Posted by Arion Neos on January 06, 19100 at 00:23:20:
This is a single section from a work in progress, _Friendly Exchange_, an SF story set about 100 years in the future. While not overtly about man/boy relations, there are elements of that in this story.
This section is an introduction of two characters in the story.
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V. Digging for Gold
Velcro parted at invasion from Shaine's finger; jersey fell open on smooth, mahogany sweat-glossed chest. Pulling lank black hair from band, shaking head, tossing thick raven locks loose to shoulders: "Hey, Jer?"
"What?"
Leaning on locker bank now, fiddling at tunic hem: "We . . . my Dad . . . is heading another dig at Valles Marineris. We're gonna be out there a week. You wanna come along? Best sight on the planet, the canyons at sunrise."
Jeremy paused in his disrobing: Bare flesh scalp to heel broken only by shorts; Shaine struggled, gave, looked: Bulb, peak, picked in tight ivory cloth under washboard midriff, arch of ribcage (gilled lats ridging); declivity of navel. Damn. Looked aside, awaiting death of groin's reaction. "A week? That's a long time for just a dig, isn't it?"
Shaine's coffee eyes locked by Jeremy's (delicate hollow of throat at collarbone, shadow pooled there like a kiss). "He thinks he may've found something really different this time; he's gonna supervise the dig."
Jeremy's hazel widened: "What'd he find?"
"If he knew we'd only be going a day or two. You can come along if you want. I told him you'd probably be interested."
Smile pulsing through him, liquid heat in his chest, fingers, toes, thighs (vertical pectoral cleft bracketed by squared risings peaked with ruddy aureolae). "All right. Sounds like it might be fun." Finishing stripping, turning lithe, muscles balleting against each other, into showers (slabbed chiseled buttocks, rippling quadriceps, somehow dainty ankles). Shaine tugging casually at tunic, shoes, sweats, shorts, taking his time; it was rude to show an erection in a locker room and he didn't want to be ribbed for it. A whole week! With Jeremy! Padding at last, mostly-flaccid, into billowing stall, Jerry grinning at him over partition; how much of Shaine had he guessed in the time they'd known each other? Impossible to judge: Jer was subtle (one of the million reasons he felt so powerfully for him).
"PM Control, Gold-digger, cleared for dustoff? Over."
"Roger, Gold-digger, dustoff go. All systems green. Over."
"Affirmative. Lifting now. Over." The heavy hopper's thruster pods sparked, thrummed power.
"Have a good flight, ya' '49'ers. Over." Chuckle in the cabin; Jer passing confused glance to Shaine. Pavonis Mons' hopper-pads leaped away, frightened, beneath as Shaine explained:
"California, 1849. Gold rush started by some miners. Course we're not digging for gold; but if we find anything good it could start another rush. The miners were called '49'ers." Jerry nodded. Shaine had had to put his mouth to the cup of Jeremy's ear to talk; lips still electric from contact now, nose itching where tow hair had tickled. Cramped into hopper: Pilot (Elijah, also known as Dad to Shaine); copilot/navigator; Shaine; Jeremy. The hold full: Pressure-tents, gravitic imagers, ground-SONAR, ground-RADAR, laser drills and diamond drills, more, other hoppers (three total) filled as well. Jostling each other, bumping each other; freight hoppers not the smoothest flyers, blocky, square, utilitarian; each rub of Jer's arm, shoulder, knee sweet agony in Shaine. They shared common interests: Swimming, cycling, chess, geology. The first three were how and why they began talking to each other; the last was why they were together in the hopper now. Native Martian, Shaine, seventeen [terrestrial] osmotically shared his father's passion for understanding planets, particularly this, his birthworld; also Martian, Jeremy was the same, though his father worked halfway across the globe, at Hellas Planitia, lifting freight in a David to the hulking ships coasting the rim of Mars' gravity well; his mother, divorced nine years from the man, an EDF star-boat navigator, was in The Deep now and Jer had the run of their quarters (normal for him). Making his own way he was more intelligent, introspective, genuine than most of his led-by-the-hand peers; at sixteen [terrestrial] he'd won Shaine's heart; he seemed to know it, all his actions showing amusement at Shaine's reactions to them; perhaps this was wrong. Shaine could not be objective. What Jeremy might have lacked (to some) in books he had twice over in intuition; he probably knew the second motivation in his being thought of for this expedition (both reasons equally obvious to his insightful, honey eyes) but Shaine knew not a meson of Jer's feelings for him, couldn't begin to guess. He was in love with beautiful Jeremy and wanted to find out somehow, this week, if the feeling was returned. They spent much free time together but had never formally dated, Jerry not the type to ask to a holo or concert; to a dig was another matter entirely.
His father turned to face them with a grin. "Shake'n'bake," he mouthed. They felt his intent momentarily; sunrays burst across the hopper's rattling cabin; temperature increasing with luminance; the copilot opening cooling ducts helped only slightly; freight-hoppers were not limos. Clack went their earbuds: "How you guys doing back there?"
"I'm doing okay, Dad." Heaven: next to Jeremy, bodies touching through insulated pressure-suit membrane.
"Getting kinda warm back here." Grin: What did that mean? Damn damn damn it.
"Little crowded, I know, but you could've gone in the other hopper; there was more room in it."
"Yeah, well, Shaine wanted to stick with you; I wanted to stick with him; I don't know the others, wouldn't know what the hell to say to them." Damn! More grin, meant only for him; things were getting warm; he had no idea where to go with it, if anywhere.
"Uh-huh, makes sense. Still, we got no room for whiners, Jer." Note of humor unmistakable; the man felt the role of surrogate father to the gypsylike boy behind him, accepted it without pause. Jerry laughed, liquid clear rippling sound even over the com. Warm sunlight in cabin, warm sunlight in Shaine; beginning to doze (they'd risen before dawn's gilding edge on the bowl of sky), Jeremy nodding too; Jer's head bounced off Ectomite port once, twice as sleep tried for him; eyeing Shaine, changing position, tipping head on his shoulder now, instantly rendering nap impossible for his makeshift pillow's owner, Shaine hopeless in surge after surge within, Jerry sleeping on in peace, hair color of the sunlit horizon, radiant, resting against him: content, both, in different ways. Mouthing the words to him voiceless: I love you, Jeremy Langlois.
Jolting awake again, pods raising skirling russet sand, sticks compressing into hydraulics as their descent ended with semi-gentle contact on the smooth windswept expanse of the basin of the longest, widest canyon in the Solar System, looking around, up at Shaine, then sitting up, smiling. "I guess we're here, huh?" His companion nodding, reaching under the bench for his helmet, passing Jerry's to him when he straightened:
"Seal up now; we've got some setup to do, Jerry." They checked each other's pressure-suits; nodded at confirmation of seal integrity. "We're set, Dad."
"Here goes, then." Hiss tapering off from shriek as pressure inside dropped to Mars's level, suits ballooning slightly, helmet-seal creaking (normal; unnerving nevertheless), hopper canopy motoring smoothly open now as dust sifted about the ship, the other two craft in close harmony with their actions. Slight chill penetrated at their fingers, boots.
Unloading bulky machinery, made less difficult by the lower gravity of Mars; still the objects retained their inertia; they had to coax the equipment into place rather than simply lift and toss it; overexerting would result in too much motion in the wrong direction. They'd all done this before and were sure, skilled, deft. Pressure-tents domed on the soil now; banks of equipment hummed to life in one, sound reaching them tinnily through rarefied air. Elijah DiCippio sat at his scanners, VRing h imself into Mars's stygian depths, support team members maintaining connection, monitoring equipment: AIs were too expensive, heavy and impractical for short-hop field geology. Shaine gestured his friend into their pressure-tent. No sense waiting this out in fishbowls.
Inside, unsealed, they sat hunched together, shoulders touching, as Shaine showed Jeremy the pseudopape hardcopy of the data which had let his father -- them -- to this site. "An imageSat got this reading of this part of the canyons a few weeks ago; a second pass confirmed it." Gravitic imaging of Mars's composition had revealed an anomaly: Fuzzy region which returned echoes, quite possibly a massive, hollow space below the ravines named after the sat's earliest ancestor, the machine which had sent the first thrilling photographs of the valleys to breathless Earth scientists in the 1960's (part of Martian history both boys knew as catechism). "We don't know if they're water-carved or anything else; they look a hell of a lot like caves, though." Jeremy scanned the papes, nodded:
"Uh-huh. This is incredible. You'd need lotsa geological activity of some kind for a system like this. Water, maybe, ice, or lava?" Quiet a moment, contemplating meanings, collating possibilities. Eyes glinted up. "Thanks for . . . well, for asking me along on this. This could be really huge." Every geological discovery here increased knowledge of Mars's history; this system of underground caverns was not a minor find even by those standards. Shaine smiled:
"Well, I kinda figured you'd wanna be along on this. I wanted to share it with . . . well, with someone who'd really understand what it meant. You." Native love of native world showed in his eyes, reflected clear in the face of his friend.
Warm now; chill of Mars's atmosphere supplanted, they continued poring over the data printouts.
=== there is one to follow ===