by David Connor
Wilbur wanted up in my arms. The moment he felt how wet they were, he decided he didn’t. He found my coat instead, the one I should have put on before going outside, and snuggled down into that, instead.
“You get warmed up, baby boy. Brr.” I pressed myself into Patrick, my back to his front, and he folded his arms around me, tracing the lines of my upper torso, and marking my heart with a letter P. I wondered if the action was a conscious one on his part. He didn’t say a word, until I shivered.
“This isn’t going to work with wet clothes on.”
I concurred. “No.”
“So, what do we do about that?”
“There are showers in the back,” I told him. “I can still see the message Jefferson and Calvin left us, though. Pulling myself away before the outlines are gone doesn’t feel right.”
“It was all real.” Patrick touched his chin to the top of my head.
“Yes. They can visit us, in their own way.”
After several more minutes of shivering and staring out into snow blowing sideways, I turned from the window, still clinging to Patrick, because I didn’t want to move too far away. He tightened his hold once I faced him, still just as wet and just as cold.
“We need to get you out of these. I wouldn’t want you to get sick.”
“You can go first,” he told me.
“We can go together, unless you’re shyer here than you were at Jefferson’s pond.”
“Was I the shy one?” he asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Patrick’s voice was playful as moved his hands up to my cheeks.
“I just am.” I was back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. There was one in aisle eleven that had googly cat eyes and a tail. Wilbur sat there for fifteen minutes one of the other nights I’d brought him in, watching the thing go tick tock, tick tock, side to side, to-and-fro, like me and my convictions to get on with life. “I don’t know why I’m so…weird about it.”
“About sex?”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t think you’re weird.” Patrick’s shirt was plastered to his body. I could see the outline of both pointy nipples and the indentation of his belly button.
“It’s been a long time since a man has put his hands on me for anything good, you know? I mean, Rip hugs me and everything, and then Jefferson, and you, but this last hurdle is…I don’t know what it is.”
We heard another noise. I heard it. The way Patrick jerked around, I assumed he had, too. We were up front, by the registers, and it didn’t take long to figure out what had fallen.
“Martha Stewart?” Patrick picked it up.
“‘Living.’” It made sense this time. “It’s from Jefferson or Calvin.”
“They want us to bake a cake? Or are they suggesting we make our own Valentine’s cards?”
“No. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“I think we should make our own Valentine’s Day cards.”
“Okay.” I put a kiss where his heart was. “We will. For now, I’m thinking they want me to live life. Jefferson told me that before. He said it last fall and again tonight. I get fixated. I can imagine him telling me to stop worrying about his happiness—his afterlife—and to start concentrating on my life over here.”
“Ah.” Patrick put the magazine back in the rack.
“So, I’m going to try.” I took his hand. “To the locker room?”
“Lead the way, and not just because I have no idea where it is.”
Patrick stayed at my side to make sure I didn’t trip on my costume tights again. Wilbur followed along. With my bag and his blanket in one hand, the other in Patrick’s, we paused a while under a ceiling vent blowing hot air not too far from the double doors to the back.
“That feels nice,” Patrick said. “We could just stand here a while.”
“After. Come on.”
The locker room was nothing special, but I kept it immaculate. There was a bank of twenty lockers, most of them unused. The space was small and smelled like pine cleaner, bleach, and a mix of male and female body sprays. A wooden bench in the middle of the floor was the only thing with any color. The lockers, the shade on the light, the tile on the floor and the walls of the shower stall off in one corner, even the curtain that pulled across its front were white.
“Goose.” I pointed out the piece of masking tape with my name written in red marker. “This is my locker.” Why was I introducing Patrick to an inanimate object? I supposed it was because I was nervous, still.
“Hello,” he said to it. “It’s cool it has the same name as you.” Patrick’s silliness was one of many things I adored about him.
“I keep it pretty well stocked,” I said as I opened the door. “Clean towels, some clothes, toothbrush, and all that stuff. I never knew when I might want to make a quick getaway or hide out a while.”
A caress against my cheek was Patrick’s only response. It made me shiver again, that and my soaking wet Batman outfit. “We’re not doing a good job making you feel all toasty,” he said then. “Hot water. Now.”
“You, too.” I took his hand. “Come on.”
We stripped down in silence. Once naked, Patrick allowed me to remove his glasses to set them on the counter beside the sink.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you without these.” I picked them up. “Not for more than a second or two.”
“I feel so naked.”
“Well…” I ran my finger beard to bare belly. “You kind of are. Can you see me?”
He squinted, and then did to me what I’d done to him, touching me from my Adam’s apple to my pelvic bone. “Perfectly.”
“Good.”
The shower was barely big enough for two. Some part of Patrick was always touching me. A seven or eight-inch protrusion between his legs made him hard to avoid, not that I was trying to.
“Is this what your bees sound like?”
The water pressure was good. The sound wasn’t deafening, like Niagara Falls, but more like the buzz of a million insects. It reminded me to ask about Patrick’s beekeeping.
“What do they do in winter?”
“It does sound a bit like that.” Patrick took charge of the water temperature, adjusting each knob a little to the left, and then a little to the right. “The colony thins out. The workers stay and protect the queen. They form a pack around her and constantly move to keep her warm.”
“All winter long?”
“All winter long.”
“Ain’t that the life? Is it wrong I’m picturing a hundred naked guys in hardhats twerking around me when I get home after this blizzard?”
“Sounds nice.” Patrick turned to face me again.
“Is it wrong they all look exactly like you?”
He chuckled, “Even better,” and poked me. “Sorry. Anticipation, not to mention the sight of you, clothed and naked, from the very first time, affects me in all kinds of places.”
“You’re good with words.” I stood on tip toe to kiss him. There was that boner again. I smiled at the word.
“What?”
“Boner.”
We giggled, and I got one, too. “Jefferson told me to try to remember the me I was before…before Tom. I was a kid, basically. A fifteen-year-old with two things on my mind.” I swiped water from my eyes. “Pokémon and porn, back and forth, back and forth on the computer.”
“Really? Bulbasaur…Pikachu…” Patrick licked his lips. “Squirtle. Doing anything for you?”
“Oh, yeah!” I put my head under the spray, and then shook water all over the stall and Patrick. “That’s hot.”
“I was more into The Periodic Table of Elements.”
“That figures.”
Patrick splashed me. “Yeah, well…’Heathcliff had large balls, butt, and cock.’”
“From ‘Wuthering Heights?’ I should read that.”
“No.” Patrick was working up suds in his hair. “Well, yes, but, it’s mnemonic. Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, bor
on, and carbon equals ‘Heathcliff had large balls, butt, and cock.’ It was my way of memorizing the elements.”
“Ah. Do another one.” Getting at the top of his head was hard for me, but I wanted to take over the task. I had to press my entire naked body against him and reach, practically climbing up his.
“Nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicone, phosphorus, sulfur, ‘Niles only fucked Norman six months after sucking Peter’s schlong.’”
“You dirty little pharmacist! Who are Niles, Norman, and Peter?”
“The butler from ‘The Nanny,’ who I always thought was hot, Norman Bates, as in Anthony Perkins, and Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man.”
“Ah. You have eclectic taste in men.” I stepped back, so Patrick could rinse away the shampoo.
“And women,” he said after a quick spray. “Bromide was for boobs, and Rhodium and palladium were part of a limerick about Reese Witherspoon and Parminder Nagra I’m not too proud of at this age. I’ll never forget the elements, though.” Patrick picked the spicy body wash up from the floor. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“May I?” He squeezed the blue gel into his palm, and then asked for permission to wash me. “If it’s too much…too soon…too…”
I shushed him with a finger. “Please. You’re fine, but that’s not all you wanted to ask me.”
He rubbed my shoulders with the perfect amount of pressure, with gentleness, and a slight scratch of the nail through the foam. Like he’d mentioned earlier, I felt it in different parts of my body. “You’re still cold.” When Patrick pulled me close, against his wet, strong, furry body, I felt nothing but safe and warm.
“Ask me what you wanted to,” I said.
“Okay.” He took a step back and bent his neck slightly to look me in the eye. “The fact that I’m bi, is any of your reluctance about that?”
“No. Absolutely not.” I didn’t even have to think about it.
“Some people think bisexuality is just an excuse to cheat. Get with a woman, cheat with a guy. Get with a guy, step out with a woman.”
“I don’t think that.”
“I don’t do that,” Patrick said.
“Of course not.”
“I rushed into marriage, but I loved her. We loved each other. There didn’t seem to be any reason to wait. I’m not sure I wouldn’t do it again, just like that now…or later. I…I like commitment.” Patrick started washing me again, stroking behind one earlobe and under one armpit. The sensation made me want to shake my leg, like Wilbur did when I scratched his belly. “I’m glad we touched on it, just to make sure.”
“Yes.”
Deep, loud breaths, literal sighs of relief done in unison, made us chuckle again. “I don’t really need a bath,” I told Patrick, my head against his shoulder. “But this is nice.”
“Hmm.” The vibration of his lips against the top of my head made me shiver again. I let him know it wasn’t the cold.
“I want to be with you,” I said, craning my neck to see up into his face. “I want us to…” I decided to show him, by pulling away, running both hands down his torso, then dropping to my knees to take his dick.
“Mmm. Oh, God, I want to be with you, too.”
The water beating against the back of my neck, running down my spine, and then between the split of my ass was rushing me to stop what I was doing to let Patrick get inside me. As my anxiety tried to speed things up to get it over with, I could hear Jefferson whisper, “Take your time. Enjoy it.”
“You think they can see us?” Patrick asked.
I looked up to meet his eyes. “Funny you should ask at this precise moment.” He didn’t have to specify who he’d meant. “I hope they can.”
“Kinky.”
I licked him like ice cream. “Maybe, but I think I want Jefferson to know I’ve found someone to…like-like.”
Patrick smiled. “Back to the teenage thing, huh? I like-like you, too.”
I stood and kissed him, smile to smile, his laugh going into me.
“What were you into at fifteen and beyond, other than Pokémon and porn?”
“I liked painting in school,” I answered. “My art teacher was this hot hippie daddy type. I played baseball. Was an okay student, B’s in most classes, some A’s here and there.”
“Wait, wait, wait. I thought you were a slacker.”
“Well, I was. Some of my teachers took pity on me, because of my home life, I think. I also took courses that came easily, like drawing, and English. I never took a math course that wasn’t a requirement. Could have gotten better grades in the sciences if I’d applied myself, or if you had been there to teach me dirty ways to memorize stuff. I regret not going to college, but I was sure that would have been too hard, and I wish I had put more effort into learning an instrument. I quit band in eighth grade.”
“It’s not too late to learn to play music now, or anything else you want to do.”
“Hmm. Well, a lot of it was just so I wouldn’t have to go home at the end of a school day. Now, I’ve gone the other way. Home is different. I like it there. Maybe I could get out more often, though.”
“To spend the night at mine on your nights off?”
“Or you could come over. Right now, I just want to get back to what we started, to enjoy the moment.”
“This moment, is it enough?” Patrick took my hands. “Our first time could have been in your bed, in mine, in the woods or a fancy hotel, maybe behind the oak tree in Tennessee…”
“That’s a wee bit public,” I said.
“I thought you liked when people watch.”
“Only two.”
“Ah.” Patrick spun me around and pushed me back to the wall. “We can wait, if you want, as hard as it would be to pull myself away from you at this very moment,” he said between kisses while grinding against me, “all you have to say is stop.”
“Stop.” I hated myself. The directive had come quite softly. Maybe I hadn’t even said it out loud, because the second time I said it, “Stop,” a little bit louder, Patrick immediately stepped back. “Fuck!” I shouted that.
“Goose, it’s okay.”
“It’s not. I want this so badly. I don’t even care where. This stupid little shower room, the seediest motel, outside on the Dumpster, it doesn’t matter.”
“I was too rough.”
“No.” My fingertips touched his frown before stroking at his beard. “It’s not your fault. I guess I just…I still maybe have a bit of a problem being vulnerable beneath the full weight of a man. I trust you,” I added quickly. “And I love you.”
“I love you, too. Hey.” He moved me slightly, so the water from the nozzle wasn’t running down my face. “I love you, and if you don’t want to be under me, maybe you can be on…top of me?” He said it just like that, with the pause and the emphasis on the word top.
I smiled half-heartedly. “I don’t want us to have to choreograph every move. I don’t want you to be worried every second you’re going to trigger something. Damn it!”
“Shh. A paint by numbers is still beautiful when it’s done.”
I looked at him. “What?”
Patrick laughed. “I was trying to be all eloquent. One, two, cha-cha-cha. If you want to write out a list of step by step instructions for me, I’m game.”
“You’re amazing. That’s what you are.” I kissed him and pressed my lower gut and half-hard dick into his. “I think we can work something out. Come on. There’s a better way to do this.”
Patrick’s big feet left huge footprints as we walked back to my locker, like they would have in the snow outside. I had a towel around my waist. He held his in front, because it was just a bit too short to close around his middle.
“Believe it or not,” I said, “I have blankets and an inflatable mattress in the locker underneath mine. It’s kind of nice I’ll be using them for fun, instead of their original intention.”
I struggled to pull the thing out of
the small opening. Even deflated, it was cumbersome and heavy.
“Oomph.”
“Oops.” I’d gotten Patrick with my elbow, right in the gut. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” He said it bent over, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and then stood, rubbing where I’d hit.
“Where should we set it up?” I asked once successful, after kissing his booboo, of course.
“Somewhere without security cameras. If Jefferson and Calvin see us, fine. If the company that watches over this place at night does, we might get in trouble.”
I reminded Patrick I knew the store like the back of my hand, where the cameras could see and where they couldn’t. “They’ll have us outside making snow angels.”
“Great. There go all those years of me being a goody-two-shoes. My reputation is ruined.”
“Aww.” I poked him in the chest on purpose this time, and then kissed the spot again, before inscribing a G there, as we still stood at the lockers. “No one ever looks at what’s been recorded, unless there’s an issue. They’ll only know a cleaner dressed as Batman and a pharmacist in his underwear were making snow angels in the parking lot if the place gets robbed before daybreak, and they go to look at the footage. Tomorrow night, our little adventure will be taped right over.”
“Good to know.”
“Yup. So…” I turned toward the doorway. “I’d love to see the snow. I like snow.”
“Even this much at once?” Patrick asked.
“As long as the power stays on, I don’t mind. My bro-ski has a snowplow. We ride around and dig people out gratis the day after.”
“So, you’re a superhero for real?”
“It’s something I always wanted to do…just show up, help, and take off, like the Lone Ranger of snow removal. I had extra money. Rip had a truck. I bought the plow. End of story. He’ll probably be here at sunrise for me. I love the guy, you know.”
“He’s pretty great.”
“And the reason you and I are here now. He’s the reason I met Jefferson. Damn. I really should have bought the guy a better Christmas present. As for right now, I know the perfect spot. Come on!”
