Seth’s Perspective
We had a lot going on behind the scenes as always; Karen’s next court date was coming up, and we had filed Ali’s adoption paperwork, although we still had a few more months to wait before we could make any real moves to make it permanent. Across the road at BroMax, Brody and Max had signed with an adoption agency and had been approved, now they were just waiting to find their little princess. Craig had moved out of the BroMax guesthouse and into Colton’s apartment at Harrington House to prep for their move into Terrence and Harris’s house at the end of the school year. So, Caleb moved into the BroMax guesthouse to test living on his own and make room in the farmhouse just in case the newest princess of the village showed up. Meanwhile, across town, Eli and Riley were getting their world ready for their own baby. And on top of all that… of course was the kids. That was the action on the home front.
On the work front, Zach was busy as hell with his heavy caseload and helping his dad with Karen’s case on the side; and me... as always, I was buried with Villagers coming and going. It seemed so quiet around The Village with Trevor and Asher both gone and BA and Daddy still on their big road trip out west. It was just me and Rodney in the office, and we were up on the second floor getting the two empty apartments ready for new residents when my cell phone rang. It was the Carolina Beach police department. We had built good relationships with a lot of the local police departments since we The Village was founded. They had come to our rescue several times and they knew to call us if they found someone in need. “Seth? This is Sergeant McRoberts” the voice on the other side of the line said. I had met him a few times and knew who he was.
“Hi Sergeant” is all I said in response figuring he’d do the talking.
“We were following up on a complaint, and long story short we found these two guys living in a self-storage unit near Carolina Beach. We didn’t get a helluva lotta info out of them other than they’re both over eighteen and homeless. I got them spots at a local shelter and the two of them refused to go… they finally admitted they were a gay couple and that they had had issues at homeless shelters in the past. I don’t want to release them without a place to go, I was hoping you might be able to help.”
“Do they have priors?” I asked.
“Nope” Sergeant McRoberts said, “One was reported missing about a month ago, but he’s an adult, he has the legal right to take off if he wants.” He said with a little snigger. “The storage unit was rented in their name, but they were sleeping there after business hours. Technically it’s a minor trespassing charge, but the owner of the storage place just wants them out. He’s not pressing charges, so they’re clean.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re here at the station on North Lake Park Boulevard. Again, I was hoping to find them someplace to go before we released them” The sergeant said. There was a caring in his voice, I had to admit that most of the local police officers really did want to do good by the community and were more than supportive of us and the villagers.
“Hold on a second” I said to the officer, then hit mute and told Rodney what was up, we had a quick discussion before I told the officer, “It’ll take us about a half hour to get there.” Sergeant McRoberts was glad we were up for helping. Rodney and I jumped in the Atlas and headed towards the beach and talked about possible options for the boys along the way. It took us a little over a half hour to get there with the traffic, and after the Sergeant updated us; we were sitting in front of the two guys.
They looked very young and weather beaten, and they stunk! I’m guessing they hadn’t showered in days. One was a very handsome African American, The other was young and cute looking, but I couldn’t quite place his ethnicity, “Hi guys, I’m Seth and this is Rodney” I said. Neither responded. “What are your names?” I asked.
They both just sat there for a moment, the African American finally said with a scowl, “I’m Che” (he pronounced it as Chee). The other still didn’t speak so Che spoke for him, “He’s River.” By the name I was guessing maybe he was Native American.
“Where are you guys from?” I asked.
Again, silence. They exchanged glances and nods before River spoke for the first time, “Iowa.” That was about as much as we could pull from them.
“Did Sergeant McRoberts tell you who we are and why we’re here?”
“He said you were social workers or something” River responded suspiciously. I swear the kid couldn’t have been more than sixteen, but supposedly he had just turned eighteen.
“Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t need no help, we’re fine” Che said.
“You’re over 1,000 miles from home and living in a storage unit… which you just got kicked out of” Rodney said. “You might want to rethink that answer.”
“I don’t trust cops” Che growled at us with his arms folded.
“We’re not cops” I said, then gave them the spiel on The Village. The newbies always think we’re trying to scam them. I wanted to tell them they could trust us, but telling someone they could trust you rarely led to them trusting you… trust had to be earned. When we started talking about having open apartments, and connections for job placement, they started to listen. Man, they were hard to crack! It took a good hour before we learned anything about them. FINALLY, they were at ease enough to be a little more open and honest.
“I just turned 18 last month” River said. “We’ve been together since we were sixteen. My dad didn’t like me being gay, but he HATED me dating Che.”
“What didn’t he like about Che?” I asked innocently.
Che leaned over the metal table and held up his forearm in front of me, his fist was clenched. “He don’t like THAT” he snarled. “He don’t like that I’m a N…. that I’m black” He said with anger and distain in his voice. “When I turned 18, his dad put me up against a wall with his hand around my neck, and said I was an adult now and River was a minor and if he saw us together again, he’d have my black ass thrown in jail for statutory rape.”
“We live out in a small town out in the country” River said.
“Yeah, in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere” Che interrupted as he slouched in the chair.
“He took my phone away so I couldn’t call or text Che. He dropped me off and picked me up from school to make sure I wasn’t seeing him.” River said.
“And he told all our teachers and the principal to keep an eye on us and make sure we weren’t hangin’ out at school” Che chimed in, “His dad’s a big deal back there and people are afraid of him. But I aint.” Che was angry and guarded.
“What about your parents, Che?” I asked.
He just shrugged, “My mom took off when I was just a kid and my Gram raised me, she died a coupla’ years ago… and my dad… he don’t give a shit.” He held up his phone, “I been gone three weeks and he aint even tried to text. Probably don’t even realize I’m gone.”
“So, how did you end up at the beach?” I asked. “You’re a long way from home.”
“Well, that was the plan” Che said, “Get as far away from that shithole as possible.”
“Che found a guy online that said he’d give us work on a fishing boat so we came here” River said.
“What about school?” I asked.
“Fuck school” Che said. River shot him a look.
“We couldn’t be ourselves there, so we just stopped going and came here to work on the boat” River said. He was definitely the more reasonable of the two.
“But the guy was fulla crap” Che chimed in again. “We only got like three days’ work since we got here, it aint enough to feed us both, and he aint even paid us yet.”
“We used up all the money we had; We can’t even drive the car because it’s out of gas” River said.
“We’re eatin’ Ramen Noodles and sleepin’ in the storage unit. Well, we WERE sleepin’ in the storage unit” Che chimed in.
“You have a car?” Rodney asked picking up on Che’s comment.
“How ya’ think we got to North Carolina dumbass?” Che growled. Che was not happy that he had to waste his time talking to us. He was a tough little know-it-all punk who hated authority… any kind of authority, and just wanted to get out of there and move on. Frankly, he was kind of an ass, but I’m guessing being gay and black in rural Iowa he’d probably been through a lot of crap… but still.
We talked to the guys for quite a while, well, we talked to River while Che scowled at us. We finally convinced them to let us help. We decided to let them share an apartment in Harrington House (a first for us, we never had a couple sharing and apartment on the second floor before). Sergeant McRoberts released the couple and Rodney and I drove them back to the storage facility to get their car, we stopped along the way to get a gas can and a gallon of gas to get their car running again. We got to the Storage place and found their car in the parking lot; it was nicer than expected; a Corolla that was about 5 or 6 years old and in decent condition. Che told us his grandmother had left it to him when she passed a couple of years ago. Rodney and Che put gas in the car while me and River went to gather their stuff only to find that the management had put a padlock on their unit. We went over to the office to talk to the manager. It took some convincing, but we got her to let us in to get their stuff out. She refused to return their deposit and warned that if she saw either boy near the place again, she’d have them arrested for trespassing. She was being a bitch, but I could hardly blame her. Anyway, we got the unit opened, the guys brought the Corolla around and we loaded up their bags, a few boxes of food and miscellaneous junk, and left the storage facility behind to make our way to Harrington House.
It took some convincing, but Che agreed let Rodney ride with him and River ride with me… they did NOT want to split up. I had a good conversation with River in the car, the more we talked, the clearer it became that running away was Che’s idea, not his, but he went along with it because he wanted to be with him and he feared his father. I finally just came out and asked what was on my mind, “Does he treat you good.”
“Absolutely!” River responded without any hesitation. “I know he comes off angry and mean, but he’s a good guy and loves me… he’s just pissed at my dad and hates that place. My dad even had him pulled over and harassed one day, the cop said if he ever saw him around me, he’d throw his ass in jail. We’ve been sneaking around ever since he turned 18, and he just wanted to get out. He’s an awesome guy and I love him.”
“What about you? Did you want to get out too, or did you just follow him?” I asked. Che was the dominant one, and I still wasn’t convinced that he didn’t push River into something he wasn’t ready for.
“I wanted out too. I hate my dad” he said with a venom I hadn’t heard from him until then. “Seth, he’s evil!” I was surprised to hear him describe his father like that. “But I could’ve waited until graduation. Everybody back home is afraid of him, he’s high up in the tribe, and into some shady stuff, I don’t know what… but it was scary living there” he said confirming my suspicion that he was Native American. “There’s no reservation there, but the casino is a big deal to the small town, and the local politicians are all crooked and on the take. My dad has them all wrapped around his finger. We’ve been gone three weeks; I can’t believe he hasn’t found us and dragged us back yet.” He went on to tell me stories of his home life… they weren’t happy and his mother sounded just as bad as his dad, almost like a mob wife. He was the youngest of three kids, the other two took off when they turned eighteen too… it was like a family tradition to get the hell away from mom and dad when you hit 18. “They went after my sister when she left and dragged her back home but she just ran away again. When my brother left, he just let him go. I haven’t heard from either of them in a couple years.” As a Psychologist, we have a technical term for this type of family dynamic; ‘Fucked Up.’ No wonder this kid ran away.
We finally got to Harrington House and the four of us sat in the therapy room and talked through the plan. Since these guys had nowhere to go and I didn’t have any sponsors at the ready, we decided to let them stay in Asher’s old apartment. We went through the rules and made them understand that the goal was to get them on their feet and help them be independent. They agreed to let us help, River seemed relieved to have the help, Che clearly still didn’t trust us.
River’s Perspective
It had been a heck of a month; I turned 18 three weeks ago and everything changed. I’m Native American and I grew up in a small town in Iowa where my dad is a big deal in the tribe, although I don’t really know why. He owns a huge production farm, employs a lot of locals, and has his fingers in local politics. He’s connected to every politician and authority figure in the town and in the tribe, everyone respects him. Che says that’s BS, that no one respects him, they all just fear him and he’s caught up in a lot of shady crap. I asked him about it once and he just said, his business was none of my business or anyone else’s. Anyway, I came out when I was about 15, not that I needed to, it was obvious. I grew up on a farm around a bunch of big, beefy, muscle men who worked the earth… I was just the little runt son of the boss. A skinny little “Indian fag.” The biggest thing in our town was high school football… the only thing that interested me about that was the locker room after the game (and I can tell you, I was NOT welcome in there). My parents didn’t like that I was gay, but they accepted it, however, when I brought Che home… THAT they didn’t accept. Che says it’s because he’s black, I say it’s because seeing me with a boyfriend made it real. They HATED me being around him, and when he turned 18 my dad threatened him and told him if he came around he’d have him thrown in jail for messing around with a minor. He took away my phone, my computer, any way I had of communicating with Che. He had all the cops, teachers, school faculty, pretty much anybody in town keeping an eye on us and reporting back to him to make sure we weren’t together. He even had a cop friend of his pull Che over one night to scare him. We were able to steal the occasional moment, in study hall, or gym class. We passed notes in the hallway, etc. Then when I turned 18, we got the heck outta there. I packed my backpack, took all the cash I saved up, then walked to the end of our road where Che was waiting in his car. We came to North Carolina because we thought we had jobs lined up, but it didn’t work out. We ran out of money, and we used our last couple of bucks to rent a storage unit. We were living in it until this morning when the manager figured it out. She called the cops; they hauled us in. I did my best to cooperate, but of course Che them all the way, calling them pigs (among other things), pissing them off, and causing more trouble. So, they took us in.
Since the storage place didn’t press charges, the cops had no real reason to hold us, but the officer was kind of nice and wanted to make sure we had a place to stay before he released us. Me and Che had stayed at a homeless shelter one night and it was freaking awful! Some guy picked a fight with us when he realized we were a gay couple, another guy tried to get into bed with me… it was scary as shit! We left in the middle of the night and we weren’t going to do it again. So, the officer brought these two guys in, Seth and Rodney, from some local charity that helps young gay guys find housing, jobs, and stuff like that. They seemed legit, and I was glad someone wanted to help us because we were goin’ nowhere on our own, but Che didn’t trust them for shit (but it’s not like he trusted anybody). They spent over an hour with us and Che finally agreed to go with them just to shut them up and get us out of the police station. They got us some gas so we could get Che’s car started, Seth talked the manager of the storage place into giving us our stuff back, then they took us back to their office, got us to sign off on helping us, and told us the rules. They promised to help us find jobs, and they set us up in an apartment on the second floor. It was a cute little studio apartment with everything we needed, frankly it was the nicest place we had stayed since we left home. They even gave us a pre-paid Visa that had a hundred bucks on it so we could get something to eat. It was early evening when they finally left us alone in the apartment… our apartment. We promised to go down to the office at 8:30AM to start the job hunt.
The first thing I did was take our clothes down to the basement and throw them in the washer. They stunk like shit. Neither of us had cleaned our clothes since we left home, and we hadn’t showered in days… we even stopped having sex because we were so gross. I tried to blow Che a couple of nights before but the smell made me gag. Let’s just say we ran away for a better life… and we weren’t exactly there yet.
When I got back from the basement, Che was standing in the middle of the apartment… naked. “There’s soap and shampoo in the bathroom, let’s take a shower” he said with a grin. He hadn’t grinned in a couple of days.
“Hell yes” I said and then we both ran… literally ran to the tiny bathroom, turned on the showerhead and stepped into the tub. The warm water felt so good as it rained down on us. I seriously was never so happy to take a shower in my entire life. Che soaped up my back with body gel, then he moved behind me, hooked his arms under my pits and pulled me against him. His warm, wet, soapy skin felt good against my back. I felt his big, black, uncut cock push against my crack. We hadn’t had sex in a couple of days (because of the whole smelling gross thing) and we were both so horned up. I didn’t have a lot of experience, and since my dad monitored all my screens before he took them away, I hadn’t watched all that much porn… but Che’s dick was huge! I saw other guys in the locker room at school, and Che was longer and fatter than all of ‘em. He was longer and fatter than me, that’s for sure.
He kissed my neck as he soaped up my hole with his thick finger. I could feel it move in, out, and all around. Damn it felt so good and my cock got hard as a rock just from his finger. He reached around and stroked me, it felt so fucking good and had my full attention… that was until his plum sized cockhead pushed against my tight, neglected hole. I grunted and pushed out as he pushed his way inside, damn, he stretched my hole and filled me completely. I swear if he was a centimeter longer or wider, he would’ve ripped me in two, but I loved it. I loved feeling full of Che. “Damn, you’re so tight” he whispered in my ear as he slowly sawed in and out of me. It always hurt at first, but after he pumped in and out a few times it sent me to a place I could never get to any other way. That big slab of dark flesh hit every nerve inside of me and I had what I think is an anal orgasm. I mean, it’s not like I shot cum out of my ass or anything weird like that, but the sensation was amazing and made my whole body convulse, my hole was taken over by ecstasy. Che was hitting my prostate over and over until the pleasure became so intense that I shot my load against the wall. I hadn’t cum in days and I released like an entire quart of boy juice, I swear! When I shot my load, my hole clamped down even tighter on Che’s Iowa black snake making him moan with pleasure. “I’m gonna shoot right up your tight, redbrown ass” (that’s what he called my skin tone: redbrown). He growled into my ear as his low hangers slapped against me. He filled my hole with his warm goo and kept fucking in and out of me. My knees grew weak and I did my damnedest to stay standing while he did.
Che kept going a little while after he came, he pulled me tight against him again and we just stood there under the warm water with his big dick inside me. When he pulled his monster out of me, he spun me around and we kissed. Then, we finished cleaning ourselves up and dried ourselves off. I pulled on the only clean clothes I had, then went down to the basement to get our laundry. After I got back to the apartment we got dressed in the freshly washed clothes and went out to find some food. We used the Visa to put another ten bucks of gas into the tank, bought some groceries at Harris Teeter, then finally hit a McDonald’s drive through before going back to the apartment.
We sat at the little kitchen table and talked about everything that had happened to us that day. We had already used over half of the money on the Visa card. “We better hang on to the rest of it, who knows when we’ll get jobs.” I said.
“Never” Che said, he never believed anyone was on our side. “They aint gonna get us jobs, they’re full of shit like everybody else. You just better hope they don’t call your dad.”
“Seth swore they wouldn’t” I said. “Che, wake the fuck up. These guys are trying to help us… why do you think everyone is out to get us?” That was the toughest I had ever spoken to Che.
“Because they are… your dad, my dad, the whole damn state of Iowa as far as I can tell” he said as he ate his fries.
“But we’re not in Iowa, I trust these guys. Give them a chance.”
“We could leave tonight” Che said. “I saw a stack of those Visa cards in Seth’s desk, it wouldn’t take shit to break into that office, grab the cards and hit the road. We’d be long gone before they even knew.”
Che was definitely the dominant one, but I finally put my foot down. “No. These guys were nice to us… in fact they’re the only fucking people who have ever been nice to us. We’re stayin’ and at 8:30 tomorrow morning we’re going downstairs to that office and gonna try and get jobs” I said, then added, “Got it?!”
Che looked at me in disbelief, then he smiled at me. He had a beautiful smile, he truly was beautiful with mocha skin, slight, chiseled features, and of course… that smile. I did fucking love him but I wished he could just be happy more. “Wow. You’re a bad ass” he said with a laugh as he gave in. “Fine, we’ll stay tonight, meet with them in the morning, and see what they have to say. But I aint promisin’ to stay.”
That night we got into the bed naked and slid between the clean sheets where Che spooned me to sleep. The next morning, we met with Seth and Rodney and they found us both jobs at the candle factory across the street. We started immediately.
I finally saw light at the end of the tunnel.
To be continued…
