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Nate knows he wants him before he had even crossed the threshold. Someone hands him a bottle and Nate sips. Eliza has abandoned him for the moment. Everything is in soft focus, like a fresh oil painting.
The guy’s back is to him. Nate watches the muscles of his neck and upper back, and the biceps that fairly strains out of his grey t-shirt. Nate observes how tall and straight the guy stands, the proud jut of his chin, and admires. Nate has always known himself. And boys, he told himself after watching a particularly mean exchange at 12, were only to be admired from afar. Here, in a house full of unknowns, Nate is 17, and he wishes and wants.
The guy turns. Nate blinks. He is beautiful. His eyes are like the Pacific off Big Sur. There is a storm swirling in them that clears and focuses as he watches Nate in turn.
Someone jostles the guy and another puts an arm around him. Nate licks his lips as the guy is pulled into yet another round of backslaps and fake punches. Nate gulps his drink.
****
Nate is bored of dodging people either wanting to ply him with recreational substances or proposition him. He is still carrying his half-drunk bottle as he meanders through the first floor looking for Eliza. He is fairly certain she won’t leave him here but the place is throbbing with music and noise and Nate worries. He pushes through a crowd into a sharp turn and on to a small dark balcony. He plonks the bottle on the wrought iron table to the side, leans on his elbows, and breathes deeply of the ocean air. Time seems to pause.
Nate exhales. He should go back and find his sister. As he stands up, he finds his wrist seized in a firm grip and then dropped enough for Nate to turn. The guy towers over him, his clipped blonde hair raked back from the angular planes of his face. His grin stretches across his face. Nate finds himself lost in the way his lips move, the way they shape into circles and pointed ellipses, and misses what he is saying.
“What?” Nate said, shaking himself. “What?”
In the dark his teeth shows sharp and white, and his shoulders block out Nate’s view of the doorway. Nate lifts his hand with no destination in mind. The guy steps forward and Nate has to tip his chin up. Nate’s palm presses into his chest. His shirt is sweat-damp between Nate’s fingers and he slides his hand up to the shoulder as the guy bends down.
Nate digs his nails into the man’s shoulder. The man grunts, voice rough and low. Then he laughs, the sound soars brashly above the noise around them. As the guy’s shoulder twists away from him, Nate grips harder and pulls it back towards him, confused. The guy laughs again as he pushes Nate up against the wall. He says something and Nate shivers with how his voice teases down the coil of his ear. Then his tongue, hot and quick, follows down the same path. Nate arches up on to his tiptoes as the guy pins his hips to the wall with large hands. Albatross wings, whispers Nate’s mind, which stutters as he watches the guy drop down to his knees. Nate bites his lower lip and fails to tangle his fingers in too-short hair. Nate feels the flick of a button and the click of his fly. When the man takes him into his mouth, Nate hisses, and doubles over his head, clutching at those shoulders. The guy shoves him back and sucks him in and flays Nate open as he rolls his tongue against the underside of Nate’s cock.
Nate’s head thumps back against the wall. He’s unable to move, eyes rolling up into his head, and he notes distantly that drooling is undignified, as he is brought again and again to the brink. His thighs clench and burn, the coil in his stomach winds tighter and tighter, his ears roar like the thundering, frantic, crossing of the wildebeest horde over the Mara River. Then the world crashes down abruptly around him, and Nate bursts through the surface, embraced in heat and pressure and a warm, wet tongue down his throat. He scrabbles for a hold on a sweaty neck as a hand tucks him in and closes his fly and buttons him back. He stumbles with dizziness as the guy backs up.
Nate slowly descends watching the guy watches his face in concentration. Then he touches Nate on his shoulder, nods, and walks away.
Nate sags against the wall in a moan of relief.
****
Over the years, Nate relives his tryst in the dark. The man was nowhere to be seen when he returned downstairs. Eliza had screamed into his face about irresponsible little brothers. She was pissed in all the ways of the word and Nate was too blissed out. He didn’t see the wisdom in snarking back at her.
Nate’s life takes a few twists and turns. One such turn takes him into Oceanside by the side of redoubtable Gunny Wynn as he takes him to meet his new Recon platoon. A tall man emerges out of the water and something in his carriage nudges a memory and has Nate turning. The man must sense Nate’s interest. When he lifts his head, Nate looks into eyes the same colour of the ocean around them.
The world contracts around them and the air clicks together in a closed loop.