Seven Thousand Minutes (Pt 2)

Dennis found him on a swing set in the garden, bathed in moonlight. When his shoe scraped against a stone in the grass, the slender figure made a start, and a hand came away from his mouth.

Dennis stopped. He just stood there, watching, for what seemed like half a minute. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Martin looked back up at him, his eyelashes a bluish quiver in the dusk. The only sound was a faint squeak from the swing. When the silence began to grow unbearable, Martin smiled. The moonlight made a slash at his teeth and then rippled in his hair as he shook his head. “If you’re going to tell me off, I have to warn you. I don’t have all night.”

The spell was broken. Dennis walked up and sat on the swing next to him. “I just don’t understand why you had to… I mean, the others weren’t even looking.”

He felt Martin turn to look at him, and his cheeks warmed at the silent retort. I wasn’t the one who started it.

“I’m sorry,” Dennis mumbled. “I guess I’m a little drunk.”

Martin chuckled. “Oh, you are.” He turned his head up and gazed as the moon was covered by purplish wisps of cloud. “But not that drunk.”

Dennis wanted to object, but he didn’t know how. The haze of beer was heavy in his head, but he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t string coherent thoughts together.

Martin leaned his head on the swing chain. There was a faint sound, perhaps a sigh. “I don’t get that game.”

Jumping at the chance to joke, Dennis started to explain. “Well, it works like this: you pull a couple of names from a hat…”

He didn’t know why he stopped. Martin hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even made a gesture. It was just… him. How he was. How he always was. That strange, innate gentleness that could deflect any barb, any taunt. Nothing ever seemed to faze him. He was like a deer who just turned to look the hunter in the eye, and all weapons fell to the ground.

Dennis wished there was some way of moving closer, but the swings hung where they hung, two feet apart.

“What did the others say?” Martin asked.

Dennis looked up sharply. “You didn’t go to them?”

Martin shrugged. “Well, I was going to, but…” He kicked at the ground, making the swing twist and turn.

A shiver ran through Dennis. “I didn’t either.”

A new kind of silence descended on them as they perhaps both contemplated what this might mean. What would the others think? What would anyone think if a couple of guys went into the closet for seven minutes of heaven and then disappeared without a trace?

Dennis leaned his head in his hands and groaned. The swing creaked in sympathy. “I want to go home.”

Martin said nothing.

Breathing in deeply, Dennis straightened up. “But I can’t. I have to explain first.”

“Explain what?” Martin mumbled.

Dennis closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t know.”

Martin giggled under his breath.

Dennis gave him a cross look. “You think this is funny?”

“It kind of is, yeah. I mean, what did you think would happen when you dragged me off like that?”

Dennis had a sudden urge to yell, but he stopped himself. Because Martin was right. Dennis had invited this whole thing. For once, one of his notorious jokes had backfired, and now he was the butt of it. “So what do you suggest, genius?”

There was a pause, a shift in mood. Sensing it, Dennis’s heart shuddered in his chest. Something was happening again, something he couldn’t handle.

He stood up, and the swing rattled behind him. “Let’s go back in.”

“Okay.”

He felt Martin approach behind him. It was as if Dennis’s senses were heightened, tightened like a violin string to the point of snapping. The subtle warmth from Martin’s living, breathing body invaded his skin through the cotton of his shirt. Moving quickly, he stalked up the slightly sloping lawn, eager to get away. But Martin was quite as fast as him. Dennis heard his laboured breathing, unnaturally close in the darkness. Heart beating too hard, he stopped and turned. Martin almost bumped into him, and Dennis grabbed him by the arms to stare at him. Martin looked back, or at least Dennis thought he did: the moon was behind him now, and his face was in shadow.

As if drawn by magic, Dennis’s hands let go of Martin’s arms and hovered up to his face. When his fingertips brushed something soft, like cobwebs of silk, they curled closed. The hard, hot contours of Martin’s head felt strangely real against his skin. And then Dennis’s hands twitched a little, and it was all that was needed. Martin’s face edged closer. His breath smelled of beer, and it mingled with something that must be cologne. Sweet and heady, it snaked up through Dennis’s nose, straight to his brain. It lit up his synapses in carnival colours.

They must have lunged at the same time. When their mouths crashed together, there was a sharp pain in Dennis’s lip. With a yelp, he yanked his head back. His hands were still buried in Martin’s hair, curled around the base of his skull. With a gasp, he let go. On instinct, he licked his lips. They tasted salty. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, because someone had to say it. He’d rather it was Martin, but one look at the way his body leaned into him like a wisp of smoke told him that he wasn’t sorry at all. Not even for biting him.

“Shit,” Dennis muttered, and then he slipped and almost fell as his shoes swerved on the grass and he fled into the night.

To be continued…