Left Turn

((Woah.. I think that must be a record. One review. Ack! Did I totally screw it up last chapter? Let me know so I can fix it, ne?

And Haywire, as always dear.. you're amazing support makes writing completely worthwhile. Thank you soo, soo much! I'm glad you enjoyed that little piece about Jack in the shower. *w*

Just going for a spin after that wicked... ))

Left Turn

"I can't believe I let you guys drag me into this," Chance stared around him through the hemmed in bodies that all but cut his sight off. "And did anyone stop to think that I might want to see?" he asked, laughing.

Looking up, he met Leon's eyes and the tall boy snickered, patting his head. "It's not our fault your a shrimp," he said, trying to be placating.

Trace grabbed Chance's shoulder. "Shit, there she is. Oh shit, you guys.." hissing in horror as the six foot five boy tried to become five foot five, "Hide me!"

"You are so strange," Chance grinned.

"Guys," Sean looked behind him with a smirk, "I think I might have to go and say hi to her, huh?"

"You do, you die, Sean!" Trace gulped.

"What is so bad about this girl? I mean, you're talking about this for weeks, Trace. We get here and now you're hiding with the hobbit," Leon looked down.

"Hey!" Chance fake snarled. "I'm nothing so sweet as a hobbit."

"Nah, Chance is more like a baby Smaug or something," Warren added unintelligently. Snickers followed his statement and he blushed.

"Seriously though, a strip club? It wouldn't be so bad, except I have to walk home and..." Chance closed his mouth before he could finish the statement, hoping no one would catch it. Unfortunately for him, Trace, staring at his face and the flush there, opened his eyes in horror and gagged.

"That is foul, Hobbit," he admonished. "Really foul."

"I didn't say it," Chance protested.

"Say what?" Mike hadn't been listening.

"Can we just go in now?" Sean was watching the door with an excited expression. How he could manage it, Chance couldn't say. The boy who he now considered one of his best friends managed to go from a foul exam, to a chipper talk on the phone with Neil, to an overly aggressive basketball match where he'd bloodied Warren's nose, to pure lust. He seemed to walk the world with his emotions on his sleeve, just waiting for anyone to come along and pull on the bell and make one or the other of them go off. And somehow, he managed to remain sane through it all.

Leon had his theories. He talked them over in front of the gang of boys, discussing Sean until the pair of them got into a tussling match, usually with Sean winning. He said it was as if Sean just wore everything so close and burned through his emotions so he never had to do anything but live in the present.

Chance wasn't so sure. And he tried not to think about it too much. He wanted to make sure his relationship with Sean remained platonic. Even if Sean had been gay, or bi, or in any way interested in the opposite sex, he wouldn't be into someone like Chance. Guys like Sean.. like Jack Ivenson weren't interested in boring little guys like Chance, unless it was for a listening ear or a quick roll in the hay.

The quick roll in the hay had been something of a surprise, he had to admit. But the listening ear he'd been aware of for years.

Sitting in the strip club with fake ID's and beers before them all, Chance couldn't help but wonder what he looked like to the rest of the world. Five boys, all taller than six two, encircling him, obviously college students, and then little Chance. Maybe one of them had a baby brother, he could imagine someone asking someone else.

"You have quite an entourage," the voice interrupted his thoughts as he stood at the mirror in the bathroom of the strip club, staring at his reflection and wondering if some cool water would cool his face down. He couldn't remember seeing so much skin ever. And things were so... so... indecent! It made him think of Jack. It made him imagine things with Jack. It made things... uncomfortable.

He turned and gazed at the older boy, obviously legal, who turned from the urinals, zipping up his pants. He smirked. "Not that they're your entourage or anything. But it's a good opening line, don't you think?"

Chance couldn't think of what to say. The older boy was chocolate-sauce brown eyed, built in the way a nice soccer player is stocky in all of the right places, slender in all of the more tempting of places, and his smile was rather inviting.

"Kasey," the boy offered a nod as he turned on the sink and began to wash his hands carefully. "You seem like you would rather be anywhere but here, though. I mean, you're always looking somewhere else." He laughs. "I've never seen anyone look so much like a virgin."

"I'm not.." Chance blurted before he could stop himself.

"Oh?" The boy named Kasey lifted his brow and grinned. "Well, it was kind of a stupid thing to say. Sorry. I say things without thinking sometimes." He paused and then slowly, "You're not very interested in them. The girls, I mean."

Chance backed up slowly, uncertainty showing on his face.

Kasey raised his hands with a smile. "Sorry. Look. I'm not hitting on you or anything. Well, I mean I probably would be if you were gay. But I am not that desperate. I just see you on campus a lot. You and those guys out there are always together. It's almost impossible to bump into you properly."

Chance had managed two words in the entire conversation. For all the talking that the other boy was doing, he felt that he'd somehow completely flubbed his first encounter besides the one that Leigh had set up for him. Here, someone absolutely gorgeous, was hitting on him. Him! And he could do nothing more than just gape.

"Look," Kasey coughed, looking uncomfortable. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. Just... taking a chance is all, kay? Anyway... " and then as if he wasn't sure how to end a disastrous moment, he just shrugged himself out of the bathroom, leaving Chance, still searching for the right words to say.

Sean looked at him when he came back, watching how Chance cast about the place, worry on the slender boy's face. The athlete smiled and scooted over. "You okay?" he asked low.

Chance blushed hard, shrugging. "Sure, fine."

And he was. In a way he was just fine. Flattered, really. And feeling like a royal idiot. But then, what would he have done anyway? He was at a strip joint, a straight strip joint, with his friends, all five of whom were twice the size of him. Was he supposed to have caught a cab with Kasey? What would his friends have thought? Or maybe a quickie?

Something about that just seemed really really wrong.

The idea of having tried to do anything more than exchanging phone numbers with Kasey unsettled Chance. It wasn't so much that he couldn't day dream about a man as gorgeous as Kasey doing things to him, kissing him, petting him, even having sex with him. He was only nineteen after all. And newly that as well. It was more the fact that the idea of Kasey or anyone else for that matter, coming on to him, or more, in front of his friends, was a serious problem.

He just walk up to them all and announce that he was gay now, could he? Leon would smile all knowingly and nod. Sean might understand and want to talk about how Neil is feeling, what Neil could want from a straight friend, that kind of thing. But the other guys?

Sexuality wasn't something they talked about very often.

In fact, they hadn't talked about it at all. Sean discussed his problems with Neil's illness with Leon and Chance only. Trace was fairly straight laced. Warren was too stupid and Mike was too busy.

Christmas holiday slipped closer. Chance sent out gifts to Babs and the kids, Sean and the gang, and bought a few extras, sending some candies to Leigh and a letter as a final step. Babs sent him a couple of gay movies that she insisted he watch, cute and unnecessary, and Leigh sent him an envelope with a "do not open til Xmas" sticker on it.

He placed it in the stocking Sean forced him to put on his family's mantle before shuffling his friend off to bed and then snoring to fit the band.

Sean's family was nice. His mom and step dad seemed to take an instant liking of the smaller, polite boy. And Sean's older brother made sure to poke fun at him for being so small. He called Chance his elbow rack and bemoaned the loss of Neil who, he stated, was just a few inches taller and just the right height for him. This then, brought on jokes the entire family gently used to force food on him and while in any other instance it might have been annoying, Chance found it endearing. They all were open like Sean. You couldn't take anything they said too personally.

They'd even gotten him some presents he found when he woke on Christmas morning. It was a real to-do, apparently. The entire family, each bought one or more presents for one another. And then there were grandparents and dad and step mom who lived in Florida, step sisters down there as well and one real sister. It all turned out to be piles as Chance smiled and watched watches and ties and gag gifts like a box of oranges or a stuffed turtle coming free of wrapping. His family had never had a Christmas like this. It just wasn't his dad's way. If anything, his dad did everything in his power to make holidays miserable for anyone in his house.

He bent over his own small pile, pleased to open Babs' and find hand prints from the kids, "I love Uncle Chance" written in crayon under, letters backwards and a strange thing that his sister had said was a horse drawn underneath it. Each of the guys had gotten him something as well and he was almost overwhelmed with tears at the outpouring of generosity from the guys. Mike and Warren had gotten together and bought him a stereo with four CDs they knew he'd like. Leon had bought him a psychological book on changing his life which hopefully was a joke, and had added a gift certificate for a local clothing store to, as he put it, "get you into something that hasn't got so many fucking holes in it!" Trace, another of the poor, live on Ramen and hope you survive students, had scrimped obviously, and bought everyone coffee mugs. And Sean had bought him books, some music, and topped it off with a small pet frog in an aquarium.

Chance sat amidst his treasures, adding candies from the family and a quick, obviously spur of the moment gift from Chance's brother, "How to Grow Ten Inches" guide that made him laugh. He fiddled with the book Leon had given him and sighed. It was a good holiday.

"You forgot this, buddy," Sean sat down next to him in a fuzzy robe his mom had bought him, looking like an oversized and rather ugly lamb, holding out the brown envelope from Leigh.

"Hmm? Oh," Chance took the envelope and smiled. "Guess so."

The envelope rattled some and he opened it on one side, drawing out the card first and reading it, laughing at Leigh's pronouncement that he'd better thank her profusely for the gifts inside, as they had cost her an arm and a leg.

The cut out arm and leg attached to the watch chain made him grin. And the small white envelope inside made him frown then smile. "Pictures!" he beamed.

"From your trip?" Sean settled more comfortable, watching over Chance's shoulder as the stack was gone through. Every place, some with Chance standing in them, some with just artifacts he'd liked especially.

The pair of them sat back as tearing of wrapping paper continued, everyone else's gift piles far larger than Chance's, and Chance quietly told Sean about the different places. There was London, cities in Wales, Framlingham Castle, and others. Then hitting France, seeing Normandy, going east to Paris, the Louvre, L'Arc du Triomphe.

Then a small piece of paper.

This is the one, Chance baby. Take a breath and pin it above your bed, kay?

Chance closed his hand over it, fearing what it was already.

"C'mon Chance. Pin it over your bed?" Sean was laughing, reaching over. Chance felt the paper move and the photo come to light. He didn't have to look down. He knew what it was. He felt his face heat up, he wanted to stand up, move away, maybe even run.

Sean made a noise that was partly surprise, partly laughter. Chance looked over at the blonde boy who was staring at him curiously.

"Just my luck, huh?" Sean said softly. "You and Neil, damn. More alike than just quiet and good listeners." He smiled. "Am I a gay guy magnet or are the chances of finding a good friend who's sensitive just upping my chances?"

Chance dropped his gaze to the picture and ran a thumb over it. Jack, before the Louvre, his arm around Chance, both of them talking low, far enough away they couldn't have known that Leigh had caught them, but close enough to be able to see faces.

Chance shrugged, wondering why it was that suddenly the world had become an empty repository for words he'd never be able to say.

Sean dropped a large hand onto his back. "Hey," he said soothingly, "It's not like I've got a problem with it. You know how thins are with Neil. I'm not about to stop talking to a guy just cause he's interested in other guys. Just so long as it isn't me. And I can see pretty plainly it's not me." He tapped the photo held loosely in Chance's fingers. "Obviously, it's not me. So who is this.. erm... what do you say?"

Chance reddened further and shoved the photos together, chewing on his lower lip. "Just a friend... well, not even a friend. He was a year older than me."

"Seems like more than a friend," Sean said.

"No... he's someone who has forgotten completely about my existence." Chance dropped the photos into the envelope and closed it. "He is like a Warren. New face every two weeks, if that."

Sean gave a pained grin. "Sucks," he muttered quietly.

"Yeah," Chance smiled. "it does now."