Whole Heart

As gently and easily as I could I inched under the covers. When I lay down my arm brushed his side. Its warmth burned me through the thin cotton of his undershirt. He turned his head and looked at me. Awake. So close, just a whisper away.

"You all right?" he asked in rough whisper that made sweat prickle my skin. He was so close I could smell his clean scent, edged with a trace of sweat and smoke from the train. All I could see of his eyes was a faint gleam in the trace of light.

"Fine." I nodded. As long as I was right here, I was finer than fine. The happiest I've ever been, side-by-side with him on Christmas Eve. I rolled to my side, facing him. I just wanted to look at him as he drifted to sleep.

"Have you ever..." his voice suddenly dropped to a softer whisper and became halting. "Have you ever kissed anyone and... put your tongue in?"

My deformed heart began to thump heavily in my chest as my knees turned to water. "Me? What girl would want to kiss me?" I whispered back with as much irony as I could. Trying to hide how nervous I was. "What... about you? Have you?"

He nodded. There as no need to whisper, it was only the two of us here. But for some reason we did. It felt like talking would break the spell. "And I ... you know... felt her..."

"Tits?" I finished bluntly, and even in the dark I could sense his blush at the word. He was such a good boy. His breath whispered out in a laugh and he nodded.

My body trembled just from his nearness. This was as close as I would ever get. I swear to God it was enough. It was enough just to feel the warmth of his body next to mine, even if I never got to touch. But I wanted to. I wanted to touch him, I wanted to hold him. I wanted to... I didn't know what I wanted to do... my mind couldn't picture it. All I knew was that I wanted to know the feel of his skin.

Russell shifted restlessly in the narrow bed. It seemed accidental, but it brought his legs into contact with my knees. For a split second we both stiffened. Electrical charges shot through me. But neither one of us moved away.

Oddly, my mind was completely calm. Confusion, nervousness, fear, shame... all those emotions that usually crowded me were gone. All that mattered was this moment. The possible consequences of what was happening, what was about to happen, meant nothing for me. To a person who could drop dead any moment, the future was nothing.

I raised up on my elbow and looked down at Russell's face on the pillow. The cold light of the storm brought out the angles of his face, showing me what he would look like long after I was dead. It was a shadow of his future. His expression was quiet and accepting. He lay completely still as my hand brushed his stomach.

I'd never known anything that felt so good as touching him. That simple contact wasn't enough. I slid my hand up his chest, following it with my eyes, trying to make out every dip and curve of his athletic body. His nipples stiffened under my touch, and I had read just enough cheap novels to know what that meant. I knew it didn't mean he wanted me to stop.

He kept letting me. He lay still beneath my hand, though I could feel his breath become jerky. Beneath his undershirt, his skin was warm to my touch, his muscles hard and lean. My mind was filled with it. My contact with other people was so limited; I was always kept away from people because I could catch a disease. So this was something completely new to me, and as my excitement grew, I needed more. I would never get another chance.

When my hand slid under his thin shirt, Russell caught his breath, but he still didn't move. He only closed his eyes. His belly was covered in a light, fine hair like strands of silk under my fingers. I delved into it. My fingers thrilled to its texture, and the hard defined ridges of his stomach and ribs.

My eyes went to his face and I saw he was looking at me. What impulse led me I'll never known, but I lowered my head and brushed his lips with mine. His response was shockingly sudden. Lips hungry, he kissed me back. His mouth clung to mine as I tasted his tongue, a little groan bursting from my throat.

"Jerry..." He drew back a little. "You know this doesn't mean... I'm not, you know..."

"I know," I whispered back quickly. I didn't care. I'd never tell anyone. Rumors meant nothing to me, reputation didn't matter to someone who lived with one foot out of this life already, but I knew what that kind of thing would do to Russell. I lowered my head and crushed my mouth down into his, losing myself in the waves of his kisses. I felt his skin get damp, I felt his heartbeat rise. I felt my own respond. I felt my cock rise to bursting, dampening the front of my underwear.

I'd never kissed anyone before. This was my very first time to ever touch anyone the way I was touching him. Girls didn't look at me; I didn't blame them. I didn't want to look at me either. All I wanted to devour as much as Russell as he would let me, until he stopped me. I didn't know what I was going to do; I wasn't even sure about the details of sex with a girl, let alone another boy. Whispers were all I knew, rumors of what silently went on behind the closed doors of the dorm rooms.

As I stroked Russell's chest, his hand came up and rested lightly on my shoulder. We tasted each other wildly. Accidentally my forearm brushed the tip of his cock and I discovered it was hard and straining in his underwear, just like mine was. He let out a gasp and I smiled. I touched it again, this time deliberately, rubbing my arm over the sensitive head. He drew in a breath that almost sounded like pain - but he didn't tell me to stop.

The whispered rumors and my own instincts led me away from his mouth. Silently, he sat up and let me draw his undershirt over his head. My eyes devoured his glorious, powerful body in the silverlight. He met my eyes and smiled - he looked peaceful. That smile made me so powerfully aroused I pinned him to the bed. I grabbed his underwear and pulled them off with a frenzy of strength. I lowered my mouth to his beautiful, powerful naked cock lying against his belly.

I didn't know enough to even know this act had a name. I thought I'd invented it this very minute, just for him. When he let out a muffled gasp of pleasure I felt so proud of myself. I was a sexual inventor. An innovator in the field. I circled his thick, blunt cockhead with my tongue over and over; I improvised. I closed my lips around the ridge of the flared head, tasting the clear sticky drop at the tip, swirling my tongue over and over. I didn't know to move up and down on it, that idea never crossed my mind. But I knew what felt good to me, and so I wrapped my hand around the smooth shaft just above his balls and began to stroke in tandem with what my mouth was doing.

"Oh, shit," Russell breathed softly. We both knew any sound would alert anyone beyond the thin walls to our activity. "Jerry, Jerry, that feels so good," he whispered under his breath. "You're gonna make me..."

"Yes," I whispered joyfully. But then I drew back, perplexed. The whispered rumors. I'd tried to picture those secret things in my mind. I wanted Russell to do them to me, whatever they were. "Have you... Do you know how to...?"

Russell knew what I was talking about. He'd heard those whispers too. His brow wrinkled most thoughtfully. "I think so," he answered softly. "I mean, I probably could, if.."

"Oh, please," I interrupted. I sounded as eager as a little boy on Christmas. Well, Christmas Eve, anyway. "Will you? Please, will you, I really want you to."

"Well..." he sounded doubtful, but eager, "I could try..."

Both innocent, with only the faintest idea what to do, we fumbled around. I loved feeling his weight pinning me to the bed; I loved opening myself to him. We had to figure it out by trial and error. Discovering we needed something to ease the way, we hit on the ancient, heady mixture of juices and spit. Finally, his fat cock entered me. The pain was sharp and immediate, but pain meant very little to me. It reminded me I was still alive. As he inched forward, stopping to let the burning ease while my tight hole stretched around him, I focused on him, how beautiful he was, how much I wanted him to take me. Slowly, slowly I allowed him in. When he was finally completely inside me, I felt thrilled, I felt proud of myself for taking him. I loved being full, being impaled, being possessed by him. I loved the sound of his almost-silent moans. I loved the feeling, but there was no pleasure for me. My cock was half-limp, pinned under me with Russell's muscular weight pressing me face-down into the narrow, hard mattress.

"Can I...?" he whispered breathlessly. I read the tension that filled his body, the way he vibrated like a wire stretched taut. For answer, I arced back and pushed my hips up gently into his.

A low whimper escaped him. He pounded me slowly, sweetly. It seemed to last hours. I felt every pulse of his cock in me, every breath he gasped out, every drop of sweat he ground into my skin, drenching me in his essence. At one point, at last, he pulled all the way out. I thought he was stopping; but instead, he pushed slowly back into me in one long stroke. And then it happened: All the sudden, sparks. Yellow light blinded me behind my eye lids as his cock slid home and struck my pleasure. I felt my heart start to hammer in my chest as he drove deeper and I bucked back, meeting his thrusts, my face buried in the pillow to drown out the sounds that wrung from my throat.

Oh God, oh God...

If I was going to hell for this I didn't care...

It was worth it.

"Jerry!" Under his breath Russell exclaimed my name with a wild note of alarmed excitement. I felt his body stiffen; I felt his cock swell in my hole. He let out a muffled cry and then I felt hot liquid spew deep into me, filling me. He kept thrusting as the spurts kept on, and the extra slipperiness increased my pleasure. I reached under myself and wrapped my fingers around my cock; and then - a blinding flash - I came - everything went bright white as my heart thumped dangerously hard, dangerously fast...

A moment of blackness and then I was aware again. He was still in me, but we were both still, our breathing labored and harsh. I felt faint and dizzy. I always thought I'd be afraid at the end - scared of the blackness that lay before me - but I wasn't. I felt curiously peaceful and complete. A white glow was descending over my consciousness.

"Russell," I said softly from a long way off, through layers of lights I had to follow to the end. "Sing to me."

"Sing? Now? Right here?"

"Yes, sing something, anything, let me hear it..."

I wanted to be sung, to fly on the wings of his music. Without questioning he began. His voice was quiet because of the thin walls, but it was achingly beautiful, a clear high tenor. He sang "White Christmas" and then he sang "I'll Be Seeing You."

In all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces...

I lay there with a smile, my heart hammering away so hard, it couldn't possibly keep going much longer. I drifted. In this moment, I was ready for it to end. His voice took my fears away and left only... something I'd never known before. Love.

When the night is through, I'll be looking at the moon but I'll be seeing you...

As I lay there, suddenly something happened. The white glow receded. I was in the dark again, a dark room of a station hotel on a hard narrow bed, my ass sore and aching and dripping with Russell's cum. The smells of sex filled my nostrils. His singing caressed me. I felt my heart thud hard. It thudded once, and then, after that moment, it began to slow. It felt...

I didn't know what was happening, but I felt something inside my chest. It wasn't pain. In all my struggles to describe it I can only find the word "light." It was like a light in my chest. And my heart stopped its wild beat. It thumped quietly, slowly. It sounded strong in my ears. It sounded whole.

And Russell stopped singing. I rolled over, took him in my arms, and we slept.

*******

The tracks weren't yet clear by early morning when we dressed and went down to the platform. All the passengers from the train hung about, anxious to get home on Christmas Eve. Russell and I smiled at each other. I felt relaxed and happy; there was no aching tightness in my chest. There was no weakness when I drew a breath. At last Russell drew his neglected, wrapped up sandwich from his pocket. He broke it in half and we ate it, laughing in delight because that forgotten sandwich had become the salvation of our hunger.

The train pulled into the Gary station just as night fell on Christmas Eve. I smiled as Russell excitedly pointed out his parents waiting on the platform, waving at them through the window. His mother was stunning, just as I'd imagined her on the Saturday Evening Post cover. His dad was an older version of Russell. I smiled, but at the same time, I couldn't help feeling sad.

"Are you sure you won't get off with me."

I looked over at him. I didn't answer, but there was no need to. He grinned and punched me lightly on the shoulder.

"Cheer up. We'll still see each other at school."

"Yeah," I said, but I must've sounded wistful, because he stopped grinning and looked into my eyes.

"We will, Jerry. I promise you that."

Nodding, I forced a smile as he gathered his suitcase and got off the train. I watched out the window as he embraced his parents. As they walked away, toward home, he turned around once. He looked back at the train, at me watching him walk away. And he grinned.

********

I can't fault Russell. He did speak to me at school. We even spent an evening together once or twice after we got back from our Christmas holiday. But we never got close in that way again. I never heard him sing again. And gradually, as we got closer to graduation and busy with exams and worries about the draft, we both drifted further and further back into our old places, disconnected, and never meeting.

But get this. At my next draft board physical, which every man of eligible age had to have annually, the bored doctor listened to my heart. My files clearly read my ailment: Hole in heart. He just gave it a cursory listen before preparing to stamp me 4-f again. But then he stopped. A puzzled frown went over his face. He listened harder.

My parents took me to the best doctor in Boston. I heard them talking in the next room. There was nothing wrong with my heart. They had been wrong all these years, there was no hole. It was healthy.

As my mother protested, how could that be?, the doctor had no explanation. Just told her doctors make mistakes and science wasn't infallible. There was only one explanation, and that was my condition had been misdiagnosed since my birth. And I heard him say, almost in a half-joking way, "Either that, or it was a miracle."

*******

The years have been good to me. Can it already have been 60 years since that Christmas Eve? Despite my new-found healthy heart, my asthma was still enough to keep me classified unfit for service; and the next year, as I was entering college, the war was over. We won at terrible cost, some of my classmates just names on the unthinkable list of causalities. I went on to medical school. I became a famous cardiologist. Nowadays my "misdiagnosed" condition can be fixed with a simple surgery. I was lucky enough to meet and marry a wonderful woman, with whom I had 40 perfect years and two beautiful children. She's gone now. In all the years since that Christmas, I was never with another man in a sexual way again.

It's only now, as I sit in my study, retired but still active, that I spend a lot of time thinking about Russell. He was called up to serve, but he survived the war. I lost track of him through the years, and some ten years ago, his obituary appeared in Brighton Academy's alumni newsletter. I found he never served in active combat. The CO of his unit heard him sing one day, and being a great lover of music, he gave Russell special assignments entertaining at various officers' clubs in Europe. After the war he even made an album of Christmas songs. One of them was White Christmas.

Thanks to the glorious new world of the Internet, I was able to locate an old, old copy of Russell's record. I listen to it from time to time. Time has scratched the vinyl and obscured the clarity of his beautiful voice, but when I close my eyes I can imagine it. I can hear him in that shabby hotel room after he'd thoroughly fucked me. I can hear his beautiful voice, singing me to the embrace of the angels, only to pull me back to earth, heal me with its love, and make my heart whole again.

********

This story is fiction. Liberties have been taken with historical details to tell a story. Thanks to TH and S.