Meathead and Loser

Gravel

We were on the road again, slowly moving through Nebraska. The last few days might have been perfect, but that worried me even more. At least when we were struggling, I could clearly see our problems. When things were good, I could only hope they'd stay that way.

Sadly, I assumed it was only a matter of time before something came up.

Nick was quiet for a long while before suddenly he asked, "So you like the way my feet smell?"

It caught me off guard, but I laughed. Of all the things he might have had on his mind, it was cute he was still fixating on my weird attractions to him.

"That's what you're thinking about?" I asked, grinning from ear to ear.

As usual, he was in the back seat, treating it like his bedroom while I did all the driving. That's how things worked. The back seat was his, the front seat was mine, and if we ever crossed into one another's territory, it probably led to sex.

Nick complained a lot about our making a bunch of stops, but he never turned away from a quick fuck on the side of the road.

"It's not just your feet. It's all of you. I can't explain it. Whatever you shower with or how much you sweat, it's always there," I explained.

By then, we could talk about anything. It wasn't like either of us had much of a filter before we started dating. After we got together, it was a steady roll down a hill of shamelessness. In a way, it was comforting to know I could say whatever was in my head. Nick was too weird to ever freak out. And maybe I was so desperate to make things work, he could have told me anything, and I would have shrugged it off.

Maybe I wasn't desperate. I authentically loved Nick, and I didn't want to fuck things up.

"What do I smell like?" He asked.

"Like comic books and soda. Or sweat and pineapples. No, I got it. You smell like a loser," I joked.

"Dick," he laughed.

Nebraska was beautiful. It honestly was, but after days of driving and driving and driving, I was mentally exhausted. The road was an endless blur. I had to pull over. In any case, we were in the middle of nowhere, which was never a safe place to stop, regardless of how nice the scenery was.

"Want to drive?" I asked as I took off my seat belt to turn and look into the back seat.

"Your car?" Nick asked as if I spoke in another language.

"Yeah, it's our car now," I said.

"If we keep saying stuff like that, people might think we're married."

He was deflecting for some reason, but I went with it, saying, "maybe we should be."

The look on his face. It was just us, so there was nowhere else for him to turn.

"Did you just casually propose to me?" He asked.

"No, I was just suggesting...," I started.

"Proposing, you were proposing," he interrupted.

I started pulling him into the front with me, but rather than have him sit in the passenger seat, I held him in my lap.

"Would that be so bad?" I said, running a hand under his shirt, feeling at his chest.

"Being married to a Meat Head?" He joked.

It killed the mood so swiftly; I had to push him into the passenger seat.

"Don't call me that," I said.

"Why?"

"Because it's what they called me. Didn't you hate it when people called you a loser or a fag?" I argued.

I might have been barking at him.

"No one has ever called me a fag...not to my face," Nick said.

"People always called you a fag. I heard it all the time," I confessed.

"Do I look like one?"

"No, not right now, not most of the time."

"Then when do I?" He asked.

I took a breath before yelling again and tried to deescalate.

"When I have my tongue down your throat, or you have me bent over," I said with a straight face.

He didn't say anything, but when he started to smile again, I knew we avoided something that could have been bigger. Names were titles, and I didn't want to be a Meat Head. I'm not sure how I felt about being a fag either, but at least a fag had someone to love.

"Do you want to drive?" I repeated.

"I can't. No license," Nick explained.

"I don't care."

"Ok, I don't want to drive," he confessed, which confused me until I remembered how his parents died.

I knew Nick didn't have a license, but I didn't know he was avoiding it. He was about to go back to the back seat, but I caught his hand before he could.

"Stay up here for a little, and give me something other than the road to look at," I said.