This is my first story submission, so please leave lots of feedback but please play nice.
There's kind of a innocent sex scene, but no hardcore stuff. I'm working on that for later chapters. So if you don't want to wait, skip this, or at least don't flame me for it.
These characters and stories are mine. Any resemblance to actual people or events is incidental.
Names are hard when you are four, especially on the first day of kindergarden.
"I don't remember your name," he declared.
Scuffing his He-Man tennis shoes on the gravel that covered the ground beneath the metal poles of the monkey bars, he said, "I don't remember your name either."
"I'm Michael Patrick Carlin," Michael said.
"I'm Kieran William Lee," Kieran said.
And that cemented their friendship. See? Kindergarden is easy.
* * * *
"Wild women do and they don't forget it!"
It was Thanksgiving again and the kids had been relegated to the "kids' table" in the kitchen. Thankfully for the adults there was a door partitioning the kitchen from the dining room. They didn't have to listen to Kieran, his older sister, and Michael and his sisters –one younger and one older than the boys– as they belted out tracks from the "Pretty Woman" soundtrack, using carrot sticks with black olives stuck on top of them for microphones.
Kieran's and Michael's mothers had become fast friends, which had extended to the rest of their families. Thanksgiving was at Kieran's house, and Kieran's dad made them all "special" hot chocolate after the annual school Christmas play. The adults' hot chocolate was a little more "special" than the kids.' Christmas eve and Easter were spent together at Michael's house. And over the course of years there were hundreds of little family events (and some big ones) that the each other family were invited to as extended family.
But still grade school was a little harder than kindergarden, as the normal course of things tend to be. Kieran and Michael attended the same Catholic grade school they had started in kindergarden. It was small school, each grade having only one class that stayed together K through 8th grade. Michael was a focused and determined kid even then. He knew he wasn't the smartest kid in the class but his consistency carried him through with B's and the occasional A thrown in.
Kieran on the other hand was all over the board. He was one of the smartest kids in the class. He always tested in the 99th percentile in standardized testing. He always got A's on the tests for regular subjects too, which allowed him to scrape by. But everything else was up and down. He was that kid that teacher's were always saying "if he would only apply himself" about. But he never remembered his homework, and everything was so distracting. If he wasn't in trouble for talking then the teacher was trying to call his attention back to class from his daydreams gazing out the window. Classes bored him. He passed the time by reading ahead in all his school books or anything else he could get his hands on while the teacher droned on about something else.
It wasn't just in school either. His coaches in baseball and soccer were equally frustrated by his lighting fast changes between hyper-focus and distraction. He was like that nursery rhyme: "There once was a girl with a curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good. And we she was bad she was ...." Well, Kieran wasn't horrid, but certainly frustrating to all the adults around him, and a good portion of his classmates too. He also had some talent as an artist and took painting lessons from a local artist. Again it was up and down. On some days he spent the entire afternoon just laying out paint in what he felt was the correct way on his palette. Again, he was "such a talented kid, if only he would apply himself."
* * * *
Kieran rushed into physics just before Mr. Payne closed the door and the final bell rang. He made it to his desk without dropping any of the many things he was juggling. There were the expected: physics book, notebook, pens, and then there were the other various things that made up his morning. The bottle of Coke that was his breakfast; he carefully put that on the floor out of kicking range since they weren't supposed to have food or drink in the classroom. The collared shirt that pretty much the only rule of their dress code –top two buttons must be buttoned.
Though when guys did only that, they pretty much just looked like morons with capes on,
he thought. He began to slip his shirt on and button it as soon as he sat down. At least today he had gotten his shoes on before class. They were always really awkward to carry and people looked at him weird when he ran in in just his socks. Today he'd been able to get his shoelaces tied at the red lights on the way to school.
In trying to organize the whirlwind he had brought in with him, Kieran had missed what Mr. Payne had been saying to the class. He winced as everyone else began to turn in their homework. He had forgotten. Again.
Finally physics came to an end. Kieran ducked his head down, avoided eye contact, and filed out the door with the rest of the class, though at 6'1" and with the exotic looks that came from him being Chinese and
happa haole
(half-white), as the Hawaiians called it, his attempts to be inconspicuous failed.
He headed for the computer lab. There he could just do mindless surfing on the internet, or maybe try to finish that paper that was due sixth block. Either way no one was going to bother him there.
The five minute bell rang for the next class. Kieran didn't notice, shutting the world out as he surfed through the drivel on the screen in front of him. Krista showed up at the door to the lab. "Hi Mr. Hurst," she said to the teacher sitting at the desk at the front of the lab.
"Kieran." Krista said as she walked down the two rows of computers. "Come on; we got to go to class."
Kieran looked up, closed out of the window he was looking at and obediently followed her to his classroom. Having dropped him off, she said "I'll see you later at break, okay?" and kept walking down the hallway to her own classroom.
Spanish was a blur. Kieran knew he knew the words, but they just wouldn't come to him when he needed them. He had a book of Spanish language fairytales that were first written in Spanish and then were then translated into English. That, the reading, was easier. He noticed class was over because everyone else was getting up out of their seats. He followed. At the door Sean was waiting for him. If Kieran had to think about it, he was pretty sure his next class was downstairs, but trying to lift himself out of this daze was just too hard, and he was so tired. So Sean got him where he needed to go.
His friends were managing him. When he looked back on it later as an adult, he didn't realize he had so many friends, friends who worried and cared about him. He didn't know if it had happened spontaneously or if there had been a pow-wow, but his zombie-like state had become apparent enough that his friends were taking turns shuttling his shambling corpse from class to class.
Then one night Michael dropped over to Kieran's house. He hadn't been one of the contingent helping steer Kieran from class to class but Kieran found out later that Michael had talked to Sean about how worried they both were for him. Michael didn't know what he could do but he knew his friend was struggling and just wanted to be there for him. And Kieran's house was like Michael's second home.
If Kieran had had room for emotion, he would have been surprised to see Michael on his doorstep. It seemed like he rarely saw Michael anymore outside of when their families gathered. The groups they travelled in at school had become so different. Kieran didn't think that most of Michael's friends even knew that he and Michael knew each other, let alone that their families considered each other extended family.
At first they just sat on the couch together, the t.v. on low. Then, with Michael's comforting presence beside him, Kieran began to talk. At first haltingly, but then it seemed like he couldn't stop. Eventually it was all to much. First the tears were quiet, just running hotly down his cheeks as he spoke. Then his breath began to hitch, and eventually he couldn't hold it back anymore. He struggled not to hyperventilate but Michael was there to calm him.
Finally, Kieran had cried himself out. Life was so hard to concentrate on right now. Sometimes it seemed to race so fast it left him spinning and confused. And sometimes it moved so slow it seemed like every breath, every tick of the clock was an eternity.
But he was here now with Michael. Kieran had his head on Michael's shoulder feeling hollow and empty after the storm of emotions had emptied themselves out in tears and sobs. He was safe with Michael. Michael had his arm around him and was drawing little calming circles up and down his back in a soothing motion. Michael tipped his head down to rest gently on Kieran's and drew him closer into his chest. Kieran heaved a big sigh of contentment. Michael had him and he was safe, even from the storms of his own mind.
And they stayed in that calm. It could have been minutes; it could have been hours, but Kieran finally raised his head from Michael's shoulder. They were so close. Laying there together, their breath had settled into the same rhythm, their hearts beating together, and as they looked into each other's eyes, that didn't change. They were so close. And then slowly, and oh so gently, their lips touched.
And their eyes closed. Still in locked in the same rhythm, everything they were to each other became crashed together in that kiss.
The kiss roughened. Their lips demanded more. The kiss went from a gentle "I'm here for you" to an "I need you" type of desperation.
Michael slide his hand up Kieran's neck and ran his hand through Kieran's dark hair, cradling Kieran's head. They both moved to their knees on the couch, their bodies pressed against each other, still kissing as if it were the only air they could breathe.
They didn't know who did it first, ran their tongue along the other's bottom lip, but the twin moans that followed opened their mouths and brought their tongues together. Kieran's hand cupped Michael's jaw, drawing him in, holding him place as fire ran through their bodies. To Kieran it felt like this was the first thing he could really feel in he didn't know how long.
Moans began to fill the room as more than their lips and tongues became intertwined. Michael's free hand slid up Kieran's t-shirt just enough to reach his lower back and press their bodies even closer together. And from there their 18 year-old hormones took care of the rest as they began to grind against each other's bodies through the confines of their jeans.
"God!" Michael said, tearing his lips away from Kieran's as he threw his head back and exposed his throat to Kieran. Loving that he could get his usually straight-laced friend to respond like that, Kieran took the opportunity to slide his thigh between Michael's and purposefully ground his friend's growing cock against him.
