Double or Nothing or Something

A story by kazoua

I play card games with the boy next door because he's a little punk - a hooligan of sorts. His parents think he's rebellious, unnaturally attracted to fire, and on his way to becoming a bona fide criminal. I actually think Dustin is just a troubled young man. But, in the end, aren't they all?

"How old are you, Dustin?" I ask slowly, trying to remember the rules to this particular game but unable, "Fifteen? Sixteen?"

Dustin makes a noise in the back of his throat that doesn't sound very nice, but I ignore it like a 'gentleman' should. "How old are you, Mr. Mac Leavitt? Fourty? Fifty? Oh, oh. How 'bout sixty?" he mocks like he thinks I'm stupid for asking.

I frown, a little downwards quirk of my lips, before I flatly answer, "Twenty seven and proud."

He turns his head down and scoffs in a moody breath before answering, "I'm about a decade younger than you, remember?"

I watch his red-gold-blond-red hair move as he lifts his head back up. I don't understand fashion trends and hair dyes. I didn't understand when I was a teenager and I still don't understand it as an adult. Dustin was born with dark brown hair. Why he doesn't keep that color is beyond me and my useless degree.

Shrugging while trying to remember the exact combination of cards that'll secure me a win, I languidly reply, "Oh yeah. Forgot."

I think Dustin finds offense to that, because he glares at me and loudly asks, "What? You forgot? How could you effing forget?!" With his naturally raspy voice, it's easy to forget that he gets mad when I forget things about him. Oh well. Knowing his rash personality (and his strange inclination towards fire and dry ice bombs), Dustin will forgive me as soon as I apologize and give him a 'man hug.' That's what he calls them.

Personally, I think Dustin is still upset that his older brother, Justin, is better loved by his parents. I would be if I had a sibling and my parents didn't show love for me. Lucky or not, I'm an only child with a very affectionate mother and an estranged father that I don't care about. And all my social acceptance needs are filled in by my small but likable group of friends.

I still dress like I did as a teenager, nerdy. But when I was a teenager, I wore the neon green and the dark purple and the rosy red that set me aside into a category of 'trendy.'

And I still don't get it.

"Are you even listening to me, dude? Mac. Fuck. You are not even listening to me. Ef you," Dustin mumbles half to himself and half to me before he raises his voice, "What're you thinking about?"

I touch my cardigan slowly, fingering the edges and mentally recalling the price I bought it for. About… I do not remember. This is something I bought from when I was running around the state, looking for my long lost friend slash enemy slash rival. I wanted to impress Dick by purchasing and wearing the most outrageously color coordinated outfits I could find. It worked and he kissed me silly.

Then I got friendly with his 'Dick Junior' and things started getting fun.

I lazily smile. "Do you remember Dick?" I ask nicely while placing one card down and halfheartedly hoping I was playing by the right rules.

Dustin frowns and twists from his position on the couch. He snorts nastily but answers, "Yeah. He was a dick."

"That's not nice." Chiding him is good.

"Bite me." But it doesn't always work.

I shake my head, refusing and mocking him at the same time by saying, "I am sure you'll love that, Dustin. But I'm an adult and I am not into little boys. You can try the local ice cream man. Mr. Reed's popsicle needs some sucking."

Mr. Reed is a nice man. I lost my virginity to his daughter. He didn't force me into a shotgun marriage or behead me with the Japanese swords lined in his house. He is a nice man.

Dustin stands up in a flurry and childishly swipes away our card game to the floor. "Fuck you!"

It's a pity that I can't do or let him do.

I sigh and watch him leave and wander into my kitchen. Dustin always gets like this when I make jokes. I should probably learn not to make fun of him anymore.

"Are you hungry?" I call when I hear him opening my refrigerator. When he doesn't answer, I assume that he is still upset with me and I say, "If you want real food, there are some leftovers behind the apple juice. I ran out of microwavable dinners last week, and if you want cereal the milk might be expired."

Dustin still doesn't answer me, but I hear him shuffle around and grab something before sticking it in the microwave. Confident that my lovely cooking will keep him sated until his parents decide he is allowed back into his own household, I play fifty-two-pick-up.

Once I get all the cards ready and in a neat pile, I feel the urge to make mediocre houses and pyramids. I know Dustin is a good boy and he abides by my rules. He knows that all eating occurs on the kitchen table in the kitchen. I did not like it that one time he thought it would be funny to move the kitchen table to my living room and then chomp through three bags of chips.

I made him clean up and (jokingly) stood over him with a baseball bat, but sometimes I think Dustin has kinky desires. He blushed and mouthed a lot of words to himself. I thought it was odd, then. I think it's cute, now. Boys will be boys.

"Remember when you were in middle school and you spilled the entire bag of Hot Cheetos all over my perfectly cream carpet?" I ask while I try to build the second level of my pyramid. It crumbles under the pressure like a bad metaphor pertaining to the struggles of life, but I like the sound of cliché philosophies on a Saturday night. I try again.

My hand slowly trails down the buttons of my cardigan, because it's starting to get warmer with the heating on. I take it off and fold it neatly and nicely place it on the coffee table to take to my room later.

Funny thing. Even though this house belongs to me, I don't sleep in the master bedroom. I still consider that my mother's room. She's living it up halfway across the world doing what she loves to do, helping underprivileged children, but I can't walk into that enclosed space without feeling like an intruder.

Dustin coughs, for about half a minute, before he slowly replies, "Yeah… You were such a crazy back then, Mac. Did you need to break out Dickhead's bat?"

I laugh and accidentally blow air on my already unstable creation. Gathering all the cards and shuffling it to a new order, I joke, "Don't be like that. I would bet you liked it."

There is an awkward silence.

Awkward pauses remind me of when I broke up with Dick. I couldn't explain to him the exact reason why I wanted to put an end to our seemingly great relationship. He blinked away tears and asked in a choked voice if there was 'another man.' I told the truth and said there was not another 'man' but that I simply didn't think we had a chance of lasting anymore. Dick nodded his head then, a tight smile on his face and wished me the best of luck in the future. I gave him an equally tight hug and silently wished that we ever had a chance to work.

It… would have been very, very, very difficult to explain that I was more attracted to a prepubescent-looking fourteen year old boy than I was to my handsome twenty five year old boyfriend.

Oh. Well, look. Here comes the reason I can't have a committed relationship.

Dustin sits down on my couch again and takes the deck away from me. Our hands brush lightly and I'm sure he feels it seconds after it happens. He blushes like a little virgin and wiggles as if it will take away from the sensations. The tinge to his cheeks is emphasized by his red-gold-blond-red hair.

Impulsive, I know, but I sweetly ask to the point of degradation, "Do you want your 'man hug' now… Dustin…?"

"N-n-n-no."

He tends to stutter when he lies. I know because I've been in (pedophilic) lust with him since I was eighteen. He told me he didn't want to go home because his mother and father would just make him go in his room and study until he was smart like Justin. He stuttered not because he did not want to study, but because he believed that his parents wouldn't care if he was home. Heartbreaking, is it not?

Nodding my head, I oblige his fake refusal and motion for him to pass out the cards so we can play another round of… whatever we were playing before.

I wait for him, but he keeps shuffling the already shuffled deck. After about a good four or five times, in which I patiently sit and let him do what he needs to settle his mind, Dustin slowly sets the deck down on the coffee table.

He's just a troubled young man, not exactly in the way teenagers are stereotyped to be, but he is troubled. Attraction cannot be a very nice thing for him to live with, especially considering that a lot of that attraction is towards me.

Standing up, I move around the coffee table and give him a nice bear hug. I wrap my arms around him and I squeeze hard enough so he can feel the pressure of my body against his. Jaz likes to call me a 'cock tease' because of what I do with Dustin. I play card games with him. I let him sleep in my home. I cook and clean for him. I give him 'man hugs' and apologize while firmly pressed against his nice, small body.

"I'm sorry, Dustin," I mumble so my breaths travel down his exposed neck, "I'm sorry for teasing you."

When I remove myself and step back, Dustin' cheeks are smudged with the cutest shade of red and he's biting his lips hard enough for the color to match. Raspy voice is raspier as he says, "Okay… Okay. I… forgive you."

Sometimes, I worry that I'm a pedophile. Sometimes, I worry that I'm not. It's alarming to think that I want to fuck Dustin until he screams my name because I actually like him. Even more - to think that I have a genuine attraction to his personality and not his lithe form or strawberry-bitten lips. But. He does have a very pleasing lithe form and very nice strawberry-bitten lips.

I get back to my seat on the other side of the table and I wait, again, for him to pass out the cards.

--

I hate Mac. I hate Mac. I hate Mac.

He looks so fucking hot right now without that old man cardigan slash sweater slash thing he likes to wear all the time. I want to take off his shirt and touch him and touch him and touch him and pull down his pants and show him how fucking good my mouth can be and use my tongue like crazy until he tells me how fucking much he wants me. I want him to want me so fucking much that he stops with all the fucking pedobear status teasing and just fucks me already.

I hate him.

"What do you want to play now?" Mac asks like he actually knows any fucking card games. I know he doesn't know how to play shit! I hate him because he's a twenty seven year old pedophile that's been cock teasing me since I was eight years old and how the hell do I get lust when I'm fucking eight years old? He hugged me close when I was just a little kid and he was so damn warm and tall and amazingly nice and he was such an effing fucking effing FUCKING PEDOPHILE!

I hate him!

He frowns like he's really that fucking gentleman my parents think he is and asks me, "Are you still mad? Do you want another hug?"

I hate him! I hate him, hate him, fucking hate him! Why? Because he knows that I want him to fuck me until I lose my voice and he doesn't care and he still hugs me all the time. He hugs me like he wants me and talks while breathing down my neck and it gets all hot and I can't help but get turned on and I love it so much but I hate him so much because he won't do anything with me.

"F-fuck no!" I say as strongly as I can but I fail but I don't care, "Bite me, Mac! Stop being such an ass!"

Why the fuck, out of all the people in the world, do I have to like Mac. He's nice to the point of being creepy and he takes care of me more than my own family does! Why HIM?!

Oh my god, he's standing up and he's circling around the table again! I can't take this kind of abuse more than once in a visit! Mac's killing me and I swear I'm going to get permanent blue balls and they're going to fall off and I'll make Mac pay for replacements and he's getting closer and closer and closer and so much closer and his arms are wrapping around me and…

…

…

"Better now? Dustin?"

… I nod.

--

Dustin is a strange individual. He always refuses my offered hugs but as soon as I step closer to him, he latches on as if I'm his last hope in this evil, desolate, dark world. I think Jaz's overemotional poetry is affecting my thoughts again.

Hmm. With my body pressed against his like this, it's easy to feel his every shudder. His hands do this odd thing. He doesn't stop moving them. He doesn't move his hands around or up or down, but he constantly clenches and unclenches his fists and rubs his fingers together. Even though it's rather suggestive, I can't think that he does it on purpose to retaliate against my teasing.

If I think about it for a moment, it's probably nervousness or something akin to that. Knowing that now, I shift my arms lower and change our positions until he as close to me as possible. The last time I did this with him, he shivered and wiggled and his breathing changed. I'm sure he also got hard, but I couldn't be sure. Considering, well, I never let my affection stray below the belt.

Dustin's hands are still, open and palm down to my back. His face is in the crook of my neck and I could feel every shaking breath he takes. It makes me grow with desire, but I wouldn't touch an underage child.

"I…" his hot, moist exhale feels nice enough for me to pull him closer, "I'm eighteen."

Well now. That changes everything.

"When did that happen?" I ask with genuine curiosity, "Last time I checked you're fifteen."

Dustin pushes away from me, disconnecting all that nice warmth, with a frown on his face. With that extra effect of his breathy, raspy, very affected voice, he says, "The last time you asked me I was fifteen…"

I look him over, top to bottom, bottom to top, and sincerely wonder how long I've spent lusting over his little body. Since he was… if my math is correct… eight years old? A ten year attraction to a little boy, pubescent child, and now a young man? Not exactly, because Dustin still looks like he can pass for a preteen.

His red-gold-blond-red is messy and hangs over his eyes like a bad fashion statement. He's wearing those silly color contacts today, so his eyes are a blue-gray color and not the usual pale green. I can see the way his tight shirt bunches and rises at his belly. The exposed skin there has some showings of his natural brown hair, but not much. If I let my eyes trail lower, goodness, it is very obvious that he's…

Hard.

Getting hard always reminds me of Dick because he was the only guy to get hard over me without the promise or thought of sex to catalyze it. Other men made due with me. Dick actually liked me. I have to think, seriously think, if Dustin has more than a silly attraction to me because I'm older and somewhat responsible and can replace that metaphorical hole in his heart?

"I'm eighteen now," he says quickly, "I'm eighteen and legal and shit so we can do this, right?"

I have a prepared statement in my mind because I am not a complete dunce. I know that time doesn't stop or slow for anyone and Dustin would eventually be eighteen. I know that; I knew that. The memorized excuse is as follows: 'I'm sorry, Dustin, but there is simply too much of an age gap between us. We will never work, except in a purely sexual relationship, and I'm sure you don't want that. You'll regret it. Trust me.'

Instead, what comes out of my (pedophilic) mouth is, "Do you mind barebacking?"

END