Festival Of Lights

"Where the Sam F'ing Hill have you two been?" Marta practically screamed.  "I have walked this whole freaking town hunting you two.  You missed the fireworks, you know."

"Oh no we didn't," I replied as I looked into Charles' eyes.

"OH. MY. GOD," Marta said slowly.  "You two didn't...."

"No," Charles cut her off quickly.  "We kissed our way to heaven," he said dreamily, turning to look back at me.

"We only got to heaven because you're an angel, my angel," I told him sappily.  I was stunned to hear something so corny come out of my mouth, but then decided it wasn't corny at all.  It was absolutely true.  Charles was my angel.

"I'm no angel," he said sadly as he looked away from me suddenly.  "If I am, I'm a fallen one."

"As long as the fall you took was for me," I told him as I pulled his chin back to face me.  "I don't give a damn what your past holds, as long as I hold you here and now."

"You shouldn't say that until you know...." he started to protest, but I silenced him with a finger to his lips.

"I know I love you, Charles," I told him firmly.  "That's all I ever need to know."

"I believe him, Charles."  Marta's voice startled us for a couple of reasons.  We didn't expect to hear her say that for one, but we had also forgotten that she was there.  "Charles, you need to relax and be happy for once in your life.  Jeremy, you need to know about Charles' past if for no other reason than to understand him better."

"But Marta, if he knows he'll leave me," Charles protested.

"Charles, please don't talk about me like I'm not here," I told him.  Then I took his hand in mine as I asked, "Have you ever sold illegal drugs?"

"No, never even taken them by choice," he answered.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

"God no!" he exclaimed.

"Have you ever tortured an animal?"  He shook his head negatively, but I could see his curiosity building up.  "Are you a child molesting pervert?"

"Jeremy what is this?  Why are you asking me such questions?" he demanded.  "I would never touch a kid inappropriately."

"Those are the only reasons that I would dump you and never talk to you again," I explained.  "Anything else you have done or been involved in I can get over and forgive.  Even some of those things are negotiable.  The only other thing that I would leave you over is if you cheat on me."

"If he ever cheats on you, he will answer to me," Marta announced firmly.  "Just the same as you will if you ever hurt him.  There is just one more question I have for you, Jeremy."

"What's that?" I asked.

"Are you sure you don't have a straight brother out there somewhere?" she pleaded comically.

"We really missed the fireworks?" Charles asked when we all finally stopped laughing.  He twisted my arm up to see my watch.  "Well, damn."

"There's always next year, my love," I told him.

"God, you two are going to make me sick," Marta complained.  "I suppose I'll be taking the back seat on the way home?"

"Not if Charles tells me that you are a good driver," I told her.

"What?" they both asked.

"If you both swear that my life and my car are safe in her hands, Marta can drive us home," I explained.  "Charles and I can sit in the back together."

"She's a great driver," Charles told me quickly.

"No, no, no," Marta whined.

"She's never had a ticket of any kind," Charles continued, ignoring Marta.

"Absolutely not," she protested.  "I am not about to be driving home, look in the rearview mirror and see you two humping like bunnies."

"MARTA!" Charles blurted.  He was as red as a stop sign again, and this time so was I.

"No!" she repeated.  "In fact, I think we better keep the same seating arrangement we had on the way here."

"But Marta...." Charles pouted.  God that was cute.

"Don't give me no butt," she retorted.  "Jeremy wants it, not me.  He still ain't getting it in a car I'm driving though.  No sir; ain't gonna happen."

"You're a bitch, you know that?" Charles asked her with a grin.

"She's just protecting us, Angel," I told him seriously.  "She loves us and doesn't want us to mess up our relationship by going too fast.  We should love her, and thank her for it," I added with a wink.

Charles caught on instantly.  He quickly got on one side of her, while I got on the other.  We each grabbed her in a tight hug and lay our heads on her shoulders.

"Thank you, Marta," we chorused.  "We love you, Marta."

"Get off me!" she snapped.

"We love you... You love us... We're a happy family...." Charles and I began singing.  Marta began squirming and screaming for help.  It did no good though.  We just hugged her tighter and sang louder.  We started swaying again like we had done earlier at the festival.  Marta howled like an animal caught in a trap.  We kept singing until we were stopped by another voice.

"What's going on here?"

"Officer, arrest these two idiots and put them in a padded cell," Marta said quickly.  "They're crazy."

"Love does that to some folks," the policeman said to her.  "I suggest you get used to it, Little Cuz.  If what I saw earlier is any indication, these two got it bad."

"Rick, you're my cousin," Marta whined.  "You're supposed to protect me."

"No, an older brother would protect you," Officer Jenkins told her.  "A cousin watches the fun and maybe takes blackmail pictures if he's got a camera phone with him.  Say Barney, boys," he added as he held up his cell phone.

"Barney!" Charles and I grinned as we squeezed Marta between us.

"Homos, I'm surrounded by homos," she grumbled.

"Don't you forget either, Cuz," Jenkins laughed.  "I'll send a copy of the pic to you, Charles."

"Thanks, Rick," Charles smiled.

The policeman stepped closer to me and grew very serious.  He glared at me for a moment silently.  I tried to hold his stare, but got nervous despite my intentions to the contrary.

"Marta is family by blood, and Charles is like a brother to her," he began telling me.  "That alone would be enough to make me want to protect him.  The thing is, even though I've never told him, he's like a little brother to me too."  He put his hand on my shoulder rather painfully as he continued.  "If you hurt them, especially him, I will hunt you down like a dog.  I will kill you in the most painful way possible and I will do it with a smile on my face.  I've got the weapons to do it with and the badge to let me get away with it.  Do you understand me, boy?"

"Yes, sir," I croaked as my voice cracked with fear.

"Of course as long as you're good to him, I can make sure the law is good to you," Rick smiled as if we were great friends.  Something told me that we just might be someday.

Marta held fast to her demands and made me drive back to the campus while she rode shotgun.  She kept snapping at me every time I glanced in the rear view mirror.  At first it was annoying to me, but I gradually realized that chances like this didn't happen every day.  I had the opportunity to tell a woman that something was her fault and she couldn't argue.

"Eyes on the road, loverboy," she said as I once again sought out Charles' face behind me in the darkened car.

"I don't have to watch the road the whole time," I told her.  "You insisted that the ride back be just like the trip to the festival.  That means I get to sneak looks at Charles, just like I did on the first car ride."

"No, you don't.... Damn, I did say that, didn't I?  I even admitted that I knew about them and didn't say anything," she realized aloud.  "Well, at least I don't have to put up with his pining for you this time.  Maybe he'll sleep well for a change."

"Charles has trouble sleeping?" I queried.  "He seems all right now."

"He's exhausted right now," she replied with an emotional look at my sleeping prince.  "You have no idea what it took for him to go back there, and then to see that idiot, when he's the reason it's so hard for Charles in that town.  I tried to tell Charles that he'd be there; that there had to be a better way for you two to get together.  He knew you wanted to go to the festival, though, and he wanted… no, he had to be there with you when you did go.  He said that was the only way that he would know what you learned about him while you were there."

"All I learned was that there is a town full of people who like him very much," I thought out loud.  "I wish someone would tell me what this terrible secret is that everyone is keeping from me about him.  I swear I won't leave him over it, no matter what it is."

"If you have to talk about me like I'm not here, couldn't you at least do it quietly so that I can sleep through it?" Charles suddenly spoke up from the back seat.

"I'm sorry, angel," I told him.  "You looked so cute nodding off back there."

"You're supposed to be driving," Charles pointed out.

"That's what I've been trying to tell him!" Marta yelled loudly.

"Well, if you weren't awake before, you are now," I grumbled playfully, as I rubbed the ear that was facing Marta.

"There are medical tests pending concerning prolonged exposure to her," Charles joked.

"You two are going to need medical attention when I get done with you," Marta threatened.

"Uh..Oh! Someone sounds cranky," I announced.  "I think she needs some more love."

"If you sing that damned song again, I swear I will puke right here in this car," she warned.

"You sure are bitchy when you're tired, you know that?" Charles asked her.

"I'm bitchy all the time," Marta sneered sticking her tongue out at her best friend.

"I wasn't aware that was something to brag about," I observed wryly.  "Although, I admit that you do raise the act to an art form."

"Of course you know, this means war," she quoted imitating Bugs Bunny.

"Bring it on, sister," I told her fearlessly.  "I grew up in an orphanage where sarcasm and jabs at others were our only form of sanity."

"I went to an advanced learning high school," she retorted.  "I can chew you out in three different languages using words so big, you'll need a dictionary to find out how badly I just nailed your scrawny ass to the wall."

"It's not scrawny," Charles defended me from the back seat.

"How would you know?" Marta demanded.

"I have eyes and I have hands," he answered simply.

"Ok the comment about the hands was TMI," Marta complained.

"You did ask, you know," I pointed out.

"You stay out of this, Mr. Bubblebutt," she fumed.

"No, that would be him," I smiled contentedly as I thought about the views I had of his rear during the day.

"You keep both hands on the wheel," Marta growled.  "Keep this car and your mind both out of the gutter too."

"A boy can daydream about his boyfriend, can't he?" I questioned.

"Yeah as long as he does it at home in his bed, the shower, or wherever else, but not when he's driving the car," she informed me.  "I have no intentions of being found dead in the front seat of a car with a guy with his pants open and little Junior hanging out."

"Who said it was little?" Charles asked her.  I was glad it was dark in the car.  He seemed to determine to have me blushing all the way home.

"You need to go back to sleep, big mouth," Marta told him.  "I do not need to know the intimate details of…. Just how not little is he?"

"MARTA!" I exclaimed.

"He's got to be close to…"

"CHARLES!!" I yelled.  The two of them broke into fits of giggles.  "Hmmph, see if you two get any more rides from me."

"I'll behave, I promise," Charles vowed from the back seat.  "I want a lot of rides from you in the future.  Some of them may even involve your car," he added.

"Oooh, you've gotten him from the shy stage to the kinky stage in just one day," Marta mused aloud.  "You are either a damn good kisser, or you both lied to me about how much you did in that alley."

"I would never do anything like that in an alley," I protested quickly.  "Especially not with Charles.  I want it to be the most romantic place and the most incredibly sensuous experience that either of us ever experience."

"Awww, Jeremy, that's so sweet," Charles gushed from the backseat.

"Yeah, I'm going into diabetic coma over here," Marta remarked snidely.

"Well, at least we'll have some privacy," I told her.

"You guys would make out in the car while I lie here in a coma?" she demanded.

"Hell yeah," Charles answered.  "You're too much like Aunt Della.  You're way too cantankerous to ever die.  You'll outlive us all, because only the good die young.  Personally, I'm on borrowed time already.  If it weren't for the times I've spent with you corrupting me, I would have been dead long ago."

"You are so full of it," Marta snorted.  "Whose idea was it to hide in the janitor's closet at school and drink that Vodka you got from… that you brought?"

"That was your idea, my dear," Charles pointed out smugly.

"Well, what about the time we took those four little freshmen out snipe hunting our junior year?"

"Again that would be your great idea," Charles reminded her.

"Well, I know it was your idea to try to convince them that they needed to rub horse manure all over themselves so the snipes wouldn't smell them downwind," Marta challenged.  "Everyone could smell that dumb kid downwind for two days."

"That was you too," Charles said again.  "It was my idea to tell him to bathe in tomato juice to get rid of the smell so he wouldn't turn us in to the director."

"Which he did anyway, the little sneak," Marta griped.  "What a little wuss he was."

"Maybe so, but he was a cute little wuss," Charles sighed.

"Excuse me," I said firmly.  "Current boyfriend within hearing range.  Please do not discuss other guys at this time, thank you."

"Oh how perfectly revolting!" Marta drawled.  "Even when he's jealous, he's sickeningly sweet."

"I think it's adorable," Charles told her.  "I would never have done anything with that kid.  For one thing, he was a freshman and I was a junior.  It just isn't done.  For another thing, he had those horrible braces on his teeth.  He looked like the guy from those really old James Bond movies."

"Not that it mattered since his parents pulled him out of school right after he started blabbing about it," Marta recalled.  "I guess it's sort of embarrassing for a high political official to have a son stupid enough to take off his clothes, rub horse shit all over himself, and traipse around the woods at night hunting non-existent small creatures."

"You mean snipes aren't real?" I asked seriously.  I could feel them both staring at me before I lost it and started laughing.  "We used to take the newbies to the pecan orchards to hunt snipe.  While they were gone, we put rubber spiders in their beds."

"Marta, I think you have met your match," Charles said almost reverently.

"I knew I liked you, Jeremy," Marta told me.  "That's not bad for an initiation night at all."

"Night?  They were in for it the whole first week," I told them.  "There were panty raids, bowls of warm water to dip their hands in while they slept, and of course the ghost stories about their rooms."

"I bow to a master of the craft," Marta announced.

"Why the warm water?" Charles asked.

"He's lead a rather sheltered life," Marta stage whispered.

"The warm water makes them wet the bed," I answered.

"That's mean!" Charles exclaimed.  "Those poor little kids."

"Just as mean as telling your little boytoy to rub shit all over himself," I pointed out.

"Well, that was different," Charles defended.  "It was his choice.  He could have left at that point like the other kids did."

"It was just a practical joke," Marta told him.

"It was humiliating," Charles contradicted her.  "I can't believe you would do that.  That is textbook example of hazing."

"Charles, I never said I did it," I told him.  "That got stopped while I was there."

"You made them stop, didn't you?" Charles asked.  When I confirmed that I was the main force behind the changing of the initiation week, he gushed, "My hero!"

"Yeah, yeah, he's your knight in shining armor," Marta sneered.

"You're just jealous because I rescue princes, not princesses," I teased.  "Sleeping Beauty would still be snoring if I was Prince Charming.  Cinderella would still be sweeping fireplaces, and Snow White would still be chilling with the dwarves."

"We get the picture, Fairy Godbrother," Marta complained.  "Can we talk about something else now?  All this talk about gay guys just reminds me that not only am I the token straight in this car; I am also the token single.  You guys suck."

"Well, we haven't yet, but...."

"DON'T GO THERE, YOU PERVERT!" Marta yelled.  "That is way TMI."

Charles and I continued to tease her about details of our future sex life the rest of the way back to her dorm.  When she got out of the car she called us twisted, demented, psychos.  Just before she shut the door she looked back in at us and told us that she was very happy that we had found one another since we so obviously deserved each other.  We laughed all the way back to our dorm across the campus.

"We got a little wild with some of the things we said we were going to do to one another," Charles said quietly as we walked through the deserted lobby.  It was pretty late, so most of the dorm was asleep by that point.

"Yeah, we did get a little carried away, didn't we?" I returned.  I could think of a couple of the ideas we had said out loud in the car that I would never be interested in doing, not even with Charles.  It was only a couple though.  What can I say?  He's so hot and cute and sexy.

"I'm not really sleepy, are you?" he asked suddenly.  I was but I wasn't.  I was actually exhausted, but I didn't want the night to end yet either.  I didn't want to be away from him.  "You deserve to know what was going on today."

"Are you sure about this?" I asked, knowing this would be painful for him, whatever this was.

"Come up to my room and let's talk in private?" Charles asked bashfully.

"I knew it," I said falsetto.  "You men are all alike.  You just want to get me up to your room and have your wicked way with me.  Well, lead on then," I added in my regular voice.

"Jeremy, this is important to me," he told me quietly.

"I'm sorry, come on, let's go have that talk if it will help you."  I could see that he was upset about this, and I knew it was well past midnight.  The dorm halls were empty.  I took his hand in mine and walked to the elevator.  Once we were inside it, I noticed that Charles was crying.  I hit the run stop button and pulled him into a tight embrace.  "There is nothing that you could ever do to change how I feel about you."

"I hope you're still saying that in the morning," he whispered back to me.

"I will still say it a hundred million mornings from now," I assured him.  I leaned in and kissed him passionately, rubbing my hands up and down his back as I did.  We finally pulled away from each other breathlessly.  I started the elevator up again and we soon arrived at his floor, and finally his room. 

Suddenly, I was more nervous than I had ever been.  I was afraid of what he had to say, I was afraid of what he might expect from me, but mostly I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to behave myself in a bedroom alone with him.  One look in his eyes told me that I had to do this though.  I could tell just from his expression that he was as terrified of me and us as I was of him and us.  He dreaded doing whatever it was he was about to do, but it had to be done.  The question was would I love and support him no matter what he told me?  As I continued to stare into his eyes, I knew my answer.  I was in love with this man and no one and nothing was going to change that, ever.