Sex & Sourdough (12 page)

“I dug out your first-aid kit. You’ve got Motrin and a full water bottle, your cell phone is charging, and your food bag is on the dresser. Hop up and change. I’m going to go wash clothes.”

Anders tried to sit up, but another dizzy spell dropped him before he made it more than a few inches. Kevin set the back of his hand against Anders’s forehead. “I think I should go buy some Tylenol too.”

Kevin pulled back the blanket and began to peel off Anders’s socks. He gave a sharp tug on both of his pant legs and his hiking pants slipped over his hips and vanished. Anders watched Kevin move, wondering if this was some kind of fever dream or if Kevin really was stripping his clothes off. If it was a fever-induced delusion, Anders’s cock wouldn’t be tenting his boxers. Possibly real, then.

Kevin either didn’t notice Anders’s erection or ignored it. He knelt over him, tickling Anders’s ribs with his large hands as he slipped Anders’s shirt up and tugged it off over Anders’s head.

Anders reached up and touched the tiny silver charm hanging from around Kevin’s neck. He had noticed it before, but he had never seen it up close. It wasn’t decorated, just a plain silver jar with a loop near the top for the cord to pass through. “What’s inside your necklace?”

Kevin plucked the necklace from Anders’s fingers and quickly tucked the necklace back into his shirt. “Nothing important.”

Anders traced the outline of the necklace beneath the fabric, and then traced the line of Kevin’s collarbone.

Kevin hissed and rolled his head to the side, letting Anders touch him. Anders ran his palm down Kevin’s chest, over the muscles he’d spent an entire month drooling over, slowing down as he passed over Kevin’s right nipple. Kevin’s nipple went instantly hard under his fingers.

“Are you still not interested?” Anders asked, running his fingers down the front of Kevin’s shirt toward his waistband. “Since you’re leaving anyway, it’s not like it’d be a long-term thing….”

“Stop that. You’re sick and we both need clean clothes.” Kevin’s breath came in short rasps. “I’m not going to fuck you while you’re too sick to move.”

“You’re no fun….”

“If you want me to wash your boxers, you’re changing them yourself.”

Kevin disappeared from Anders’s line of sight, and Anders heard the rustle and zip of Kevin rummaging through his pack. A moment later a clean pair of boxers hit him in the face.

“Hmm…. Fine.” Anders kicked off his boxers and managed to squirm into the new pair without getting up. Even that effort left him panting and exhausted. He was too tired to keep his eyes open, too tired to think clearly. He dropped his hand and let his eyes roll shut, and for a moment, he imagined he felt chapped lips and coarse hair brush against his temple. The tingle lingered long after he was sure Kevin was gone.

K
EVIN
WALKED
to a Laundromat and tossed their dirty clothes into the wash, then crossed the street to Walgreens, where he picked up refills of his own medication, more Motrin, and some Tylenol Cold for Anders. He bought a new paperback novel, a book of crossword puzzles, and a couple of candy bars, then returned to the Laundromat to throw their clothes in the dryer. He tried to bury himself in the book, tried to forget the way Anders had touched him, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be the freaky homeless guy sporting a hard-on in the Laundromat, either, so he forced himself to read.

When everything was washed and dried, he piled it all in his pack and hauled it back to the hotel. Anders was asleep and didn’t stir when he came inside, so he got cleaned up and then settled down to read. Every hour or so, he checked Anders’s fever, but the man didn’t wake up. Each time he sat next to Anders for a few minutes longer than necessary, indulging the strange urge to study Anders’s face or to ghost his fingers through Anders’s hair. It had grown out a little, and the tight curls were more distinct now.

Kevin pulled out the small laminated map of this section of the trail that he’d had made last year and planned out the next six days, including stopping when the trail went straight through the tiny town of Hot Springs, North Carolina, and then north for another sixty miles to Erwin, Tennessee.

This time around, Kevin paid more attention to the towns and villages along the trail, just because they had come as such a shock last year. The towns thrived on the hikers who passed through, so everyone was friendly and welcoming. Every town had at least one outfitter if he needed to replace gear, and every town had incredible restaurants, all-you-can-eat buffets, and hiker-friendly hotels. He’d been on his own for so long, isolating himself not only from his family but from the entire world, that seeing friendly faces and smiles every few days had touched him deeply when he was hiking south.

When he had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, other hikers were so rare that most of the people he encountered looked at him with outright suspicion. The few businesses that had catered to hikers charged insane prices for everything from Pop-Tarts to stamps, and they’d treated him like he had the plague. Since he hadn’t been in much of a mood to deal with people, that had suited him fine.

After seeing how the towns along the Appalachian Trail treated hikers, he couldn’t say he wanted to go back to hiking on the West Coast. He was determined to enjoy the towns just as much as the wilderness this time around. If only Anders could have gotten sick a day or two later, they could have taken a few days off at one of the spa resorts in Hot Springs instead.

Kevin woke Anders up a few hours later and managed to get him to swallow some Tylenol and a few gulps of water before he fell asleep again, and then Kevin decided he would just have to be content with the hotel hot tub. When he returned to the room, Anders startled awake as he opened the door.

“Kev?” Anders gasped. “I thought you were leaving?”

“I said I
should
move on. I really should,” Kevin said, suddenly all too aware of the feel of Anders’s eyes on him. “Give me a second.” He grabbed the T-shirt and shorts he slept in while they were in town and escaped into the bathroom. He stripped off his swim trunks, dried off, and pulled on his clothes. The thin layer of cotton didn’t help him feel any more covered than the swim trunks had.

Anders knocked on the bathroom door. “Kevin?”

Kevin opened the door and dropped his gaze to the floor. Anders was leaning against the doorframe, wearing nothing but the boxers Kevin had thrown at him earlier. His tanned skin was covered in goose bumps and his eyes were half-closed. Anders shivered.

All thoughts of sex evaporated as Kevin watched the tremors move up and down Anders’s frame. He cupped Anders’s cheek and then smoothed his palm over Anders’s forehead. The fever was down but it hadn’t broken. “How are you feeling?”

“Gross.”

“Hmm?”

“Sweaty, salty, dirty… gross.” Anders rubbed his hands over his eyes. “Bathroom… I need a shower.”

“Okay. Can you manage on your own?”

Despite the tremors running through him, Anders looked up at Kevin with a sly grin. “If I say no, are you going to take a shower with me?”

“You’ll be fine.” Kevin swallowed hard and slipped past Anders into the hotel room.

Kevin turned on the TV when he heard the shower start. He ordered two pizzas, remembering Anders’s preferences from last time, but adding jalapeños to his own. The pizza arrived before Anders was out of the shower, but Kevin heard him moving around and heard the water shut off, so he wasn’t worried.

When another fifteen minutes had passed and Anders still hadn’t come out of the bathroom, Kevin knocked on the door again.

“Anders? Your pizza’s getting cold!” There was no answer. Kevin didn’t hesitate to turn the knob. “Anders?”

Kevin found him inside the bathtub, curled into a ball with a wet towel wrapped around his shoulders and back. He was shaking with violent tremors and didn’t look up when Kevin swung the door open.

“Anders?”

A sleepy moan came from the bundle of cold flesh in the tub.

Kevin leaned over and hoisted Anders from the tub. His skin was so cold and slippery that Kevin nearly dropped him on the tile. He let Anders’s legs fall and then scooped him up again, holding him up bridal-style. “Your skin’s like ice.”

“C…. Cold….” Anders clung to Kevin’s T-shirt, shaking.

“Yeah, cold water does that.”

Kevin felt like shaking Anders, but given how much he was shivering, Anders probably wouldn’t even feel it. He set Anders back in bed, grabbed a dry towel from the bathroom, and dried him off as best he could. He pulled the comforter up to Anders’s chin and tucked it in, then hurried to get him more Motrin. “A cold shower wasn’t the brightest idea ever, Butch. Your body wants to run a fever to fight off the infection. You’re just going to shiver until your fever goes sky high now.” He shook out three pills and opened up a bottle of Coke.

“The cold shower didn’t have shit to do with the fever, Sourdough.” Anders propped his head up and stared down at the blankets. “How’d I get out here?”

“You passed out in the tub.”

“Did I?”

Kevin wrapped his arm around Anders’s shoulders and helped him sit up. “Here, take these.”

Anders swallowed the pills and drank half the bottle of Coke before he sunk back down under the blanket and turned his face into Kevin’s chest. Kevin held him until the shivering stopped. As soon as the tremors stilled, Anders’s breathing evened out and he curled into Kevin, using him like a giant pillow.

Kevin knew he should set Anders down. He knew he should move to the other bed, but he couldn’t deny how nice it felt to hold Anders. The warmth of Anders’s body trickled through him, making his heart beat a bit faster. Kevin stared down at Anders’s sleeping face and realized he was totally fucked. His dick wasn’t hard and sex was the last thing on his mind, so the sheer
rightness
of their close position meant he was beginning to care about Anders a lot more than he should.

This wasn’t something he could fix by jacking off. It was something he could only fix by walking away. He set his lips on Anders’s head and inhaled the scent of his clean hair, savoring it while he had the chance. As he dozed off, he scolded himself yet again, and then squirmed under the covers and pulled Anders close.

When he woke up, a Saturday-morning cartoon was on television and a very naked Anders was rolling over in his arms. Anders’s blue-gray eyes were open and focused, wide awake. There was no point in trying to hide the fact that his cock was swollen and hard, since he could feel the bare skin and heat of Anders’s thigh against the head of his cock. Poking out of his boxers should have been humiliating, but the way Anders was moving against him effectively shut his brain down.

Anders wrapped long, slim fingers around him, pressing his cock hard against Anders’s own erection, then stroking them both slowly. Kevin kept his gaze locked on Anders’s eyes and shifted his hips forward, silently urging Anders on. He hissed as his foreskin pulled against Anders’s drier flesh, slipping over his shaft. Anders froze for a moment, and then he gave Kevin a subtle half smile and pulled Kevin’s T-shirt up to expose his stomach. Then Anders wrapped his fingers around them both again. With nothing but Anders’s sultry gaze to focus on, each stroke, slip, and squeeze of Anders’s hand beneath the comforter seemed so much more intimate than just a hand jacking him off. The sensations in his cock, the feel of Anders’s glans and fingers stroking him up and down, were tantalizing, and Anders’s eyes held him spellbound, as though they were locked together. It was strangely intimate and more erotic than anything Kevin had ever felt. Soon, he was slamming into an orgasm so fast he should have been embarrassed, but the way Anders continued to stroke them both drew out Kevin’s pleasure until his entire body was trembling and all he could do was screw his eyes shut and hold on. Anders’s cock twitched against his a moment later, cum splattering against Kevin’s stomach and mixing with his own.

While he was still coming down, Anders propped himself up on his elbow and threw the covers off them both. Kevin twitched, resisting the urge to pull his T-shirt down or tuck himself back into his boxers. It would just make more of a mess, and Anders had put his hand back on his cock already. This time, though, he wasn’t stroking Kevin toward completion but just rubbing his slit as his foreskin loosened.

“You’re not circumcised,” Anders said, grinning down at him.

“Yeah?” Kevin laughed. Of all the things he’d expected Anders to say, that hadn’t even been a possibility. Kevin looked down at his own cock in Anders’s hand. Anders was gently tracing the sensitive tip, not enough to make Kevin swell again, but enough to send tiny shocks of pleasure through him. “So?”

“I was just wondering why you were so soft, so smooth.” Anders chuckled. “I’ve never been with a guy who wasn’t circumcised before. I didn’t expect it to be so silky, so moist.” Kevin hissed when Anders ran his thumb over the slit again. “Or so sensitive….”

“It has its advantages,” Kevin agreed. “But it doesn’t look as good.”

“Are you kidding? Mine just looks like regular skin, but yours looks like… like lips….”