As for Ben, he tended not to believe in any sort of god or devil. Except when he sang. That was the only time the veil between reality and the impossible melted for him. Singing revealed to him a million worlds made up of colors the physical eye could never see, realms populated with countless spirits and energies of all kinds. God was there too, a benevolent being of as many faces as there were religions on the earth. Oh, yes, when he sang such things were possible, but the second he stopped it all faded away, forgotten until the next time he took up his voice again.
A snort followed by a grunt called his attention back to the present. There was a shuffling followed by the sound of a Coke can opening. Tim was finally awake.
“Oh, man, I slept deep,” he said as Ben entered the room. His hair was sticking up in all directions and was so adorable that it took all of Ben’s willpower not to reach out and muss it up further. “The house looks nice. Thanks.”
“No problem. You can repay me by staying awake. I was going out of my mind with boredom.”
“Sorry.” Tim grinned. “I took too many of those pills. You should try them. They make you feel great.”
“I might take you up on that,” Ben said, remembering the mellow buzz that had followed his tonsils being removed.
Tim yawned like a lion in the Savanna heat. “I feel grody. Would you mind running a bath for me?”
“Bored,” Ben reminded him.
“Oh. Once I’m in the tub you can come in and keep me company,” Tim offered.
Surely Tim was aware of how erotic such a situation would be for Ben. Was he offering more than it sounded like or was he just being playfully flirtatious without any real intentions? Regardless, Ben rose to run the bath without revealing any enthusiasm. If Tim thought he could easily arouse Ben’s appetite... Well, he could, but Ben wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing it.
Once the tub was full of steaming water and bubbles, he waited outside the door while Tim climbed in. It took much longer than it would for an uninjured person, but once he was settled he called for Ben. The shower curtain was half-closed, obscuring from view everything from the waist down. It hardly mattered. Tim’s impressive upper body was enough to evoke an unquenchable lust in Ben.
Ben sat on the toilet, for lack of a better place, directly across from the bathtub. Aside from being the only seat available, it allowed him a more revealing angle. There would have been nothing left to his imagination if not for Tim’s injured leg. The cast was propped on the side of the tub so that it wouldn’t get wet. The unfortunate side effect of this was an obscured view.
“I’m guessing this isn’t how you usually spend your weekends?” Tim asked.
“You mean watching straight guys take baths?” Ben replied innocently enough. “Oh, you’d be surprised. It’s a fairly common occurrence.”
Tim’s laughter echoed in the small tiled room. “Well, what do you do besides that?”
Ben shrugged. “Hang out with Allison Cross. She’s my best friend.”
“And what do you usually do together?”
“Shop, mostly. Hit the movies sometimes or just drive around. What about you?”
“Me and my friends? Same stuff you do, I guess. We don’t shop, but we drive around and try to find somewhere to hang out. There’s been a couple of good parties this year, too.”
Ben didn’t know anything about that. He was rarely invited to any parties. Such things were the mysterious domain of the popular kids. He had almost forgotten the crowd Tim ran with. How the nice person in front of him could be cronies with the biggest assholes in school was hard to comprehend.
“Haven’t been on any dates yet?” Ben asked, even though he knew otherwise.
“Yeah, that too,” Tim said without any great enthusiasm. “Shit. I still haven’t called Krista since this happened. She’s going to be pissed.”
“Who’s that?”
“My girlfriend. Krista Norman. Maybe you know her?”
“I think so,” Ben said evenly as an image of an anorexic witch sprung to mind. “Wow, and you haven’t called her for a week?”
Tim shrugged, slipping further down into the tub. “I guess I should have, but it just seems pointless right now. The pain killers pretty much kill my sex drive, you know.”
Ben didn’t know, but now he could safely assume that Tim wasn’t hoping to initiate something with his weird choice of social setting. Such a shame. It would have been a scene right out of those magazine stories. The straight guy starts talking about his girlfriend and gets aroused, eventually turning to the only other warm body around…
“She never puts out anyway,” Tim continued. “She’s a real cock tease.”
Ben swallowed a laugh, Tim’s line fitting the fantasy all too well.
“That sucks. You’ll probably score major sympathy points, though, when she sees you injured.”
“Hey, yeah! You’re right!” A lazy smile came over Tim’s face as he considered the idea.
Ben cursed his mouth and brain for conspiring against him. Soon after he was sent upstairs to fetch a new outfit for Tim, which was fun and only helped to further the feeling that they were a young married couple. Was Tim at all aware how this felt for him? Did he care, or was all this just a blur of opium-induced numbness for him?
As the afternoon faded into evening, the pressure outside finally peaked and exploded. The sky opened with a grumble of thunder and a hammering of rain. They killed the air conditioner and opened the windows, enjoying the rhythmic sound of water pummeling the leaves outside.
Ben busied himself in the kitchen, attempting to make a simple dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. He had gone over the process a dozen times with his mom, who was becoming increasingly puzzled at his sudden interest in cooking.
The pasta sauce wasn’t a problem, since it came from the supermarket in a jar. The meatballs were trickier since the meat wasn’t fully defrosted. Ben sculpted them into balls as best as he could, his hands stinging from the cold. Timing was something he hadn’t considered before he started. The pasta was finished boiling before he had even started frying meatballs or warming up the sauce. He took the pasta off the heat but left it in the water in the hopes of keeping it moist.
After an hour of effort, he ended up with pasta that was much too soggy and meatballs that were slightly burnt on the outside but barely cooked on the inside. Because he couldn’t mess up the sauce, and as he had done with his pancakes, he used a generous amount of it paired with Parmesan cheese to help cover up his mistakes.
Ben set the dining room table, but abruptly changed his mind, feeling it revealed too blatantly his domestic fantasies. That and the result of his labors didn’t seem worthy of such a formal presentation. He brought the plates into the den instead and placed them on the coffee table. MTV serenaded them in the background as they began their meal.
Tim reacted to the food like a ravenous stray dog. He tore into it at a speed that promised he wouldn’t be tasting very much of anything, much to Ben’s relief. They were halfway through their meal when the power went off. A vehement snarl of thunder followed the sudden silence, the storm proclaiming its role in the outage. There were a few minutes of scrambling in the dim light until matches and candles were found and lit.
“Romantic,” Tim joked as they resumed eating.
“Isn’t it?” Ben tried to chuckle casually.
“It’s funny. It’s like fate has some crazy plan in mind for us. You running into me that day and dragging me to the hospital. Then you take care of me, do all the stuff you’ve been doing, and now this.” He gestured to the nearly empty plates in front of them. “Dining in candlelight. It’s so close.”