Gang of Five

by Douglas

Chapter 1

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Thomas Wolf -- or is it Wolfe?  Whatever; it doesn’t matter -- was so completely wrong.  You really can go home again.

Even if, like me, you’re not really sure you want to.  Or -- part of you really, really wants to, has dreamed about it, jacked off about it, for three years -- while another part of you is so, so scared . . .

And maybe, a third part isn’t so completely sure where home is, anymore.

*

“Christian?”  My mum’s -- sorry, I mean my mom’s -- voice came floating up the stairs.  “You have company.”

I knew who it was, just by the sound of her voice.  Delighted; joyful.  The way she sounds when she sees someone she cares about, after a long, long time.

“Coming!”

If I hadn’t known from her tone, I would have figured it out from the babble drifting up now.  Voices; happy, chattering.  Deeper than I remembered, of course, but I thought I could place them, and I shivered.

I took a quick look in the mirror, this too-small mirror in this weirdly familiar, too-small room; I looked tense and pale, even to me.  Standard-issue, skinny-ish, tense, sixteen-year-old boy, scared blue eyes under a lot of curly brown hair.  And then I went down the stairs, to meet my friends.

“Christian!”

“Dude!”

“Hey . . . !” from me, stepping down slowly.  I sort of put out one arm, ready for a handshake, or a high-five; and Tim ignored it, grabbed me and pulled me in for a huge, full-body hug.

I was hard in, like, a second or so; I tried to pull back a little, to make it less obvious, and Jarod took Tim’s place, with a hug that was less huge but longer, and his smooth, warm cheek brushed mine.

“Good to see you,” I think I mumbled, and Jarod kind of spun me around and there was Zach, my best friend and neighbor, my mom’s arm over his shoulder; and then I was in Zach’s arms, pressing up against him, holding him for the first time in -- years.

For a second --  just a second -- he pulled me in close; REALLY close, his whole body pressing against mine, arms around me, hands rubbing me, the way we’d always hugged, nothing held back; and then the second was gone, and I wasn’t sure what to think.

“Hey,” I said again, sort-of-looking at him.  Same light-brown hair, same smooth, light-tan skin and dark brown eyes.  But so different; so grown.

“Welcome back,” said Zach.  And then my mom claimed his attention back, and as he was talking to her I looked up and watched his face just kind of open up, like a flower blooming.  Shining.

Twice as beautiful as when I left.

Zach and I have been -- were -- best friends, most of our lives.  We shared a lot, especially since we were both only children, no brothers or sisters -- and, we were neighbors.

But when his mom died when we were ten -- well, my mum and Zach got really close.  Closer; like she was his surrogate mother, sort of.

I found out later, this idea of leaving Zach while we moved to the UK for three years almost killed the deal, for my mum; she and my dad had some long, long talks about him before she said yes to the teaching/research fellowship.

It was hard on Zach when we left.

Hard on me, too.  Really hard.  I remembered.

“No Liam?”  I looked over at Tim and Jarod; one red-haired and sweet and shy, one Asian, darker-skinned, and still almost impossibly beautiful.  And watchful; that hadn’t changed, in three years.

“Not today,” went Jarod.  “He’s doing something with Candace and her parents.  We’ll see him tomorrow, though,” and Tim nodded his red head for emphasis, the way he’d always done.

Liam was the other boy in our group.  And the news -- by email -- that he was dating Candace had a LOT to do with my howling insecurity, that day.

Right then, actually.  That very minute.  The insecurity, I mean.

“Timothy!  Jarod!!  Come here, let me look at both of you,” went my mum.  She did the hold-out-her-arms, look-you-up-and-down thing with both of them.  “I have missed both of you so, so much!” she said in her really direct, straightforward way, and wrapped them up in a double hug of her own.

My mum’s British, by the way.  And incredibly cool.  And almost as much a surrogate mother to Tim and Jarod as she was to Zach; I watched as Tim flushed with pleasure, just talking to her.

I really lucked out with my parents.

A lot more so than Zach.  He’s only got his father left; and his father -- well, he’s a workaholic.  Maybe a little distant.

Which is another big reason my parents were worried about leaving Zach behind, back then.

“So . . . I guess you’re a little jetlagged, huh?” asked Zach, at my side, in his new, deeper voice; as my mum chattered on with Tim and Jarod.

“Yeah.  It’s, like,” I squinted at my watch, “one in the morning, my time.”

I felt a little pang when I said it.  ‘My time.’  A part of me thought that London was home.  Maybe a big part of me.

Maybe I was going to think of the UK -- Britain, London -- as my real home for a long time to come.

I wasn’t sure.

“But that’s enough of that; we can catch up later,” my mum was saying, eventually.  “I’m sure you boys want to go talk without adult supervision.”

The words kind of penetrated my jetlag fog, and I almost shivered, again.

“What do you think?” asked Zach, after the obligatory protests, and after my mum sort-of bustled off.  “You must be pretty tired.  You feel up to walking around, a little, or do you just want to crash?”

“Let’s walk.  Please.  I have to stay awake ‘til tonight.  It’s the best way to get over the jetlag.”

“Cool.  Let’s just, go downhill.  Okay?”

We all nodded, and went out into the California afternoon.

*

California doesn’t look anything like England.

At least our part of California; the part I grew up in.  I won’t say exactly where, except that it’s near a place whose first initial would be pretty close to Mill, and whose second initial would be pretty close to Valley, and which would be in Marin County, just north over the bridge from San Francisco.

Maybe.

I can say it, because we’re not exactly in Mill Valley; just close.

Anyway.

So -- twelve hours ago, I lived in a nice flat in a nice part of London; nineteenth-century buildings with iron railings and big flowerboxes, chimneys everywhere, and even a semi-authentic pub on the corner.

A Mews, actually.  The street, I mean.  An authentic, redeveloped Mews.

Now I was in a bone-dry coast live oak forest, all steep hills and valleys, trudging down a narrow, winding road past the houses I’d grown up with, heading toward the little American shopping center at the bottom of the hill.

The smells alone brought me back with a huge, huge rush, the smells of dried grass and woods and bay trees.  And the light; California in July, late afternoon sun filtering through the branches.

“You look a little -- out of it,” said Jarod.  As we trudged; feet crackling through the dead oak leaves and dust, by the side of the road.

“How can you tell?”  went Tim, looking sideways at me.  “I mean -- Wow.  I can’t believe how . . . . . different you are.  You’ve really grown!”  He stopped, obviously searching for words.  Tim’s the quiet one, in our group.

“Are you serious?”  I looked over at all of them, as we scuffed along.  “You guys have changed, so much!  It’s like, disorienting, a little.”

“Disorienting?” from Zach.

“I don’t know.  It’s like, weird.  Coming back.  I mean, I grew up here; but now the house feels about two sizes smaller, and the ceilings are so LOW, and now you guys are all, well, giants.”  I glanced at them briefly, again.  “You all even got muscles.  How did that happen?”

That got a small laugh, and we trudged on, for a second.

*

Some things were being left unsaid.

Like the fact that the last time the four of us were all together, we’d been naked.  At Zach’s house, by the side of his pool.

Or that they’d given me a really special goodbye, then.  An incredibly sensual goodbye.

Me, on my back, looking up at the blue sky.  Not allowed to use my hands.  Zach straddling me, the rest of them sitting or kneeling around me, all of them working my bare body with their hands, their mouths, all over me, getting me so CLOSE to orgasm, and then backing off, and then starting in again, building me back up to exploding, getting me closer . . . .

They were really good at it.  We all were, back then.

It was a memory that was still a big part of my erotic mental furniture; the kind of thing I played back in my head, and tried to feel again, to live over again.  And jacked off to, a lot.

A whole lot.

I wondered, as we trudged downhill, what my friends looked like naked, right now.  These boys whose bodies were once so, so familiar to me.

I wondered if they were wondering the same thing about me.

“So you stayed at that same school, right?  In London?  You never did wind up at a boarding school -- ?” asked Jarod.

“Lord, no.  I mean, not a boarding school.”  I shuddered, a little.  “I really love the UK -- parts of it, anyway -- but some things . . . ”

“But it wasn’t a regular British school, right?”

“No.  It was private; I got in through the University.  Where my mum was teaching, I mean.  It’s mostly foreign kids, like me, in the UK temporarily.  Diplomats’ kids, business families -- like that.”

“Cool.”  Another glance from Jarod.  “You going to miss it?”

I thought for a second.  Wondering how much to say.  “It was a really good school, and I learned a lot.  I kind of liked it, I guess.”  Pause.  “And I’ll miss some of the other kids.  Sort of.”

One in a particular way, actually.  Maybe a warped way.  But I wasn’t ready to talk about THAT.

I noticed Zach not saying anything.

“So,” I said, scuffing my feet, a little.  Wanting to turn the conversation around.  “Your school here is -- okay?  I mean, it’s decent, right -- ?”

“Your school too, now,” went Jarod.  Then he turned to look at me, really directly.  “It is, isn’t it?  You didn’t enroll someplace else?”

“No.  It’s my new school, too.”  I shrugged. 

I wasn’t looking forward to starting a new school.  Again.  Being the newcomer.  Again.

“Cool,” went Jarod again, and he looked down.  “Yeah, it’s decent.  There’s actually a lot of academic pressure; grades, AP classes . . . competition.  You know.”  He frowned.  “Last semester, before vacation started, my advisor told me to start looking out for teachers who would write recommendations for me, for college admission.  When the time comes.  Like, we were all still in tenth grade, then; sophomores.  Two years left.  Kind of sick, if you ask me.”

“Yeah.”

I wasn’t surprised.  Marin County is -- well, it’s kind of wealthy.  Actually, very wealthy; the schools are good.  Even in junior high school, before I left, we were doing fairly advanced work, for our grade level.  And things were getting competitive.

Silence, again.  Four pairs of feet, trudging along.

I glanced over at Jarod and Tim, on one side of me; then at Zach.  Just quickly.

“You guys really DO look . . . well, good,” I said.  Carefully.  “Athletic, maybe?  You’ve all been doing something physical . . . . ”

I wasn’t exaggerating.  They all really did look just fantastic.  Incredible.  To me.

I guess partly it was just that they’d been growing up.  We’d been growing up.  Those smooth, skinny boys’ bodies that I knew so well, that I’d loved so much -- were all filled out, now.  Jarod’s smooth arms and legs were lined with slender muscles; Tim’s shorts -- well.  For the first time since I’d known him, Tim had a butt; THAT was new.

And Zach -- Jesus.  Arms; chest; legs -- everything.  Not bulky; still slender, but beautifully proportioned; sort of -- swelling, maybe.  Graceful.

All of them looked SO much better.  So fucking beautiful, compared to the boys of three years ago.  Exciting; and so, so sexually appealing, to me.  Powerfully appealing.  Getting-me-hard-just-by-being-close-to-them appealing . . . .

So -- yeah.  Now, maybe, you’re beginning to understand my dilemma.

“Well,” said Jarod, “You know how it is; you have to do something in sports to have a ‘well-rounded curriculum vitae’.  If you want to get into a good school.”  He twitched an eyebrow in a kind of well-bred disdain, and I had another weird, flashback-to-three-years-ago moment.  The expression was so, so pure Jarod.  “Tim and I do cross-country.  And, actually, it’s okay; it’s kind of addictive.  We run a lot, even in the summer.”

“And you?”  I kind of asked Zach.

“Swim team,” he shrugged, without looking at me.

I almost blurted out, “You, with a swimsuit?”  I think I kind of half-snorted; but I stopped myself.

*

When I left, three years ago, I’m pretty sure Zach didn’t even HAVE a swimsuit.

And this, for a boy who was in and out of the water, every day.

Oh, wait -- when we went to the beach, he’d wear some old cutoffs; he did the same thing, the time we went to the water park in Santa Rosa, in sixth grade.  I guess that sort of counts.

The point is -- Zach HATED those times when he had to wear something, in the water.  He grew up swimming naked in his own pool -- his parents never minded at all -- and it was just taken as a given, if we went over to his house, we’d be swimming naked, too.  It is Marin County, after all.

And we went swimming and hot tubbing at Zach’s house a LOT.  Swimming in the summer; tubbing in the winter.

Zach’s got to be around water; and in and out of the water.  He just does.  And he’s got a way of being persuasive, with all of us, when it comes to joining him.

Or, he used to have a way.

*

“What about you?” said Jarod.  He stopped a second and looked me up and down, carefully, and I almost shivered again.  “You’ve been doing something too; you’ve filled out, so much.”  He ran his eyes over my chest, and shoulders; and then down my bare arms and legs.  “Not weight training.  I think.”

“You look . . . good,” said Tim.

“I’ve been swimming,” I shrugged.  “Not on a team; just in the University’s pool.  I had to do something . . . ” and I glanced at Zach.

I didn’t mention that I’d been totally fixated on the chances of going go to a different university pool, in a different part of London.  Where a gay group holds Gay Nude Swim nights, once a week.

I never did go.  I wasn’t -- exactly -- old enough.  Technically; although I thought they’d let me in . . . .   But I wanked -- sorry, jacked off -- a lot, thinking about it.

But not as much as I jacked off thinking about the five of us, naked, at Zach’s pool.

*

Actually -- the pool wasn’t the only place where Zach liked being nude.  Three years ago, anyway.

Zach liked being naked anywhere.  Anytime he -- we -- could get away with it.  He loved being naked; he loved being naked with other naked boys; he loved rubbing his bare dick on another boy’s naked skin, getting another boy’s dick and balls in his hands --

And he was never, ever shy about it.  Embarrassed about it.  To him it was perfectly natural.

I loved it all.

Zach and I were swimming nude and sleeping together nude, at each other’s house, from at least the third grade.  By the time we were nine, we’d go into the woods, strip naked and spend afternoons exploring some of the hills and wading in the little creeks all around us.  By the time we were twelve, -- and Jarod and Tim were doing it with us too -- Zach organized naked nighttime bike rides, when it was warm enough, ending up with some really great mutual jackoff sessions in one of our favorite clearings.

But sleepovers at Zach’s house were always the best.

Zach’s bedroom had French doors opening out onto the pool deck.  On warm late-summer or fall nights, we’d leave the doors open, and go back and forth between his room, the deck, the water.

Completely, comfortably bare.  Touching each other.  Laughing.  Pulling each other into the pool . . . .  

His parents never came back to the pool area, when we were using it; I guess to give us a little privacy, for our skinnydipping.  Or maybe just to avoid us; who knows.

We weren’t really loud, or obvious -- about touching, I mean -- but we took advantage of that privacy.

A lot.

I can still remember a few mornings, waking up on Zach’s bed with three or four other naked boys, kind of tangled up together, seeing the light reflecting on the water outside the doors, feeling some little sticky patches on my skin, from last night’s dried semen . . .

Not just my own semen.

For more than three years, in London, I’d think of those nights and mornings and want to cry, I missed it all so much.

Not just the sex; although I never realized how much I’d MISS sex, how lucky I’d been to have it, before, to have these four friends to play with, to COME with, before --

But more important -- the touching; the physical connection; the feeling of being CARED about.

Yeah.  I’d thought about it, a lot.  You could call it friendship; or you could be honest, and call it a kind of love. 

I just know I went without if for three years, and I couldn’t begin to describe how much I’d missed it.

And I didn’t know if it was still here for me, now that I was back.