Gang of Five

by Douglas

Chapter 8

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After that conversation -- about me, and dual citizenship, I mean; it was a little like coming out for the second time in two days -- things got a lot more relaxed.  We drifted, for awhile; and swam, and splashed, and then we were back to touching and caressing each other, some, and in spite of how nice they were being, to me, I tried to fight the impulse to touch them all, rub against them, pet them, all the time.

It was hard.  I think I had -- a deficit.  Kind of the same thing as a sleep deficit, but a touch deficit; I’d been an my sensual shell for so long, and I think my instinct was to try to make up for it, all at once.

So I floated, and hugged, and tried not be grabby, and I think the three of them saw right through me and didn’t mind, because it seemed like I felt bodies against mine, hands roaming over my chest, my groin, my butt, and I felt lips on me, a lot.

Maybe they were this physical all the time, though; I didn’t know.

Eventually we got out of the water to rest, which meant taking a nap in the half-shade under the leafy sun canopy, the pergola, by the side of the pool; and I remembered how GOOD it feels, how much BETTER it feels, getting in and out of the water, all bare like that; drying off and comfortable in the warm air, no wet swimsuit, gentle puffs of breeze moving over my skin --

Well, the part about half-cuddling with my friends -- that helped, too.

And the part where I just casually reached over and cupped Zach’s balls in one hand; just because I could -- and, no big deal, he just murmured something nice and appreciative --

That helped too.  A lot.

It was going to take me awhile, though, to get used to it.

I actually fell back asleep pretty quickly; which wasn’t surprising, I guess.  I could still feel the bone-tired punchiness of jet lag, every time I closed my eyes.

And I had The Annoying Dream again.

I started having The Annoying Dream right after we got to London.  It’s not at all complex, or tough to understand; it’s actually pretty dull.  As usual, it involves going to the airport, and waiting to catch a flight somewhere; with my parents, sometimes, or with one of my teachers once, but usually alone.

And also as usual, it involves me missing -- or almost missing -- the plane.  My stupid unconscious seems to like it best when I forget my passport (as if you could get anywhere NEAR the boarding gate without showing your passport, like, every five minutes); but Losing The Boarding Pass is also a popular one.

Once I lost the whole boarding gate; that was especially fun.  Running through the airport, looking for my gate as the minutes ticked away, until it was five minutes after my flight was scheduled to go and I had the final, sickening realization that I just-wasn’t-going-anywhere . . .

Like I said.  Way too obvious to be interesting.

Except.  This was the first time, for The Annoying Dream, since I came back.

And this was the Lost Passport Variation.  The obvious question; was I back in the UK, trying to get back here?  Or -- the other way around . . . ?

I jerked myself awake; and had a quick second of total disorientation, before I remembered where I was.  We were.

“Uuummmpphhhh . . . ?”, from Zach.  My head was pillowed on his tummy; I felt him stir underneath me.

“Shhhhh . . . ” I whispered.  I lay back and tried to stay still, feeling Zach’s breathing underneath me; but my heart was beating fast, and I was way too tense to drop off again.

Zach could tell.  His hand was lying on my chest, right underneath my left nipple.  I tried to control my breathing anyway.

“Bad dream?”  he whispered at my ear.

“Not really,”  I whispered back.  I twisted my head around, and kind-of-kissed his tummy.  His hand came up and squeezed my pec, gently, and we just lay there, like that, in the warm air, for a few more minutes.

“Come see my room?” he whispered down at me, eventually.  I twisted my head to look at him and smile, and we -- carefully -- disentangled ourselves from Tim and Jarod, without waking them up.

Zach’s room really WAS different.  Way different.

I mean -- I remembered it, really clearly, from before.  I spent so many nights here, it was almost MY room.

A little messy, maybe; back then.  Neither of us was much for making beds.  But totally Zach; travel posters all over the walls, and a mobile hanging from the ceiling; a big desktop computer, and boxes of computer games, and half-finished science projects on shelves . . .

But now it looked -- well, kind of adult.

He’d painted; the walls were kind of dark grey, now, without a single poster anywhere.  Instead of the old desk, there was a glass-topped table, with nothing on it but a super-thin Apple laptop and a pair of really high-tech-looking speakers, exactly centered.

The kid-size bed was gone, too.  Against the opposite wall, there was a really BIG bed.  King-sized?  And perfectly made up, with a plain, rich-looking duvet.  Bedspread, I mean.

But the real surprise was the books.  Dozens and dozens of them; all in dark, minimalist-looking shelves, floor-to-ceiling against two walls.

“Wow,” I said, looking around.  But mostly at the books.  “You really changed this.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking sideways.  “I guess.”

“I think you actually have me beat, now.  With all of these.”  I waved at the bookshelves.  “Well -- except, they’re neater than mine.”

I’ve always gotten teased, for all the books I have; I read a lot.  And somehow, my books tend to wind up -- on top of desks, or chairs; or piled in stacks, against walls.

“I just kind of got into the habit, I guess.  The more I read, the more I WANT to read; you know?  About the real world, I mean.”

“Yeah.”

 I looked at Zach; it was -- well, maybe not weird; since we didn’t really know each other that well anymore, not the way we used to -- but.  He was acting kind of -- shy.  Not really looking at me, much; being a little tentative; smiling, a certain way.  Just -- shy.  I could tell.

The Zach I grew up with was a lot of things -- kind, loving, generous, courageous -- but shy?  Not one of them.  Zach can be quiet; really, really quiet.  But -- he’s always had that openness thing going for him; that face that just, shines . . .

“A lot of my mom’s books are over here,” he was saying, looking at one wall.  “I’m starting to get into them; a little.”  He half-smiled.  “She always used to tell me how everything we see, and everything we are, is just large-scale molecular biology.”

“Yeah,” I said.  Looking at his face.  He hadn’t really ever talked about his mom, much, after she died.  “So . . . you’ve definitely decided you’re going to do that?  As a major, I mean.”

“Uh-huh.  It’s really . . . interesting.  I mean, my mom was right; it’s how everything’s put together; it’s how everything works.”  He glanced over at me, quickly, and paused.  “I was thinking . . . maybe next summer, after I get to drive . . . I might try for an internship in one of the biotech companies in Emeryville.  You know; for early college credit?”

“Wow,” I said.

Thinking -- again -- how maybe I had come back . . . a little late.  Just when we were about to start drifting apart . . .

“Hey,” he said, looking at me.  “I figured we could carpool.  You’ll probably be doing something in International Relations at U.C. Berkeley . . . if you haven’t applied for political asylum in the E.U., by then.”

He made it all sound like a joke; but I didn’t look at him.

“So,” I said, after a second.  “What happened to all your posters?”  I looked around at the grey walls.  “I really liked them.  Remember how we said we were going to that one little village in Norway, some day?  The one in the picture?  Underneath the mountain, on the fjord?”

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging a little, still kind of not looking at me directly.  “I’ve still got them, somewhere.  But they got a little old.”  He gave me a quick smile.  “Besides -- I keep most of my pictures on my laptop, these days.”

He padded over to the desk, flipped up the screen on his laptop, and turned it on.  And as we stood there -- instead of watching the screen, I watched the light from the screen on Zach’s bare skin, and face, his long, lean body --

And I couldn’t help but notice.  Everything; that we were both, well, bare; and, yeah, that Zach had turned beautiful, with the light from the screen showing up his slender muscles, his smooth chest -- the light really highlighted his pectorals -- and his FACE, damn it, that open face that showed so much of his soul, but was so, so, sculpted-beautiful, these days . . .

I looked away, fast.  Because in the space of time it took for his laptop to boot up -- and it was a lot less time than my laptop took -- I started to, well, get hard.  Chub up.  Become tumescent.

I told myself it was because, duh, I was nude.  We both were nude.  Three years ago, I was used to it; heck, I’d grown up like this, really.  Now, I’d caught myself trying to put my hands in my pockets twice in the last five minutes.  And I was still really, really conscious of being naked.

But I knew it wasn’t just that.  It was standing next to Zach, nude.  Zach, with his sixteen-year-old-boy’s body, close enough to feel the heat from his skin.

And that bed, right next to us.  With that soft-looking duvet . . .

“Here,” he said, touching me just lightly on my hand.

“Oh, no,” I said, looking at the screen.

It was one of the first jpegs -- of me -- I’d sent back from London.  The three of us, my mum, dad and I, standing in front of Westminster Abbey.  Yeah; original.

“Why, ‘oh, no’?  I think it’s nice.”

“Look at me.  God, I was so young.  And look at that hair.”  Way too long; I thought I looked like a brown dandelion.  A scared, brown dandelion.

“Hey!  You know I’ve always loved your hair.  Well -- how about this one, then?”  He clicked again.

This one was me, alone, almost as unsure, with the Houses of Parliament behind me.

“I think these were all from our first weekend there.  I had to get them scanned.  I remember how weird it was, going into the store alone and asking them to do it.”

“Why was it weird?”

“I don’t know.  The accents.  How different everything was.”

“Well.  I’m glad you did.”  He paused a second.  “It was so cool, getting these pictures, actually seeing you there.  Kind of unreal.”

“It felt unreal.”  I looked back at my stalky, thirteen-year-old self.  “Did you keep ALL the pictures I sent?”

“Well . . . “  He clicked again; and I was looking at myself from last March; on the highest walkway above the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, with the Thames shining in the sun behind me, puffs of white clouds almost covering the sky.  I remembered when it was taken; Jose, Robert and I had skipped an afternoon of school.  Which was why I was grinning like an idiot at the camera.

“That one, I don’t mind so much.  I’m sort of presentable.”

“Even if you are wearing clothes in it,” he said, flashing his eyes at me, with another little smile.

“Hey!  What about all your pictures?  The really good ones, I mean.”  I deliberately bumped my bare hip against his, and I felt my dick getting bigger again.

“Which ones?  The stills, or the movies?”  He smiled with one side of his mouth.

“MOVIES?  Oh, Jesus, I want to see those!”

“You will.”  Zach closed down the viewer program.  “But I thought we should do it with Liam here.  He’s got some of his own; he’s bringing his laptop.”

“No!  Come on.  Just a few?  I mean, you guys were out here taking pictures, and movies, and, and, stuff, and I was, like, barely able to wank off in private . . . ”

“Wank off?”  Zach sort of laughed, but gently; then his face got really kind of serious.  Kind of sad, actually.  “Christian . . . I really am sorry.”

“What?”

“You know.”  He looked down, then back up, at me.  “For letting it get . . . like this.  Like it was.  For not, like, coming out, to you.”  He was looking at me really, really directly now, right in my eyes, totally serious in that way Zach has.  “I . . . let it get weird, and I shouldn’t have.  I guess I do that, sometimes, with . . . things that are really important to me.”

The thing about Zach is -- he’s so, so open.  Anybody can read his face; his body, his posture -- just about everything about him just, shines.  It’s part of what makes him so beautiful.

And now, all of Zach was, well, focused on me.  He was really, really sorry; he was really concerned about hurting -- having hurt -- ME.

“Zach -- no.  It’s not your fault.  It was me, too.”  I shrugged my shoulders, still looking at him; then I looked down.  “I should have . . . well.  I think it was too important to me, too.”

“Yeah, but I should have done more.”  He paused, for a second.  “You’ve always been -- well, you FEEL things, so much; you care, so much.  You’re sensitive; and I should’ve realized that, I never should have let the silence build like that . . . ”

He went on, a bit, still shining his concern, his compassion, and as he said it -- something kind of changed, inside me.  Something big -- started to change.

I don’t know.  Maybe it was a combination of things; his new (to me) body, his beauty, the new maturity and humanity shining out of him --

See; when we were thirteen -- well.  When we were thirteen, sex was -- great, fantastic, FUN; we -- all of us -- were a set of almost-brothers, really, really fiercely and loyally devoted to each other; (mostly because of Zach’s leadership).

Yeah, we loved each other, in our special way, our thirteen-year-old way; we even said it to each other, often enough, when nobody else could hear us.

And Zach and me, if anything, had been even closer; brothers without the rivalry, closer than friends could ever be.

But now -- standing there, close enough to smell his breath, close enough to feel his warmth, almost close enough to TASTE --

Now it was different.  I FELT different.

And Zach had stopped talking, somewhere along the line.  And we were facing each other, a few inches apart.

And I was growing a full, hard-on boner; which was weird.  Partly because I was embarrassed about it -- like, when had I EVER been embarrassed, being hard in front of Zach? -- and partly because it was, well, kind of an EMOTIONAL boner.

And Zach, standing so close to me, smooth and muscled and beautiful and quiet -- he was getting hard as fast as me.

“Zach,” I said, softly, not-quite-meeting his eyes.  Then I looked up at him, and I slowly reached out my hand and just, gently, touched him, on the side of his waist --

And he shivered.

Twice; close together.

I kept my hand on his waist, and leaned a little closer, still looking in his eyes; and our hard dicks kind of bumped against each other, in that wobbling, rubbery way hardons have.

And then -- still barely touching -- we were kissing.

I mean -- weird, again.  I’ve kissed Zach hundreds of times, and more.  We’ve tried to time our orgasms, more often than not, since we were old enough to HAVE orgasms, to when we were kissing.

This was -- different.

Wet; soft, and gentle -- but that wasn’t it.  We’d kind of kissed like that, a couple of hours ago; this was still different.

This was -- well, a kind of rush I’d never felt before.  I began to feel something for Zach I’d never felt before; and I felt like my brain, and maybe my soul, were, like, sort of naked to him, exposed to him, in a way I’d never, ever felt before . . .

And this new, weird kind of kiss just kept going on, and on, us moving our tongues and lips together, saying things without saying them, and I reached down without looking and took both our hard dicks in my free hand, gently pulsing them together --

Splash, from the pool outside; then the sound of Tim’s voice in a kind of ‘Whoop!’, then a bigger splash, a cannonball-to-soak-somebody kind of splash.

I’m not sure which one of us pulled back first.

I know I was -- I don’t know.  ‘Confused’, maybe?

‘Needing to process this’; a lot. 

Yeah.  I needed to process this.

“Maybe . . . we should go back out there?” I murmured.

“Yeah,” whispered Zach, to my face.  Then he leaned in for another soft, warm, wet kiss, and back out again.  “We should.”  Another shock, of his mouth on mine, in mine, then out again.

And then he’d pulled himself away, sliding his dick out of my fist; and I wondered what I’d just done . . .

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