WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS PROFANITY, EXPLICIT ADULT CONTENT, HOMOSEXUAL THEMES, AND MATERIAL THAT MAY OFFEND LARGE PORTIONS OF THE POPULATION. IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, ENTERTAIN CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL VIEWS, OR SUFFER FROM A HEART CONDITION, PLEASE CLOSE YOUR BROWSER NOW TO AVOID OFFENSE, ILLEGALITY, OR A DANGEROUS RISE IN BLOOD PRESSURE.
At the top of a dark granite cliff, a two foot wide stream turned into a long, crystal cascade that tumbled over ledges and fell in clear sheets like ice, until it finally tumbled into the pool. A granite bolder had tumbled down from the cliff, probably hundreds of years before, and formed a natural dam. Half of the bolder was flat and dry, and the water from the pool spread out and tumbled over the other half, where it fell hundreds of feet to another pool hidden beneath the canopy of trees.
“Alright,” Anders said beside him. “This was worth it.” Anders unbuckled his pack and leaned it
against one of the higher stones, then sat down and began to unlace his
boots.
“What are you doing?”
“Cooling off!” Anders shouted, setting
his boots aside. He stripped off his
long sleeved shirt and the thin Under Armor tank top he wore beneath it, zipped
the legs off of his pants, and waded into the water. “Come on!
You didn’t drag us ten miles to see this just to sit there, did you?”
Kevin rocked his head from side to
side. It had gotten up to seventy-five
this afternoon, and the water did look lice.
It also looked cold. “I think
I’ll pass. There’s a real shower and a
hot tub somewhere in Franklin with my name on it.”
“You’re kidding! It’s nice!”
“It’s wet!”
“Yes,” Anders nodded, “That’s one of the
features people tend to like about water!”
“Fuck you,” Kevin grinned.
“Shouldn’t insult the guy who’s already
soaked!” Anders shouted. “I don’t have
anything to lose by splashing you, you know!”
“I’m out of range!” Kevin shouted, not
quite sure if he was.
“Ha!”
Anders bent down raced back towards him, scooping up a handful of water
as he moved.
The water arched towards him and dropped, as if by
magic, right over his head.
“Bastard.” Kevin wiped the water away from his eyes,
glared and Anders, and stood up. He
hadn’t even taken his pack of yet. He
dropped his back quickly, though, and slipped out of his trail running shoes
and thick wool socks. He had more layers
to shed than Anders, and the skinny man laughed and scooted away, making use of
the extra time to get deeper into the pool.
When Kevin tossed his shirt aside and
plunged into the water after Anders, he stopped, struck by the cold and the
opened mouthed shock on Anders’s face.
His first thought, aside from trying to
block out the stabbing cold as the blood vessels in his toes constricted, was
that he probably looked like shit. He
tried to cover up his chest, sure that the dusky pink splotches that made his
skin look speckled were obvious. He felt
the blush rising through his neck and he knew that there was nothing he could
do to stop it. He backed out of the
water and reached for his shirt again.
“What’s wrong?” Anders laughed. “You can’t possibly be shy!”
Kevin pulled his undershirt on and
turned away. He didn’t need to hear any
jokes about it. He knew what his body
looked like. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t
care, and he didn’t want to think about why it bothered him bow.
“Kev, what’s wrong? I was just having fun!”
Kevin sat down to dry off his feet and
pull his socks back on.
Anders waded towards him and climbed up
onto bolder. He left wet footprints as
he made his way towards Kevin. “Is this
the whole definitely not interested thing?
Because I didn’t mean to stare. I
was just surprised, that’s all. But,
hell, man if anyone here has a reason to feel shy, it’s me.”
Kevin slipped on his shoe and began to
tighten the laces. “Anders,” he said
quietly, “It’s alright. You can ask.”
“Ask what?”
“About the marks on my skin. It’s not my favorite subject, but I’m not
ashamed of it, either.”
“Are you serious? Do you really think a few freckles are going
to make you any less hot? Now I don’t
feel so bad for always falling behind, though.
I had no idea you were in such amazing shape.”
“Freckles?” Kevin laughed. He ran his fingers over the muscles on his
own chest, wondering how Anders could be so distracted by the muscle definition
that he didn’t see the alternating areas of pink inflammation and white skin
that came after. Looking at his own arms
and shoulders, though, Kevin was relieved to see that his skin wasn’t so
bad.
“They’re not freckles?”
Kevin shook head slowly, the humor of
the situation vanishing.
“So what is it, then?” Anders sat down beside him, but he made no
move to retrieve his own clothes.
Kevin took a deep breath and stared at
the water. The ripples and sediment that
Anders had stirred up playing in the water had settled and the pool was clear
down to the bottom now. “I’m sick,” he
admitted. He took another deep
breath. “I’ve got a disease called
lupus. It’s like…” he shook his head and squeezed his eyes
shut. The clinical definition, with all
of the many ways that it could impact the body, was long and drawn out. “It’s like a combination of arthritis and an
allergy to sunshine.”
“An allergy to sunshine?”
“Basically, yeah.”
“But you spend all day outside. Every day.”
“In case you didn’t notice,” Kevin
nodded up towards the trees above them, “There’s not actually much for sunshine
on this section of the trail. And I
stick to long sleeves and sun screen.”
“And four prescriptions?”
“That too.”
“What all do you have to take for it?”
“Basic stuff. Arthritis medication, prednisone, another
arthritis drug, blood pressure medication, Motrin. Lots of Motrin.”
“Damn…
So, you’ve got to take all of that medication every day? For the rest of your life?”
“Yeah.”
Until his kidneys failed, or the inflammation started to cause fibrosis
in his lungs. Theoretically, treating
the condition early could prolong those complications, and maybe even prevent
them, but Kevin wasn’t putting much stock in that. The same treatments hadn’t stopped it from
killing his dad in the end.
“Is it serious?”
Kevin picked up a small shard of rock
and tossed it into the pool. “Yeah.”
“How serious?”
“Well—barring random car accidents, my
own stupidity, and plagues of zombies—it’ll probably kill me.”
Anders was quiet beside him, but Kevin
could almost feel the air around them getting colder.
“Not for awhile, though, so you don’t
need to worry about dragging my corpse off the trail. My doctor’s pretty optimistic, anyway.”
“But you’re not optimistic.”
Kevin tossed another rock into the
water. “I have my optimistic
moments. Most of the time, I’d gladly
put money on the whole plague of zombies thing.”
“Because no one ever gets killed by
something as mundane as a car accident,” Anders nodded.
“Exactly. That’s so normal that it could never possibly
happen.”
Anders rolled over and crawled to his
pack. He came back a moment later with
two candy bars and dropped one into Kevin’s lap. “I’d bake something, but…” Anders gestured around at the rocks and
water.
He looked down at the candy bar and
reluctantly picked it up. “You know,” he
muttered, tearing into the wrapper.
“When pity comes in Snickers Bar form, it’s not so bad.”
The walk into Franklin was cut short
when a pickup truck stopped beside them and offered them a lift. They got a room at the Comfort Inn, and Anders
began stripping off his clothes again as soon as the door shut behind
them.
“You want to shower first?” Anders
asked, hesitating at the bathroom door.
“You go ahead. I intend to use all of the hot water in the
hotel, so I can wait.”
Anders hurried into the bathroom, his
grin huge. In a moment, Kevin heard the
shower start running and finally let himself relax. He went through his pack, emptying trash from
his garbage bag, sorting through his laundry, and wishing he could wash his
pack and sleeping bag. As soon as he was
in clean clothes, he knew he would feel better.
When Kevin ran out of things to do, he
fell back onto one of the queen sized beds and enjoyed the soft give of the
mattress. The moment he shut his eyes,
he saw that open-mouthed stare again. He
couldn’t get that memory out of his head.
Anders had covered up his shocked
reaction well enough, and Kevin was touched that he would even bother. Anders really was a nice guy, emasculating
himself just to save Kevin’s ego.
Somehow, being able to laugh about it was a relief. He knew that Anders had just been humoring
him, but the wish that he hadn’t been, the desire to see Anders look at him
like that for real, had left him reeling.
The water shut off far too quickly. Kevin sat up, half wishing that Anders would
just stay in the bathroom. He needed
more time to clear his head. Even if
Anders stare had just been indulgent pity, the image had worked its way into
his brain and refused to quit niggling away at him, making him imagine things
he needed to stop imagining.
When Anders walked out of the bathroom
dripping and wearing nothing by the small hotel towel wrapped around his waist,
Kevin wanted to scream.
“Shower’s all yours. If you toss your clothes out, I’ll go throw
all of them I the wash together.”
Kevin groaned as he pushed himself off
of the bed. His muscles and joints all
ached, but enough hot water would get him moving again. He nodded slowly, not trusting himself to
speak, and hurried into the bathroom. As
soon as the door was closed, Kevin turned the water on to its hottest setting. He leaned on the counter while the bathroom
around him filled with steam. He met his
own gaze in the mirror and felt like breaking the glass. He could see the pink tint beneath his beard,
and the last thing he wanted to do was take off his clothes and see just how
terrible his skin looked. He didn’t want
to see what Anders actually saw when he looked at him.
When the mirror was coated with steam, Kevin
stripped off his clothing and adjusted the shower temperature to the hottest he
could stand. Under the spray of the
water, he rolled his shoulders and stretched his hands and wrists, trying to
work some of the stiffness out of his body.
He kept his eyes closed and let the heat wash over him. Despite himself, he let his imagination
wander. With his eyes closed, he didn’t
have to see the strange colors of his skin.
He imagined the way his body had looked before he got sick.
Holding fast to that memory, he could delude himself into thinking that
someone like Anders might actually want him.
His body, so long condemned to being isolated and alone, surged to life
in an instant. He used what was left o f
the hotel conditioner and stroked his already weeping cock. Just thinking about Anders’s narrow nips and
tight ass, along with imagining Anders looking at him the way he had pretended
to that afternoon, was all it took to push him over the edge. He swallowed the cry that nearly escaped as
he came in his own hand, then collapsed against the tile wall of the shower.
“Fuck…” Kevin whispered.
As he came back down, he opened his
eyes, took a few deep breaths, and reached for the shampoo. He heard the echo of metal clicking against
metal and froze. That could not have been what it sounded like. Because it sounded a lot like someone closing the bathroom door very quietly.
