Don't Read in the Closet: Volume Four (133 page)

feeling, now, clenching muscles releasing all that built-up tension,

sharply sweet as each spasm hit him.

Jurgen thrust against his ass hard, grinding against him and

groaning, and the idea that Jurgen had come in his jeans was enough

to make Nik’s balls pull up one more time.

Nik was still trembling and jerking from aftershocks when he laid

his forehead on the screen door and looked down at their hands,

covered with cum.
Penis sundae.

He should probably be grateful he hadn’t said that aloud, either,

but he just couldn’t be bothered to care. Jurgen’s forehead was resting

on his shoulder, hand still gripping his shaft, stroking gently, slowly.

Nik pushed back a little when he got too sensitive and couldn’t take it

anymore. Jurgen dropped his hand. They breathed together. Nik let

the night come back in tune around him. After a couple of minutes

Jurgen kissed the back of Nik’s neck, once, straightening up.

“You said my name.”

Shit.
He shrugged.

There was maybe two inches, max between their bodies, but Nik

thought the chance of more contact was slim. He could feel Jurgen

getting all distant back there.

“Let me know if you want to do that again,” Jurgen said. He

hesitated. “I better go. It’s gonna be a sticky ride home.”

Then he walked off.

If Nik had just gotten the hand job he’d always deserved, why did

he feel like a slut? He rocked his head back and forth against the

screen, cum slowly coagulating on the door and him, trying not to

think about it.

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 814

****

apartment. He looked around. All the windows were open. Sam’s

room was right over the porch. He couldn’t see anything, but he’d

damn well heard it.

“Do I want to know what you’re doing in there?”

“No.”

“Great,” Nik muttered. He wandered into the bathroom to clean

himself up. When he came out in just his boxers—miraculously

clean—Sam was on the couch with a glass of wine. He was wearing

his robe and nothing else. Another glass and the rest of the bottle were

on the table in front of him.

Nik poured himself a glass and sat in his favorite chair. They

sipped in silence a while. It was almost too cool up here, now, but Nik

didn’t have it in him to shut any windows.

“I let my inner slut have control.”

Sam nodded at him solemnly. Then he grinned, showing what had

to be all his teeth. “Windows were all open.”

“I saw that when I came back in. Good show?”

“Oh, yeah. Better than porn.”

“Glad I could liven up your vacation.” Nik meant for it to come

out snarky, but it just sounded flat. He let his head fall back onto his

chair.

“You shouldn’t feel bad. Jesus, I would have climbed him like a

cat tree given half a chance.”

“A
cat tree
?” He lifted his head and stared at Sam.

“You know. They’re covered in carpet and cats climb them.”

Nik let his head flop back. “I know what they are, I’ve just never

associated one with hot sex.”

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“Lots of white guys come on to you and you’ve never accused

them of wanting to fuck you because you’re not white.” Sam was

looking at him, Nik could feel it. The sudden comment—apropos of

nothing—snapped Nik back to reality. God knew what he’d been

thinking about.

Certainly not motorcycle cops.

Sam sighed and sat back, sipping wine and scratching his balls.

Sam was so suave. He clearly knew Nik wasn’t going to answer.

Perversely, it made Nik want to answer. “It’s just different, here.

I’m different. You know how whenever your brother comes to visit

you and sleeps on your couch, you spend the whole time bitching at

him about being a slob?”

“Yeah.” Nik caught Sam’s nod out of the corner of his eye.

“And you know how, whenever your brother isn’t visiting, your

place is a disaster? Dirty dishes on the couch, piles of laundry, pizza

boxes everywhere. Vermin.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Nik turned his head to the side to look at Sam. Sam looked back at

him. He sighed and turned away. “Okay. Yeah. But there’s no

vermin.”

“What about your ex?” Nik looked back at the ceiling.

“Fine. One vermin.”

“It’s like that. This place pushes my buttons. I got stared at when I

was little, and then as I got bigger people got used to me, but they all

had to make comments. ‘You sure play ball good for a kid from India.’

Stuff like that, it didn’t even make any sense. Even Mom still has a big

old chip on her shoulder about how I was treated. And then, when I

came out, it was like everyone had been waiting for it. Waiting for me

to show how I was different.”

“You played ball?” Sam stared at him in amazement.

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Nik lifted his head, made his eyes big, and stared back. “Can we

try to focus, here?”

Sam nodded. He fell silent. That wasn’t going to last. He fidgeted

and squirmed, but Sam finally got it out. “Are you sure you aren’t

reading something into it?”

“No. I’m not sure. I have issues about this place. So I try not to

come back here much. If I didn’t like my parents, I’d never see this

place again.”

Sam was silent a while.

Another long silence. “Why did they raise you here?”

Nik sighed. “It’s complicated. Dad knew how to farm, and he had

a farm sitting here waiting for him. So when they got out of the Peace

Corps this is where they came.”

This time the silence was much, much longer. Nik poured himself

another glass of wine and drank most of it before he finally felt Sam’s

equilibrium returning.

Nik could almost see the smile growing inside of Sam. Sam was a

hard guy to keep down. So to speak.

“So. Gonna do him?” Nik heard the huge grin in Sam’s voice

before he looked.

“No.” Nik stood up, chugged the rest of his wine and set the empty

glass on the table. “I’m going to bed.”

Sam gave him that grin again. “Night.”

“Asshole,” Nik muttered on the way to his room.

In spite of differences of opinion with his inner slut, Nik slept

better than he had in months.

Three days later, Sam drove back to the city to see his family

before the summer break ended. He looked pretty gloomy about it,

and he bitched up a storm.

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For his part, Nik was kind of relieved. He liked Sam, but nothing

had been normal since The Hand Job.

It was the most ridiculous thing ever, but… that weird little shift in

the world he’d felt during The Hand Job? It was possible—only

possible—that it had some lasting effects. Like, Nik had something of

a different perspective on things.

Once Sam left, Nik went in to talk to his Mom in the store. During

a gap in the morning rush (snort), she worked up the nerve to broach

the subject she always broached. “Nik. I know you feel like you don’t

really fit in here,” she paused for a micro-second, since this was where

Nik usually interrupted her to say, ‘You mean I feel like a circus

freak?’ He didn’t. She looked startled, but she went on, jumping on the

opportunity. “But you know people like you, here. They even love

you. Hard as that is to believe.”

Instead of arguing with her, asking for specific examples and

picking them apart (it was sort of like a family game), he smiled

weakly and shrugged.

It was the best he could do.

His mom frowned and felt his forehead. “Are you feeling alright?”

Nik knew she was right. It wasn’t the affection people like their

neighbor Maggie Sales had for him that was the issue. It was the other

stuff. The stuff he could never quite name. Like when he overheard

one of his classmates proudly telling her out-of-town cousins that he

was ‘the guy in town adopted from India.’

Circus freak, right?

Just maybe not malicious. Or even one-sided.

Nik shook it off for the moment. He was doing too much deep-

thinking at once. Bad for the skin. He got himself another cup of

coffee and went to sit on the front porch yet again. (Seriously, should

he invest in striped overalls and some chewing tabaccy?)

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Just in time to see Trooper Dammerung go by, code three. The

lights washed out in the bright sunlight, but the siren was loud no

matter how bright it was. It was the first time Nik had seen him since

The Hand Job.

Were those heart palpitations?

Nik sat there for a while, trying to journal but mostly thinking

about men in tight uniforms, before he noticed the change in the color

of the sunlight. He looked out into the parking lot. It seemed darker.

And the gravel was a little brown-looking instead of basalt gray. He

looked at the formerly golden grass. Orangey.

Now he could smell it. That sweet charred smell.
Shit.
Nik had it

figured out just as his dad was coming out onto the porch.

“Grass fire,” Dad said shortly. He was usually a pretty talkative

guy, but grass fires were serious shit. He was wheeling a hand-truck

with boxes stacked on it.

“Was there lightning last night?” Nik hadn’t noticed any. It was

pretty common this time of year, though, and over 90% of the wild

fires around here started from it.

“I don’t know,” Dad said, still short. “Help me get this stuff in the

truck. You wanna go change while I bring it around?” His Dad went

from short to diffident. He wasn’t going to make Nik pitch in at the

fire, but hell, Nik had to. There just weren’t enough paid fire crews

that could muster quickly enough to attack a fast-moving grass-fire.

Everyone had to pitch in or people would lose their wheat crops. At a

minimum.

Nik looked at the boxes of water, energy bars and sports drinks his

dad had in the stack. There’d be more inside to load. Dad was good

with the hand-truck, but it was work for a one-armed man to load

boxes into much of anything. He’d need Nik’s help for that.

He ran upstairs to change while his dad got the truck. Nik tossed

his suitcase looking for jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Had he even

brought any? And boots. He knew he didn’t have those. He didn’t even

Don’t Read in the Closet – volume four 819

own work boots anymore. Who needed work boots to teach a bunch

of undergrads how not to write?

Didn’t matter, his boots from high school would still be around

and should fit.

By the time the truck was loaded they could see the smoke

column. It was southwest of town, blotting out the sun and a good half

of the sky. “That got big damn fast,” Dad said. Nik’s stomach started

aching.

Nik spent the morning and afternoon in a swirling haze of brown

smoke, low-flying aircraft and flashing lights. He got used to

breathing in strangled breaths again, and wiping soot boogers out of

his nose. His eyes stopped stinging after a couple of hours, and he

knew they were as bloodshot as everyone else’s around him.

Sometimes he could see fifty feet. Sometimes he couldn’t see five. A

couple of times the only way he knew where his hand was was by the

flame at the end of the drip-torch he was carrying to light back-burns.

He and his dad got to the fire about 9:45 in the morning. Nik got

released from the back-burn crew around 7pm. Just before enough

contract and government crews arrived to start relieving the first

responders, Nik got caught by a load of retardant dropped from an air

tanker. It knocked him on his ass—somehow he’d missed the

command to hit the deck. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt.

Nik now looked like he’d puked up pepto-bismol all over himself.

Murphy, the crew boss, laughed at the three guys who’d gotten nailed

by retardant and told them to go home. Nik was at that point where