Chapter 61

Singing, Stretching, and Salsa al Formaggio

'1:00 PM, outside 30 rad/hour, basement 2.9 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

After filling out the hour with David 'actively relaxing' his hurt leg while I did more stretching exercises and other exercises to strengthen my legs and abs so I could hold them out straight – eventually – we sat down to a surprisingly good lunch.

"Pasta marinara con salsa al formaggio!" announced Klaus as he put a plate of macaroni with spaghetti sauce in front of each of us, and then ladeled some sort of cheese sauce on top of it.

"This is amazing, Klaus!" said David. "How did you do this cheese sauce? Your mom's not Spanish and Italian, is she?"

This time I agreed with David. This was special food, not just eggs and potatoes. "It's really fantastic!" I said.

"Oh, I'm glad you like it!" he said, placing two pieces of garlic toast on each of our plates. "My mom isn't Italian either, but she did teach me how to make this cheese sauce. It's a little like David's mayonaise, though. It takes a bit of a knack to getting it right. If you would like, I think it would be ok to have a half-glass of wine with this. I used a little bit in the cheese sauce, along with just a drizzle of bourbon. What do you think?"

"Yeah!" I said.

"That would be very nice," said David.

Klaus poured a half-glass of wine for each of us, including himself. He raised his glass and said, "To our island of love and beauty in this deeply challenging world."

"Here-here!"

***

'2:00 PM, outside 29 rad/hour, basement 2.9 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus wouldn't share his secret cheese recipe with us. He said that was because it contained a little bit of alcohol, but mostly I think he was teasing us.

We all agreed that reading time after lunch could also be used for drawing and painting and stuff, which meant Klaus could do some more work on his two special portraits of David & me. He tried to melt some of the crayons and use them as paint, but he couldn't come up with a safe way to do it. He said he wasn't out of ideas yet. In the meantime, he busied himself with David's colored pencils, lead pencils, and using crayons the normal way.

I was so turned on by our acrobalance work that I decided to spend our reading time drawing my own pictures and diagrams of what I thought would look really hot. I was absolutely terrible at drawing, though, and I refused to show them to anybody. David saw the boner I got, and I could see him out of the corner of my eye, sometimes smiling at me. I think he was excited to see what I would come up with too."

"I thought the whole thing was incredibly sexy, but David saw it as something beautiful, with maybe just a little sexiness, but mostly beautiful, like a dance. I guess that made sense, given he was such a beautiful dancer himself. Maybe he was happy I found a way I might be able to share his love for dancing, but I was just horny. Maybe it was ok if art and beauty felt sexy. I'd once seen a picture of an ancient Greek sculpture called Laocoon and His Sons. It showed a naked, bearded man and two naked boys being eaten by giant snakes. The man's muscles were incredibly beautiful, but something about the worried, naked boys turned me on, and I never understood why. That was art and beauty that felt sexy.

***

'3:00 PM, outside 28 rad/hour, basement 2.6 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Soon it was free time. The radiation continued to drop one rad per hour, per hour. Klaus showed me another way to write that in science shorthand. One rad per hour was 1 rad/h, and one rad per hour, per hour, was 1 rad/h2. He said it was even ok to write it 1 rad*h-2.

I think Klaus really wanted to see if I could learn calculus, but I hated math. It was nothing but endless repetition. The teacher would show us how to do a simple problem on the chalkboard, and then we would have to do the same kind of problem thirty more times in class, and sometimes fifty times more for homework. I just didn't do my math homework, which is why I got such bad grades.

I liked our math teacher a lot. Miss Bosley tried to make it interesting by showing us this Korean way to count to 100 on our fingers, and she showed us Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land, which we all liked, even though we all said it was stupid. She knew we liked it too. She heard us laughing at all the funny parts, and no one ever asked for a bathroom pass when that film was showing, and she showed it every year, to every grade. She told me all seriously that even the eighth-graders who'd already seen it three times in her classes before still love it, only they're old enough not to pretend to hate it.

I knew I had to learn math in order to be a good scientist. I was already way ahead of my grade level, but that was because I found interesting things to do with numbers, like my formula for the decay of our fallout. I was proud to point out to David and Klaus that it was still holding, all the way from 840 rad/h down to 28 rad/h. But that wasn't like doing math – it was more like doing physics.

We decided to do some more singing during free time. If David was going to do the music for our acrobalance act, he wanted to learn to play the guitar better. Klaus and David played guitar, and I decided to stretch on the floor while I sang.

I really wanted to be able to do exciting things with my body. I had never believed I would find a physical activity that I was any good at. Klaus didn't like the idea of me stretching my muscles all the time, though. He showed me strengthening exercises that I needed to do between stretching exercises to keep my muscles toned. I wasn't sure what that meant, but he wanted me to spend equal time strengthening and stretching, which would keep me from getting carried away and doing too much stretching.

I knew I wanted to be stronger so I could hold those poses longer, and so I could sweep David off his feet. I also knew that David thought I was beautiful when we did our pose, and that was really all the motivation I needed, at least for that evening. I even did five burpees between each of our songs. That made David smile, which was heaven to me. Klaus smiled too, of course, but I only saw David.

It was David who picked out our first song. Klaus helped him find the right chords before we sang, and soon I understood why he'd chosen it:

"Boy, you sure are a funny kid, Donny, but I like you! So tell me, what kind of a boy are you, Don?
I only like dreaming, all the day long, where no one is screaming
Be good be good, be good be good be good, be good be good be good, be good Donny!"

I got to choose the next one, and I needed a rocker!

"Tough boys, running the streets, come a little closer
Rough toys, under the sheets, nobody knows her
Rough boys, don't walk away, I very nearly missed you
Tough boys, come over here, I wanna bite and kiss you…"

Klaus knew that song very well, and David said he liked it, but I think he was just being nice. It gave David a boost to play along with a song he didn't know because there were only four chords for most of it, and if he got lost, he could just play a D, and it usually sounded ok. Klaus knew all the really cool parts at the end, too, which made me so excited I got up and did ten burpees, just to say thanks!

Klaus picked the next one, which was another rocker. I think he wanted to encourage me to keep moving.

"I have this feeling, my luck is none too good
This sword here at my side don't act the way it should
Keeps calling me its master, but I feel like its slave
And I feel it hauling me faster and faster to an early, early grave
And it howls, it howls like hell!"

He made lots of creepy faces and had a lot of fun with the song. David clearly didn't know it at all, but I went nuts! As soon as Klaus played the first few chords, I recognized it. I had an uncle, my real dad's brother, who was a rock musician, and I loved it when I could visit him and learn all about hard rock. My uncle taught me how to play some of it on guitar, but I wanted to stay on the floor where I was, and David wanted to learn to play the guitar better.

David did his best with the song, and he giggled when I got up and did a goofy sort of shaking dance. That was how that song made me feel, though – like the earthquakes just before Mt. St. Helens erupted. It was so full of energy that it was physically impossible to sit still when I heard it.

"Teachers aren't supposed to like that kind of music!" I said when the song was done.

"Teachers aren't supposed to be gay either," he said with a wink. "Teachers aren't supposed to be a lot of things, but we're just people."

"I walk along the avenue, I never thought I'd meet a boy like you, meet a boy like you

With auburn hair and tawny eyes, the kind of eyes that hypnotize me through, You hypnotize me through…"

David made it clear who he was singing this song to. The guitar chords were in one of the music books we had, and he kept looking up from the book to me with yet another kind of lovely smile I'd never seen on him, just before he forgot where his fingers were supposed to be on the guitar. He loved me; he was flirting with me; he was embarrassed, but only slightly. I think that's what his latest smile was telling me.

It was my turn to pick one, but the one I wanted to play took a long time to figure out. It wasn't in any of the music books, and neither Klaus nor David knew it, so I had to hum it for Klaus so he could find some chords that fit the music. Klaus and David both knew I wasn't a good singer at all, but after living naked with them in the same room for so long, I couldn't be embarrassed to sing anymore. I loved the words, and I wanted them to hear the words when we did the song, not before. It was one of those kind of funny but really true songs. Eventually, Klaus found a very simple bass part David could play, and we began. It was so worth it!

"…In fear of love we fear of life, a fear of living life alone,
When love is found a fear is past, and your life becomes your own.
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, and born in bed, in bed we die,
As life goes on and time goes by, born in bed, in bed we die."

"That's so true," said Klaus. "Life's most important moments usually seem to happen in bed, and we're not just born in a bed in a hospital. Most of us are conceived in bed too. If we're sick or badly hurt, it's back in bed. That's pretty clever."

"The part just before that," said David. "In fear of love, we fear being alone or something like that. Then when love is found… Donovan, wasn't that us all year at school? We were both so afraid the other wouldn't want to be in love with us. I mean, I was afraid you liked girls, and you were afraid too. What a lovely song!" He leaned over to my stretching position on the floor and kissed me.

"Where did that song come from, Donovan?"

"Oh, Mom had lots of Three Dog Night records, and that one was on Golden Biscuits," I said. "I used to listen to her Three Dog Night stuff as loud as I could, all the time. I really love them! She made me wear the headphones if someone was watching TV, but then she kept yelling at me for turning it all the way up!"

"Good for her!" cheered Klaus. "You really shouldn't have to grow up with hearing problems." I gave him a cold stare as he slowly realized what he'd said. "I'm sorry, Donovan! I meant unnecessary hearing problems." I gave him a giggle to let him know I wasn't upset. I was just being an asshole again because I caught him saying something embarrassing. Still, he wanted to finish his point. "Your ears are still healing, and the chances are that when they're done healing, your hearing will be normal again, partly because your mom helped you protect it."

"I guess. Your turn, Klaus!"

He thought carefully before saying, "This one is going to be difficult for me to get through because it's very emotional. I'd like to just sing it for you by myself if that's ok." David and I both nodded, and he began.

"Close your eyes, have no fear, the monster's gone, he's on the run, and your Klaus is here

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boys…

…Darling, darling, Donovan and David."

Klaus made it through the song, but David didn't. He sat next to me on the floor, sniffling and cuddling with me. When the song was over, we each wordlessly gave Klaus a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

Chapter 62

Keep On Working!

'4:00 PM, outside 27 rad/hour, basement 2.6 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

'5:00 PM, outside 26 rad/hour, basement 2.5 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

People sometimes asked, if you were stuck on a desert island, whom you would want to be stuck with, and I think my answer is obvious. We'd been in David's basement, mostly confined to the shelter corner, for three days, and I should have been bored at some point, but I wasn't. Music had become something very meaningful to us, and it didn't matter how much time it took, we would take that time to learn a song, or to learn it better. We didn't know what kind of world would be waiting for us when the 'silver people on the shoreline' eventually came. We didn't know if there would even be schools or scientists, but as Klaus told us, 'As long as there are people, there will always be a need for artists. That means painters, sketch artists, sculptors, musicians, acrobalancers, other performing artists, writers, poets, every kind of artist.' Somehow that made it feel like there was a purpose to our music, and a real reason to work on it until it was just the way we wanted it.

In the meantime, it was five o'clock, and that was the time Klaus had scheduled for work. That meant Klaus went into the workroom and brought back several coils of coaxial cable so we could run the antenna cable from the CB base station to the garage, but I immediately recognized a problem.

"These are F-connectors!" I said. "All of these are!"

"What does that mean?" asked Klaus, clearly concerned.

David winced and put his hand on his forehead, which no longer hurt because his burn was healing (and peeling) nicely, but he knew what the problem was.

"It's what you use for cable TV and video games," I said. "These screw-on connectors are the wrong size for a CB antenna." Our hearts all sank.

***

Back at the table, David and I were discussing our options. "What we really need is a female connector in the car to screw in the antenna, right?" I said. "But the only female connectors we have are in the back of the two radios, which we can't use, and the one in the wall that used to lead to the antenna on the roof. I think whatever we do, we have to take that one out of the wall and connect it to this cable somehow so we can get it to the car."

"Why this cable?" David asked. "Since the antenna is obviously no longer connected to the cable in the house, in fact, it had to have broken in the attic because there were a few feet of cable hanging from the broken antenna, so why don't we see if we can pull any of that cable out of the wall when we pull that connector out? It's a very stiff cable, so it shouldn't be tangled up on anything." I kissed him and reminded Klaus he was MY gay boyfriend!

Of course, the best-laid plans of mice and cute boys don't always work out very well. Even with Klaus pulling on the cable, all we could get out of the wall was a little over a foot.

"That's good, though," I said. "If we cut the cable there, we can strip it back. Then we have bare wire to deal with. Then we could cut the end off one of these TV cables and strip it back. Your dad has a nice soldering iron in there – we could splice the cables together."

"Yeah," he said, "but then we still have to make the F-connector talk to the base station, and that only has a CB antenna female connector." He looked sexy when he was giving us bad news. I think that was because he was being sensitive, which I found so attractive in him.

"Well, right now, there's a short cable with two male ends screwed into that female connector. The other end was screwed into the wall. We could cut that cable too and splice it just like the first one. Maybe."

"It's going to have a lot of weak spots," said David, still with his sexy, sensitive look.

"We shouldn't cut one of the only good cables we have, should we." I wasn't asking. I knew.

"I'm not sure I understand the exact problem," said Klaus, "but it sounds like we should probably postpone the cable job until we've had a chance to re-think things. So we don't have the exact cables we need, but I think a couple of bright young electrical engineers like you will come up with something that'll work!" Ever the optimist – he was believable too.

This was bad news for another reason too. Running cable for an antenna was easy. It was still work time. Now, what would Klaus find for us to do instead?

***

Klaus was awesome! He surprised me by coming up with a building project that would help with our acrobalance act. His idea was to make a sort of trapeze that hung from the pole in the ceiling that we'd been hanging from the night before. He came up with a chain system that would allow us to hang it as high or as low as we liked, but he thought about a foot below the pole would be best usually. That would give me something to hang onto while we worked on difficult balancing poses, and he said it could be used for lots of other exercises. I was sure he meant pull-ups!

It seemed I misunderstood Klaus' main purpose for work time. He had in mind something more like what we called industrial arts at Northview Middle School, or what most people call shop class. It was still creative time, though we did have to spend the last half-hour cleaning and organizing our home.

Klaus used Mr. Chance's power tools to cut a strong pipe we found in the workbench area to about three feet in length. Then he used a grinder to smooth the ends where he had cut it. Finally, he drilled holes through each end to fit these bolts that were shaped like loops. He found some chain, bolt cutters, two crescent wrenches, and two thick hooks that would go on the other side of the chains and hook through the loops in the pipe on the ceiling. He brought all that stuff plus a roll of that tape we'd been using to seal the doors into the shelter corner, where David and I had to wait while he used the power tools in the workshop. Even though the radiation level in the basement was down to 2.5 rads per hour, he was very serious about us only leaving the shelter corner to use the bathroom or other quick but important business until the radiation in the basement was at 2.0 rads per hour or less.

When Klaus was done with his part, our job was to cut the chain with the big, heavy bolt cutter and assemble the whole thing. He showed us how to use the bolt cutters to cut the chain to the length we wanted, and he had us use two nuts and a lock washer on the loop-shaped bolts, which he called eye bolts because the two nuts could be tightened against each other so they wouldn't come unscrewed.

I remembered a song off one of my favorite albums, so I sang, "I was digging in the yard today when a letter came from Southampton way. It said keep on working, keep on working…"

When it was done, Klaus bent his knees and did a few pull-ups to make sure it was strong enough for us boys to use. It was funny watching him bend his head over to try to pull himself all the way up. He was able to do it, but just barely. He did fifteen of them, and I was relieved he didn't ask us to do any.

I was proud of what we'd built. Just to try it out, he lay back down on his back, on the rug, and I sat upright on his feet. I stayed upright while he lifted me, and as soon as I could reach it, I grabbed the bar. I didn't need to use it for balance with this simple pose, but we were just testing it. Then he told me to hang on tight while he bent his knees and pulled his feet down quickly, leaving me hanging on the bar. He didn't ask me to do any pull-ups while I was hanging there, but he did ask me to lift my legs, so they pointed forward, keeping them straight. That was hard, and I only did it once. He said that was an exercise I should do for strength every day. I looked down at David's magical smile, and I decided it was worth it. No pull-ups, but I would do those leg-lifts every day, as many as I could, which I knew would only be one or two for a while.

He showed me another exercise while I was hanging there that I needed him to help me with. He told me to keep my feet together and my legs straight. Then he grabbed me by the shins and pulled my legs backward until my feet touched the ceiling.

"It's ok if you relax your legs during this one too because that will give you a good stretch. You can also use this one to arch your back. Try it. Straighten your legs as much as you can, now lift your head back as far as you can and arch your back. Let your belly hang and see how far your back can flex."

I did it, but it wasn't easy at all. My body was already a bit worn out from all the exercising I'd done that day, and it was a lot harder to hold onto the bar while he lifted me into that position.

"That's really good!" he said as he lowered my legs back down, and I dropped to the floor. "One thing though – I don't want you trying this with David helping you. I need to be your spotter for these exercises. You could easily fall, and I need to have my arm under you, ready to catch you. Remember, there aren't any hospitals we can go to if you get injured.

Sometimes it was easy to forget we'd just suffered a massive nuclear attack.

***

'6:00 PM, outside 25 rad/hour, basement 2.5 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

"I see there's some frozen salmon in here," called Klaus from the deep freezer. "Do you boys like salmon?"

"I like it when Mom makes salmon patties," I said, "but she always gets it in a can."

"Oh, then you're in for a treat! I think we have just enough of David's mayonnaise left to do up a nice tartar sauce too. Ooh! There's asparagus in here too! This is gonna be good, boys!"

"Mom makes supper like that a lot," said David. "I know we don't have a regular oven or anything, but I know it'll taste wonderful, Donovan." He smiled and kissed me.

"Can I massage your leg?" I asked him.

"Sure!" he said. "I like it when you do that, but I have to be honest, Donovan. It hurt a lot last night, but it doesn't hurt much at all today. I like the massage, but please give me one because you want to make both of us feel nice, not because you think I need it to heal my injury. I think it's mostly healed anyway."

"I want to give you one," I said. "Besides your face, your ass and your thighs, you know, where they come together, those are the parts of your body that fascinate me the most, which turn me on the most."

"Really? I thought that was my penis," he said.

"I love your penis too because it's a sort of key to your body. I can use your penis to make you feel super-good. I don't think you have any other body part that makes you feel that good. I know you like it when I play inside your ass, but even when I do that, you seem to feel way better when I suck your penis at the same time. That's why I like your penis so much. Sometimes all I want to do is make you feel better than you've ever felt before. That's why I love your penis, but the rest of your body – it's like a magical privilege to be able even to touch it." I ran my hand gently down his side. "David, just touching you like that makes me feel so good I want to cry!"

"Oh, Donovan!" he said with a worried look. "Why? That's just my waist and my hip. Why does that feel so good? People touch each other there all the time."

"No, they don't," I said. "If I could come up with any excuse to touch you at all last year, I would have," I confessed. "In gym class, I sat really close to you while Mr. Kettering was talking to us because we might accidentally touch bare legs, or maybe my hand would touch your leg. I always wanted to pair up with you because you were my best friend, especially after Henry died, but also because I might actually get to touch you. The best was in the swimming class! It was like playing naked together! Your whole body is so soft and magical, and I could touch almost all of it in the pool! After I learned what a fag was, I got a little scared because I knew those boys who called us that were right. Well, I knew they were right about me. I could only dream they were right about you too. I just wanted to play with your body because it's so beautiful, penis or not. You are the most beautiful thing ever, and you'd be that to me even without a penis." I looked at him nervously wondering what he thought of all that.

After a brief pause, he gave me a wink and said, "A girl me?"

"Yes!" I said it with no hesitation. "That's because you're inside, and I know you're not some silly girl, and I don't understand it at all, but it would still feel the same way to touch your body all over, even if you had a vagina! If it was yours, it would feel nice!"

"I love you, Donovan," he said as he kissed me, "but I'm confused. Just a little." He sniffled a bit, and I saw a tear fall. Now, what had I done? "That's such a beautiful, loving, and honest thing to say…" He broke off and hugged me while he had a very quick sob, and I tried to remember what I'd said that would make him feel like that. "You said it was like a magical privilege to touch my body…"

"Every time!" I said.

"But you like touching my penis because you like the way you can make me feel, is that right?"

"Yeah, that and a few other parts of your body – all the parts that make you feel good. The rest of your body makes me feel good, and that can be a sexy thing, or it can be just… like an electric angel sort of feeling. That's mostly because you're in there, and you let me touch you, maybe you even want me to touch you, but that's also the part of me that would like to touch anybody's bare body, just because I can. I want other people to touch my bare body too."

"Did you ever go to the pool with your family?" he asked.

"We went to the lake a few times when my real dad was around," I said.

"Did you ever sit on your mom's lap while she caressed you?"

"If I was hurt, sometimes."

"I wonder if you didn't get enough touch when you were little. Mom was telling me about research that was being done with monkeys first, and then with human children who were touch-deprived. It sounded so sad! I wonder if you were touch-deprived."

"Maybe," I said, "but touching you isn't the same as touching Ronny or Henry or Mom or anyone else. No, not Calista Zakland either! You just have a magic in your skin. I mean, it's not that I never think of touching other boys all over in those same places, and even girls, in fact, I've thought about it a lot, but that's because I never thought I would ever get to do that with you, or with anyone! I never thought I would be able to touch anyone like that ever!"

"When I see boys in shorts that barely cover the bottom of their ass, I get envious about how sexy they are, and they don't even know it! I want to run my hands up and down their bare legs and touch them, not even fuck them, but just touch them. They don't even know they make me feel that way, and if I grabbed them by the legs to tackle them or something, they wouldn't think anything of it, but they have these beautiful bodies that I could never touch! That's a really awesome feeling mixed up with a really desperate feeling, but you're different. The feel of your body, anyplace on your body, is way beyond all that, and maybe it's just because it's the wrapping you come it. I dunno. I've never been able to work it all out, only I've never, ever felt this way about a boy before, and I've never been able to get you out of my mind."

We kissed softly, and he seemed speechless. He lay across my lap, and I drizzled some oil down his thigh.

Chapter 63

Sexy-Feely

"Make sure to rub deep, and push the blood toward his heart," said Klaus as he worked up another culinary surprise for us.

"Ok," I said, though this massage had little to do with healing David's thigh. We were continuing our confusing talk about what made me feel so good about touching boys' bodies. It was so much more than sex. There was sex, yes, but there was way more.

"So," said David, "just touching someone's bare skin makes you feel that sexy feeling?"

"It's weird," I said. "It can be sexy, or it can just be beautiful and feel very nice. I guess like when you pick up a little toddler or something, there's something beautiful and nice about that, even if you don't know the toddler. Everybody likes toddlers, right? But not everybody wants to rub their hands over a boy's body, which gives me kinda the same feeling. It can also be a sexy feeling if I'm in the mood, though, but mostly it's like a beauty thing, like maybe I feel beauty with my fingers instead of seeing it with my eyes. I've never liked paintings in museums, and I've never understood why they're so popular. I've seen boys touch each other all the time in ways that sometimes feel like I would fly to the moon if only I could touch them like that, but they think nothing of it! I wish I could understand it, because then maybe I could tell you why I feel that way."

"Hunny, you can touch any part of my body you like, any time." He turned his head back, and I leaned over to kiss him.

"Giving you a massage probably feels better to me than it does to you," I said. "It feels super-incredible, and that's why it's hard to describe it. Because there's a less-incredible version of it too. Like, I would also feel incredible giving a massage like this to half of the boys in our school. Having my hands all over their flesh – that's like a dream! It's partly sexy… ok, it's a lot sexy, but mostly it's all that other stuff, the beauty in touch, I guess. Have you really never felt like that?"

"It's difficult to say," said David. "Nobody can know exactly how somebody else feels, but I have felt that rush of beauty when I see a gorgeous boy like Jason Bateman or Ricky Schroder. Yes, I think that's a sexy sort of feeling, but I think I get what you mean. Now that we're together, I could see them naked and love their beautiful bodies, maybe still have a sexual thought, but I don't know who's inside them. I'm in love with you. I don't really feel like touching their skin or anything, though. Can we agree for now that they are two really beautiful boys?"

"Sure," I said, feeling relieved that David was really trying to work this out because I never could.

"Ok, and as beautiful boys, if you saw them naked, or in little shorts, you would want to rub your hands all over them and feel their skin?"

"Yeah, I sure would," I said. It seemed that this idea was alien to David. Did nobody feel as desperate to touch as I did? "But no one wants some strange kid walking up and rubbing their skin. It's so weird. Even if it's not sexual touch, like Mr. Kettering over there," I motioned my head toward Klaus, "taught us in sex ed, it would still freak people out because I wanted to do it. Am I really the only one?"

"I don't think so," said David.

"You certainly are not," said Klaus, who had been listening in. "Not everyone feels the same way about touch, and no one really knows for sure what touch-deprivation does to human kids as they grow up. I get the impression that your family didn't touch very much at all, and obviously you feel very good when you touch skin-to-skin with someone else. Those two might not be related, or they might. But what matters is you, Don." He had walked over and put his hand on my shoulder. "You have shared an intimate part of yourself with us, and guess what? Now we know yet another way to make you feel good!" I pulled his neck in with my oily hands and gave him a kiss, being careful to smear some oil onto his nose when we finished.

***

Klaus liked wine with his meals, and he made no secret of it. That meant that with every meal, David and I got a half-glass, which was often all he had too. He just liked some, enough to compliment the meal, as he said. David and I set the table, wiping everything with a towel first to make sure there was no fallout dust on the dishes, and Klaus put a plate in front of each of us with a piece of fish and asparagus, which I had never seen before. He had poured what he called herbed butter over everything and added a dollop of tartar sauce to the side. Then he looked at David and asked in a very smooth French accent.

"Quel colour du vin, Sommelier Chance?"

David giggled and said "du vin blanc!"

"Is that French?" I asked. "It sounded like French. Do you know French?" I asked David.

"Yes, it's French," said David, "but I only knew a few words. I knew coulour and vin, and I know du vin blanc means white wine, or maybe it means some white wine."

"I don't know if I asked the question properly, either," said Klaus, "but I wanted to call you a sommelier."

"I didn't know that word," said David. "What does it mean?"

"You know what a connoisseur is, right? It's someone who knows a lot about how something should taste. There are wine connoisseurs, beer connoisseurs, cheese connoisseurs, what have you. Wine is considered by some people to be the most important beverage of all, and putting the right wine together with the meal is considered a high art. Fancy French restaurants pay professionals tons of money for that kind of expertise and knowledge about everything to do with wine. That's who the sommelier is – the wine expert."

"Why do you always have these weird things you teach us?" I asked him.

"Maybe it's because I think you look cute when you're confused!" We both laughed as he lightly rapped his knuckles on my head. "Or maybe it's because I worry about what kind of education you boys are going to get, now that… with all that's happened, and whenever I think of something you guys don't know, and that's not easy, the teacher inside of me turns on and says 'Must teach! Must teach!'"

He opened a new bottle of something white and fruity, maybe a little more tart than that other stuff we all liked the night before. He poured half a glass all around.

"Hey! There's still scales on my fish!" I complained.

"Oh right!" said David. "You haven't had salmon like this before. The skin is on the bottom, so you cut gently through the meat, then sorta scoop it off to eat it. Cooking it with the skin on makes it taste a lot better."

"I'm sorry I didn't warn you, Donovan," said Klaus.

"David's tartar sauce is awesome!" I said, not wanting to ruin things with my complaining. Was I gaining social smarts? I had to pretend much harder when it came to the asparagus, though. It had no flavor except for the herbed butter, and some of the pieces seemed to turn into wooden sticks at one end. I decided to dip them in the tartar sauce and eat the fish plain because it was pretty good by itself.

***

'7:00 PM, outside 25 rad/hour, basement 2.3 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

After we'd finished eating, but before we'd cleared the plates, Klaus leaned back in his chair, sipping his wine very slowly and said, "Donovan, you and David talked a lot about touch, and about how you feel when you touch someone." I nodded, trying to sip the last dribble from the bottom of my wine glass. "I'm curious. Have you ever wondered what it would feel like if someone wanted to touch you like that?"

I slurped everything I could from my glass and set it down. "I've always dreamed I could make someone feel that way about me and my body. I always made Mom buy the smallest shorts we could find. I always cut my cut-offs really short too. I wanted to make myself look sexy and all soft and touchable like David, but nothing seemed to work. My skin just feels like ordinary me."

"That's how my skin feels to me, too, Hunny!"

"I suspected as much," said Klaus. "If you really, really wanted to touch a boy the way you described, how could you go about doing that?"

"Well, that's my problem," I said. "I can't, not unless I tell everybody I'm gay! I'm gay! I want to feel your butt cheeks and hips, but not for sex!"

"So how would you know if somebody felt that way about your body?"

"Nobody feels that way about me! I mean, David loves me more than I ever dreamed, and I know you do too, but I'm the one who has this touch thing."

"You didn't really answer my question, Don. Assume someone feels that way about you. How would you know they felt that way?"

"I suppose if they looked at me in the showers, or when I'm wearing my tiny shorts, if they stared at my skin, or maybe if I had my shirt off. That sort of thing would be a clue."

"It would be a clue," said Klaus, "one of the few clues that gay boys and even gay men ever get – we notice someone is looking at us. Have you ever noticed someone was looking at you like that?"

"Sometimes, I think… but it's just my imagination. Maybe I'll accidentally make eye contact with another boy in the shower who I think is really sexy, and I'll look away right away, but Stephan Pearson felt a little different. I thought maybe he was looking at me. Oh God, is he hot! He's the seventh-grade quarterback, and I would play center for him any time! But I didn't know if it was my mind playing tricks, so I always just looked away."

"You noticed Stephan Pearson?" asked Klaus. I nodded, then tilted my head sideways, vaguely suspecting Klaus was about to blow my mind. "Yeah," said Klaus, "he saw you that way. Stephan had the hots for you in a big way."

"What?" I'd felt it coming, but it was still surreal.

"I noticed him too," said David, "and I was worried all year that even if you liked boys, you might like him better because he was older and stronger."

I slid my chair over and put my arm around David. "Why didn't anybody tell me?"

"Teachers can't be matchmakers," said Klaus.

"Obviously, I couldn't bear the thought," said David.

I kissed him and said, "You're my grand prize sweetie, and I love you more than I could love anyone else, but all this time I thought no one was, you know, turned on by me, and the boy I liked most for his body wanted mine too, and I never knew it."

"Welcome to the world of gay romance," said Klaus. "You boys are very fortunate to have found each other, and may you last and last!" He raised his glass and took the last sip from it. "But that means you don't have to go through that scary experience of finding out whether some guy likes you or wants to bash your face in with a broken bottle because you're gay. I'm sorry, that was probably not appropriate to say, but it has happened, and worse. It's very difficult to know, even if you are in the same room, if someone is attracted to you, or whether it's ok to tell him you're attracted to him. That's one big reason why gay social clubs and bars are so popular."

"So, I was afraid to say anything, and he was afraid to say anything for the same reasons?"

"That's right," said Klaus. "Now we have that same problem on a much, much bigger scale; I'm sorry to say. After this nuclear war, or whatever it is, we can't be sure what society will be like when things settle down. Law and order might not exist everywhere, and because of the AIDS epidemic and the shortage of hospitals and research labs after all this, people are terrified of gay men. Things might be very unsafe for us in the future, so remember, when the silver people on the shoreline finally come to us, we have to pretend we're straight, and we'll have to keep pretending we're straight until we're absolutely sure we're in a safe and private place."

After a very painful period of silence, David said, "That's so sad. People don't need to be like that! It's so sad."

"I'm sorry to bring up something so depressing and scary, but I need to make sure you boys are ready for life after our shelter corner. You will need to protect yourselves because it might be a much more violent world out there. Tell me how you're feeling, Donovan?"

"It SUCKS!" I shouted. "I just found out I'm gay, and I have the most amazing gay boyfriend I could ever want and I love him like crazy, oh wait, now someone wants to kill us all because we found out we love each other? It's BULLSHIT!"

"It is," said Klaus, "and I do understand your anger. Boy, do I. David? How are you feeling about this?"

David turned to me, and we fell into one of those crying hugs that we both felt, but neither of us really understood. Why do people have to be like that? While we had our moment, Klaus cleared off the table and cleaned the dishes.

Chapter 64

Manhandled

We folded up the table and chairs and put them away. After supper was entertainment time and Klaus had an idea. "I know that was a real downer of a conversation," he said, "and it wasn't even the conversation I meant to have with you."

"What do you mean?" asked David.

"Well, I asked Donovan what it would feel like if someone wanted to touch him that badly, so we talked about Stephan Pearson, a real boy who really did want to touch him that way. Then we really did need to talk about the ugly side of society when things get back together, and I never really got a proper answer from Donovan. So," he said, looking at me, "how do you think it would feel if someone wanted to touch you, to feel you, to caress your body as much as you've ever wanted to touch another boy?"

"Well, I'd have to know he wants to first. Otherwise, there's all that danger."

"Yes," said Klaus. "Assume you know this person feels that way about you. He wants intensely to touch every part of you, to have his hands constantly on your bare skin because it makes him feel so high."

"Like I feel about David?"

"Only the physical part. Tell us what it would feel like to have a boy craving your body the way you have always physically craved other boys, and you know he feels that way."

"Well, if he was nice, I'd let him, I guess," I said. "And I'd probably want the same thing because I feel that way about most boys' bodies."

"Imagine sitting here one night, and this imaginary boy starts feeling your chest, maybe licking your nipples…"

"Oh! I don't like that! Not my nipples!"

"Ok, maybe your foot. A lot of people like feet, and I mean a lot. Maybe he just wanted to touch you, to caress your lower leg, and he started sucking your toes because that's what he liked. You are his physical dream-come-true! How does that feel?"

"I'm still in love with my David, right? This is just a… whatever thing, right?"

"That's right, Donovan. How does it feel to be the boy who has so much power you can give someone his dream-come-true, or you can just say no?"

"Oh, I don't like that! I couldn't just say no!"

"You MUST ALWAYS say no to something you don't like. Sparing someone else his pain is not a reason to say yes. He has the right to feel the way he does."

"Ok then," I continued, "can we pretend I like what he wants to do – lick my toes or whatever?"

"Sure, as long as we know in real life, that has to be true."

"Then, I think… I've never imagined that before, but I feel tingly! It's like, something I want so bad I feel desperate about, but this time it's that other boy who wants me that way, and whenever he's with me, he's in heaven! Who wouldn't want that? Yeah, I'd think that's great!"

"Ok, we're almost there," he said. "Let's go back to the touching." He stepped up to David and me on the couch and stroked my inner thigh. "Let's say this turns me on as much as it would turn you on." I got a boner right away. "Do you like it because of the intense pleasure you're giving me, or because it feels good to be touched there?"

"That's where I want to touch other boys, and it feels so good that you're touching me there!"

He licked the inside of my thigh and sat down. "David," he said, "who is the sexiest boy in this room?"

"My Donovan, of course!"

"What makes him sexy?"

"Well, it's who he is first, but that kinda makes everything else more beautiful, like it stands out more."

"You mean that makes parts of his body sexy?"

"Oh yes," said David, almost salivating. "His eyes are the most amazing… and his penis… just look at it," he said as he stroked it. "And I have never seen an ass as gorgeous as his! He has these nice strong muscles around his legs. Oh yes, he's my sexy boy!" He kissed me while I sat utterly confused. I liked it a lot, but where was this going?

"Donovan," said Klaus, "I'm trying to show you there are a few different ways to feel sexy and to be sexy. You and David both know how being the person you are makes you sexy to the other person. You have both talked about that, and I tried to give you a glimpse of what it's like when someone feels an almost desperate need to touch you. Can you feel the difference?"

"Well, yeah, I guess," I said. "The first one is love; I mean super-love more than anything else, and nothing comes close to being worth that much. David's already the most sexually perfect boy I've ever seen, but he's David! He's the boy inside the body. So that one's the most important one. The other one is a real turn-on though. To think I can make someone's dream come true like I wanted to happen to me, well, if I can do it and I like it, I think it would feel incredible!"

"Now, all you have to do is realize you have both, right here."

"Both?"

Klaus put his hand back on my inner thigh and caressed it softly. "David, Donovan, I love you both, but I think it's time to tell you two things. First, I feel the same way about touch as Donovan does, and second, I really, really do love feet.

***

'8:00 PM, outside 24 rad/hour, basement 2.3 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

We talked a while more about what a foot fetish was and what it meant that Klaus wanted to touch me as much as I'd wanted to touch all those other boys. He actually wanted to touch David and me both like that. He made us giggle a lot while he told us about these things, he also pointed out that he'd have to use a wipe on our feet and run it past the Geiger counter before sucking our toes, but David and I giggled the whole time as he described the kinds of things he wanted to try. Most of all he made us shout "NO!" several times as an exercise. It was important to him that we didn't just do these things for him. It sure brought a new level of excitement to being horny!

***

Something else that came up really surprised me. I had started out being curious about being a contortionist, but it was he who steered me toward acrobalance, which is for two or more people. He wanted to put his hands all over my body, and that was another nice way to do it. That was Klaus' entertainment idea for that evening. He and I both wanted to develop more poses, and David wanted to improve his guitar playing, and he was such a wonderful audience!

He asked David to sit in the recliner while he played for us. Then he hung up the trapeze we'd made during work time earlier that day. "Ok, Donovan," he said, "would you please lie down on the couch, on your back, with your head to my left? Great. Cross your hands in front of your chest, that's right, like a mummy. Legs and feet together, toes pointed, now I'm going to lift you with my arms, but I want you to hold your body completely flat. That's called the plank position. Here goes! Legs together, great!"

I realized right away that he could make it easy for me to hold that plank position just by choosing where he put his hands. If he kept his right hand in the middle of my thighs and his left hand in the middle of my back, I just had to hold my legs straight and keep my head and shoulders up.

"Now I'm going to toss you lightly a few times, just so you get the feel of it. The first few, I won't even let go. You're going to love what we do with this!" I hadn't been tossed in the air since before my real dad went to prison! It made me laugh. "Ok, now I need you to stay very, very stiff. Whatever you do or feel, trust me. Stay stiff as a plank, and trust me. I am going to toss you up and flip you so you will land on your side, facing away from me. Stiff as a plank now… three, two, one…"

I know I let out a little yelp, but it felt incredible! It was just a little toss with a little turn, but I was holding my position, and it worked on the first try! "Ok," said Klaus, "I'm going to toss you a few more times to change my hand positions. Here we go!" He tossed me twice more then sat on the couch, where he tossed me once more to turn his hands around, so his thumbs were facing forward. 'Bench press!' he called out as he lifted my stiff body up and down like a barbell.

"Are you ready for a few more tosses?"

"Yeah! This is fun! You're doing all the work!"

"Ok, stay as stiff as you can. I'm going to toss you all the way over so you're on your right-hand side, facing me. Three, two, one…" The lights, along with the whole room, made an arc in my eyes as I was almost instantaneously flipped onto my right side. He lowered my body like a barbell and gave me a kiss.

"That's so beautiful!" said David. "You guys are gonna make me cry!"

Then Klaus tossed me again to turn his hands around before standing up and laying me across his arms on my back again.

"Here comes the fun part," he said as he started tossing me and flipping me halfway around, then all the way over, all at once! It was amazing! It was a thrill! A big strong man was handling my naked body like his toy, and I know there was a boner poking out every time he flipped me. David had stopped playing his guitar and begun cheering and applauding.

"Now I'm going to put my hand between your thighs, good, now squish your thighs together. Now I'm going to tilt you forward. Ok, spread your legs, keep them straight. This is a little harder. You've got it! Doing great! Now bend your lower leg back, bend your knee, good, and slide it between my legs as far as it will go. Very nice! Top leg up on my shoulder, good, over my head, wow! Now bend that knee to hang on. Look Ma! No hands! Arms out, Donovan! Show it off!" More applause from David!

"Now let me help you hold your left thigh on my shoulder while you pull your right leg back out, good, now let me help you lift that onto my other shoulder – great! Now sit up with your belly in my face," he said as he lifted my back, "lock your feet together tightly, good, now lay back, back further, arms spread, lay back all the way, yeah!" He helped me sit up again with my belly in his face. Since it was so nearby, he gave my cock some badly wanted attention before putting me down. David jumped up and kissed me enthusiastically, then continued applauding. It had been so easy! My part had been anyway.

As soon as David was done, Klaus hugged me and asked, "What did you think? Did you like it?"

"Are you kidding? It was awesome!" I yelled. "I love it when… I mean, when you throw me, and I know you're gonna catch me – I haven't had that much fun since…" Nope, not going to bring my real dad up. "Ever!" Then I asked, "What about you? What was it like for you? Is that how you like touching me?"

A huge grin slowly split his face. He picked me up and hugged me, then he and David squeezed my butt cheeks. Could it be true? In their eyes, did I have the sexiest ass? I kissed Klaus, getting his mustache hairs up my nose, and I let them have their fun. I had never truly felt sexy before.

Chapter 65

Not Enough Room

'9:00 PM, outside 23 rad/hour, basement 2.2 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Everything was easy when all I had to do was hold the plank position, but soon there were a lot of things that I needed to work on, things that required coordination, flexibility, balance, and strength. I had much better flexibility and balance than Klaus had expected, much more than I'd expected, too, but my coordination was terrible, and I wasn't very strong.

We decided to add two exercises to our morning callisthenic routine. The first one had Klaus lifting me like a barbell twenty times, then flipping me over and doing it another twenty times. The second had Klaus lying on his back in the bicycle position and me lying across his feet so he could roll me around and flip me. That night he even showed me how he could spin me around like a helicopter!

***

I asked Klaus if I could sit in his lap so he could show me the kind of touch he dreamed about having with a boy like me. It was oddly like having a bath with no water and no washcloth, and instead of Mom yelling at me to get in the tub, it was someone who loved me gently handling my body the way I needed it to be handled – and loved. He and I were both hard immediately, but I think we both felt something more than sexual pleasure. I moved over to Klaus' right thigh so David could sit on his left, and we could both reach his great big hard cock.

I remembered the sensation of being drunk and hanging upside-down from the ceiling the night before. His hands were all over me then, too, and they had a similar urgency.

I held the base of Klaus' cock, and David held the tip, and we stroked him slowly and carefully. Then Klaus held his hands still and said, "I don't want to cum yet. If I cum now, I don't think I can give you another load tonight."

David and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows. "That sounds like a challenge!" said David. Klaus rolled his eyes in submission.

David got down to get some oil and a towel while I sucked Klaus's cock, much deeper than I thought I could. He lifted my body and took my cock into his mouth. I could feel his mustache hairs tickling my balls! He lifted me and lowered my mouth onto his cock, up and down, and I pulled tighter on his hips when I wanted it deeper. I remembered the night before when I was hanging by my ankles, and he forced his cock way deep into my throat. Was that how it happened? My neck was bent way back then, and my tongue… my tongue was forward. I pulled tight on his hips and stuck my tongue forward. I held myself there when he tried to lift me. I knew I could do it. I hooked my feet behind his head and squeezed him with my thighs as I pushed, and I pushed, and I had to pause.

"Don't hurt yourself, Donovan. The alcohol might have helped you last night. It's a muscle relaxant."

He was rubbing and caressing my ass cheeks and my thighs while he was talking. Then David came forward with his hand in his ass, slathering oil everywhere, and looking as sexy as a boy could look. Klaus tipped me forward and set me on the floor. David slithered up in my place and offered his tongue to Klaus, who seemed rather hungry that night. As he took David's tongue into his mouth, David slid easily down onto Klaus' cock, no pause, no stretching, just a soft, sweet moan. David was really good at doing that. I figured it was all his practice with his mom's dildos.

"Here's one you should add to our calisthenics," whispered David as he smoothly began to lift and grind.

I climbed up behind Klaus and sat on his shoulders. I wanted him to have all the soft boy skin he wanted. To my surprise, David began caressing my thighs. He was kissing Klaus with his arms wrapped around my thighs, with his own ass riding up and down on Klaus' cock. I rested my chin on the top of Klaus' head and grinned. The back of his hair felt tickly on my cock, but not as nice as I knew it would be feeling soon enough when it was my turn to suck a second load out of Klaus. I grinned down at David's pleading face and smiled as my plots developed. I pushed David's hair back and kissed his forehead between my knees as he kissed Klaus' lips. Klaus was grunting, but David always made sweeter sounds, almost like a bleating lamb.

Klaus wrapped his arms around David's upper back and pulled him in, taking over his body, which he knew David loved. I could just reach David's ass cheeks with my toes, so I tried to tickle him. He was making his kitten sounds again. This time his kitten sounds went right into baby crying sounds, the soft tones of my sweet boy's orgasm. Klaus wasn't ready yet, so he kept heaving, making David howl in a way I'd never heard before. David acted like he wanted to escape, but I knew that couldn't be it. With a few, forceful, powerful, and very slow final thrusts, Klaus came to his orgasm. David settled down all the way on Klaus' cock and pinched it tightly with his ass.

We remained in that awkward three-way hug for some time before David asked me, "Do you want to get his cum this time?"

I smiled and said, "Sure! Share?" He smiled and nodded while I climbed down to the floor and got on my knees. I put my tongue on Klaus' cock, right where it entered my David's ass, and said, "Ok!" David lifted slowly, and I sucked in every drip I could find. Finally, when his cock-head was about to emerge, I slurped in everything David could squeeze out. Then I sat next to David, who held his tongue out to mine, right in front of Klaus' face, and I let half of what I had (more or less) dribble onto David's tongue. Then we kissed and stirred everything together, and on our signal, we gulped. I climbed back down because I knew there was more where that had come from. I cleaned off Klaus' cock first, and then I took my slow, leisurely time cleaning the cum from David's ass. It seemed that even when the cum was all gone, it still had that great sex taste, so David got a nice long rim job from me. Besides, that's where the most magical boy skin in the whole world was at that moment.

***

"We should let him rest a while," said David.

Klaus had fallen fast asleep, and David was sitting on my lap, sorta, on the recliner. I'd licked two of my fingers and slipped them up David's ass while he was relaxed. I just wanted to explore some more to see if I could find any new places that made him jump. "What do you think he likes doing with boys' feet?" I asked.

David giggled softly and said, "I don't know! I think it'll be fun though. Klaus is so sweet, and he'll only want to do it if we think it's fun too. We know part of it is sucking our toes, and he said licking our feet."

"You know, I bet some of these places in your ass feel a lot more exciting when I'm sucking you!" I said.

He smiled, kissed me, and said, "I think you're right."

"I wanna try something," I said. I got up, jumped up to take hold of the trapeze, and hung from it by my knees. "Can we do 69 like this?" David stepped up to me, and it was clear that I was far too high up. "I'll lower it then," I said. "I think it worked last night because I was hanging from my ankles, not my knees."

"Oh, that makes sense. Want me to grab a few of my mom's dildos?" I felt a rush of excitement when he said that. "You'll want to be ready to go for Klaus."

"Oh yeah!" I said. "Let's start with your favorite pink one, ok?"

"Ok." He oiled it up and pressed it into my ass, but not very hard.

"Push it in; it's ok."

"Ok, but be sure to tell me when to stop."

"Just push the head in. I know that goes in fine. Push it right in." With a little grunt, it was in. "Can you pull it back out now, and then just push the whole thing in, all the way?"

"Ok," he said, and he did exactly as I'd asked. I pulled his magical ass cheeks in to aim his cock into my mouth, and I sucked.

"In and out, please," I asked. He began thrusting his favorite pink dildo in and out of my ass as he took my cock into his mouth. "Faster… faster please, and deeper too, ok?" Again, he did as I asked. I'd been so wound up with everything that had happened that evening, I knew I'd orgasm pretty quickly, and that was fine because boys my age could just keep going. He was hitting my prostate wonderfully!

I decided to surprise him. I hugged his ass tight, and I lifted him up off his feet, just a little.

"Legs out wide, awesome!"

He held himself up on my groin, so I only had to hold half of his weight with my arms. He was pretty lightweight anyway. It was so hot! Then I worked my arms between his thighs and spread them out below his ass, so it was like he was sitting on my armpits while I licked his ass. I wanted his cock, so we sort of wiggled his body down to where his knees were hooked to my armpits. I could just get my fingertips into his ass.

"Faster!" I called. I could hear him sucking and slurping on my cock, and he was ramming my ass beautifully. The sexual pressure built and built, and I came hard! David held the dildo inside me, and he held his mouth still, but he wasn't done. He was face-fucking me as we hung from the trapeze. It was so hot! I began to swing the little trapeze, and he came right away.

***

(King Polixines to Queen Hermione)

We were, fair Queen,

Two lads that thought there was no more behind

But such a day to-morrow as to-day,

And to be boy eternal. (Wm. Shakespeare)

To be boy eternal, to have that kind of lusty sexual energy. They say youth and vitality are wasted on the young, but I think David and I were using ours rather well.

***

'10:00 PM, outside 23 rad/hour, basement 2.1 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

We sat quietly, one of us on each side of Klaus, and on David's signal, be both suddenly stuck our tongues in his ears! It tasted nasty, but it was funny, and we knew Klaus would like that kind of joke. Before he could object, I was on my knees in front of him, sucking his cock, and he was hard right away. "Morning wood?" asked David.

"No," I said, "he's just a horny ol' dude and he doesn't want to admit it. I bet we could get three or four loads from him tonight, a couple of super-sexy boys like us!" Before he had even said a word, I had crawled up on top of him and slid down on his cock.

"Donovan!" he gasped, "you didn't stretch!"

"You don't know what us horny, sexy boys get up to while you're asleep," I winked. "Hey David, I think he needs some more magical boy skin. You can sit here in front of me if we all slouch down a bit."

David arched his graceful leg over Klaus and fed him his cock, which was predictably hard. I probed David's ass again with my fingers as Klaus filled my ass again and again. The first one among us to cum was actually David! He rolled off and sat next to Klaus. I put my hand on David's thigh, leaned all the way in on Klaus, and whispered, "Squeeze me tight, force it in and out of me. Take me; I'm yours!" – He did. I lasted about thirty seconds before I came, which was just fine. Klaus went on like that for another few minutes before I stopped him.

I got up and said, "Come on, ol' man! This is your finale!" I jumped up and adjusted the trapeze as far up as it would go and still let me hang from my knees. I knew from trying with David that it would most likely work with Klaus if it was way up high like that. "This soft, sexy boy body is waiting for you!"

Oh, I loved that smell when I got near Klaus' cock. I sucked it in right away, and I could also feel mine sliding into his mouth, which distracted me from my purpose for just a few moments. I worked Klaus' cock as hard, as deep, and as fast as I could. He would be glad he waited for this!

I pulled my head back long enough to say, "Shove it in, all the way down. I want it!" I slowed to a stop and pulled hard on his ass, forcing the back of my throat over his cock, poking my tongue forward, waiting for that magical moment when everything popped in place. It was more work than I remembered, but I kept at it. It didn't hurt, and I wanted Klaus to have this special treat from me. I also wanted to claim victory in our challenge to make him cum twice. I pulled and pulled on his ass, relaxing my throat, but he soon stopped.

"If you don't feed me," I said, "I'll never get it in!"

Suddenly something felt wrong. He backed out of my mouth and said, "Don, I have to stop now."

"Why?" I asked. "We were almost there!"

"No, we weren't," he said. "I don't want to hurt you. I can't do that to you if I think I'm going to hurt you, Don. There's just not enough room in there for me right now."

"But, I'm fine!" I protested. "I had plenty of room yesterday, so I can do it again!"

"Remember that anytime we're having sex, everyone gets to say no if they feel uncomfortable."

"But you're not making me uncomfortable, and I didn't say no! Really, it doesn't hurt!"

"I'm uncomfortable," he said, which was not at all what I was expecting to hear. "I think you should come down so we can talk for a few minutes. This isn't the end of our fun, or at least it doesn't have to be, but there's something very important we need to understand, all three of us, as a group."

I wanted at least to suck his cock while he was lifting me from the trapeze and carrying me to the couch, but he'd lost his erection, and I couldn't reach the tip of his cock with my mouth. I don't think he wanted me to either, which confused me even more.

Chapter 66

The Cockathlete

I felt horrible. I was frustrated. I was angry. I just wanted to make Klaus feel good, and I wanted to win the challenge of making him cum twice, but he wouldn't let me, and it's hard to stay horny when you feel like that.

He sat on the couch next to David and lifted me up to sit on his right. Then he put his arms around both of us and said, "You boys both understand that any one of us can say no while we're having sex, and we don't even have to have a reason, right?" David and I both nodded, though I thought we were supposed to have some sort of reason.

"Well," Klaus continued, "That has to include me too. Donovan, I'm sorry you can't continue trying to deep-throat me because I know you really want to, and I know you are really proud when you can do things like that, things that make other people feel so good. I know how much it means to you to make me feel good, and that makes me feel special."

"Well, then why are you saying I can't I keep going?"

"I think the most important reason is that one of us said no. One of us wasn't comfortable. I will tell you more in a bit, but first, I want you to tell me if you understand that, and if you think it's a fair rule that none of us should be made to do something that makes them uncomfortable. Do you understand that one of us said no, and do you think it's fair that no one should be made to do anything they feel uncomfortable with for sex?"

"Well, yeah," I said. "When you put it that way, of course it makes sense, but it's not like that. I mean, I wasn't uncomfortable, so why should you be uncomfortable? It's like you want to be uncomfortable for me or something."

"That's the heart of it, right there," he said. "'Why should I feel uncomfortable?' We don't have to have a reason to feel uncomfortable, and no one should have to be able to persuade anyone that they are uncomfortable. Saying 'no' is enough. Here's a really crazy example of what I mean."

"Pretend you're hanging upside-down here in the basement, and I started to slide something that felt really nice, soft, and well-lubed, up your butt." I badly wanted to find the hole in the argument he was about to make. "You didn't know what it was. All you knew was that it was soft and slippery, and it felt like it was just the right size, so you were ok with it. You feel ok. The slippery thing in your butt feels kinda nice, and you like it at first. You even tell me it feels nice, though you don't know what it is. But soon you start to smell fish. You're not sure why, so you ask me. That's when I tell you I'm using a dead fish as a dildo in your butt. Something changes that very instant."

"Oh that's nasty!" said David.

"That's the very instant when I realize how disgusting you can be!"

"In this example, that's pretty likely – something does change. The way you felt about the sex act changed. At first, it felt nice when you didn't know what it was, but it changed to something unpleasant when you learned it was a dead fish. Does that make sense?" I nodded.

"Then I tell you, 'but you said it felt nice! You liked it before I told you it was a fish. If something feels nice, then how can it all of a sudden be unpleasant?' Now here I am, shoving a dead fish up your ass, and it's your job, not mine, but your job to convince me that you don't like it, that it's reasonable not to like it, and that I should stop, but that's not right, is it, guys? If something makes you feel uncomfortable during sex, you shouldn't have to convince anyone that you feel uncomfortable or that it's reasonable that you feel uncomfortable or that your discomfort is bad enough that it should stop right away. It's far better that we follow the rules that no means no, and that if anyone feels uncomfortable, we stop without arguing, without having to convince anyone of anything. Does that make sense? Just remember the dead fish if you forget why we follow that rule."

"But I didn't use a dead fish on you! I just wanted to deep throat you, and I know you like that!"

"And in my crazy example, I knew you liked the feeling of the dead fish because you even told me, but something changed."

"You used a dead fish in the story! That's nasty! I wasn't being nasty!"

"But feelings change. My feelings about what you were doing to my penis changed. At first, it felt really incredible! You boys are both far better at giving oral sex than I think you realize, but my feelings changed. When that happens, we can all say no if we want to, and I said no."

"I guess I get that part," I said, even though I didn't like it, "but what changed? Why did your feelings change?"

"I love you, Don," said Klaus, "and love for someone is more important to me than anything sexual. I saw you struggling. I felt you pulling me in hard, and I pulled your head in too, but after a while, I became worried. That is the exact moment my feelings changed. I was thinking about the muscles in your throat, and how they could be injured, and the effects that even minor scarring can have on them. You need those muscles for lots of things, including swallowing, not choking to death, even vomiting. If you can't do that right, there are several ways it can actually kill you. When I began to worry about those things, my feelings changed, and I became uncomfortable. I had to stop, but I wanted to make sure you knew why."

"But my throat's really fine," I said.

"Yes, it is," he said, "but the way your throat feels is not the reason we stopped. What was the reason we stopped? Can you tell me, Don?" I looked down. I knew the answer, but I didn't want to say it out loud.

"David, can you tell us why we stopped?"

"Yes, because you felt uncomfortable, and you said you wanted to stop. That's why you stopped, but the reason you felt uncomfortable was that you were thinking all these terrible things could happen to this boy you love, and that wasn't a good feeling."

"That's it exactly." Klaus ran his fingers through my hair. "Can you understand that now, Don?"

I leaned into his strong chest and nodded. Normally I had a very hard time dealing with someone being right while I'm wrong. Sometimes it felt like my worst nightmare, but when Klaus was the one who was right, or even David, somehow it didn't feel the anxiety or shame. I was so lucky to be with them. I thought it was even possible I was becoming a better person when I knew for sure the people around me loved me.

***

'11:00 PM, outside 22 rad/hour, basement 2.0 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

"Can we have some Harvey Wallbangers?" I asked. Besides loving their flavor and loving the way they made me feel, I wanted us to get back in the mood. I felt bad because everybody had to stop and wait while I learned what I should already have known about saying no when someone feels uncomfortable, so I felt it was up to me to get us back in the mood before Klaus decided he wanted to go to bed. Besides, I wondered if Klaus was right, that the alcohol helped me loosen my throat muscles the night before, and that's why it seemed so much easier to deep-throat him.

"Drinking like that has to be for special occasions only," Klaus replied. "A half-glass of wine with a meal is reasonable every day, but drinking like last night has to be very rare, and for very special reasons. You've been through my two-week unit on alcohol! You remember all that, don't you?"

"Yeah," I said, "but since everything's changed, I thought we were maybe more like adults now because we probably won't live long enough to be as old as you are, so why not go a little crazy? Party like it's 1999?"

The effect that had on Klaus was not at all what I was going for. He sat quietly with his hands over his face for about a minute. Then he sniffled and pulled us both into a close, warm hug.

"I didn't mean it that seriously," I said. "I'm sorry, I just wanted to drink some more."

"Those silver people on the shoreline will come, and our world will be changed forever," he said. "I'm scared about what kind of world that will be. You could be right. You might not live into your thirties. I think you will most likely live to be much older, but how would I know? The world has changed, and we've lost touch with it. We don't know what's happening out there right now. That scares me, and it doesn't really have much to do with drinking."

David turned his body to face Klaus, wrapped his arms around his neck, and said, "Just because you're an adult doesn't mean you don't get to be scared too. We've just been nuked. I know adults were as afraid of this as us kids, because you can only get so afraid, and you can't get more afraid than that. That's how we all felt about this. We were all as afraid as we could be while still carrying on with our lives." Then he sang very softly into Klaus' ear, "Carry on, love is coming! Love is coming to us all!"

***

He was mine! David was the boy I loved, and he loved me! There he was, gently comforting a grown man, possibly the wisest man I'd ever known, and it was just David being David. I don't think he thought anything unusual about it. That was how he was toward everybody he met. Yet somehow, he'd fallen in love with me! A boy with so much love, he could comfort the whole human race, yet somehow he wanted me as his lover. Who am I to be chosen from all humanity to be this beautiful, beautiful boy's boyfriend?

***

"1999!" We all cheered, holding our Harvey Wallbangers up high. After David's comforting talk, Klaus was easily (and unfairly) persuaded that the evening should be a special celebration of partying like it was 1999, an evening of fun and joy instead of what he called 'the woes and leaden thoughts of the world.' After all, he said, "The silver people on the shoreline will come in their time, and we should not spend one minute of our lives feeling afraid or sad about that before it happens. We will have the rest of our lives for that. While we are together here, we celebrate our love and happiness!" I don't know why, but he seemed to be talking like the president or something. I guess he was orating.

We each drank our first round quickly, and when Klaus returned with our second round, I drank it all in one go, then jumped off the couch, got on my knees, and started sucking Klaus' cock. Not forcing it in too deep, but doing my best to make him feel as good as I could. I kept my head moving fast, turning it a little each time I went up and down to see if I could make my hair flop around. I felt like an Olympic athlete competing in the cockathon. When I knew he was close, I slowed way down and squeezed his balls. I took his cock out of my mouth and licked the sides up and down. David had begun stroking himself, and he pulled Klaus' hand over and held it on his inner thigh.

Klaus let out a groan and said, "You boys are such teases!"

As soon as he said that, I took his whole cock into my mouth again, reasonably deep, and I went back to my work as a cockathlete. I didn't let go of his balls, though – I attacked him hungrily. I was getting his second load, and I was getting it now! As I said, there would be a third, possibly a fourth.

When I felt he was about to cum, I didn't slow down one bit. He howled and writhed, but he didn't give me any sign that I should stop. I swallowed his cum as it flowed in a natural stream from his cock to my stomach. I kept working his cock like a madman – a madboy – until he chuckled and told me that was enough. I squeezed his cock with my hands and sucked it to make sure I'd gotten all the cum before climbing up to sit with them on the couch.

"That's two," I said. I wasn't done with him yet, and I wanted him to know it.

David was still stroking himself, giving me a look that I thought was kinda flirty. When I say 'kinda flirty,' in David's case, I mean emotionally overwhelming. Klaus caressed his inner thigh gently. I moved Klaus' other hand to my inner thigh and started stroking myself as well. David and I looked into each other's eyes for an eternity of love and pleasure. Klaus sat between us, providing the touch, and David and I made love. I don't know how long we sat wanking like that while Klaus caressed our skin, but David and I shared one big orgasm that was very different from any other we had felt that day, and that was a lot of orgasms.

Chapter 67

Cassettes

I heard the softest snort from Klaus. I looked up to see he'd fallen asleep. I looked over at David. He smiled softly and laid his head back on Klaus' chest. It was a beautiful sight, but I didn't want our evening to end. I'd shown Klaus we could get two loads from him already that night, but I'd also said I thought David and I could get three or four from him. Besides, this was meant to be our 1999 celebration, and it had just started a half-hour ago!

I wanted to wake Klaus up, but it had to be gentle and nice. Klaus being an old man in his 30s, I thought his cock probably needed some rest before David and I tried to suck anything else out of it.

"Do what I do, ok?" I whispered to David.

He smiled and nodded. I put Klaus' hand on his lap and turned my body to face him. Then I put my knee between his legs, tight up against David's leg, facing Klaus. He began to stir at this point. Then we both began kissing his furry lips, sneaking an occasional kiss with each other.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty," said David.

"Oh, mmm, if this is a… ummm, a dream, please don't mmm, wake me up," he said between kisses. "Two astonishingly beautiful, mmm, sexy, ummm, naked boys kissing me, ummm, as I open my eyes." He caressed our ass cheeks as we kissed, and again, David and I both got boners right away.

"Do old people like you fall asleep easily?" I asked, unaware of how that might sound to a man in his 30s.

Instead of giving a lecture on human aging and male sexual development through adulthood, like he might otherwise have done, he simply said, "Yep," and he continued kissing us. I started grinding on his thigh, and David did the same. I think he was still following what I did, even though I only meant for him to do that until Klaus woke up.

"Mmm!" Klaus grunted as he pulled us off him and abruptly stood up. "We need another round of drinks!" I didn't understand why he'd gotten up so suddenly. He seemed to like what we were doing. He wasn't fully hard, but he was halfway there. "We need to get this party rolling again! I can't believe I fell asleep on you!"

I could hear him mixing our drinks, David and I slid together for a good, deep kiss, and we began to stroke each other. "Hey, you two!" said Klaus. "You're absolutely insatiable!" He handed us our drinks.

"You're pretty sexy too," I said, not knowing what insatiable actually meant.

Klaus chuckled and let it go. Then he said, "David, does anyone in your house have a tape recorder?"

"Well, we have the datasette recorder for the VIC-20."

"I mean something that can play music," said Klaus. "I was thinking a little music for our party would be nice, and maybe when we're learning to play or sing songs, it could help us with that too."

"The only two I can think of are in the stereo upstairs and the one in Mom's car radio."

"Your mom was a doctor, and I've seen doctors walking around, mumbling into dictation recorders," said Klaus. "Did your mom use one of those at home?"

"Yes, she did!" said David with a huge smile! "She has at least two upstairs, and I know one of them is a regular cassette too, because they changed the ones at her hospital to mini-cassettes, and she complained a lot about having two different kinds of tape. She has at least one of each."

"Where are they in the house?"

"They would be in her desk in the den."

"What part of the house is the den in?" asked Klaus.

It's right over the garage," said David. "You go up the stairs to the kitchen, and you go left, and then through the opening to the left, and it's right there."

"What about cassettes?" Klaus asked. "Are there any music cassettes, or blank cassettes?"

"Oh, Mom has tons of cassettes with music, and there should be blank cassettes up on the shelf next to the VIC-20 computer."

Klaus stood up and rummaged around the top shelf above the couch, which was nice because his cock was swinging just inches from our faces. David grabbed Klaus' cock and pulled it twice, making a honking sound. It was a rare moment when he was the one being mischievous instead of me.

"Hey, you!" called Klaus as his body jerked. I loved seeing David doing things like that, and I loved laughing with him afterward.

"Here we go," said Klaus. "Looks like a box and a half of blank tapes, sixteen altogether." He walked over to the outdoor monitor and flipped a few switches. "Hey guys, it's twenty-two rads per hour outside, so shouldn't the house and garage be about half that?"

"Yes," said David.

"That's normal," I said.

"Why do you suppose the garage is showing four point six then?"

David and I looked at each other, curiously. "I wonder if the garage probe was moved somehow or blocked by something," said David.

Then I smacked my head and said, "Duh! I'm so stupid! The garage is mostly underground! Of course, it's more protected than an average garage."

"Oh, I never thought of that either Don, but you're absolutely right!"

"Well then, that means we have more options with the CB radio tomorrow," said Klaus.

"What about tonight?" I asked.

"Hang on," said Klaus. "I've got lots of fun ideas already for tonight. Let's see, the north side of the house is lower than the south. Right now, it says fifteen. The kitchen is seven point eight. Yes, this will definitely work. David, where are your mom's music cassettes?"

"In the living room by the stereo, on the other side of the kitchen from the den."

"Can you tell Donovan exactly where they are?"

"Oh, Don knows," said David. "He spends half of his summers here."

"I know," I said. "They're in two cases, like suitcases only smaller."

"Ok, here's what I propose," said Klaus. "We'll assume it's eight rads per hour upstairs. We have been doing one bathroom break of three minutes per day at seven rads per hour, so I think we should keep this to two minutes. I think we should all put on socks, then go upstairs for no more than two minutes."

"Donovan, you go right to the living room right away and grab those two cases of cassettes and get back downstairs. Don't wait for us if we take a few seconds longer. David, we'll go to the den and get both of those dictation tape recorders, plus any blank mini-cassettes and batteries we can find. We have enough regular cassettes already down here, and we've got that whole box full of batteries, so we're good – but extra supplies don't hurt – and the mini-cassette recorder might be useful. Then we have a very quick rummage around that room in case there's anything else we need. Then we get back downstairs as quick as we can. How does that sound?"

"Cool!" I said. I was longing to see another part of the house again, even though it had only been three and a half days of relative comfort in the basement.

"I think that sounds great!" said David. I think he was thinking the same thing I was.

"Donovan, can you carry both of those cases by yourself?" asked Klaus.

"Oh yeah," I said. "They're just cassettes; they're super-light."

"Ok, then when we get back downstairs, we wait next to the decontamination shower until we're all back before removing our socks, and we check our feet with the Geiger counter, then use a wipe on them and check that. Then we use a wipe on every package or item we bring down and scan that. Everybody understands the plan?"

"Yep!"

"Yes."

"Great! Let's down our drinks and do it!"

***

A few minutes later, we were all back downstairs. I'd grabbed a few tapes that were sitting on the tape deck without looking at them, then latched up the cases. I crossed the kitchen and called out, "I'm done. Going downstairs now."

"Ok," called Klaus. I thought there had been the slightest bit of distress in his voice, though.

It turned out that Dr. Chance's cassette dictation recorder was not in her desk, and after a minute of looking around, Klaus and David came downstairs with only the mini-cassette recorder and a few tapes that had been in the drawer.

David was really upset, and Klaus had his arm around him as they came downstairs. He held David and hugged him while David had a good little cry. It hurt to watch, but it seemed natural that a boy might need his dad at a time like that. Every lover needs their lover, but kids still need grown-up love from parents, or whoever is acting as their parent.

In hindsight, I can say that David needed parental guidance, which is not something most lovers should be giving to each other. Love must be equal, with neither needing such fundamental things as parental guidance from the other. There can be love between two such people, of course. That's as natural as a parent loving a child, but romantic love cannot function like that. I have learned it must be equal.

"I'm just sorry I made us all go upstairs and have an unnecessary exposure for nothing," said David, "that's all."

"Sorry?" I said incredulously, "I thought it was awesome to get out of the basement! And look," I said, taking a cassette out of one of the cases, "we've got words to all kinds of songs now! That's not nothing!"

"And we do have a tape recorder," said Klaus. "We can use that mini-cassette recorder for our own music just as easily as a regular cassette."

"David," he said with sudden seriousness, "whenever someone remembers something or has a good idea, and people make plans based on that memory or good idea, we make those plans knowing they might not work out. Memory isn't perfect, and sometimes plans just don't work out. We knew that before we went upstairs. There is no shame in your mother not having left her tape recorder where she usually did. Ok?"

"Ok," he sniffled. Now it was my turn to hug him and tell him I loved him.

***

"Ok," said Klaus, "That's part one of the plan done. Part two is the CB radio in the car. I think we should go out there now and see what we can learn. We know the garage is measured at four point six, and inside the car should be half of that, which is two point three. That's nothing to be concerned with. Let's each put on a fresh pair of socks first and follow the same procedure coming in."

"Since we're going through the garage, I think we should check our hair for dust when we come back in. Actually, we should check our whole bodies. If we do that, we should be ready to do full decontamination. I'll disconnect the hose from the shelter corner and pass it to you, David, and you can hang it where it was. I guess this would be a good time to check the Nano-Pure filter on the hose."

Klaus passed the hose through the opening in the wall to David, who was in his dad's workroom.

"Remember to read C-P-M on the Geiger counter when you check the filter," said David.

"C-P-M?" asked Klaus.

David hung up the hose and went to the shelter corner to explain the difference between rads per hour and counts per minute. "A simple way to think about it is if you walk into a room and you want to measure how bright the room is, that's like measuring rads per hour. However, if you want to know how much total light a single bulb gives off, no matter where the light goes, you want to use counts per minute. We use rads per hour because we want to know how 'bright' a room is. That's what matters to our bodies, no matter where the 'brightness' comes from, but for the filter, we definitely do want to know how much 'brightness' is coming from that one source because that one source tells us how safe our water is."

"Ok. Wow. It's twelve hundred. Is that high?"

Normally, I would have jumped in and been the know-it-all, dispenser of information, but it felt so nice to see David getting all that fatherly love and support, I decided to be a spectator.

"It's not high," said David, "but I don't know if it would normally be lower. Our well water filters through rocks, and it's surrounded by rocks. All rocks have some radioactivity, so all well-water has some radioactivity. We know this radioactivity is what was picked up by dozens of gallons of water. So maybe we can say this was 100 C-P-M per gallon or less. That's really very little. All we can do is log the time, the level, and the number of gallons on the flow meter and see if the next one gives us more or less per gallon."

"It just sounded like such a high number," said Klaus.

"Watch this," said David as he took the Geiger counter from Klaus.

There was a small plastic pouch on the side of the device containing what looked like a very small scrubbing pad for washing dishes. He stood next to Klaus, held the probe up to the pouch, and made the thing screech like it had done when the fallout had arrived from St. Cloud.

"Thirty-eight hundred C-P-M," he said. Then he took the scrubbing pad thing out of the pouch and held it in his bare hand, rubbed it on his skin, and offered it to Klaus, who declined to hold it.

"That's a tiny amount of radiation," said David. "This mesh is a mantle from a camping lantern. You can buy a pack of five for three dollars at Target. Lots of stuff in your home is this radioactive, even your food. A normal banana has about a thousand C-P-M, which is ten times as much as the filter pulled out of the water – none of this is as radioactive as your own bones. Just by sleeping next to you for one night, because your bones give off radiation, the person next to you will absorb radiation from your body in addition to the radiation coming from their own. It only amounts to about half as much as eating a banana, though. We're talking super-tiny amounts. I don't really care how hot this filter gets anyway for two reasons. First, it's the only water we've got, and second, these filters won't let any of the fallout particles through, no matter how small they are. Only traces of dissolved isotopes can get through these filters, and I'm not too worried about them getting all the way down to the artesian well water. If they do, I doubt they'll be enough even to matter. Dad told me it's nearly five hundred feet deep."

Klaus rumpled David's hair, which made David smile proudly, and which made me happy I hadn't jumped in and played Mr. Know-It-All. In my whole childhood, that almost never happened – me seeing immediately how good it is not to try to impress people. I had to love someone in order to see that. Only my love for David made that obvious to me. This is a story of love, and for this tired old fool, this was one bad habit that love eventually helped me break if, indeed, I have broken it.

***

Soon we all had our socks on and were lined up at the door to the garage. Klaus went in first to remove the car cover. When he got in the back seat, that was our signal to come out and join him. I seemed to be in charge of CB operations, so I sat in the driver's seat – I was nervous – My right knee was bouncing. What would we find out? Was there a world out there?

A minute earlier, I'd been standing at the door, excited and impatient. Now it started to become real again. Imagine the weight of knowing there's a very real chance that when you turn on a radio, you might actually learn nearly every human who was alive last week is now dead? David and I had lived through something like that just three days earlier, but we found out it was just our country that was destroyed. Humanity was fine otherwise, but what about now?

The last we heard, NATO was furious, and the Soviets were claiming innocence. Even though the Soviets had taken the initiative and stood their launch crews down from alert status, who knows what might have happened? Was the St. Cloud burst part of a larger nuclear exchange? I think that having been through an attack once and not knowing the outcome until all the government lies were made clear is what made this feel so difficult.

David sensed my feelings. He put his hand on my leg, whispered, "I love you, Donovan," and nodded, as if to tell me it was ok. I switched on the radio and nervously selected channel nineteen.

"Break one-nine, break one-nine, anybody there? Break one-nine, this is Sven and Ole, come back?" Silence. I turned the squelch all the way off and tried again. Nothing but static.

"Ok, that's not good," I said in a shaky voice.

I switched to channel eight and called, "Breaker eight, breaker eight for CCO 830. Breaker eight for CCO 830, this is Sven and Ole, you got your ears on?" Static. My hands were shaking terribly. I handed David the mic and switched to channel nine.

"Emergency channel. No slang. Pl… Plain English."

David held my hand as he keyed the mic and said, "Emergency services, this is Sven and Ole, Sven and Ole calling, can you hear us? Emergency, this is Donovan and David, Donovan and David and Klaus calling. This is David Chance, Donovan Langevin, and Niklaus Kettering. Can anybody hear us?" I thought there was the slightest squeak buried somewhere deep in the static, but it could have been my imagination.

"Is anybody monitoring channel nine? Please respond, anybody." I squeezed his hand and began to cry. I didn't want to believe it. There had been plenty of people to talk to before the St. Cloud blast. Where were they all?

David hung the mic back on the radio, switched the key off, and hugged me. "We don't know what this means. I think we should wait until we get inside to talk about what this might mean. Oh look! Mom left a tape in the stereo." He ejected the tape and said, "Pete Townsend, Empty Glass. You love that one, don't you, Hunny! I bet she's got more in the glove compartment."

"What are we going to play them on?" I whimpered.

David paused for a minute, then held something in front of me. "Will this work?"

"Is that your mom's cassette recorder?" asked Klaus.

"Yes, it is!" said David with a huge smile that seemed to make his agony about not finding it upstairs worthwhile.

He looked at me with his most sincere plea for a smile. I don't care who you are. When my David looked at you like that, it was not possible to resist smiling. It was an unfair weapon that should have been licensed. I smiled and hugged him. I truly was happy about finding the tape recorder, but I knew my misery about not knowing what else had happened was still there, and I could be miserable again when we went inside.

Chapter 68

A Fine, Fine Day for a Reunion

'12:00 AM, outside 22 rad/hour, basement 1.9 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus put the cover back on the car. He and I each carried in a bunch of tapes from the glove compartment, and David carried the tape recorder in from the car. We did the whole, complete decontamination routine. We were happy to learn that nothing at all that we had brought down from upstairs was contaminated. Still, we cleaned everything carefully, just the same. We even agreed to a full decontamination shower using Lift-Away shampoo at Klaus' suggestion. His arms and chest seemed like they might have gotten a little fallout on them from the car cover, but if he did, it was such a slight amount, it was almost undetectable, and then only with the wipes. We knew we were the three luckiest, most fortunate Americans alive after our nuclear holocaust, and we didn't feel like taking chances. A full decontamination shower was a fair price for our fortunes. One single, tiny speck of plutonium-239 could do us in.

Klaus went to the back wall where the food and liquor was and mixed us each another drink. I knew he reduced the amount of alcohol to compensate for how much we were drinking, so even though this was our fourth drink, I didn't even feel light-headed.

"How 'bout a whole shot of vodka this time?" I asked.

"Sure," he said, "this time. This one time. Otherwise, we've…" he sang the rest, "gotta do it my way, or no way at all!"

"That's not fair!" I said. "I love that song! You can't use music I like to make rules, ok!"

"Why not? Doesn't it work?"

"Yeah but…" He handed us our drinks. I finished my sentence with a nose-tickling kiss. "Don't ever trim your mustache!" I said. "It tickles, and that feels nice!"

"Yeah!" said David.

I held up my drink and said, "to long, tickly mustaches!"

We all took a drink. Then Klaus said, "To party music!"

"Here here!"

I had completely forgotten to be miserable about not reaching anybody on the car CB. Boys can be easily distracted by fun things.

***

We all knelt on the floor and put the cases and loose piles of cassettes on the couch so we could sort through them to see what we liked. Some of them were David's, so I knew those pretty well, and most of my own records were there in the cassette version. I only had maybe a dozen albums at home, but they were really good ones.

"Oh!" said Klaus with a worshipful smile as he held up a cassette with a black label, "I know you guys love this one! I want to nominate this as the first recorded music we play for our party!" He bowed and reverently presented to us, with both hands, the cassette of AC/DC's Back in Black.

"Yeah!" I said.

"That one's mine!" said David. "I love that one!" That sounded odd to me because David usually preferred lighter pop and dance music. I was the rocker.

Klaus put the cassette in the tape recorder and pressed play. We all knew the album started with a huge bell chiming, but something seemed wrong. It was too huge, too deep, or something. "I think we need new batteries," he said.

"Oh, I know what that is," said David. He pressed a button on the tape recorder, and it sounded perfect.

"Rock on!" I said.

"This tape recorder is meant for dictation, so you can set it to half-speed and double the time on a regular cassette."

"Rock on!" said Klaus. We all agreed to hurry and put the cassettes away before starting the music, so Klaus rewound the cassette, and that's what we did.

I'm a rolling thunder, a pouring rain; I'm comin' on like a hurricane…

Many of you who lived through those horrible days – such irony that I should call them that – will remember the feeling of being without music or radio or contact with the outside world, and how good that first taste of music is once you have it back. Yeah, it was a tiny dictation machine. The sound was cruddy. It wasn't the nice stereo system upstairs, but it was heaven, and we danced!

David sang along too, and it was weird for me to hear him singing such crunchy, raw, eyeball-bleeding music. It was weird, but he was a very good singer, and it sounded fantastic. That first song was special. I knew we had the whole album still to come, but that was my favorite song on the album, and it was the first one we heard in our shelter corner. Sometimes when I feel really happy, I can notice a glint of sadness to it, and I felt it when I heard that final bit.

…Aaaaahhh… Hell's bells!

Suddenly we heard a loud siren turn on and off. Not the Civil Defense siren, more like a police car. We heard it a second time. Klaus stopped the tape recorder, and we all went out into the basement, where we saw flashing red lights outside the window. Then we heard a powerful loudspeaker and a voice we'd all heard before. "David Chance, Niklaus Kettering, Donovan Langevin, this is Wright County Sheriff's Deputy four three one, are you there in the house? David Chance, Niklaus Kettering, Donovan Langevin, if you can hear me, please answer me by speaking through your house's intercom system. I will hear you."

"Maybe I should talk to him," said Klaus.

"Tell him I said hi!" I said.

"Me too," said David.

"This is Klaus Kettering. Good to hear your voice again, Deputy! What can we do for you?"

His reply came through his jarring PA speaker. "Sorry, but I need to use this thing to speak to you. Fallout precautions. First off, how are you and the boys doing? Do you need anything urgently? Are there any casualties or serious injuries? Do you have enough food, water, and medicine to last another two weeks? And ah… have there been any changes to who is staying there? Is it just you, David, and Donovan, no one else?"

"Wow," said Klaus over the intercom, looking at each of us with a smile, "that's so thoughtful of you to check on us! Thank you for caring! You must be busy with people in real need. Ah, very quickly, no injuries, all in good health, and yes to all that other stuff. It's still just the two boys and me here, and we have plenty of everything, probably for at least another month or two. Dr. and Mr. Chance did an incredible job keeping this place supplied for everything…"

"Please tell him we will share," said David. "That's very important. It's why my parents kept this place so well stocked. Even people who need a place to stay. It's very important."

"One thing more," said Klaus over the intercom, "It was the wish of Dr. and Mr. Chance that what we have here should be shared with others, so if you have people in need, we have plenty. One of our supplies could become a problem, possibly in less than a week. As you see, we have electricity through a generator. We are very fortunate for that, and we know it, but we might run out of gasoline at some point. That could impact a lot of people in one way. We have a very deep artesian well that has Nano-Pure filtration. I'm told that's what they use in research labs when they need ultrapure water. As long as the electricity is on and the water pump is working, we can offer a nearly limitless supply of clean water for anyone who needs it. We could provide that right now if anyone needs it. We can run a hose under the garage door, and people can come by and take as much as they like. If water is needed, that is the reason the fuel would be needed. Otherwise, we'd be content to learn to live without power like everybody else."

"That is very, very generous of you, Klaus."

"This is David's house, and he just this moment insisted that I tell you that. And yes, he is an extremely generous person."

"He sure is. Thank you very much, David. We do have a lot of people who need a lot of help, especially safe, fresh water. Our problem is connecting those in need with those who can help. As I'm sure you know, it's about twenty rads per hour outside, and people just can't be traveling in this. The sheriff's department has radiation suits for deputies, but moving people around can be difficult. You know you can't walk through this."

"David says you're welcome, and both of the boys have asked me to say hi to you! They remember your help and your bravery when they were in such danger that night when we all met. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that too. We had to work through a lot of fear that night, but we have each other."

"That's what cops are supposed to do, but again, it was the boys who led us to a serial child murderer, and now we are safe from him, so they just keep making my job easier."

Many things felt weird about this conversation. First was how incredibly loud it was. But we were pretty isolated, so I wasn't worried about people overhearing us. Second, it was well after midnight. Why did he choose that time to check up on us? Third, I still had very mixed feelings about them shooting a man dead because I helped them find him, no matter who he was.

As if on cue, Deputy four three one answered my second question. "The reason I'm here is more than just to check up on you. I have someone in the car here who says he knows you, and he's 'very desperate to see you again,' his exact words. I have verified his identity as Kevin Geheren."

Chapter 69

Meet the New Boy

'1:00 AM, outside 21 rad/hour, basement 1.9 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus' hand dropped from the intercom panel. He just whispered, "Kevin?"

How could it be Kevin? His boyfriend, who ran off to Ohio State and got a girlfriend named Katherine? Had he come back for Klaus? I was dumbstruck, and I wasn't the only one.

"I think you should say something, Klaus," said David. I held David close in a desperately frightened hug.

"But he's in Ohio!" said Klaus over the intercom.

"His driver's license is Ohio-issue. Is there a problem Klaus?"

"A problem?" Klaus wasn't thinking straight, and neither was I.

"Klaus, it's me," said a second voice over the intercom. "I came home for summer. I need a place to stay, but I won't put you through pain if that's what it means."

Klaus looked at David, who said, "I want people to share what we have, but not if it hurts you. I need you to decide. I will welcome him, but only if you can too."

"Hurt?" said Klaus in a shaky, almost hyperventilating voice, "welcome? Of course, I want him here! Is he real?" He pressed the button and said, "Kevin, are you real?"

"Yes, it's me Klaus."

Deputy four three one took the mic and said, "How 'bout it, Klaus? I'm a little confused. Do you want him to stay with you or not?"

"Of course, I want him to stay!" shouted Klaus as he broke down in tears.

"Hello Deputy, four three one. This is David. Klaus definitely wants Kevin to stay. We all want him to stay. Klaus has missed him very much, and… he's feeling rather emotional right now. Yes, Kevin, we welcome you to our home!"

I wasn't sure David was speaking for me. I didn't want some homewrecker coming in and taking our Klaus! "One request before you get out of the car, Kevin. I understand you were planning to go to medical school. Will you please tell the deputy about any medical training you've had. We have a lot of medications, medical supplies, and medical equipment, even emergency surgical equipment and instruments. You probably know Klaus had some training as a medic when he was in Vietnam. With the two of you, it's possible we can help people. Maybe the sheriff's deputies can bring people to us if they need first aid or medicines."

"Ok," said Kevin, rather flatly.

"Ok then," said the Deputy. "We'll follow the same procedure we used last time with Klaus. You open the garage door, Kevin will enter, then you close the door. I'll honk my horn and drive away once the door is closed all the way. Remember to do a really good decontamination any time someone enters your house."

David opened the garage door while Klaus tried his best to compose himself. "Thank you, Deputy!" said David.

"You're very welcome. Stay safe! We're all happy you're doing so well." I heard a car door close. "Ok, he's in your garage. Close the door now, and I hope we can meet in person soon!"

"Us too!" said David as he closed the garage door. We heard the deputy's car horn honk as he drove away. Then David knocked on the door to the garage and called out, "Kevin? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, please don't touch anything, and stay at least five feet away from the door."

"Yes, I can hear you," he said, "and I know I might have some contamination, so I won't touch anything, and I'll keep my distance."

My feelings were getting really mixed up, and not all bad. Was he a threat? Was he hetero? Would he and Klaus automatically become gay boyfriends again? I didn't know how stuff like that worked. I also wondered if he would be as hot as he was in high school when he rode on my school bus.

"Thank you very much," said David.

"Look, is Klaus all right?" Kevin asked. "This is all kinda scaring me. I don't know if he's told you much about me, but… it's complicated."

"I understand," said David. "We can all talk more about that if you like once you're inside and comfortable. First, we need to get you decontaminated. In order to do that, I need you to put anything you're carrying on the floor right where you are and take off your shoes. As you take off each shoe, take a step forward with that foot. The point is to have your socks only touch clean floor. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, it sure does. You have a pretty thorough system here."

"Thank you!" said David. "Now, I need you to take off all of your clothes except your socks. Let your clothes fall to the floor where they are, except for your shirt. Hold that in your hand. Does that make sense?"

"Yes, it does."

"Good, said David. "While you undress, we need to put on our protective gear. I'll be back in a couple minutes. Please stay where you are for now."

"Will do," he said.

Klaus and I had already begun dressing up in our meat packing-paper suits. We all put on our third pair of socks for that day and wore the shoe covers over the socks. When we were completely covered up, looking like crumpled litter blowing alongside the highway, David went back to the door.

"Are you ready?" asked David. "Have you removed all of your clothing except your socks? That also means jewelry and accessories. I'm sorry I forgot to mention that earlier. You can keep your glasses on if you wear any. Other than glasses, the only thing we can allow in the house is your human body, nothing else. So, are you ready to come in?"

"Ye…" he whimpered, then cleared his throat and said, "Yes, I'm ready."

"Ok then," said David. "I'm going to open the door now, but don't come in until I say so, ok?

"I understand," he said.

David opened the door. Dear God in Heaven! He was not just as hot as he was in high school! My David's body was made of pure angelic love and soft perfection, but Kevin's body was unspeakably sexy and far, far hotter than when he was in high school! I had a boner again, which was easily hidden in the packing-paper suit.

"Ok," said David, and I could hear the gentle smile in his voice. He waved his hand to beckon Kevin closer. "Come up to about a foot from the door. You can throw your shirt on the pile with the rest of your clothes. These procedures are so confusing. I wasn't supposed to open the door yet!"

Kevin smiled softly and said, "It's ok."

His smile could make it rain. His smile could make the sun come out, whichever you prefer. His eyes were prettier than I'd remembered, and I never noticed it before, but the outside corners did look like he was wearing mascara, and he really did have lovely lipstick-lips. He had those smile dimples on his cheeks that I love so much. He was also wearing tube socks that went up to his knees – white with red and black stripes.

"Ok," said David, "take off one sock, and step that foot through the door, on the floor inside. Now do the same with your other foot, good. Please throw your socks out there with your clothes. Thank you. Now I'll close the door, and we can begin! Welcome to our home! I'm David, that's Donovan…"

"You were on my school bus in high school!" I said, wanting to make a very friendly first impression.

"Donovan Langevin? Yeah, I remember you as a cute little second-grader."

"I was cute in third grade too."

"Oh right, my senior year, yeah. I'd gotten my own car by then, and I didn't take the bus much."

"And wait till you see me now!"

He gave me that smile again, and I melted. When he stood still, his body seemed to fall into artistic statue poses. He didn't seem the least bothered about being naked in front of us. "Where's Klaus?" he said.

From far off, we heard Klaus clear his throat. "Kevin?" he called. "I would rather wait until the decontamination is done before I see you. I don't know if you can understand, but I want to be able to hug you if you want, or whatever. I just don't want the first time I've seen you in two years to be, you know, contamination, having to be careful. Can you understand? When I see you, I just want to see you and let our reactions happen naturally without all that other hassle. Is that ok?"

"Of course that's ok, Klaus," he said. "It'll give me a chance to get to know your roommates!"

Roommates? Did he think we were just Klaus' roommates? I was emotionally very edgy. I thought it would be best to save that talk until later. Roommates indeed!

"They will give you a very thorough and professional cleaning. You're in good hands.

***

He had very well developed muscles, but nothing bulgy or creepy like professional bodybuilders get. He looked like an Olympic swimmer, which we later learned he might have been the next year.

The 1984 Summer Olympics were supposed to be in Los Angeles, but I doubted there was a Los Angeles left anymore, but that was how he was built. His body was completely hairless from the neck down. I'd never heard of a man with no pubic hair, but he didn't even have leg hair. It made him look more like a boy, though, and less like a man. I thought that was a huge part of why I thought he was so hot. He was like the best of both boy and man. His penis was absolutely gorgeous! It was smaller than Klaus', but he was smaller than Klaus, so it made sense on him. It didn't hang straight down and look all saggy. It's like it was always just a little perky. It came straight out of his body and curved downward, but only after it was clear of his scrotum. It didn't just squish them out of the way. He was also the first of us in the shelter corner who was uncircumcised.

David read off the steps for decontamination, like he'd done with Klaus, but since he had most of his vision back, he could help me with Kevin. I used every excuse I could think of to touch his body, even through my rubber gloves.

To my thrill, Kevin's sleek, muscular thighs had been a little hot. He had been wearing shorts before he came inside. I did everything I could to wash his gorgeous legs. David could tell I was getting off. We shared looks at each other while Kevin was looking away, but David's entire face was covered. The only part of it I could see was his eyes, and not very clearly. I wasn't sure what he was trying to tell me.

"Yeah? He is absolutely hot!" or "I know! He's your type! You're gonna love his company and playing with him," or "I thought I was that sexy? Did you just drop me for the fancy model?"

At some point, when I had that last thought, Kevin suddenly looked a lot less sexy, and I became a lot more focused on my work. It's probably a bad idea to drool over someone else when the one you love, adore, and lust after most is right next to you. Let me just say that I became more focused on my work, but my boner never left.

Chapter 70

Can Love Return?

'2:00 AM, outside 20 rad/hour, basement 1.7 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

David and I each took a bath towel and helped towel Kevin off. I thought that was a good sign that David wasn't upset about me drooling over him. David and I took off our protective gear and disposed of everything in the proper bin, so we were as naked as Kevin.

"There's something you should know about living here," I said. "David and I are gay boyfriends, and we love each other more than you can possibly imagine." I pulled David close and gave him a big, deep, long, sloppy, and very erotic kiss. I didn't stop until I had a good stiff boner because that was what I wanted to show Kevin.

"We don't wear clothes, and we all live in the same shelter room and share the same bed, so we'll be making love a lot, and we're not going to stop doing that just because you've joined us. You have to be ok with that." I looked at David, who nodded in agreement, and I deliberately said nothing about Klaus.

To my astonishment, Kevin smiled and said, "Wow! Can I have a kiss from each of you? Would that be ok?"

I stood on my toes and puckered up, but he wanted the sexy kind of kiss, with tongue and everything. I groped his ass, and he groped mine. Our hands did a lot of exploring. When we were done, Kevin and I, and I was surprised to see David too, we were all erect. Then David took his turn with the new boy. I understood why it turned David on to see me with Kevin. He knew how to stroke and caress every bit of David's body to make it curve and form the sexiest shapes imaginable. Oh, he was going to fit right in!

"Thanks guys," he said with his super-hot superpower, his superhero super-smile. He was the sexiest adult I'd ever seen in my life, and by far, the sexiest part of him was his smile.

"Are you ready to see Klaus?" asked David.

"Yes, I think so." That's what he said, but I thought he looked worried.

"You need to know that your reunion won't be private," said David. "Whatever you have to talk through, you'll have to talk it through in front of us. We hide nothing from Klaus, and he hides nothing from us. Everything is a community issue in a small, one-room shelter. We'll do what Klaus does when we want to make love alone, though. We'll sit together on the other side of the room doing something quiet. We'll try not to disturb you, but we will be able to hear and see everything."

"I was surprised!" I said. "I thought I wouldn't like it, but having no room for any privacy at all makes me feel like I'm a full member of this family, fully all the way. It's really hard to feel left out when you're stuck together like this."

He flashed his super-sexy super-smile and said, "Thanks, guys. I think I'm actually going to like living like that. Let's go." He was smiling kindly, but I noticed he was no longer erect.

"We're coming in now, Klaus," I called. "Ready?"

"Yep."

I entered first, followed by David. We went straight to the recliner because we thought they would need more room. David sat on my lap.

I kissed David – It was mostly a nervous kiss – to try to distract me from Klaus and Kevin. After about five seconds, the two of them were bawling loudly without having said a word. I glanced out of the corner of my eye, and I could see they were in a very tight hug. I pulled David into a hug that kept me looking the other way.

"I don't know if I can do this," I whispered to David.

"Try your best, Hunny." He turned around to face me, with his knees on either side of my hips, and he smiled into my eyes. Superboy magic powers activated!

"You boys are free to join us if you like," said Klaus. "Kevin said you told him about how nothing is really private here, and we both agree that it's a good idea to include you in this conversation, especially since we've made a nice life here for the three of us, and now there are four of us. That will affect all of us."

"Can I get you a drink, Kevin?" asked Klaus.

"Yes, please! That would be nice!"

"Boys? Another round?"

"Yeah!"

"Yes, please."

"We were having a party like it's 1999 when you arrived," said Klaus.

"So you guys get to have alcohol?" asked Kevin.

"Yes," said David, "on certain occasions, and Klaus always decides how much vodka to put in our drinks, so we don't have too much."

"Oh, he always did that with me, too," said Kevin. "I bet you two figured it out right away. It took me three nights of drinking with him before I figured that out!"

"We did a special ancient ritual last night," I said. "That was the first time we had alcohol except for a half-glass of wine with meals, but we figured it out before the night was over."

"You did the ritual? Oh wow!" said Kevin. "How was it for you?"

"It was awesome! Really, really awesome until…" David caressed my chest. "Until I got carried away and hurt David. That was awful, and it meant we had to be done."

David kissed me and said, "I forgive you for that, Hunny. You need to forgive yourself, and remember, it's pretty much healed up now."

"Last night, when that happened," said Kevin, "that must have felt terrible for both of you."

I looked down. David said, "It hurt quite a bit, but I think Donovan's emotional pain is lasting a lot longer than my physical pain. Klaus is great with muscle strains, and I think that's all it was and a really mild one."

"Donovan," said Kevin, "Everybody makes mistakes, right?" I nodded dutifully, if not enthusiastically. "And we can apologize and learn from our mistakes. It can actually be a time for two people who love each other to come closer. Since we all make mistakes, we can't measure the quality of a person by their perfection. I think we learn more about the quality of a person when we see how they handle the mistakes they've made."

"When you've hurt someone you love, it can be very difficult to accept that, but tonight, I am going to have to try. Since we are doing this all together, you will see me trying to deal with a similar situation, only the hurt I caused was a broken heart." He stopped suddenly. His chin and forehead wrinkled.

"I believe our imperfection is a gift, but when we've hurt someone we love, it's awfully difficult to see it that way."

I kissed David, then hugged him, then sniffled quietly. I was still so very sorry about how carried away I'd gotten and how I'd hurt David, but what Kevin said made a little bit of sense, and he was going to go through it in front of two strange boys he'd just met.

Klaus brought us our drinks. "Oh, I haven't had one of these made properly since… well, for the last two years," said Kevin. "Thank you Klaus."

David held his glass up and said, "To our family of four!"

"To our family of four!" we all repeated. I made a point only to have small sips from this drink. This talk didn't seem like something that would be helped by me getting drunk.

Klaus and Kevin were sitting in opposite corners of the couch, facing inwards. "So tell me, Kevin, how have you been? I'm afraid to ask about anybody after all that's happened, but how did you wind up here?"

"If you were thinking about asking me about Katherine, that's ok. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever laid eyes on. She was brilliant, witty, and a great swimmer. Just perfect for me, right? Well, we didn't even last until winter break in our freshman year. I was pretending. I thought if I met the right girl, and if anyone anywhere was the right girl, it was Katherine. I knew I was gay, but I couldn't shake this thought, what if I'm not? Should I let the perfect woman slip through my fingers?"

"I waited until we were finished with exams before I told her. That way, she could study without being all upset, and she'd be going right home to her family, who would be able to give her lots of support. I felt like I'd used her like she was my test case. She…" His voice began to break. "She really loved me and see how I'd used her." He took a sip of his Harvey Wallbanger while David reached for a tissue and blew his nose.

"There was no one else," Kevin continued. "Klaus, I don't know if you want to hear this, and I don't expect it'll make a damn bit of difference, but I thought of you all the time when I was with Katherine. Then when I broke up with her, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't imagine calling or writing you, not after leaving you and then taking up with a girl. Maybe you would want me back, I didn't know, but it felt wrong for me to contact you and tell you I'd had second thoughts, and I want to stay together after all. How could you ever trust me again?" Klaus' chin wrinkled as he put his hand over his forehead.

"I left to make a new life, and I put you behind me. That's what I thought I did anyway. After doing that to you, no matter how much I wanted you back, I couldn't hurt you again by inserting myself back into your life. I had no right. I don't know what kind of relationship you want now, but I don't think it can be up to me. You're all I ever wanted, and I threw you away. That's… Well, that's the important stuff. I can't imagine how you'd want me here in such an intimate setting, and I'm ready to leave again if this isn't going to work out."

Klaus sobbed quietly for a few seconds, then David softly spoke in a slightly trembling voice, "Klaus, do you think Kevin is a bit too hard on himself?"

Klaus' response was sudden, angry, and loving, though it might not have appeared that way to someone who didn't know him. He picked up a pillow from behind his back and threw it at Kevin, not very hard, and shouted, "Of course he's a bit too hard on himself!" Kevin looked stunned and confused. "Kevin, do you remember how old you were when we began our relationship?"

"I remember to the second," said Kevin, "but for now, we'll say thirteen."

"Yes, thirteen," said Klaus. "And we were together until you were seventeen. Most boys have no idea what they want at that age. Some say that's what college is for. You know I have had boys for lovers before. How do you think they worked out? When you love boys, you have to let them find themselves. You have to know when it's time to let them go. They might actually turn out to be straight.

On the other hand, they might want to date boys their own age. They might even get the opportunity of a lifetime, a full athletic scholarship to a Big Ten university! Loving boys means letting go. You had already given me four of the most precious years of your life.

"And being a boy who is loved by a man means you need to find yourself, unhindered by the man you were with. The boy always comes first – Always. What is best for you isn't what matters most. It's the only thing that matters. You're nineteen now, I know. You're a man, but in our relationship, for just a while longer, you're also still a boy, and you still come first. The man in you has to tell me what is best for you, and maybe the man and the boy in you need to decide what exactly you want out of our new relationship. Then, if you want to be with me, the uneasy part for you is whether I want the same thing. You seem to have come back, though. I need to know what you want, and as a man, what is best for you."

"You're sure that's how it is?" asked Kevin.

"Yep."

"What if he doesn't want you, Klaus?" I said, overwhelmed with worry. "Is he supposed to go back out in the fallout?"

"Kevin," said Klaus, "I hope you can see the love in this family. Before you answer me, I must tell you that this will remain a family, no matter what your decision is. No, Donovan, no matter what happens, Kevin will stay with us, as our guest or as part of our family. I think the time has come to decide. Kevin?"

He looked Klaus straight in the eye and said, "I thought it was too late; I had given up, but you've asked me, so I'll tell you what I didn't dare say to you before. I want to spend the rest of my life as part of your family, with you as my lover, and me as your lover. What is best for me has been obvious for the last year and a half. What is best for me is to be with the man I love, if he will have me." I had never heard anyone speak so directly to anyone before. It was a bit scary.

Klaus leaned toward Kevin and slid to him. As he did so, I could feel David's arms tightening around me. Kevin leaned in toward Klaus, and they kissed. I turned toward David, and we kissed.

Chapter 71

Family Rule

All you women who want a man of the street, but you don't know which way you want to turn

Just keep a coming and put your hand out to me, 'cause I'm the one who's gonna make you burn

I'm gonna take you down – down, down, down

So don't you fool around, I'm gonna pull it, pull it, pull the trigger

After a very emotional snog session on the couch and another on the recliner, Kevin suggested we get the party rockin' again, so we did. That prompted Klaus to mix another round of drinks, and he made all of them full-strength.

"We have a rule for new family members," I said to Kevin. "On your first night in our family, you have to cum once for each of us!"

Klaus put his hand over his head and said to Kevin, "That's not a rule."

"Well, I'm ok with it," said Kevin. "Even if it's a custom – a brand new custom."

With Kevin's help, we lay Klaus sideways on the couch. For the first time in two years, Kevin knelt astride Klaus' neck and fed him his sleek, bare cock. David sucked Klaus' cock for a few minutes while I got the oil & towels. I lubed up David's ass and Klaus' cock, and David sat right down, reverse cowboy, facing me. I sucked David's cock rather aggressively. Kevin made light, delicate sounds during sex, too, which I thought was a huge turn-on. I had a plan, dear reader, and you know what it was. I sucked and sucked. I wanted David to cum, and soon. Soon Klaus was hammering David's ass, and David let out a yowl that sounded nothing like any orgasm I'd heard from him before.

David had guessed my plan too. He climbed off Klaus while I slammed the rest of my drink. I began sucking Klaus' cock like the cockathlete that I was. I pushed deeper and harder, then without thinking too hard, I gave a good little grunt, and his cock suddenly popped into my throat! I bobbed up and down, keeping it deep to provide him with max stimulation to his head. Then, after I came up for air, I went all the way in, way out, and all the way in again. I could hear him grunting. I went as fast as I could. I wanted him to pound me like he was pounding David's ass.

Kevin reached back with one hand and grabbed my hair, holding my head into Klaus' cock. Perfect! I loved Kevin – Klaus took the clue. He began banging my throat like I knew he always wanted to. I was a little worried I might get a bloody nose from his pelvis slamming against my face, but I wasn't going to stop. He was taking such long strokes that I had no trouble breathing between them. I heard Kevin moaning louder as he pushed harder on my head. I squeezed Klaus' balls, and he suddenly slowed way down and pulled back slightly as Kevin made a cooing sound. Klaus filled my mouth, and I swallowed most of it. I sucked out every bit I could, leaving him clean. Then I gave David a deep tongue kiss so he could enjoy the taste.

***

'3:00 AM, outside 20 rad/hour, basement 1.8 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus and Kevin kissed for a while too. Soon it was time for another round of drinks. Klaus was feeling pretty good that night. This round was full strength also.

"Did you see Donovan's little trick, Kevin?"

"No, what did he do?"

"When he's really relaxed like this, he can deep-throat a man's cock."

"Oh my god, really?"

"Yep, I can!" I said proudly. "You came for Klaus. You still have to cum for David and for me. If you like, I'll deep-throat you."

"We'll see," he said, looking bashful for some reason. It occurred to me then that, although he had given us big, deep, erotic kisses, he hadn't touched David or me sexually yet. Maybe he didn't know what to expect.

"Do you like boys?" I asked.

"Oh, I love you, little sweeties! We didn't often have boys your age at Klaus' parties when I was in high school – only if they were friends from another school or someone's cousin from out of town. When they were there, they were always popular, and I always loved playing with them."

David and I looked at each other and giggled, "Then we're wasting time!" I said. I slammed my drink and lubed up my ass.

"Just slouch on the couch there," I said. "Ooh, very nice. David! Look at this cock! It's so beautiful! It's like a statue!"

I took the statuesque cock into my mouth and went right into my cockathlete routine. He was moaning and gasping in no time. I left his cock all slobbery and climbed up on top of him. I sat down on his cock and felt it smoothly penetrate my ass. It felt about the same size as Klaus', only not quite as long. His eyes were squinting, his mouth was wide open, and his head was tilted back. He was grunting, almost as if for mercy. I would have to be careful – I didn't want him cumming in my ass.

"Look at me, Kevin," I said softly as I began to move up and down. "No closing your eyes. We share this experience, ok?" He nodded and forced his eyes open. I leaned in and gave him a soft kiss as I began to ride him faster.

"Do you like how my ass feels, Kevin?"

"Mm-hmm," he said.

"Wait till you feel my throat." He gasped but kept looking at me. "It's not time to cum yet. I've only had you for about three minutes!" I squeezed as tight as I could, which isn't very tight when you've got a big cock in your ass. "Do you like it slow and intense? Klaus likes it slow and intense." He nodded helplessly.

"Klaus," I asked, "will you bring the trapeze down to where you think it'll work with Kevin?"

"Yes, Kevin, I said trapeze. Do you like to play, Kevin?" He nodded with a pleading look in his eye. "We can play with each other on the trapeze."

"David sweetie," I asked, "would you please get the red dildo?"

"That dildo could be for you or for me, Kevin," I said. "Would you like it in your ass?"

He gasped and said, "Yes… Yes, I would like that."

"That one's for him, David. Could you also get that other one we play with, please?"

"We're going to get along very well," I said, smoothly raising and lowering myself on his cock. "I think we've had enough of this," I said. I kissed him and let his hard cock slide out of my ass as I stood up. I went straight to the trapeze and hung by my knees.

"Come here, my sweet Kevin," I said, beckoning him with an upside-down finger.

Klaus had got the height perfect. I took Kevin's cock into my mouth gently. I pried his ass cheeks apart and held out my hand. David put the pink dildo in my hand. I started moving in and out with his cock, then pressing the dildo into his ass. I shuddered as I felt my cock sliding into his mouth. I pressed the head of the dildo into Kevin's hole. He didn't seem to react, so I gently slid the rest of it in. I began swinging very gently. When I swung back, I pressed the dildo into his ass. When I swung forward, I pulled his cock into my mouth. Soon I felt the fullness in my ass that told me he had fully inserted the larger sized dildo. At that instant, I knew I should hurry with Kevin because I wasn't going to last very long. I gently pulled his ass toward me and gulped his cock all the way down my throat. He shoved the dildo in my ass hard and let out a loud grunt.

I found his left hand with my left hand and pulled it down to the back of my head. Soon, all I had to do was hang there and hold his dildo in place. Breathing was even easier with Kevin because he didn't go in quite so deep. He went faster and faster, and I got closer and closer. I was cumming! I didn't want to cum first, so as I felt the explosion start, I reached around and squeezed his balls gently, and he fed me his yummy load. It tasted nothing like Klaus. It was somehow creamier, possibly sweeter. It was nice but in a very different way.

I held his smooth, muscular, hairless body close, dildo, and cock still in place, and he did the same. Then I heard a noise that sounded like kittens. I sucked Kevin's cock clean and turned my head. Klaus was sitting on the chair with David on his lap, both facing us, and not only were they fucking, but they were also both cumming.

I slid the dildo out of Kevin's ass, and he did the same. I hopped down from the trapeze and pulled Kevin into a great big, hot, erotic, sloppy kiss. "Whaddya think of us little sweeties now?" I asked him.

He went down on one knee, caressing my ass, and said, "You will always be a sweetie. I think that's just who you are, and I'm incredibly lucky to know you while you're still little." He kissed me sweetly. "And that's not just a sex thing either."

David and Klaus got up. David came to give me a sweet David kiss. Even after Kevin the sex god, there was nothing like a kiss from my David.

"Did he really cum?" I asked. David gave me a devilish grin and nodded his head. "Awesome! Now you just need to get one more load from Kevin. Really, sweetie, you should taste it if you can. It's creamy or something – It's really nice."

***

David flipped the cassette to side two.

Back in black, I hit the sack, I've been too long I'm glad to be back

Yes, I'm let loose, from the noose, that's kept me hanging about

I've been looking at the sky, 'cause it's gettin' me high, forget the hearse 'cause I never die

I got nine lives, cat's eyes, abusin' every one of them and running wild

'Cause I'm back, yes, I'm back

Well, I'm back, yes, I'm back

I was pretty sure Klaus' judgment wasn't the greatest because he mixed up another round, and mine was full-strength again. I was having a good time, and I wasn't about to say anything. I wondered if maybe seeing Kevin again was more than he was ready for emotionally.

"Kevin's definitely ready for another go," I said to David as we danced. "I can't believe you got Klaus, though!" Klaus and Kevin were dancing and kissing on the other side of the room, so we were able to talk freely.

"I didn't get him," smiled David, "He got me! He was so turned on by what you were doing with Kevin, and so was I!"

"I bet Kevin will be putty in your hands. Just dance for him, shake your incredibly sexy and unspeakably cute ass for him, then ride him or something. Did you see how he was with all that talk I was doing? I think men like all that non-touching and foreplay stuff more than anything. Tease him a bit, get him worked up, and he's yours."

"That's him," said David, "but what about me? I'm worn out!"

I got to my knees and sucked his cock gently yet energetically if that makes sense. He ran his hands through my hair and tilted his head to the side and moaned. I stopped abruptly and said in my snottiest tone, "Oh, sorry, you're worn out." I stuck my tongue out at him and gave his cock one last big slurp. "He can fuck you and I'll suck you if you like."

He kissed me with a smile and said, "We'll see, Hunny. He is so sexy; I think I could easily turn myself on for him, no matter how tired I am."

"I know what you mean, sweetie! I was worried while we were cleaning him and drying him that you might have been jealous. I looked at you a few times, but I couldn't tell what you were thinking."

"Oh, Don Hunny, don't be silly!" he said. "He is incredibly sexy, and I think we'll both be able to enjoy him that way a lot while he lives here."

"So, you're not jealous?"

He kissed me in reply.

Back in the back of a Cadillac, number one with the bullet, I'm a power pack

Yes, I'm in a bang, with a gang, they've got to catch me if they want me to hang

'Cause I'm back on the track, and I'm beatin' the flack, nobody's gonna get me on another rap

So look at me now, I'm just makin' my play, don't try to push your luck, just get out of my way

Klaus and Kevin weren't rock dancing or headbanging. They were mostly hugging, kissing, and twirling, but they were both smiling a lot. I was really feeling the alcohol, and I was afraid if I twirled like that, I'd have to throw up.

"I think this must be the happiest Klaus has ever been," said David.

"I bet. After what he said about having to let boys go, I think Kevin is the only one who came back, and he was the one Klaus wanted more than anybody."

"Hey guys," said Kevin as he and Klaus turned to walk toward us. "I've got an idea for you and me, David." He lifted himself up onto the trapeze and hung with his knees spread all the way to the sides of the pole. "Come join me, David!" he said.

Klaus lifted David upside-down, so he also hung by his knees from the middle of the trapeze. Then Klaus gave David and Kevin a touch-up of oil. Having Kevin's legs spread wide lifted him just enough to line his cock up with David's ass as he hung from the middle. David was a little nervous, but he was smiling, which told me it was that good thrill kind of nervous. He had never hung from the trapeze before, not upside-down. (He hung from my body once.) Kevin had his arms around David so he was nice and secure. Then I heard a high-pitched squeak as Kevin penetrated David's ass.

Klaus sat on the recliner and started wanking himself casually. I climbed onto his lap and sat down on his cock. He thrust in and out very slowly, in a relaxed way. I'd gotten my four loads from him, so I wasn't going to push things. I decided if he had a fifth load that night, it should go to Kevin.

The two of them began to swing on the trapeze as the sex god Kevin got into his rhythm. He reached around to wank David's cock, and I could tell David was simply overwhelmed, in a good way. David let out a shriek, which I could tell was his orgasm, though I wasn't sure Kevin could tell. He was pumping David faster, which messed up their swinging. David howled like I'd never heard him before!

"Oh, you sweet thing!" Kevin called out before cumming hard in David's ass. "David! You're so… I mean you feel so incredible. Oh my god! Just holding your body…"

"That's what I keep telling him," I said, "but he doesn't believe me."

David just hung there in Kevin's embrace until Klaus pulled out of my ass, stood up, and lifted David back to the ground.

"Wait, sweetie! I wanna taste it! Don't you?" He made an incoherent sound, slumped on the couch, and squirted Kevin's cum onto my tongue. I brought it up to David's mouth and kissed him. We swirled the creamy cum between our mouths, then swallowed.

David smiled and said, "You know, you're right! It really does taste nice and… I guess creamy is a good word for it."

***

"Last call!" said Klaus as he mixed another round of drinks. David declined. I think he was feeling a little woozy from the trapeze, but I decided to have one more.

Whiskey, gin, and brandy, With a glass I'm pretty handy

I'm trying to walk a straight line, On sour mash and cheap wine

So join me for a drink boys, We're gonna make a big noise

So don't worry about tomorrow, Take it today

Forget about the check, We'll get hell to pay

Have a drink on me, Have a drink on me

I sat on the recliner with David on my lap, facing me in a hug. Klaus & Kevin lay on the couch snuggling with each other. "Tonight was a night for a party and a reunion," said Klaus, "but I'm sure tomorrow we'll want to ask you about everything, like, how you found shelter since the first attack on Wednesday, and how St. Albert looks now. We've been completely cut off from the world for a while, and we're dying for some news. We'll ask you about all that tomorrow. Right now, it's this smooth ass I'm interested in."

***

We're just talkin' about the future, forget about the past

It'll always be with us, it's never gonna die, never gonna die

Rock 'n' roll ain't noise pollution, rock 'n' roll ain't gonna die

Rock 'n' roll ain't no pollution, rock 'n' roll is just rock 'n' roll

After all the pause, rewind, replays, after all the starts and stops, and after one battery change, the album finally finished, and it was time for bed.

Chapter 72

Secret Hangover

'4:00 AM, outside 20 rad/hour, basement 1.7 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus made the last radiation log entry before we pulled out the bed and settled in. Nobody was anxious about the four of us fitting on the bed because David and I were pretty small, and Kevin was smaller than Klaus. Besides, we all liked sleeping all snuggled up. Normally, I had always had David on my left and Klaus on my right, so I had a couple of snuggle options, but there was no way I would get in between Klaus and Kevin, not on their first night together. Really, the only reason I'd wanted the snuggle option with Klaus was that I was so terrified that first night. After that, it just felt nice. I decided it was really for the best because unless I needed a man or a father figure because I was scared or needed to learn something, I needed to be with David.

David and I kissed sweetly. He rolled to his left, and we spooned. Before I could even stroke his cock, he was asleep. I wondered if he had ever been up until four AM before. There is something extra soft and sweet about a beautiful boy who is fast asleep. I wished I could see him, but I just caressed his skin lovingly. He was my gay boyfriend, and I could never understand that. I could believe it, but I couldn't understand it. Why me? He loved everybody; it seemed. What made me special? I hurt people. I hurt him! Some kid punched him just for being with me!

As an old man, I still have not found a satisfactory answer to that question, but I believe it is one of love's mysteries. I don't think we can choose who we fall in love with, and I certainly don't think we can justify the partners we find happiness with. I still don't know why I was so utterly smitten with David. For some reason, I found equally perplexing; it seemed others did not see him as the miraculous angel of true joy that I did. People loved him, indeed, and people even though he was sexy. Why did he have that effect on me? Was he asking himself these same questions?

Speaking of love, this was Kevin's first night sleeping with us, and his first night sleeping with Klaus since he left two years earlier. After pulling three loads from him that night, and four from Klaus, I wondered if they would make love. If they did, I wondered if I could keep my curiosity under control and leave them alone. I heard a lot of kissing and a little bit of moaning, with the occasional soft giggle. There was not a hint of jealousy left in me. I wasn't worried anymore about Kevin taking our Klaus away. In fact, hadn't they both just put David and me first all night by playing along with us sexually instead of taking semi-private time to make love with each other? On their first day back together, they gave that to David and me.

I rolled over and whispered to them, "I love you guys. Both of you. Thank you for finding us, Kevin, and thank you both for having so much love for us."

"Aw, that's so sweet!" said Kevin in a voice that conveyed his magical smile. We all exchanged kisses, and I rolled back over to spoon with the boy I loved so much it made me want to cry, and I did, softly. Tears of joy aren't something I wanted to bother Kevin and Klaus with – I just held my David and drifted off to sleep.

***

'7:00 AM, outside 18 rad/hour, basement 1.6 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

'11:00 AM, outside 17 rad/hour, basement 1.4 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

'12:00 PM, outside 16 rad/hour, basement 1.4 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

It seemed to me that some adults liked to wake up long before they needed to. Klaus was one of these adults. Every day he'd spent with us, he was always out of bed before David or me. Since it was a weekend, and since we'd been up until after 4:00 AM, I felt no rush to get out of bed. I had no idea what time it was the first time I woke up, but Klaus and Kevin were already up.

Klaus was sitting in the recliner, and Kevin was straddling him. They were making love, alone and in peace. I smiled and snuggled up to my sweet David and slept a while longer. I was in no hurry to interrupt the closest thing they could get to privacy in our shelter corner. I was also in no hurry to move my head any more than was necessary.

***

I awoke to a light bouncing on the mattress as David rolled over to face me. I opened my eyes, and there he was again! My angel boy who was with me every morning to remind me he was not a dream. His long, messy black hair and his deep ebony eyes capped a smile that would melt an iceberg and turn it into happy butterflies. "Good morning, Hunny," he said softly.

***

Every day during the school year, my alarm would go off. I would hit snooze three or four times until Mom yelled at me from her bedroom to turn it off and get up. Every day, I slept exactly as long as I could in order to avoid the coming day. I was so tired, I dreamed of nothing but to sleep just another half-hour. In this stupor, I had to get dressed, grab a slice of bread and put a smear of peanut butter on it, and run to the bus stop, trying to swallow the bread before I got there because food wasn't allowed on the bus. Usually, I made it just in time.

On a good day, I would find an empty seat; then someone would sit next to me, facing the other direction with their feet in the aisle, and pretend I wasn't there, hoping their friends weren't watching. On a bad day, one of the bullies would sit next to me and take my glasses. He and his friends would play keep-away with them, and maybe I would get them back before school, perhaps not. Maybe they would be broken, or a lens would be scratched. Or maybe one of the kids would play it simple and just throw chewing gum in my hair, which meant I'd have to go to the nurse's office and get a chunk of my hair cut out. Whatever the case was, I knew that the first classroom I entered would have three seventh-graders hiding behind the door, waiting to punch me until Mr. Tuscque told us to settle down. That was my routine every school morning just three weeks earlier.

***

As I kissed David, I tried to tell him through my lips what it meant for me to start my day with him, and not my normal way. I would feel the feelings as I kissed him. I could feel my body filling with happiness and warmth, and I wanted to share that with him every morning. When he made me feel that good, I wanted to give him a piece of it back, just so he might know what he did to me every time he so much as looked at me. I have no idea if he ever felt all that. I don't know if he even thought I was a good kisser. I knew the most important fact in my life was that he loved me, and he wanted me more than anybody else. Why did he love me? Why didn't he sit with his back to me and pretend I wasn't there? I've already answered both questions, but still, those answers felt so incomplete.

On some mornings, like that one in particular, when I finished kissing David good morning, I would have to wipe away a few tears. He didn't really understand what my mornings were like before him, and I didn't want to tell him. I just told him the tears meant that was how much I loved him, and he would have to put up with them.

We both heard a deep groaning sound, and we realized Kevin was on his knees leaning over the recliner while Klaus was fucking him doggy-style. That's an awkward way to describe an act of such deep love, but I think it's even more awkward to say Klaus was making deep love to Kevin by anally penetrating him from behind. David and I kissed and snuggled some more, and I drifted off back to sleep again.

***

The headlines read 'these are the worst of times,' I do believe it's true

I feel so helpless like a boat against the tide, I wish the summer winds could bring back Paradise

But I know, if the world turned upside down, Baby I know, you'd always be around

The best of times are when I'm alone with you
Some rain some shine, we'll make this a world for two

David's fingers were flowing through my hair as he sang softly to me and only to me. The world had turned upside-down, and we were in love. I wanted to pretend I was still asleep and listen to the whole song, but I had to see his beautiful eyes, so I opened mine. He kept singing anyway until the end of the song, and he had to endure another round of tears after another good morning kiss.

"Well, who wouldn't cry if the most beautiful boy in the world woke you up like that? I bet you would, Kevin!" He seemed sensitive, and I thought he might be the type who would cry when being serenaded by a beautiful boy like David. He was a handsome boy like David, in Klaus' eyes. I wondered what it would be like to be so impossibly beautiful.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe tomorrow morning, David could sing to me instead?" He paused until he and David both started giggling. "Oh, you know I would!" he said. Then he looked at Klaus and said, "Are you taking notes from this little romantic cutie?"

***

I sat up to get out of bed, and I felt dizzy. I didn't tell anyone because I was pretty sure I knew what it was – I had a hangover. I walked quietly to the bathroom without raising attention, then I turned on the shower to hide any noise I was about to make, and I threw up in the toilet. Then I had a shower, and I thought I felt much better. I sat down and had a little spell of diarrhea too. I used an enema system Klaus had set up in the bathroom for cleaning ourselves out for sex to make sure I got it all. I knew Klaus had given me a lot of alcohol the night before, and I didn't want him to know I was probably hungover. I didn't want him thinking like that the next time we had a party with drinking.

***

Ten minutes after I returned from the bathroom, we had folded the bed away, cleaned up the room, and set up the table and, for the first time, four chairs. We only had three bananas left, and Klaus insisted on giving his to Kevin. I had Wheaties and toast with peanut butter. I loved it when the peanut butter melted on the hot toast. When Klaus offered me a glass of orange juice, I declined and said I'd rather have another glass of milk. The truth was that the orange juice was too much like the drinks we'd had the night before, and my stomach was telling me it didn't want anymore.

Chapter 73

Kevin's Story Begins

'1:00 PM, outside 16 rad/hour, basement 1.3 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

After we cleaned up from breakfast, I couldn't believe it was after one o'clock. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding my dizziness, which was much better since breakfast.

"So, my dearest love, my everything, my only reason, dear Kevin," Klaus began when we'd sat back at the table, after which Kevin interrupted him with a smiling kiss, "normally this is our reading time, but it's the weekend, and we can be flexible with our schedule. I think we should use this as storytime." I was quite relieved he didn't expect us to get up and do calisthenics! "Can you tell us how you rode out the attack, and how you survived until now? We're all very curious, I know. Any news from the outside would mean a lot to us."

"It's not a very happy story," said Kevin. He paused, and it seemed that all happy thoughts were sucked out of the room. "I'd been home from school for a month, and I was staying with my parents. That day I decided to ride my bicycle into town and have lunch at the Corner Bar. You know, it's a treat once in a while, even for elite athletes, to get a good burger and fries with a beer. The lunch rush was over before I even got there, so I sat at the bar to get caught up with Russ. He's the owner of the Corner Bar," he explained to David and me.

"I'm sure it was a complete shock to everybody," he continued. "I mean, our tensions with the Soviets have been high, but no higher than they've been for the past month or two, and there didn't seem to be any immediate crisis overseas, so we had no real reason to fear a nuclear attack, except the general fear we always had. Suddenly that incredible bright white light grew, and it came from everywhere. You know how the Corner Bar's windows are… were… all on the north and the west sides of the building? Well, none of the windows faced Minneapolis, so it looked as if everything in town was giving off a blinding light of its own.

"Then there was that eerie silence for about – I don't know, thirty seconds? I could see fires burst to life out of nowhere across the street. Big Tom's was fully alight in an instant, along with several houses to the north. The middle school and the parochial school were mostly brick, so they seemed fine except for the window frames. So was the Blue Moon. Russ ran to the window to see what was happening. The light had died down, and I guess everything seemed peaceful to him. He didn't seem to realize what was happening. I screamed at him… I had kicked away a few bar stools and pulled a dining table up against the bar. I screamed at Russ to take cover. I told him to get down or get under the table with me. He was confused…" Kevin needed to pause for a moment. He took a sip from his cup of tea, and Klaus caressed his back.

"I was like Russ," I said. "David knew what the bright light meant, but David had to pull me by my hair to get me to safety. Can you imagine my sweet David doing that? You better not say sorry again, sweetie – You better not be sorry for saving me." I didn't give him a chance to protest. I stopped anything he had to say with a kiss.

"I wish I could have reached Russ," said Kevin with a sniffle. Klaus handed him a box of tissues from the shelf behind him. "Of course, he didn't really have any hair to pull." Klaus chuckled softly at those words. "Bald as a cue ball," he said to David and me.

"Oh him!" said David. "I didn't know he was the owner. How sad! Mom and Dad used to take me there as a special treat because you're right, their burgers and fries were wonderful, and normally they wouldn't eat that kind of food. He's a very nice man; he always had a smile for everyone."

"He really was a nice man, but I'm sorry, he's gone now," said Kevin through tears. David helped himself to a tissue then as well.

"I never knew him," I said. "Mom didn't want me to be in bars, not even to eat. I think they reminded her of my real dad."

"What happened?" asked Klaus.

"Well, you know the Corner Bar had brick walls up to about four feet, and the rest was wood, and the apartments upstairs were all wood? That first flash had set the outside of the building on fire. The shock hit with just enough force to shatter the windows and cause part of the upstairs to collapse into the ground floor. The kitchen and the area behind the bar were buried in flaming debris, and so was the space between Russ and me.

"I couldn't see him, and I couldn't get to him. Before the place filled with smoke, I jumped over the bar and grabbed as many towels as I could, and I soaked two or three of them in water. Then I climbed up onto a chair, then a table, and out the broken window. There wasn't much glass left in the frame, and I put a couple of towels down on the bottom to protect myself." He paused again for another sip of tea.

"The world around me was on fire. Everything that could burn was burning, except the taller trees. As I walked toward the entrance to find Russ, I noticed that the Blue Moon looked ok. It was mostly in the shadow of the Corner Bar, and it was all brick, top to bottom. I decided to go there for shelter after finding Russ." Another sip of tea, another tissue.

"As I got nearer to the corner, above all the terrible noise of burning and collapsing buildings, I began to hear screaming. It came from all around me. That was the moment when I first understood the suffering the attack had just caused, and that was only the beginning. When I got to the front door to look for Russ, I realized…" He stopped for a cry, leaning into Klaus for a reassuring and loving hug.

"I realized some of the screaming was coming from Russ. The upper floor had collapsed on the lower floor when the wall up the middle gave way. There was a heavy beam along the top of that wall. It landed across Russ' legs. His left leg was completely severed, his right leg was crushed, and the debris from the wall was covering most of his body. It was all on fire, burning him alive. I managed to move most of the burning debris off of him, and I wrapped one of the towels around the lower part of his right leg, and with him screaming in my…" He had to stop again.

"Kevin love," said Klaus, "please tell us this story because it helps you deal with the pain. If it makes the pain worse without helping you, please don't put yourself through this just so we can know what happened." I didn't understand Klaus at all. If I'd gone through something so horrible, I'd want people to know about it. Maybe it was something private between them.

Kevin hugged Klaus and said, "Thanks, dear. It feels better to have other people who know what happened. It's all too much to keep inside and not say anything about it." Klaus kissed the top of Kevin's head and gave him a squeeze before Kevin continued. "You boys, tell me if you're having trouble hearing this horrible stuff. You don't have to listen, and I don't want you to hear all this if it's going to hurt you."

"I want to know," I said, though I already knew I might have nightmares thinking about what he was telling us. Scary movies sometimes did that to me, but this was real.

"I want to know too," sniffled David as he reached for another tissue. "I know we only met last night, Kevin, but I love you a lot already. You're part of my family now, and I want to know what you went through. It's because I love you. It feels like a way that I can share my love with you, even if it hurts. I think love always means sharing hurts, just like we share our joys. Please continue, as long as it's still helping you."

He was MY DAVID! I knew my social skills were improving by being with him, but only after he said all that did I actually think about those things, about love meaning we share joy and pain. I get to have some of yours, and you get to have some of mine. If you hurt, I get to feel better because I can take some of your hurt away. If you are happy, we both get to feel happier because I get to feel your happiness, and you get to feel better for making me happier. Love is simple, but it can be so sophisticated too. It was like a master class in social relations.

"Thanks, sweeties," he said to David and me, forcing a bit of his magical smile to flash across his face.

"Well, I managed to pull his right leg out from under the beam, and right there, I made a tourniquet for his left stump. I could see he was very severely burned. Then came the next flash and the next blast, and the next, and the next. I still don't know how many there were, but they were all weaker than that first one, so the remainder of the building stood up, though it was fully engulfed in flames. We had to move away from that building. I managed to pick him up and carry him across the street to the Blue Moon. I didn't see anybody inside at all. I called out, but there was no response. I could see the volunteer fire station from the front door of the Blue Moon. I decided I would have to leave Russ for just a few minutes while I ran two blocks to the station to get help.

" 'You're in bad shape,' I said to Russ, 'but hang in there. Once we get you some medical attention, you'll be fine.' I told him I'd be right back, then left. I ran to the fire station as fast as I could. Two firemen were there, but they only knew first aid, which is all I really know. They were waiting for other firemen to show up before they left. Two firemen can't fight a fire on their own. They said they had two paramedics in their department, but given what happened, they couldn't be sure if anyone would turn up. I asked them to send a paramedic to the Blue Moon for Russ as soon as they could. I thanked them and then ran back to Russ. The water was still working behind the bar, so I filled a pitcher and brought it to Russ with a glass. I told him to drink as much as he could."

"That's because people dehydrate with major burns, right?" I asked.

"Yes," said Kevin, "but also because he had lost a lot of blood, and I didn't want him to go into shock."

"Being in shock is awful!" I said. "When we were both burned from that same flash, I went into mild shock that evening." I looked at my shoulders, and most of the peeling was done. The same was true on David's forehead. "I couldn't stop shivering, even when I was warm! The book in the first aid kit said that was shock from the burns, and that meant fluid loss, but it also said bleeding a lot causes shock, so Russ had both! He must have felt really, really horrible."

"He… He did," said Kevin. "I tried to talk to him. I told him help was coming, but he was in so much pain. It was a helpless feeling. Then I heard a noise from the back of the room. I called out a few times, and eventually, I coaxed a young girl out from behind an overturned table. She was maybe six or seven years old. She told me her name was Sarah, and her mom was behind the table, but she wasn't moving. I ran back to their table and found her mother dead. She had no injuries that I could find, so I assumed it was her heart. Her fingers were cool, but it was hard in that heat to tell whether her body was getting cold.

"It had been less than an hour since the first attack if that. Protocol says to perform C-P-R until help arrives, the body becomes stiff, or the body becomes cold. I decided on my own that she was dead, and if I spent time with her, I wouldn't be able to help Russ at all. I knew he could be saved if we could just get him some help, but even on a good day, it took a half-hour or more to get an ambulance to St. Albert, and it was another half-hour to the hospital in Buffalo. What was I supposed to tell that poor little girl?"

He sobbed heavily for a few minutes while Klaus comforted him, which was something I knew Klaus was good at. Then he continued. "You know, most people in St. Albert and all these farms are Catholic, so I thought it might be helpful if I assumed her family was also Catholic. I said, 'Sarah, God sent the angels to take your mom to Heaven. He's called a lot of people to heaven today, so I think they must be having a celebration. I think your mom is celebrating with God.' I don't think that helped . When she realized I was telling her that her mom was dead, she screamed and ran back to lie down with her mom. I didn't stop her. What could I offer her? I focused on Russ again.

"I helped him to drink his water. Soon another woman came down a stairway in the back of the bar. She asked me who I was, and she screamed when she saw Russ. I never went to the Blue Moon, so I didn't know she was Bridget, the owner. She and Russ were competitors, but they were also dear friends, so it was a real shock for her to see him in that state.

"She told me she had been fighting a bunch of small fires in the upstairs level that had started around the windows, and even one small fire on the roof. I have to say I was impressed that this one woman was able to tackle so many fires on her own. She looked so exhausted. She got a pitcher of water and a glass for herself and sat down. I told her about Sarah and her mother, which shocked and upset her even more. Sarah's mother was named Stephanie, and she and her husband, Rick, were regular customers with their daughter.

"I told her I thought I should stay with Russ and do what I could for him because at least I knew CPR. I asked if she would mind looking after Sarah. I didn't know what to do for the poor girl. I also asked her if she had a first aid kit so I could help Russ, and she brought it to me. I cleaned him the best I could with water and more clean towels. Then I cleaned his wounds with a sterile rinse in the first aid kit, and I smeared bacitracin all over his third-degree burns. There was also a can of lidocaine spray that gave him some relief from his first and second-degree burns."

"Oh, that stuff is wonderful!" I said.

"It seemed to help Russ with his pain," Kevin said. "I began to feel pretty good about my first aid with Russ so far, but his life was in very serious danger, and he needed more than me. I had stopped his bleeding, coated his penetrating burns with antibiotic ointment and bandages, and I was giving him as much water as he could take. Easing some of the pain from his burns was wonderful, too, for both of us. Meanwhile, Bridget went back to check on Sarah. Bridget was brilliant. I don't know if that's because they knew each other or maybe Sarah needed a woman to talk to, but soon Bridget had Sarah in her arms – crying, but in the loving arms of someone who could help her see things through.

"I had to make a decision about Russ. He would die without professional care, and the only place I could think of where he might eventually get that was the fire station. So at about six o'clock, Bridget filled my pockets and Russ' shirt pockets with bar snacks, and she filled several empty liquor bottles with tap water for us. She kissed Russ on his head and me on my cheek, and we set off. I carried Russ the two blocks to the fire station, where it was soon obvious that I wasn't the only person in town who decided to go there for help. There were at least two dozen seriously injured people lying in the driveway in front of one of the two garage bay doors. Apparently, they wanted to keep a clear path in case enough firemen arrived to take a truck out.

"The same two firemen I'd spoken with earlier were standing in the main entrance to the building. They told me there were no paramedics, and they couldn't do much more than offer us space in their driveway in case someone arrived. I laid Russ down on the grass next to the driveway and put a folded towel under his head. After giving him a drink of water, I went back for another word with the firemen. I asked if I could just get an I-V set and two bags of normal saline for Russ. They probably had over a hundred I-V sets and probably fifty bags of normal saline in the paramedic supplies, and what I was asking for could be purchased for less than two dollars. They were adamant in their refusal.

"I tried to understand. They weren't bad guys, but they couldn't just start giving away supplies to everyone who asked. I thought maybe I could help them. So I told them about my first aid training and the additional training I'd had as a pre-med student, and I told them that if I could have those meager supplies for Russ, I would stay there and help as many others as I could, including I-V rehydration for burn patients like Russ. I was surprised but relieved when they agreed. Then I looked around at all the suffering people and wondered what I'd just agreed to.

"The firemen brought the equipment from one of their two trucks to where I was helping Russ. They needed to keep the equipment on the other truck, so they'd be ready to roll if more of their crew arrived. Then they rolled three large carts full of supplies out to me, locking the station door behind them. They stayed with me to act as security while I set Russ up with his I-V. 'You're gonna feel so much better when this hits your system,' I said and then I circulated. I told people I was just a guy who knew first aid plus a little more, but I wasn't an MD or paramedic or anything, and I found I had to ask people if they wanted my help. Some of them told me to keep my hands off their loved one, and I couldn't argue.

"There were eight more severe burn cases, and I treated them the best I could like I did Russ. Most of the rest were trauma – broken bones, wounds that needed suturing, things like that. I could handle those injuries just fine, except the compound fractures. Thankfully, there were only two patients with compound fractures. The saddest part was that there were four dead bodies among those waiting for help. With each of the living patients who wanted my help, I left a small notepad with the patient's name and basic info so I could record who had received what treatment and when, like a medical chart on a notepad.

"Soon the firemen said they needed to get back to the door, where they could hear their radio and phone. We decided to put the supply carts just inside the door, and leave the one set of mobile equipment outside. With their help, I was able to move Russ over near the door, so I could care for him, and we set up a system where people would bring their patients to me if they could. First, I had to triage everyone.

"Severe burns came first, compound fractures came second, large, bleeding, or extensive lacerations were third, simple fractures were fourth, and smaller lacerations were fifth, as long as the bleeding was under control. I had never been trained in triage before, and that was what made sense to me. Whenever I could, I showed the people who were with the patients how to clean and dress the severe burns while I set up the I-V's for them. I was always able to find a vein in college, so I was happy to have that skill.

"There was one patient who had ventricular fibrillations and then went into total arrest. I had to unpack the portable defibrillator and figure out how to operate it. I didn't bother with the E-K-G function. I used a stethoscope. I told the patient's family I was doing my best, but I wasn't trained or qualified to use that equipment, but they pleaded with me to try anyway.

"I cleared everyone and shocked him. Then I realized I'd forgotten to use that electrolyte goop, so I had burned the patient. I apologized to the family as I gooped up the paddles again, then shocked him. He had a faint heartbeat. I showed his wife how to measure his pulse. I left the defibrillator next to that patient and told her to call me if she could no longer feel a pulse."

"Twenty minutes later, that powerless feeling came back. She screamed for me that she had lost his pulse. I checked with my stethoscope, and he was in full arrest again. So, I cleared everyone and shocked him. Nothing. Again, nothing. A third time, nothing. I did C-P-R on him with his wife doing the breathing for ten minutes before shocking him again and again. I knew there were drugs right there in that case that could help him, but I didn't know how to use them.

"I thought a big injection of lidocaine right into the heart was part of the treatment, but was that really the drug that went into the heart? Or was that epinephrine? I told his wife what I just told you, and she took a guess that she thought she might have heard on TV. That was the level of care we were giving. He would be dead anyway, and his wife wanted to try one last desperate measure that probably wouldn't work, and would probably prevent the proper drugs from working. It was her decision.

"I injected ten cc's of epinephrine directly into his heart. I listened with the stethoscope and heard nothing. We resumed CPR for five minutes, and I listened again. Three more shocks with CPR in-between. She and I hugged. We had done our desperate best, and her husband was gone. I was very lucky that she was so accepting. I think she realized I was just some guy who was doing his best, trying not to do more harm than good, and she seemed convinced that risking him with me was better than watching him die. I did get his heart started once, which isn't too bad.

"One of the firemen was usually helping me the whole time since we were set up by the main entrance. He changed I-V bags, treated minor burns and lacerations, prepared and gave injections, and took vital signs when needed. One of the nice features of having access to the paramedic supplies was that they contained a lot of drugs, including antibiotics and morphine. I made sure the severe burn patients and the compound fracture patients got plenty of antibiotics, but I had to be careful with the morphine because it suppressed breathing, which was something the burn patients were vulnerable to.

"The firemen seemed to become more giving as time passed by. They came out with dozens of clean blankets for the patients to lie on and under. Then like a gift from heaven, a nursing student named Corey showed up. He took over everything immediately because he was far better trained than I was. I bet he even knew which drugs to use on the cardiac arrest patient.

"But the patients kept flowing in. Everybody was surprised to see we'd set up a pretty decent first aid station, and they'd all thought it was a shot in the dark to come to the fire station in the first place. By eight o'clock, we had sixty patients, and the firemen said they'd heard from Buffalo to expect some amount of fallout after midnight. They said it was on the public radio as well, yet people still kept arriving.

"Quite a few were able to leave after being sutured or cleaned and bandaged, and we sent supplies with those who needed them, but by ten o'clock, we had a hundred patients. It was a great stroke of luck that one of the patients with burns and a simple fracture was one of the two paramedics who worked from that fire station, so at last, we could be sure of some degree of competent treatment.

"Corey handled triage, Evan, the paramedic, treated the patients first and decided what meds and other treatments we should use, and I did rounds with one of the firemen. It took me an hour to make it through my fifty patients, by which time still more were arriving. Unless a patient was in acute distress, one visit every two hours seemed to be enough.

"Our biggest fear was that we would run out of morphine. After every complete round, I sat with Russ to tell him who was there, and that so-and-so sends their love, and just to chat as friends. At 11:47 PM, I sat next to Russ, and he was gone. He'd died within the previous… the previous hour."

Kevin began to sob, but he kept talking. "He was doing very well the previous hour. He seemed stable, though still in very perilous condition. Evan and I talked it over, and we decided it was probably a fat embolism from his badly mangled thighbone. It would have hit his heart, and he'd have been out three seconds later. We had no monitors for patients. There was no such thing as a code blue. He was just gone.

"It was more than I could take and more than I felt I'd bargained for. I thought we'd all done a pretty good job based on what limited skills we had. I couldn't help anymore. I wasn't sure I could live anymore. Everybody was really sweet about letting me go. I think they could tell I'd be no use to them if I'd stayed.

"As soon as my feet left the driveway, I had to work out where I was going. I knew I couldn't stay there, so I kept walking toward town. I didn't want to live in this world. I didn't know of any others. Straight ahead of me was the church. I decided to hide out there from the fallout. Maybe God would tell me what to do, or maybe he would if he didn't hate fags so much.

"I think I went there to pick a fight with God. I wanted to scream at him on behalf of every person I had just seen, on behalf of Russ, and on behalf of Sarah and her mother Stephanie, on behalf of every faggot he made that way, and on behalf of my parents!"

Chapter 74

To Pick a Fight

"I went to the side door first, and I was surprised to find it was open. I called out to see if anybody was inside, and I got a reply from someone in the sacristy. He came to meet me in the office where I was standing. He was a gray-haired man with glasses, in his sixties, maybe his seventies, and a little shorter than me. He was wearing dress pants, dress shoes, and a dress shirt, with his tie loosened and the top button was undone.

"He walked gingerly as if he was supposed to be using a cane. He was bent at the hips, which gave me the impression that he had serious joint pain that he was trying to hide. He introduced himself as Ray Miller, a deacon of the church. He was surprised that anybody was outside at the time because the radio said fallout levels were already dangerously high. 'Let's get you cleaned off and decontaminated if we can,' he said."

"He asked how long I'd been outside. I told him since six, which seemed to startle him. He led the way to a bathroom and handed me a basket. He told me to put my clothes in the basket and take the most thorough shower I could, scrubbing everywhere with lots of soap and shampoo. He lit three candles and set them on the vanity for light.

"There was no electricity, but I was impressed that the water was still working, just like at the Blue Moon, though it was cold water only. The municipal water plant is right next to the high school, right, and it only supplies the town center. It seemed that if a building was left standing with intact plumbing, it had water, though the pressure seemed pretty low. They have their own emergency generator at the waterworks, but I understand that all of the destroyed buildings with plumbing leaks are placing a huge drain on the system.'

"Anyway, I undressed and passed the basket of my clothes around the door to Ray, and he handed me a choir robe. He said, 'Sorry, that's all I have for you to wear until your clothes are dry unless you want to dress like a priest.' I thanked him and told him it would be fine. I wondered what he would be doing to decontaminate my clothes, but I didn't ask. I just scrubbed and scrubbed, trying to scrub away everything I had just seen. It was probably the angriest shower I've ever had. When I was done, he asked me to leave the shower running a while longer to wash any fallout down the drain. Then he invited me to join him in a pew.

"He had a transistor radio, and he was keeping track of the fallout the best he could, and it seemed I'd been exposed to a much higher dose than I'd realized. No Donovan, sweetie, I've already done the math. Let's leave that for later." It was a simple matter to calculate his total dose, but I put the log back down.

"Ray told me he had my clothes soaking in a basement laundry sink in a high concentration of detergent, and that he would scrub the clothes after they'd soaked for an hour. I think he just liked the thought of me sitting with him naked in a choir robe.

"Then he asked, 'So what brings you here?' It wasn't his fault, the poor man. He'd been so kind to me, but all the rage I had building inside me about this god thing that I'd been taught about, who allowed this to happen to our world, it all came out, and I screamed it all at him. He didn't even have the decency to shout back at me.

"Instead, he said, 'You've got every right to be livid with your creator, whoever that is. I've told God at least a dozen times today that I was furious with him for what he's allowed to happen. I haven't asked you about your faith because that's your business, and you may feel free to share what you like with me, but I am a Catholic, and the God I worship is strong enough to take my fury, and he is wise enough to understand what is going on in my heart that drives my words.'

"I think this made me even angrier. 'Great,' I said. 'Your god will forgive your harsh words. Isn't that nice of him! Your HARSH WORDS? If all he gave me were harsh words, even I could deal with that, and I'm no god. He's just overseen a nuclear holocaust! Sorry, but I don't care if he forgives me! You know what? I DON'T forgive him!

"You might as well know that I'm also gay, and I don't forgive him for that either! He made me as I am, I love myself for who I am, but I had to leave this church because it teaches others to hate me for how he made me. Your god has a sick sense of humor and backward priorities.'

"I needed a gentle person to treat me with kindness, and there he was. So I attacked him! It seems I also needed someone to lash out at and to vent some of my feelings that were so strong they could never be fully vented. 'Yeah, that's about the size of what I had to say to him too,' Ray said, 'except the gay part. I'm not gay, and I can never know how much worse that makes it for those of you who are. I told him I couldn't forgive him for this, and that I didn't see how a God who lets such things happen to those he calls his children could be worthy of worship in the first place.'

"That was not what I'd expected, nor what I wanted. I came to pick a fight with God, and here's his representative agreeing with me! 'What kind of deacon are you?' I asked. 'You may as well ask me what kind of Catholic I am,' the guy said, 'because I could probably give you a more meaningful answer. I'm the kind of Catholic that a lot of other Catholics dislike. Some might even fear my kind of Catholicism. I am a true Catholic, which means I belong to a church as defined by the Second Vatican Council… this doesn't mean much to you, does it?'

"I shook my head, but I told him I wanted to hear more, but just the meaningful parts, please. 'I'm sorry,' he said with a gentle chuckle. 'I do get carried away. What I mean to say is that I am a free-thinking Catholic, as all Catholics are taught to be. I decide what is right and wrong for me. I pray. I ask for God's help with the more difficult issues and I might even scream at him when I think he's fouled things up, like today. I have searched my God-given conscience, and I know that my gay brothers like you, just like my lesbian sisters, are children of the same God I worship, and I know he loves you as much as he loves a crazy old deacon like me.

"I don't know when an embryo becomes a person, but I know it's not for me to decide. I think studying the billions of years of evolution of all species is the same thing as studying the billions of years of the splendor of God's creation. And I also have it on good faith that the Earth revolves around the sun.' He laughed at that last bit, and so did I.

"That meant I was letting him distract me from my purpose. 'It sounds like all you're doing is making it up as you go and calling it God's will or whatever,' I told him. 'How's he going to work his way back into your good graces after today?' Then he floored me. He said, 'I don't know. That's really up to him now, isn't it? – And it's going to be a very tough sell. The one thing I won't say is that he can't. I will not say he can't be forgiven, or that he can't become worthy of worship in my eyes again. I won't shut the door on him.

"Saying it's impossible is giving up on faith, and I won't do that. Right now, God has a lot of explaining to do, and I have no idea how he's going to do it, but I won't say that he can't do it. That's not asking a whole lot. I'll be waiting next to you for his answer. I won't say he can't answer for this. I don't know what he can and can't do, but I'm amazed every day at the things he has already done.' There was no fighting with this guy!"

***

'2:00 PM, outside 16 rad/hour, basement 1.4 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

We took a bathroom break. Kevin and Klaus each made another cup of tea and coffee, and I made myself a cup of hot apple cider. David was still sipping his orange juice from breakfast. It felt a little weird that all this talk of religion was happening on a Sunday, and just for a moment, I wondered if Klaus had a hand in that. Then I realized that was a ridiculous thought. We all wanted to hear Kevin's story, and this seemed to be a big part of it.

We all sat back down at the table to hear more from Kevin. It was cool to hear what he went through, but I thought he could probably tell any story and make it interesting. He was a good storyteller.

"So all that time you were at the Blue Moon, I was right across the street at the school, and then at the church!" said Klaus. "It was only an accident that we didn't see each other, and Deacon Ray must have arrived at the church soon after I left. Did he say anything about the wine and communion wafers I took?"

"You took those, dear?" said Kevin. "Yes, he said he truly hoped they would feed someone who was hungry. There were several more cases in a closet in the church."

"Well, the first thing I want to do when we can leave this place is get that stuff back to the church," said Klaus, "or to a priest who can use them. I took them when I thought I needed them, but I never needed them. When I joined up with the boys here, there was more than enough food. I have to give the communion wine and wafers back."

"You have to tell me about how you wound up here, too, dear," said Kevin.

"We've got to get through your story first, sweetie," said Klaus.

"Ok, so I was sitting on a pew with Ray, furious with God. Well, maybe more furious with people who could still believe in God after such a horrible thing happened, and here's this deacon sitting next to me, telling me he's been yelling at God too, that he expects God had better have a damn good explanation for what he's done, yet still he considers himself a devout Catholic. He'd told me the only thing his faith required was that he not convince himself that God couldn't justify everything. He didn't see how God could ever justify letting this nuclear holocaust happen to his "children," but to Ray, that wasn't his problem.

"God was the one who had to justify it, and that was going to be quite a challenge. He told me there were a lot of other things God needed to account for if he expected us to follow him, like the Inquisition, slavery, the many genocides, including the holocaust, even killing the first-born sons of Egypt when they'd done nothing wrong. Should they answer for what their parents did? Or their Pharaoh?

" 'So you live with this God who allows such horrors, even directly causes some of them, and you worship him? He is who you follow in your faith?' I asked. 'In a way,' he said. 'The Catholic church does not expect the faithful to believe anything in order to belong. To be part of the Church, you only have to want to believe, and I very much want to believe there is a God, and that when I meet him, he'll be able to make sense of all this to me. In the meantime, I do my best to live the kind of life Jesus taught us to live, adapted to our modern times, of course.'

"I wasn't expecting that to be his answer either. 'No matter how many times I read the first three gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, I get the same image, the same impression of who Jesus was, and what he wanted me to learn. There were other gospels too that weren't included in the bible, and a lot of them also give the same messages. I don't think he ever claimed to be anything more than a man, the son of man, or a son of God. I think Thomas Jefferson did a great job summarizing that Jesus in his Jefferson Bible. Have you heard of that?' This guy was blowing my mind. This is not what the Catholics had been teaching when I left the church."

"We have a copy of the Jefferson Bible on the shelf," said David. "It's the same story told by the gospels with all the miracles and magic removed. There was no immaculate conception or three wise men. Dad thought it was a much more inspiring story if Jesus was just a regular person like the rest of us."

"I'd like to read that while I'm here," said Kevin. "The thought never occurred to me that I could go beyond the bible and find my own sense of Christianity. Ray and I talked for at least two hours, stopping twice to scrub and rinse my clothes, and again to wring them and hang them to dry. It had gotten so late; we needed sleep. He got some priest's robes for us to use as blankets, and we did our best to get comfortable lying on the pews. My clothes needed to hang overnight, so I slept in the choir robe.

"The next morning, I woke up to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. I sat up and thanked Ray. He also offered me a small bowl of communion wafers. 'I'm afraid it's all we have to eat here. I'm sure God would rather we ate his un-blessed wafers than starve.' The coffee was wonderful, but then I remembered it was always prohibited to eat in the church. 'This is not only God's house now, Kevin. This has become our house as well, and anyone else who cares to join us.'

"Somehow, I had managed to sleep until noon on the hard church pew. I wondered how the heck did Ray make the coffee? We had no hot water and no stove we could use. He has this lovely laugh," said Kevin.

"It was a laugh of happiness, and of calm. 'This is a church, my boy. Do you think we want for candles or brass bowls or such things?' It was kinda funny. So we settled in for a long day of waiting for the fallout to diminish. The radio was reporting levels in nearby areas, and at one in the afternoon, it was still about seven rads per hour. I wanted to help more at the fire station, but anybody who was still there a few hours after I left could have received a lethal dose in just two or three hours. I couldn't go outside all day at seven rads per hour. I hadn't yet calculated my dose from the night before, but I knew it was already bad. Still, I had something I wanted to do. I had to check on my parents' home.

"At about five in the afternoon, the fallout diminished to five rads per hour. We heard knocking on the side door. Ray got up to open the door, but whoever was knocking opened it for themselves, and they started calling to see if anyone was there. 'We'll be right with you,' Ray said. It was Bridget from the Blue Moon and Sarah, whose mother had died in the Blue Moon.

Ray showed them what they needed to do to get cleaned and reasonably decontaminated while I went to put my clothes on and get out of that choir robe. Bridget said they had to get out of that place because she was afraid it was unsafe, and without being too obvious, for Sarah's sake, because Stephanie's, Sarah's mom's, dead body was there, and at some point, it would begin to decompose but bless her heart, she brought food!

"She brought all the bar snacks and pizza she could fit in a big box. After a diet of communion wafers, thawed pizza was wonderful, even if it wasn't heated. Ray had some ideas about how we could heat it with candles, but I was hungry!

"At eight o'clock, the fallout was about four rads per hour. I decided that it was worth it to run out to my parents' house and back. They lived about two miles to the west, so I figured fifteen minutes running each way plus a half-hour to spend there would be a total dose of four rads. That's not to be taken lightly, but I had to know.

"As I approached the completely flat patch of ashes that was the house, I slowed to a walk to cross the ditch to the ruins. I should have died that instant, but I happened to be in the ditch. When the light started growing, I was already mostly in the shade. If we hadn't just been attacked the day before, I wouldn't have had the reflex to drop flat. I stayed where I was until the shock passed, and everything was settled.

"What I hadn't fully appreciated at that moment was how much fallout dust had stuck to the bare skin on my arms and legs, and my clothes, and how much I had inhaled, while I was lying in that ditch. I didn't even think much about the direction the blast had come from, but of course, it was from St. Cloud. I ran back to the church, knowing I had plenty of time before the new wave of fallout came, but also knowing the fallout from the Fargo blast was still somewhat hot. I told the others what I'd seen. Of course, the radio was dead.

"I'm not sure why I did it, but I think it was because I was feeling useless, and I was pessimistic about the radiation dose I'd already received, but I decided I needed to help people at the fire station again. I needed to feel useful, but I decided I would only do it if they had a way to manage the fallout, like if they were treating people inside the fire station. I didn't need the radio to tell me that fallout from the last blast was heading our way.

"I washed off my hands in the large laundry sink, and I shook everybody's hands. I couldn't hug anyone because I'd been rolling on the ground in the old fallout. I knew I'd had some exposure, but I think it was a lot more than I believed at the time. I would have to see if the fire station had facilities to decontaminate me there."

Chapter 75

Surgeon Kevin

"I was absolutely delighted when I got to the fire station," said Kevin. "There was nobody in the driveway, and I was welcomed inside the building and shown to their decontamination showers just inside the door. Decontamination showers were becoming routine for me, so I don't know how thorough I was. This might all be a lot of worry over nothing, but it could have led to a dangerous exposure for me.

"One of the two trucks was gone, which I took to be great news, and there were only about six or eight patients there, in the garage bay where the missing truck had been parked. The supply carts were back where they belonged, which was within easy reach of those helping the patients. I would have to ask for details after I was decontaminated. They gave me some scrubs to wear, and they put my own clothes in a washing machine they had been using for contaminated clothing, bedding, and towels. It wasn't perfect, but it worked quite well.

"To my surprise, Evan was there, the paramedic from the night before. I asked if he had been there all night. He said yes and no. 'Not long after you left, we realized we had to get out of the fallout, so we pulled the truck out of the bay and brought the patients and helpers all inside. Then Schuett says, why don't we just load up some of the injured and run them to Buffalo in the truck? It sounded like a great idea, so he and Bauer ran the first group up to Buffalo.

"They're in disaster mode up there, so they've got all the people they need. They're coping pretty well with their patient load. When Bauer & Schuett had a look at the fallout estimations, they thought it was best for them to stay in Buffalo for the night. The fallout there was less than half of what we got here. So they were gone, but the six most critical but stable patients were also gone. Corey and I did all right overnight, though we lost two patients. Severe burns and severe trauma don't go together well.

"We're bagging them and leaving them off to the side of the building. They're collecting fallout, so we can't let the families take them back. We'll be able to release them to the families after the fallout's cooled down, and we can clean up the body bags. That's why we bagged them right away.' It was sad, but I told him about Stephanie's body in the Blue Moon. He said they might make that a priority because the Blue Moon might be a safe place that has some food, or at least a safe gathering place.

"Evan continued, 'Anyway, Bauer and Schuett got back around nine this morning, and they've been running patients back and forth the whole time – after our break. They took over from Corey and me for a couple of hours so we could sleep. I think you can understand sleeping wasn't easy, but it was nice to get something in my stomach, even bread and peanut butter, you know? And God bless 'em, they've still got the city water going!' "

"Evan was the kind of guy I'd imagined firefighters were like," said Kevin. "He was strong, cheerful, nothing stopped him from doing his job, and he seemed grateful for what I considered the small things, though thinking back on it, I couldn't imagine not having the city water still flowing."

"Most of the Wright County emergency services radios were working. The big tower in Buffalo was fine, and a lot of the repeaters were fine too, and the mobile radios worked about as well as the cars and trucks worked. That meant we could get real-time nationwide data about the fallout, though not in our specific area, at least it was something.

"We could talk to the rest of Wright County, but Wright County wasn't in contact with anybody else, so we couldn't get any more big-picture information than anybody else. I also thought it was unbelievable that, during the Cold War, a well-equipped fire station wouldn't have its own Geiger counter!

"When I shared this with Evan, he got on the radio with Schuett & Bauer, and when they returned from the trip they were on, they gave us two of them to use at the fire station and wherever else we needed one. That actually helped everyone, because if we had readings in St. Albert, then Wright County officials could fill in a hole in their map where they were missing data.

"I took over the Geiger counters right away. I put the first one on a shelf next to the main entrance, and I taped the probe and cable to the outside, about six feet above the ground, which is where Bauer & Schuett said it was supposed to be. That way, if it got so bad we had to seal the door, it would still be in place. Then I started a log, and it looked a lot like the one you have here, only the county wanted updates every fifteen minutes

"My first job wasn't what I'd expected. In fact, very few patients were arriving and needing help, so Evan and Corey could handle them pretty easily. My first job was to keep the fallout log and call the sheriff's department on the radio every fifteen minutes with our readings. My second priority was to thoroughly survey the entire interior of the fire station, starting with the patients and the people with them. Many of the patients were in no shape to go through the full decontamination process, particularly the severe burn patients, but everyone else had gone through, so for them, it was my job to check on how well their decontamination process was working.

"The only thing I found was on a boy, younger than you two, maybe eight years old. I found a hot spot on his scalp, so Corey took him back through the shower after promising he only needed to wash his hair again. The poor little guy was so upset! His dad was a burned-up wreck, and people kept wanting to scrub him off. Corey was so good with him. Corey is a real sweetie, and my gaydar was beeping loud and clear."

"Your what?" I asked.

Kevin laughed and said, "It's something gay people often talk about – that we have gaydar, like radar, and that tells us whether another person is gay. It's not a real thing, but I think gay people do have a better intuition about whether other people are also gay. I just meant I thought Corey was gay."

"My gaydar must be completely broken!" I said. "I had no idea Klaus was gay, and I wish I'd known that David was gay!"

"Don Hunny," said David, "you didn't even know you were gay. I imagine this gaydar gets better as we grow up."

"Boys, remember what Kevin just said. It's not a real thing. Gay people might develop better intuition about such things, but that takes time, and it might never happen. Remember, most gay people live their entire lives pretending they're not gay." That made sense, but I wanted to hear more of Kevin's story, even the detailed parts, and the sad parts.

"One of the saddest things I had to do right then was scan the little boy's dad. He had severe facial burns and burns to his chest and both arms. His chance for survival was nearly zero. I scanned him when the little boy was in the shower, but the man's wife was right there. She didn't need me to tell her what the noise from the Geiger counter meant. It meant that she was going to lose her husband, and she couldn't even kiss him goodbye. The radioactive particles were all embedded in his burned tissue, and that could only be removed surgically. We couldn't load him on the fire truck to Buffalo either because he was so unstable he'd likely die on the way.

"The radioactive material embedded in his tissues would continue poisoning him until it was removed, but it wasn't so hot that his wife and son couldn't be near him. Part of me thinks it was probably best for the little boy to be with his dad when he died. That way, he could understand it better, I guess. He might have even understood better why it was so important for Corey to decontaminate him again since it was so easy for me to show him how radioactive his dad's burns were. I don't know. It might have made a little more sense.

"We got word from the county that the big fallout cloud would hit us some time just after midnight, and it was going to be over 300 rads per hour. We sent the last truck at eleven-thirty that night with five patients, and Schuett & Bauer spent the night in Buffalo. They had a shelter for the truck there, whereas we were using the truck's normal shelter at the fire station for our treatment area.

"With those five patients gone, that left us with the little boy's dad, another woman with severe burns, a teenage boy with a severe facial laceration and a broken collar bone, a man with a simple tib-fib fracture – oh, I mean the two bones in the lower leg – and a very young girl with multiple lacerations over her whole body with glass embedded in most of them.

"Evan made a decision that surprised me. Since I had sutured animal tissue before when I worked in a lab, he decided that I should do all the suturing on the patients. He said that paramedics and nurses didn't train to suture patients, so he and Corey had zero experience. Of the three of us, I was the least qualified as a medical professional – first aid only.

"They thought I was the one to perform what was technically a surgical procedure. I told him I needed him to make sure the wound was adequately cleaned first, and that I didn't know how to administer lidocaine injections for anesthesia. It turns out that it wasn't much of a problem. Corey had given lidocaine injections before, and Evan could tell when a wound was thoroughly cleaned and debrided, which means all the dead tissue has been removed. Some of that work had to be done after the lidocaine was injected because it could be quite painful.

"First, we went to work on the teenage boy's facial laceration. It went from the bridge of his nose, inside his right cheekbone, outside the corner of his mouth, and down to his jaw. His mother said it had been caused by a single piece of broken glass. I talked with her while Corey was numbing him up, which took a lot of lidocaine, and Evan was cleaning the wound. I needed to make sure she knew I'd only had veterinary training in a lab for suturing surgical wounds, and that I would do my best, with her permission.

"He hadn't been able to ride out on the last truck to Buffalo because he could wait. He was not severely wounded, and he would have had to wait alone – because only he could ride to the hospital, not his mom – for possibly more than a day before he was treated, and when he was treated, it would probably have been an untrained nurse anyway who sutured him up. His mom didn't want him to have to wait any longer, and she wanted to be with him, so she told me to go ahead and do my best.

"I gathered my instruments, which were sterilized in plastic packs, and a bottle of alcohol and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. I also had a bead sterilizer, which surprised me. It's a heater with like a deep bowl full of glass beads in the middle. You set it to about two-fifty centigrade, then hold the end of the instrument in the glass beads to sterilize it. It doesn't clean the instrument, but it sterilizes the business end of it completely. Then I put on a pair of surgical gloves for the first time ever to work on a living human.

"He was a good-looking boy, and no matter who did this job, he would have a big scar from it. I felt around the outside of the wound to see if I could get an idea of how deep it was and which muscles might have been cut. I thought he was fortunate because the path of the wound and its depth had caused only the slightest damage to two of the facial muscles, and I knew they would heal up on their own. However, the laceration also went completely through part of his cheek, with the glass apparently stopped by his teeth, leaving another laceration above his right upper first molar. You guys, I know this is a lot of detail, but I was so scared! I had so many things on my mind, and I didn't want to be the one to mutilate this beautiful boy's face for life! So I'm telling this story with a lot of detail because that's what it was like – a thousand thoughts a second, and I'd better get everything right!"

"It's ok, Kevin," I said. "I like learning about how to fix the human body and how the body works."

"Me too," said David. "Mom was a doctor, and I've sometimes wondered if I should try to be one too."

"Ok, thanks, sweeties," he said with an apologetic smile. "I found a wide selection of suture kits and other instruments in one of the boxes of portable paramedic gear. Apparently, physicians do ride-alongs with the paramedics, so they keep equipment like that available for the physicians. Anyway, I decided to begin with the inside of his cheek. I used 6-0 monofilament absorbable sutures because they are thin and flexible, and I didn't want to use a wicking material like silk to transfer bacteria from the saliva into the wound. I didn't know if that was good logic, but that's what I did. I used the absorbable ones because I thought it would be difficult for him or his mom to get in there with scissors to remove them."

"You mean monofilament," I said, "like, monofilament fishing line?"

"Yes, that's it exactly," he said. "I had never sutured the inside and the outside of a laceration before, so I was really guessing. I just did the inside first, and then the outside, each as if it had been its own wound. My first problem came right away when I noticed that if I cut the loose ends of the sutures, they'd poke into his lacerated gum. So I told him and his mom I was going to leave them long, and they could decide for themselves, based on his discomfort, whether or not to trim them.

"I sponged off the bridge of his nose and the upper portion of his wound carefully, and I realized there were two wounds. The bridge of the nose needed some stitches, but there was a gap in the wound down to the level of his cheekbones that wasn't cut at all. I gave him six little stitches for the bridge of his nose, using ordinary 6-0 monofilament, which I also used for his cheek. I knew from my lab work that regular monofilament was less prone to infections, and smaller sutures, like 6-0, leave less scarring.

"I used a method they taught me in my lab. I found what I thought was the exact center of each side of the wound, and I sutured them first. I knew the most important thing I could do for this poor boy's face was something called approximation. That means bringing both sides of the wound together as close as possible to their original position with each other. At the bottom of the deepest part of the wound, I stuck a tiny piece of this antibiotic wick material. That way, in case it got infected, the fluid would have a place to drain, and hopefully, it would heal anyway. From about the level of the corner of his mouth down to the jaw, I used the 6-0 monofilament again to keep the scarring down as much as I could. In the end, I had given him exactly forty-seven stitches, and everything seemed to be where it belonged. I kept rinsing and rinsing his wound as I went along because if that wound got infected, he could have been seriously deformed. Oh my god, you guys, I hope he's all right! He's so cute, and he doesn't need a big ugly scar all down his face!"

"You did your very best," said David, "and that was better than anyone else had done for him. Klaus, didn't you say there was a Good Samaritan law?"

"That's right, David. If you try your best to help someone, but something goes wrong, it's not your fault, and I'd think especially now when everybody is just doing the best we can, I'd think that boy and his mom would be grateful for anything you could do for him. I think that piece of wicking was a pretty clever idea too, given your concerns about infections."

"I hope so," said Kevin. "So anyway, that's how it went. The little girl with all the broken glass was heartbreaking too. After having Evan pick each piece of glass out of her and cleaning each wound, she had to have lidocaine injections in more than half of her lacerations because I needed to stitch them closed. Corey was terrific, but the poor girl screamed the whole time, and who could blame her. When we were done, Evan used his judgment and gave her a pediatric dose of morphine, and that relieved her pain so she could calm down and get some sleep. She had a total of sixty-three stitches, and I can still feel each one.

"As the night went on, we got quite a few more patients who'd been injured after the St. Cloud burst. As you all know, the radiation levels almost hit a thousand rads per hour that night, so we got several acute radiation poisoning patients. With that much fallout, even the burn patients had to go through decontamination before being treated.

"We decided none of us should open the door. When people arrived, they had to let themselves in; then, I would run them through decontamination. I knew how high the radiation was too. I knew it was so high that anyone who had been outside for fifteen minutes had a fifty-fifty chance of dying, and that everyone who had been outside for a half-hour was going to die, but not right away, of course.

"All we could really do for the ones we knew were going to die was give them as much water as they could drink. We had to save the saline bags for patients who had a chance of survival. We didn't know when Schuett and Bauer would be able to return from Buffalo with more supplies, so we had to ration what we had, and it wasn't easy.

"You know how long it's taken for the fallout to cool off. Bauer & Schuett have been stuck in Buffalo since they left that day. They thought they might be able to come back on Tuesday if they could get some personal radiation protection of some kind. With the fallout as bad as it was, I think people were staying wherever they were instead of going out to get help unless it was life-or-death, so our caseload was manageable, but by last night, our supply shortage was getting dangerous.

"Families were shouting and even threatening us if their loved ones weren't getting morphine or saline or whatever, and who could blame them. Evan called the Sheriff's department and told them we needed either supplies or riot police. So sometime after midnight, a sheriff's deputy pulled up in his squad car. He stepped out of his car, wearing a radiation suit, and brought two boxes of supplies just inside the door, where we could decontaminate them and open them. Then he pulled off his hood and changed my…"

Kevin had abruptly stopped telling his story and begun crying heavily. He turned to Klaus for a good, tight squeeze. What could he have changed?

Kevin collected himself and finished his story. "He changed my life. The deputy asked if anyone there at the station knew David Chance, Donovan Langevin, or Niklaus Kettering. It seems he'd heard you making a call on the CB radio, but it was very faint. He said he answered you, but you didn't seem to hear him. He said he was going to check on you guys and see if you had some kind of emergency you needed help with." That was why he showed up so late to check up on us. He'd heard our call, and we called late.

"I begged him to take me along. I started crying. I'm sure they were all confused. The deputy explained that his car was not clean on the inside and that I'd be exposed to radiation from the outside and from fallout dust on the inside. He said if I was ok with that, I was welcome to come along. I quickly changed out of my dirty scrubs and back into my own clothes. I gave Evan and Corey hugs. They seemed to understand how much it meant for me to be with you, and their patient load seemed manageable at the time.

Of course, I didn't tell the deputy our whole history, or that I thought there was a good chance you wouldn't want to see me, but I had to try! I said goodbye to the boy with the gash across his face and told him not to smile too much or it literally might get stuck that way. Anyway, I got in the back seat of the car, and you know the rest – so many good people. So many I've met these past four days! Now can you imagine how happy this happy ending has made me?" He turned back into Klaus' chest and began bawling again.

After Kevin calmed down again, he and Klaus took a moment for a good, sloppy kiss. Then I asked, "Well, how come the deputy could hear us, but we couldn't hear him?"

"He didn't know," said Kevin. "He said you normally used a base station, and this time your signal was really weak."

"He should have heard us just fine in St. Albert," I said, "and we should have heard him too."

"Oh Don, I think I know!" said David, putting his hand on his forehead. "It's the garage! Three sides of the garage are underground! The only side that isn't underground is facing the opposite direction! That would weaken the signal, don't you think?"

"Well, that's that mystery solved," I said. "I suppose it only worked last time from the car because we were calling the radio station on their large base station system, and they were more toward Minneapolis. It's in the H-F band, so it doesn't need line-of-sight, but it's still seriously blocked in three directions by being underground. If there was anybody on in Maple Grove, we should have been able to reach them, but I don't think there's much left that way," I said grimly.

I flipped through the radiation log. Riding around in a car seemed pretty risky most of this time. Then I looked at Thursday night when Kevin went to the fire station, and later on, when the fallout went up so high from the St. Cloud burst. I looked up with my mouth hanging open. Kevin was looking at me, his chin wrinkled, and I knew why. Kevin was going to die.

Chapter 76

A Deadly Dose

He was a beautiful sex god, the love of Klaus' life. He was the newest member of our family. He liked to play; he wasn't sick, no diarrhea, no purple patches on his skin, no bloody gums, and no hair falling out. He seemed perfectly healthy, but I knew what he knew. He had been through the first phase already at the fire station. He had been sick there, and he hadn't told us the whole story. Now he was feeling all better. Radiation sickness was a cruel thing. You could feel awful for a day or two, then perfectly fine for a week or two, maybe even a month or two, and then it could kill you slowly.

I stood up and took David's hand. I led him to the couch, where we snuggled close. The time had come for Kevin to tell Klaus what he had not told him yet, that he would most likely die soon. That was why he didn't want me to calculate his exposure that first night. I held David close. He didn't know either, and I couldn't tell him. I was trying so hard not to cry; I think I was even grunting. "What's wrong Hunny?" he asked. I just shook my head and clung to him.

Soon we heard the sound that felt like a punch to the stomach. Klaus was crying, and so was Kevin. Klaus had just gotten Kevin back into his life, and now he was going to lose him.

David looked at me in panic, so that was when I whispered to him that Kevin was dying from his radiation exposure. Now it was David's turn to cling to me and cry. It was so cruel! We'd just met this wonderful person, and he was a perfect fit in our family. The nuclear war was over! People weren't supposed to be healthy and happy now but still dying! I knew better than that, but I felt more than cheated.

***

'3:00 PM, outside 16 rad/hour, basement 1.4 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

We all knew. We all cried our eyes out. We didn't have precise information yet, and I thought that was important. After a break to use the bathroom and refresh our beverages, we each grabbed a notepad and pencil, and I sat next to Kevin with our radiation log. "Do these numbers look like the numbers you got at the fire station?" I asked Kevin.

"Close," he said. "We peaked at eight-twenty though. You peaked at nine-ten."

"Oh good!" I said. "We can make a correction factor of…" I had some division to do. "Point nine zero. If we use these numbers, we can take ninety percent of our total to represent your exposure. Now you say you left the church at six?"

"Yes. You should know I've done the rough math in my head after talking with Evan, and we were both well over six hundred rads. Well over, but we didn't know by how much. Plus, you need to remember my rolling around in the ditch and probably inhaling fallout dust."

"Well, we have a lot of factors," I said, "and though we can't know how much, if any, you inhaled, you did get decontaminated pretty quickly each time you had an exposure." While I was working like a scientist, it seemed my emotions went into standby mode. "Did you measure the readings in your work area and compare them to the outside?"

"Yes, I did," he said. "There were important things I left out of the story because I didn't want to talk about my dose until I was ready. As the rads per hour skyrocketed that night, I noted the difference between the outside and our work area was about eightfold. It was immediately clear that we wouldn't survive that. So we moved everybody into the sleeping quarters, an interior room with another layer of brick. That got us down to about five percent of the outside levels. We made that move around three AM."

"So, if we add that up," I said, "we get… four hundred twenty rads total, but that doesn't count those first few hours before you moved. We didn't get those readings here. We'd gone to bed already. Do you remember what they were?"

"Well, midnight was still fine," said Kevin, "below four, I think, but I think one and two o'clock were one and two hundred."

"Ok, that's three hundred rads divided by eight… thirty-eight rads. And we should add that to your sixty rads from your first day out in the driveway."

"I figured you'd worked that out already," he said. "But we can't stop there," he said. "We didn't spend the whole time in the firefighter's sleeping quarters. We had to get people decontaminated, which brought us back into our work area, and closer to the door."

"Ok then, let's work it out like this," I said. "How many minutes per hour did you spend decontaminating people and doing other stuff in the original work area?"

"Well, we traded decontamination duties, so… let's say about ten minutes per hour. We really tried to hurry them through, just so we could get them to the shower in the sleeping quarters."

"Ok," I said. I chewed on my pencil as I thought about how we could get the right answer. "So three-fifty plus one seventy-five… add in those two… ok, I get six twenty-three, but we get to use the correction factor of point nine zero, so that gets us to… five-sixty. That's a lot," I said, "but I guess it's better than six hundred. And there's even better news here." I went to the first aid kit and got out the book. "Most of your exposure happened slowly, over several days. That helps a lot. It means if you get it all at once, or in just a few minutes, you've effectively had the full dose – five hundred sixty rads. When the dose is spread out over time, your body has a chance to heal some of the damage while you're still being exposed to more radiation. You got a lot between four and ten AM on Thursday, but otherwise, this is spread out pretty widely. Even your max dose was spread out over six hours."

"Thank you, Donovan," said Kevin. "I've still received a very high dose of radiation. If it doesn't kill me, I will be extremely sick in every way imaginable. And I haven't told you what I think is the worst. While all the fallout dust was coming down, every time we opened the door, more of it floated in. And when I was working outside, it was in the air all around us. I'm afraid there's no way of knowing how much of it I inhaled that whole night, not just in the ditch by my parents' house. Donovan, I think you understand what that means. As long as there are particles of radioactive material in my body, I'm still being exposed to more radiation all the time, and there's no way to remove any of the dust from my lungs. We used masks after a while, but it's a big unknown, and I need you all to know I will probably die from this." Klaus grabbed him desperately and sobbed again.

"I think you've still got a reasonable chance of surviving this, Kevin," I said, "depending on how much you inhaled. Being sick like that will be really horrible for you, but we'll take care of you, no matter what! And we've got a car too, and the fallout should have cooled down enough by the time you start to get sick again that we can take you to the hospital!"

"Not in Buffalo, I'm afraid," he said. "They're no longer admitting patients with acute radiation sickness. There's really nothing they can do for them anyway but fluids and antibiotics."

"At least that's something – fluids and antibiotics," said David.

Kevin slowly grinned and said, "It's nothing I can't do myself! In my bag in the garage, I've got supplies from the fire station. Evan sent me off with ten I-V bags with saline and electrolytes plus ten I-V sets. That's the needle and the tubing. Plus, he gave me a bunch of antibiotics. I'm taking the pills now until I get sick again, and at the first sign of diarrhea, I'll need to drink as much water as I possibly can, and then a little more. Then I'll probably need antibiotics injected into my I-V set."

"You brought a hospital with you!" said Klaus. He was smiling, but he was still sniffling and sobbing. To someone who's hurting as bad as Klaus was hurting, a little good news can mean a lot.

"I need to be clear about this though," said Kevin. "I thought I was definitely going to die. Now I believe I have a minimal chance of survival if I didn't breathe any radioactive dust in, which to me, seems unlikely. I need you all to know that there's a very good chance that I am going to die. I think we should work on accepting that, and if it doesn't happen, so much the better. I just don't think we should get too excited about these things that might or might not help me survive. I want us all to know that's a likelihood. I also want us all to know that while I'm here, I intend to live! It wasn't very fair of me to come back into Klaus' life just as I'm dying, and I want to try to make that up by bringing as much happiness as I can to our family. I really do love you guys."

Kevin was smiling sweetly, but David and I were starting to cry again. It was somewhat awkward. He wanted to bring us happiness, but the numbers didn't lie. At best, he'd had an exposure that would be lethal to most people who got the same dose. At worst, he got a lot more.

"Now, I need to ask something of all of you," said Kevin. "The most likely cause of death from radiation sickness is that the bone marrow dies off, and that keeps the patient from making new blood cells. It will keep me from being able to fight infections, and it will make me very weak and fatigued. It would help if I could replace my blood cells with cells from someone else, but they have to have the same blood type as me, or similar…"

"O-negative!" shouted Klaus. "Anybody can use my blood!"

"Oh, that's wonderful!" said Kevin. "I have donor bags and needle kits in the garage. I've also got a blood typing kit. Evan gave me everything I could need for this. If you are willing, Klaus dear, I would like to decontaminate all those medical supplies today, and then draw two units from you. Boys, this is really hard for me to ask…"

"Of course!" I said. "You can have as much of my blood as you need!"

"Mine, too," said David, "but I don't know what type I am."

"I'm A-positive," said Kevin. "Donovan, David, when I've got my stuff decontaminated, I would like to stick you in the finger and get a drop of blood to figure out your blood type. Then, if one of you is a match, I would like to take only one unit of blood from you. David, for you, that might be a lot. It might make you tired and dizzy for a while. All three units will need to be in the refrigerator until I have to use them. Then, if I don't get sick for another month or two, we could do more blood draws then."

"Oh that's fine," said David, "but I think you should really go through our first aid kit here. I'm pretty sure all of that blood typing and transfusion stuff is already in there. Mom was a neurologist, and she equipped it like a hospital."

"Oh, wonderful!" said Kevin. David heaved the first aid kit onto the table and shoved it toward Keven so he could rummage around.

"Boys, in seventh-grade health class, we do a unit on death and dying," said Klaus. "Some of the things we cover in that unit are the importance of talking with someone or expressing our feelings in some way. We also have to face the unknown, which is hard enough when you're just going to school to take an exam. When the unknown is the end of the life of someone you love, it can feel unbearable, but we have to find words for it, or music, or some other art. It needs to have a voice.

"Quite often, it feels like too much, and we don't know where to start, so we don't start at all. Right now, I want you to know these things are all normal when we're facing the loss of someone we love. It's also normal to think about your own death when someone close to you is dying, and that can be terrifying for some people. What we need more than anything is to stay close as a family. We all love each other, and Kevin isn't going anywhere just yet."

Great. Kevin was probably going to die, and Klaus was going to have us making posters about it on construction paper with crayons.

Chapter 77

A Special Dessert

'4:00 PM, outside 15 rad/hour, basement 1.3 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

We did our blood typing, and we found out I was AB+, and David was A-, which meant my blood was useless to anybody but me, but Kevin could use Klaus and David's blood, and I could use anybody's blood if I needed to. Since our fridge in the basement was so tiny, and since a quick run into the upstairs kitchen was no big deal, Klaus ran the blood bags upstairs and put them in that fridge once they were full. Kevin insisted that David and Klaus drink plenty of orange juice. Klaus poured each of us a tall glass full of orange juice with a tiny drizzle of Galliano to make it taste like a Harvey Wallbanger. He mixed one for me, so I didn't feel left out because everybody knew I'd give my blood too if anybody needed it. (It wasn't my fault that my blood would be poison in anybody else's body.) I was feeling much better than when I woke up, and I liked this sorta virgin wallbanger.

Kevin also told us that, even at the small doses of radiation we'd all probably received, we might have a drop in a certain kind of blood cell called a lymphocyte. He thought it was a good idea to check the levels of all our blood cells too, so he poked all our fingers again and took a drop of blood from each of us, one at a time, and put it on a special slide that he used with a tiny microscope that was in a special pouch in the medical kit. He said these numbers didn't really mean anything, except that Klaus' lymphocytes were slightly low, but not enough to cause any concern. It was really a sort of baseline measurement. The reason for doing these blood cell counts was so we could tell if anything started to fall, which would be an early warning that we were getting sick. I was surprised at how many numbers he wrote down for each of us.

***

'5:00 PM, outside 15 rad/hour, basement 1.3 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

"Mr. Green in the study with the revolver," said Kevin. David looked at me and smiled. It was the first time I'd seen him lose at Clue.

Since it was a mellow afternoon, I was out-voted, and we played some soft music on the tape recorder.

Almost cut my hair, happened just the other day
It's gettin' kind of long, I could've said it was in my way

But I didn't, and I wonder why I feel like letting my freak flag fly
And I feel like I owe it, to someone, yeah

It was a funny song from one of David's mom's Crosby Stills and Nash tapes. "Let your freak flag fly, sweetie," I said to David. "I love your big, long, floppy hair!"

"For you, I'll let it keep growing as long as I can get a hairbrush through it," he said, giving me a kiss.

I said it was a mellow afternoon, but that's not quite right, is it? We'd just learned that Kevin was most likely going to die, but Kevin had said that in the time he had left, he wanted to bring happiness to our family. It wasn't difficult to have fun if I just pretended none of that had happened, and he wasn't dying. It felt weird and somehow wrong. I think it was what he wanted though.

"What's it like knowing you're gonna die, Kevin?" I asked. I was getting better at some of my social skills, but choosing the best time and place for difficult questions was advanced material for me, and I wasn't very good at it yet.

Klaus looked from Kevin to me and back. He had taught us that we needed to talk about Kevin's likely death, but I don't think this was quite what he had in mind. Kevin took Klaus' hand and smiled at him and me.

"It's scary. Really scary sometimes," he said. "But it also seems to make a lot of things simple. If I have, let's say, a month left to live, I can think about dying and be scared all the time, but I'd rather be happy, and I'd much rather bring happiness to my new family while I can. The way I see it, I might have about a month to be scared the whole time or to be happy with my new family. I try not to think about the scary stuff, so I can focus on the happy parts of my life. To me, it's pretty simple. You guys will have to go back to being a family of three again, and that will probably be difficult, and it might be difficult for more than a month. Please remember, you can spend your time feeling sad, afraid, or angry, or you can spend your time feeling how awesome it is to have this beautiful new family that's so full of love. You can actually choose your mood. Sometimes it's difficult, but if you think of me after I'm gone, I hope you are smiling!" Klaus was smiling, but he was crying at the same time.

***

'6:00 PM, outside 15 rad/hour, basement 1.2 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus and Kevin were lying on their backs with their feet up in the air, butts facing each other. I was lying across Klaus's feet face up in the plank position, and David was practicing guitar.

"Are you ready, Donovan?"

"Yes!" I said, making sure my whole body was as stiff as a plank. It was hard to let someone else balance me, but I trusted Klaus and Kevin.

Klaus bent his knees just a bit, then rolling my body with his toes; he tossed me to Kevin's waiting feet, where I landed facing down. Kevin turned my body like a helicopter rotor, only one-half turn, then tossed me back to Klaus. Then he began turning me like a helicopter rotor, I don't know how many times around, but soon it was Kevin's feet that were turning me around. When he stopped, he pushed really hard and tossed me back to Klaus, who had caught me facing up, a complete turn all the way around. I was so dizzy I had to laugh!

"That was so cool!" I said. When Klaus set me down, I lay down with Kevin, because I wanted to feel his love and his life while I could. It was nice to know I could trust him as much as I could trust Klaus. There was no way I could balance myself with all that twisting and twirling. All I could do was remain stiff as a plank and trust them.

***

In a way, our acrobalance gymnastics seemed a bit like sex, especially the ancient man-boy ritual we celebrated (until I fucked everything up and hurt David, that is). During sex, the really good kind, we become powerless. We lose control of ourselves, our bodies, our expressions, the embarrassing noises we make, and we have to trust our partners completely.

The way I see it that is the most honest view we can give another person of who we are. It's not embarrassing noises – It's the act of trusting someone else enough to share them. We give ourselves completely to someone when we have sex with them. That moment when we cum is the most powerless moment in our lives, just for an instant, and the more completely we trust the person we're with, the more explosively joyous it can be.

Our ancient man-boy ritual was all about that. I didn't understand it at the time, but it wasn't about forcing boys to bow to your will or giving them pain or unfair punishments, which is what I first thought it was. I think people live their whole lives enjoying BDSM as subs without ever understanding that the most incredible aphrodisiac is not pain. It's trust.

Klaus wanted David and me to think he was going to be cruel and selfish with our bodies, and we were both turned on. I know now that he was taking us right up to the limit of what would hurt or be unpleasant, and he was trying to keep us there without crossing that line. After that day, I would have served Klaus as his slave boy any time he wanted me to because I trusted him. I trusted him with my life.

I think this is really why acrobalance was such a sexual turn-on for me. Imagine being thrown in the air naked and caught with someone's feet. You have to trust that person completely. If I get dizzy, which I did all the time, I had to stay in my plank position, and later other positions, and absolutely trust Klaus and Kevin to land me safely on the floor.

Now consider my eleven-year-old mind and how I might have processed this whole concept of trust as the greatest aphrodisiac. During our ritual, I saw it as a little hurt, a little pain, a little punishment, it was all a turn-on, and I hadn't quite worked it out yet. I didn't really understand how trust figured into the picture. I actually thought it was more pleasurable for Klaus to have his way with us than it was for us to offer ourselves up for Klaus' pleasure.

Punish the boys! Make them hurt! Make David cry! As an old man, that memory plagues me as it did the day it happened, but I do not want anybody's pity. All three of us were hurt by my act of impulsivity, but what is childhood for? That is the time when we learn by our less-costly mistakes to think things through and reason things out instead of acting on impulse. I think that's how it's supposed to be anyway.

***

'7:00 PM, outside 14 rad/hour, basement 1.2 rad/hour, inside 0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus found a surprise for us when he went upstairs to put the blood in the fridge for storage. After supper (loaded potatoes with chili, onions, sour cream, and cheese, however we wanted it), we had raspberries and cherries with whipped cream! David's mom had somehow hidden two cans of Reddi-Whip in the upstairs fridge, probably for some special treat that never happened. Kevin showed me how to make a pile of raspberries in the middle of my bowl, then cover it with whipped cream, and top it off with a cherry.

When we were done eating, Klaus called David to his side and whispered something into his ear that made David giggle hysterically. He and David cleared off the dishes first, then Klaus helped David up onto the table and told him to lie back and spread his legs. David was already hard before they cleared the table, so I knew it was going to be fun! Soon Klaus was applying whipped cream to David's cock, swirling around it in a big cone. Then he put a cherry right on top.

"Kevin, why don't you climb up and let Donovan decorate you?"

With a huge smile, Kevin sat on the table, gave me a kiss, and laid his beautiful athlete's body back on the table. I sucked his cock, but only for a few seconds. I wasn't convinced he was fully hard. Ok, I knew he was fully hard, but I needed an excuse! I loved his cock. It was big like Klaus', but it was smooth like David's.

I liked Klaus' big hairy cock a lot, but it was a different feeling. Klaus liked boys because we were right in the middle between children and men. Well, I think that's why I liked Kevin's cock so much. It was a man's cock, but it still felt like a boy's cock. It wasn't all full of sharp stubble from shaving either. I never asked him how he kept his body so hairless like that. I was an eleven-year-old boy. I was already hairless, sort of. Adulthood wasn't part of what I imagined in my future.

Klaus had more in mind than decorating their cocks. Before I knew what he was doing, he had swirled whipped cream around each of David's nipples and put a raspberry in the middle of each, and he did the same with his belly button, only he used a cherry. Then he made a great big smile across David's lower belly and added more below his cock and down his ass crack to make it look like a beard.

I put whipped cream on all the parts of Kevin's body that would normally have hair, including all the way down his crotch, the armpits, and his face. I didn't have the artistry that Klaus had, but I wanted to get on with the sex! Kevin and I kissed slowly with tongues before I did his face, and he told me how sweet I was. Then he grabbed me and kissed me the same way after I did his face!

On seeing this, Klaus said, "What a perfect opportunity for a demonstration! We've decorated each other's boys, so now we go back to our own boys and lick up our dessert, like this!" You can guess what he did with my messy face after all of Kevin's kissing!

I began right away with excavating David's cock. That's the part of him I wanted the most. Klaus had put whipped cream down David's crotch too, so I took my time licking it up. I looked up and saw that David and Kevin were licking each other's faces. That felt like cheating, but I had all I wanted. In fact, a devilish part of me had a surprise for David.

I took a can of Reddi-Whip, poked it up his ass, and shot a nice amount of whipped cream up inside him. Then I used his ass as a whipped cream dispenser, licking it up as it came out. He fought me by squeezing my head with his legs and pushing my head away, getting whipped cream all over in my hair, but I had him where I wanted him! I even did the same with a few cherries. (We all knew about being clean before sex and having enemas, so I knew it was ok.)

Kevin and David made a mess of each other's upper bodies by hugging and kissing while Klaus and I mostly paid attention to their lower bodies. I asked Klaus if he wanted to trade. I wanted to make Kevin cum, and I wanted to taste it. All three of them thought swapping would be fun.

First, I climbed on top of him and got my body all slippery and sticky. Then I kissed him like we'd just kissed a few minutes earlier. I slid back down and sucked his cock. Then I shot some Reddi-Whip up my own ass, and I climbed up on the table and slipped down onto Kevin's cock, feeling the foam ooze out from all around my ass. I wanted to taste Kevin's cum, but I wanted to mix it with some whipped cream. Besides, I was horny for some nice ass sex.

Klaus asked for the Reddi-Whip when I was done so he could use it to lube David. I was sitting upright on Kevin's cock on the table, and David was lying back on the table while Klaus fucked him from a standing position. When Kevin was ready to cum, I hopped off the table and quickly covered his cock with more Reddi Whip before I sucked out a sweet cum sundae! I knew I had to enjoy it while it lasted because there was no way Klaus would let us keep that Reddi-Whip for another day. It was fine for that day, but we'd had both nozzles up our asses, and bacteria grow over time.

I slid back up onto Kevin's sweet, slimy body for a kiss and a cuddle. Soon I could see David sitting up quickly while Klaus hurriedly covered his cock with more whipped cream so David could have the same treatment I'd had. He smiled and giggled as Klaus picked him up and kissed him deeply, smearing all the dessert stuff all over his body.

"Our turn!" I called out with a smile, only too aware that neither David nor I had orgasmed yet.

I rolled off of Kevin so my back was on the table, and David crawled on top of me so we could have a delicious 69. Klaus and Kevin sprayed us all over with most of the remaining whipped cream while we sucked each other between giggle-fits. Kevin put a few cherries into David's ass and followed it with whipped cream for a cherry sundae. I couldn't reach David's ass, so the mess that Kevin spilled just sort of plopped down all over my face, where Kevin was careful to lick it off. It really was clean. David was always meticulous about that after we'd read about it in the gay picture book from the library.

I could feel Klaus' tongue in my ass most of the time, too, occasionally squirting me full of whipped cream, but no cherries.

"Klaus, dear," said Kevin, "I think we should leave these two adorable, passionate lovers alone now."

"Right now?"

"Yes," said Kevin. "I think it's important."

Their departure seemed abrupt, and in a minute or so, I could hear the shower. That didn't bother me.

"I love you, David! I haven't had this much fun since… forever, I think!"

He slipped and slid around so we could kiss and lose ourselves in this world that was made of each other, occasionally laughing at how ridiculous it was that we were covered with whipped cream head to toe.

I sat in a folding chair because they looked easiest to clean, and David sat facing me on my lap, kissing and breathing, not sure which was which, and still stopping for the occasional giggle fit. I'd laid a towel over the edge of the table and spread my knees past the sides of the chair so David had a nice, clear path for his docking maneuver. Young boys usually have a tough time finding good positions to make anal sex work, but we had good coaches and an excellent book, and a lot of recent practice.

I slid my hands up and down along his smooth, slender torso. It was a feeling I'd never imagined before. Then I grabbed his cock, and with the small motions he was making with his body, that was enough to make him squeal briefly.

"I love you, Donovan!"

"I love you, David!"

***

Kevin and Klaus emerged from the bathroom to find the two of us facing each other, hugging on the folding chair, not quite asleep, but I kinda wished I was, because I didn't want to move or be disturbed. We looked at each other, almost sadly, trying to communicate the amount of love we felt for each other.

"When you boys are ready," said Klaus, "the shower is yours. I think we left enough hot water."

Seeing my reluctance, he added, "All good things must come to an end. If we don't clean this mess up carefully, and wash your hair and feet carefully, by the way, and help each other with your backs and butts, ok? A sugary butt crack can cause a yeast infection if you don't clean thoroughly. If we don't clean this lovely mess up carefully, we'll have insects all over here, and I know a lot of the ants around here bite. So you two clean yourselves, and we'll get started in here."

On our way to the bathroom, I licked every surface of David's body I could reach, paying close attention to his astonishingly sexy butt. When I snuck my finger up his ass, he paused and gasped. I held it there until we got to the bathroom and fucked again in the tub before our shower.

Chapter 78

Upcoming Transition

'8:00 PM, outside 14 rad/hour, basement 1.1 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

Kevin had shared some of his bath product secrets with David and me, so after our skin was completely dry, David's felt so incredibly soft, even softer than normal, and it didn't feel like it had a layer of goop or lotion on it. Mine seemed to feel the same, but all three of the guys swore they felt a difference, and that my skin was also very soft anyway.

Since David and I were so much smaller, we cuddled on the recliner while Klaus and Kevin snuggled on the couch.

"Boys," said Klaus, with a tone of voice that scared me, "there's something we need to talk about."

Just then, I noticed that it looked as if Kevin had been crying. This was going to be bad. "We need to talk about Kevin's illness." Yes, this was going to be very bad. "You both know that radiation sickness has an early phase and a late phase, right?" We both nodded.

"You also know that Kevin became very sick for a few days at the fire station, which was the early phase of his illness." Again, we nodded. "His recovery from his first phase seemed nearly complete, though we've always known the second phase would be coming." Kevin gave us a comforting smile, which was occasionally broken by a wrinkled chin and a quiet sob.

"The second phase can begin in one week, or up to eight weeks, even more, or it can overlap with the first phase, but the sooner it comes, the more severe the illness will be, and the lower the chances of survival."

That was the exact moment when it hit me, what Klaus was saying. The one boy, the one man he'd loved more than anyone in the world, was going to die after all, and it would be a lot sooner than we expected.

"But he seems fine!" I desperately protested.

Klaus looked at Kevin, then back to me, and said with some difficulty, "We just discovered a major sign that phase two has begun."

"We didn't want to ruin your fun or interfere with your love-making," said Kevin, "but I noticed a serious problem just before we went into the shower. You might have noticed we left rather quickly."

"I didn't notice that," said David. I shook my head in agreement with David.

"We're both happy about that," said Klaus. "We tried hard to leave quietly and let you have your time and your fun with each other. We need to be direct about what has happened. While we were playing with the whipped cream, I noticed some blood mixed with the whipped cream coming from Kevin's anus." David maintained his most caring and compassionate face, but I'm afraid I must have shown signs of disgust, which even then I was not proud of. I loved Kevin, and that blood meant he would die very soon.

"Don't worry. Nothing gross happened. As soon as Kevin noticed it, we went to the bathroom, and he had a bout of bloody diarrhea before our shower."

"It came very suddenly," said Kevin. "I would never have played like that if I'd felt something like that was developing inside me. Right now, I want to thank you all for the love you're showing me in understanding this for the medical problem it is and not letting it ruin an incredibly fun and love-filled evening we had."

"I've had diarrhea that came out of nowhere before," said David. "I know what you mean when you feel fine and you can't tell it's coming. You must have felt awful when you realized what it was!" He got up and hugged Kevin, and they shared a few sobs.

"So now what do we do?" I asked.

"Well, I think the first thing we can do is accept the fact that I am going to die," said Kevin. "When we calculated my exposure and drew blood for transfusions, I think we had some reason for a little hope, but when the second phase arrives this early, survival is nearly impossible, even in the most advanced hospital. It seems I must have inhaled a fair bit of fallout dust after all. What I would like to do now is to spend the time I have left with you three, all of you, and share the love we feel. I have already found a new heaven right here with you, and with you near me when it's my time; I will die knowing I am loved, and that my life was worthwhile." We all sobbed for a few minutes, even Kevin, before Klaus spoke up.

"What Kevin says is right. We need to expect and plan for his passing, but that doesn't mean we don't treat his illness. Dr. Chance left plenty of medications, I.V. supplies, and some diagnostic equipment, which Kevin has already used. We've also got blood for transfusions in the fridge upstairs and lots of bags of saline, with and without electrolytes & dextrose. For when the time comes, she has also left us with medications to help keep him comfortable during his transition."

"His transition?" I asked.

"Yes, Don," said Klaus. "Since nobody really knows what it means to die, the word 'die' doesn't have much meaning to people who are facing their own death. We do know that death is a transition from being alive here on Earth to something else that no one knows. It's a more useful word to many people."

"This isn't really news to anybody here," said Kevin. "We've all known this was coming, but we didn't know it would be so soon. What that means to me is that having happy times with you needs to be my top priority!"

***

I had an idea for a shared happy time with everybody. I wanted to share my acrobalance fun with David, so we worked out a pose for all four of us. I would lie back on Klaus' feet in the plank position, and David would lie over the top of me in the 6-9 position. We would wrap our arms tight around each other's straight legs and keep our bodies as stiff as possible. Klaus took us first and bounced us a few times. Then he flipped us over, so David was on the bottom, but we started to roll off his heels.

Not to worry. Kevin caught us with his feet and set us back up again. Klaus tried it again, and this time we landed with David on the bottom, then again, right away, I was on the bottom. I think Klaus wanted to keep me on the bottom because I was bigger than David. He began to spin us like a helicopter rotor, and he passed us off to Kevin. He stopped the helicopter spin and tossed us up for a half-turn, and then another one right away.

Then to our surprise, he immediately began a series of whole spins, where I was on the bottom every time we landed. It was good that I was holding David's legs together in such a tight hug because I could feel him trying to catch himself by putting his legs out, which would have made us fall. Then, during one full spin, I felt us move to the side, and then back. Klaus and Kevin were tossing us back and forth with a full spin during each toss. David was making howling and wailing noises the whole time as if he were on a roller coaster or something. Finally, Klaus caught us and held still while we climbed down.

David was positively giddy! "That was so scary!" he said, "but it was incredible! I know why you like it so much now!"

"With you as part of this," said Klaus, "that opens a lot more possibilities of what we can do if you like."

"This was so much fun," said David, "and I for sure want to do more, but I also want to watch because I love the beauty of the human body as sculpture, which is really what you started out doing. This more acrobatic stuff is so much fun though! If you're doing the balancing, I'd rather watch, but maybe I'd like to participate in this acrobatic stuff, as long as it's safe for a klutz like me."

"We can do that," said Klaus, "but I hope we can include you in some pure balancing poses as well, David. It's very unusual for an acrobalance team to have one bottom and two tops." Those words meant something sexual in the gay book.

Seeing my funny look, he said, "The bottom is the bigger, stronger member of the group, and the top is the smaller, lighter member of the group. Most groups have a bottom and a top, some have two of each, and some have one of each and someone in the middle."

***

Before we knew what was happening, Klaus and Kevin were helping David and me to come up with basic poses for just the two of us, which was the last thing either of us expected. I was really surprised at how easy a lot of the basic stuff was. For example, David assumed the plank position, and I held him high in the air on my feet, just like Klaus had done with me so many times. Klaus didn't want me to toss him or spin him or anything, of course. (His butt looked so cute between my feet!) W

With David in that position, Klaus showed him lots of ballet-type poses he could do while on my feet by extending his arms and legs in elegant curves and positions, all of which took me back to that day in the locker room when I first saw his naked leg gracefully arch over the bench on the way to the shower. David was graceful, and he was meant to be doing this.

Then David leaned forward, with his hips on my feet, and we held each other's arms. Klaus showed him several poses he could do with his legs, and when he was comfortable with those, he was free to add one arm. He reached behind his back with his left arm and took hold of his right ankle, lifting it as high as he could. I thought I could see where that pose was going, but it was clear he'd need more flexibility before that would work out – by god he was sexy!

Finally, Klaus lifted David, so he was standing on my feet. This was incredibly difficult. The feet move to the outside when you try to stand like that, and you have to have strong groin & thigh muscles to hold them steady. Klaus never let go of David, which was good. He just wanted to show us a goal we might want to follow for our future. And that's how we spent an hour doing what I thought would make us happy. It was time for someone else to choose. A shared happy time

Chapter 79

Music Therapy

'9:00 PM, outside 15 rad/hour, basement 1.2 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

…Dr. Dr. help me please I know you'll understand
There's a time device inside of me I'm a self-destruction man
There's a red, under my bed, and there's a little green man in my head
And said you're not goin' crazy, you're just a bit sad
'Cause there's a man in ya, knawin' ya, tearin' ya, into two

Silly boy ya' self-destroyer. paranoia, they destroy ya'

Self-destroyer, wreck your health, destroy your friends, destroy yourself
The time device on, self-destruction, light the fuse and start eruption

David had suggested music as his happy time idea. As usual, we went around, each of us choosing a song. Klaus was the family rocker, so he chose one by The Kinks. It was another kinda funny song about paranoia, though I suppose a paranoid person wouldn't think it was so funny. David and I had a good time dancing to it, though!

Kevin went next:

…I've got the only key to your heart, I can stop you falling apart
Try today you'll find this way, come on and give me a chance to say

Let my love open the door, it's all I'm living for
Release yourself from misery, there's only one thing gonna set you free
That's my love, that's my love

Let my love open the door, let my love open the door
Let my love open the door, let my love open the door

It turns out Kevin was a romantic, a bit like David, and he loved love songs. This one had been popular while he was in high school.

The pressure was on me! I liked a lot of music that was either angry or sad or depressing. What did I like that was happy? Love songs weren't really my thing, but when I was with David, they actually meant something. I couldn't think of any. Then I remembered a song from when I was in third grade that I really liked. It was angry but fun at the same time:

We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teacher leave them kids alone

Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

All in all it's just another brick in the wall

I never understood that third line. It sounded like "no ducks are chasm in the classroom," which I knew couldn't be right because it made no sense. My problem was that I hadn't learned the word sarcasm yet, but Klaus helped me with that one.

Now, what would David choose? It was a song that none of us had heard of, but he said there were just four chords in it, and they move slowly, so he started on the guitar:

…This isn't quite the way I thought it would be, it seems they want to make a symbol of me
I have the power that can keep us alive, it's a sugar coated pill and it's bitter inside
I have the same dream every night, I wake up shaking in the morning light
I don't know what could be expected of me, I only know that I believe what I see
And you, do you see what I see, yeah you, do you see what I see

David was crying at the end of the song. Not just tearing up, but heavy sobbing. I put my arm around him, not knowing what to say. The song had sounded sad, but I had no idea what it was about. When he'd settled a bit, David said it was about a boy who could see into the future, and he saw horrible things, including nuclear war, but he had a special power that could save everyone around him. The boy finds out that his special power makes people act crazy when they try to persuade him to do their bidding.

"I'm sorry," David said. "I don't know why I felt I had to choose such a horrible song. It's as if the boy saved us, but he charged a fee by taking one of us."

"I can see how that song can have different meanings, David, and it's ok that you chose a sad song too," said Kevin. "It's not reasonable to expect that we will all be happy and cheerful until the moment I pass on, and you needed to tell us how sad, or maybe angry you feel."

"But why should I feel angry?" asked David in a very loud voice that I'd never heard from him. "You're the one who's dying, not me!"

"Part of your family is being taken from you, David. I think you have more reason to be angry than I do. After all, we all have to die, but we don't all have to lose someone we love when we're only eleven. You've already lost your friend Henry. You've had more loss than a boy your age usually has, and now you're going to lose someone else. I can't tell you how you should feel, but I would understand if you were angry at the unfairness of it all, or with the cruelty of the people who made this war happen."

"Maybe we should sing a few more songs that aren't so happy?" suggested Klaus. "Art, including music, helps us to express our true feelings, even when words aren't working. We talked about that this afternoon, remember?"

"I think that's a good idea," said Kevin.

"If you want to do that," said David, "that last song came from an album that tells a story, a sort of rock opera, and there are songs I like on it a lot, but they're not very happy. They say how I feel."

"Can we give David one more turn right now, everybody?" We all agreed. He rummaged through the cassette cases until he found one with a picture of a happy blonde boy on the cover. He opened the case and put a pink colored cassette in his mother's tape recorder. He wound the tape until he found the song he was looking for:

…And the minutemen stood as we knew they would, and the world went temporarily sane

And the radio said, "My god cover your heads, and get out of the boiling rain"
And the true believers looked on and laughed, till the last cruise missile had flown
And life goes on for the lucky ones, out here in The Zone
Behind the barrier

"You see," said David, "The Zone is the area created by that boy where everyone is safe from nuclear war, and it's surrounded by The Barrier. Since the boy made this safe place for the leaders and the people of the country, they figured out they could launch a nuclear attack without having to worry about anyone striking back, and that's exactly what they did. That poor boy was just trying to help people with his special powers, but everyone kept using him! And millions and millions of people died because of what he'd done when he was only trying to help."

"That sounds very unfair," said Klaus, "cruelly unfair."

"That's what all of this is! It's cruel and unfair! Kevin was just trying to help people at the fire station, and now look what's happened! Why did everyone have to die from the bombs? Why did people have to launch them in the first place? Why do more people have to die from radiation? Why does Kevin…" He broke down in heavy sobs, laying his head in my chest. I had to cry, too, because I felt so completely helpless.

Kevin had been more than stoic in his acceptance of his condition. He seemed to be accepting of it and eager to carry on with his remaining life, but at that moment, he showed that he was human, and he also broke down. I don't know if it was because of David's pain or the unfairness of his own impending death, or fear, or something else, but he was definitely shaken. I was trying to comfort David, and Klaus was trying to comfort Kevin, but neither of us seemed to be succeeding. The truth of our situation indeed was horrible, and maybe all the fun and love we'd been enjoying had caught up with us. Were we simply in denial of what had happened?

Chapter 80

Dealing With It

'10:00 PM, outside 14 rad/hour, basement 1.1 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

"I don't think we need to keep the log anymore," I said, "not like this. It never changes, and it's so depressing, and I don't want to have to think about the radiation poisoning us all day long just because another hour has gone by. I've looked at my formula for our fallout decay, and so far, the radiation outside has been matching it really well, better than I thought it would. Maybe we could put a copy of my formula in the log, and just check it a couple of times each day. Wouldn't that be enough?"

Klaus and Kevin looked at each other in silence for a few seconds before Klaus gave Kevin the slightest nod. "That sounds like a much more positive way to keep track of our radiation," said Kevin. "We should check it a couple of times each day, but also before we decide to leave the basement. Your formula was a really complicated math problem that you solved very accurately."

"Precisely," David and I said together, though it didn't feel as fun as it once did, correcting adults when they confused precision with accuracy.

"We're both super-good at math," I said, matter-of-factly, not looking up from the radiation log, where I was copying my formula from memory and filling in the expected overnight values. I meant to continue for several days, but it felt wrong to fill in the values for days after Kevin would be gone. I slapped the pencil down on the table, closed the logbook, and walked to the bathroom, looking at the floor. I didn't have to use the toilet, but I felt horrible and confused, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I sat on the toilet for a minute, and I noticed I was only feeling worse. I needed something. I needed someone. I needed parents. I had Klaus, but his lover was about to die. How could I tell him I needed him too? I didn't even know what I needed from him. I just knew I needed him, but he needed to be with Kevin.

"Are you ok in there, Donovan, Hunny?"

David had knocked on the bathroom door to check on me. I opened the door and hugged him. Then I began to cry. I told him about my confusion, and how I felt I needed Klaus, but it felt wrong to tell him I needed him. David held me quietly until I was done crying. Then he wiped my tears away with a wad of tissue. He held another to my nose and said, "Blow," which I did. I felt much better after these small gestures. "I think I know what you need," he said, "and there's only one way you're going to get it. Come on."

He took my hand and led me back to the shelter corner. "Are you ok, Don?" asked Klaus. "I thought you looked a little upset when you left."

"Yeah," I lied. David shot me a disapproving look. "I mean, no!" I cried, "I'm not ok, and I don't know what to do!"

"You told me in the bathroom that you needed something, Donovan, Hunny. Maybe that's a good place to start."

I was scared. How could I tell Klaus that what I needed was for him to hold me like a dad, but without being selfish and hurting Kevin?

"There's only one way?" I asked David.

"Yes, Donovan, sweetie. Just tell him. Tell them. They need to know because they want to help you. They both love you, and they want to know if you need something."

"Ok," I croaked. Before I knew what was happening, it all came flooding out, and I had used another seven tissues. "So how can I take him away from you, Kevin? Just because I want to talk with him really bad?"

"I bet there are lots of answers, Donovan," said Kevin, "but can I give you one that I think is most important?" I nodded.

"Trust," he said.

I looked at Klaus, then back at Kevin. "Klaus is your guardian. You know, your dad, only different. He loves you. Oh, he really loves your precious hearts. When you need to ask him for help, I think it's important to trust that he really does love you that much. You know why?" I shook my head but kept listening.

"He is very much like a dad, and what a loving dad wants more than anything in the world is to help, teach, protect, nourish, and guide his kids. In other words, to love them as much as he possibly can, and even more, if he could. You have a problem, and what you want to ask him for is a little of that love that he so badly wants to give you. I think you need to trust that he wants to give it to you more than just about anything, and I think you need to let him decide, and show you just how important it is to him.

"Yes, he loves me too, and I'll be needing help as my condition gets worse, but I think you also need to trust that Klaus will balance his need to love you with his need to care for me. He's a wise and responsible man, and he can work out that balance, but he needs to know when you need him. I think you should tell him what you need and trust that he will do what's best.

"You also need to trust that you boys are the most important priority he has. Don't get me wrong – he loves all three of us, but he is responsible for you, and he wants it to be that way. I'm an adult – I'm his lover. My needs can usually wait. You're his kids, so you come first. That's how families work, but some day soon, my needs might be more urgent than yours because I'll be getting very sick, and he will need to consider that too.

"In that case, he might decide that it would be best for him to help me or whatever, and then find time for you as soon as he can. It's not a matter of who he loves more. It's a matter of how urgent the problem appears to be, but you need to trust that he will make those decisions the same way a loving father would – maybe a loving father with a sick wife."

"Kevin won't go anywhere while we have a talk, anyway," said Klaus, "and there are three of us if you boys want to pitch in with his care." Tears began to fall from my eyes again. Of course, I wanted to help care for Kevin! I just didn't want to have to think about it yet. He was so kind and gentle and full of love. I felt so safe and comfortable with him.

"Can I sit on your lap?" I asked Kevin, surprising even myself.

He picked me up and cuddled me in his muscular and very soft arms. At age eleven, I was getting kinda big to sit on anyone's lap, but he made me feel like I belonged there, as if I had always belonged there. I thought I really badly needed it. I rocked just a tiny bit, trying to understand what Kevin had just said, and wondering why it suddenly felt like Kevin was the one I needed.

"If Klaus is like my dad, only a little different," I said, "can you be like my mom, only a little different? Can you love me that way too?"

I felt a few of his tears splash on my bare skin, and he seemed to be trying not to cry when he told me how good it felt that I had asked him, but somehow, those tears of his didn't hurt. They felt like a protective shield. I had what I'd wanted just a few minutes earlier, though I hadn't realized it. Soon David joined us in a hug so he could show Kevin he also wanted him to be like his mom, only a little different. I was in the safest place in the world, and for a little while, nothing could upset me. Nothing could hurt me.

***

"You guys should get married now," I said

"Oh, Donovan!" said David with a look of surprise. "I think that makes us like brothers, only a little different!" I jumped off Kevin's lap so I could tickle him.

Soon I had David on his back on the rug, laughing his breath away and begging me for mercy. Kevin sat on Klaus' lap, and they kissed tenderly while keeping an eye on us. I felt like a little boy again, and at that moment, I liked that feeling. I hadn't felt so young since I was five! I held David's arms to the floor and licked his nipples. Not tenderly, but rudely. I wanted to tickle him, not turn him on. Then I licked his armpits, and he wailed! I remembered to check every few seconds to make sure he was still having fun. (That's another social skill I'd learned from our time together.) Then I remembered that part of the hip bone that pokes out in front. I licked it madly, pressing my tongue in hard. Before I knew it, he had lifted his right leg up and rolled to his left, trapping my head between his thighs and there it was, right in front of me. As he was catching his breath, I saw that he actually was hard.

"Have you had a boner this whole time?" I asked before taking it into my mouth to suck on it.

"Oh! Umm… I mean… Yes… I think… I think so."

"So, tickle-torture turns you on?"

"NO!" he said. "OH!!! Oh, I mean, yeah, yes, I mean, I think it does. Sometimes. Yes! AHH!!! Yes, it does!" Kevin had his hand over his mouth and Klaus was trying to stifle a chuckle.

"Mmm," I said. "Someone missed a few places when he cleaned the whipped cream off himself!"

I thought I might have tasted it once, very faintly. I mostly said it for fun as an excuse to keep sucking my new, like-a-brother-only-different's cock. We'd adopted a mom, played, laughed, and had fun, all within an hour of learning that Kevin was going to die soon, but at that moment, I think it helped all of us to live as we usually would. After all, our normal life in our shelter corner was exactly what Kevin wanted, it really was nice, and it included a lot of sex.

But I had to stop sucking on David's cock because just then an important question came to me. "Kevin, if you're starting to get sick now, does that mean you can't have sex anymore?"

"Oh, sweetie," he said with a smile as he nuzzled his head into Klaus' strong, hairy chest. "That's so nice of you to ask. It's pretty clear that since my digestive bleeding has begun, I won't be able to take anal sex anymore, but that's the only thing I can think of right now. As I get sicker, I might also just feel too weak to do anything, but it would make me happy to see you all loving each other.

"So far, I don't feel sick like that. My hair has already been coming out in my hairbrush, but that won't stop anything. When I get a fever and feel weak, I will tell you I have to stop. I don't know how long that will be. I've had only one day between my phase one and phase two symptoms, so this could happen kinda fast.

"I'm sorry, but I think it's important that you know what to expect. Can I tell you boys something I heard a Vulcan say in a Star Trek episode? He said, 'Vulcan parents never shield their children from the truth. Doing so would only hinder their ability to cope with inevitable difficulties.' Since you've adopted me as your mom, but a little different, I think I need to be clear and direct when talking about my illness with you."

I laid my head on David's belly, looking at Kevin. David stroked my hair. If it was good for us to have sex and make love while Kevin was still around, how could I do that when thinking of his sickness made me feel sad and not horny?

"I've got an idea," said Kevin. He gave Klaus a kiss and stood up. Then he got down on all fours with David and me. "I wonder if you've ever had this done for you, David."

He took David's balls into his mouth and sucked them slowly. His cheeks bulged in weird ways that made me think he was rolling David's balls around with his tongue. David's eyes opened wide as he looked at me, almost in fear. Kevin indicated to me that I should resume sucking David's cock. David let out the cutest squeal!

He clearly had not had that done to him before. His whole body was one great spasm. His thigh muscles were all clenched hard, and his knees were bent past straight, which kept his heels from touching the floor. I gently caressed the soft skin over his muscle-spasming belly. He grabbed my forearm and clenched it tight – so tight I wasn't sure if his fingernails were going to make me bleed when we were done. He made a kitty-crying sound, as he usually did when he orgasmed, but this was different. This time he sounded like an angry kitty with a bad sore throat.

Kevin and I lifted our heads slowly and kissed each other deeply. He put a hand around my head and fed me his tongue rather aggressively. I thought maybe this was his way of saying, "I haven't gone anywhere yet, kid!"

When David finished with all of his twitching and gasping (I wanted that kind of orgasm!), we went to the recliner to cuddle.

"Does that help answer your question, Donovan?" asked Kevin.

"Uh-huh," I said.

"As long as I feel healthy enough and strong enough, I will play however I can." Kevin and I hugged over David's recovering body.

***

That day was full of all kinds of emotions, and I couldn't make sense of them all. Sometimes they scared me, and sometimes they made me feel really nice because I had a new mom, only different.

Later that night, we had our usual bedtime sex. We pulled out the bed, and Mom-Only-Different, well, I'm sorry if it sounds gross, but it was part of our new life, Mom-Only-Different had to spend a few minutes in the bathroom, just to make sure he wouldn't have an accident. He had to do that before sex every time after that day, but soon it became as ordinary as enemas.

Anyway, Mom-Only-Different jumped on Dad-Only-Different and began a lovely sixty-nine that was super-sexy to watch, so David and I sat there and did just that. I felt some regret because I hadn't watched the men having sex very closely, and it really turned me on and now Kevin was going to die. What a stupid thing to feel bad about when Mom-Only-Different was about to die! That's how my night went. My thoughts and my feelings weren't saying the same things.

That confusion ended when I felt David's sweet mouth on my suddenly stiff cock. The surprise made me gasp, but I kept my eyes on the men. I reached out and caressed Kevin's soft ass. He didn't seem sick at all to me. He was really face-fucking Klaus hard, and he was going all the way in with each stroke. I moved my hand down and lightly stroked Kevin's balls. He lifted his head and gasped loudly, shoving his cock deep into Klaus' throat. I took that moment to suck his balls into my mouth and pop them out. He held still as I did that, and I could tell he was near cumming.

"Ok, your turn, boys," said Klaus.

Kevin had rolled awkwardly off of Klaus' body and set me on his face so he could lick out my ass. That's a feeling I'll never get used to. He was so strong! He lifted me from his face onto his cock. He let me slide down at my own speed, which was getting quicker and quicker every time Klaus or Kevin fucked me. It always felt really tight, but it was a reassuring feeling, the feeling that a man who loved me was snugly connected to me, and I was safe. Just to my left, Klaus and David were doing exactly the same, only they were facing the opposite direction, which meant David and I could kiss.

"Can I swallow your cum?" I asked Kevin.

"Sure," he said. "I'll let you know when." He didn't have to – Men make it kinda obvious when they're about to cum. I slipped off his cock and slid down his soft, sculpted skin to catch my creamy prize. I kept some in my mouth to share with him. I thought it was only good manners. We shared the bit of cum as long as we could, then just kissed until David and Klaus were finished.

I realized that I was ok. Mom-Only-Different was going to die soon, and nobody could change that, but what he seemed to want in his last days was something we could give him, and only we could give it to him the way he wanted it. He wanted our love, and when the time would come to say goodbye to Kevin, he would leave us with his dying wish fulfilled. Kevin was really dying, and that's forever, so it's an important moment to get right. Out of the whole world, Kevin chose us. He wanted our love.

Ok, his family had all died, just like our families had, but still, he chose us, and I had never felt so special before. When it came down to it, my love meant something to someone. It was a tremendous burden, but it was one I knew we could all handle because love was the one thing we were best at.

Chapter 81

A Perfect Monday Morning

'8:30 AM, outside 12 rad/hour, basement 1.0 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

Klaus was up early, as usual, and so was Kevin. I woke up at about 9:30, and I saw Klaus and Kevin enjoying another moment alone together. Kevin was on his knees, sucking Klaus' cock, and Klaus was slumped in the recliner, trying to grunt quietly. The sight was really sweet and quite hot, but it was their moment. I was not about to interrupt them, not when I had the most beautiful boy I could ever dream of sleeping next to me.

I carefully slid down and took David's soft, un-expecting cock into my mouth and gave him every boy's dream alarm call, nice and slowly, so he didn't wake up suddenly. I thought it was odd that he got a boner while he was still asleep, but that didn't last very long. His sleeping, I mean. He yawned, then stretched that nice, satisfying, first-thing-in-the-morning stretch. He moaned, then gasped. I gently pressed my hand down on his chest to show him I wanted him to stay where he was and not sit up. His skin felt like magic, just like it did that first time we made love. It was too soft to be real, and its tan color was both bright and warm. David clenched his thighs around my neck as he approached orgasm, which made me feel so good I wanted to cry! Knowing that I could make someone I loved so much, feel so good was better than an orgasm to me.

When David had finished, and we were both lying still in the same position, I felt a soft yet strong hand on my right ass cheek. It was Kevin, turning me over. He crawled in bed next to me and kissed me. He had a surprise for me, though. He gave me some of Klaus' cum with his soft, sweet kiss. He pulled back, and we shared a smile and another quick kiss. Then I crawled on top of David and did just the same, sharing some of Klaus' cum that Kevin had just given to me.

"It's my favorite high-protein breakfast drink," said Kevin after he swallowed. "I just wanted to return the favor from last night, when you shared your drink with me."

"Thanks!" we said, giving him another kiss. Then David and I fell into another long, soft, deep, and very loving kiss with each other.

***

The sounds of dishes clanking and someone snoring came to my ears after a while. So had the sound and smell of sizzling bacon. David and I gently parted our lips from each other. When I looked into his eyes, I felt like I might cry from the power of his beauty and his love. His eyes seemed to glisten too as he smiled back at me, or maybe I imagined it. We fell into a hug, then rolled over so he was on top. We had to get on with our day, but I couldn't let go of him!

"Don, I'm not going anywhere," he said, apparently sensing my dilemma. "I want to be with you forever, and that's a long time," he said, paraphrasing Prince. "Besides, we're kinda stuck together as long as the fallout is so hot outside."

"Today, you want to be with me forever," I said, "but what about a month from now?" I would have asked about five years from then, only with the world in the state it was in, none of us knew if anyone would be alive then. "You're so beautiful and so perfect, and I never knew I could ever feel like this – I'm just Dumb Donny Langevin! You could have anyone you want! How could you want to stay with a dork like me forever. It's just so hard for me to believe this is real."

"I don't think I can help you with that," he said sadly. "It hurts me to hear how much of those lies you believe, those things the bullies said. I think you know that none of that is true. You're not an ordinary boy at all, but I'm not either. I think that's why you like me. The things that make you unique are the things I love the most about you. I wish I could prove it to you, prove to you how I feel, but I can't.

"I can only feel the way I feel, which is deeply in love with you. I think you have to convince yourself that this is real and that I really do love you this much. Maybe you'll be able to accept it better after we've been together a little longer. It's only been two weeks. We're both in love, and we show it in our actions toward each other.

"Maybe it would help if you paid attention to the little things we do with each other. The way you woke me up today wasn't just about sex. It's all of the little things, the way you touch me, the care you took to be gentle, your hand on my chest – I don't know why, but I felt so much love in that touch! It's definitely in your kiss too. You take the time to feel me. It's like you can feel what I'm feeling. Little things like that are actually big, huge things that show me how much you love me."

A tear leaked from each of my eyes and rolled down the sides of my head. David hugged me again. How did he know all that stuff? I never thought to pay attention to most of it. I didn't touch his chest to make him feel loved. I didn't know that kisses had a language that said "this is how much I love you." I just kissed him that way because that was how he kissed me, and because it felt good and powerful that way. Usually, when I touched him, it was because it felt good, not because I was telling him I loved him.

Maybe that was kinda the same thing – I loved touching him. I guess that was a kind of love. I loved the feeling of kissing him in a special way, was that another kind of love? His eyes made me melt, his whole body was angelic, and the way he moved when he did ordinary things was always the most graceful sight – he understood things like no one else – He understood me like no one else. He helped me understand things. Everything he said felt special because it was so unusual, and he was saying it just to me.

Even the sound of his voice made me feel good. Somehow I felt I knew all these things when Henry first introduced us. And these all sounded like things I loved about him. If I added them all together, of course, I loved him. I showed him how much I loved all these small things about him, maybe that was how I showed him that I really loved him and maybe that was how he was showing me how his love for me was true.

***

Bacon, toast with plum jelly (made by David's mom herself!), oatmeal, orange juice, and milk, was the breakfast that Kevin had made for us. I didn't want any oatmeal, but oatmeal and dry toast was all Kevin had. I think he was feeling sick. I hoped it wasn't the sex or swallowing Klaus' cum that made him feel worse.

David had a little bit of everything, and Klaus had a lot of everything. Even though he seemed to be feeling sick, Kevin looked happy that we were all eating the food he'd made for us, and that we all liked it (except for me and the oatmeal).

"It's Monday, boys," said Klaus, "and this is meant to be our first day on the daily schedule I made up. We've already begun the day off-schedule, but I think it's good for us to start each day sharing love, and if you agree, we need to make some changes. I think it's important to have a routine. It helps us establish good habits. Structure is good for us all," he added, gulping down a huge spoonful of oatmeal.

"The first change is calisthenics," he continued. "That was meant to be done first thing in the morning, but I really think we need that time with each other, us couples alone."

He looked lovingly at Kevin, and they kissed. I looked lovingly at David, but he was looking sadly at Kevin with a tear rolling down his cheek. He wiped it away with a napkin before Kevin could see it, but I don't think he was able to hide it from Klaus. No one said anything about David's tear, but I realized that Kevin would soon be gone, and Klaus would no longer be part of a couple – David and I loved him! We would make love with him every morning, the three of us together – no games, no tricks, nothing kinky, just love.

"So tell me how this sounds," Klaus continued. "Love-making first, then breakfast, both done. Next is education time, followed by a fun activity. I think we should put calisthenics in between education and fun activity time. It only takes five or ten minutes. After that, I think we can carry on as normal with lunch, reading, free time, work, and supper. Evenings will stay unstructured for now. Sound like a plan?"

"Ok," I mumbled. I didn't want to have to work every day because it said so on a schedule, and I hated calisthenics, but it didn't feel like a good time to complain.

"That sounds like an excellent schedule," said David, a little too happily for my taste.

"Great! Now there's one more thing you boys need to keep in mind. Kevin will be getting sicker in the days and weeks to come, so he is allowed to decide whether he is well enough to be active with us. That goes for you boys too, by the way. If you feel sick, I need you to tell me or Kevin right away so we can check you out and see if it's something we need to treat, and if you're sick or hurt, you won't need to participate in our normal activities if you don't feel up to it. Always remember, we have no clinics or hospitals, so if you have any problems with your health, even a tiny splinter, we need to know right away so we can keep it from becoming a serious problem, ok?"

We both nodded. I wondered how Klaus must have felt as he told us that. His lover was dying, and he was afraid one of us could die too. If I lost my David, it would be more than I could bear, or so I believed.

Chapter 82

Skin

We all thanked Kevin for cooking, and David and I told Klaus that we wanted him to have a nice cuddle with Kevin while we cleared up and washed the dishes. Klaus had wanted to help us, but we told him the thought of Kevin sitting alone while we worked felt wrong.

It was education time, and Kevin taught us about the skin, at my request. I pointed out the lovely features in David's skin that captivated me every time I looked at him, asking what made his skin that way and why I couldn't stop touching it or looking at it. He taught us about the eight different kinds of melanin, which is what gives the skin most of its color. He told us his skin was so light because he had very little melanin, and David's was such a radiant tan because he had a lot more melanin of different types.

He pointed to a tan part of my leg that was almost as dark as David's, but it was a different color tan. "That's because this tan comes from sun exposure, and David's tan color comes from his genetics."

Then he pointed to the part of my hip that my swim suit covered. "This is the basic color of your skin," he said. "When you get a suntan, that means your skin is producing more melanocytes, which are the cells that contain melanin. David already has lots of melanocytes. He was just born with them. I was born with very few of them, but when I get too much sun, I also produce more melanocytes. They are different from the ones on your legs from the sun, and they are different from the ones David was born with. Can you guess what my melanocytes look like?"

Kevin stood closely in front of us and turned around slowly. "Remember," said Kevin, "melanocytes give the skin a darker color." David giggled. "I think David knows. Donovan, my skin is very light except in certain spots. Does that clue help?"

"Freckles!"

"That's right, Donovan! You knew the answer too, didn't you David?" David nodded and kissed my cheek.

"But what makes his skin so soft?" I asked, caressing David's thigh.

"Oh, Don! You have no idea how soft and beautiful your own skin is!"

"That's certainly true, David," said Kevin. "Our own skin always feels plain and ordinary. We've always had it, and we're used to it. Only other people have skin that feels remarkable. That's how most people feel anyway." Kevin softly stroked my thigh and my chest and said, "Donovan, you can't know this for yourself, but I hope you can believe David and me when we say you have incredibly sexy skin."

"Believe me too!" called Klaus, who was sitting at the table reading a textbook.

"I know a lot about the skin from my medical studies," Kevin said, "but they didn't teach me much about skin softness. I'll just tell you what I know. First, we need to talk about three proteins, and then we'll talk about water balance."

Proteins! I liked the way Kevin was teaching us all the science stuff. I could understand it better that way.

"The first protein is called keratin," he began. "Keratin is a very strong, tough protein, and it feels that way in the skin. It protects the skin from anything that tries to break through. Think of it as the skin's armor. Some people naturally have more keratin than others. The skin on your hands and feet has a lot of keratin, so your palms and the soles of your feet feel rougher. You've both felt Klaus' hands on your bare skin. He has tons of keratin there. When an area of the skin is treated roughly, rubbed or scraped, that causes the skin in that area to make more keratin over time and to thicken the layer of keratinocytes. That thickened area is called a callus. Klaus has calluses on his fingertips from playing the guitar." He paused and gave a sly smile. "I bet you can figure out what keratinocytes are."

"Do you know?" David asked me.

"Yeah," I said. "I think so. If melanocytes are cells that make melanin, are keratinocytes cells that make keratin?" David smiled and kissed me on the cheek again. He knew the answer, but he also knew I liked being the one to give the answer.

"That's right, Donovan," Kevin said with a smile. "Now, the second protein is called elastin. Does elastin sound like another word you already know?"

"Elastic!" I said.

"That's what goes around the top of my underwear that I don't wear anymore," said David.

"That's right! And what does elastic do when you pull on it?"

"On my underwear it stretches, and it tries to pull back," said David.

"It certainly should," said Kevin. He was looking right at David now, as if to say he wanted David to answer a few questions instead of me. "And what happens when you let go?"

"It goes back to the way it was."

"Exactly. That's also what elastin protein does. You can pinch a small bit of your skin and stretch it out," he said as he demonstrated on his own skin over his muscular belly, "and when you let go, it springs back, exactly the way it was, as you said. Kids have a lot more elastin in their skin than adults. As people get older they lose elastin. Since their skin no longer stretches as much as it used to, they need to grow more skin so it hangs more loosely and doesn't make their bodies all stiff and tight. That's why older people have wrinkles and saggy skin. It's lost its elasticity – it's ability to spring back."

David and I pinched our bellies and watched our skin spring back. Soon we were pinching each other's bellies, falling into a giggle-fit. "Ok boys," said Kevin, "I need your attention. This is education time."

"We're sorry, Mr. Geheren," said David. It always annoyed me when someone else apologized for me. I can speak for myself! But that wasn't the time to discuss the issue, so we both sat up straight, and I nodded.

"Thank you," he said gently. "You might have heard of the third protein in TV commercials for hair and skin products. It's called collagen." I nodded knowingly. "Collagen is kinda the opposite of elastin. It forms strong sheets in the skin that resist stretching. Elastin stretches, and collagen makes sure it doesn't stretch too much. You kids are growing, and you're usually very active. Your skin needs to stretch a lot, so you don't have much collagen. That's not true as we age. As we lose elastin, we gain collagen in our skin to keep it strong."

"Keratin, elastin, and collagen?"

"That's right Donovan. Keratin protects the skin and gives it a rough texture, and elastin and collagen work together to make the skin tight but springy, which gives another kind of softness. It also changes the way the tissue under the skin feels. If you squeeze David's leg," which I did immediately, "what you are squeezing is mostly muscles, but look at how his skin stretches as you do it. If it didn't stretch, you wouldn't feel the softness inside as well as you do now. And another detail: his muscles, and yours, are also softer and springier, just like your skin. That's another thing that changes with age. Put all that together and you have several factors that make the skin feel softer, especially in you kids."

"That's one thing so many of us like about your young boy bodies," said Klaus. "Touching your bare bodies can feel incredible!"

David raised his hand. "You also said something about water balance?"

"Yes I did, but I really don't know much about it. If you spend the day outside on a sunny, windy day, and if you aren't sweating, you might notice a slight difference in the softness of your skin. It might feel a little less soft and possibly a little more rough. This can happen in the winter here. When it gets really cold, the air gets really dry, and so does your skin. If your skin gets dry, that means there is less water between the cells and less water inside the cells. That makes the skin feel less soft."

"It must not be a very strong effect," I said. "David's skin is never like that."

"Well, consider the opposite," he continued. "I'm a swimmer, so I am very familiar with this effect. Do you know the effect I'm talking about?"

I shook my head, and David said, "You mean when your skin gets all shriveled up?"

"That's exactly what I mean. That happens when there is a lot of water between and inside your skin cells. When your skin absorbs all that water, it thickens and grows, making parts of it wrinkle. Water is a liquid, so it can add a kind of squishiness to the skin, and it stays that way for some time, even after you've dried off. So there's thin, tough, dry skin and thick, squishy wet skin. Usually our skin is somewhere in-between. Skin that normally has more water in it will be softer than skin with less water. That's why there are so many skin moisturizer products you can buy. If David's skin is really softer than yours, he might just be holding a little bit more water in it.

"Water is a complicated issue though because if you hold extra water between your skin cells, that's called edema, and it's probably not something you'd like. It thickens and stretches the skin without really making it softer. That's really all I know about what the body does to make skin soft and tinted with melanin."

Kevin called a bathroom break. (David and I both knew what he had to do.) After ten minutes off, he taught us about infections. This made me happy because it meant no calisthenics yet.

He explained how a tiny little splinter could actually result in death if it became infected with the wrong bacteria and it wasn't treated. That scared me until he explained how easy it was to treat an infection like that and how rare and unlikely the really super-dangerous infections were. He told us again that even with small radiation doses, we might have lost a lot of white blood cells, the ones that fight infections. That was why it was so important to tell him or Klaus right away if we had a splinter, or even a pimple.

He taught us about the ways we could treat infections, from ointments to pills. He taught us how to recognize infections in our own skin or in each other's. When he was done I felt less worried, and I understood why it was so important to take every little poke or scrape seriously.

"Wonderful!" said Klaus. "Now who's ready for calisthenics?"

Chapter 83

The Bed

As we went out into the basement to do our calisthenics, Kevin had to run to the bathroom again. This time it sounded like he couldn't keep his breakfast down. He rested in the recliner while the three of us exercised.

For our fun-time activity, we made a makeshift bowling alley by using ten of Mr. Chance's empty beer bottles for pins. (Remember, returnable glass bottles were very strong and difficult to break.) We used a softball as the bowling ball, and we taped a foul line near the bathroom door. We set the ten bottles near the door to the garage. We all agreed not to roll the ball too fast and break the bottles, but there were times when Klaus and I got a little carried away.

David was absolutely the worst bowler I'd ever seen! I know he was embarrassed, and Klaus and I tried to be kind and encouraging. Of course, Klaus was very good at bowling, and I was better than David, but nowhere near Klaus' level, so we decided that David and I should challenge Klaus by adding our scores together. We never won, but David managed to smile and even make fun of himself a few times. By the time we were done, he was not only relaxed and having fun, but his game had improved considerably.

I wondered if David was thinking of his dad.

***

We had chow mein for lunch, but Kevin thought he should try the BRAT diet for a while. BRAT stands for bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. It's for people who are sick in the stomach. I think Klaus suggested having chow mein so Kevin could have rice with us. We were all out of bananas, but we had everything else, even two big jars of applesauce.

"I feel so stupid," said Kevin. "Oatmeal has all that fiber, different kinds of fiber. It can't be easy to digest!"

Klaus pulled him near and kissed his cheek. "You can feel how you want. You're still perfect for me." Kevin blushed, and we carried on eating.

For our reading hour, I went with my old favorite, The Guinness Book of World Records. While I was reading, I sat on the floor doing stretching exercises. I had only been doing them for a few days, and I was surprised at the progress I was making. Of course, on some days, I could stretch for hours. After all that stretching, during free time I decided to play on the trapeze. I could hang from each leg and point the other leg straight out level to the floor, both forward (easy) and back (not so easy). I managed the latter when Klaus, who was spotting me, told me I would know when my leg was level to the floor.

When I felt his big, warm mouth over my cock, I understood what he meant. I tried to suck his cock too, but he pulled back and wouldn't let me. I screamed when my orgasm came. For once, I wanted him to suck me through my orgasm and not stop until I had another. Then I realized he was holding me, not the trapeze.

"Always use a spotter," he said, "and if you want to do a front split soon, I think you should add one more stretching exercise." He had me sit on the rug with my legs straight forward, bend over, and give my legs a hug. "Bend from your hips. Keep your back straight. Imagine lifting your butt off the floor. That's it. You should feel the burn in the back of your thighs, in the hamstrings, and in your glutes – your butt muscles. Bend until you feel the burn and no more. Count to ten, then sit back. You're already doing this full-flexion! You might be able to do the contortionist poses yet! For sure I think you're ready to try a front split."

Following his directions, I knelt down, extended my right leg forward, and began to slide my legs apart while Klaus held my arms up to keep me from going too far too fast and hurting myself.

"Roll your butt back and up again now, like you just did in that last stretch. Arch your back, but roll your butt. That's it. That's right. Doing great. Whaddya think, David?"

"Don! That's… I'm so happy for you!" He pushed away his VIC-20 computer and ran over to kiss me. It wasn't until Klaus let go of my hands that I realized I'd done it! Klaus and Kevin kissed me too.

Kevin leaned over and hugged me as well. "I'm so proud of you, sweetie," he said.

I didn't know what to think. "I'm so glad you got to see it!" I said. Then I gasped in horror! I'd just told him I was glad he wasn't dead yet.

"I'm so glad too!" he said, giving me another kiss and surprising me with a genuine, lovely smile. "We can speak plainly," he said. "I won't be here to see most of your achievements as you grow up, so please help me celebrate the ones I can share with you, all right? Celebrate this accomplishment!" I nodded, then slowly smiled and pulled him in for another Mom-Only-Different hug.

"How do you feel, Donovan?" asked Klaus.

"Happy, and I guess a little proud…"

"That's good," he said, "but I meant your body. You've been holding a full split for over a minute now."

"Wow! I guess I didn't notice. I can feel the burn though, but it's not as bad as I thought it would be. I think I could stay like this for a long time." Klaus smiled but disagreed. He helped me roll onto my side so I could slowly bring my legs back together. He massaged my thighs and butt muscles a bit before he helped me stand up.

"Now how do you feel?"

I leaned to each side and shook each leg to see if it still worked. I hopped in place three times. "Happy, and I guess a little proud!" I felt a little wobbly too, but he didn't need to know that.

***

When work time came, Klaus thought we should build a special bed for when Kevin got really sick. The bed in the couch wouldn't be very comfortable, and it wouldn't be able to tilt or lift his legs. David showed Klaus where in the garage he could find a camping cot that had a thick foam mattress. Klaus brought it inside, along with some longer pieces of lumber than David and I had brought in already. Kevin looked on as the three of us sat at the table, working out a design for turning a camping cot and a bunch of wood into a hospital bed that could be rolled on wheels, inclined from the hips to the head, and lift the legs while allowing the knees to bend.

I won't bore you with the details, but David and I were able to be most helpful as we designed the bed. Neither of us was any good at woodwork, and neither of us had taken a metal shop class. (Fifth-graders weren't allowed to take metal shop.) We did all of the work in Mr. Chance's workshop, the room David and I climbed into on that first day, through the window. He had a lot of nice power tools, and Klaus seemed to know how to use all of them. David and I mostly held things or fetched things. Klaus spoke very little as he worked. It seemed this was a work of love, of great passion. He didn't really expect much work from David or me. In his heart, he just wanted everything to be perfect for the bed on which his dear Kevin would soon die.

We didn't finish the bed that day. In fact it took several days, but not a moment too soon. Klaus got what he wanted. The bed was perfect; it was comfortable, sturdy, portable, everything, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

***

David remembered his mom had an electric frying pan and a slow cooker upstairs. I was upset when Klaus made me wait downstairs while he and David went to find them in the kitchen upstairs.

Kevin managed to keep his lunch down, so he decided to stick to his BRAT diet. He had toast and applesauce while the rest of us had grilled cheese sandwiches (thanks to the electric frying pan) and beans. I loved grilled cheese sandwiches, but it was becoming too real. Seeing Kevin look at his food as if it were the enemy, only nibbling at it, and knowing why he was like that, made it hard for me to enjoy my grilled cheese.

"What kind of wine goes with grilled cheese?" I asked David.

"Red, I think."

"Oh, that sounds good," said Klaus. He left the table and returned with a bottle of Chianti. He poured two half-glasses and gave one to me and one to David. Seeing my confused look he said, "Kevin can't have any, and tonight I'm at his service!"

"Oh, sweetie, you don't have to do that!" said Kevin. "Have some wine with the boys. I feel better when I know my family is happy."

"Ok, but not tonight," said Klaus. "Can we make tonight special?"

Kevin blushed and kissed him. "Maybe if you give them your portion of the wine. I want to see happy, carefree boys. If you are at my service, that is how you can serve me."

As Klaus topped off our glasses, David and I looked at each other, smiling wide-eyed. Where was this going to go?

"Drunken boy orgy! Drunken boy orgy! Drunken boy orgy!" I repeated hopefully in my head. Kevin turned his eyes to David and me, giving us a slow, seductive wink.

Boner.

Chapter 84

Queen Kevin

We finished our wine with supper, and this time Klaus insisted on doing the dishes while David and I folded up the table and chairs and put them away. We moved the recliner to the center of the room. We'd decided with Klaus that Kevin would be in charge that night, our king, and we would be his subjects, giving him anything he desired. The recliner would serve as his throne.

"But he's our mom, only different," I said. "Shouldn't he be our queen?"

David looked at me like I'd said something wrong, but Kevin laughed harder than I'd ever seen him laugh before. He picked me up and kissed me. He might have been getting sick, but he was still very strong and very muscular.

"I shall be your queen!" he said with a joy that confused me, but I didn't say so. I just smiled and kissed him back. "More wine for our boys, our sweet courtiers! More wine!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," said a smiling Klaus. He brought another glass for each of us and bowed to Kevin as he handed us our wine.

Before Klaus could rise from his bow, Kevin put his hand on the back of his head and held him down. "Before you rise, you shall make us rise. Service, now!"

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Klaus. He opened his mouth and took Kevin's soft cock in fully. In a second or two, it was no longer soft, but Klaus was still able to take it in all the way. David and I sat on the couch and watched – This was fun!

After about a minute, Kevin said, "Enough!" Klaus looked up at him, waiting for his next command. "Turn around. On all fours."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Donovan! Lubricate him. We shall have him!"

I hopped up and said, "Yes, Your Majesty." I got the bottle of olive oil and a dishcloth and knelt next to Klaus. This really felt strange! But strangeness had always been a turn-on to me. I dribbled some oil down Klaus' crack and rubbed it around and into his hole. I added some more to make sure Her Majesty would be comfortable. Then I wiped the excess drips from his cheeks and asked, "May I lubricate Your Majesty as well?"

"Do it, and be thorough," he said. "Do not hurry your fine work."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

That meant he wanted a nice, slow hand-job. Playing make-believe sex was fun! I poured some oil in my hand and rubbed it along the bottom of his cock first because I didn't want to turn my hand over and have the oil drip out. I rubbed some over his scrotum too, which he really seemed to like. Then I turned my hand over and smeared the oil over the top of his cock and began my slow hand-job. I stroked his shaft with my right hand and caressed his balls with my left.

He moaned and looked down at me. "Yes, very thorough," he said. "Make sure the tip is covered well." I rubbed more oil onto his glans, and he said, "Enough, boy. Return to your seat."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I wiped my hands with the cloth and returned to cuddle with my David. We watched as Kevin slid his cock into Klaus' ass. Klaus grunted and threw his head back. Was he feeling pleasure or pain? Either way, it felt strange to see another man fucking Klaus. He was always the one sticking his cock in everyone's ass. I had never seen it the other way round.

I took a large gulp of wine and noticed David had a boner too. I reached down and held his cock in my hand. He gave a startled gasp, but he didn't take his eyes off Kevin and Klaus.

He spread his legs so I could reach his cock more easily. I went slowly, as I had with Her Majesty. He put his hand on my chest and breathed more heavily. It surprised me that he didn't grab my cock and stroke it too, but that was ok. I wanted to make him feel good, and he was a bit preoccupied. Still, it felt strange. That was two strange things happening at once. It was ok that David wasn't stroking me, but this was all making me really horny!

Kevin was thrusting into Klaus faster and faster, and Klaus was moaning with his eyes closed. Without realizing it, I was stroking David faster and faster. He was breathing heavily, but he never took his eyes off the men. Just when I thought David would cum, Her Majesty called, "Come here, boys. Kneel before your queen." We obeyed, of course. He pulled his cock from Klaus' ass and said, "You too. Kneel." Klaus immediately obeyed.

Kevin wanked himself rapidly and said, "Who shall have our prize?"

We all raised our hands and said we wanted it. I loved his cum! "Then put your heads together, side-by-side, and open wide!" We did so, and about ten seconds later, Kevin shot his cum back and forth across our faces, getting as much as he could into each of our mouths, but making quite a mess on the rest of our faces.

"Donovan, you shall clean David's face."

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said with a smile. I began licking Kevin's cum from David's face.

"David, when he is finished, you shall clean his face."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"And we shall clean this manly face," he said, looking at Klaus. He sat in his queenly throne and commanded Klaus to bend down so he could lick his face.

After much giggling, and when all faces were pristine, Kevin called out, "Boys! You haven't finished your wine! Drink hail!"

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

"That will not do," he said. "When you hear 'drink hail,' you hold your glasses high and respond with 'wassail!' Then you drink heartily. Let's try that again. Drink hail!"

We held our glasses high and shouted, "Wassail!" before taking several gulps. I finished mine, but David still had some left. I kissed him and took the glass from his hand and emptied it.

"Well done, well done," said Kevin. "Now, when your glass is empty, you snap your fingers or whistle or bang on something and call out, 'Ho wench!' That is the proper way for our serving wench here to know your glasses need filling."

"Yes, Your Majesty," we said. Klaus was a wench? Didn't that mean whore? I wasn't sure, but it was fun, and Klaus accepted his role. David and I were courtiers, and Klaus was our wench. I decided I liked wine almost as much as I liked Harvey Wallbangers.

***

Reality reared its ugly head a few times that night when the wench had to help Her Majesty to the privy chamber, but Kevin absolutely refused to let that spoil the fun evening we were all having.

"Please," said Queen Kevin, "Sample the delights of our wench if you like. What is the purpose of drink if you don't enjoy yourselves?"

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," David said.

"Ho wench!" I said. "Service my friend here." David smiled at me with wide eyes in total surprise. Then he turned straight forward and spread his legs so Klaus could suck his cock.

"Yes, My Lord."

"It is all the more delightful if you enjoy your wine with your wench," said the queen.

"Yes… yes, Your Majesty," said David.

"Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

We took a few more gulps, and David kissed me with a nervous smile. "Relax and enjoy it," I said. I put my arms around him and kissed him deeply and passionately, with lots of tongue.

"That's the spirit!" said our queen. "When you have had enough of this wench, kick him away so he can serve someone else."

David interrupted our kiss long enough to say, "Yes, Your Majesty."

"Cum while we're kissing," I said. "I want to feel that again."

He nodded slightly as we kissed. He was breathing heavily through his nose, and soon he was taking in air through his mouth as we continued kissing. He wrapped his legs around Klaus' neck and growled into my mouth. Soon the growl became a muffled howl as his whole body jerked. Klaus continued sucking with the same vigor, which was obviously driving David's body completely out of control.

"Kick him away if you've had enough," I reminded him. He unlocked the death grip his thighs had on Klaus' neck and managed to get his right foot onto Klaus' left shoulder. He gave him a good, strong, and sudden shove, and Klaus fell back onto the floor.

"I'm sorry!" said David in a bit of a panic. "I didn't mean to push so hard! It was hard to control…"

"Don't apologize to the wench!" commanded our queen. "If you want to kick him around, he will accept it with the joy of having served your pleasure."

"Yes, Your Majesty," said David. "Klaus, are you hurt?"

Kevin rolled his eyes as Klaus said, "No, My Lord, I am not hurt. Her Majesty has said, it is with joy that I serve your pleasure."

"You worry too much, boy! You must drink until you stop worrying. Dutch courage. Drink Hail!"

"Wassail!"

We emptied our glasses and looked at each other. "You do it," I said.

David nodded, slapped his thigh, and shouted, "Ho wench! Charge our glasses!"

"Right away, my lord" He brought the wine bottle to us and filled our glasses.

"And fetch a pail afterward. Our courtiers will drink merrily and heartily this night. We expect they shall puke before the night is finished."

"Yes, Your Majesty." He went out into the basement to search for a pail.

"Boys, do you understand what that means?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"No, it's me talking, Kevin, Mom-Only-Different. If you play along, you probably will get sick and be hungover tomorrow. A hangover is an awful feeling, but some people feel it's a fair price for the fun you had the night before. You've already had a lot of wine, and I should have had this talk with you when we finished supper, but what do you think? Would you like to try this new experience? Even if it means feeling awful tomorrow."

"Yeah!" I said with excitement. David looked at me with his nervous smile. "Aw come on, sweetie! Let yourself go! You know you worry too much. I think you should know how it feels, not to worry."

"Don't pressure him, Donovan. It's his decision, and it's an important one."

"No, Don's right," said David, smiling sincerely at Kevin. "I want to try this. Klaus is already your nurse. He can be our nurse, too, if we get that sick."

"I shall empty your puke pails and act as your nursemaid," said Klaus as he entered the room with two empty pails.

"Drink hail!"

"Wassail!" Having decided I wanted to get as drunk as I could, I drank my whole glass down.

"Now that's a boy who knows how to drink properly! Wench, fill his glass!"

"Yes, Your Majesty. If it pleases Your Majesty, I will need to fetch more bottles and open a new one."

"Be quick about it then! Our courtiers will not go without!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Chapter 85

Merriments

"Lord Donovan," said the queen. It seemed I had a new title. "You achieved a certain success in one of your physical pursuits this afternoon." What did that mean? He recognized my look of confusion and said, "You can now spread your legs wider than anyone in the land! Demonstrate for us."

"Oh, yes, Your Majesty!" I knelt on the rug and stretched my right leg forward, and in no time, I was doing a full forward split, right in front of the throne.

"Wench! Where is that wine! Our courtiers will have better service!"

"Yes, Your Majesty. Sorry, Your Majesty. It's right here." I heard a cork pop, and soon Klaus handed me my wine in a fresh glass, while I was still in my split.

"Now service him, wench!" The queen was pointing at me! I leaned over to get out of that position, but the queen said, "No! He will serve you as you are! Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

That was a unique sexual experience I'd had. My legs were stretching, yet my cock was exploding with pleasure! And somehow, the stretching made the pleasure more intense.

David stood up and said, "Your Majesty," followed by quiet whispers.

"Let it be done."

David went somewhere and came back. A minute later, I could feel him behind me, kneeling astride my left leg. Then came the last thing I expected, though in hindsight I should have known. I felt a slippery, smooth, slender dildo slide slowly up my ass. I made a barking sound without meaning to. He moved the dildo in and out for a minute or so, then pulled it out, only to replace it with a bigger, longer one. I was doing the splits in front of the queen on her throne, getting sucked off by my gym teacher, and with my David working my ass with his mom's dildos. I grabbed Klaus' hair in a tight fist and screamed, pulling his head into my body with my orgasm. Then I remembered the "kick him away" order, and I yanked Klaus' hair away from my body to pull him off my cock.

"Kiss me, wench," I said, pulling Klaus' curly blond hair up and letting it go. And he did kiss me. Boy, what a kiss! He put so much love and excitement into it, though I can't say how he did it. I was glad David hadn't pulled the dildo out yet. For now, I just wanted it to be where it was.

"Such thrilling merriments! Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

David leaned his head over my shoulder and kissed my cheek. "I love you, Donovan Langevin."

"I love you too, sweetie. You can pull that dildo out now."

***

"…And the boys lived happily ever after in their castle by the sea."

We all applauded, and the queen said, "Wench, your storytelling does you credit. Rise and approach us for your reward."

When Klaus obeyed, he was treated to a vigorous blowjob from the queen, but only for about thirty seconds. I didn't understand why Queen Kevin had said "us." David and I were on the couch, and he was on his throne. Wench Klaus had been kneeling before the queen as he told his story.

"Thank you, Your Majesty," Klaus grunted as his hard cock popped out of the queen's mouth. Clearly he had hoped for more. "You are most generous with your royal rewards."

"Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

"Lord Donovan. Your legs."

"Your Majesty?"

"Are they well? Are they strong? Or are they in pain after your stretching stunt earlier this evening?"

I could feel a little soreness, but I felt that after the first time I'd done it, so I just said, "Yes, Your Majesty. They are both strong and pain-free."

"Good. We shall have more acrobatics for our entertainment." We? I guess he meant everyone. "Wench, bottom, on your back. Lord Donovan, plank position, on his feet, on your back. Lord David, I want you at my side."

"Yes, Your Majesty," we each said in turn.

I lay across his feet, with my lower back on his right foot and my thighs on his left. "Now flip him onto his side and back, then his other side. You know, that sort of thing. It is absolutely delightful when you do such things."

"Yes, Your Majesty." I was glad all I had to do was keep my body flat and rigid. I had a very poor sense of balance from all that wine, and my coordination, as bad as it had always been, was much worse. Klaus, on the other hand, hadn't had a drop of alcohol that whole day, and he was the one who had to keep both of us balanced.

Whoa! The whole world had suddenly spun as Klaus flipped me onto my right side. It was far more than that simple spinning sensation I normally felt when he did that. Suddenly, I was extremely dizzy, and I had to remind myself I was in Klaus' hands, or rather, in his feet. I concentrated on keeping my body straight and stiff, which took more of an effort than it usually did. He flipped me from my left side all the way to my right side, and then in the same direction, all the way back to my left. Then he flipped me three-quarters of the way around and caught me with his right foot on my lower belly and his left foot as usual on my thighs. One more half-flip, and I was on my back. Then he bent his knees and threw me high into the air, flipping me all the way around to my back again.

"Oh, well done! Well done indeed!" Queen Kevin and David were clapping. Then I could see the queen put his hand gently on the softest and most beautiful ass there could ever be. I smiled at them both. I knew how David's ass felt, and I was glad I wasn't the only one. My head was spinning. I just had to remain stiff and trust Klaus.

"Now spin him like a helicopter!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

It's hard to describe the feeling of having someone's feet in your body, holding you up, but then letting go and holding you up somewhere else. Now try to imagine that after having a lot to drink. It was so bizarre that I got a boner again. Just then, Klaus launched my body into the air as I was whirling around. He caught me when I was facing the opposite direction. After another half-turn, he tossed me again. Oh, I really had to trust him, and I did. After the third time, he tossed me and caught me after a half-turn as he had been doing, but instead of twirling me, he tossed me up right away for another half-turn.

He did this four times before he stopped my body and flipped me onto my belly and repeated the whole routine. Then he stopped me and flipped me onto my back. He turned me so I was lying the same direction as he was, and he was holding me with one foot on my back and the other on my right upper thigh.

"Oh, bravo! Bravo!" cried the queen. "Wench, hold Lord Donovan in that position. He needs time to regain his equilibrium."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Spying my boner, the queen added, "He certainly seems to enjoy these stunts."

Queen Kevin took David's hand in his, the hand that held his wine glass, and raised it to David's mouth. "Are you dissatisfied with the wine?"

David took a gulp and said, "No, Your Majesty. It's just that I'm not used to drinking so much."

"You can drink less if you drink something stronger, Lord David."

"My father told me that mixing different types of alcohol in the same night makes you sick, Your Majesty."

"Oh, you will be sick. That can't be helped, but that is tomorrow's problem. Tonight you shall be carefree and merrily crazy!" Now that was a phrase I had never heard – merrily crazy.

David smiled, then giggled, then said, "Yes, Your Majesty," before emptying his glass.

Chapter 86

Love Pile

"Wench and Lord Donovan hear me. Lord Donovan, sit up straight on this wench's feet. Wench, you will help him to sit."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I was glad to change positions because my neck muscles were getting tired of holding up my head. I felt Klaus' hands on my back as I tried to sit up. When I tried to raise my upper body, all that happened was that my legs came up. Klaus lowered me by bending his knees so he could push my back up higher with his hands. He moved his feet together, holding my lower back and my butt cheeks, and my upper body rose easily.

"Bend your knees, My Lord," he said. He held my back up and he sorta walked his feet up and down my ass cheeks and lower back until I was almost all the way up. "Lean your body forward, My Lord." I tilted forward and lost my balance. I threw my arms out and waved them about, trying in futility to regain the balance that I never had. "No fear, My Lord! I have you!" And he did!

I was reminded of horseback riding at summer camp. Our horse wrangler told us that if a horse knows its rider well, it will sense if the rider is falling and catch the rider by moving slightly to one side or the other. Klaus was my horse.

"Lord Donovan, you have a fine wench beneath you. You needn't worry about falling."

"Yes, Your Majesty. He is a fine wench, like a fine steed."

"An apt simile!" said Queen Kevin with a smile. "Now, perform for us another trick. Do you remember, Lord Donovan, this afternoon, just before you performed your first split? You did a stretching exercise by leaning forward from your hips onto your straight legs."

"Oh, sure, Your Majesty. I mean yes, Your Majesty." Saying "Oh, sure" seemed a little too informal for some reason. Maybe I was thinking too much.

"Excellent. Straighten your legs and assume that position once again. This wench will adjust to hold you in balance."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

It didn't seem very difficult. It was as easy as doing it on the floor if I ignored my sense of which way was up. Klaus had all that under control. He just walked his feet down my thighs as I bent over, et voilà!

"Now move your legs apart, slowly, and only a little. Very good, Lord Donovan. Now reach down with your hands and hold your ankles. Now put your hands together, as if in prayer, and slowly let them down between your legs. Allow our wench to make adjustments."

Indeed he was making adjustments. He was walking his feet up and down my thighs so smoothly I never felt off-balance, not even with my spinning head.

"You must do this next part very slowly because it will be more difficult for our wench to adjust if you go too fast. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Good. Open your legs wider and let your body fall between your knees. Do it slowly, and stop if you feel undue pain from stretching too far. Call out if you need help."

"Yes, Your Majesty." I opened my legs slowly, and Klaus felt solid as a rock. Soon I could get my shoulders between my knees.

"Now take hold of your legs around the outside with your hands."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

This felt so good! I was doing things I never knew I could do, and I was learning them very quickly. I pushed up slowly on my legs, which brought my shoulders down, clearly below my knees. I bent my head forward, and there was Klaus' huge cock, right in front of me.

"Your Majesty, may I?"

"You may. Lord David will assist you. Help him to get it into his mouth, good Lord."

"Yes, Your Majesty. This is so beautiful."

Soon I saw David's hand take hold of the wench's mighty, thick cock, which became hard as he did so. I couldn't see my sweet David because of the way my head was hanging. Klaus lifted me slightly, and David guided Klaus' cock directly into my open mouth. Then Klaus lowered me a few inches, and I felt David's sweet lips kissing me on the back of my neck.

It wasn't easy from that position to move my head up and down over his cock, but it was quite easy to get it in deep. I think Klaus realized this because he began to slowly move my body up and down, which really helped.

"You will tell him to stop if bouncing you like that becomes painful," said Queen Kevin.

I pulled off his cock and said, "Yes, Your Majesty."

Then I wondered what to do. Should I ask for David's help to put it back into my mouth? Then Klaus reminded me that both of his hands were free when he slid his cock back into my mouth himself.

"Lord Donovan, open your legs wider still. The wench will balance you with his hands on your hips. It is probably safer to do it that way."

"Yes, Your Majesty," I said, spitting out the huge cock again.

As Klaus fed his cock back into my mouth, Queen Kevin said, "You needn't answer us with words while you have him in your mouth."

When I felt Klaus' hands on my hips, I opened my legs wider. Apparently I went too fast because I felt Klaus using his feet to hold me in. He walked his feet farther down my legs and brought my body closer to his head so I could still reach his cock. Soon his feet were behind my knees.

"Donovan!" gasped David.

"Hold the wench's legs with your hands," commanded the queen. "That way, you should be steady enough to control your movements properly."

I nodded, but I wasn't sure he could see it. The queen was right, though. Holding Klaus' legs made it much easier for me. I was still dizzy from the wine and all that spinning, but all I cared about was keeping his cock deep in my mouth.

I heard some movement as if someone was getting out of the recliner and walking around. I heard whispering. Then for the second time that night, I was pleasantly surprised by an unannounced intrusion into my ass. This time it was flesh. It was too big to be David, so it had to be Queen Kevin.

First, he introduced an oil-covered finger. Then he slowly pressed his cock inside. It felt like an electric shock over my whole body. I grunted on Klaus' cock and went faster. Kevin was going slowly, though. I think he wanted to savor the moment.

Then I felt something really weird. Two small feet had been lowered onto my legs. They just stood there. Then they felt as if they were pulling back and forth, but only a little bit. My Lord David was getting a blowjob from the queen! Soon I felt Klaus' hands letting go of my hips. They were replaced immediately by Kevin's much smoother hands as Klaus reached up to hold David's lower legs. It was time for me to open up my throat and welcome Klaus inside.

Since that day, I have tried to imagine what we must have looked like. We were having four-way sex, and we were all touching everyone else's body. That made sense to me. That was how group sex should work. Everyone should feel and respond to everyone else, if possible. Maybe that's just one old man's stubborn opinion, but that day it felt wonderful beyond description.

Klaus came first. Swallowing his cum from that angle was a bit awkward, but I got it all. I cleaned him carefully, and I kept his cock in my mouth after I was done, just because I wanted it there.

Next, it was David's turn. It sounded like his crying kitty was growing up into a growling lynx. His toes dug into my thighs, but Klaus held his ankles steadily in place.

Everyone stayed where they were until the last of us were finished. I didn't want to cum, though. I was still only eleven, and I could cum as often as I wanted, but I didn't want the pleasure to end, not even for a moment. It was silly reasoning, and I know that now. I think everyone who is fortunate enough to grow old has many regrets of things they could have done or appreciated when they were young. There was a saying long ago – youth is wasted on the young.

"Cum for me, Lord Donovan," said the queen.

That was it. That was a command. I had to obey. "Yes, Your Majesty," I thought, though I could still only mumble with Klaus' cock in my mouth.

I closed my eyes. I took in the smell of Klaus' balls. I tried to visualize the impossibility of our group position. Then I visualized the beautiful, sexy young man who couldn't stop smiling, who loved me so much, and everyone else here, whom I wanted to please more than anyone while I still could, and who wanted nothing more than to please me and the others, to make us happy and comfortable. Without meaning to, I let Klaus' cock fall from my open mouth. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time while my body exploded with love. We were all one. We were all connected We were all in love. I felt each of them as clearly as I felt myself. In that instant, there was no separation. I felt Kevin's orgasm too, as if I was the one having it. I felt it inside of myself, but I felt it from his body as well. I felt his mouth on David's cock, holding still, but suddenly sucking it very hard. I felt Klaus' tears of joy and love for all of us.

Then I felt sad as David's feet were lifted from my legs and Kevin's cock was withdrawn from my ass. I cheered up a bit when Klaus tilted his feet toward his head and his hands lifted me by the waist so I was sitting on his mouth.

We weren't quite finished. He licked and sucked all the cum from my ass that he could. He licked my ass clean, and kept licking, just for fun I think. I saw David was also cleaning Queen Kevin's cummy cock. I didn't feel quite so greedy for gulping down all of Klaus' cum myself. David and Klaus got their share as well, and when Queen Kevin came to kiss Klaus, he received his share of the prize.

Chapter 87

The Wench's Mistake

I got up and kissed David. We hugged, and to my surprise, I realized we were both crying. We walked to the couch and cuddled. Klaus and Kevin were cuddling next to us. "Why are we crying?" I asked Klaus. I knew he'd been crying while we were still having sex. "I've never felt so good, but I have to cry, and I'm confused."

"There are a few reasons," he said, "You've had a lot to drink, and that makes people more emotional."

"They're gonna have a lot more before the night's over!" said Kevin with a mischievous giggle.

"But you cried too, and you haven't been drinking. Why?"

"Love can be an overwhelming feeling. There was so much love between the four of us that I felt overwhelmed. Sometimes when people get overwhelmed by their feelings, no matter what those feelings are, they cry. I felt so much love for the three of you, and I felt so loved by the three of you, I couldn't help it. It felt as if we were all together in a way that's more than just loving each other. People who love each other feel empathy. They can sense how the other person is feeling, and it can be very vivid – this felt more real than that.

"It was as if I could feel inside you like I could feel how it felt to have my penis in your mouth and to have Her Majesty's penis in your ass. I felt David having his penis sucked by Her Majesty too. I felt the inside of your ass, too, with Her Majesty's cock. It was as if I was all of you, and we were all one big pile of incredible love and pleasure."

He realized I was crying heavily. David was crying again, too as he tried to comfort me. Klaus and Kevin joined us in a group hug that was also a group cry, which ended with lots of smaller hugs and "I love you's."

When I could talk again, I said, "That really happened! I could feel each of you too! I knew what you and David and… Her Majesty were all feeling because I felt it inside myself! Was that some kind of magic? Maybe something caused by the radiation?"

"Oh, sweetie!" said Queen Kevin, hugging me with his loving, maternal smile. "Welcome to love! That's just what true, deep, real love feels like when you're in the moment, loving each other, and not letting silly things distract you. When you really make love, you experience everything because you pay attention to everything, especially how your lover feels."

"Mom told me everything about love and sex," said David, "but she never told me about this. I wonder why not?"

"I think she might have thought you weren't old enough to experience this kind of love," said the queen. "Maybe she would have taught you about it when you were older. Some parents never talk about this with their kids. Some parents think their kids need to find this kind of love for themselves. Some parents have never experienced this kind of love, and maybe they don't believe it exists."

"How sad!" I said. "I wonder if my mom ever felt that."

Kevin stood up and seated himself into his queenly throne. "Subjects, you have all experienced love in its most powerful form. That is worth a celebration. Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

David and I were looking around for our wine glasses, and Klaus suddenly jumped up and said, "My apologies, Your Majesty! My Lords! I should have charged the glasses after our love-making. It won't happen again."

"No, it will not," said Queen Kevin in a smooth voice, giving us a sly wink. "You need not worry about that. Your punishment will be forthcoming, and it will dissuade you from further infractions."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

***

A few minutes later, Klaus was handcuffed and hanging by his ankles from the ceiling with a bandanna gag over his mouth, and his legs spread wide. David and I were each holding a small shot glass half-full of something called Southern Comfort, which Her Majesty recommended as a stronger drink that we might enjoy.

"You may sip that drink slowly if you like," the queen said, "but when we call 'drink hail,' you will respond 'wassail' as usual, and you will swallow the entire contents of the shot glass in one gulp."

"Yes, Your Majesty," we said slowly and nervously.

That made Kevin laugh devilishly, and he called out, "Drink hail!"

David and I looked nervously at each other, giggled, and said, "Wassail!"

The queen laughed and said, "Courage and stout hearts, boys!" We turned up our glasses and gulped the small amount of liquid. It burned! Our reactions made the queen laugh more. "You will learn to like that feeling, boys! You will know the sensation that follows, and the burn you feel will be a comfort to you."

"Aw, it's not so bad," I said to David. "I don't know what that flavor is. It's really sweet, though, like a fancy candy."

Her Majesty slapped my ass and said, "That's the spirit of a true knight of the realm. Remind us to knight you later."

"Remind us tonight you later?" I wondered.

"I've had this before," said David, much to my surprise. "It was last Christmas. Mom and Dad were having some. I thought it smelled wonderful, and they let me have one teaspoonful. I don't know what that flavor is either, maybe vanilla is part of it, but I really like it! I don't like the burning, though."

"Then you shall drink it tonight until you no longer feel the burn. Both of you!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Each of you shall keep his glass at least half full for the rest of the night. When we call for a drink, you shall drink, and not waste time foolishly looking for a bottle."

"Yes, Your Majesty." We had the bottle with us on the shelf above the couch so we could serve ourselves while our wench was indisposed. I grabbed the bottle and filled my shot glass.

"Only half," said David.

"Chicken!" I taunted. Right then, in three swallows, I drank down the whole glass.

"You do your queen honor!" said Queen Kevin. David drank his down, too, and we fell into a giggle fit.

I filled my glass again and poured David's about three-quarters full, which was more than he wanted. I raised my glass and said, "To the queen!" I drank down half of it and stared at David.

"To the queen," he said, taking a small sip.

"Thank you, Lords. Now, what horrors shall we visit upon this poor wench? How shall we use him for our amusement?"

"I find his penis amusing, Your Majesty," I said. I stood up and took the long and limp organ into my hand. It stayed limp.

"We think his penis has nothing left to offer, but you may have it as you please."

"I have a surprise I wish to offer the wench," said David. "I think his reaction will be most amusing!"

"Then have at it Lords, and spare him not!"

I slapped the wench's balls from side to side as I pulled his soft cock taut. I heard him whimper softly, which awoke a sadistic part of me. I bit into his shaft as I stretched his cock with one hand and stretched his balls in the opposite direction with the other hand. His whimper turned into a whine, which made Queen Kevin laugh. Then David walked up to him and matter-of-factly slid a rather large dildo into the wench's ass. The whine became a roar.

The queen could barely contain himself. "When poor old Falstaff received his comeuppance from the fairy boys deep in the woods, all they did was pinch him!" He burst out laughing again. I had no idea who Falstaff was, and I'd never heard of the fairy boys in the woods, but they sounded like a group I'd like to join.

I knelt down and bit the wench's nipples, not too hard, but hard enough to get quite a reaction from him. I untied the bandanna gag and tied it back on as a blindfold. My cock had been hard again for some time, but I didn't realize it until I stuck it into the wench's mouth. He sucked it in like a starving calf. I fucked his face with my whole body, making him swing a little.

David noticed what I was doing and joined in. He inserted a different dildo, a much longer one, and he used it like a lever, pulling back and forth on it to make him swing more abruptly. Klaus was being knocked around, not played with like a child in a park. The wench was being punished!

"You boys are so clever!" said Kevin, briefly breaking character. "Lord Donovan," said the Queen, back in character, "you shall orgasm at once!"

"Yes, Your Majesty, but what if I can't?"

"But what if?" he said loudly. "When you receive a command from your sovereign, you will obey it immediately, without question, or you will find yourself hanging there, next to that incompetent wench! You are an eleven-year-old boy, Lord Donovan. You will offer no excuses! You can cum at will!"

"Yes, Your Majesty!" He was trying to teach me what I was so slow to learn, that as a boy, I could enjoy orgasms all day long. Well, certainly more readily than as an old man, but I was a slow student in that regard.

I had to cum, but I wasn't feeling it – I had to! I was frustrated, but there was a ready victim on whom I could take out my frustration! That sadistic part of me growled back to life. I wrapped my arms around his head and pulled him so hard against my body that I hoped he couldn't breathe. I leaned my head against his chest and listened. I heard no breathing until I loosened my grip, at which point he gasped and breathed normally. Good! I suddenly pulled his head back into my body and held it there again. He stopped breathing.

"Work it with your tongue, wench!" I knew he could do incredible things with his tongue, and he did them.

I felt his body heaving as he tried to breath. I loosened my grip very slightly, allowing tiny amounts of air to slip past his lips. I kept him there, feeling his powerful muscles struggle desperately for more air.

"Most excellent, Lord Donovan! The wench shall not ignore his duties again!"

I pulled his head tighter, cutting off all air, and said, "Thank you, Your Majesty."

He flicked his tongue faster and more powerfully, hoping to be rewarded with a breath of air. Instead, I rewarded him by biting him on the side of his rib cage. This time I bit hard! He squealed and squirmed, occasionally getting a tiny bit of precious air. The queen laughed. I released my bite. I had not made him bleed. I certainly didn't want that, but I was rewarded with a nice, deep, pristine imprint of my own teeth. I loosened my grip a little, allowing him some air, but he had to struggle for every bit of it.

"Does this please Your Majesty?"

"It pleases us greatly, which is why you are not hanging in his place for not yet obeying your sovereign's command."

"Yes, Your Majesty! With my apologies, I shall immediately obey."

This time I was turned on. This time I was ready. I pulled the wench's head in tight, sealing off his breath again. "Work your tongue, wench," I said. "You shall not take another breath until I have obeyed my queen!"

That seemed to motivate him quite well. I had no idea how he was doing such things with only one tongue! I was on my way, in my zone, almost there, when I bit him hard on the other side of his rib cage. I tugged at the skin with my teeth. I felt a shocking, shaking sensation flow through his head, which filled me with a perverse pleasure. I released his skin as I barked with orgasmic abandon. Then I slowly released his head. That was when I noticed David was still cranking back and forth on the long dildo in the wench's ass.

"Lord Donovan," gasped the wench, "Oh, my Lord Donovan…"

I slapped him on the cheek and said, "Silence!"

I removed the bandanna blindfold and returned it to its previous position as a gag. When I stood up, I realized his cock was rock-hard again. That really surprised me, given how old he was and that we'd all just orgasmed not that long ago. I held his cock in my hand and turned to the queen.

"Your Majesty, it would amuse me…"

"Lord Donovan," he said, cutting me off, "he is there for your amusement. You needn't ask permission."

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" I gulped Klaus' cock deep into my mouth and sucked him with enthusiasm.

"Have you got a thicker one, maybe one that vibrates?" I asked David.

A minute later, Klaus was moaning loudly through his gag. I had his cock down my throat, and David had found the perfect vibrating dildo. It was nice and thick. I mean really thick! I could feel it vibrating in my throat through his cock! David was thrusting it in and out, and not gently.

We managed to time ourselves together. As David shoved the dildo in, I pulled my head back. As I pulled the wench's cock in deep, he pulled the dildo back. We discovered that when we got the timing wrong, David's knuckles would accidentally punch me in the nose.

Chapter 88

Am I getting sober?

'10:00 PM, outside 10 rad/hour, basement 0.8 rad/hour, inside <0.1 rad/hour.'

"Our radiation counts are diminishing! Drink hail!"

"Wassail!"

David and I each gulped down another half-shot of Southern Comfort. We refilled our own glasses because Klaus the Wench was busy giving Her Majesty a slow, comfortable blowjob, and the queen had commanded us not to disturb him while he was serving Her Majesty.

"No, no, wait… Don'van, I'll do mine. See, in this glass, I can do it!" David was getting quite drunk, and he couldn't talk quite right. He wanted to pour his own half-shot this time because I was always giving him more than a half-shot when I poured.

"Fine, fine. That's fine," I said. "You can do it. No, just a minute!" He had tried to take the bottle from me. "No! I wanna show you something. I wanna show you… see?" I gulped down my full shot all at once. "See? You should be drinking more too! Her Maj'sty says we should get DURRRUNK!!! And I don't think you're drunk 'nuff."

I poured another shot for myself and said, "Your Maj'sty, I don' think M'Lord David here is even trying!" I filled my shot glass again and chugged it down. I filled it yet again and finally handed David the bottle so he could pour his half-shot. As he poured, I grabbed his cock, which always seemed to be hard that night, and squeezed it. He tried to pull away, giggling loudly, but he only ended up spilling a little of his drink.

"Lord Donovan, you must pay attention to your own drinking and let Lord David attend to his own. You have had nearly enough to satisfy me already this evening, and it is only just past ten. And where is your pail?" I looked around and didn't see it.

Then David handed it to me. He stuck his face in mine and gave me a goofy grin, then held up a full shot glass and swallowed it all. I leaned into him clumsily and kissed him. I held up the pail and said, "Right here, Y'r Ma'sty."

"Good, you will keep it in your hand or on your lap for the rest of the night. Lord David, where is yours?"

He held his up and said, "S'here, yer Majasty."

"In your hand or on your lap, all night, understood?"

"Yup! Oh! No wait, I mean, yes, Your Majesty. Sorry."

Kevin lifted Klaus' head and said, "Wench, bring them plenteous water."

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said in a clear voice.

"Drink hail!"

"Washail!" We chugged the liquor down and reached for the bottle.

"No!" said the queen. "You shall leave those glasses empty. The wench is fetching water for you. Ah, here he is. You must drink this water, all of it. You may not have any more alcohol until you've finished this water."

"Aw! That.. you mean…" I stammered. Queen Kevin gave me a stern look. "Oh, sorry. I should've said yes, Yer Maj'sty."

"Yes, Y'r Masty," said David. "Masty… Majsty… Majesty… Can I just say Your Highness?"

"If you wish, that will be acceptable." Then he turned to Klaus and said, "Wench! Music! Fetch your lute and sing for us!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I had no idea what loot he had that would help him sing, but the water glasses he'd given us were huge! I drank as much as I could all at once. As Klaus tuned his guitar, I began to feel sick in the stomach. Very sick. I looked down at the pail in my lap, and I watched as the dark wine and liquor, water, and part of my supper flowed effortlessly into the pail. David looked worried as I gently heaved a few more times.

"Wench! See to it!"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I thought I was in trouble, and somehow I was what Klaus needed to assist. Klaus casually stood up and took my pail full of puke into the bathroom. A few minutes later, he returned, handing me the clean pail. He wiped me around my belly and my legs with a wet washcloth, then dried me with a towel.

"I hope My Lord feels a little better now." I looked at him with curiosity. He smiled and kissed me, whispering, "finish your water" in my ear.

***

Excuse me forgetting, but these things I do

You see, I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue

Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean,

Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

David and I were dancing slowly as Klaus sang this love song to Kevin. I thought those words were funny, but then I've always had a hard time trying to describe David's eyes to other people. I can describe a specific color, but no simple color is as beautiful as my David's eyes.

We had both finished our water some time before. (You will understand if I can't remember time very well when I was an eleven year-old boy who'd had a great deal to drink.) David had been sick too. We'd dutifully half-filled our shot glasses for the next time Her Majesty told us to drink hail, but neither of us wanted to drink more just yet. Klaus began his next song. I'd heard him sing it before, I was sure.

Tonight's the night we'll make history, honey, you and I
And I'll take any risk to tie back the hands of time, and stay with you here tonight
I know you feel these are the worst of times – I do believe it's true
When people lock their doors and hide inside, rumor has it, it's the end of paradise
But I know, if the world just passed us by, baby I know, I wouldn't have to cry, no no
The best of times are when I'm alone with you
Some rain some shine, we'll make this a world for two
Our memories of yesterday will last a lifetime
We'll take the best, forget the rest, and someday we'll find
These are the best of times

It was another slow, pretty love song, and I liked dancing slowly while cuddling my soft, sweet David with the magically beautiful eyes, but I wanted some rock! I was feeling drunk and stupid. I wanted to act as crazy as I felt! When that song ended, I said, "Your Majesty, can we hear some rock music from the wench? I think it would be fun!"

"Even as you would have it, Lord Donovan! Wench! Rock on!"

Turn it down you say
But all I got to say to you is time and time again I say No! No! No! No!
Tell me not to play
Well, all I got to say to when you tell me not to play I say No! No! No! No!
So, if you ask me why I like the way I play it
There's only one thing I can say to you

I want to rock! (Rock!)
I want to rock! (Rock!)

David and I were hopping up and down like crazy fools. Kevin got up and danced with us too, but I think he wanted to be able to catch us if we fell. I felt so giddy, so happy, so… carefree!

"Your Majesty! I think I'm carefree now!"

The queen took me into a great big hug and kissed me all over my face. "That pleases us," he said.

The song Klaus was playing was written for us kids, and it was really hard rock. Some people called it heavy metal. Whatever it was, I had to move and feel freaky when he played it. David was hopping in place, twirling around with his arms out, like he was in his own world. He looked pretty carefree to me.

When the song was finished, the queen called out, "Drink hail!"

"Wassail!" we replied, gulping our half-shots.

I was feeling much better after puking. I could speak clearly (at least I thought I could), and I wasn't so dizzy anymore. "I think I might be getting sober!" I said to David in a panic.

I poured myself another full shot and chugged it down. I poured another full shot and set it back on the shelf with the bottle, ready for the next royal call to drink. David told me I was silly as he filled his glass halfway again.

Heirs of a cold war, that's what we've become
Inheriting troubles, I'm mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I'm living with something that just isn't fair

Mental wounds stop healing
Who and what's to blame
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

I needed to be crazy! We were heirs of a cold war, and it was all crazy! I jumped up and grabbed the bar that hung across the ceiling, from which Klaus had hung earlier. I swung my body to the music and sang along with Klaus. I dropped down and ran into the brick wall across from the opening to our shelter corner. I hit it with my shoulder like a football player would. I wasn't trying to hurt myself or anything, and I didn't, but the queen commanded me to stay inside the room.

That was ok. We could be crazy inside the shelter corner. I smiled at David and pointed to the bar across the ceiling. He smiled back and nodded just before he jumped up and hung from it. He flailed his body around, not exactly in time with the music, but in the spirit of the music. Then I jumped up and hung next to him, just to his right, but facing the opposite direction. I reached over and grabbed the bar with my right hand, holding it so my right hand was between David's two hands. We had to turn our bodies a little toward each other for it to work, but that meant I could kiss him more easily, so I kissed him. I wrapped my right leg around his as a sort of hug. We started to sway side-to-side when I realized the song was done.

We both gasped as, for the third time that night, something unexpected intruded into my ass. It popped in like it was made not to fall out. Apparently the same had happened to David. When we broke our kiss in surprise, we heard the queen say, "You shall leave these in place until I tell you otherwise."

"Yes, Your Majesty," we said. David couldn't hold on any longer, so he released his grip and landed somewhat ungracefully on the floor. When he was clear, I let go too, only I was sure my landing was much smoother than David's – why was that. Why did I still have such good balance. I slammed my shot and poured another.

"I wanna be so drunk that I can't stand, Your Majesty."

"If you cannot stand on your own," he warned, "others might find surprising places to prop you up."

"That sounds fun!" I said, completely unaware that I had just been given a warning. I slammed another shot and refilled my glass.

"We shall see."

***

…You are just a dreamer, and I am just a dream.
You could have been anyone to me.
Before that moment you touched my lips
That perfect feeling when time just slips
Away between us on our foggy trip.
You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but I'm getting blown away.

The minstrel-wench's next song was sad and slow, but David and I didn't feel it that way. We did a bunch of silly, funny dance moves, like rubbing our butts together and spanking each other, which made the queen laugh hysterically. I had been sick, but I was having the time of my life! I think that's what made Kevin so happy – seeing us enjoy ourselves and being carefree. David and I got into a giggle-fit that lasted till the end of the song.

Chapter 89

The Fog

The two of us kissed, David and I like we'd never be able to kiss again. My lips and tongue felt numb, and I think we were kissing harder than usual so we could feel it better.

Klaus had put the guitar away, and he and Kevin were also kissing passionately while standing in the middle of the room.

It didn't occur to me to make love with David, but I felt so in love with him! He was my angel who filled my life so I'd never need anything from anyone again. I broke our kiss and tried to tell him that, but I couldn't put the right words together.

"Oh, poop!" I said in frustration as I reached for my full shot glass and emptied it down my throat. David drank his down too.

"Do you need the bathroom, My Lord," the wench asked.

"Oh, no… no no no," I said. "I j'st said 'oh poop.' I dint say gotta poop, no, not at all. I'd j'st poop if I had to poop. Right?"

"Yes, My Lord."

David had filled our glasses again, and I mindlessly drank mine down. I got to my feet and staggered a bit. I walked over to the trapeze and reached up for it.

"What means My Lord?" the wench asked.

"J'st wann hang. You know, hang by my knees and SUCK YOUR COCK!"

"Please allow me to lift you," he said.

He lifted me in place so I was hanging upside down and moved in so I could suck him off. He never let go though. He was holding on to me like an upside-down hug. Then I felt his mouth covering my cock with a warm, gentle caress. He lifted me up from the trapeze, and my legs hung over his shoulders. I was lost in the moment, and in my drunken stupor, so in an instant, I'd forgotten about the trapeze. A standing sixty-nine with a big, strong man is awesome!

He walked me over to Queen Kevin, who yanked the butt plug from my ass and replaced it with something much bigger. I heard a click, and the much bigger something began vibrating like a motorcycle engine. Even so, it took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. I remember rolling my eyes back and sliding the wench's fat cock back into my throat where it belonged, but not much after that. It was all a fog.

***

Details of the rest of that night are quite hazy. I do remember a few things, like having to drink another huge glass of water, and then puking again. The next thing I knew, I was hanging from the ceiling by my ankles with my hands tied behind my back. The rope tying my hands together was connected to the pole in the ceiling, pulling my hands back. That made my back arch. There was also a kind of strap tied around my head. A short rope was attached to the strap. On the other end of the rope was that butt hook Klaus had used on me before. The hook in my ass was holding my head back. I looked to the floor and realized why. There was a rather large bucket, apparently intended to catch my puke, and another one next to it. David was also tied up in the same way and hanging right next to me, huffing and growling. I had a boner, and someone was sucking it. I assumed from the sounds he was making that David was also being serviced. I was howling sickly as I was sucked right through my orgasm. The mouth didn't stop sucking though. I twisted and writhed as I tried to escape the pleasure torture, but I was stuck there.

It couldn't have been even a minute before I orgasmed again, but the mouth kept sucking! He had complete control, and he was going to force my pleasure as it pleased him. I gave up caring how much noise I made. My squealing and howling seemed to please whoever was sucking me. I know I came at least twice more.

When you're drunk and you can't remember everything, what you do remember most are the most powerful feelings. Imagine that you were bound and hung up like I was and sucked straight through four orgasms, and you didn't know who was sucking you. Would that be a powerful feeling for you?

Then somehow David and I were covered in olive oil and play-wrestling on a plastic sheet on the floor while the queen and the wench cheered us on. I had a butt plug in place, but this one was quite a bit larger than the first.

Then we were in the shower, washing each other. I knelt down and sucked David's sweet cock, and despite all of its hard work that night, it sprung to life in my mouth.

"Oh, my God!" the queen giggled. He and the wench were both supervising our shower. "Never let them stop," he said. "As long as they can, they should," I growled and became more aggressive, and David made an ear-piercing shriek as he came again.

The table had been set up again. David and I were lying on our backs, facing opposite directions and kissing. My legs were resting on someone's shoulders again, and I was being sucked through another orgasm, then another. David and I were both grunting as our fingers dug into each other. Then the sucking stopped. The butt plug came out, and a big cock was quickly inserted in its place. I didn't care who was fucking me. I just wanted him to fuck me harder! I had another ass-orgasm, which didn't seem like such a big deal after all we had done that night.

"Ok boys," the queen said, "turn about and face us." We ended our kiss, and I turned around to see Klaus had been the one in my ass.

"Open up," he said. "And in." Klaus slid his beefy cock back into my mouth, back down my throat. I lay there still as he fucked my throat at his own pace.

After a few minutes, Queen Kevin said, "Wench, ten," then "five… three, two, one!" Klaus pulled his cock out of my throat, and it exploded in my mouth with a shower of cum. It seemed he and Kevin had synchronized their orgasms.

The vibrating dildo was in my ass again, and once again I was being sucked through an orgasm. I was still on the table, again with my head facing David's so we could kiss. The dildo was slid out, and I gasped as I felt something very cold between my ass cheeks. The sucking grew more intense as the ice cube was pressed fully into my ass and left there. I looked down and could see it was Kevin this time. I resumed my kiss with David, and I felt another ice cube being rubbed all over my scrotum as the sucking continued. A minute later, he shoved that ice cube up my ass, bringing on yet another orgasm. As he continued to suck unrelentingly, I felt two ice cubes, one rubbing against each side of my belly, then up to my nipples. I let out a shriek when he did that. Then I felt more ice entering my ass, but this was much longer than an ice cube. It felt like a frozen dildo moving in and out slowly. He pulled it out of my ass and gave my cock a break from all the sucking.

He leaned over and asked, "Do you want a lick?" He'd been sucking on a Popsicle, which he was offering to share with me. He kissed me with his icy lips and went back to my ass.

Chocolate frosting had been spread over my belly, and David was licking it off. Klaus spread some over my cock, and David sucked it clean, giving me another easy orgasm. Then he spread the frosting liberally inside David's ass crack, poking some up into his hole.

"Looks like dirree," I slurred. After a drunken giggle, I plunged my face in and cleaned him carefully, sucking hard on his hole to see if I could get any more out. I loved chocolate frosting!

Those are all the memories I have of that night, and some of those things might have happened another time while we were drunk and playing. Kevin liked his boys drunk, so it could have been anytime. Well, anytime during those few days.

***

Perhaps you are thinking that Klaus wasn't acting like a very responsible surrogate father to his boys. That's probably true but think of his position. He was preoccupied, we all were, with the impending death of his lover. That lover, who was about to die, wanted to see us drunk and carefree. Klaus wanted us to enjoy our remaining time with Kevin. And Klaus also liked to get us drunk and fuck us. We loved that too, and he also wanted us to have what we love.

These are not excuses to justify irresponsibility. I am telling you these things so you might understand where his mind was at. Mostly, the thought of Kevin dying had him thinking out of desperate fear that he had to make Kevin's last days as special as he could, and in that pursuit, everything else was secondary. If you understand nothing else, understand that.

***

Klaus and Kevin told me the next day that I had orgasmed seventeen times that night, and to the best of their reckoning, I had drunk twelve shots of Southern Comfort. I'd also vomited three times. David had fifteen orgasms and about nine shots of Southern Comfort, and he'd thrown up twice. Yes, they had actually kept a log!

Apparently I had begged to be hung from the pole, all tied up, and David joined me in my pleas. Oil wrestling was Kevin's idea. The rest were connivances by Kevin and Klaus, living their fantasy of having their way with two drunken boys. That idea has always appealed to me from the times when I was the drunken boy until now when all that remains is an old man's fantasy. There is something right about it.

Chapter 90

The Nightmare

The parking lot was packed. The sun was shining, and it was so hot outside the asphalt surface had become soft and sticky. I always liked to go grocery shopping with Mom because I got to choose the cereal as a reward for helping to carry the groceries into the house, but I regretted my decision to go along with her on that day, that hot, awful day, in her rusty old car with no air conditioning and hot vinyl seats that burned my bare legs. (Boys' shorts were quite short in those days.)

It was 1983, and the Cold War had us all scared. There were movies all over that showed the Soviets either invading the US or bombing us into oblivion. I could recognize most of their military aircraft from those movies, and sometimes I wondered how it would feel to see them coming where I lived – sometimes I felt safe. That day in the grocery store parking lot, I had no worries. Well, a few seconds after getting out of the car I had a few worries. In fact, I was terrified! One of those huge Soviet helicopters appeared from behind the grocery store, along with two smaller ones. The smaller ones were firing their machine guns at us, killing people and blowing the cars to pieces. One of them had a loudspeaker, and it was shouting things at us, but I couldn't understand. I was afraid of what the big one was going to do.

Mom pulled me down to the ground, and my knees were burned on the sticky asphalt. It stuck to my hands and my arms and my legs and my favorite red satin shorts with white stripes. It was all over my skin, burning me! And what was that big scary helicopter going to do to me? Why was it waiting? It hovered in front of me, facing me as I was burning.

I never found out what the helicopter was going to do. Every time I got to that point in the dream, I woke up.

I woke up, I sat up, and I threw up. Klaus had sensed what was coming, and he was sure to get my bucket under me.

"It's ok, Donovan," he whispered. "Come with me to the bathroom."

I rolled out of bed and stood up, and I puked again. Klaus was very quick with the bucket. As we walked, I saw that it was still dark outside. I don't know how I noticed such a thing. I felt dizzy, which was ok because that was part of getting drunk, but I'd never felt so sick ever. When we got to the bathroom, Klaus dumped the watery contents of my puke pail into the toilet and flushed, then rinsed out the pail. He washed my face and my chest. I guess he hadn't caught it all in the bucket.

"I'm going to get you some more water. Please wait for me here. If you need to be sick again, you can use the toilet or the bucket." I lowered the toilet seat and sat down with the bucket on my lap. I didn't think standing was a good idea while I was alone.

He returned with another huge glass of water for me and said, "Do you know how many times you've peed since seven o'clock?" he asked. "None. Not once. That's because you're dehydrated. Your body doesn't have enough water. Hard liquor does that. Alcohol takes water out of your body, but if you have beer or mixed drinks, usually you put plenty of water back in. Usually. Then, when you drink water and throw up right away, like you and David did a few times, it's as if you hadn't had any water at all. So drink up, cutie! You have to keep drinking water until you stop throwing it up."

I became extremely embarrassed, but I had to tell Klaus my shameful secret. "I used to wet the bed every night until this year, and drinking a lot of water might make me wet the bed. Sometimes I still have accidents." I was shaking as I told him this. I didn't want to sleep in a separate bed, away from all that love!

"Oh, Don," he said, wrapping me in a whole-body hug. "You can't pee if you're dehydrated." He gave me a kiss and explained, "Dehydrated means your body doesn't have enough water, like now."

"But what if…"

He stopped my words with a kiss and said, "If you have an accident some night in the family bed, we'll clean it up, and that's that. We'll know you couldn't help it. Nobody does that on purpose. Remember that we all love you so much! We all want you with us, and a little pee won't scare anyone away who loves you." He kissed and hugged me again.

"I don't like feeling this way at all! Everything is spinning, and that's ok, but my stomach has never, ever felt this sick before, and this time throwing up didn't make me feel better."

"Most of that awful feeling is dehydration. Drink your water down, and I'll stay with you in here for ten minutes to make sure it stays down."

"Ok." He told me about a few of the things we'd done that night that I'd forgotten completely. It really turned me on that I gave away all control of my body to someone else who just loved playing with it. I was hard again, but I didn't know why that made my cock sore. Klaus rubbed my thighs and leaned over to suck my boner gently. It felt good. I felt better. I threw up on the back of his head. It dripped all through his hair, but he didn't stop sucking me until I pushed him away with tears in my eyes.

"I'm sorry, Klaus!"

He just smiled and kissed me. Then he washed my legs where my puke had rolled off his head and jumped into the shower, leaving the shower curtain wide open. I took that as an invitation. He helped me up and held me as I stood in the shower with him. He kissed me, and I knelt down to suck his cock gently.

"Thank you Don," he said with a gentle smile. It seemed to take a long time for him to get hard. It was difficult for me to move my head back and forth because it made me dizzy and more sick. When he was done washing himself, he pulled his cock out of my mouth without cumming. He thanked me, and he washed me, every part of my body, very thoroughly. He even had me bend forward so he could wash out my butt. He turned off the water and dried me with a big fluffy towel.

"We've got a problem, Don," he said. "I was mistaken. You weren't able to keep your water down. Your health isn't in serious danger, but I'm sure this much dehydration feels pretty miserable." I nodded and leaned into him so he could cuddle me. "Since we've tried several times, and you still can't keep it down, we need to try something different. I'm going to wake Kevin up, and he's going to poke a needle in your arm. That way he can pump a bunch of water right into your blood. That way it doesn't have to go through your sick stomach."

"I hate needles!"

He laughed, hugged me, and said, "You've been hanging upside-down, all tied up, with a hook in your ass. You've had enormous dildos in your ass. Are you saying a little needle is going to bother you tonight?"

"But we were having sex then! That's different!"

"Ok," he said. "We'll do something sexual while he pokes you!"

"You promise I'll feel better?"

"I promise."

***

I was laid back in the recliner, holding Kevin's smooth, beautiful cock in my hand. The lights were on in the shelter corner, and my beautiful David was snoring softly, so beautiful lying naked in a deep sleep. Klaus was sucking me off while Kevin slipped the needle right into my arm.

"That wasn't too bad," I said.

"That's the worst part of this," he said. "Wait till you get some fluids. You'll feel like swinging on the trapeze again!"

He taped the needle in place and attached a plastic tube to it. He hung a bag of water, what he called saline with electrlytes, from the top shelf and connected it to the other end of the tube. I felt something cool running up the inside of my arm.

Fifteen minutes later the bag was empty. Kevin pulled the needle out, slapped a Band-Aid over the needle hole, put the needle in a special container, and threw out the rest. He and Klaus helped me to my feet and asked me how I felt.

"Wow!" I said. "I thought you were kidding, Kevin!" I hopped up and down and paced back and forth to show them I had my balance back. "And my stomach feels brand new!" I knelt down and slid into my splits position and giggled. "Whoa," I said. "I guess I'm still a little dizzy, and my head kinda hurts." I reached around Kevin's ass and said, "Thank you for making me feel so much better!" Then of course I pulled him toward me and sucked on his cock. That was the proper way to say thank-you, and he didn't resist.

Klaus curled up in bed with David, snuggling comfortably. I guessed each of them had agreed to watch one of us, and I'd been Klaus' boy. Now I was playing with Kevin, and I guess that made me his boy. I opened my throat and thought, "Fuck me! Fuck me hard!" I dug my fingers into his ass and pulled hard. He understood, and he delivered. My head was really hurting with all that pounding, but I would take it for Kevin! He turned out the lights and lay back on the bed, pulling me along and helping me to get on top of him so we could sixty-nine. I felt Klaus' hand gently caressing my butt cheek.

I guess when a boy cums a lot in one day, each time becomes easier, but a little less intense. I clenched my thighs, almost there. Suddenly Kevin's cock filled my mouth with his liquid love, and I spasmed that very instant. His cum felt great because it was made out of love, but it also tasted so creamy and sweet. I had the thought that it might taste good on noodles. I would have to ask him some day.

***

The next time I woke up, Kevin's cock was still in my mouth, and mine was still in his. If it ever happens to you, you'll understand the incredible feeling it brings to wake up like this. It was getting light outside, and nobody else was awake. My tired cock became hard once again. Usually, when you cum, there is a period of time afterward when you're not horny anymore. When boys cum so many times in a day, that doesn't happen. I had been sucked through many consecutive orgasms, and I wanted more.

I pressed my cock gently but deeper into Kevin's mouth a few times, then pulled it out. It just didn't feel right. I rolled off of him, and he mumbled and moved a tiny bit. Then I lifted his arm and crawled under it, snuggling against his smooth, muscular chest. His hand caressed my skin, and he turned toward me to cuddle more effectively. My head was pounding savagely, but I was safe in Mom-Only-Different's loving arms. When I felt as loved as I did at that moment, the headache didn't matter. Off to sleep, I drifted once again, trying to enjoy what felt like a roller coaster ride in my head, and secretly wishing we could still play.

Chapter 91

The Cost

I grabbed David's arm in fear as I woke up. There was no one else around, and I didn't know why the bed was spinning! David startled into wakefulness and immediately threw up. I was glad we were spooning, and he was facing away from me. It happened too suddenly for him to reach his bucket, so it got all over his pillow and the sheet.

He sat up and said, "Oh, no!" He grabbed his bucket and threw up once again as he dashed off to the bathroom. Klaus quickly pulled the sheet off that corner of the mattress to keep the puke from soaking through. He asked me urgently to get out of the bed so he could take the whole sheet off. He brought the sheet and David's pillow to the washing machine while Kevin attended to David in the bathroom.

I was dizzy, and my head hurt, but I wasn't sick like David. I sat down in the recliner and tried to pretend the room wasn't spinning. I could hear water running in the basement, probably coming from the decontamination hose, which was over by the washing machine. Klaus hurried back into the room, gathered up several dishcloths and towels, and brought them out into the basement, and I heard the washing machine start up. Then he came back, poured a glass half-full of water, and dropped two Alka-Seltzer tablets into it, and brought it to the bathroom for David. When he returned, he gave me a glass too.

"Try to drink it down fast," he said. "The taste is pretty bad, but you'll feel better."

I took a sip and nearly threw up again. "That's disgusting!" I said.

"Yeah, but it really helps. I've got another idea. Hang on." He poured me a small glass of orange juice and set it next to me. "Take a deep breath and hold it, try to drink the Alka-Seltzer as fast as you can, and without breathing, then swallow some orange juice before your next breath. You'll hardly taste it."

"If you say so." I was nervous, but I had learned to trust Klaus, my new dad-only-different. I took a deep breath, chugged the Alka-Seltzer as if it was a full glass of wine, and took a drink of orange juice, just like he said. "Wow, I could hardly taste it at all!"

"That's because when we taste things, most of what we think is taste is actually smell. When you hold your breath that keeps the smell in your mouth, so none of it goes up your nose. Then the orange juice rinses the smelly stuff down your throat, so when you breathe again, there's nothing left to smell."

"And my stomach feels better too! I didn't even know it was sick, but I'm dizzy, and my head hurts."

"There's aspirin in the Alka-Seltzer to help your headache," he said, "but you'll just have to wait for the spinning to stop. Drink as much water as you can, all day today. That will help with the dizziness, but this is going to be a difficult day for you and David. You gave Kevin a truly wonderful gift. I don't think you realize how much fun he has with drunken boys. It's not because he can use you, though that is part of the play. He likes to be with boys who don't care about anything other than being happy, and you boys gave him that last night. If you two want to have more drunken boy orgies, you can have as many as you want until… until we have to say goodbye to Kevin."

He collected himself and added, "You will feel better as the day goes on, but you'll probably feel like this for several hours."

"I feel awful!"

"That's the cost of a night of heavy drinking, and you boys both drank very heavily. Did you have a good time?"

"I think so," I said. "I can't remember it very well. Why can't I remember? Did I hit my head on something? It really hurts!"

"Memory loss can also happen when you drink heavily," he said. "No, you didn't hit your head on anything. You just got really drunk."

"Why?"

"You wanted to get so drunk you couldn't stand up. Do you remember telling me that?"

"Yeah, now that you mention it. I do remember saying that, and I really wanted to. It was fun!"

"And so did David," he said. "Kevin wanted to see you boys being carefree and playing during the time he has left with you. Do you remember telling him you were carefree?"

"Yeah! And he hugged me!"

"You made him very happy." He paused and said with a wink, "He had the time of his life! Kevin always did like getting boys drunk and fucking them. Like I said, it's because you boys are so carefree when you drink."

"I think you like that too!" I said.

"I won't lie to you," he said. "I do! Sometimes I like to pretend I'm your master, and you have to obey my evil wishes, and drunk boys are more likely to play like that."

"What happened to your chest?" I asked. "It looks like somebody bit… Oh wow. I did that, didn't I?" He nodded, and I said, "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to…"

"Listen to me, Donovan. Kevin was in charge last night, and he knows what I like. I thought it was hot! I don't want that kind of thing every time we have sex, just once in a while, ok?"

"Ok. I think I really did have a great night last night, but I don't think I'll ever get drunk again. I feel so awful! I didn't know a hangover would feel this bad."

"Wait until you feel better before you decide that," he said. "You drank a lot, and you drank it fast. You won't feel like this if you slow down and drink less. It'll also help if you drink more water with your alcohol instead of waiting until you're too drunk to keep it down. Food helps too. If you eat some snacks while you drink, that helps. Some people say it helps to take a hair of the dog that bit you."

"Dog hair?"

"No," he chuckled. "It's a saying. The dog that bit you is the alcohol you drank too much of. Taking a hair of the dog means having just a little of that same alcohol in the morning to help with your hangover."

"No!" I said. "If I have even a taste of that stuff, I think I'll throw up again!"

***

Klaus folded the bed and put the couch together. A few minutes later, David shuffled slowly back into the room, accompanied by Kevin, who had his arm around him. I'd never seen David like that, like a zombie. Kevin sat him on the couch and then brought him a glass of orange juice.

"Drink that down, sweetie. It'll help." Something I liked about our family was that everyone called everyone sweetie.

David turned his head slowly toward Kevin and nodded gently before taking a sip. I put my hand on his knee and softly kissed his cheek. "I feel horrible, Don," he croaked, "Like a tank ran over my head after I swallowed everything in our chemistry sets."

"You need to have lots of water in you," I said. "When you had water last night, did you throw all of it up?"

"I remember throwing up the first glass, and I don't remember having any more, but Kevin says I had two more glasses later, and I kept them down."

"Well, water makes you feel a lot better if you can keep it down. Maybe you should have more?"

"I think we should let him finish his orange juice first, Donovan," said Kevin. "Drinking too much water too fast can upset a sick stomach too, and that's the last thing he needs."

"Ok," I said. "I just love him so much, and we both feel awful, but I think he looks a lot worse than I do."

"I love you too, sweetie," he muttered, leaning his head on my shoulder. Seeing him like that made me want to cry.

***

David and I shared a piece of dry white toast, which we didn't finish, and we had some applesauce for breakfast, which was exactly what Kevin had. Our stomachs didn't feel so good, so Kevin had suggested we try his BRAT diet until we felt better. David and I both felt a little better after having just a tiny bit of food like that.

"Seventeen times?" I asked incredulously. "I had seventeen orgasms?" We were discussing the parts of the previous evening that David and I couldn't remember.

"Yes, you did," said Klaus, "and once was in the middle of the night when you woke up to be sick."

"That's right," said Kevin. "I had given you fluids and…"

"And we did sixty-nine!" I said, a hazy memory forming. "I remember waking up super-early, and we were still in that position. I wanted to do it again, too. I didn't know I could do it so many times in one day!"

"We didn't know either," said Kevin. "We still don't know how many a boy can do in one day because you still wanted more when we had to go to bed."

"Maybe we should find out tonight!" I said.

"We'll see," said Klaus.

"Did you try that out with me too?" asked David with a super-sexy shy smile.

"We sure did," said Klaus. "You had fifteen orgasms, but that's not a fair comparison with Donovan. You fell asleep first, and you didn't get up in the middle of the night and have another one."

"Wow!" said David, smiling at me with proud surprise. "I think we can do that experiment at any time we want!"

"Yeah," I agreed, "but not today, ok?"

"I think that's for the best," he replied with his hand on his stomach.

***

"Education time," said Klaus.

"It's eleven o'clock!" I protested.

"Oh, right. Time for calisthenics!"

Was he joking? The floor would be covered in puke! "We're supposed to start the day making love," I said. "We haven't done that yet."

"We did," said Klaus, giving Kevin a kiss.

He was joking, of course. David and I were still small enough that we could lie down on the couch together and snuggle, which we did. There was nobody on Planet Earth I'd rather be sick and hungover with than my David. It felt good to be there with him in that moment. I wasn't sick anymore. Rather, the sickness was less important.

"I love you, David Chance," I said, kissing him softly. He treated me to that smile that made my world worthwhile, and we drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 92

Love and Lunch

The hammock over the little stream was our special place. Nobody else knew it existed. We could relax comfortably and make love, the two of us. There was no other place like it in the world. The hammock was swaying gently, and David kissed me. He kissed me softly and lovingly. I couldn't kiss him back, but that didn't matter to him. He loved me like I loved him, and the truth of that made me want to cry. I felt a few tears roll down my face, but he continued to kiss me, to love me, to need me, and to show me how precious I was to him. His mouth told me all of those things.

As my eyes opened, his hair came into view, and his cheek. I couldn't see clearly because my eyes were wet with tears. That didn't matter, though, because there was something wrong about kissing him with my eyes open. I closed them and began kissing him back, accepting that the hammock over the little stream was gone, but we had another special place – right here, in our shelter corner.

His body filled me with his special magic, and of course, I was hard, even before I woke up. I could feel that he was hard, too. I felt his whole body. I wasn't controlling my hands. They were exploring his body of their own accord. I was aware only of his kiss and the feel of his entire body as a shapely, soft, magical whole.

I had to continue holding him, and I couldn't break the kiss, but I was so in love with him, and I wanted to share it sexually. One of my hands came up with a great idea. It seemed, of its own accord, to reach down between us and take hold of our boners. Then, squeezing them together, the hand began stroking and wanking them as one. David moaned and spread his legs without slowing the kiss or interrupting his caresses.

It had the power of a slow explosion, making love like this, and that feeling lasted for ten minutes, at least. Really, I'm not sure how long it lasted. Toward the end, we could feel each other twitching, and soon we twitched together, at the same time. Our cocks felt as if they were one cock that we both shared, partly because they responded the same way. In the end, our orgasms came together. They were smooth, prolonged, and deeply pleasurable, like nothing I'd felt before. Of course, I would say that after most times we made love.

When it was over, we hugged each other tight, both of us crying softly, tears of absolute joy.

They say there's someone for everyone, but with over four billion people in the world, how did we find each other?

***

"How are you boys feeling?" asked Klaus after giving us some time alone after our love-making. "Better?"

We kissed and smiled at each other. He could never imagine what we had just experienced. "Yes," said David, "much better, thank you."

I collected him into a huge hug and said, "Oh, David! The world is so much better with you here! They nuked us, but I don't even care! You love me! That's so much more important!" I meant it too, but David looked a little worried. "What's wrong?"

"Do you really mean all that? I mean that I'm so much more important to you than a nuclear war?"

"Of course!" I said.

"I'm not that important! I make mistakes! If you think I'm so wonderful, what will you do when you find out I'm not?"

"I hope I do the same thing you've always done, only you're better at it than I am."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean how you say things nicely, you show me how to do something better the next time, and if I hurt you, you still love me, like when I hurt your leg."

"That was just a… a mistake, I guess." He paused. "I feel the same way about you. I don't think I could have survived the bombing without you, and I don't mean because you carried me home. I mean, I think I would have died from misery without you. This has never felt like a nuclear war should feel with you here."

"So I feel the same way. Maybe now you gotta trust me? Maybe you gotta trust that I can't stop loving you, not even if you hurt my leg!"

He giggled and kissed me before we fell into another hug.

***

A few minutes later, Klaus cleared his throat and said, "Uh, I know you boys are deeply in love, and I don't want to interrupt your sharing that with each other, but it's past lunchtime, and I'm hungry. Do you want anything? Are your stomachs ready for a quick meal?"

That was when I became aware that my stomach was no longer sick. It wasn't back to normal, but surely it could handle a meal. "I'm kinda hungry too," said David, which made me feel really good. He was sicker than I was, and I was glad to see him feeling so much better.

"You sure you don't want to count orgasms today?" I asked him.

He giggled, looking a bit embarrassed, lightly play-slapped my chest and said: "Oh, stop it!" Then he kissed me. He tried to hide it, but he had another boner.

***

For lunch, Klaus made us a big batch of macaroni and cheese with sliced hot dogs and peas mixed in. He had made a dish of plain macaroni for Kevin, along with a small dish of applesauce. "It's because macaroni and toast are made of the same thing – wheat flour," said Kevin. "This is really an experiment, though." Then he whispered, "Don't tell Klaus, but I added a tiny dash of olive oil and some garlic salt." Then he said aloud, "We'll see if the macaroni is ok. We should know in an hour or so."

I was surprised at how hungry I was. I had two plates full, and I never got sick from it. David only had one plate, but he was hungry too. Nobody got sick after lunch, not even Kevin!

***

Because we were so badly hungover, Klaus hadn't expected us to do anything before lunch, though he commended us for making love. We both knew that Klaus liked watching, but that was ok because we all loved each other. After lunch, however, we were back on our schedule, which meant reading/studying, free time, work, and then supper.

Klaus sat at the table with another textbook. David was on the couch, staring at a page in The Fellowship of the Ring. I don't think he was taking any of it in. His eyes were fixed in one position, and he didn't turn any pages. Kevin leaned back in the recliner for a nap. I grabbed the library book with the pictures of naked gay men having sex in it for my reading. I read (ok, I looked at pictures) while on the floor doing the splits. I held that position with my right leg forward for about ten minutes. Then I tried it with my left leg forward. I'd never done it that way, but it was no more difficult than the other way round.

The pictures were making me horny, and I was once again erect. Orgasms really seemed to make me want more orgasms. I reached down and began to masturbate. I knew David wanted sex, too because of his boner just before lunch.

David moved his book aside and saw what I was doing. He stared for a few seconds, and then slowly smiled at me. He spread his legs wide, revealing his proud boner, and he began to masturbate.

We kept eye contact the whole time, and we were quiet. I don't think Klaus saw what we were doing until the end when we both squeaked and trembled in pleasure. "We were just practicing what it says in the book," I offered as my excuse.

"Oh, it's ok then," he said with a wink, "as long as it's in the book."

David sat on the floor next to me to see what else was in the book. "Let's do it!" he said. "Let's count them and see how many orgasms we can have!"

"Yeah!" I shouted.

"Let's do them together, or if we do them with Klaus and Kevin, let's do the same number, ok?

"Ok," I said.

We sucked each other through three orgasms, each in the sixty-nine position (because it was in the book) before reading time was done. "That makes five total so far for today, not including the one you did in the middle of the night with Kevin."

Chapter 93

Kevin's Boys

I lay on Klaus' back. Up, down, up, down, up, down we went. He was disappointed that we'd missed our morning exercises, so he was doing push-ups with me riding on top. Every time he went down, he sucked David's cock in, then let it pop out as he pushed up. David tried as hard as he could, but he couldn't stop giggling. Kevin was sitting on the floor, holding David's upper body in his lap, and every time David giggled, it made him giggle too. Klaus was in no hurry. He was thorough with each slurp of David's cock. He didn't want to go too fast and wear himself out either. These were endurance push-ups, and he did a hundred of them!

The rest of the free time was spent with Kevin and Klaus figuring out new and clever ways to make boys cum. They put us in various positions, but in the end, they nearly always sucked us off when we were properly posed, or shackled, or held down. Kevin fucked both of us at various times, but not for very long. He didn't want to cum, and he was still sick, even though David and I were feeling much better. I think my favorite was when David and I were lying on our sides doing sixty-nine while Klaus fucked David from behind, and Kevin fucked me. The men wouldn't cum though.

"It'll spoil your supper," said Mom-Only-Different. That didn't stop David and me, though. Before we had to stop for work time, David and I had seven more orgasms each, which brought our total to twelve.

Sex brought Kevin to life. It seemed to give him new energy. When he wasn't having sex or making love, he seemed weak and sickly. He didn't have much time left before he had to die, but he would have all the sex he ever wanted. I would see to it!

***

Kevin's bed was almost finished by the end of work time. That day, Klaus only had David as a helper. I helped Mom-Only-Different with cooking supper. Klaus told him he had to sit down and tell me what to do. He was only allowed to do work while sitting at the table. Kevin complained, but then he kissed Klaus and told him how much he loved him with his bright and very cute smile. For a moment only, I felt crushed deep inside because such a beautiful person had to die, just for helping people and getting too much radiation. I had promised Kevin I wouldn't think that way, and that I wouldn't get stuck feeling sad about him dying. The last thing I wanted to do was make him feel bad, so I quickly shook those thoughts out of my head and put on a smile before asking him, "So what do we do first?"

"Well," he said, turning his chair to face the cooking area, "you need to wear an apron."

"I do? Is that because boys in aprons are kinky?"

"Oh, yes, they are," he said with a smirk, "but really it's for safety. Hot food might splatter on you and burn you. Remember, we can't have any unnecessary burns or injuries. Like Klaus keeps saying, there are no doctors or clinics or hospitals here, and we can't take chances."

"Ok," I said, "but you gotta do something too."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You gotta have a boner when you look at my cute butt while I'm wearing the apron!"

He laughed heartily and said, "I think I can handle that, but I might need your help."

"Oh, I love helping you like that!"

I put the apron over my head, and Kevin tied the string in the back and patted my butt. "Oh, you are so sexy!" he said. "You should see the way these soft, round cheeks stick out!"

I turned around to kiss him, and true to his word, he was lightly stroking his rigid cock. "Wow, so are you! Sexy, I mean. I wish I could sit on it."

"Why can't you sit on it?" he asked with a devilish grin.

I paused in confusion, then smiled and said, "I'm glad I'm the one who gets to sit on it!" I smeared a little olive oil on his cock and then turned around. He was playing with my ass as I put the oil back on the shelf. He moved his hands around to the front of my hips and pulled back gently. I settled down slowly until I felt his cock press against my hole. I put my hands on his knees and sat down.

He gave a soft but forced grunt in my ear. His hands were both under my apron, stroking my chest and playing with my cock. Sometimes he held my body still in his strong arms while he fucked me hard, and sometimes he lifted my whole body up and down. My cock was rubbing on the inside of the apron while he fucked me, and that was all it took. I made a loud squeaking sound, and my butt clenched as my whole body shivered. Of course, that had the effect of making him cum too. He held me close, kissed me softly on the side of my neck, and said, "I love you, sweet Donovan, my dear, sweet boy." I turned sideways and leaned into him so he could cuddle me like a mom, only different.

"Did Klaus hold you like this when you were eleven?"

"He couldn't. Not until I was thirteen anyway. Remember, he was my teacher until then, and he never played with his students."

"Oh, right," I said, remembering what Klaus had told us. "He really loved you. I don't think he'd like to think of it as playing. Weren't you making love?"

"Yes, I suppose we were," he said. "I didn't know it at the time, though. He always had lots of boys at his place, and we all played. Of course, it felt different with Klaus, but I guess I thought it was because he was a man, not one of the boys."

"How many boys came over to play at his house?"

"Oh, it was different every day. Sometimes five, sometimes fifteen, but usually a lot. It was the only safe place for us gay boys."

"Were they all thirteen years old?"

"Oh, no! They just couldn't be students at Northview. We had one little boy who was eight. He was the youngest one. He came with his brother, but he didn't seem to like it there. We only saw him that one time. Then there was this really, really cute nine-year-old that I became friends with."

"Did he like to play?"

"Oh, he loved playing!" Kevin said with a bright smile. "He was so sweet and so cute! He was the first boy I fucked in the ass. He used to sit on my lap, like you are right now, when we finished sex, with my cock still in his ass, cuddling. He was so sweet and full of cuddles and kisses!"

"Did you like the little boys who were younger than you?"

"Yes, I did. They were sweet, soft, and cute. Something happens to boys when they get into seventh grade. They lose their sense of amazement and wonder, but you need that to really experience good sex. So usually I looked after the youngest new boys to make sure they were happy, comfortable, and fully serviced."

"I don't like older boys either," I said. "They can be really mean."

"You should look after the young boys then like I did. There will be a lot of them who have lost their homes and families. If they are gay, they will need friends like you, and they will need love from boys like you and David. You know how it feels to have sex for the first time, and I know you would be gentle with them and only do the things that made them happy. With the little boys, that's really pretty easy – They love it all! They'll be grabbing at your clothes as soon as you walk through the door, they will want to play with handcuffs, they will want blowjobs all day long, you'll love them!"

"There were two boys on my bus who were in second and third grade," I said. "I think they were brothers. They were really cute, and I think I would love to play with them and their bodies. Why are boys so cute when they're that young? I think all boys are cute when they're little. They should all know about sex! They could make lots of people happy, and they would love it!"

"I don't know why little boys are so cute or why that makes them seem sexy. I just know they are, and I love them."

"Maybe after the fallout cools down and we can go places, we could find little boys who need a new family, and maybe I could be their mom, only different!" I could feel him getting hard inside of me again.

"I think you would make a wonderful mom to some little boy or dad," he said. "Some people think moms and dads are the same – that moms can do what dads do, and dads can do what moms do. Since you two sweeties asked me to be your mom-only-different, I've felt like a mom. It's hard to explain. Dad-Only-Different loves you too, and he wants to take care of you, but somehow, I feel more like a mom than a dad. If you feel more like a mom than a dad, that's just fine, but I think it's important to know which you want to be before you accept that role with some little boy."

I had just said maybe I could be their mom, only different, but I hadn't really thought about it. Maybe we could have a real strange family, with David and me as moms to different boys, and Klaus could be Dad-Only-Different to all of us!

Chapter 94

23 Times

Kevin had shown me how to make sloppy joes in the electric frying pan. I was surprised at how easy it was. Then I heated some canned creamed corn in the microwave as a side dish, which I'd never had before. Kevin also showed me the importance of timing when I cook. We were watching the clock because work time ended, and supper started at six PM.

There used to be an old saying: "If you want to make God laugh, show him your plans." I don't know what he'd been doing, but David came out of the workroom with dirt all over his body. Klaus just washed his own hands and face, and he was fine, but David needed a shower.

I don't know why, but there was something really hot about seeing his body all covered in dirt like that. David just wasn't the kind of boy who got all dirty. Anyway, I accompanied him into the bathroom, and there I hugged him, kissed him, and rubbed my hands all over his dirty, dusty skin. I knelt in front of him and confessed my orgasm with Kevin just earlier. Since we wanted to match each other as we counted orgasms, that meant I owed him one. I took his cock into my mouth and spat it out right away. It was covered with dirt too. I just slathered it with spit and wiped it clean with my mouth and sucked it in again. My hands found their way all over his body, and as far as I could tell, the dirt was everywhere.

"Hey! What are you boys doing in there?" Klaus was calling from the other room when he heard David's orgasm.

"What do you think?" I said.

"We're waiting for you so we can eat," he said. "Donovan, please let David take his shower, ok?"

"Ok. I'll help him! That should make it go faster." I heard a deep sigh and a little chuckling from the other room as David turned on the water.

David and I both had a giggle as we noticed his cock was clean, and the rest of him was filthy. "It looks like I had one transplanted!" he laughed.

"How did you get so dirty anyway?"

"Oh, we were working on the bottom bracing, and in order for me to hold the boards steady, I had to lie on the floor, sometimes with my body under the workbench. I don't think Dad ever cleaned under there. There was greasy sawdust and spider webs and gunk that had probably been there since Mom and Dad first moved in. Klaus didn't notice how dirty I was getting. You know how preoccupied he gets when he's working on Kevin's bed. I wasn't going to say anything either, because I didn't want to slow him down by fussing over me getting dirty."

I had become almost as dirty as David by hugging him and caressing his body, so it was best for us to shower together. It was so difficult, but we managed not to have and kind of sex in the shower, but we did stop to kiss once. Showering together reminded me of that first day in the locker room, when we showered next to each other, naked, in front of the whole class. It felt just as magical that day as it had at the beginning of the school year.

We sat down at the table for supper, all clean and pristine, with our wet hair carefully combed back. It reminded me of our time in the swimming pool when David's hair was all under his swimming cap, and I could see his cute, happy face so clearly. I could see him like that again, and I longed for it to have been just three weeks earlier.

***

We had just one item on our agenda that night. David and I were going to see how many times we could cum. We found out very quickly that Klaus and Kevin could suck us through our orgasms more effectively than we could do with each other. It's difficult when you're cumming yourself. We also found it was more exciting, and therefore more effective, if they held us firmly in place while they did it.

When we finished washing the dishes and everything was cleaned, David and I were immediately back on the table, facing opposite directions, kissing, and being sucked off by Klaus and Kevin. Both of them were very strong, and I couldn't move my legs or my hips at all, not even during my most out-of-control orgasm, while either of them held me in place. That feeling of powerlessness excited me! We each had three more orgasms before Kevin had to stop. "That makes it fifteen! David! It's only just after supper, and you've already got to your number from last night!"

"Yes, I know!" he said with a proud smile, "but my penis is getting sore. I think it's good for me to stop now too. My penis needs some rest, I think."

"Whenever you're ready to start again," I said to David, "just do it, 'cause I'm ready."

"Ok." The truth was that my cock was sore, too, but I wasn't going to let a little thing like that stop me.

David and I hadn't been paying attention as Klaus walked Kevin to the recliner, sat down, and pulled Kevin onto his lap.

***

David and I lay on the couch in the sixty-nine position, which we found was the easiest on sore cocks, though we hadn't tried anal yet. We brought our daily orgasm total up to seventeen. Kevin had been watching us, and I was happy to see he was masturbating. It seems he'd needed a rest after our fun at the table, but sex still brought him to life. He smiled devilishly at us after we'd finished and said slowly, "Would you lovely, sexy boys like something to drink?"

The thought of Southern Comfort made me feel woozy again. "I can't drink that stuff anymore," I said. "I'll be sick if I even taste it." David nodded in agreement from underneath my thighs.

"Oh, of course not!" said Kevin. "I know one you'll really like. Do you like apple cider?" David and I both nodded. "It's settled then!" he said triumphantly.

I didn't remember settling anything or agreeing to anything, but it was Kevin. I loved him so much, and I wanted to make him as happy as I could until he had to die, even if it made me sick. David seemed to feel the same way. We looked at each other, smiled, and hugged as Kevin went off to mix our drinks. He and Klaus went out into the basement to get a gallon jug of apple cider, a bottle of club soda, and a liquor bottle with a pirate on it.

"You boys are only eleven," said Klaus, "and you have very little experience with getting drunk, and how much is too much. You know how it feels to wake up hungover. In fact, I bet you're still hung over a bit right now." We both nodded. It was true, and we were always honest in our family. Always.

"Well, you know what you are getting into, and what kind of day you might have tomorrow. Are you sure you want to drink again tonight?"

"Yeah!" I cheered.

"Yes, I do," said David. "I like giving away my body, and I think you and Kevin like drunken boys. You even said so earlier. Oh! Just look at my penis! There's your answer." Klaus knelt down and sucked David's cock until Kevin brought us our drinks.

"What are these drinks called?" I asked.

"I don't know if they even have a name," he replied. "A friend of mine showed me how to make them, and I think they're really good. Of course, they're much better if you use fresh cider from the orchard, but I don't know if we'll ever have that again, so we'll use this."

Klaus stood up, and Kevin handed him a drink, too, which surprised me. "You boys don't mind if I join you in a drink tonight?"

"Skål!" said David as he raised his glass. He told me later that was what Norwegian people said when they gave a toast, and there were a lot of Norwegians in Minnesota.

"Cheers!" said Klaus, raising a glass to David. We all knew David's family was English, so he uttered the most English of all toasts. Then he turned to me. "Santé!" he said, raising his glass to me. My family was French, so I knew he was wishing me good health.

Then I lit up with excitement. My step-dad's family was German, and I'd heard them give toasts lots of times. "Prost!" I said, raising my glass to Klaus, who was also very German.

By the time we'd finished our toasts, our glasses were empty. The drink was really good! It was like apple cider with apple pie flavor or something and just a tiny bit of bubbles. Kevin told us the liquor was called Captain Morgan, which was a kind of rum with extra flavors and spices added. He had mixed the apple cider and the rum in a pitcher, but he left the club soda in the bottle so it didn't go flat.

"This mix is a little weaker than I normally do," said Kevin, "though the bubbles actually make you absorb the alcohol a little faster. I want to make sure you sweeties get lots of water inside you before you get sick and can't keep it down. In fact, it would make me happy to see you having to run to the bathroom all night."

I remembered the needle. I didn't want another needle! Wow, I sure felt a lot better after that iv bag of fluids and electrolytes. I was grateful again that David's mom, Dr. Chance, had stocked the first aid kit as if it were a hospital emergency room.

***

Two drinks later, David and I were on the couch. I was slouching, and he was riding my cock in the position we had discovered on the hammock over the little stream. David was facing me and leaning back with his hands on my thighs. We discovered this was a great position for us younger boys whose cocks didn't reach very far. And no, we weren't the slightest bit self-conscious about it either. We loved being eleven! Our lives were beyond perfect at age eleven.

While David and I relived our special pleasure, which we discovered together, Klaus sucked David's cock while Kevin looked on from the recliner, lazily stroking his own boner.

That day, I noticed that it didn't seem to matter how many orgasms we'd had. If we were together, we would always have them at the same time. If he got all twitchy, like he was about to cum, that would set me off. Sometimes it was the sound of his voice, like the kitty crying sound. It was like a signal to me that he was losing control, and that would send me out of control. Klaus said it was a good thing that we were like that.

On that occasion, the twitching and clenching began in David's cock and worked its way down to his ass. I could see it happening. (That was a benefit of our favorite anal position.) I held his legs as tight as I could with my hips lifted well off the couch, which I often did during orgasms in that position. Klaus kept his head in place, holding David's hips down. He kept sucking, which surprised me. I didn't know if I could orgasm through anal sex twice like that, staying hard enough to keep penetrating my sweet woodland fairy boy. I lowered my hips back to the couch, and David immediately resumed his riding up and down on my cock. It was going limp, as I feared, but gazing into David's beautiful eyes for a few seconds brought me back to life.

We decided we'd have one drink after each orgasm, or several drinks after multiple orgasms, so we paused long enough to have two more glasses of the apple rum stuff. Nineteen orgasms each and my head was feeling pretty good!

***

"Hang us upside-down!" I said. Then, "Wanna?" I asked David. He smiled and nodded. Three minutes later, we were hanging by our feet, face-to-face, but staggered a bit. Our hips were overlapping. As we kissed, I wondered if we'd hung like that the night before.

"Oh! Oh wow!" I shouted.

"What?" David squealed. I had faint memories of what was happening. If I wasn't mistaken, Klaus and Kevin had just inserted butt plugs into our asses. Then, without a word, they handcuffed us and put blindfolds on us.

I felt a soft hand stroking my whole leg, from my ankle to my groin, then lingering over my ass cheek, caressing it and squeezing it. I felt a warm cock rubbing against my mouth. I opened up and sucked the cock in. The cock obviously belonged to Kevin, and he began to face-fuck me, but nobody was sucking my cock! I found that surprising because we were doing an experiment on how many times two eleven-year-old boys could cum. He was thrusting deep. I let him go all the way into my throat, and that just made him fuck my face harder. Wasn't anyone going to touch my cock? I decided that was ok because the whole point of that night was to give Kevin the best time we could.

He kept going faster and faster until suddenly he pulled out, leaving a fine tendril of pre-cum in its wake. (I loved Carl Sagan, and he said tendril a lot.) He immediately began sucking on my cock and sucking hard. I don't think it took more than fifteen seconds for my body and mind to explode in pleasure. I faintly heard my voice exploding, too, and since David and I were in contact with each other, once again, we felt each other's pre-orgasmic twitching, so we came together again. They weren't going to stop after only one orgasm, as hot as it was. They sucked us off, just hanging there until we'd given them three more orgasms. Daily total: 23.

Chapter 95

Drunken Boys for Kevin

After Klaus and Kevin helped us down, we had to drink another four glasses each, but Kevin's pitcher only had half that much left. "Can I try just the rum by itself in a shot glass?" I asked him.

"It's stronger, and it's going to burn more than what you had last night, but you can try a shot. I'd really prefer it if you had something mixed with it, though, just to make sure you're getting enough water."

He was right! How did people drink that stuff? It felt like I had a super-strong burning acid going down my throat. I'd only taken in a small sip, and I almost spat it back out.

"Ok," I said. "I won't be doing that again." I poured the contents of the shot glass into one of my mixed drinks and drank it down. "Now, that was good!" I said. The remaining drink tasted weak after that, and I still had to have one more.

Kevin finished mixing up a new pitcher and said, "I'm glad you like it strong because I made this pitcher nice and strong for you. Remember, that first one was very weak so we could get a bunch of water into you. This one is a little more than twice as strong."

Yum! It was just as strong as the one I'd poured the extra shot into. I raised the glass to Kevin and wondered where his last name, Geheren, came from. "Prost!" I guessed Germany.

We tried a new acrobalance pose. I did a front split, and Klaus held me up on his feet, as always, one holding each thigh. David knelt astride Klaus' head and sucked me off while Klaus sucked him off. I had to keep one hand on David's head for balance. This time Kevin watched while lazily stroking himself again. I had the impression they were saving themselves for something special. Two more drinks, 25 total so far.

***

"I love you, Kevin. No, no man, I really do. We both love you, man, David too, I mean. What? Oh yeah, no, we love you, and we don't tell you enough! We… we do, no, we mean it too!"

"Oh, bless your sweet little sexy self!" he said, kissing me, "And how are you feeling, David?"

"W…well…well, Donovan. He says… I mean, that's truth. That's. The. Truth. What he says. Wait… What did he say?"

"Ooh! Klaus Hunny, they're just perfect! They're not falling over, but they have no idea. Yeah!" He pulled me across his lap, face-down, and gave my ass a few slaps. I think they were loud but not hard.

He pulled my butt plug out and stuck a finger in. Then a second finger. "Oh, hey, I mean ow, like…"

"Are you ok, Donovan?" he asked me.

"Well, yeah. That feels kinda good, actually."

"Good," said Kevin, just before slipping a third finger in!"

"Oh!" I moaned. "That's too many fingers, right? I mean, how many?"

"How many does it feel like?" he asked.

"How many what?"

"Does it feel like I have more than one finger in your butt?"

"Well, no. I like it when you move it around like that. Man, is that your thumb? S'really a big finger."

Klaus dragged David over next to us, facing down on the couch, and did the same thing with his fingers in his ass. At some point, a big, long cock had entered my throat. At another point, I realized I couldn't breathe. At a third point, the idea occurred to me that I should be concerned about a lack of breath. I noticed my body was wiggling around in a funny way. The cock left my throat, and I thought, "That was interesting." It sounded like David had a serious cough, though. My ass really felt good.

I felt two strong hands lifting me by the hips. I was on all fours, with my knees on Kevin's thighs and my hands on his shins. I had to laugh! He was licking my ass! I will never get used to that feeling. My balls were very comfortable, but I didn't know why. Then I felt something tight around the place where the scrotum attaches to the cock. It got tighter and tighter. "Hey… Hey Mom. I mean Kev… Hey. What's that?"

Then it started to hurt, but I wasn't really paying attention to it hurting. I had a mystery to solve! "What? What is that?" I asked. Something that felt wonderful was massaging my balls.

"It feels nice, doesn't it," asked Klaus.

"Oh, yes!" I said. "It feels really, really nice. I don't mean stop. I mean don't. Ow! What is that?"

The tightness was no longer there, only the warm massage. "I'm licking and sucking your balls," said Kevin.

"Oh, it's so nice. So nice."

I was hanging upside-down by my left foot. My right leg was bent forward at the hip, and my torso was leaning down to meet it. I was doing the splits; only I was hanging. The slapping on my ass continued, which is how I discovered I was being slapped on the ass.

"Good, you're awake. I wasn't sure if you'd gone to sleep on me," said Klaus. "This is no fun if you're asleep."

"AWWWW!!! It's fun! It's lots of fun!" I could hear David was having fun too.

I don't remember how he did it, but suddenly I was hanging from a length of chain instead of the ankle cuff hanging from the bar. A big, long cock was in place, up my ass, so that was normal. Nothing felt weird except that I was closer to the ground. "Kevin, Hunny, you want a piece of this?" He must have because I'm sure there was a different cock in my ass.

David was hanging next to me from his left leg while Kevin and Klaus put away the table and chairs. They told us they'd come back when they needed us.

My legs were spread wide, and I was lying on my back, on top of Kevin. My head was hanging down backwards over his cock, with Klaus' cock right where it belonged, in my throat. Klaus was making love to Kevin, using my throat instead of Kevin's ass, which could no longer be used for sex.

Where was David? Somehow, he wound up on his knees on the floor, licking Klaus' ass while Klaus fucked my throat. I swallowed Klaus' load, but I let David clean his cock so he'd get some cum too.

Then Klaus and Kevin swapped places, and Kevin used my throat to make love to Klaus. There was nothing wrong with Klaus' ass. He just didn't like being fucked. So, they used my throat. It made sense to me that night because of Kevin's sickness, David licked Kevin's balls instead of his ass. Better safe than sorry and Kevin was happy! We'd helped him to be happy!

After Kevin came, they held us down and sucked each of us through another three orgasms, making it a total of 35 for the day.

I thought we could do better, but after three more drinks, I didn't know how, and I didn't remember whether we actually did any better. I just hope Kevin got everything he wanted from us. I wonder how many times he came that night.

Chapter 96

Silver People?

There are times when things are so bad you can't imagine how many things had to go wrong at the same time to make it so bad. Maybe you can't imagine it's possible that things could ever be worse. Things can always be far worse than they are. Start out as a young boy with an incredible hangover from two days of heavy binge drinking. Then, in that state, go through events that are even more devastating than the nuclear attack that killed so many and destroyed our country. If you have harbored resentment for my luxury throughout those merciless times, you will soon be satisfied.

***

The huge Soviet helicopter was hovering in front of me again. The dream was vivid, as always. I was scared! What did it want from me? Why did it keep coming after me and killing other people, but not me?

I opened my eyes, and the helicopter was a jackhammer in my head. My sweet David was facing me as if we'd fallen asleep holding each other. He opened his eyes and gave me his most beautiful smile for the very last time.

His smile vanished and turned to fear. His eyes opened wide. "What is that?" he yelled to me. I realized slowly that the helicopter sound was real! Klaus and Kevin were standing at the window facing the street. David and I shared a case of empty beer bottles to stand on so we could see what they were looking at, a giant helicopter approaching from over the woods and hovering over the street, facing us. Facing me!

I knew what it was, what it meant. These were not the silver people on the shoreline. These were far worse. This was the enemy! This was a Soviet helicopter! This was the same Soviet helicopter from my dreams! I was still dreaming. That had to be it. There was nothing as terrifying as those huge Soviet helicopters, not even their fighter jets and bomber planes.

Klaus snapped me out of my dream – my dream that this was all a dream.

"Boys! Go get some of David's clothes. Each of you put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Socks, underwear, and shoes if you have time." What an odd thing to worry about at a time like this! I threw up on the floor as we went to get the clothes. "Don't worry about it. Just get the clothes on! Kevin! His parents' bedroom – his dad's clothes – some of them might fit you. Hurry! David, show Kevin your parents' room. Hurry! We can't give them cause!"

Cause for what? I knew not everyone liked seeing naked boys, but why was he so urgent about clothing? We were about to be killed by Soviet soldiers! I'd rather be killed naked, but when Klaus is shouting orders, I had to obey. Something inside me wouldn't let me ask the questions that were crashing around in my head.

Klaus took a disposable radiation decontamination suit and hurriedly put it on, the over-sized pants and jacket, the shoe covers, a hood, and a mask. There were no regular clothes that he could wear. He seemed to be planning to go outside, and he was protecting himself against long-term radiation poisoning. Didn't he know they were here to shoot us? They were the enemy! Then my heart rate tripled as Klaus went to the gun cabinet and took out the shotgun and a hunting rifle. Quickly, he rummaged through the ammunition to find rounds that would fit the rifle. The shotgun was still loaded from that awful night with the child killer coming after us, but in the end, that was the night that brought Klaus to us.

David and I decided to wear tube socks and underwear too because they were right there, and we had no idea what was happening, only that it was horrible, and probably we would die at the end of everything. He had enough stretchy shorts and shirts that I had a lot to choose from, and he had worn every one of these items on his magical body. Thinking about the best choice of David's wardrobe took me out of the horror of the moment, but David's wet face and wrinkled chin brought me right back into the moment. It always killed me to see him like that.

***

The helicopter landed. Klaus removed the sealing tape from the basement window, opened it, and aimed the rifle outside. "Now everybody, we have to keep calm and think before we do anything. These people might even be our friends." Yeah right.

There was a loudspeaker on the helicopter repeating a recording over and over. It was in English with a Russian accent.

Hello Americans. Soviet troops are entering your area. Please cooperate with them. They are your friends. There is no need for alarm.

Klaus held a steady aim. I looked out the window again and panicked. There were two Soviet soldiers with rifles on their shoulders, wearing goggles and masks, and walking right toward us! "What do they want? What do they want?" I repeated with increasing urgency as if I didn't know.

Without moving even an eye, Klaus said in a surprisingly calming voice, "We don't know what they want, but it's a very good sign that their rifles are on their shoulders. If they were coming to attack, they'd be holding them out in front. We need to allow time to answer these questions, Don."

The soldiers stopped about thirty feet from the door. One of them pulled off his mask, held up a bullhorn, and began to speak in a thick Russian accent. "Hello. We are friends. We have help for you. We have names for house. Is David Chance, Niklaus Kettering, Donovan Langevin, and Kevin Geheren inside? I see window in lower stairs is open. Can answer through window?" Klaus said he wasn't sure whether to answer them. "We see you have rifle point toward us. Is ok. We are strange for you. Maybe help we put rifles on ground?"

"Slowly!" shouted Klaus. The soldiers turned to the window and nodded as they slowly took off their rifles and laid them on the ground. I noticed they seemed careful to keep them pointed away from us the whole time. "Now, walk five meters to your left!" Klaus shouted. The soldiers complied. "You know who we are. What do you want from us?"

"Tell you already, bring help, is gift from Soviet people to help with unspeakable tragedy," said the soldier, no longer using the bullhorn. "Nobody want for this to happen. Nobody want. Even Secretary Andropov not want. Is horror brings fear to all people. Bring fear to Soviet people when NATO think Soviets do this to America. Soviet people believe same happen to them. Leaders of Soviet have great wisdom, decide give help, not offer, give help is best for peace, is best for all man. We bring peace to you, and wishes of peace from Soviet people. All Soviet people cry with you on Wednesday, is six July. Still cry with America as work to… is… to… recover." Despite the soldiers' cooperation, Klaus kept the rifle aimed at them. "Have food, have doctor, medicine, have hospital, clean water, have shelters, have organization finding new home for people have none. Most important is message from Soviet people. They cry. They wish you well."

"That sounds like a carefully written script," whispered Klaus.

"A script?" I said, "he sounded so nice, and he said his people wanted to help us." David continued breaking my heart by crying his most painful cry. I just hugged him, and he clung tight.

"They've given us every reason to trust them," said Kevin.

"Except they came as armed soldiers from a nation hostile to ours onto our property. They can play nice," said Klaus, "but I have a hard time excusing that."

"Look, sweetie," said Kevin, "if they'd meant us harm, why would they waste this time talking?"

"Ok," said Klaus, "we'll assume they don't want to kill us, but I have a hard time trusting the benevolence of armed soldiers. I was in the army, remember? We don't need what they're offering. Let's see if they'll leave us alone when we tell them that. If they do, then I'll trust them."

Then he called out the window to the soldiers, "Thank you for your generous offer of help, and for your kind words. The world needs friends, and the world needs the USA and the USSR to be friends. We are fortunate. We have everything we need here. Your food should go to someone else who needs it. We have medicine and clean water too. Thank you again for your kind offer. Goodbye."

"Wait!" he replied urgently. "Please wait. One more important business, then we go." Then the soldier said, "Must be direct ask question. Is boy name Donovan Langevin in house? We must speak with boy Donovan Langevin. Is very important."

"WHAT???" I screamed.

Chapter 97

Why?

Why would he want to know if I was there? I was just some kid! Maybe they heard I was good in science and wanted to groom me for their nuclear weapons program! Klaus sensed my fear and asked the soldier, "Why do you need to to talk to him?"

"Of course," replied the soldier, "Forgive, please. Most important information for you. Have family. Him family, want see boy."

"What?" I squealed. "They're dead! They're all dead!" Was it some distant cousin? Who could they have?

"Donovan's family all died in the bombing. It seems you have an impostor."

"Come to front door, maybe see person? She come out, but sick. Need rest for her."

"Whaddya think, Donovan?" asked Klaus. "Do you want to see this surprise visitor?"

"I'm not leaving you!" I said. "If you come with me, I'll see the person. I'm scared, Klaus. I'm really, really scared!" I was also very curious to know who else had survived.

"I know, Don," he said hugging me. "I'm scared too. This is a scary thing that's happening." Then he turned to the soldier and said, "We will come to the doorway and see this person. If Donovan doesn't know her, then I will assume she is an impostor, and I will expect you to take her away."

"Agreed," said the soldier. He said something in Russian into his radio. Then Kevin took Klaus' place at the window with the shotgun. I stopped to kiss David's sad face, though I didn't know it would be the last time I would see him. He was just as scared as I was. None of this made any sense, but we had a huge Soviet helicopter with armed Soviet soldiers asking for me!

Klaus and I walked upstairs and stood by the front door. Two unarmed soldiers emerged from the helicopter and helped a third person to the ground. All I could see was the big white blanket she had wrapped tightly around her, a gray hood, and part of a face mask she was wearing. The two soldiers stood to her sides, holding her elbows, and began walking. Were they helping her walk, or were they escorting her as a prisoner?

Then a man wearing a suit and tie jumped out, and another man was wearing what I recognized as a Wright County Sheriff's uniform, both wearing masks and wide-brimmed hats. They followed the soldiers and the woman wrapped in the blanket toward the front door. Then the bullhorn crackled back to life and said, "Please open door so woman can see boy, and boy can see woman." Klaus held the rifle in front of him, pointing upwards, and looked at me. He was telling me clearly that it was my choice and that he would fight and die for me if things went wrong. I couldn't tell him how much he meant to me just then, but I really wished I could. I had to know though. Very slowly, I opened the inside door, then the screen door.

"Donovan!" cried my mom.

"Mom!" I shouted back. She had removed her mask. What was she doing there? How could she have survived? She didn't look very sick to me!

"Come on Don. We have to go."

"I can't go! How can I ever go?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, but we can't keep Major Morozov and all these nice people waiting. Come on now."

Klaus hung his head and set the rifle down. "Mrs. Langevin?" he said. "I'm Klaus Kettering. I was Donovan's teacher. He and his friend David saved my life, and I have been looking after them the best I could ever since. He's been well fed and well cared for, I assure you. We've developed a bond…"

"He's our new dad!" I interrupted. "We adopted him and everything! You were dead! We have a whole new family now!"

Mom looked shocked, with her mouth wide open, like she was about to have a shouting fit, but Klaus cut her off by saying to me, "Don, that's not how it works. We formed our family because we thought our own family members were all gone. It's a wonderful thing that your mother survived! Now you can go back to her and…" He choked up and had to pause. "And live with your real family. Do you know how few people will ever see their family members again if they thought they died in the bombing?"

"you were at work in Crystal! How could you be alive?"

"Didn't you miss me?" she asked. "Aren't you even happy to see me?" Then came her guilt trip tears.

The true answer was, "No, absolutely not!" I had grown accustomed to being loved and cared for. That would have been a horrible thing to say in front of all those people, so I said, "Sure, I'm happy, but I can't leave David! I can't leave my new dad!" Let alone my new mom, I thought.

"He is NOT your dad!" she shouted. "He's your teacher! I am your mother, and he's not going to take my child from me!"

"That's not what…" Klaus began, but she cut him off.

"I'm not talking to you!" she shouted. "I am talking to my son, and he is coming with me, whether you like it or not!"

"Why, Mom? You're never happy when I'm around!"

"WHAT???"

"Donovan," said Klaus, "I know this is so sudden and so horrible and so unfair, but you have to go with her."

"You're damn right he has to!"

I fell into Klaus' waist and clung tightly to him while I had an awful cry. "I'm NOT GOING!" I screamed. "They can't make me!"

"THEY can," she said, pointing at the man in the suit and the sheriff's deputy. "Get over here, you two! He's not letting him go!"

As the two men advanced toward Klaus, he said, "I'm not stopping him. He doesn't want to go, and he's not letting go of me." He hugged me and told me he loved me always, which filled me with dread.

"Get your hands off the boy!" Shouted the deputy. Klaus stood straight up with his hands in the air. That was it? That's what it meant to him to be my dad, only different? He loves me until someone tells him to get his hands off the boy?

"KLAUS!!! NO!!!" I screamed. "YOU'RE MY DAD!!! THEY CAN'T TAKE ME!!! HOLD ME!!! KLAUS!!!"

"Please be kind to him," said Klaus. "You have no idea what you're asking him to leave behind." Be kind to him? He had given up!

"KLAUS!!! THEY CAN'T TAKE ME!!! YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!!!"

"A group of hippies who think they can just take someone's kid by filling him with lies about a pretend family? Having his life saved wasn't enough for this teacher," she said angrily to the deputy. "Now he wants to abduct my child too! No one is going to take my child from me!"

Most of that couldn't be heard over my screaming and howling as the deputy, and the man in the suit pulled and pulled on me. I put up a good fight, and the soldiers refused to get involved. Eventually, I lost my grip on Klaus, the man who wouldn't stand up for me or fight to keep me in his family. I loved him so much, and he was turning his back on me! Then I hurt so much. Then I blamed him, and I hated the most loving man I have ever known. I HATED HIM!

Chapter 98

What Happened Next

I stopped being scared and filled my heart with hatred the moment they put me on the helicopter. What could they do to me that would be worse? What was left to fear? I didn't even get to say goodbye to David or Kevin, and Kevin was going to die soon! As Klaus had said, when any emotion becomes overwhelming, we cry. I was so full of hate and anger that I cried loudly for the two-hour trip to Thunder Bay in Canada. Mom didn't try to talk to me or even look at me. She had won. It was just a game to her. She didn't give a damn what was best for me. She knew there was power in a mother asserting her rights.

While we were on the helicopter, during the times when I wasn't crying so hard, the man in the suit was telling me things about our acceptance of Soviet aid, our president and other officials being dead, and the whole attack being the work of a huge cult who worked in the American nuclear weapons program. Apparently, it had been in the works for over ten years. Apparently, he thought I would give a shit about such things. I could never care about anything again.

Then I looked at David's shorts and shirt I was wearing, and both had been badly torn in the struggle. I did still care about something. I took off my safety harness, stood up, and removed the shorts and shirt. Now it was my mom's turn to scream and my turn not to care. I put my safety harness back on, then folded David's torn clothes and held them on my lap. I hugged them. I decided to keep the socks and underwear on because they weren't damaged. I only wore the shoes when I had to because they were too small for me. I heard nothing, not one thing that Mom screamed, but I gave her a warning. "If you don't stop your howling and your whining, the underwear is coming off. Imagine what they'll think of a mother who KEEPS HER KID NAKED!"

One measure of love is how much it hurts when you lose it. It's not a very precise measure, but losing my David and my new parents-only-different destroyed me.

***

About three days later, while taking in the love and joys of life in a Canadian refugee camp, Mom informed me that we were going to be living in Sweden.

She took away my new family, a family that was created from pure love, a family that would guide me carefully and with love as I grew up our lovely, comfortable, safe, and well-stocked home, and my David, the only boy I could ever love like that, and the only boy who loved me like that. It was perfect love. There was nothing about our relationship that wasn't absolutely perfect, and she took him away from me. She took away my David. Now she was going to move me thousands of miles across the ocean to a country whose language I didn't speak. Was she trying to make sure that I could never get back the things she'd taken? It felt that way, and I felt nothing but rage against my mother. I knew the miracle of David and my new family was too good to be true. I couldn't imagine losing it because I couldn't imagine feeling so much pain. I couldn't imagine a mother doing that to her son, but then no mother had ever had the opportunity to do such a thing before. When opportunity knocked, there was Mom!

Ten days later (we were supposedly very lucky), we were in a new apartment in Sweden, where I was absolutely miserable. I cried every day. I cried when I woke up and David wasn't next to me when I woke up and realized I wasn't safe in our shelter corner. I cried as I walked to the school that would never teach with as much love as Klaus and Kevin. I cried when I came home from school, went straight to my room, and closed the door. ("At least he's out of my hair," I heard Mom say to someone on the phone.) I cried when the lights went out but I didn't hear the generator running down, and I didn't have a big, strong, loving man keeping me safe on one side and the most beautiful, sexy, angelic boy made of pure love on the other side. It was very unlikely I'd ever see either of them ever again. Sadly, I knew Kevin was most likely gone by then.

Mom was becoming increasingly annoyed with my growing depression. The counselor in my English-language school told Mom that I needed help, very badly. Apparently, they watched American kids for signs of trouble because we were the ones who'd had our country blown to dust and lost so many friends and family. Mom said she was handling it just fine, so I should too. I never asked her what it was she was handling just fine. I really didn't care, and she never tried to tell me. She didn't care about me, and I hated her.

Something cool about Sweden is that they have laws that can make it mandatory to provide appropriate health care for kids, including psychiatric health, and those laws are easy for officials to enforce. Mom had to take me to therapy, but she wouldn't let me talk about it with her. No therapist could bring back my David or my loving family. What was so cool about it was someone else forcing her to do something with her precious boy that was good for him.

When I was thirteen, I ran away. I took a ferry to Denmark and lived for a while in Copenhagen. It surprised me how easy it was to find the places where the homeless gay kids hung out. Everyone wanted to know me because I was an American, so they expected stories about the bombings. I followed Kevin's advice. I met a lot of the younger boys and made friends with them. It wasn't just about sex. Don't get me wrong; sex with a nine-year-old boy has to be experienced to be believed! It was much more than sex. I did feel like a sort of mom, a loving protector, I suppose. I wanted to be with them so I could help them if problems came up. Being with the young boys made me think of Kevin, and of our whole life in our shelter corner, which meant I thought a lot about my David, my sweet, sweet David.

I had to find a way to get back to Minnesota. First, I needed money. There were only two options for a kid in my position to make that kind of money – prostitution and making child porn movies. AIDS scared me like it scared everybody else, and male prostitutes were at the highest risk.

I worked my way into one of the nicer child porn production companies. They didn't seem to want me to know it, but I heard them talking about me, and they said I looked younger than I was, that I had big, beautiful brown eyes and that I could do anything they wanted with man-boy work.

Child porn had been legal in Denmark until five years prior, so a lot of people from the industry were still left, albeit underground. With increased legal risk came increased pay. In about six months, I had enough money, but I needed a passport. That meant I had to go back to Sweden, which had granted American refugees citizenship. I could forge Mom's signature, but I needed a new address because I didn't want it going to Mom's place.

So I went back to Stockholm and re-joined the group of homeless gay boys I'd spent time with before I left for Denmark. I learned of a wealthy, horny old guy named Jens, who always wanted boys to stay with him and sleep with him. He provided food and shelter, plus a decent allowance of thirty US dollars for each day. I stayed with him until my passport arrived. He was really sweet, but he wasn't Klaus. (I was beginning to forget how much I hated Klaus.) He did know how to appreciate a good deep-throat, and that earned me extra tips.

So, with my child porn earnings exchanged for US currency and my money from horny old Jens, which was already US currency, I had $2,200, which was far more than I had expected to have when I left for the US.

***

Very few airlines had flights to the US because most of the runways hadn't been repaired yet, and it was so easy to pick up radioactive dust in the engines, which would blow it all through the cabin. So I bought a ticket that took me to Iceland, then to Toronto Pearson, and finally to Thunder Bay in a little plane. Instead of the $600 I was expecting to spend on the ticket, it cost me $1,300. I was grateful for horny, generous old Jens.

After living on the streets for so long, I had no baggage. I bought a change of clothes just before I left and threw away the ones I had been wearing. I kept David's underwear in my pocket, though, the pair I was wearing when the soldiers took me. It was all I had left of him. I made sure the jeans were too long so I could roll up the cuffs and sew them like that, making a great place to stash my money. I hated long pants though. It was early spring, and it would be quite cold in Thunder Bay, and in Minnesota if I ever made it there.

***

There are groups of boys, like my friends in Copenhagen and Stockholm, who look after each other, play when they want, and work when they have to. Then there are more predatorial groups, like the one I encountered in Toronto. They can spot runaways. They make it hard to say no. They want boys they can sell into prostitution and child porn. The boys they take in might never be seen again.

I suppose it must have been my eyes – they were so big, beautiful, and brown. I woke up face down in a pool of vomit and in a world of pain in a restroom stall in Toronto Pearson Airport with my pants down around one ankle and my legs spread wide. A police officer was standing over me, asking what was going on.

"You queer boys have got to find someplace private! Now, I don't care if you like other boys, that's your business, but you can't be liking them here! Not this way anyway. I'm glad to see you at least used a condom." I reached around to feel my ass, and there was a condom hanging out of it. Apparently, whoever had used it shoved it back in when he was done. I pulled out the condom, and the cop said, "For God's sake boy! Throw that away!" I stood up painfully and dragged my jeans and underwear toward the trash when the cop said, "My God! What's happened to you?"

I didn't know, so I shuffled over to the mirror to see. My left eye was badly blackened and puffy, and I realized I could hardly open it. My nose had bled all over my new shirt, and I suspected it was broken. My balls were very swollen, and I had knife cuts on the side of my shaft and my left cheek. The cop didn't think I should put my pants back on until a doctor looked at my injuries, so he had me sit on a toilet while he pulled them off my feet and folded them neatly. He called for an ambulance and an emergency medical team.

"I'm so sorry about how I spoke to you when I first found you here," he said. "I had no idea you'd been beaten and raped like this. I should not have assumed."

"It's ok," I said to him. "People have said a lot of things to me and other, other… what you said… other gay kids, and really, you've been kind."

"Well, people need to think before they talk, including me," he said. "I'm sorry, but I need to ask you some questions about what happened."

"I'm afraid I don't remember," I said. "I think they were trying to, you know, to… get me to… to go… to recruit me or something." Why was it so hard to think of the right word? "I wouldn't go with them, and then I woke up on the bathroom floor." I did my best to tell him what they looked like, but it was all a blur.

"Can you tell me what time it was?"

"I'd just gotten off of the the… from the island… the… Iceland! The Reykjavik flight and I was just going to the bathroom. I don't know when that was. I think it was due here about six-thirty."

I felt like I had another hangover, a really bad one. I wanted to throw up again, I was dizzy, and my head was in agony. "So about two hours ago," he said.

"What? My flight to Thunder Bay is due to leave at eight-twenty! What time is it?"

"I'm sorry, son," he said, "but you're not going anywhere like that, not without seeing a doctor first, and I'm afraid it's eight-fifty now. Where do you live, and where are your parents?"

I reached into my jacket pocket for my passport and realized it was gone. Why would they take that? "Saint Albert, Minnesota," I said. "I was in, you know, where I came from, north, from Copen… oh yeah, Sweden visiting my grandma."

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "It must be difficult living in the US right now."

"It's difficult getting back there," I said, trying to use small talk to distract him from the issue of where I lived. "Thunder Bay is the closest I can fly. Then I take a, a… a bus to the US border and my dad picks me up there. How am I going to get home now?"

"We have people who can help crime victims here," he said kindly. "You can give them your ticket, and they should be able to negotiate a new one for you tomorrow."

I felt in my other jacket pocket. "It's gone! They took that too!"

"No worries, no worries," he said. "Our people are very resourceful. I'm sure the airline has records of your earlier flights, and that you bought the ticket to Thunder Bay. They give people full credit for emergencies, and this is an emergency."

The restroom door opened, and two paramedics, a man and a woman, hurried in. "This must be our patient," said the man. "Looks like someone left you in the tumble dryer," he said. "I'm going to look at your eyes," he said, shining a bright light into each. "Unequal but reactive," he said. "I need to lay you on the floor," he said. "I see your pants there. I'll lay them down so you're not on the cold tile."

He shook my jeans out and laid them on the floor, then lifted me with powerful arms that reminded me of Klaus and Kevin. "Why am I down here?" I asked as he gently lowered me to the floor, resting my head on the cop's lap. Two more police officers entered the bathroom, and I became aware that I was naked from the waist down with comically swollen balls in front of five fully-clothed adults. I wished it could have been a more sexy moment, but my cock and balls hurt, and my head hurt even worse – barely.

"I think your head's hurt pretty bad, and I need you to be as relaxed as possible. The EMT's with the ambulance will be here any second now with a nice comfortable gurney for you." He knelt next to me, and the woman knelt on my other side. The two standing cops stepped closer to watch, scribbling in their notepads. I imagined they were sketching me naked like Klaus had done. That gave me a soft chuckle, but thankfully not an erection. It's difficult to get a stiffy when your cock is injured.

"You said they took your ticket too," said the first cop who was holding my head in his lap. "What else did they take?"

"My… thing, from the government, so I can travel. That little book thing."

"Your passport?" he asked.

"Yeah, they took my passport too."

"We should leave it there with the questions," said the male paramedic. "He has to stay very calm. His head trauma might be very serious."

"If you think it's best."

"What's your name, Hunny?" asked the woman.

"Don… Donovan. Donovan Langevin."

"Donovan, can you tell me what day it is?"

"Well, I know it's today." Everyone laughed politely. "Is it Monday? No, it's Tuesday, isn't it? When I fly across the ocean, I get days confused." Actually, it was Thursday.

"Ok, Donovan, while Bill's looking over the injuries on your head and face, I'm going to be looking over the rest of your body, ok?" I felt her soft hands lifting my shirt and feeling around. I twitched. "Does it hurt when I touch there?"

"Yes! Please don't do that!"

Ok," she said. "I won't. I'll need to get my hands under your back, though. Can you roll over a bit to the right, hun?" She felt all over the left side of my back, and very quickly, for which I was grateful. It hurt a lot to hold that position. "Ok, now, can you do it again for me, hun, to the left? Good! All done with that. It looks like they got your penis pretty good."

I could feel her lifting it with her hand. I didn't know she was actually going to touch me there! I gasped and lifted my head to see what the hell she was doing. "Oh, Hunny! You have to relax and let your head rest on Officer Donelly's lap." That was easy for her to say! She didn't have some woman handling her delicate, damaged genitalia! "I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable for you, but we have to assess the extent of your injuries. I won't touch your scrotum at all. I can see it's terribly swollen and turning purple, and I know that's an extremely painful injury for you boys. It looks like they cut you with a knife or something sharp on the side of your penis." She let go of it and said, "There, all done with that. I still have to examine the rest of your body though"

It felt ok to have a woman touching the rest of my body, but my cock was special! She should have asked me first. I don't like women playing with my privates. There were some girls at my school that I'd let touch me there though. I'd always been curious.

She moved my legs around to see if I had any broken bones, and she felt my feet and toes all over. "Now I need to check your insides," she said. She pulled up my shirt and felt lightly around my belly. I howled in pain when she rubbed anywhere near the top. "Where is that gurney!" she said, more in frustration than as a question.

I think it was about a minute later when they arrived. Now there were seven adults and me naked. The two paramedics lifted me, and I threw up all over the first cop's lap. "Oh, I'm sorry!" I said. "I'm really sorry! You're so nice!" The rest was a blur.

Chapter 99

ICU

I woke up in a hospital room with a tube down my throat, two little things blowing air up my nose, horrible pain everywhere, and something stuck way deep inside my cock! A woman was standing beside me.

"Good morning Donovan," she said. "You're in Saint Andrew's Hospital in Toronto. I'm Doctor Jamisen, your neurologist. You've had a bad head injury, and you've probably lost some memory. You're probably feeling pretty foggy right now too."

I tried to talk, but it hurt my throat, and nothing came out. She put her hands gently on my arms and said, "I know you must have lots of questions, but it's important that you don't try to talk. That tube in your throat has been breathing for you. The nasal cannula blowing air into your nose is giving you extra oxygen. You have been in a coma, and you couldn't breathe properly. You came in with several injuries, and I will tell you about them now if you feel like hearing about them now."

I nodded, but only a little. My head had so many things connected to it; I could hardly move it. "Ok then. If you want me to stop, gently shake your head no. Just turn it side to side. Let's start at the top. You had a fractured skull. That means your skull bone was broken. That was a very critical injury, and it could easily have killed you. I know it doesn't seem like it, but you're a lucky young man to be alive today." Was she bragging?

"It looked as if someone hit you in the head with something about the size of a hammer, but probably a bit smaller. That blow was hard enough to cause several other injuries. From the outside in, it broke your skin open. We call that a compression laceration. That means the skin was crushed so hard that it splits open. Then you had blood pooling just under the skull, which pressed in on the brain. You also had blood gathering just above the lining on the surface of the brain itself, adding to the pressure."

Then she started getting technical, which I liked. It reminded me of my old life before I was a runaway. "We surgically implanted what we call an ICP probe. That tells us the exact pressure your brain is under. We drill a small hole through your skull, feed the sensors through, then screw it to your skull." I could have done without knowing that. "Then we connect it with a cable to the machine. You can see your pressure right here." She pointed to a display on a machine that I couldn't read. Did that mean that thing was still screwed to my skull and poking into my brain? That was way too creepy.

She continued. "When the pressure is high, that's a very dangerous situation. A person can suffer permanent damage or die. One way we relieve that pressure is to give the person medicine that puts them into a coma. When you're in a coma, your entire brain slows down. With less activity in the brain, we get lower pressure. When the ICP probe tells us the pressure on the brain has fallen to a safe level, the person is revived from that coma. That happened today with you." They put me in a coma on purpose? How long did they keep me out? What day was it? "Finally, there was damage to your brain from the force of the impact. We won't know the extent of that damage until you've had some time to heal."

My eyes were telling me they wanted to cry. It sounded like I almost died, and my body was all broken, but I wanted to hear the rest of what Dr. Jamisen had to say. "You received one or more additional blows to your left eye, which probably caused additional injury to your brain. Officer Donelly said you had a chance to see your facial injuries in a mirror, so perhaps you remember the area around your left eye was badly injured. Your left orbit, the bone around your eye, was broken into several pieces and had to be carefully reconstructed. You have a few small plates holding those bones together. I'm happy to say there was no injury to the eye itself. There was a laceration, a cut with a sharp object under your left eye. We stitched that up, and it's healing nicely. You also had a broken nose, as if someone had punched you hard or hit you with something. All we could do for that was to brace it in place and allow it to heal."

Here it came. She was going to tell me about my cock next. "Moving down your body, you had several bruised ribs, and the third and fourth ribs on your left side were broken. They also have small plates in them to hold the pieces in their proper place. It will probably hurt when you breathe for some time." Ok, now my penis? "Next, you had internal bleeding, so you needed emergency surgery for that as well as for your head injuries. Your liver was lacerated, right in the middle, near the top. That kind of injury is consistent with excessive pressure on…"

"The xiphoid!" I tried to shout. It was a memory from the best day of my life. David and I had both taken our shirts off during Dr. Apfelheinz' summer science program on the day when he taught us about surface anatomy. David found his xiphoid immediately (it's just the lower extension of the sternum), but I couldn't find mine. He had touched me with his magic hand and found mine. He then guided my hand across my body to show me where it was. Then came my first visit to Heaven as he pulled my hand into his chest to feel his xiphoid. His skin was soft, and a glowing kind of tan. It felt unlike anything else, and when I touched him, everything else disappeared. He looked into my eyes as if to tell me he felt the same way. That afternoon, we shared our first intimate, sexual moment, and my life changed forever. I was gay, and David and I were in love.

I had tried to shout, but again the tube prevented me. "Oh, please, Donovan, remember you can't talk with that tube in. We'll see how you're doing in another two days, and maybe we can take it out then. I was saying your liver was probably gashed open by this little bone on the bottom of your sternum called the xiphoid. Your skin was bruised, and you had contusions on your lungs, and that caused your lungs to swell up…"

"Edema! Pulmonary edema! Like Henry!!!" I only wheezed, grunted, and coughed. Those boys in the airport had done to me what Henry's dad had done to him! I didn't die because someone who cared found me in time, Officer Donelly. No one around Henry cared. Well, his dad didn't care. His mom was probably afraid for her life.

"Please, Donovan, if you get this excited, I might have to let you rest and finish this talk later. Would you like some more rest?" I shook my head. I tried to shake it wide and vigorously, but there were too many tubes in my head. "Ok. I know this is all very emotional for you, and not talking is very difficult, but we'll be able to talk normally soon, and I'll ask the nurse to bring you a notepad and a pencil so you can write your questions down or say what you want to say in writing. Ok, I was telling you about your lung contusions and edema."

I nodded the best I could. She had no idea how emotional these things were to me! "We're using the ventilator with the breathing tube because your brain was unreliable at telling your body when to breathe. We also set it to a slightly higher pressure, so it opened your lungs more effectively while they were swollen. That nasal cannula under your nose is blowing extra oxygen for when you're breathing on your own because injured lungs don't take up oxygen as easily as healthy lungs. We're going to let you breathe on your own now, and the ventilator will only begin working if you stop breathing."

I wanted to cough, but I couldn't. I could feel fluids – drool, phlegm, whatever – dripping around the end of the tube in my lungs. It was an awful feeling, and I wish I could have told her!

"Your penis had a laceration on the side…" Oh, here it comes. A woman talking to me about my boy parts being all banged up! Shouldn't boy doctors be the ones working on penises? "You were very lucky because, although it penetrated the skin, it penetrated nothing else. There is a tough layer under the skin of the penis that holds its shape and keeps it from over-expanding during an erection…" She wants to talk about erections now? What do girl doctors know about erections?

"The erectile bodies underneath that layer can form scar tissue that can also cause a disfigured erection." Disfigured? Who is she to say my cock isn't sexy? "That skin was stitched up, and your penis should be fine now. If you have an erection while you're in the hospital, please let the nurse know that you've had one, and actually it would be best if you could show your erection to the nurse. Make sure to tell the nurse whether you felt any pain at the site of the injury. Sometimes the patient can feel things that the doctors can't see." What? Yeah right! "If you do feel pain, something might not be healing properly, and we need to get it fixed up now before it gets too bad to repair. I think you will want pain-free, normally-shaped erections. Right now, your erections look fine. During your surgeries, you had several, which gave your urologist, Doctor Franklin, a chance to better assess the extent of the injury to your penis." The sick bitch! She was ogling my boner while I was unconscious? I mean, if Klaus had done that, or Kevin, that would be different. In fact, I think they both did do that during those last two drunken boy orgies we had.

"We also had your urologist open up your scrotum to see the damage there. I'm afraid the news is not as good for your testes as it was for your penis. I mentioned that tough layer that holds the penis in shape and prevents it from over-inflating. Well, in your penis, it was unaffected. However, that same layer exists around each testis. If it ruptures, the testis loses its containment and its shape. It swells and bleeds, and if it's not repaired surgically, everything can adhere to everything else in the scrotum. Multiple, powerful blows ruptured your testes. Sometimes attackers will cause the injury by kicking, often multiple times. Sometimes they will use a blunt weapon, which is what Doctor Franklin thinks happened to you. It was a very brutal sexual attack. She said each testis had multiple tears in that tough layer or multiple ruptures." She? She! There was a woman handling my cock? Cutting into it while I was unconscious? Didn't that hospital have a code of ethics?

"The tissue inside was disrupted too, herniating out through the tears. Think of it as the tissue inside the testis being mashed up and squeezed out through the tears. I'm very sorry to say that your left testis could not be saved. Doctor Franklin had to perform an orchidectomy immediately." I was too shocked to cry. Maybe I would cry later, but the idea of not having balls, or only having a ball, was truly shocking. "Your right testis wasn't nearly as badly injured. It was ruptured and badly swollen, but Dr. Franklin waited to give it time for the swelling to go down before performing a second repair surgery. Your scrotum is suspended right now in a scrotal sling. The swelling from the second surgery has gone down nicely, and your stitches were removed three days ago."

I didn't have balls. I had a right ball. Who would want to have sex with a boy with a right ball? "I think you'll be happy to know that all of the functions performed by the testes can be performed by one testis." Now I felt shame. A girl doctor talking about my one ball! "You will have erections, ejaculations, even a normal sperm count with one testis. Lots of men have only one, and they lead normal lives." That was fine for her to say, but how would she know? How many people want a one-balled boy? I wanted to cry, but my urge to scream was stronger, yet I could do neither.

"That's the summary of your injuries. You also need to know that we ran a rape kit on you. A rape kit is a series of tests for injuries and infections, including AIDS, and sets of instruments and sterile containers for collecting evidence. You were negative for all infectious diseases, including AIDS, but we'll want you to be re-tested in six months after any virus has had time to develop. The rape kit included an anorectal exam. Donovan, our findings might be distressing. Please nod if you feel ready to hear what we've found." She's going to tell me their findings are distressing and expect me not to want to know? What could be up there? A dead gerbil? I nodded.

"Ok then. There were lacerations in your rectum. They appeared to have been cut with a very sharp knife, like a scalpel, or maybe a hobby knife, like an X-acto knife. The lacerations were not very large, but they were deep enough to leave scarring directly over your prostate. The lacerations spelled out a phrase. I'm afraid it will be visible whenever you are examined there. The phrase is 'LITTLE FAG BOY.' It will cause no specific medical problem for you, but it is a very serious violation of your body, and I would expect you will feel emotional trauma concerning this. Remember, there is help for you here." Help for me? I was someone's little fag boy. Why not. I was a little fag boy. It fit me just fine.

"There is one question most people want to ask when they wake up from a coma," she said, having no idea how devastated I was about only having a right ball. "Would you like to know?" A guessing game? I nodded carefully. "You have been in the hospital here for thirty-two days. That means six of your surgeries have been done, and all your sutures have been removed. You will need one more operation to have your ICP probe removed, and Dr. Franklin needs to do at least one more to manage the way your testis is healing. Your liver needs to be monitored closely, and you might need more surgeries for that too."

Thirty-two days?

"Oh, before I forget," she said. "Patient Services gave me a message, asking me to tell you that they have your clothes and personal belongings, and they found 396 US dollars tucked under one of your pants cuffs. They have moved that money to the safe. Your clothes were badly stained and soaked in blood, vomitus, CSF fluid from your brain, and whatever else your attackers left behind, and the police needed all of your clothing for evidence." I gasped, sucking air from my tube. "They have a fund to replace clothing for crime victims, and Patient Services has clothing for you that is the same size and an approximate match for the clothing seized by the police." they could never replace David's underwear, and I knew it. "When you can talk, and when you've moved from the ICU to a regular room, someone will bring you a receipt for the money and your property. Patient Services have a lot of things they need to talk about. They said something about having no record of you being issued an interim US passport, which is hardly surprising, and they need help locating your dad. That's why he's not here with you after a whole month in the hospital. They'll go over all that with you."

Great. Even more stress. The passport was ok. My story was that my grandma lived in Sweden, I had dual citizenship because I was born there, and they can just call the Swedish government for my passport, and they wouldn't have to send it to Stockholm because I was stuck in Ontario! Finding my dad was more of a problem. The address the Swedish government had for me was in Stockholm, at that nice old guy Jens' house. I could say Jens was my real dad, and that was my official address in Sweden, but I lived with my stepdad Klaus Kettering in St. Albert, Minnesota, and Mom had died in the bombing. I'd say he was worried about me because I'd gone missing. I'd say he was probably waiting in a hotel near the border where he was supposed to pick me up! That's what I would tell them. I just needed a man's voice on the phone saying he was Klaus, and they should release me to travel home, and I would get follow-up care there. Who could I get to make a call like that, and why wasn't Klaus with David at the house? This trip was all a great adventure. I wanted my family back, and I wanted my David back! Had I really believed I would succeed?

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