Please see original story (www.nifty.org/nifty/gay/camping/canvas-hell/) for warnings and copyright. Highlights: All fiction. All rights reserved. Includes sex between young-adult men. Go away if any of that is against your local rules. Practice safer sex than my characters. Write if you like, but flamers end up in the nasty bits of future stories. Donate to Nifty TODAY at donate.nifty.org/donate.html to keep the cum coming.
Suddenly, we launched into a mad, passionate session of lovemaking... No. I reached out and brushed a tear away from his face. He smiled and did the same to me. We didn't kiss, we just looked at each other. Yesterday had been a burst of need and passion. Tonight... I think I was just coming to terms with the idea that all of this was real. I swam in the deep pools of his eyes for the longest time, and he seemed content to look into mine. I held on of his hands in mine and used the other wipe away his tears, as if they were the hurt and I could remove the pain with the moisture.
***** Canvas Hell 18: HART-brake (noun)
By Bear Pup
T/T; self-discovery; kissing; true intimacy (no sex this chapter)
Karl made enough noise approaching the tent that both Jim and I howled with laughter. Jim got enough breath back to call out, "It's safe, Karl. Promise. Come on in!"
I don't think I had ever seen someone who wasn't me so embarrassed and nervous. He stuck just his head in and stared at each of us, apparently expecting either a bloodbath or the remains of a two-man orgy. The fact that we were still fully dressed and had all our limbs intact appeared to give him enough confidence to actually make it inside. Jim was smiling like a prize-fight champion but I sobered quickly.
"Karl? Um, I'm really sorry, Karl. For, well, for everything." Karl just stared at me. "I..." I what? I didn't even know what was happening, much less what to say. I wasn't even sure what to apologise for, but I felt terrible about, well, everything.
Karl's voice was as tentative and puzzled as his face. "I honestly don't know what you're apologising for, or why I'm upset or worried... but I am. Let's sleep and talk tomorrow, okay? I... I don't... I'm really sorry but I'm not sure I have it in me to figure this out tonight."
Jim looked at me, suddenly worried. I had nothing. Not a single thought. Karl turned and got undressed as I doused the lamp. I followed suit, then Jim, all three of us quiet as we crawled into the sleep sacks. I could tell from the breathing that no one was asleep or even pretending. I guess all of us eventually drifted off.
No one seemed upset in the morning, and Jim was chattering and Karl smiling as we made our way to the Hygiene Hut, but I was still troubled. We made it to the Mess Hall just as Lloyd rang the triangle. We retrieved our fruit and cereal, then I went up and got our 'special' milk from George. About halfway through the meal, Jim frowned.
"What's wrong, buddy?" Karl asked.
"I have Tracking this morning and it's soooooo boring."
"Change."
"What?"
I took up from Karl, knowing that his conversational style would mean the discussion would last for the entire breakfast otherwise. "You can switch subjects, Jim. I was going to ask about it myself since the cooking thing just doesn't seem to be working for me."
Jim got thoughtful. "What do you guys have this morning?"
"Woodworking."
"Is it anything like the leatherworking we do?"
"A lot, really."
Karl spoke up. "I might switch out of Survival and take Leatherworking. It was really cool the rain-day with you guys."
"That would be GREAT, Karl. Then we'd all have Woodworking and Leatherworking and can help each other. I'll miss you in Survival, though. I really like that one."
"I know, buddy, but with Orientation I get enough of the wandering around now."
I got up and walked over to the Adult table and waited for a lull in their conversation. "George, can I ask a question?" He turned to me.
"No, you may not have another cup of sludge." He smiled. I laughed.
"No, Jim and Karl and I want to know how we change schedules."
"Easy." George leaned down the table. "Lloyd, when you're done, can you help Red and his buds? They want to shuffle."
"No problem."
About ten minutes later, Lloyd came over to the table with his ever-present clipboard. "Okay, so who wants what?"
As it turned out, two guys had dropped Woodworking, and Leatherworking had space anyway, so there was no trouble. Lloyd said he'd talk to Land and get materials ready for them. Apparently, I was not close to the only one dropping cooking.
We were in fine fettle as the three of us headed off to Woodworking, Karl and I prepping Jim on the whole 'finding what's inside the wood' thing. Jim worried until Land handed him the block. Within moments he was beaming, but refused to say what he saw. We all set to work. I keep half an eye on both Karl's and Jim's work, wondering what was trapped in their wooden blocks.
I suddenly reached the neck of my horse and turned to an even-smaller tool, as the neck ran across the grains as opposed to the flowing mane that ran with it. That section, perhaps an inch square, took me through the rest of the session even though I know that it was worth the work. So much else of what I saw would be easy to reveal.
We handed back in the blocks and Karl headed for his beloved Orientation & Cartography. Jim and I now both had a Free Period. It was a postcard type of summer day complete with warm sunlight, cool breezes, scuttling clouds and birdsong. By some unspoken agreement, we headed in the opposite direction from Tent Canvas Hell, into the light woods and across the back of the ridge between this hill and the next.
About 30 minutes later, we both looked down at the same time and blinked, then looked up at each other. I could see my own question mirrored in those deep blue pools, 'How did we end up holding hands?' We both smiled, pulled closer and walked on.
We came to a clearing, more of a rock shelf sticking out from the hillside on which no trees were growing. I watched the wind tease Jim's curls and leant forward; he was there to meet my kiss. We melted into each other, one spirit with two bodies. The kiss went on for what I wanted to be a lifetime. Some slight sound to the side drew our attention and we turned, losing the kiss but not the contact of our faces. A doe stood at the end of the shelf, chewing, looking at us but completely unafraid. It felt like, through her, the world was giving Her blessing on what we'd found. We returned to the kiss.
Yes, we were both so hard it hurt. I'd moan and rub into Jim or he'd growl and rub into me. But today's magic was in the kiss, nothing more, and we both seemed to know it. Even perfection wears (as does standing for an hour in the same position), so we turned and slowly made out way back to Camp Sin.
The same spell as earlier happens in reverse. Without conscious thought or action, I was walking in front of Jim with no contact as we came within sight of the camp. The triangle announcing the end of the afternoon session rang a few moments earlier so we headed to Tent Canvas Hell. Karl was there, again jazzed by his mathematical exploring. Today, they'd tackled the problem of distance on uneven terrain. One segment had them pace 100 yards uphill, then 75 down, then 50 up, then 25 down. The person closest to the absolute midpoint of their trek won. Karl came in second and was overjoyed.
It was something that I suddenly realised. Unlike any boy I'd known (or most men since), Karl could not care less if he won, only that he'd done his best. It's why the teasing over his minnow had no real effect, and why he was so happy after the canoe races. He knew that no one on that river had put more into the effort. All these many years later, is it a lesson I come back to with a pang in my heart as I watch myself or others curse in frustration for almost winning, only to think back to the pure elation Karl had in coming in second.
There was tension but no opprobrium in his sidelong glance and question on how we'd spent the afternoon. We told him of the game trail, the rocky ledge, the magnificent doe and her soft and peaceful gaze. The light wind, warm sun, glimmers of the lake, the small colony of butterflies in the most unexpected colours -- red-velvet trimmed in cobalt pearls and buff lace -- that we disturbed under a willow.
He could tell we were leaving a lot out, and I think he knew what. Somehow, even as suspicious and protective as he was, the quiet and reserved Karl knew, he knew that what we'd shared today had not been sexual but sensual. Like the doe, I sensed his approval and, perhaps, contentment.
Karl again dined with Dr Eaglas, but was waiting for us outside the tragic and needless accident that was the Mess Hall. I'd never seen him so calm. He wasn't smiling, frowning, laughing, crying, moping, worrying; he was, for the first time, just Karl. It could have been that he'd had a great session with Dr Eaglas, or just that he'd escaped the dining nightmare that we'd never be able to un-live. I put my arm across his shoulder and he did the same with Jim and we went off to the Cabin for song practice.
Did you know it is possible to loath syllables all by themselves? I didn't until I'd spent the second straight night saying "Fa" on queue. Nothing else. Just "Fa". "Fa" dum-te-dum-te-dum "Fa". I wasn't the only one. I distinctly heard a Sophomore sink "FAuck" at least twice, and one of the kids in the next group would always add a muttered afterword: "SOstupid" and "SOboring" and "SOkillme". I think even the leaders were hating it by the end of the practice. One's smile looked more like lockjaw and the other's hands had assumed a distinctly claw-like appearance.
The night was, for the first time, an uneventful one. The only piece of excitement at all was something that no one, not even Karl, could have seen. Sometime during the night, Jim or I had unzipped a tiny bit of each sleeping bag and we awoke holding hands. I think it might have been me; during the night, I'd walked on beaches and mountain trails and bridges, never looking right nor left but knowing, without a glance or a word, that I was holding hands with Jim.
Watered the beeches. Hit Hygiene Hut. Avoided chef-destroyed foodstuff. Headed to class. This morning, we all had Leatherworking, Karl for the first time. Jim and I coached him and another newly-started kid on scoring, cutting and punching the leather. Land released each boy as he finished the holes as Friday would be decorating and we'd lace over the weekend so we'd have a finished product to show any parents that might show up to the mid-camp dinner and fire ring. We stayed to help Karl and the sprightly young Tommy. He had to be 13 since he was here, but he could easily have passed for 11 with his turned-up nose and "please-pinch-me-Aunt-Rosy" cheeks. We all finished before the triangle announce round 2.
Jim headed to his Tracking session. Karl and I looked at each other. With the schedule changes, we now both had Free Period next. We turned to each other.
"Let's walk for a while." Karl's voice echoing my own thought.
Again, we headed in the opposite direction from Tent Canvas Hell, but this time on the river side of the hills. I was too nervous to notice the beauty around us. We came to place where a fallen tree had ripped a hole in the canopy. Ferns and honeysuckle had colonised the area, and the fallen tree made a natural bench. We sat for a while in silence. Karl watching some bees and me watching Karl.
"What was it like?"
I startled a little. Karl had not seemed to move or speak, but it was his voice. It was as if he were asking the bees.
"Kissing Jim?"
"Yeah."
I let out a long, quavering sigh. "I can't answer that, Karl. I don't know. I felt... whole? Protective but also protected? Absorbed?"
"No, I mean what did it feel like, you know, physically." Karl's dark eye looked up into mine finally. He smiled a little at my expression.
It was as if he asked me how it felt to blink, to exhale. I was at a complete loss. "I, um, well. I don't remember, Karl. I never thought of it. Different each time. Wet. Soft, no, hard. Wow. I really, really don't know."
"That's what I thought." He went back to talking to the bees. "For me, it was feeling his lips and his teeth and his... tongue. His arms around my neck. My arms around his back. How strong and how breakable he felt. I got... I dunno, an echo of what you were talking about. The protecting and protected thing. I watched you two, you know, last night. When I was supposed to be walking. I peeked. You two were hardly even touching, just your hands," his voice broke a little, "but you were kissing anyway. Patrick, will I ever feel that?"
Heartbreak: HART-brake, (n) overwhelming distress.
There is a definition in every dictionary and each one is a little different. But there are times when I found out just how wrong those books are. Heartbreak is the feeling that something had literally snapped inside my chest. That some cosmic force reached in and shattered a piece of me I didn't even know that I had.
"Karl. Karl, look at me, please?" He did. "Karl, you can hate me later. You can even rip my arms off and beat me with them." He smiled a little. "But I don't care."
I pulled him forward and his eyes got wide, then closed just as mine did. With Jim, something spontaneous happened when we touched. It wasn't the same with Karl. With Karl, for Karl, I had to work at it.
I pumped every ounce of love and grief and need and joy and frustration into that kiss. Every broken promise and every Christmas present. Every memory that made me want to scream with elation, weep with pain, moan with desire.
I felt his lips, his teeth, his tongue. His arms around my back. His amazing strength and immeasurable tenderness. His unquenchable desire to be everything for everyone and the terrible knowledge that he would fail. The bristly hair beneath his shirt and the bulge of his muscles. His broad, broad back and thick neck. His essential and inescapable goodness, bravery, resignation, determination. His... Karlness. I pulled back and looked at him. His eye stayed closed and I reached up tenderly to wipe away the wetness on his strong cheeks. "So, what was kissing like, Karl?"
Every kiss, if done right, changes the world. Let me know what you think about these two kisses.
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Active storelines, all at www.nifty.org/nifty/gay... Karl & Greg: 20 chapters .../incest/karl-and-greg/ Canvas Hell: 17 chapters .../camping/canvas-hell/ Beaux Thibodaux: 9 chapters .../adult-youth/beaux-thibodaux/ The Heathens: 10 chapters .../historical/the-heathens/ Mud Lark Holler: 8 chapters .../rural/mud-lark-holler/ Off the Magic Carpet: 4 chapters .../military/off-the-magic-carpet/ Lake Desolation: 3 chapters .../rural/lake-desolation/