Old Friends

~*A work of fiction. Any resemblance to places, events, people--alive or dead--is purely coincidental*~

His big smooth hands descended on my hips with such finesse. It was as if a feather was running up and down my skin. His deliberate handling of my body enticed a reaction in me. His hot breath on my neck chilled me to the core, a cornered animal clawed at my insides. My hands landed on top of his, trying to stop his invasion in vain. Did I really want to stop him? I did not think I did. In some weird way it aroused me, made me want it more; I felt repulsed by the action itself and yet intrigued just the same. He wanted me, I don't know why, and he showed just how bad his desire was.

Once he felt my own erection he was damn near impossible to stop.

My best friend since childhood wanted to make love to me, but I should start at the very beginning of this story.

~*~*~

I chased a skirt to the dirty south after college. Being a stupid young man I made stupid decisions left and right, and chasing this skirt to a Podunk town in Bible belt Georgia was one of the stupidest mistakes I made. My dad would later tell me that at least I had the brains to graduate before chasing that, "Stupid cunt of a woman."

I spent the first three months in sexual bliss with her before the proverbial shit hit the fan. I guess that she hadn't thought about what we would be doing after graduating, but that moving might help. That we would end up working fast food for three months wasn't exactly in her agenda, so before she became what she called "white trash," she left me. The apartment was still under my name and, wouldn't you know it, the Podunk town grew on me.

My major was in journalism with a minor in music. My original plan was to write for a living, while wooing the chicks with my knowledge of musical arrangements, and my way around an acoustic guitar. The former proved successful in the loosest sense of the word while the latter proved quite inefficient, and yet it was this combination that proved successful in my job hunt three months after she left me.

I had secured an interview with the local paper, and thinking I had made it big (in a way) I quit my burger flipping job and bought me a suit befitting my new job. I brushed up my resume and got my portfolio set up and made my way to the worst looking building to ever host a newspaper firm, local or otherwise. My expectations were lowered somewhat, but I didn't waver. Perseverance my only ally, I launched myself into the building and braced for the worst.

~*~*~

Two years later, one hundred and seventy concerts or so under my belt and nearly twice that many reviews and the only thing I had to show for it was backstage passes to unlimited shows and venues free, but no raise. The job was wearing on me and slowly driving me insane. The weekday shows at the Masquerade were murder on both gas money and time. The bands were awesome, but it was an inconvenience having to drag my tired ass all the way into the busiest of highways in metro Atlanta for three hours of loud music and cheap booze. My main bread and butter are the tiny venues that dotted Highway 20 but nothing attracted more readership than the shows played in Atlanta rather than out of the perimeter. So despite it being Tuesday I went to the Masquerade on twenty dollars worth of gas.

After a seventeen minute hunt for suitable parking somewhere in Ponce de Leon, a ten to fifteen minute walk to the venue, and a seven minute wait in line to get a ticket, I made my way to the bar. I had a very expensive--very small--shot of rotgut and ordered three more like it. It was my professional experience that doing my job and liking it involved a copious amount of alcohol in my system. My bread and butter are local bands, but sometimes I am disappointed in some of the bands that have spawned in Atlanta. After downing three more shots of rotgut, I ordered three more.

"A man drink like that and don't eat, he is going to die!" a voice on my right said.

"Ahaha! Blazin' Saddles. Awe--" I said as I turned around, then I was stricken dumb. The face I saw had not aged a day it seemed, for all the marks of youth were still there. The lines of age were graceful and beautiful, not at all savage. Here stood my childhood friend Charlie, damn near how I last saw him in high school: a stunning five foot eleven inches, olive tan shade skin, long flowing auburn hair.

"Well butter my biscuits, if it isn't Charles the fifth!" I exclaimed.

"Wait, what?" he looked at me for a confused second.

"Sorry, southern living. I got used to it. So, what's King Charles the fifth doing in this little 'hole'n da wall?'"

"Hey fuck you, tubby, I told you I hate that name."

"Yeah, and I hate that nickname, so it's all good," I grinned wide. "And you still haven't answered my question."

"Well, believe it or not, I got a band going after we split. Not to spite you or anything, but I didn't want to quit playing despite losing you to the evil power of adulthood," he grabbed my shot glass and emptied it. "One of us still has to stick it to the man."

"Ha-ha. Fuck you, your highness," I grabbed my notepad, my pen, and started scribbling, "but your success here depends on what I write about you and your band. I also stick it to the man whenever I can."

He grinned as he made his way backstage.

~*~*~

Making our way out of the venue, laughing and staggering and half-dazed from the show, he lit a match and inhaled from the butt of his cigarette. I accompanied him to my car, leaving the rest of his band mates behind. He told me not to worry about it, that they understood, but I couldn't shake the feeling that that wasn't the prudent thing to do.

"They're going back to the hotel to enjoy their last show. After tomorrow they're going back home," he told me. "You don't mind me staying with you for a few days? I kinda wanna see Atlanta."

"You trust them with your instruments and equipment?" I asked.

"Yeah they're awesome, those guys. Trust them with my life, I do—which is saying a lot considering the state of the world." He looked at me for a moment before opening his mouth again: "Say, you OK to drive?"

"I may need a slap to sober up a bit," I answered, "or this long-ass walk to the car. Yeah, I think I'm OK to drive."

"If you want I can drive us to your house, as long, of course, as you give me good directions," he said. I gave him a once over and handed him the keys. I said, "You kill us, I'm haunting your ass."

~*~*~

We made it home just fine, and I use fine in the loosest sense of the word: a couple of miss-turns sobered me up, along with a bunch of potholes and one of the roughest road in all of Route 5. After a near hit with a tree I took over. When we got to my apartment, he made a straight line for the bathroom and I powered my laptop and wrote my article. I thought about spending the next day home as I stroked the keys ever so gently, trying my damndest not to hit the mouse pad.

When he got out of the bathroom, he walked up behind me and started to read out loud. I stopped for a moment and turned around, saying, "Alright, I can't finish my work like this, man. Either sit down over there or read to yourself."

I turned back to my work and he stopped reading out loud--which activated my second pet peeve. Just as I was about to turn around again, he draped his arms around my shoulders and whispered into my ear; "I've missed you, you know," sending chills up and down my back.

"Quit screwing around, dude. I gotta finish this. May I finish it?" I said.

"Yeah, sure," he responded and walked into the kitchen. "You got any bread and peanut butter?"

"Bread yes," I responded, "but I'm not so sure about peanut butter." Click clickity click.

I spent ten minutes on my piece. I hit the save button and e-mailed it to myself. I got up from my chair and walked into the kitchen, my stomach growling and demanding sustenance. I saw Charlie sitting on the sofa munching happily at his sandwich, half-eaten triangle on his left hand and TV remote on his right. I was thrown back into the past, back when sammiches and watching TV was about the highlight of the day. When having a good friend spend the night over at your house meant weekends of rough housing and outdoor camping and silly camaraderie.

"Say," I said as I opened the fridge and got out a jar of mayo and a packet of deli turkey slices, "do you remember back in middle school--"

"When we used to hang out every Friday at your mom's?" he finished my sentence.

"Well, yeah," I said. "Guess you do."

"Those were fun times."

"Sucks that we grew up," I said, "We don't often do this—hanging out."

"Yep."

I sat down next to him and enjoyed my sandwich in relative peace. He flipped the channel every so often, and the only noise in the room was that of infomercial after infomercial.

"You know," I said, "I used to put your hand in a bowl of warm water at night. Nothing ever happened."

"You bastard," he replied.

"Dude, you put shaving cream on my hand!"

"Yeah, and tickled your nose with a feather. What's your point?" he asked.

"Don't call me a bastard for pranking you. You did it, too!" I interjected.

"Yeah, but I failed. You, on the other hand, dumped the water on me when it didn't work," he said.

"Failed?" I inquired.

"You scratched your nose with your other hand," he explained. A bubble of giggles formed at the base of my stomach and swelled to my mouth. I clenched my jaw to stifle it but failed, letting out a loud snort before spitting out hearty guffaws.

"Since we're reminiscing," he said through my cackles, "I got something to confess."

"—haha, woo, yeah shit, confess away—" I said through the dying throes of laughter.

"I kissed you once. While you slept," he said.

I stopped laughing at once.

"I saw you peacefully laying there, a dab of drool running down your chin, hand full of shaving cream. The feather was inches from your face, and I was itching to get you. You looked--" he struggled with his words, "angelic."

"This isn't funny anymore," I said. "What the hell."

"The weird thing is, you see, that while the feather hovered above your nose, something inside me wanted to know what kissing felt like. So I kissed you."

"I don't remember this. How did that not wake me up but the feather did?" I asked.

"I never used the feather."

I sat there, half-eaten sammich in my hand, struck dumb by his confession. We sat there in near-absolute silence. He took another bite and munched as the information reeled in my head. He finally broke the silence, saying. "I loved you, did you know that?"

"Loved?" I asked.

"Yeah, loved. Love still. Two months before I kissed you I realized that I loved you. When that crazy little bitch hurt your feelings, I got crazy mad. Hell before that, when you asked her out, I got jealous," he placed his sandwich on the coffee table as he turned to face me. "It hurt, you know? Those five days you guys went out. I felt betrayed.

"Then when I kissed you, when your eyes fluttered open, I felt happy. I felt complete. Then you went ahead and ruined my prank by scratching your nose with the other hand."

"So," I started before finding it very hard to finish my sentence, "Why—why—why now? Why tell me now?"

"Meh, felt I should. I mean, you started reminiscing and I couldn't help it," he said in an ambivalent tone. In one fluid motion, almost as graceful as a tabby going after a mouse, he grabbed the sammich out of my hand, placed it on the coffee table at his side and leaned his face very--oh so very--close to mine. He placed his hand on mine, trying to entangle his fingers through mine.

"I still love you," he said before locking his lips on mine.

I closed my eyes as his lips pressed warmly, snuggly, onto mine and I melted. I left my body behind as my mind raced crazy fast like so much adrenaline. The consequence of this innocuous action as just a mere kiss hit me like a ton of bricks and I slammed back into my own self as he ended the kiss. I sat delirious and dazed; he pressed his body against mine and embraced me in a very tight hug.

A very big, very mischievous, grin adorned my face and I forced him off me. I caught him off guard, and it showed when his eyes got very big when he looked at my face. I pressed my hand on his shoulder as I forced him down onto the couch and I climbed on top of him.

I one crude motion, I grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him back just how he kissed me.

~*~*~

My hand landed on top of his when I felt it reach for the hem of my pants. I held it there for a hot second before I guided him and we pushed the hem down together. In the struggle for control we fell, landing the floor. I got off him while examining the surroundings. I grabbed him by the hand and said, "To my room."

I got up and led him to my room. The heat in my loins was intensified by the heat in the room. Sweat started to dribble down my forehead as I entered and examined the cleanliness of the place. He let go of my hand and grabbed the bottom of my shirt, moving under the cloth while sensually caressing my skin. I turned around to face him and kiss him, placed my arms around his neck and pulled him closer to me. I broke the kiss when he pulled the shirt up and over my head and I slid out of it. I took off his shirt, not nearly as graceful as he had taken mine off, but we were now half-naked and starving.

I unbuttoned my pants then I unbuttoned his. He could now clearly see the tent my penis made on my underwear as I could see his. The size of his tent overshadowed mine by a mere inch and a half, I estimated. We stood there, on the threshold of my room, almost nude and not moving. We locked eyes for a minute, exactly one minute, our breathing keeping time of the seconds as they flew by. I could hear the beating of my heart thump thumping as hard and fast as a jack rabbit.

He moved one inch closer, took my hand into his and pushed me on top of my bed. He lay down on top of me, pushing my hands on top of my head, and nibbled on my neck. His breathing was hard and forced; I moaned as his teeth sank onto my flesh and kept the rhythm of his animalistic grunt. His hard cock pressed against my thigh was torture and ecstasy; I wanted it and longed for it and dreaded the pain that would come of having it.

He got up, removed his boxers and removed my briefs, then got on top of me again. This time the heat between his legs was intensified fivefold. Our cocks rubbed each other and our testicles intermingled as he ravaged my neck with nibbles and suckles. I arched my back to press my hips against his, and he straddled my left leg as his hand landed on top of my erect prick.

"I love you," he said as he began to stroke my hard-on.