The Suburbs

eight

I saw the great void in your soul, and you saw mine.

[Sebastian Faulks]

• • •

Little pellets of marble raindrops hit the thin glass of Kody's tall window. As they listened to a storm brew around them, Kody and Arlo sat cross legged on the double bed, a laptop open in front of them, glowing softly with the dull flickering of a movie neither of them were paying attention to.

As badly written lines fell past the lips of badly trained actors, the two boys found themselves moving closer to each other. It was an instinctive reaction, and soon, their thighs and shoulders were touching. The smell of Arlo's sweet vanilla shampoo was almost overwhelming by now, and the desire to examine the boy's pink lips in greater detail was growing hard to resist.

No boys. No boys. No boys. No boys. No boys.

The credits rolled, and Kody breathed a sigh of relief. He'd never been so intimate with a boy without proceeding to have sex with him afterwards. He was good at that. Kissing people, undressing them, making them feel beautiful, fucking them how they wanted to be fucked. Whether it was boys or girls, that was his field of expertise. But he wasn't allowed to fuck boys and he was too scared that if he fucked a girl, the whole town would know within a week, and the pretty little reputation he had built for himself would be tarnished.

"Hey, Arlo?"

"Hm?" He looked sleepy. It was adorable.

"Have you lived here your whole life?"

"Unfortunately." He nodded.

"Well..." Kody started.

Arlo groaned loudly, "No. I don't wanna."

"What?" He laughed, "You don't even know what I was going to say!"

"You're gonna ask me to show you around town." He picked his glasses up from the nightstand and adjusted them onto his face, squinting when Kody turned the lamp on. "There's nothing to see." He shrugged. "There's school, the post office, fucking Pizza Express, the lake-"

"What?" Kody cut him off. "There's a lake?"

Arlo nodded in disinterest, "Yeah. Don't most towns have lakes?"

"I don't know, I've only ever lived in the centre of a city." Kody respondes dryly. "Oh, please take me to the lake, Arlo."

"No."

"But-"

"It's raining." He used as an excuse.

"We'll bring an umbrella." Kody reasoned.

"It's just a big puddle with ducks."

"There are ducks?" Kody's mouth fell open in disbelief.

Arlo started to laugh, "It's not that-"

"Get your coat."

"Kody." He whined. Hearing his name murmured in that sweet husky voice almost worked. Seeing Arlo sitting in his bed, glasses wonky, hair messy, lips pressed into a pout, also almost worked. But he gathered all the self will he had, and pushed his needy thoughts aside.