuck he says about me, I just -” He pauses momentarily, looking right at me, scowling. I take a step back, out of his swing-zone. “- wanted to make sure he wasn’t screwing around with Keith.”

My name sounds weird coming from him, though I’m not sure why. “With Keith? Why would you think that in the first place?” Coy says.

He glares hard, eyebrows drawn down, mouth pressed shut. He says nothing else and looks at neither Coy nor I again as he turns around to Shelf, standing at the river’s edge. He looks thoughtful, and seems surprised as Cam comes up next to him and taps his arm, as if he didn’t hear or see anything that had gone on since we got out of the van. He follows Cam back into said van, and I walk up to Coy. “Wow, he called you a cunt. And then didn’t make you answer at all.” I go around the hood of the van to get to the driver’s side.

“Love must make him frazzled,” Coy smiles and shrugs and ducks into the passenger side seat.


xxx

Some pretty cool stuff ensues after that: Cam’s resolve is cracking. I don’t want to risk taking my eyes off the road, but Coy is ripping up little bits of paper from an old notepad he found in the glove compartment, and is writing on them and passing notes to me. He says little things like, “He keeps looking at him,” and “He’s really scowly.” Soon, he gets bored with Cam and his shenanigans and starts writing things like, “I love you,” and “Let me suck your cock later,” in his neat fancy script. If you just saw his writing, you’d think he was far too elegant to be saying that sort of thing.

Soon I’m blushing too badly to take any more of his dumb notes, but that doesn’t mean he stops throwing them at me. Before long, my lap is littered in little folded bits of paper, a few that look like little bitty cranes. I don’t know what they say, but I’m assuming that they’re filthy, and half of me really wants to read them, but the other half of me doesn’t want to crash the car. I’ll read them later. Coy is making kissy faces at me and taking photos of me, trying to make me pose. He says he gets a few good ones, but his idea of a good photo of me and my idea of a good photo of me are very different, he thinks every one is good. He makes me laugh a few times, which I’m sure results in some horrid squinty toothy shots. I don’t photograph all that well, and as I’m quickly realizing, I don’t drive all that well either. My plastic left leg is finicky about pressing on the break, the ankle jamming up at this angle, so I try not to use it. I keep driving because if Coy’s mood is any indication, he likes being in the passenger seat, and I want to make him happy.

It’s still bright and early and I have a full day of driving ahead of me, but Coy is kind and lets me stop often on the side of the road, even though it annoys the other three boys in the van. The day is lovely and warm, a sweet-smelling breeze blowing in from the west. We stop once on the side of the road in late afternoon, it must be around four because Cam is in the back of the van taking his meds. A few clouds float aimlessly in the sky and Coy is standing behind me with his hands clasped over my stomach, three small umbels of little white flowers laced in his fingers. His mouth is pressed to the back of my head, his hair falling from its ponytail, blowing in the wind. “You remember these?” he murmurs, tipping his head so he can talk into my ear. He wiggles his fingers, making the flowers dance. “They look like carrot flowers, don’t they? Like that song? And remember when we were little, and mom grew carrots in the back yard and she always let us pick them?”

I hum in agreement, letting my eyes close. I sway gently, relaxed to the point of weak muscles, and Coy holds me up. His unshaven jaw scratches against my neck as he bends his knees and bows his back to heave me up a little. “You remember we made those forts in the hedges and spent all day outside?” I hum again, shivering, wanting to sink back into the warmth and solidity of his chest. “You were so sweet, you were still blonde back then ... I like you as a blonde ...” He’s been bringing that up more lately, getting me to stop dying my hair, and I’m starting to consider it. “Man, we had a pretty good childhood despite everything, huh?”

“Mhhhmmmm ...” I cover his hands with mine, careful not to crush the little flowers, so delicate and tiny.

“I love you so much. Did you know that?” He has his face pressed to the side of my head, eyes shut, voice low and watery and dreamy, barely there, floating on the wind.

“... Yeah, I know.”

“You’re so beautiful,” Kissing my ear and then my cheek, he sighs softly. “Tell me you won’t leave me, alright?”

“Never,” I whisper, painfully close to choking on tears. I turn around in the protective circle of his arms and I hug him tight, my palms spread flat on his shoulder blades, my nose pressed into his sun-warmed shirt. His hands slip to the back of my head, threading in my hair, letting the flowers fall crushed to the ground. Over his shoulder, I can see Phil turning away from us, wiping furiously at his eyes.


xxx

The rest of the day is beautiful hours of sun and laughing and more little notes thrown into my lap, and when Coy goes to retrieve them to laugh at his own sense of humor, he ‘accidentally’ touches my crotch and then says “OOPS” really loudly and then laughs for like five minutes until he can’t breathe.

I drive until I’m so tired that I only have one hand on the steering wheel, the other on my armrest with my chin in my hand. My eyes are drooping so I decide that I’m definitely stopping at the next hotel, no matter what. Coy whips out the map, but isn’t sure where we are. I’d just pull over on the side of the road and camp out wherever we end up, but that’s dangerous and we need to get a hotel with a separate room because no matter how tired I am, I really want to have sex tonight.

We end up making it to somewhere, I can’t say exactly where. It looks like a pretty big city, but I’ve never traveled this far north, so I can’t really say. I know Lomoni is right at the border, though, or somewhere way the hell up there, and we have to be close by now. We drive through brightly lit streets until we find something that at least looks like a nice hotel, a Hilton, and we park the van on the street, eager to get inside. In a few minutes, we have a hotel room on the fifth floor; a room with a separate bedroom.

Our suitcases feel like they’re filled with lead as we haul them up flights of stairs – the elevators are out of service until tomorrow morning – and down the longest hallway of all time to our room. Coy fumbles around with the key card but it works after about three tries and we stumble into the room, falling down on the nearest bed. There’s one in the main room, it seems, and another one in the door to the right, so Cam and -

“Shotgun the bedroom!” Cam yells and dashes in, throwing himself onto the fluffy white quilt, legs and arms all spread and tangled.

“That’s ours!” I shout, flipping off the main-room bed where I collapsed. I forgot that I shouldn’t be talking to him, but this isn’t being nice, it’s arguing, so I guess that’s fine. I won’t let him win.

“Uh, I don’t think you understand the rules of ‘shotgun,’ boy.” He rolls onto his back, looking at me standing in the doorway. Shelf moves by me and sits gingerly on the bed, looking around the room. It has its own TV and dresser and everything.

“Don’t you call me ‘boy,’ you condescending piece of shit, I’m six years older than you.”

“Ooh, my mistake, congratulations. That over-rides all the rules of shotgun and my catlike reflexes.” Sarcasm just drips off his voice and I’m going to charge into the room before Coy wraps his hand around my shoulder.

“Just let him have it.”

I spin around, glaring fiercely, so completely dumbfounded that he’s taking his side. “What?”

He leans in close. “This one has a bigger bed,” he says lowly, and touches the back of his knuckles to my stomach. I open my mouth to argue some more, but he starts pouting and that just takes all the wind out of my sails.

“Fine,” I snarl and stomp back into the main room. I see Phil in the bathroom, brushing his teeth already, and when he sees me he turns to look with his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, blue suds foaming down his chin. He spits into the sink and tries again.

“Can I go for a walk? I know it’s late, but I like this place.” He looks so sheepish, it’s adorable.

“How do you know where we are?” Coy asks, coming up behind me, using my head as an armrest.

“You don’t know? This is Wilmington, my class came here on a trip once in fifth grade. It was pretty cool.” He’s fishing around in his duffle bag now for a sweater, bag lying near the bathroom door. He finds his brown zip-up-hoodie and throws it on, already having assumed that we said yes.

“It’s dangerous out at night for a kid like you,” Coy says warily, having moved his arm, thumbs now hooked into his pockets. “Do you have a cell phone?”

“I think so ...” Again he returns to his bag and after some rummaging, he pulls out a chunky blue cell phone. “I don’t use it much, though.”

“Tell us the number and keep it on so we can call you or you can call us, okay?”

So we exchange numbers and off he goes for a midnight walk, perfect. He probably knows why we got the extra bedroom. It’ll keep Cam and Shelf occupied – doing what, I’m not sure. Watching stupid TV shows, eating a fortune in mini-fridge food, getting drunk – but he wouldn’t want to stay in there with them, and can’t watch us having sex. He’s such a nice kid, going out just so we can have some time alone, and we didn’t even have to ask.

The minute he’s out the door with the key card in tow, Coy is on me. The boys shut the door to their room and we’re all alone, the blinds drawn, the only light in the room coming from a small tungsten lamp on the bedside table. Coy grabs my face and kisses me, vicious and deprived, passionate. Our teeth clash – but that stopped being embarrassing about a week after we first got together and it’s better when it’s not completely an accident – and our mouths seal and part like the tide against rocks.

He shoves me back onto the bed and climbs on top of me, his weight on his knees, his hands already fumbling with my shirt. This makes me think of something so I put my fingers on his chin to stop another round of attacks from his mouth. He looks at me expectantly, almost angry. His cheeks are red. “Why do we never just take our clothes off and then get into bed instead of falling or being pushed onto it?” I ask.

He laughs hoarsely and smacks me in the forehead, making me lie flat under him. “Because we’re not fifty yet, you dork. Don’t complain,” he murmurs, mouth coming down on mine again, hands slipping under my top. He rubs his thumbs over my nipples and I squeeze my eyes shut tight, trying to listen to him because he’s saying something, but I’m not sure what. He slides the straps of my tank top down with his mouth, then pulls it lower so it’s around my waist like a belt. “Fucking death, having to see you in these damn shorts all day,” he mutters, grazing his front teeth over my ribcage as his hands start trying to tug down the shorts he’s talking about, the little plaid ones he picked out earlier this morning. “You look like such a slut, it was fucking killing me, these are like four inches long.”

He peels them down my legs with my panties and top, getting them tangled and twisted by the time they’re at my ankles. I kick them off and they land with a fwumph near our luggage and only then do I realize that I’m completely naked while he’s completely clothed, and that’s irritating. He palms my dick and kisses my chin, lips following it when I tip my head back. “Coy, wait wait wait,” I murmur, not entirely sure why. I never thought I’d tell a boy to get his hands off my cock, but here we are. His hand slides up my stomach and he holds me just under my ribs, lips hovering over mine. As he does this, I bite back a grin, thinking about something lovely.

“What?” he whispers, digging his fingertips into my side. He looks right at me and seems so interested in whatever I have to say, he’s hanging off my words. I like that.

I smile – because this is really fun, playing with him like this. Does that make me sound like a skank? – and put the pad of my index finger against his bottom lip. He bites at it, somewhat absentmindedly. “I want you naked too, alright?” I whisper, kissing him and the tip of my finger. He groans (he isn’t too fond of being naked, for one reason or another) but sits back on his heels anyways and starts unbuttoning his shirt. I sit up as well, deciding that I should take over for him. It’s slow work, because I hate his stupid formal shirts with their stupid buttons, but I manage to get it off. I slip it down his shoulders and arms, staring at him, marveling. I love the way he looks, I don’t know why he isn’t naked more often. He’s so pale, and he has such cute nipples and such a tiny waist. I bring my hands up and run them down the middle of his chest. When I realize that my mouth is open, I close it with a snap, sort of embarrassed. He is too, he’s blushing. Even his ears are red. I kiss the middle of his chest, donned with barely-there chest hair, and start clinking his belt free. “God, you’re beautiful,” I mutter, biting at him, struggling to get any skin at all between my teeth.

He stutters in trying to respond, sitting back and wriggling out of his jeans. He tosses them to the ground with a flick of his hand, but not before fishing lube out of one of the pockets. “Are you serious?” I talk quietly, not wanting the boys to hear us. They won’t come out here, I know they know what we’re doing. “You’ve been carrying that around all day?”

He grins devilishly, flipping it in the air and then catching it. It’s a little nondescript tube, no bigger than my index finger. “Gotta be prepared,” he laughs, then full-on lunges at me and I giggle and squeal, bouncing off the mattress. I hear the click of the lid being flicked open and I stop him again, rolling over so I’m straddling his hips. His hair is spread out on the quilt behind him, his bangs flipped off his face, showing off both his beautiful blue eyes. I slip the bottle of lube from between his fingers, smiling wickedly. He has his boxer briefs on, still, but they do nothing to hide how eager he is.

“Settle down, boy,” I whisper, running the flat of my palm down his chest, plucking at the elastic band of his boxers, listening to the satisfyingly loud ‘snap’ as it hits back against his stomach. “You’re so lively today, what’s the occasion?” I raise my hips up and he lets me slide the last bit of clothing he has on down his legs. I realize that he’s kept his socks on and due to the pure, delighting absurdity of that, I don’t take them off.

“The ‘occasion,’” he says this in a mocking, snooty, tone. “is having to stare at you in those booty shorts all day. What are you doing?” He sees me squeeze a dime-sized amount of lube onto my fingers, pulling them apart and then together again, watching it string between my fingers. I smile some more.

“Taking my time.” I shuffle backwards so I’m between his legs instead of on top of him, my own legs falling to either side of me in a V. Coy looks wary, though far from disinterested. “Wanna have fun, while we’re here?” I ask, somewhat taunting even though I don’t mean to be. He nods, like, six times. “Then close your eyes and touch yourself a little, okay?”

For once, he’s too enamored to be skeptic about things like this. He usually doesn’t do what I say, but this time he does. He drops his head back against the mattress and with a virgin’s shyness, he starts sort of playing with his dick. He won’t look at me, he never does, which is just fine right now. His face flushes red and once I know he’s preoccupied, I slip my middle finger inside him.

It doesn’t go as unnoticed as I’d hoped, not anywhere near it. He stops what he’s doing and jolts up but can’t quite sit all the way up, so he props himself up on his elbows. His cheeks are a bright red, eyebrows having been shot up onto his forehead, so high they threaten to fly into his hair. “What are you doing?!” he hisses, trying to squirm away from me. I slide my finger in up to the knuckle and he shudders, wrinkling his nose up, pressing his lips tight together.

“Trying something,” I say, being rather truthful. “Just lie back, or put a pillow under you or something.” I move my finger back out and then in again and he does the same thing, squirming, shuddering, scrunching his face up.

“No, no, no, no, I don’t think so. Back off.”

“Oh, come on ...” I curl my finger and he fidgets more, shifting his weight between his two elbows. “It’s not so bad.”

“Yes, it – Okay, Keith, listen to me -” He seems serious about this, but I don’t think he’s all that serious. Has he forgotten that he’s done this before? Albeit not that often, just once or twice, but he didn’t make a big hooplah about it back then. “- You know you said you do this kind of thing so you don’t have to carry luggage and stuff?”

I remember something about that, why being the lady comes in handy. “... Yeah?”

“I carry luggage so I don’t have to do this.” He sounds desperate, why does he sound desperate? This isn’t a big deal, he’s just making it one. Just ‘cause he’s not the one who usually, uh, gets this, doesn’t mean he has to be all upset.

“Get off your huffy bike and just take it.” I roll my eyes, not wanting to give up on this. “Now is not the time to flex your manliness, alright?”

“I swear to god, if you don’t get the fuck -” I slide a second finger in with the first and twist them around and that ‘fuck’ turns into a string of curses and he falls back against the bed, his hips twitching up, mouth gaping. He’s breathing hard now, both hands covering his face. “What the fuck -”

Oh, how quickly he forgets. “You like that?” I push my fingers back in and out, adding a third. I push them against his prostate. He makes a choked sobbing noise into his hands and for a second I feel bad, but then I realize that I don’t think he’s upset anymore. “Nice, huh?” I need some sort of confirmation from him that this is okay, mostly so I can lord it over him later.

“Jesus christ,” he groans, twisting around with restless fingers nearly clawing at his own face. “Ohgod, I hate you, I hate you,” and he says this a few more times before I try to get a fourth finger into him, at which point he raises a leg and kicks me in the side of the head, saying “Don’t push your luck,” in a delicious breathless voice. His dick is definitely hard, sticking up against his stomach, looking very inviting but I’m holding off for now for the sole purpose of pissing him off. He’s such a liar, he loves this. I’ll never understand his need to protect whatever masculinity he has left; there isn’t a lot by now. My other hand is free, so I start jerking off with it.

I’ve decided that I hate him back when he catches me off guard. I get too absorbed in myself, or too absorbed in something, I guess. Quick as a goddamn cat, he scoots back, forcing my fingers out of him. My reflexes must have been dulled, I tell myself, because though I’ve noticed that he’s done this, he still has enough time to grab me and toss me down on the bed. “What’re you doing?!” I say, trying to turn over and sit up. He pushes his knees into the back of mine, making me cry out in pain. Laughing lowly, he bends over me, whispering in my ear.

“Trying something,” he mocks me, the kisses he’s showering down my neck and shoulder soon becoming nips, then bites. I clench my teeth and try to turn over again, just for the thrill of struggle, but he grabs my wrists and shoves them down to the bed. It’s an awkward position, half on my knees, my face shoved down into the mattress. We’re facing backwards, the headboard and pillows at our feet, and Coy manages to snag one that he shoves under my hips, pushing my dick up against my stomach. “You’re trying to be so sneaky,” he murmurs, scraping his teeth over the left wing on my shoulder blades, hard enough to leave angry red marks in his wake. “Try something new, trick me, or whatever you were doing.” He digs his left hand into my hip as his right one guides his dick inside me. I gasp and hold it in my lungs until it starts to burn and he’s in me and I let it out through my teeth. “It always ends up like this, remember that,” and he kisses up my spine into my hair and starts to move.

Whenever we have sex like this it brings out this whole different Coy that I barely recognize. You’d never think that this boy was one who cut the crusts off sandwiches and never lets me run with scissors, not in a million years would you think that they were the same person. Over the years, his worry and caution during sex inevitably melted away, leaving incredible carefree (albeit rough) sex behind. I’m having trouble breathing and swallowing, not having any free hands to push my glasses back up; even though I pull at my wrists a little, Coy refuses to let up and even goes as far as to lace our fingers together. So, I’m forced to watch them slip off my nose and they bounce on the bed twice before the rocking of our bodies sends them clattering to the floor. Coy bends down and nips at my ear, whispering a short, strained apology. I shake it off, unable to find anything to say back.

I realize that my panting against the quilt has dampened it in front of my mouth. My pulse is thundering throughout my body, I can feel it in my fingertips and toes and cock and in the beat of him inside me, intense enough and hard enough to make me squeeze my eyes shut and bite down on the quilt, whimpering and whining all these pathetic-sounding noises into it. I claw my nails at whatever I can get to, my whole body tensed up like a slingshot, not sure how much more of this I can take. He’s bucking his hips fast now, bowed over me, both hands gripping my bare hips tight enough to leave marks, I’m sure, and I swear nothing has ever felt so good. I’m gritting my teeth so tightly that I wouldn’t be surprised if I managed to push them back into my head by the time this is over. Nothing has ever felt this good, nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.

My head feels like it’s full of wobbly cotton things and I’ve lost all sense of time, but at some point I start making noises through my impossibly clenched teeth, groaning and moaning and panting and crying into the quilt, seeing spots dance against my closed eyelids, shut too tightly. I make myself jerk forwards a little with each thrust, gaining friction against the pillow shoved under my hips, and before I can say a word to Coy I’m coming, all but screaming into the blanket, shoving my face into it to quiet the fuck down but god it’s so amazing, it’s so amazing. I feel warm dampness seep into my stomach and somewhere inside me I feel a pang of sympathy for the cleaning lady.

It’s a couple minutes before Coy finishes, in which I shut my eyes tight and wait patiently, wincing with each slap of his thighs against mine until he shudders and groans one of those deep-bellied groans and pulls his dick out in time to come all over my ass. I glare into the quilt, not having the energy to turn around. I raise myself up enough to speak. “You’re a fucking bastard.” My throat is dry and my voice just seems to crawl out, but he doesn’t respond anyways, just moans and pants some more, rubbing the tip of his cock down the back of my leg. When I say that, something falls out of my mouth and bounces on the mattress near my hand. I shake Coy off me and pick it up, examining it closely, squinting without my glasses. “Well, I’ll be ...” It’s inches from my eye so I can see. “I chipped a fuckin’ tooth.”

The bed squeaks and leaps as Coy flops backwards, his head landing on the remaining pillows, sweaty hair stuck to his forehead and splayed out over the white bedding. He looks positively exhausted, and no surprise. He seems to have little to no interest in my tooth, so I stand up – my knees give out, making me almost fall and hit my head – and put the little chunk of my canine tooth on the chest of drawers, along with my glasses that I pick up off the floor. I’ve decided it’s my canine tooth because if I feel around with my tongue, I can find the bit that’s gone, leaving sharp flakes in it’s place. That’s certainly never happened before.

With a glare in the still-comatose Coy’s direction, I pick up the pillow that was underneath me, glaring at it too before I wipe my butt off with it. “Fucking incredible,” Coy groans, startling me. I look at him and he looks dead, and very naked and sweaty. “Was fucking incredible, you have no idea.”

I smile fondly and walk over, all previous annoyances forgotten. Perching on the side of the bed, I run a hand down the middle of his chest, absolutely slicked with sweat, shining pale in the dim light. “I think I might have some idea.”

He opens one of his eyes and swivels it around to look at me, and it seems like a brighter blue than usual, or maybe I just haven’t seen his eyes in a while. He smiles lopsidedly and takes my hand in his, kissing my knuckles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah ...” His breath is warm, almost hot. “You tired yourself out, huh?”

“Shit, yeah,” he rolls his shoulder back and forth, then his neck. He gets too tired after that and just kind of goes back to being comatose. “That’s fucking exhausting.”

“You’re swearing a lot,” I mention, watching him guide my hand along his jaw and neck, cupping it around his face. It’s cute.

“It’s ‘cause I don’t think I’ve ever felt this manly.” He smiles proudly, gently shutting his eyes. “I feel like I need to smoke a cigarette and stand on a street corner in a leather jacket and pump some iron.”

I laugh, pulling my hand away, standing up. I gotta go wash up, or something, maybe a shower. “‘Manly’ and ‘greaser’ are not the same thing, in case you didn’t notice.”

“Pfft, says you,” he scoffs with false arrogance. “Those were the glory days, boy.”

“Sounds like you were born in the wrong d -” I freeze, and so does my heart. The bedroom door across from the bathroom has been left open just a crack and now in the silence, I hear something. My mood does a 180 in just a few seconds. “Coy ...” My voice cracks, I can hear it. “Coy, get over here, right now.” I’m whispering.

He hears the undeniable urgency and quickly rolls off the bed, tiptoeing over. He doesn’t see where I’m looking and looks at me, a hand on my shoulder, worry written across his face. “What’s wrong?”

Unable to do much else, I nod my head towards the thin gap between the door and the door jamb in which we can see into the bedroom. It’s as dark as it is out here, a single tungsten lamp lighting the room, casting long shadows. Coy looks, and instantly his hand flies to his mouth. In the dim light, we can see nothing other than a pale skeletal hand blooming out of the darkness, slipping down the plane of a smooth, tanned back. Short, square nails dig into flesh, making the bones under freckled skin stick out. My breathing sounds too loud in the near-silence of the room, the only other sound is the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings. I take a step to the right, closer to the front door, not taking my eyes off that gap in the door.

“Don’t,” Coy breathes, grabbing my arm, pulling me back towards our bed. My feet stumble mindlessly with him. “Don’t look, don’t look ...” I’m suddenly reminded of Brandon. He said just that, in just that tone, when mom came home some nights when I was just a kid, staggering around drunk, knocking things over. ‘Don’t look,’ he’d say, and the two of us would shut ourselves up in my room, playing board games and drawing, doing things that I now realize were to make me forget. It always worked. I don’t think chutes and ladders will fix this.

I feel like crying. “They’re ...” I don’t want to finish that sentence, I can’t. I knew this was coming, why didn’t I really know? Coy doesn’t make me say it. He nods, looking very much like someone just kicked his puppy. “Oh, god. Phil ... Phil, what is he gonna do?” My hand runs through my hair, pushing my bangs away from my face, letting them flop back a second later. “Phil ... ohgod, that poor kid ... I can’t believe ... ohgod.”

Coy hugs me, smelling strongly of sex and sweat. His tangled hair falls across my face and his hands climb up my back. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do.” His voice is as quivering as mine is. “I have no idea what we’re gonna do.”

He holds me for the longest time, and I just can’t stop thinking. What is Phil going to do? Why didn’t we warn him? Why did we leave those two alone? I knew this would happen, that bet we made, Phil knew it was going to happen too. He knew it was going to happen ... Will he be okay? Has he prepared himself? No, I know he hasn’t. He loves Cam, for some fuck-all reason, he told Coy in Rockwell, I heard him. He can’t handle this, the boy he loves is having sex with someone else, under his nose, and they won’t hide it. They’ll stayed sprawled naked on that bed, maybe even open the door farther than it is now. Phil will come back from his walk and see them and ... Then what? What will he do? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

The plastic ‘click’ sound of a card-key in a lock is deafening to us. The door opens before either Coy or I can move, just sitting next to each other on the bed, only our knees touching, both of us still as naked as the day we were born. I can’t bring myself to move. The door swings open and Phil steps in, shutting it behind him. He’s so beautiful, I don’t want to see him hurt, I don’t want him to get hurt. He sees us a second later, blushing beet red. Keep your attention on us, I beg him silently. Phil smiles, averting his eyes politely, breaking my heart. “I knew you guys were gonna have sex, but you could have at least gotten dressed for my benefit,” he laughs.

Coy laughs, but I can tell it’s forced. I wonder if Phil can. “Sorry! We weren’t sure when you’d be back,” and he stands up, walking – still naked – to the end of his bed where his boxers lie, half-hidden under the bed skirt, blending in with the dark carpet. He tosses me my panties, and I pull them on. I can’t swallow the lump in my throat, knowing that this room is a ticking time bomb. The sound of the door shutting was loud, that deadbolt click, the boys know he’s here. Phil hasn’t looked yet, and from where he’s standing, he couldn’t see anything thought three-inch gap other than wall. Coy is tense, I’m tense. We wait. Phil walks by us, still smiling, to the window on the other side of the bed, giving the soggy pillow on the ground a bit of an odd look. He opens the window, letting cool air breeze into the room. I think it’s safe to assume that it smells like cock in here.

When the bedroom door opens, it feels like I’ve been hit in the stomach with a freight train. I see Shelf first, first his arm, then his leg, then his chest, and I instantly can tell he’s naked, leaning against the door frame. My eyes dart to his cock because no matter the situation, cock is cock, and I instantly feel bad a second later. Phil’s back is to him; he’s staring out the window, out at the blinking lights of the pitch-black city. Coy and I are staring at the door, Coy’s mouth ajar, mine firmly shut, tongue fluttering nervously over my newly chipped tooth. Cam appears next, sauntering out, his long spider-monkey arms and legs seeming even longer when he’s naked. His stomach is freckled, his thighs are freckled. He stands just behind and to the right of Shelf, curling his arms around his wide shoulders, resting his head against him. His hair is matted and knotted, his expression calm and happy and tired. They say nothing, they wait.

Phil must see them in the reflection of the glass. He turns around and tears are already in his eyes as if they were waiting just as Coy and I were, knowing what was to come. He doesn’t move, but I’ve never seen someone so shocked. He looks like he’s been told that his mother’s dead. His mouth is open and his jaw moves like he’s saying something, but nothing comes out. Big fat tears roll down his cheeks, dripping off his chin, and I swear I can hear them make a noise as they fall to the carpet. Coy and I, sitting on the edge of the bed, look between the three of them, the only other movement between the five of us is Cam’s hand, rubbing languidly over Shelf’s strong chest. Shelf himself looks just as Cam does, placid.

“What ...” Phil speaks, voice something so indeterminable, like there’s too much emotion shoved into just one word, too much, and he can’t even say it. “... What did you do ...?” Phil, you idiot, don’t ask that! You don’t want to know. Even as I think that, I realize, what else can he say? What is there to say right now?

He looks right at Cam, Cam looks back at him. He keeps crying silently, and for a little while, Cam keeps doing nothing. “Everything,” he finally says, lowering his head so we can only see his nose and upwards over Shelf’s shoulder. He starts kissing him, up the side of his neck, and Shelf makes a happy little noise that makes me want to smack him so hard he’d fly back in time. “Absolutely everything.” His voice is just as out of character as he is, so pleased and calm. No more high-strung nasal quality to it, just audible cotton candy.

Phil’s eyes fill to the brim with tears, spilling out when he blinks. Little crystalline droplets cling to his dark eyelashes, and I don’t know what to do. Even as Cam’s kissing Shelf, kissing the back of his neck, pulling his dirty hair out of the way, he’s looking at right at Phil, their eyes boring into one another's. Phil’s vision is doubtlessly blurred by tears, but I’m sure he can see one of Cam’s hands slip down Shelf’s hip. Cam is the only person to ever make me this angry, this seething, shaking, horribly murderous brand of angry. I want to hit him, strangle him, crack his head open on the floor like a goddamn watermelon, but I know that would only make things worse. Anger is hard to keep in, it’s bubbling out from under my nails, out my tear ducts, out each and every pore of my skin. I can’t keep it in anymore, it’s going to get out. “Go away.” My voice is low, different than I remember it being. Everyone looks at me, though I’m looking solely at Cam. “Go. Away. Get back in your room. Go away.” I can’t stop saying that, it’s what I really want, right down in the pit of my soul. I want him to go away, I want him to get out, get out of my life, get out of Phil’s, get out of Phil’s head. He has to go away, and if the bedroom is as far as I can get him, I’ll take that. “Go away.”

He gives me the dirtiest, meanest look. “Alright.” For a minute, I think he’s going to go without a fight. He wraps his other arm back around Shelf’s neck and starts pulling him into the bedroom, and then he finishes with “Broken record,” and their lips touch just a second before they disappear back into the room, shutting the door with a heel behind them.

Phil falls to the floor. Coy leaps up, vaulting over the side of the bed, crouching down, calling his name. He’s facing the wall, lying on his side, his arm folded awkwardly under him, though he doesn’t seem to want to move. Coy tries to roll him over but he wrenches his shoulder back. I walk over, my legs not working how they’re supposed to. I have to think very hard about how to walk, like how it was back when I first lost my shin. “Phil, c’mon, get up,” Coy begs, a hand on his arm. Again, Phil shakes him off.

“No. Fuck off.” He sniffles loudly before rolling over onto his stomach, sobbing into his folded arms.

“Phil ...” I crouch on the other side of him, rubbing my hand down his back. He shrugs me off, twisting his arm behind him, slapping my hand away.

“Fuck off.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, so close to crying, I don’t know why I’m not. “I’m so. So. So. Sorry.”

“That doesn’t change anything!” he cries, muffled by his arms. “Just get out of here.”

After that, he doesn’t talk anymore. He cries until he runs out of tears and then he just lies there, not moving, face in his arms until three in the morning. At that point, we hear him start to snore, deep in sleep. Coy and I didn’t go to sleep, we couldn’t, because of Phil and the noises coming from the bedroom. We talked quietly so Phil wouldn’t hear us – we weren’t sure quite when he went to sleep – and we both knew there was nothing we could do, but Coy said he’d “snap my other leg off” if I caused more trouble than there had to be. I agree, and ask him to stop me if I start to get all ‘ornery’. He finds this very responsible, apparently, and agrees. We cover Phil with a blanket and try to get a pillow under his head, but can’t, so we just leave it sitting next to him before we go to sleep, all tangled up in each other, dreading tomorrow.


xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cam screaming wakes me up. In the back of my sleep-riddled mind, I think that maybe he’s gotten hurt, or even stabbed, and I smile into Coy’s shoulder, smushed into my face. However, the longer I’m awake, the longer I have to process the sound of that scream and I realize that he is definitely not hurt, at least not in any way that isn’t just peachy-keen to him. I feel Coy stretch, working out the kinks in his back. “I fucking hate him,” I mumble, rubbing a hand over my eyes. The blinds on the window are still open, too much sunlight streaming in. All the sunlight in the world won’t make this day any more bearable.

I roll over, bracing my hands on Coy’s delightfully bare chest, the sun glaring off it as if it was made of porcelain. He looks up at me with a lazy, sleepy smile, failing to hide his concern. “What do we do now?” he whispers, attempting to flatten his bangs where they’ve started to wave and curl. Neither of us can see over the side of the bed, unsure if Phil is awake yet.

“We ... pray for the best.” I don’t know what I can say here, I have no idea what we’re supposed to do now, there’s no handbook on these situations.

“Praying never did anyone any good. I prayed while you were in the hospital, and ...” he pauses, reaching down, knocking against my fake leg. “... and look what happened.” He looks distinctly upset, nudging me to the side as he sits up, peering over the side of the bed. “He’s gone.”

“Oh, Christ.” I sigh, flopping out of bed, stretching my arms above my head, reaching for the ceiling. “He couldn’t have gotten far.” I rub at my glasses, smudging them horribly. I forgot I had them on, and had been going to rub my eyes. I see Coy’s shirt from yesterday lying on the floor and pick it up, throwing it over my shoulders. It reaches my thighs, long enough to not wear pants with, and I button it up just high enough that my nipples aren’t showing.

Ready to go on a search of the whole damn hotel and its surrounding grounds if I have to, I open the door and step out into the hall. The keycard I had in my hand flips twice and falls to the floor as do I, tripping over Phil’s legs. I slam into the opposite wall with surprising force, realizing that my purposeful stride kind of screwed me here. I hear a crunch and at first I think it’s my face, but once I’m on the ground I see black stuff scattered around my palms and I realize I’ve broken my glasses. That’s another first.

“Oh shit,” Phil groans and crawls across the hall to me on his hands and knees. I can barely see him, just his fuzzy outline, as if I had my eyes crossed. “You’re such a klutz.”

“You were lying in the hall!” I shout back, momentarily forgetting everything. It’s like I need to be mad at something, since I can’t hurt Cameron, so I’m mad at my glasses being broken. I scoop up the little shards – it feels like it snapped on the right side, at the joint from the lenses to the arm – and the still-intact glass bits. I hold one up to my eye like a monocle, sure that I look like a fucking idiot. Phil looks upset, so I recoil. “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else I should say.

“... I couldn’t be in there.” He says quietly, not even smiling at my makeshift monocle. “I can hear them,” he whimpers, and more tears start bubbling up in his eyes. He shoves the heels of his palms into his eye socks and doubles over at the waist, resting his forehead on the carpeted floor, sobbing. I shuffle closer, shiny black bits of my glasses forgotten on the floor, and I put my hand on his back.

“I know, I know.” I rub up and down his spine, noting through my ‘monocle’ that he’s wearing the same clothes from yesterday. He sits up, looks at me for a few moments with his eyes and nose red, and then he puts his arms around my neck. In my rush to hug him back, I drop the left lens and it bounces off the carpet. I can now see very little, just blurs of color, but I don’t need to see now. He’s warm and soft and a little squishy in my arms, a knee between mine, his little face pressed into my shoulder, Coy’s shirt getting wet from his tears. I shush him softly, pressing my cheek to the side of his head, drawing him closer. “It’ll be okay, I promise.”

He wails. “I can’t believe it,” he shudders out, sounding so devastatingly sad. I have to fight back my own tears. “I can’t believe he did it, I lied, I didn’t think he would, I didn’t think he was that ...” he pauses, choking on his own tongue. “... mean.”

“He’s just lost,” I say, though it kills me to say anything nice about Cam. I like Phil a whole lot more than I hate Cam, and that’s saying something. “He’s really really stupid and misguided and young, he’ll come around, he’ll settle down.”

More crying ensues. “I’m just as old as he is,” he sobs. “so why is he like this when I’m not?”

“Because,” I know this answer very well. “he’s the biggest douche of all time, you know that, right?”

More crying. I don’t blame him, not at all. I know I’d be crying my damn lungs out if I was in his situation; it would be hard not to. “He’s the biggest douche ever, and he doesn’t like me. What does that say about me?” And then, more crying. Coy’s shirt is sufficiently soaked.

“No, no, no, no, I didn’t mean it like that!” I rub his back, so warm through his shirt. “He just – I mean, you’re ... You’re too good for him, you need a better guy than him, you need someone who -”

“I don’t want someone else!” He sits back now, rubbing furiously at his eyes. He’s frowning, looking horribly angry, so uncharacteristic on him. He’s such a sweet boy, I don’t understand why this has to happen to him. He should be the one breaking boys’ hearts, not the other way around. He moves away from me, his face red and mottled. “I want him.”

I try not to ask this, I really do. I feel the question move from my brain down those little nerve-cords towards my mouth and I tell it to stop but it comes out. “Why Cam?”

He stops, looks at me. He turns away and starts picking up the bits of my glasses again, handing me an intact lens for a ‘monocle.’ I hold it to my eye, watching him. I can just barely see his face from this angle, and he isn’t pleased. “Just because.”

“Just because?” I’m stumped and it’s like my mouth is falling down the stairs, it won’t stop until it’s at the bottom. “After all this, after what he did right in front of you and made sure you knew like a fucking jackass, you’re still desperately in love with him JUST BECAUSE?!” It’s at the bottom.

He slaps me right in the face. It doesn’t hurt, not all that much, but the pure shock of getting slapped is a heavy one. For a few seconds we’re both silent, the loud crack of his palm ringing in the air. I sit there, mouth open, staring at him with one very red cheek. He’s glaring at me, I can tell though I’ve dropped my ‘monocle’ again. His eyebrows are drawn down sharply, touching his eyelashes. “Shut the fuck up.” He isn’t apologizing? “Just shut up. I know you’re trying to help, but this makes no sense and all you want to do is get me to explain it to you. There is no explaining.” He cups his hands around mine, depositing the broken bits of frame along with both lenses and arms. “Just leave me alone.” He sits back up against the wall. “I’m not going back in there.”

Shocked beyond belief, I just stand and nod, turning around, opening the door with my pinkies as not to disturb the broken glasses. When I’m back inside, Coy rushes up to me, a red blur against the bright white light of the window. “What happened? Did you find him?”

“He’s out in the hall, he won’t come in.” I raise my cupped palms up to him. “I fell and broke my glasses.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Keith.” He scoops the bits out of my hands, carrying them to what I think is a trash can. He drops them into something anyways. “Do you have an extra pair? You can’t see shit without them.”

“I think so, check my suitcase.” I just stand there near the door, worried I’ll trip over something. “Aren’t you worried about Phil? He slapped me, you know.”

“I’m sure you deserved it. Plus, what can we do? This is just about the shittiest situation of all time, and he must be absolutely devastated, but short of binding and gagging Cam and Shelf, there isn’t a whole lot we can do.” He’s too logical, and I love and hate that. “Cam and Phil are almost on this trip against their will, and that’s as far as our power goes. Come to think of it, they’re actually worse off now than they were when we left. Whoops.” His hand is in mine and something cold drops onto my palm. “I found your back up pair, but they’re those dorky ones.”

I put them on and everything becomes startlingly clear. Coy’s smiling his crooked half-smile, jaw and chin covered in stubble from two days of not shaving. He looks so rugged. Ambling over to the mirror, I glare at my own stupid looking reflection. These glasses are the dorky cheap ones I bought, knowing I’d eventually break my cool expensive ones. They’re just boring and silver-framed and make me look like I’m twelve and really lame. “We can buy your old ones again when we get back home.”

“Weren’t they really expensive? I should just get a monocle or something. Or a sturdier pair.”

“Those were a sturdy pair, you must have slammed your face into the wall to break them like that.”

“My stride was purposeful.”


xxxxxxxxxxxxx

The rest of the morning in the hotel room is nothing short of disaster. Coy and I dress and shower and shave, feeling clean and happy, and we think, hey, this might work out after all. Then, Cam comes twirling out of the bedroom. I’m not even kidding. He twirls like a ballerina, naked save for a pair of very small black underwear. He’s positively beaming, and comes right up to Coy and I, fixing up our suitcases because they’ve gotten disorderly over the past few days.

“What are you so happy about?” Coy snarls.

Cam just keeps smiling, cocking his head to the left for a moment. “Six times.”

“What?”

“We fucked -” he leans in, grinning so wide that I think if I punched him right now, I could probably knock a tooth out, just like one of those clowns in those arcade games. “- six times.” Each word is enunciated clearly, as if we wouldn’t understand otherwise. Coy glares, looking wickedly dangerous, but Cam just smiles. “Did YOU have sex six times last night? What’s that? No? I didn’t think s-”

I punch him in the mouth.


xxxxxxxxxxxxx

When we’re in the van, back on some godforsaken highway again, things are predictably sullen. Dark grey clouds hang over us like anvils waiting to drop, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they will. We aren’t far from Lomoni now, but will Shelf even leave? The way he’s ramming his tongue down Cam’s throat, my guess is maybe he won’t. Did we drive all the way out here for fucking nothing? Cam will probably just ask us to turn around soon so he can take Shelf home and live with him and pamper him back to health. He’ll say it today, ‘turn around, I’m tired,’ and then we’ll turn around and gruelingly drive home.

They won’t stop making out – it’s more grappling than anything now. Cam is shoved up against the closed trunk, his hands up the back of Shelf’s shirt, all-too-pleased with the fancy tanned blonde boy that won’t leave him alone. This must be fucking heaven for him, that would explain the twirling and smiling. I can’t look at them anymore, and apparently, neither can Phil. He’s abandoned his spot behind my seat and now sits between the two front seats with his head on Coy’s armrest, staring up through the windshield at the sky churning above. His headphones went on the minute we left, and he has yet to remove them. He doesn’t look angry with me anymore, just very, very sad. I don’t know which is worse.

No one talks for hours. Coy doesn’t mind driving today, but the road is long and boring and I know he’s tired of it. We go by four or five small, nameless towns, under overpasses, past so many mileage signs. At about three in the afternoon, Cam makes us stop the van at a rest stop under tall pine trees creeping their way up next to the road. He and Shelf get out and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what they’re doing in one of those bathroom stalls. Phil knows too; he sighs and rubs his temples, and I just feel so bad.

“What do you want for lunch?” Coy asks him, smiling sort of sadly. Phil looks up at him, slipping his headphones off his ears and around his neck. He can see through Coy’s trivial talk, an attempt to get his mind off this whole mess. “I mean, I know it’s a little late, but you haven’t eaten today.”

“I don’t want anything.” He sounds like a bitter kid, but that’s just what he is. I have to remind myself that he has all the right in the world to mope.

“But ...” I look to Coy, then Phil. “I know this is sort of sour now, but ... you won our bet.” He looks confused for a second. “Remember? When we were in Madison, when we got him, you said that if they had sex, we’d buy you lunch or something, and if they didn’t then we’d get to -”

“You can kiss me.”

Coy’s mouth opens a little and over Phil’s head, he gives me this wide-eyed look. Phil’s looking down at his ankles, sitting cross legged. “What?”

Phil shuffles around and gets on his knees, elbows sitting on my arm rest. If his face didn’t look so impassive, you’d think he was eager. He’s barely blushing, too. “Even though you lost, you can kiss me if you want.” He turns and looks at Coy over his shoulder. I watch Coy’s eyebrows shoot up. “Both of you.” He faces me again, the lack of joy in his features and voice almost insulting.

“But ...” I don’t know what to say. He’s pretty close and I’m suddenly self conscious over my stupid glasses. “Why?”

“You don’t want to?”

“No, I -”

“I want to make someone happy, I guess. And you guys have done a lot for me, even if some of it was shitty.” He glances over my shoulder towards the dingy bathroom building made of cinder blocks. “You’ve paid for my food and all the motels, and I don’t think I can pay you back in money or anything, so ...” He trails off, looking distinctly embarrassed. He doesn’t move away, just stares at me with this near-frightening look of determination. Well, whatever he wants. You shouldn’t say no to a boy going through mental trauma; I’d have given him a unicorn if he asked.

After a quick look to Coy, who nods warily, I lean in and kiss him. I mean for it to be just a peck ‘cause he’s only fifteen and everything and is clearly going through a rough time right now, but then I linger for a second and then another, and then his hands are on my shoulders, but he isn’t pushing me back. This is pretty weird, I have to admit, but not anywhere near a repulsive sort of weird. More of a kissing-my-uncle weird, but it’s pretty cool, unlike kissing an uncle would be. He kneads my shoulders nervously, tipping his head, working his lips slowly over mine with a charming hesitance. He certainly knows how to kiss, no matter how few boys he’s done it with. It’s a few more seconds before he pulls away and rubs his lips together, looking thoughtful.

Spinning around on his knees, he faces Coy, who all but grabs him. His headphones knock against Coy’s chin when he kisses him harder than I had, squishing his arms to his sides. From my seat, I can just see the back of Phil’s head, but he looks like he’s okay with whatever it is Coy’s doing inside his mouth. At his sides, his fingers curl and uncurl, fiddling with the cord of his headphones.

The back door slides open, but Coy and Phil don’t turn around when I do. Cam is standing there in the gravel, his eyes fixed on the two of them, a look of disgusted horror on his face, his hair disheveled in a whorish kind of way. Shelf stands behind him, looking as surprised as him, minus the malice. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Phil turns around, gasping. He looks at Cam with wide eyes, his lips slicked with spit, most likely not his own. Coy is grinning, and I give him ‘nix’ motions, telling him to stop. He doesn’t look at me. With an angry exhale out his nose not unlike a provoked bull, Cam leaps into the van, his arm cocked back.




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