Faggot.
I wanted to die. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I wanted a horde of crows to come flying in the school's doors and swoop down the corridor and converge on me and tear apart my living flesh, because painful as that would be it would save me from the humiliation of all my friends and half the people at school seeing this accusation taped to my locker door.
The whole gang was here to see, since they'd all walked me to my locker. I hadn't wanted the escort - I'd wanted to forget yesterday had ever happened - but Donna had insisted that those guys might try to get back at me for making them look bad, and there was safety in numbers.
Now I understood the disgusted looks people had been giving me as I walked into the building.
"Jesus!" Donna tore the piece of looseleaf off my locker door. "Those guys from yesterday must've done this. That is so, fucking, immature."
"Yeah," I agreed weakly, and started trying to open my locker.
"What is a faggot?" Fez asked.
My face felt like it was on fire, and I couldn't remember my locker combination. I hoped no one noticed.
"It's a man who sleeps with other men," Donna said.
"Oh! I did not know you did that here," Fez said, grinning and bouncing up and down on his toes.
Sometimes I wonder about Fez.
"We don't." Hyde slapped Fez on the back. "The excitement's over here, my young friend. Come away with me, and I will explain the customs of this land and its people."
For the rest of the day I was a nervous wreck. Whenever I walked through the halls, I could feel people's eyes on me, prickling the hairs on the back on my neck. Over and over, I thought I heard the word "faggot" whispered as I passed by, but when I tried to see who said it, no one was looking at me.
I also wondered where Hyde was. He didn't show up in the two classes we had together, and I didn't see him at lunch.
After school, we all ended up in my basement, minus Hyde.
Right after we got in, Mom came down with a cardboard box labeled Old Toys. "I want you to go through this, sweetie, and see if there's anything you don't want to keep," she said, handing me the box. "I've got to scrounge up some donations for the church rummage sale."
Mom left, and naturally Kelso and Fez dove right into the box.
"So who do you think would win in a fight: GI Joe or Barbie?" Kelso asked, holding up an example of each. Barbie had her hair hacked off, and GI Joe was missing his gun.
"That's too easy," Fez said, making a pouty face. "Barbie."
"What the hell, Fez?" Kelso gaped at him. "GI Joe is a soldier! Barbie is a girl!"
"Yes, but she is much bigger," Fez explained, grinning and drawing out the last word. He took the doll from Kelso and traced her breasts appreciatively.
I left them to dig through the rest of the box; I went and slumped on the couch.
"Is something wrong, Eric?" Donna said, sitting down next to me and kissing me on the cheek.
"I'm just wondering where Hyde is," I said. "Did he show up in any of his classes today?"
Donna frowned. "Well, he wasn't in math, or history. That's all I have with him. But so what - he skips so much I'm amazed he passes."
Jackie looked up from the fashion magazine she was flipping through. "He went off with Fez after we found that note on your locker, remember?"
"The bell rang and I went to chemistry," Fez said absently. He was busy undressing Barbie. "I did not see him after that."
"Maybe he went after those guys you beat up yesterday," Kelso said. "I mean, leaving that note on your locker - that was a major burn, man."
Fez looked up from his Barbie. "Hyde would not go pick a fight without telling us, would he? That would be so foolish."
That was exactly what I was worried about, but I couldn't tell the rest of the gang the thing that was really scaring me: a few months ago when Hyde had the measles, I'd cleaned out his pockets at the hospital and found a switchblade. He'd said that he was carrying it because some guy had threatened to cut him; now I knew that guy was Randy, who'd been mad 'cause Hyde'd slept with his girlfriend. Now Randy was threatening me, and I wondered if Hyde thought it was his responsibility to take care of it.
I wondered where the knife was now.
"Hyde wouldn't do that." Donna seemed pretty certain. "He probably decided to skip and get stoned with Leo, or something. The guys who put the note on your locker are obviously complete morons - they're not worth bothering with. I mean, hello, 'faggot'? That's like calling you 'fatso.'" She giggled at her own joke.
"I dunno Donna," Jackie said. "Two girls asked me today if Eric was really gay."
"What?!" My voice rose about two octaves, and Kelso snickered in the background.
"Well, I told them no," Jackie said, flicking her fingers in the air.
"What air heads," Donna said, looking to me for confirmation. "Obviously you're not gay - hasn't everyone at school seen us making out in the parking lot?"
"Oh, Donna. You don't want to know what they say about you." Jackie looked at us with wide, innocent eyes.
"What? Yes, I do." Donna pinned Jackie with an intense gaze. "What do they say about me?"
"Well, just that you're not very feminine. And Eric's not very masculine, so...." She shrugged. "If you'd just stop dressing like a lumberjack-"
"I think Donna is very feminine," Fez interrupted. "You are a very beautiful woman, Donna."
Donna grinned. "Thank you, Fez."
I cleared my throat. "What about me?"
Fez snapped a sultry look in my direction. "And you are a very beautiful man, Eric."
Kelso fell over backwards laughing. Donna and Jackie snickered.
"Come on- come on, guys!" I begged. It was all very well for them to laugh. They weren't the ones getting death threats because someone thought they were a fag. Remembering, I touched my lip. There was a scab where it'd split, but it was only a little swollen - probably because of the frozen peas. It was sore, though. "If you didn't know me, would you think I was gay?"
"Well, you are pretty girly...." Kelso mused.
"Buddy thought you were gay," Fez recalled.
That was not the answer I was looking for. "Fuck off!" I said, seriously pissed. "At least I'm not the one playing with dolls!"
Kelso looked offended. "It's an action figure!"
Hyde didn't show up for dinner, but it's not like it was the first time he'd stayed out and not called. He didn't show up in the basement before midnight, either - again, it wasn't the first time. Mom and Red didn't press him to account for his movements the way they did to me, and sometimes he'd just disappear for a day.
I went to bed. I didn't think I'd be able to sleep; I was worried about Hyde, and I was terrified about facing school tomorrow. The note on my locker this morning had let me know that Randy and his buddies weren't ready to leave me alone yet. Now everyone at school was wondering if I was gay, and my own friends weren't exactly jumping over each other to assure me that I seemed straight.
But I was straight. Hell yeah. To prove it, I got out the copy of Playboy I'd hidden between my mattress and the box spring, and I beat off looking at the naked-lady pictures.
And then I slept, and I dreamed.
I dreamed that I was in the boys' locker room at school, and Hyde had me backed into a corner, and he was kissing me. And I was digging it. His hands were planted on the two walls, and his body pressed against me, and his lips were hot against mine, soft and rough all at once. He wasn't wearing his sunglasses; his eyes were locked on mine. I squirmed against him, moaning, feeling my dick straining against my pants. I wanted it to go on forever, and I wanted more.
"Hey, look at the fucking faggots!" said a nasty, familiar voice. Hyde backed away from me and turned around, and I saw Randy. He must have been in here the whole time watching. "I don't want your kind in my school," he sneered at Hyde, and gave him a shove so he staggered back against me.
Hyde slipped his right hand into his pocket. "Why don't you just walk away before I hurt you?" he said, not raising his voice at all.
"No way, fag," said Randy, and then I noticed that Chris and Frank were here too, just behind him.
I wanted to run away. I wanted to grab Hyde and pull him out of there. But I was the one backed into the corner; there was no way to run.
Suddenly Hyde had the switchblade in his hand, the blade reflecting the grubby yellow tile of the walls. And Randy had one too - no, his wasn't a switchblade, it was a hunting knife, long and jagged. I wanted to call out some kind of warning to Hyde, but my voice didn't seem to work.
Hyde and Randy circled each other, faking thrusts with their knives but not getting close to drawing blood. Then Chris suddenly punched Hyde in the kidneys from behind; Hyde cried out and dropped his guard, and Randy stabbed him in the chest. The long knife sunk in to the hilt, and then Randy wrenched it out again. Hyde dropped to his knees without making a sound. His face was white.
"Hyde!" My voice finally worked. I fell to my knees beside him and wrapped my arms around him before he could fall over. "Don't die, man, you can't die, I-"
I woke up. I was lying in my bed, covered in sweat, with the blankets tangled around my legs. Holy crap. That was the most vivid nightmare I'd ever had in my life.
I lay there, trying to separate the strands of the dream from reality. Hyde wasn't really dead, and he hadn't really kissed me, and I hadn't really been totally turned on by my best friend's body pressed up against mine, and I hadn't really been about to tell him that I loved him. Nothing but a dream.
I couldn't shake the image of Hyde falling down with a big bloody hole in his chest. I knew it was only a dream, but it was so fucking clear in my memory. I shuddered. I had to see him alive again.
I checked my bedside clock; it was nearly three in the morning. He had to be home by now.
I tiptoed through the silent house, down two flights of stairs. In the basement the cold, rough concrete under my bare feet made me shiver, and then I tripped over the box of toys Fez and Kelso had abandoned behind the couch. I caught myself on the back of the couch, swearing under my breath, and then I looked up and saw a line of light under the door to the furnace room.
I was so relieved my knees nearly gave out. And that was a shock - I hadn't known I'd been that worried until I finally saw that yellow glow and knew that he must be safely home.
I needed to see him. I went and knocked on his door. "Hey, it's me. Are you awake?"
"Yeah," I heard from behind the door, so I opened it.
The room was lit with a soft yellow glow by one desk lamp, which sat on the floor at the foot of his cot. Pink Floyd was playing on the portable record player, not too loud. Hyde was sitting cross-legged on the cot, wearing blue plaid flannel pajamas that used to be Red's and smoking a joint.
"C'mon in and shut the door, Forman," he said.
I shut the door and went and sat facing him on the cot. The cot's not that big; our knees nearly touched. He leaned forward to hand me the joint, and the cot squeaked.
I took a long drag and handed the joint back to him, holding my breath as long as I could. When I had to breathe again, I said "Where were you all day?"
"I went and talked to those guys." He lifted the joint to his lips, and I saw that his knuckles were badly scraped and bruised. "They're not going to bother you any more. Don't worry about it."
I stared at his hand as my throat tightened with dread. How many times would you have to hit someone to mess up your knuckles that badly? Images flashed through my mind: the switchblade, my dream. "You didn't kill someone, did you?" I squeaked.
He looked at me with dark, stony eyes, and for a moment in the dim light he was a stranger, and I was afraid of him. Then he laughed, and the tension broke. "Hell no. Have you been waiting up all night to ask me that?"
"I wasn't waiting up. I just woke up now," I said, taking the joint back from him. I felt ridiculous for asking him if he'd killed someone - I was still tripping on that nightmare. "How can you be sure they're going to leave me alone now?"
"Like I said. I talked to them."
"And said what? They didn't seem like the listening-to-reason type yesterday."
Hyde handed joint back to me. It was nearly short enough to burn my fingers now. I held it gingerly and sucked down the acrid smoke.
"I told them that they were idiots if they really thought you're gay," Hyde said. "And if they don't believe me, they should come down to the basement and watch Charlie's Angels with us sometime." He smirked, and took the stub back from me to get the last drag off it.
"That's it?" My voice rose a little, betraying my total incredulity. Yesterday, even the fact that I had a girlfriend hadn't convinced those guys they didn't need to beat me up.
"Well, we talked for a while over some beers." Hyde leaned over and smushed the butt of the joint against the upside-down lid of a metal cookie tin on the floor. "I found out Chris had told the other guys he saw you and Buddy making out at the drive-in. I told them I knew that was total crap. So we rode Chris a bit, 'til he 'fessed up that he lied about it because - get this - he's jealous you're dating Donna now. Turns out he's had a crush on her all year."
"That's incredible." I hugged myself and shivered a bit - it was damn cold in the basement, and my cotton pajamas were thin. "You just sat down and offered them a beer and they explained everything to you? You ever consider working for the UN?"
He snickered at the suggestion. "Whatever man. I used to be pretty good friends with those guys."
I frowned. "What the hell, Hyde? How can you have friends I don't know about? You live with me."
"Doesn't mean you know everything about me, Forman."
"Anyway, didn't you say Randy wanted to kill you for sleeping with his girlfriend? Which I can't believe you didn't tell me about at the time, by the way."
Hyde gave half a shrug. "That all happened last summer. Everybody was away, so I ended up hanging out with Randy and those guys. And yeah, one night when Edna was out I had a party at my place, and Randy passed out early and I ended up doing it with his girlfriend. Who was even more of a slut than your sister, by the way."
I smiled. Nothing like a little Laurie-bashing to lighten the mood.
"He didn't find out 'till he dumped her in September," Hyde went on. Obviously the weed was making him talkative tonight. I liked it. I felt like I was peeking behind his walls, for once. "Then she got mad at him and started talking all kinds of shit about how she'd slept around with about five guys while they were dating, including me, and they were all better in bed than he was."
I shivered again, and rubbed my arms. Hyde noticed. "I know, it's cold down here," he said. "Get up."
I stood up and so did he. I stumbled a bit - the weed was just hitting me now. He yanked the quilt off the cot, then motioned for me to sit down again. I did, tucking my knees up close to my chest. He sat down right next to me, wrapping the blanket around both our shoulders. He was warm and I was cold; I felt his body heat starting to warm me. "So how'd you start hanging out with those guys, anyway?" I was very curious about Hyde's secret double life.
I felt him shrug. "Mostly we used to go drinking out by the reservoir, back in junior high."
"Junior high?" I repeated, a bit shocked.
"Hey man, I'm from the wrong side of the tracks, remember?"
"Yeah but - how the hell did you get beer when you were fourteen?"
"Twelve," he corrected me with kind of a wry tone. "Usually we stole it from our parents, or Chris's older brother bought us stuff. Not just beer, either. Later we got to know this old guy, George, who had his own still."
"Jesus." I turned a bit so I could look at him; his face was very close to mine, but his gaze was fixed on the record player. There was a momentary scratching noise as the needle advanced to a new track, and then the room filled again with Pink Floyd's 'Brain Damage.' "How did you have all this stuff going on and I didn't know about it?"
"It was like two different worlds. There was hanging out at your place with you and Donna and Kelso, with your mom hovering around offering us sandwiches and making sure we went outside to play instead of watching TV all afternoon...and then there was getting wasted out back of the reservoir after dark with Randy and Frank and some other guys."
I tried to make sense of this, thinking back to when we were in junior high. Usually Mom kicked all my friends out around eight o'clock back then, so I could finish my homework and get ready for bed. I'd always assumed Hyde went home to do the same. Of course, back then I didn't know how bad things were with Edna. I didn't really get that until she walked out on him.
"I can't believe you never told me." I giggled, though it wasn't funny at all. "You have a fucking double life, like...like Jekyll and Hyde!" OK, that last bit was funny. I giggled again, leaning against him.
"No I don't," Hyde snapped. "Except for the two weeks last summer your family was away on vacation, I haven't hung out with those guys in years."
I stopped giggling. Something told me there was more to Hyde's story. He was still staring at the spinning record, and his body seemed tight. "Oh yeah? How come?"
"The winter we were in eighth grade those guys started doing some really stupid shit," he said. "We started sneaking out of school at lunch time to go drinking. Sometimes we'd skip off, sometimes we'd go back to school drunk. I knew it wasn't a great idea, but-" He shrugged, and didn't finish the sentence.
"How the hell did you get away with that?" I asked.
He turned his head to give me a look like I was a bit stupid. "We didn't, man. The school called Edna about it lots of times. What do you think she did about it?"
I took a wild guess. "Nothing?"
He nodded.
I tried to imagine what Red would have done to me if I showed up for school drunk in eighth grade. Military school, probably, and I'd still be grounded.
"So if Edna didn't care, why'd you stop?" I asked.
"One night in February that year, after we had a couple bottles of George's moonshine out by the reservoir, Chris's brother Paul drove us back into town. There were seven of us in the car, and we were all totally wasted."
I shuddered, picturing it. "Was there an accident?"
"Not like you're thinking. But when we got back to Chris and Paul's place, we realized we'd left Frank in the woods. Paul and I went back for him. We found him lying in the snow, unconscious. We couldn't wake him up. I said we had to take him to the hospital. Paul said he wouldn't, because if we went there they'd know we'd been drinking, and Paul would lose his license." Hyde's voice had become very hard. "I told Paul I'd kick his ass and steal his car if I had to, to get Frank to the hospital. So he drove us there. He stopped in the hospital's driveway long enough for me to get Frank out of the back seat, and then he drove away."
"Holy crap," I managed to say. "Then what happened?" I had to get the whole horrifying story out of him now. How often did I get Hyde to myself, stoned, at 3 am? If he didn't finish telling me tonight, he probably never would.
"I guess someone inside saw us, because some guys ran out with a stretcher, and then they were rushing Frank in and asking me all kinds of questions. And they noticed I was drunk, so they decided to make me drink some ipecac to make me puke, in case there was still booze in my stomach. So the nurse comes with the ipecac, and guess who it is?"
Oh my God. "Mom."
He nodded.
"Fuck, man. You must have freaked."
"Actually, I was too out of it to really care."
I hugged him. It was an automatic reaction - my arm was kind of around him anyway, holding the quilt up.
"Then at the end of her shift she took me home," Hyde went on, not reacting at all to the hug. "Not my home, I mean - your home."
"Wait a second, I think I remember this," I said. "February, eighth grade? One morning I woke up and came downstairs and you were sleeping on the couch in the living room. Mom said you had the flu, and Edna couldn't take care of you 'cause she was working, so Mom'd said she'd take care of you at our place."
"Yeah," he said. "After you went to school that morning, Kitty gave me a talking to like I'd never had in my life. She told me Frank could have died - she told me if I kept going like I was, I was going to die. And she told me I had a choice."
I thought I could guess what the choice was. "That's when you stopped hanging out with those guys."
"Hell yeah. And Kitty started letting me stay here a lot later at night."
I remembered that, too. She'd said it was good for Steven and me to work on our homework together.
"God," I said. "I can't believe I never knew any of this."
Hyde smiled. "Surprised your mom keeps secrets from you?"
"Secrets? Plural? There's more?"
Hyde didn't say anything, but his smile kind of turned into a smirk.
"Don't hold out on me, man," I begged. "We're really communicating here. Isn't it beautiful? Keep it going!"
"I'm not telling you anything else about your mom." He was definitely smirking.
"Oh, I think you are," I said.
Not many people know that when Hyde gets stoned, he's really, fucking, ticklish. In fact he keeps forgetting that I know it.
I tickled his belly, and he instantly yelped and tried to roll away from me. The quilt, which was still wrapped around both of us, pulled me along with him. We fell together onto the floor, ending up tangled together with me on top of him.
"Gonna tell me now?"
"Get off me!"
I tickled him again and he writhed under me, laughing helplessly and swearing. The quilt was tangled tight around us, so he couldn't get away. I stopped, and asked "Ready to tell?"
"Yes, OK, just stop it!"
I let up. The quilt stopped me from easily moving away, so I stayed where I was. He was lying half curled up on his side, panting, and I was lying on top of him, my legs straddling his hip.
And I was turned on. Fuuuuck. My dick was hard, and it was pressed against his side. With the quilt around us, there was no easy way out of this position. He didn't seem to have noticed, though....
"When there's no one else home, Kitty watches Charlie's Angels with me," Hyde said.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Kelly is her favorite," Hyde said.
I couldn't help laughing at that. I buried my face in Hyde's shoulder and snickered, already forgetting that I needed to get away from him before he noticed my hard-on. The flannel of his pajama shirt was warm and soft against my cheek, and it smelled nice.
He shifted under me so that I fell down onto the floor next to him. Our noses were practically touching. I stopped giggling. "Why'd you tell me now?" I asked.
"You were going to tickle me until I died," he said.
"You can't die from tickling."
He raised an eyebrow. "You don't know that for sure."
I fought to remember what I'd been trying to ask him. I could feel his warm breath against my lips. I had this crazy impulse to kiss him, but even stoned I knew that was a bad idea. I'd done it once, when we were eleven, and he'd hit me hard and told me never to do it again. "I meant why'd you tell me about all that shit that happened in junior high? Why now?"
"Christ, Forman, I don't know. It's been a weird couple of days." He touched the cut place on my lower lip. "My old friends were going to beat the crap out of you yesterday."
My lip ached where he touched it, and I held my breath until he moved his hand away. He didn't move his arm back to where it'd been before, at his side; instead he rested his hand lightly on my waist. My brain spun wildly, trying to figure out the significance of this. Did he mean something by it? Or was it just a more comfortable position for his arm?
"Oh, I had the situation under control," I said lightly. I had to spin words to distract myself from the ghost of his touch on my lip, the lightning sensation of his hand resting on my waist, the almost-touch of his nose against mine, and the embarrassing fullness of my dick in my thin pajama pants. "I was just lulling them into a false sense of security. Hey, what were you doing leaving school that late?"
He smiled. "Detention."
Of course. Lucky for me. "Thanks," I said, pointlessly. "For standing up for me. For telling them I'm not gay."
"Yeah," he said.
"I'm not gay," I repeated.
"I know," he said.
"I've never even wanted to kiss a guy," I said.
Except you! I screamed silently in my head, not letting the thought touch my eyes.
"I know," he said.
Then he kissed me.
I didn't even clue in for the first half-second. I thought he was just shifting around to try to get untangled from the blanket. Then the room went dead silent and I felt his lips on mine, and...
...oh my God...
He tasted like the pot we'd just smoked, and a faint trace of alcohol. His lips were so warm, and soft. I hadn't really expected them to be soft, everything about him seemed so hard. I'd closed my eyes the moment our lips touched, and I was lost. I felt his hands sliding in between the quilt and my body to wrap around my waist and pull me closer. My brain shut down. I didn't name what was happening, I just kissed him back and wrapped my arms around him. His kisses became more urgent, harder against my injured lip, and I stifled a yelp of pain.
He noticed, and pulled back immediately. "Sorry," he whispered, and I stared at him, frozen, so full of shock and lust and wonder that I couldn't even remember to blink.
The silence was shattered by a horrible rhythmic scratching. The album had ended, and the record player's automatic arm was broken. Swearing, Hyde quickly disentangled himself from me and the blanket, and went over to turn it off. I sat up, watching him. He crouched in front of the record player with his back to me, gently slipping the record back into its sleeve. His feet were bare. I knew how cold the concrete floor was. "I could get you some socks," I said. "Wool ones for sleeping, I mean, since the floor down here is so cold in the winter...why am I talking about socks? You just kissed me."
He put the Pink Floyd album into the milk crate with the others, and he didn't turn around. "No I didn't, Forman. You're stoned. Why don't you go back to bed?" He pulled a Zeppelin album out and put it on the turntable.
It's true that I was stoned, but I wasn't that stoned. I knew what had just happened, though I was still pretty confused about why.
I knew one thing for sure, though: if I walked out right now, I'd regret it for the rest of my life.
"I guess I just imagined it, then," I said, standing up. I took two freezing steps across the concrete, and crouched down beside Hyde, just little behind him. "And you're probably imagining this." I brushed his frizzy hair out of the way and kissed the side of his face, just at the edge of his sideburn. I could hear my own heart pounding.
He turned towards me, and our lips met again. This time he kissed me gently. My lip ached a bit, but I was careful not to give any indication of pain so that he wouldn't pull away again.
Without talking we went back to the cot, and tucked our icy feet under the blanket, and kissed some more. He touched the side of my face, laying his strong, warm fingers against my cheek. I put my hand over his to keep it there, liking the gentle feel.
"Have you ever thought about doing this?" I asked. "Before tonight, I mean?"
"Shut up, Forman," he said, and kissed me again. He bunched up the front of my pajama top in his fist, and pulled me down so we were lying face-to-face on the cot, and then he was kissing me again, his hands caressing my body.
I didn't try to talk again. I explored his body, caressing his shoulders and arms and chest and belly through his soft blue flannel pajamas. I loved the smooth, firm shapes of his muscles. Then my hand slid down to cup his package, and I felt his dick twitch as I touched it. He was as hard as I was. He caught his breath and stopped moving. I wasn't sure what to do next. I looked at his face for a clue, and was confused by what I saw. He looked...scared. He was looking down at my hand, his lips were slightly parted, and his eyes were open a bit too wide. It only lasted a moment. He closed his eyes and let his head fall down against the pillow. I put both my hands on his chest and kissed him on the lips, and asked "Was that too fast?"
He didn't respond at all. He lay there under me with his eyes closed. His adam's apple bobbed once. Maybe he'd suddenly realized he didn't like this after all, and he'd just decided to shut me out and go to sleep.
"I mean, I don't even know where we're going, fast or slow," I said to his closed face. "Or if we have to go somewhere. I mean... fuck, man, I've never done any of this with a guy before."
He twitched - just the tiniest twitch at the corner of his mouth - and I got it. Or thought I did, anyway. Hyde is so fucking hard to read.
I'd never done any of this with a guy before, but he had.
I lay down beside him, on my side so I was facing him. "You're thinking about him, aren't you?" I was afraid to say the name, in case I was wrong.
He didn't move, except his adam's apple bobbed again. I waited, counting our breaths. Five, six....
"Go away, Forman," he said.
He didn't say 'Who are you talking about?' so I knew I was right. He was thinking about Stu.
"No," I said.
"I'll kick your ass," he said, monotone, still lying there with his eyes closed.
"You're gonna have to," I said, and I put my arm over him and hugged him around the waist. "'Cause otherwise I'm going to stay here all night." He held his body stiff. I kept my arm around him, and my body pressed up against his. My erection was gone; all I wanted now was to make things OK with Hyde, and I had no fucking clue how I was going to do that.
"Freak," he whispered, but he didn't move.
"Sticks and stones," I replied automatically. "Talk to me, Hyde." I'm used to his walls, but this went way beyond normal. I was afraid of what he was seeing behind his closed eyes. I remembered back when he first let slip about Stu, when he was sick and delirious, and how Donna and had worked herself into a near panic over it, thinking Hyde might kill himself or something, and then I'd talked to Hyde and he'd convinced me we were blowing it way out of proportion.
"Just leave it, Forman," he said, a little louder.
"No." I hugged him tighter. His hair tickled my nose, and I reached up to brush it out of the way. "You're my best friend. Please talk to me." I laid my hand on his chest. I could feel how fast his heart was beating.
"We're men. Men don't talk," he said.
"All right. We don't talk." This was getting me nowhere. Whatever weird mood had come over Hyde earlier tonight to get him to talk so much about stuff from his past, it was obviously gone now. He was shut up tight, as usual. But no way was I going to give up and just leave him down here to brood by himself. "Can we go back to what we were doing before I screwed up and pushed it too far?" I said quietly. "I swear, I won't do anything you don't want me to do."
Finally, he opened his eyes. "Eric," he said, "I trust you."
I didn't trust myself to speak in return. Any words that came to mind were too flip or too corny. Instead, I kissed him.
This time it was good, and gentle, the sweetest kisses I'd ever shared. I would be careful this time not to go too far - careful as if he were the virgin, instead of me.
"You're cold," I noticed.
"So're you," he said. "Your hands are like ice." He leaned over and picked the quilt up off the floor. "Let's get cozy."
We cocooned under the blanket and the quilt. He pulled them up over our heads, so the lamp's yellow light dimmed to almost nothing. The opening chords of Kashmir filtered through softly. Hyde was a dark, beautiful shadow, and there was nothing in our private world now but the music and the smell and the feel of him next to me, and the cot squeaking slightly as we moved.
His mouth was so warm and soft on mine. I tangled my fingers through his hair. His fingers played at the buttons of my pajama top, undoing one at a time with teasing slowness while he kept kissing me. When all the buttons were done, I felt his hands sliding across my chest. I shivered when he accidentally brushed my nipple. I moaned quietly, feeling too many intense, tingly-down-there feelings and wishing I could touch my own dick at least - but I wouldn't risk it. I just kissed him harder, loving his taste and the soft, low sounds he made.
I didn't notice the music ending until the needle started scratching against the label again. Hyde flipped back the top of our covers and crawled out to deal with it. The air in the room was so much colder than the air inside our cocoon had been, I felt like I should be able to see my breath.
He turned over the record and came back to me. As soon as he was close enough I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back onto the cot, and we picked up where we'd left off. "Can I do this?" I asked, slipping the top button of his pajama shirt out through its hole.
"Yeah, good idea," he said, and tugged my own shirt off my shoulders. I let go of his shirt for the moment it took to let mine slip off completely. Then I quickly undid the rest of his buttons, and he shrugged his shirt off. In the chilly air, our skin went all goosebumpy. His nipples stood out, dark and hard, and I thought about kissing them.
He ran a finger along my collar bone. I noticed the bruises and scrapes on his knuckles, and wondered about them again, but decided now was not the time to ask questions. He leaned in and kissed my chest, just over my breastbone.
I shivered, suddenly feeling very scrawny now that he was looking at me without my shirt. "I'm too skinny," I said.
He snorted a laugh. "Nah, you're fine." He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close, and we kissed again, my bare skin against his, our arms tight around each other. I felt a rush of feeling so intense I couldn't name it - I wanted to kiss him, to feel him, to protect him, to be with him. I wanted to hold on to this moment, this night, forever. The 'L' word skimmed the surface of my consciousness but I shied away from it. All I could do was squeeze him tight, so tight my arms started shaking. I think he understood; he stopped kissing me and squeezed back, so tight I could barely breathe. We held on as "Custard Pie" ended, and held on through the silence, and finally let go when "The Rover" filled the air.
I yawned. It snuck up on me, and as soon as I realized it was happening I tried to hide it. I didn't want to be the one to break the magical spell and remind us that the night was passing. He noticed, though.
"It's four thirty in the morning," he said, yawning himself. "We've gotta get some sleep."
"No," I said, almost desperate. "I'm not tired."
"I am." He leaned against me, resting his head on my shoulder. "You slept before you came down here. I didn't."
I put my arm around him and he nuzzled my neck sort of sleepily. I relished the comfortable feeling of it. "I'm afraid..." I said, hesitatingly.
"Of what?"
"That this'll never happen again."
"Sure it will. You can come back down tomorrow night. I'll be here." He ran his hand over my bare skin as he spoke.
I shivered again. "Would it be all right - could I stay down here 'till morning?"
He skimmed a finger along the goosebumps on my arm. "Get back under the covers."
I did, leaving my shirt in a heap on the floor. Hyde got up and turned off the record player, turned off the lamp, and found his way back to me. He crawled under the covers and kissed me, then whispered "Roll over so your back's to me."
We spooned, me in front, his warm breath on the back of my neck and his arms around me. The narrow cot didn't leave us any room to move, but that was OK because I didn't want to move away from him. Not ever.