Free The Boy Who Came in From the Cold by B. G. Thomas Page A

He was short and balding and spoke in an effeminate voice, and people were nice enough to his face but said mean things behind his back. Really mean things.
    “Cocksucker is what he is,” Todd’s stepfather would snarl. “He has no place running a place where kids go. Frigging fudge packer. Homos are all degenerates. Perverts. They like little boys. They kidnap them and they cut them.”
    “Cut them?” Todd had asked in shock, his eyes wide. His stepfather nodded. “They fuck little kids in the ass.” Todd had actually staggered back. “What?”
“And if their assholes are too tight, then those fags cut them to make them big enough.”
    The words had made Todd want to vomit. He thought of Mr. Tanson and just couldn’t imagine the man doing such a thing. Couldn’t imagine anyone doing anything like that. The very idea horrified him. Todd didn’t know whether to believe his stepfather or not, but it was months before he could look at the quiet little man without thinking about blood. The damage had been done.
    Running became a thing for Todd. Running let him get away from stuff. From a mom who remarried half a year after her husband died. From a stepfather who said horrible things.
    Today Todd ran from memories as well. He ran from homelessness and snow and boys who told him he should sell himself for money. He ran again from his stepfather and those hurtful hands. He ran from a mother that stood aside and only offered platitudes, and over time, a host of ugly words as well. What had happened? How had a sweet childhood turned so dark and horrible?
    Todd ran, and when Lady Gaga began to sing about being as free as her hair, he knew just what she was singing about. How he wanted to be left alone. To be able to be who he was, without small-town—or a stepfather’s—expectations. And in that moment, screaming pain in his side or not, he was free.
    He hurt. The pain felt good. He wasn’t nude under the sun in his clearing in the woods in Buckman, but he was nearly naked. And strangely turned on by the shirt, Gabe’s shirt, which was stuck to him by sweat, and by the scent that rose from it and mixed together as one with his own. Something told him that had he allowed himself to be with Gabe the night before, it would have been nothing like that night in Austin’s basement. Oh, no. It would be something altogether different.
He opened his eyes to belt out the final lyrics.
     
And that was when he saw Gabe, standing in the doorway staring at him.
G
ABE’S mouth dropped open. He’d come home for lunch, bringing
    sandwiches from Quiznos (terribly unhealthy prime rib sandwiches with tons of cheese and sautéed onions and peppercorn sauce), because after all, a growing boy needed to eat. Gabe had walked in the door and called out, but there hadn’t been an answer. His stomach dropped as he wondered if Todd had left. There was no smell of cooking chicken, and when he went into the kitchen, he found it thawing in the sink. Why hadn’t Todd put it in the Crock-Pot? Had Todd not been able to find it? Gabe turned to look for it, and sure enough, there it was. What the hell?
That’s when Gabe heard the singing. A young man’s voice. Todd. He was singing about being free as his hair. Lady Gaga.
    Gabe walked down the hall, calling out so as not to startle Todd. He followed the singing to his work-out room and froze when he got there. He rocked back, totally taken aback by what he saw: Todd, in nothing but black underwear and one of Gabe’s own T-shirts, soaked with sweat and running hell bent for leather, voice booming like a rock star. The wet clothes clung to the young man, an erection straining the front of his briefs, leaving little to the imagination. And while there was a certain desperation pouring off Todd that was almost alarming, Gabe found himself witness to one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen.
    Gabe knew he should back off—this time he really was being a voyeur—but he was paralyzed, unable to move.