Daniel pulls into the driveway and turns off his car, he can hear the deep thumping of the music all the way out there from the house. Great, just another night to torture myself with this guy.He gets out of the car and walks up to the large oak wood door and raises his fist to knock, but just walks in instead.
The music makes his chest vibrate as he gets a grasp of who all has shown up to the party. Only seven other people? Daniel wanders around a bit mingling with the crowd finding the few people he knows, greeting the others he doesn’t, but all the while searching for the host himself.
As he wanders around the spacious room he bumps into someone, he turns around to apologize but the words are caught in his throat as his eyes take in the guy in front of him. only an inch or two taller, his ice blue eyes match his own moss green. he is wearing a button up shirt, striped vertically in varying shades and tints of blue and tucked into semi-tight jeans that fit the curvature of his butt and crotch perfectly.
“Oh hey you made it, I would have been pissed had you not shown. I already have half a party.” He frowns “Oh well, its my sweet sixteen, nothing is going to ruin this.” He perks up immediately and meanders to the kitchen, presumably to get more food.
A few hours pass and everyone has become pretty well acquainted with each other. There are people dancing by the computer that is playing the music, some are on the couches talking, or eating. Daniel and Jake are sitting on Jake’s favorite couch eating a sandwich and a bag of chips between them. Daniel admires how much Jake can put down despite his slender frame.
“So how exactly did your mom agree to this?” With a mouthful of food Jake almost laughs. He swallows and answers.
“Well my mom understood how important hers was to her, so she wanted mine to be just as good. But I had to put the whole thing together, that’s why we have the alternate stuff going on in about… oh an hour or so.” He grins making Daniel laugh to stop himself from staring at his beautiful smile. Daniel was being tortured for something, everything about this boy was perfect, from his jet black hair to his uncrushable spirit, except for his sexuality.
“Define ‘alternative’” Jake’s eyes dart around a little bit looking for any onlookers. Once he believes no one is looking he pulls out a small baggie out of his pocket stuffed to bursting with a green substance that isn’t quite distinguishable in the current lighting. “Is that what I think that is?”
Jake quickly stuffs it back into his pocket with an even bigger grin. “You and I have been wanting to try it for awhile now so I figured, why not? my mom never specified no drugs.” A feeling begin to stir in Daniels stomach, nervous or excited, he couldn’t tell.
Another hour and a half pass and most of the guest had gone home, all except for Daniel and two others. Together they went outside to the patio and turned on the lights to the pool. It fills the small area with greens and oranges and violets then back to green.
“So you both are first timers, right?” Daniel and Jake nod as Jake hands the guy the baggie. He pulls out an intricate glass bong. the mouthpiece splits into three thin tubes that spiral to the main chamber holding the water, the stem goes down the center of the three spirals and forms a bubble every third of the length down the stem. The entire thing is a swirling green and yellow color. “So you guys understand the basic principle of how to use this? these three pieces here all act as carbs in themselves allowing for an extreme amount of control. Here go ahead and take greens birthday boy.” Jake takes it and lights the weed, Daniel can see his hand trembling in the quivering flame and gives him a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. Jake holds it in for about two seconds then begins to double over coughing and blowing out smoke. It has a sickly acrid smell to it.
It goes around to Daniel and he takes a deep breath, empties his lungs and begins inhaling while lighting the weed. He manages to keep it in a whole ten seconds before mimicking Jake.
“Nice, managed to hold it in better than most on their first try with this one.” Daniel snickers.
“I blame it on second hand smoking.” After about half an hour they had managed to go around and finish off a dub. They all relax and recline into their chairs and eventually just space. after an half hour they all decide to go back inside. Jake and Daniel sit on a couch together with a little space between them. Jake loses strength in his abdomen and just flops over onto Daniel who had already propped himself onto the arm of the chair, so now Jake’s head was in Daniels lap but neither seemed to notice.
Jake rotates around so he is on his back staring up at Daniel and Daniel is staring down at Jake, Jake spaces out once more, but Daniel admires his eyes as much as he can, deviating only slightly to admire his high cheekbones, his smile, and the sharpness of his jaw. He begins imagining what it would be like to kiss his soft looking lips, or even his jaw, slowly he leans down not fully realizing what he is doing. The zipping of a backpack snaps him from his trance and they both look toward the other two guys who are packing up.
“Were going to leave you two with a small piece so you guys can smoke some more later if you want, but we got to head out. Thanks for inviting us.” Jake barely acknowledges them, but manages to lift his arm into a wave. After they leave they resume their blank staring at each other for another hour.
They suddenly snap out of it when Jake realizes his mom will be home soon with his little brother. Together they begin cleaning up the house and making it look presentable, but their actions are slow and limber and thinking was even more difficult. Not paying attention Jake reels and falls on the floor yelping in fear. Daniel runs over to see what happened and sees a grim reaper Halloween ornament tucked in the corner that never got put away.
“Jesus Christ, You gave me an heart attack.” Jake looks at him wounded.
“Well it gave ME a heart attack!” They both laugh and finish up then plop back down the sofa together and await the arrival of Jake’s mom.
About an hour passes and Jake’s phone rings, they look at each other questioningly. Jake’s mother has no cell phone, but she was due half an hour ago. They made sure no one left anything so they figure that it must have been someone just wishing him happy birthday at two in the morning.
Jake picks up the receiver and answers “Hello?”
Daniel can’t understand the tiny voice so he moves his head to right next to Jake’s.
“Hi, Is this Jake Smith?”
“Yes”
“You may want to take a seat” The voice replies.
Daniel can’t stand any longer like that and goes back to the couch and waits hearing what must be a series of questions. Suddenly Daniel hears a clattering and looks over to see the receiver on the ground, and Jake standing there, blank and emotionless. He stands up, walks over and picks up the receiver, on the other end is a small female voice repeating “Hello?” Daniel slowly lifts it to his ear.
“Hello? Who is this?” There is a small pause.
“This is Saint Maria Hospital, Who is this?” He hesitates for a moment, and begins considering whether or not to claim to be the brother.
“This is Daniel, I’m a friend of the family.” There is another long pause.
“I’m sorry but I need you to put Jake back on the line.” Daniel glances over at Jake who hasn’t moved, out of the corner of his eye he glimpses the grim reaper ornament. It almost looks like it is smiling.
“I can’t…He won’t, umm, take it. What happened?” Once more there is a pause, followed by an exasperated sigh.
“There has been an accident, His mother Helen Smith, and brother Mike smith were in a car accident. His mother died instantaneously from cranial trauma and his brother is in severe condition, He will need to stay here and will be monitored. For now keep him home, there is nothing he can do. We will contact him when he can come in, and when his brother is stabilized. There is…” The voice begins drifting and getting smaller and smaller, suddenly it is gone. He realized he hung up the phone. He turns to Jake who still hasn’t moved.
He wraps a protective arm around his shoulder and guides him to the nearby sofa and sits him down gently. He tries to get his attention a few times, snapping, calling his name. It wasn’t until he clapped in his face that he snapped out of it. Jake turned toward Daniel, his expression blank, but he had gotten his attention.
“Ar-Are you ok? Well I mean..” Daniel stopped himself before he began stammering, he had no idea what to say. He realized when he looked into Jake’s eyes, he no longer saw that bright happiness, it now more resemble a cold arctic wasteland. He did the only thing he could think of, he scooted closer and wrapped his arms around Jake and pulled him into a deep protective embrace. Jake began to pull back and fight him the only thing he allowed to move was his arms and that was behind Daniel, so Jake swung his fist around catching the couch or Daniels back making a resounding thud against his body with every hit, But Daniel sat there and took it all.
Slowly the flailing began to die down and Jake began to convulse in sobs and held Daniel as tight as he could, almost crushing the breath from him. Daniel felt the warm tears begin to soak the front of his shirt but he just began stroking the back of Jake’s head gently while rocking him back and forth.
Daniel was conflicted. This is what I have been dreaming of about him for months, just holding him in my arms, but he is in so much pain, I don’t know what to do. So he decides to just sit there and hold him. An hour passes and Jake looks up at Daniel, tears still forming in his eyes.
“I-I need to see my brother.” He goes to stand up but Daniel pulls him back down.
“The person that called said they would call when you could see him, You won’t be any use to them. Stay here, with me. I’ll take you there myself when they call.” Tears well up again and Jake buries his head in Daniels chest.
“I don’t know what i’m going to do now.” Daniel shushes him.
“We’ll figure it out later, let me text my mom letting her know i’m staying.” Jake nods.
Daniel gets up and goes to the kitchen, he unlocks his phone and decides to call her instead. It rings a few times and finally is answered by his mom who is tired, frayed, and pissed.
“Where the hell are you?!” Daniel rubs his temples and turns down the volume of the phone.
“I’m staying the night, mom.” She scoffs at him
“Oh no your not, You are driving straight home th-”
He cuts her off “No i’m staying, something happened, i’ll fill you in later.” She sighs
“Fine, but this better have got a good explanation!” He hangs up the call and walks back into the living room. He turns off the flashing colors light and walks over to Jake.
“Im going to go grab a blanket from your room for you, we’ll watch T.V. to get your mind off of it.” Jake nods and sniffles a bit as Daniel walks away. As he is walking he notices the creepy reaper figurine once more. He finally decides to walk over pick it up and take it into the bedroom with him. He sets it down on the floor in the corner, there he notices a skull in the off hand, a small one, either disproportionate or the skull of a child. he shudders and grabs the green blanket, it was Jake’s favorite because it was made by his grandma before she had passed.
He folds it up and goes back downstairs to discover that Jake had already pulled out the fold-able bed. Daniel jokingly chides. “Damn I was going to claim that.”
“We could share it, its easily big enough to fit us both.” Butterflies suddenly start churning in his stomach.
“Sure, I don’t see why not.” Hesitantly Daniel climbs under the blanket with Jake and they both turn to the T.V. which has been turned to a SciFi movie marathon. Together they laid there watching the movie. After a few minutes he hears Jake sniffling again, he turns towards him and notices him holding back tears once more. Jake notices and turns away from Daniel.
Daniel thinks of what to do, finally he decides on something that he probably shouldn’t try. He slowly scooted closer to Jake and presses his body against Jake’s, carefully Daniel slides his hand around Jake’s waist and rests it on his stomach, He can feel the indents of his muscles through his shirt. Jake turns towards Daniel, and in an instant he thought he made a horrible mistake, but his fears swayed as soon as he found out what his lips tasted like for the first time.