1/9/12

Caution Follows Desire
By Thomas Kearnes


Danny stood at the window. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling. He opened the blinds. He peered through them, over the lush, green lawn, down a gentle slope and into the pond located at its bottom. An older man with wild cinder-colored hair crouched at the bank and tossed hunks of bread at a flock of ducks. Their heads twisted and tucked. They snapped at the floating bread chunks with their beaks.
Hayden moaned. Danny heard his body shift beneath the sheets as he stretched. Danny wasn’t ready to speak with him. Hayden pulled his arm underneath the pillow, nestled his face deeper into its yielding surface. The young man at the window still had time. At least a moment, maybe more. He was now Hayden’s lover, and he needed those moments to calibrate his mind and welcome this development. They had waited so long to meet in person! And now here was morning, the first morning over a new threshold.
He had brought no clothes for sleeping. He grinned, remembering how he suspected he wouldn’t need them. His jeans rested in a lump beside the bed. Perhaps he should slip into them? Hayden had guided him through the kitchen earlier that evening. Surely, his new lover might wake, sweetly surprised, to smell eggs, bacon, perhaps pancakes?
But he remained rooted in place. Danny reminded himself what he had desired most was for Hayden to wake and see Danny beside him. Like he belonged there. Like he never had to leave, not while there was still the morning left.
He stepped to the side of the bed. Hayden breathed, the air made a purring sound as it passed through him. Danny peeled back the covers, never taking his eyes off Hayden. He eased one leg onto the bed, silently seated himself, and then pulled his remaining leg under the covers. He propped himself up atop his pillow.
Danny watched his new lover in the late moments of his slumber. Remember this, he told himself. Yes, you must always remember this.
After a few moments, he began to feel anxious. Perhaps Hayden knew he was watching and only pretended to sleep. Perhaps he was waiting for Danny to grow irritated and slink into another room, watch television, start a shower. Danny’s lips pressed together, his brow dropped over his eyes. He could not stop staring at the beautiful man lying beside him. Hayden’s body was muscled with a pleasing thickness. His left bicep ballooned under the sheet as he slept. His silky, copper-colored hair drooped in lovely locks over his forehead. His lips were full in the middle, thin toward the corners of his mouth. And his eyes! Of course, Danny could not look into them now, but he remembered the brilliance of their hue. They were a blue that compelled him from the moment Hayden opened the door and Danny gazed at him in gracious wonder.
I could leave right now, he thought. He wouldn’t wake until I was gone.
Escaping this bedroom, with its remembered delights and promise of more, would safeguard the memory of last night. The overpowering sensation of Hayden deep inside him as he closed his thick arms around Danny. All the fevered whispers and shocked cries of joy. As long as Hayden slept, the memory remained fixed. No careless comment or thoughtless gesture could spoil it.
I must leave right now. The night remains perfect only if I leave him.
Danny noted with alarm his back leg already inching toward the edge of the bed. He watched it slide beneath the covers like a copperhead through the grass. He risked a last look at Hayden. The delightful man slept still.
He sat up in bed, pulled both feet to the floor. He gazed out the window once more, through the open blinds. Only the soft white light of early morning. The haze blotted out the rising sun. In the stillness, he heard the ducks from the pond quack and splash.
He was going to leave! His poor host would wake up abandoned!
Danny bowed his head, ran his hands through his hair. He had to admit it: he didn’t trust his new lover to carry out this new day without somehow disappointing him. Disappointment, more constant than any pleasure.
He rose from the bed but froze when he felt a large, smooth-fingered hand grab his wrist. He dropped back to the bed, looked back at the man who held him. Of course, he knew this man.
“Where are you going?” Hayden asked. His head remained on the pillow. He looked at Danny through half-closed lids. A baby lost inside a lullaby.
Danny gulped. “Nowhere,” he said. “I just wanted to let some light in the room.” He gestured limply toward the blinds.
“We should sleep some more.” Hayden smiled slyly. “I think we’ve earned it.”
“That sounds great.” Danny stretched, his long arms arching over his head. “I was still tired anyway.” He slid deeper underneath the covers. Hayden pulled him closer until Danny’s back met his broad chest. Danny noted it was cool and dry, so unlike the moist, hot surface he’d stroked last night. Perhaps he again would feel that heat, perhaps very soon.
“When should we wake up?” he asked Hayden.
“Whenever. The whole day is ours.”
“The whole day?”
“If that’s what you want.”
Yes, Danny thought. That’s all I want.


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Thomas Kearnes is a 35-year-old author from East Texas. His work has appeared in PANK, Storyglossia, Night Train, SmokeLong Quarterly, Word Riot, Eclectica, JMWW Journal, The Pedestal, wigleaf, Knee-Jerk, LITnIMAGE, 3 AM Magazine and elsewhere. He is a columnist for Flash Fiction Chronicles and a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee.