52 Panhead - 6. Chapter 6

I totally couldn’t concentrate on Friday, so I took the dog down to the river and ran us both into the ground, washed the Jeep, packed a bag, taste-tested Callie's new cookie recipe when I took Chewy next door, fucked around until I couldn't stand the suspense any longer, and finally roared out of the driveway at noon.

Evan was 100 miles away and I didn't want to be late.

The city where we’d walked around the gardens is about half way between us; I skirted it on the freeway bypass, smiling as I recalled the afternoon when he’d admitted he wanted us to have a chance. Traffic was light, so I made good time and parked down the street from his condo, waiting for him to get home. Evan's neighborhood was clean and quiet, big old trees lining the streets, the buildings tidy, the yards trim and green.

I sat there bouncing my knee up and down, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, and nibbling on my thumbnail. I was nervous and jumpy, completely strung out from thinking about him for two weeks, wondering what he was up to here by himself, and could hardly wait for him to get his ass home. I'd analyzed every word we'd spoken, each glance we'd shared, trying to figure out if this was some crazy infatuation that would burn itself out after we’d fucked enough, or if it was the real deal.

I still didn't have a clue.

At 2:07 I started looking at my watch every ten seconds. That’s how I know that at 2:11:49 the front door opened and Evan stuck his head out for a quick look around. My heart went ka-THUNK when I saw him, and little thrills of nerve shot out to the tips of my fingers. He didn't spot me, so I grabbed my bag and walked up to the door. I was wound so tight that if anyone had come up behind me and whispered 'boo,' I'd have leapt out of my sneakers.

I punched the bell and took a couple deep breaths while I waited for him to get to the door. It opened abruptly, surprising me, and I looked up at him. He was wearing a suit with his tie loosened, and he looked twenty times better than I remembered him, which hardly seemed possible. We stared at each other for a long moment. I'd been afraid that maybe it would all be gone, that we'd just feel like two semi-strangers who'd spent a hot weekend together.

But no, it was all still there, and I began to smile, a slow grin that spread across my face like a kid on Christmas morning. I felt like that kid, too, and couldn't have wiped the smile off my face even if I wanted to, so I just stood there ginning like a moron. Luckily, he looked about like I did, and we both chuckled a little as he stepped back to let me in.

As I walked past him, he closed the door, put both hands on my shoulders from behind, and steered me into the living room. His touch felt good and my dick started to fill, pushing its way across my belly. I dropped my bag as he turned me to him, sliding his hands from my shoulders up to hold my face.

He stared into my eyes for a second before he leaned in to kiss me, and that broke my nervous restraint. I grabbed him to me and kissed him hard. He responded roughly, dropping his hands to my belt, yanking my shirt free, and raking his hands up my body. When his finger dragged across my nipple, I gave up trying to hold onto any sort of injured dignity, moaning as his hot, wet mouth worked its way down my neck. I got his pants undone and shoved them down his hips, then pushed mine down just far enough to get my dick free. Evan's rock hard cock thumped into my hand when I reached for him, lurching in my grip. Pushing him away from my chest, I sank to my knees, bringing him with me and leaning into him until he fell back.

As I lowered myself onto him, he pulled me down with an arm around my neck, kissing me hard enough to bruise my mouth, but all I could feel was his tongue as it circled mine. His other hand was down the back of my jeans with one finger urgently probing my ass. I scooted up an inch or two to give him better access, wrapped my hands up over his shoulders from underneath and began to thrust against him, arousal and nerves driving me hard. We were breathing so fast we could barely kiss, but I wasn't about to let his mouth go. As his finger stroked across my hole for the third time, I began to climax, bucking in his arms as we ground our bodies together. When the warmth of my load flooded his belly, he gave a strangled cry and arched his body, grunting through a strong orgasm.

I dropped my forehead to the floor over his shoulder, panting into the carpet and trying desperately to get my raging emotions under control. I've fucked a lot of guys - drunk, sober, stoned; standing, sitting, and lying down - but I have never felt what I did then with Evan.

We still hadn't spoken a word to each other, so I lifted my head enough to see him and croaked out a weak, "Hi."

He stared at me for a second, and then cracked up, his eyes closing, his body bouncing me up and down as he laughed, the accumulated cum between us making squishy noises. After a few moments, he calmed down and looked up me, nodding.

"Hi yourself. Christ, it's good to see you. Fuckin' two weeks felt like a year." He fell quiet for a minute while we gazed at each other, looking for God only knows what. I was looking for reassurance; him, probably for any leftover anger I might still be packing.

Finally, he swallowed and tried a small smile. "Still pissed at me?"

I made him wait a beat before lowering my face so that we were nose to nose. "Nope."

The sincerity of the smile that lit up his face made me feel like a shit for doubting him at all. He hugged me tight, nuzzling into my neck with an 'mmmmm,' and I felt myself falling in love for the first time in my life. This was so unlike my doomed relationship of seven years ago that they weren't even worth comparing. I was a different person now; my wants and needs had matured into those of a man, not a horny kid. I bit my tongue for the moment, knowing there would be time later to talk to him about what I was feeling, where I hoped this would go.

We got to our feet, and he pulled me into the shower, a little snug with the two of us in there, but we didn't mind. With the initial urgency gone, we soaped each other leisurely and kissed a lot, slow exploratory kisses, lots of tongue and spit, reconnecting after twelve days apart. For all the tongue action, they weren't especially passionate kisses; we were learning each other, learning to enjoy the small pleasures of just being together.

At one point, I crowded him back into the corner, deep in his mouth, and our soft cocks brushed against each other. The feel of his body was becoming familiar, and it quieted my nerves a little. I found an emotional comfort in that, recognizing it as another small step toward believing that something good was possible with this guy.

Hunger finally got us out of the house, and we walked several blocks to a dark little steakhouse that Evan said was good. They knew him there, not bothering to give us menus; the waiter showed up quickly with salads, bread, and two icy beers. I looked across the table at Evan, wavy black hair framing his face, grey eyes dark in the candlelight, and lifted my glass to him. He clinked it with his and raised an eyebrow at me.

"To us, what else?" I said with a smile.

"What else?" he agreed, nodding, holding my gaze for a moment.

We ate wonderful steaks with a minimum of conversation, content in each other’s company. After dinner, we wandered slowly back to his place and about halfway there our hands bumped. I took his hand without even thinking about it, and the jolt of pleasure when his fingers gripped mine made me close my eyes for a second.

Sometimes I want to rush things, get to the next chapter of a good book, the next episode of a favorite TV show, before I'm even finished with the current one; but with Evan I wanted time to slow. I wanted to stretch every minute we were together until that's all there was - a lifetime of moments big and small. I think Evan felt it, too; by unspoken assent, we slowed our pace, hands swinging between us, strolling through the quiet twilight of Patterson.

When we got back to the condo, he pulled me down to sit on the couch and curled up facing me, lying against my chest. We kissed and snuggled for a long time, enjoying the closeness, but eventually we lost our shirts, then our pants were around our knees and Evan had his face buried in my lap, sucking my cock in long, slow pulls that I could feel in my toes. I took it as long as I could, then pushed him back, tugged his pants off and turned him around to straddle my legs, facing away from me. I held my dick while he slid slowly down onto it, hands braced on my knees, stopping only when his ass was settled into my crotch with my prick deep inside his belly.

He raised himself almost off me, then sank down as slowly as his trembling legs would allow, both of us groaning with the pleasure of it. I watched the muscles in his thighs and ass tighten as he moved, running my hands slowly over his skin as he rode me. After a bit, I pulled him back to lay against me, stroking my hands from his chest down his belly, then out along his thighs and all the way back up again. The feel of his body really excited me, and it wasn't long before I just couldn't wait. Being with him again had reduced my control considerably.

"I'm gonna shoot," I moaned into his mouth when he angled his head back to kiss me.

"Do it."

He wrapped his hand around mine on his cock, and it only took about fifteen seconds till I felt the familiar tingle of a killer orgasm begin to churn in my balls. As cum erupted from Evan, I push into him and froze for that eternal second just before lift-off; then my cock throbbed several times as I unloaded in his ass.

Afterward, I tipped us sideways on the couch, keeping an arm tight around his hips so that we stayed together as we fell over. I don't know how long we slept, but it seemed like hours later when he shook my leg gently.

"Let's go to bed." I staggered down the hall behind him, half asleep, falling into his big bed when he pulled the covers back. He pushed me over a little ways, then crawled in behind me and wrapped himself around me, one hand spread across my chest, his leg shoved between mine. When I pushed back into him a little, he kissed my shoulder, ran his tongue up my neck, and whispered, "See you in the morning," just behind my ear.

I felt more content there in his bed than I'd ever felt in my own house. Until I'd had the chance to spend that first weekend with Evan, I hadn't realized how much I enjoyed being with someone. Not just for sex, although a steady diet of Evan sounded like heaven on earth, but someone to talk to over breakfast, make dinner with, walk the dog with; someone to share my life with.

Was Evan gonna be that guy? I had a feeling this was the weekend that would make or break us. I mentally crossed my fingers, and the next thing I knew, he was waving a cup of coffee under my nose, and sunlight was seeping in through the blinds, slanting across the bed in thin yellow bars. I woke up slowly, too comfortable in the warmth of his bed to want to move. He was leaning across me on one arm, turning his head to kiss my palm when I reached a hand up to touch his face.

"I brought coffee," he said with a smile. "Ready to get up?"

"I am up," I mumbled, grinding my morning wood into his hip.

He sat the coffee cup on the bedside table and tossed back the covers, allowing my erection to spring up and waver around. As he swallowed my dick, I picked up his pillow and pressed it to my face, breathing in Evan as he blew me. One ball-draining orgasm later, all I wanted to do was roll over and sleep another two hours, but Evan started the shower and came back to drag me out of bed. I stayed limp as he tugged at my arm, and when he realized I was fucking with him, he leaned over and blew a big raspberry on my stomach. I yelled and convulsed in a fit of laughter as he ducked out of the way of my flailing fists.

"Get your ass out of bed or I'll do it again."

I finally quit laughing enough to sit up, burn my mouth on the coffee, and follow him into the shower, still weak from the blow job and the tickling. He smiled at me, a happy, mischievous smile, and for the first time I saw the high school kid that Luke had fallen in love with all those years ago; the innocent boy who had given his heart, only to have it shattered to pieces by a drunk.

A wave of emotion surged through me and I hugged him. Something of my mood must have come through, because he pulled me close and held me with the same intensity I was feeling. When we separated, he looked away for a second before meeting my gaze steadily. The look in his eyes gave my heart another thump-thump moment, and I thought, if I can keep him looking at me like that for the rest of my life, I'll die a happy man. I reached for him, stroking him lightly until he began to respond, but after a minute, he backed out of my grip.

"It's ok, I'll catch up later."

By the time we got to the kitchen, I was starving and ready to chew on something besides Evan for a change. He threw together scrambled eggs full of onions, hot links and mushrooms with a sprinkle of cheese on top, a big pile of wheat toast, and two glasses of cold milk. Now that Evan had gotten me out of bed, he seemed in no hurry to get out of the house, and we ate slowly, staying at the table through a second cup of coffee. When we were finished eating, I lay a hand over his on the table and felt a happy little pinch in my chest when he turned his hand over to hold mine. As at my place last weekend, there were silences in our conversation, but they were becoming more comfortable. I could have sat there all morning.

His condo was warm and homey, with furniture that looked like it had come from his grandma's house, which turned out to be true. He told me that when he got out of the hospital after the accident, he recuperated for a year, and then went off to college, living in a dorm. His grandparents had lived nearby then and when they got ready to move the following July, they gave him all their old furniture. He got an apartment, hauled it all to school, and then here to the condo after college.

"Wanna get outside for a while? It's nice with the sun out," he asked me.

He glanced toward the window, narrowing his eyes into the light. The sun washed out his eyes, making the grey go pale, and deepened the shadows in his black hair. He stayed there a moment, and I knew it was another picture I'd carry in my head forever. When he turned back to me, I nodded my agreement. We cleaned up the kitchen, he loaded some stuff into a backpack, and we headed out the door and hopped into his car.

The same river I ran the dog along yesterday morning comes within a few miles of his place, so we followed it out into the countryside, stopping at a spot where it tumbled over boulders and wound around small islands thick with trees. I shrugged into the backpack and we scrambled down the bank to where the water foamed white at the edges, lapping slightly as it swirled along.

We worked our way across the smaller rocks to the big boulders, jumping from one to another until we were well down-stream from where we'd parked. His boot slipped taking off from a boulder and he landed short, reaching for my hand as he fought to stay clear of the water. I grabbed his wrist with both hands and sat down, bracing my feet in the crevices, and managed to haul him up onto me, but it winded both of us and he rolled over to lay on his back with his eyes closed, one hand resting on his heaving chest.

"Shit! Close call." He shaded his eyes to peer up at me. "Thanks. Goddamn water's too cold to go swimming." He rubbed his leg absently, fingers pressing firmly into the outside of his left thigh.

"Does it still bother you?" I asked.

"Every now and then if I use it too much, or something like this happens," he gestured at the water. "Mostly it's ok."

He looked really good laying there; his mouth was open in a smile and the muscles of his chest were pressed against the fabric of his t-shirt, rising and falling as he breathed. I rolled partially onto him, my knee between his legs and my hand over his left nipple which hardened into my palm. The smile died from his face as he came up fast to meet my mouth, and a hot lick of desire slid through my gut as his tongue pushed into mine.

I had his cock out in record time, and bent to suck him in before he was fully hard. I love the feel of a cock hardening in my mouth, those first little twitches, the magical expansion, and the fact that it was Evan's cock made it all the better. By the time he shot his load down my throat, I wanted to fuck him in the worst way, but the rock was too damn hard, so I kept my dick in my pants and decided to head for an island, in hopes of finding a grassy spot where I could get him naked, or at least bent over.

Luck was with me as we soon came to a place where the river split around a small wooded chunk of land with a little clearing in the center, perfect for lunch and sex. Or maybe sex and lunch. The backpack contained a couple beers in a cold pack, two apples, cheese, crackers, and a big salami which Evan shoved into his mouth, closing his eyes and making wet slurpy noises as he sucked on it. I admired his deep-throating abilities for a moment before I cracked up and grabbed it away from him, slicing it up with the knife he'd brought. We ate and sipped the beers, leaning back against a big tree with the food between us. It was a lovely little spot with the light angling down through the branches to dapple the clearing with sun and shadow.

I swigged down the last of my beer and tugged Evan by the sleeve over into the grass, so that I could crawl onto him. As I ground my crotch into his, I leered at him. "Hey, baby, wanna fuck?"

"You bet."

He grinned at me and we started ripping off shirts, boots and jeans as fast as we could, which turned out to be pretty quick, considering we kept trying to kiss through it all. I turned him onto his belly, dragging my stiff dick along the crevice of his ass and up his lower back, then down again, smacking it on his butt a few times.

"Lube's in the top pocket of the backpack," he panted, groaning when I bit the back of his neck as I leaned down to reach for it. I squeezed a shiny bead of it along my cock and gave it a few quick strokes, then kneed his legs further apart and stuffed it in. His hands were fisted in the grass as I grunted my way the last inch or two, so I slowed down, dropped forward onto my hands, and started thrusting with slow, easy strokes that I knew I could keep up for a long time.

Now and then I bent my arms down to kiss his back, and he relaxed as he realized we were going to be here a while. When he reached down to hold my wrists lightly, I closed my eyes and let go of everything except the feel of him warm and silky tight around me, and the mesmerizing sensations of our bodies moving together.

I don't know how long we fucked, but eventually we both began to move more quickly, and soon it was all heavy breathing and cum everywhere. It's tough to beat sex outdoors with a hot guy. We got our clothes back on, more or less - we ended up in each other's t-shirts. As I was kneeling to stuff everything into the backpack, Evan crouched down and put a hand on my shoulder. When I looked up at him, he started to speak, then waved it off and stood, turning away from me to walk down to the water's edge. I closed up the pack, and went to him, standing a few feet away and following his gaze out over the river.

"What?" I asked him. The silence was so long that I finally glanced at him, but he was looking away from me, so I couldn't read his face. "Talk to me, Evan, or this thing doesn't have a prayer in hell."

Another full minute went by before Evan spoke, his voice soft and tentative. "Some people believe that there's one perfect person for each of us.... your 'other half,' so to speak. Others think that's bullshit and that you can be happy with almost anyone if you work at it." He paused. "I used to believe the 'one' theory, which meant that, because Luke was dead, I was fucked.... I'd used up my 'one' at 18." He shook his head and paused again. "But then I heard the Pan that night…."

I kept my mouth shut, understanding that although he was speaking to me, he was really talking himself through the realization that maybe, just maybe, he could be happy again, happy with someone besides Luke. The silence strung out, ending when he picked up a flat stone and sent it skimming across the water. We watched it skip four, five, six times before sinking from sight, and then he turned to me.

"What do you believe?"

Well, it sure as hell wasn't the 'one' theory. To be honest, I'd never given it much thought until now, so I spoke slowly, feeling my way through it. "Seems to me there's a helluva lotta guys out there. How can only one of them, in the entire Goddamn world, be the only guy who's right for you? What a fuckin' waste that would be."

Evan had been watching me as I talked, his eyes searching my face, but now a smile widened his mouth as he echoed my words. "What a waste."

We looked at each other for a long minute before he turned away to sling the pack over his shoulder. We hopped across the boulders to the shore and hiked along the bank hand in hand. I'd never been with someone where the relationship progressed to the point of me wanting to hold hands in public. Then Evan comes along, and I can barely let go of his damn hand no matter where we are. Go figure.

His was the only car in the dirt lot, so we made out for a while before driving back to town. A stop at the dry cleaners, another at the grocery, and we were home by 3pm. We kicked off our boots and got a beer; Evan had to print out some reports to take on his trip, so he spent twenty minutes in the spare room. As I listened to the printer spitting out page after page, I wandered around the condo. It had two decent sized bedrooms, the larger one with its own bath; a sunny kitchen that looked out to the back parking lot; and a big living room. The kitchen was large enough for a table and chairs, so I sat down and looked around, trying to get a feel for what Evan's life here was like. The fridge was covered with family pictures, a motorcycle magazine review of his Fat Boy with a big heart drawn around the picture of the bike, and a few notes jotted in his blocky hand. I was still sitting there when he came in with a smile.

"I got a later flight - noon instead of 7am."

"That'll leave you enough time to…. whatever, after you get there?"

"Yeah, plenty. The bitch at work who books the flights always tries to fuck with me cause I won't go out with her. The whole Goddamn office knows I'm gay, but she still takes it personally."

We shook our heads at the perplexities of women, and went into the living room where Evan maneuvered me onto the couch, then stretched out with his feet in my lap. The TV was off, so the room was quiet, just the distant sounds of traffic making it past the hum of the refrigerator. I pulled off his socks and began to rub his toes one by one, tugging on them and working each one firmly between my thumb and the knuckle of my forefinger. Evan smiled at me and sighed, settling deeper into the sofa as he relaxed.

"God, that feels great. So, you don't think I used up my 'one'?" he asked, picking up our earlier conversation as if it had been only a few minutes ago.

I smiled at his foot for a second, and then met his eyes. "I'm countin' on it."

We did another of those long looks that our relationship had been full of so far. What he saw must have reassured him because he smiled back, and said, "Me, too." We were quiet for a bit until he asked me, "How'd you meet the guy you told me about?"

I shrugged. "The usual. Picked me up in a bar. He was older than me, and we hit it off right away. I blew him in the bathroom, and then we went to his place and fucked."

We recognized the similarities at the same time, but where I would’ve ignored it, Evan said, "Kinda like you and me?"

"No," I said vehemently. "Nothing like you and me." I blew out a breath and took a grip on my temper before continuing. "He fuckin' never talked about anything. I don't know if he could string three words together." I shifted on the couch so that I was facing him. "Nothing like you and me," I repeated less forcefully, but no less seriously. "We've been talking all through this thing."

"When we weren't fucking," Evan said in a subdued tone.

"Yeah, well, if all I wanted was talk, I'd date a chick." That got a chuckle out of him. "I wanna fuck, too, and nobody does it for me like you do."

We looked at each other for another minute, and then I went back to his feet. “So…. what’re you gonna do in New York?”

“One of our clients here in Patterson wants to do some business with a big firm there and we have to iron out the details. It’ll be a bunch of suits sitting around a conference table reading the contract word by word until everyone agrees what it means.”

“Fuck, does that sound boring. No wonder you wanna do something else.”

“Well, it’s what I’m trained for, and there’s a certain appeal to getting the words just right, but, yeah, it’s pretty boring most of the time.”

“Will you have any free time?”

He snorted out a laugh. “No. We get in Sunday evening, so we’ll have dinner and read through the contract. That’ll take hours. Monday morning things get started at nine and’ll go till six, at least. We’ll probably have dinner with the New York guys, then back at it Tuesday morning, and fly out at two.”

“Jesus. Why, exactly, did you wanna be a lawyer?” I asked in bewilderment.

“Well, what made you wanna stare at a computer screen and type gibberish all day?” He dug his toes into my ribs until I twisted his ankle far enough to make him stop and he continued. “My dad’s a lawyer, and I like the idea of being a lawyer, of having the legal ability to change things, but I’d really like to work in something more directly involved with helping people. Adoptions, maybe, or family law of some sort.” He sighed. “But that requires more schooling, and I’d have to move to a different firm. Ours doesn’t do any family stuff.”

“You couldn’t maybe start a family…. division, or whatever you call it, where you’re at?”

He was quiet for a minute like the idea had never occurred to him, and then shrugged. “I don’t know. The two are so different…. Maybe. You happy with what you’re doin’?”

I shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. I like working for myself. If I feel like fuckin’ off till noon, nobody’s on my ass about it. And I’m good at it.”

“And modest, too,” Evan smirked at me. “I like that in a man.”

“Yup,” I said as I raked my fingernails up the sole of his foot. He shrieked and rolled off the couch in a heap. I followed him down, landing across his hips just as he twisted hard to avoid me. My head hit the edge of the table with a sharp crack, a volley of starbursts exploded behind my eyes, and I slid to the floor.

“Oh, shit!” Evan pushed the table back and crawled over to look down into my face. “Jeff, you ok?”

I had a knot rising on the side of my head, but wasn’t really hurt. I crossed my eyes at him and sat up. “Yeah, yeah. But I’m gettin’ hungry. What’s for dinner?”

He sat back against the couch, gently massaging the back of my neck. “I don’t know. I’ve probably got macaroni and cheese, or soup, or something. I didn’t bother shopping. You wanna order in? Pizza? Chicken?”

I'd seen a decent looking bar on the way into town, with a neon sign proclaiming to have the best burgers in town. “Burgers? I saw a pool bar on the way into town. Peppy’s? Patty’s?”

He hesitated for a split second. “Peetie’s. Maybe next time, huh? I got the hots for Chinese."

I looked at him, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. God, what now? But I didn’t press him for an answer just then. “Yeah, ok.”

I sat back against the couch next to him, but he got up and went to call in the order. I watched his back disappear into the kitchen, and then turned to gaze out the window with a gusty sigh. Every time things were going good, some weird little glitch like this came along to make me crazy.