They had selected a development of McMansions on arbitrary twisting streets because it was quiet, well-lit, and the audiences were plentiful and generally appreciative of their harmonious endeavors. One of the last houses of the night was a long icicle-lit colonial at the bottom of a cul de sac.

The moment the doorbell rang, barks of a large dog came pealing through the front door. A few of them chittered anxiously as they hummed their opening pitch in anticipation of the door opening and a possible resultant canine attack. When it did swing open, sparkly wreath swinging, voices lifting, a young couple peered out. Smiling at the quaint nostalgia of Christmas caroling, the man squatted down to retain the beast, whose tail thumped and nails skittered across the tiles as he strained to greet visitors.

Brandon’s friends glanced at each other and smiled through their song, clearly enchanted by the dog, who turned out to seem loving rather than menacing. Brandon, however, had his eyes on the young man. Brown hair, brown eyes, shadowy stubble, and a baseball cap, he had his arms around the dog and whispered in its ear. Brandon noticed the man’s half-tied Jordans, as though he had hurriedly put them on when the doorbell rang. He noticed the lazy way in which the sneakers hung open, and the way in which the dog’s leash, which he had dropped to hold on to the dog’s collar instead, lay across his shoe, the nylon strap settling into the gap between the tongue and loose collar.

Neither aware of what a fetish was, nor fully aware that he was even gay, Brandon fantasized about that scene later that night. He came, imagining the dog launching out the front door from the man’s arms, the leash dragging through that gap in the Jordan, the hand loop catching the tongue and pulling it down as it flew by.

---

“I need your design expertise,” Anthony explained on the phone. Brandon’s interest was piqued.

“Oh yeah? What kind of design?” He organized the rings of fabric swatches on the counter in front of him imagining getting his hands on Anthony’s downstairs. Or even better, a storage area designed specifically for his shoes.

“Halloween decorations.”

Brandon paused in his task, a swatch swinging in the air from his suspended hand. “Halloween decorations?” His voice was so flat it was more of a statement than a question.

“Now come on, don’t be snobby.” Anthony teased. Brandon could hear the smile in his voice, and he wished he could see it.

“No, no. I’m not being snobby,” he explained pushing the swatches to the side and playing with the corner of a binder of lighting products in front of him. “I’m just surprised is all. I didn’t figure you to be the type.” But then, Brandon seemed to be getting a lot of things wrong when it came to Anthony lately.

“Well it’s not like I have a crazy thing for the holiday or anything, it’s just that the kids in our area don’t have a lot of trick-or-treating options. So I try to…make an effort.”

Brandon raised his eyebrow. “What exactly do you need me to do?” He asked suspiciously. A chuckle came through the phone, and Brandon’s heart flipped. He rolled his eyes. Anthony’s effect on his was clearly getting worse. Well, stronger, he mentally corrected himself.

“Just to figure out where stuff should go. It’s not like I need you designing anything for me.”

“I see. So you don’t actually need a designer at all. You need someone to do grunt work,” Brandon said, seeing the light.

“Exactly.”

---

Brandon slammed the car door and looked around. It was a cool, overcast day. Mist was pressing in from above, and in spite of the fact that many of the leaves had barely started to turn, it felt bleak. Anthony’s Camry sat in the driveway, windshield gathering the chilly droplets. But the Jeep was nowhere to be found.

Brandon crunched along the gravel drive to the back of the house and peered in through the covered porch. The kitchen was dark. Pulling out his phone, he texted Anthony about his whereabouts. Within a minute, the phone buzzed with a reply that he was return posting a camera stand and it was taking longer than he thought. He would be home in twenty, and Brandon could check out the stuff he had already pulled out in the garage.

Brandon stepped in, the familiar scent of the garage filling his nostrils. The fluorescent lights were buzzing overhead today, and the cluttered scene was bathed in a flickering blue-white light. He had never seen the extent of the chaos so clearly before. Brandon picked through a few small hay bales, strings of orange led lights, and a few limp bedsheets that had been stuffed with newspaper to look like ghosts. It was the standard solution to Halloween, and certainly having nothing to with design.

Since Brandon’s survey of the project had taken approximately three of the twenty minutes, he glanced around to figure out what would take up the other seventeen. His eyes fell on the cluster of abandoned shoes. The Wolverines, the mystery cleats, and the Adidas Tubulars were right where he had left them. The Tubulars were actually slightly cleaner than they had originally been, much of the hard mud having flaked off in their romp in the yard a few weeks prior. Brandon briefly considered donning them, plugging in the weed eater, and replaying the entire episode from that day, but that lacked points for creativity, and would be rather hard to explain if Anthony were to pull in and hear the weed whacker revving in the garage.

The more he stared at the red suede high-tops, the more he really just wanted to have his cock in them. To experience them in the same way that he had Anthony’s Vans slip-ons, which still made Brandon tingle with anticipation every time he knew he would see Anthony, hoping to catch them on his feet again. So far, they had not made a second appearance. The Tubulars didn’t have exactly the same magnetism, not having just been worn by Anthony just moments before or still retaining his heat. But at some point, these shoes had been filled with his luscious sock-clad feet, and that was sexy enough for Brandon.

He knelt on the floor and put his hand inside the roomy shoe, the familiar caress of the felted inner padding against his wrist. Unzipping his jeans, he pressed the sole of the shoe against his cock, already pushing against his underwear to meet it. He leaned against the shelf behind him, which creaked and swayed momentarily, and closed his eyes, imagining Anthony’s foot inside the shoe, and Anthony, standing above him, watching him with the same intensity that he watched his boots when he recorded them plunging into the mud. Brandon squirmed, and began to drive the shoe into his groin as Anthony depressed his foot, winking at Brandon the way he always did.

Release began to surge from his depths, his heart racing and breath quickening. He started to fumble with his underwear, which was surprisingly dry to this point. Brandon had raced through this fantasy so quickly that barely a drop had oozed. Eyes still closed, he tipped the high-top up, his still cock now resting inside the collar at the heel. God, the padding felt fucking amazing on his shaft. In his mind’s eye, Anthony lifted his foot, twisted it slightly, and let Brandon’s cock rub along the collar of the sneaker, his precum smearing on his sock. “How’s that?” he asked in a half smile.

The sensations on his dick and the movie in his mind perfectly aligned, Brandon came. It was thick and white, and Brandon could feel it surging through the urethra as it rushed into the waiting shoe. When the last had pulsed out, and Brandon’s breathing slowed, the pulled the Tubular away. A thick deposit had coated the inside wall of the high-top and as he returned it to its position on the garage floor, he watched in satisfaction as it slowly rolled down the steep, scarlet valley toward the insole.

Brandon’s heart rate had returned to normal and his cock had returned to his pants when Anthony’s Jeep crackled into the driveway. There came the trademarked screech of the driver door, and shortly after Anthony appeared in the garage doorway.

“Hey, bro!” he exclaimed as though he hadn’t expected to see him. Clapping him on the back, he gestured to the jumble of spooky paraphernalia that littered the floor. “So? What do you think?”

Brandon thought that Anthony looked sexy today, although it was hardly a novel thought. A backwards black baseball cap with a tuft of his hair poking out the front, an old Notre Dame sweatshirt, and relaxed worn jeans with several curious holes and rips. The holes didn’t look intentional, but as the result of hard wear. Still, they were clean and terminated in ragged, shredded hems dangling over the gray Crocs, which Brandon had a new respect for. He also noticed the bright white gleam of fresh white socks showing through the holes of the rubber clogs. Anthony must buy them in bulk, he silently mused.

“Looks like you’ve done this a few times before,” Brandon responded. Anthony threw back his head and laughed.

“How very diplomatic of you!” he choked. “That was perfect. Said like a professional designer staring at a terrible design.”

“Design?” Brandon quipped. “I don’t see one of those here, good or bad!”

Anthony feigned hurt with widened eyes. “Now come on! Look at this great stuff—we’ve got hay bales, witches, ghosts…” he indicated various parts of the mess.

Brandon stepped around a hay bale and poked into a box of plastic tombstones. “Witches?”

“Yeah,” Anthony verified. “There’s a big blow up witch in here somewhere. You know…those lighting up lawn ornaments?”

Brandon scanned the mess again. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I just don’t see one. Aren’t they pretty big? Is it in a box or what?” Anthony hopped over a pile of bedsheet ghosts and started to peer around himself.

“Huh,” he said, raised eyebrows. “I keep it in it’s box, but where…” he stepped back, his left Croc striking a string of candy corn lights, which scratched across the cement floor. Anthony gazed up toward the ceiling. Brandon followed his stare to the loft.

The garage had a loft that ran front to back along one-side of the tall structure. The part that was visible was a sea of packed boxes that stretched from wall to wall and reached most of the way to the ceiling, which sloped down to a knee wall at the back, now completely obscured by the accumulation of clutter.

Brandon whistled low, and Anthony shot him a mock irritated glare. “What? It’s stuff from my grandma’s house. When we cleaned it out it all ended up here. It’s a mess, but it sure beats paying monthly rent on storage.”

“You could go through it and get rid of it,” Brandon suggested. “Am I to suppose the inflatable witch is up there somewhere?” Anthony sighed.

“It’s got to be,” he thought out loud. The loft was accessible by a wood ladder that seemed to have dated back to the turn of the century. It was a deep weathered gray and decorated with an endless of array of colored paint spatters. Anthony headed to the ladder and put his Croc on the lowest rung. The rubber shoe creaked against the narrow band of wood, Anthony’s white cotton covered heel drooping precariously toward the floor as the sole bent under his weight. “Hmm,” he exhaled, stepping back to the floor. “Safety first. Crocs and ladders probably don’t mix.”

Anthony glanced around when what should appear in his field of vision but none other than a pair of red Adidas Tubular. “Ah, perfect.” Anthony marched over to the shoes, and Brandon’s heart started to hammer in his throat. Exactly how fresh, and how visible was his cum? His mind raced. He was torn over trying to distract him with another shoe or offer to ascend that ladder for him, and letting Anthony’s foot find the creamy surprise inside the right high-top. He opted for the latter, rather than the ladder.

Anthony lifted the right sneaker and brought it nearly to eye level. Brandon stopped breathing. “I had completely forgotten that these were even here,” he marveled at them. He brushed the thick, textured lace strap with his hand before returning it to the floor. He slipped this white socked foot from his Croc and pointed the foot into the sneaker. Brandon had not bothered to untie them when he had worn them, Anthony’s shoe size being so much larger than his own. He had been able to slip his feet in and out of them with ease.

But Anthony struggled. The collar crushed beneath his sock and the shoe crunched in protest. He mashed his heel right, then left as Brandon stared, wondering if he had just seen the glob of gluey semen latch on to the side of his Achilles’ tendon. He glanced at Anthony to see if he was noticing any sticky anomalies with the inside of the shoe, but Anthony had actually turned his gaze back to the loft, scanning for the decoration box as he continued to thrust his foot into the stubborn sneaker. Finally, the Invader relented and conformed to Anthony’s foot. The collar popped up to embrace his white stocking foot, and the perforated toe box expanded as Anthony filled it. By the time he had repeated the process for the left shoe, Brandon was surprised to find that he was already getting hard so soon after his recent expenditure.

“Okay, that’s better,” Anthony announced, satisfied that the red suede high-tops were the safety solution to his mounting the steep loft ladder. For as hot as the shoes had looked sitting abandoned on the garage floor, or on Brandon’s own feet, they looked ten times sexier on Anthony. He started his climb as Brandon approached the ladder, his shredded jeans hitching up and the socks and red shoes rising up before Brandon’s face. Brandon leaned in.

“I’ve got the ladder,” he called up, staring at the right Adidas as it came level with his eyes. Anthony looked down at him from under his arm.

“Thanks.” As he turned to take another step, he brushed his arm in front of his face and spat. “Agh. Damned cobwebs up here.” As Anthony paused to fight with the invisible strands that draped across his hat and face, Brandon stepped onto the bottom rung and brought his face just above Anthony’s right foot. This situation could not have been more perfect if he had planned it. When would he ever get another chance to see anyone, let along his hot-as-hell friend, wearing his jizz inside his shoe? Actually see it? Brandon’s eye came level with the tattered hem of Anthony’s jeans as they hung over the tops of the sneakers, but he was not deterred.

Delicately so not as to alert him, Brandon brushed the ropes of frayed denim aside and stared into the crevice between Anthony’s white sock and the cum soaked collar. Even without cum it would have been a lovely sight. The fuzzy scarlet material folded and puckered about the soft, dazzlingly white ankle. It was definitely a photo for the mental image bank. Brandon reached down and squeezed his cock, still a little weepy. And that’s when he saw it. Just where the collar kissed Anthony’s foot, a small shiny patch not quite as white as the cotton of his sock clung to it. Most of it was further down out of sight. Brandon desperately wanted to push his fingers down into the gap, to feel his cream as it latched to Anthony in the scarlet cave of the Invader, but he knew that was going a bit too far.

A second later, the moment was over. Anthony had dislodged the sticky cobweb from his face and resumed his ascent. Brandon gazed up at the bottom of the smooth soles as they bent over the rung. The loose straps waved out over the tops of Anthony’s feet at him.

Anthony paused at the top of the ladder, staring into the disorganized mess of the loft. Then he leaned back and looked off to the left. “Crap. I think it’s further down.”

Brandon looked in the direction of his stare, but not knowing what he was looking for, saw nothing of significance. Not compared to what lie directly overhead, at any rate. “Can you get to it?” he asked the soles of the sneakers.

“We’ll see,” Anthony replied, swinging his leg around the side of the ladder ladder and resting the high top on the narrow strip of loft floor that hung out from the under wall of boxes and over the rest of the garage.

“Maybe we should move the ladder?” Brandon called, thinking that he wouldn’t mind seeing Anthony repeat his ascent. Anthony was now pulling his right foot onto the precarious ledge.

“It’s fine. I’ve done this before.” Brandon started to climb as Anthony began his delicate shuffle along the boxes. By the time Brandon’s eyes had nearly reached the level of the loft floor, Anthony was already several feet down the ledge to the left, the pull straps on his red suede heels hanging over the ledge in open space. The soft creased suede uppers rippled as Anthony’s feet flexed in the shoes. The boxes at his toes sagged under the weight of the stacks, the cardboard stained from the heat and humidity of the garage over time.

As Anthony approached what Brandon presumed was the location of the coveted inflatable witch, his jeans snagged the prongs of an old electric cord that protruded from a box handle. He hissed in pain as the metal gouged him, and shook his leg ferociously as though trying to free himself of a snake attack. The prong, it seemed, had gotten tangled in one of the fibrous holes in Anthony’s pant leg. As he continue to try to pull himself free, more of the old cloth-covered cord pulled through the hole in the box. The contents of the carton shifted.

The soft cardboard buckled and the boxes above began to slide forward and topple. Brandon and Anthony froze and exchanged glances as an avalanche began, the entire column of boxes crashing to the floor, pulling the bottom one with it. Anthony tried to stop it’s fall with his foot, but in doing so only succeeded in looping the old cloth cord around his ankle as the box followed its mates to the concrete floor below.

The cord, both men could now see, belonged to an old chrome clothes iron. Now tethered to Anthony’s leg, the iron jolted to the end of it’s leash while the box and the rest of its contents continued on its trip without it. The iron’s mass wrenched Anthony’s foot from the ledge. His hands shot up, finding a roof truss to catch hold of just before inertia got the better of him.

Brandon watched, helplessly out of reach, as Anthony now dangled above the garage, his left shoe barely making contact with the ledge. The iron swung like a pendulum below. Brandon could hear cotton fabric cord creak as it pulled around the denim of Anthony’s jeans.

“Oh my God, Anthony,” Brandon cried. “Are you okay?”

To Brandon’s surprise, Anthony chuckled. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He glanced below him. “Fuck, what a mess.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Um…I don’t think I need you to do anything. As long I can get this damned weight off my leg.” Anthony started to shimmy his hands along the truss, bringing his entire left foot onto the ledge. Releasing one hand from the overhead handhold, he attempted to reach toward his leg to free it of the cord, but there was no way he could both hold onto the beam and reach his ensnared jeans. Anthony started to pull his right foot up closer. The the iron twisted in space and its cord squealed against his sneaker.

Brandon watched, entranced as Anthony strained his outstretched arm, closing half of the distance to his shackle when the prongs on the plug suddenly began to slice a tear through the denim of his jeans, raking across his shin. The iron dropped again with the sudden slack. “Jesus!” Anthony hissed in pain, the red Adidas containing Brandon’s cream now hanging below him again. A second time, Anthony began to raise his foot, reaching, reaching for the cord that was strangling his ankle.

Brandon watched the denim pull tight around Anthony’s leg as the twist in the cord gathered it, the mesh covered wire rubbing into the valley between the sneaker and Anthony’s sock. Brandon shuddered as he gripped the ladder, his mind going back to the icy Christmas caroling night and the man holding his dog.

Just then, there was a loud ripping sound, and the bottom two inches of Anthony’s tattered jeans began to unfurl under the weight of the iron. His foot twisted as the weight on the entangled cord pulled a ribbon of denim from halfway around his ankle before the prongs broke free and the iron clattered on the floor. Anthony hung for moment before he sighed and pulled the right Adidas Tubular onto the ledge, a train of denim hanging by his heel and his creamed white sock gleaming from the gap in the front. He stood in the void left by the fallen boxes and turned to face Brandon.

For a moment, the two were silent. Brandon stared at Anthony, hating himself for the cum stain that had formed on his jeans in light of Anthony’s near fall. Anthony returned the stare, panting. Then he clapped his hand on a nearby box, and broke into a smile.

“Found it!”