Brandon felt the splatter of the August-stiffened grass beneath his sneakers as he broke into a jog across the back yard. He wasn’t sure if his pace was quickened by a desire to catch Kyle before he had prematurely sprung the trap, or so as not to miss a single moment should he blunder into it.  Either way, he couldn’t remember the last time he had put this much spring in his step. Kyle’s baseball cap had just passed the place where the early evening sun was dramatically sliced by the roofline of the woodshed, and he was fully immersed in murky blue shade.  In a matter of steps, he would be next to the rain barrel.  

“Sorry about that,” Brandon called after him.  “What have I missed?”  As Brandon had hoped, Kyle stopped turned to face him.  He saw the brief flash of the cream soles of his boots as he pivoted. 

“Not much.  I was just coming back to see what the grade up here was like.”

Brandon had come up even with gap between the two outbuildings. As he stepped out of the steeply-angled sunlight, the amber fog that had suffused his vision flicked out as though with a switch, and he could now clearly perceive the twin humps of Kyle’s boots. His heels were hanging over the hidden trench. Brandon’s pulse shuddered so violently in his neck that he was sure Kyle could see it. 

“Oh yeah?” he forced himself to sound casual. “Are we looking for anything in particular?” He drew up alongside Kyle.  He was careful to stay on the narrow band of solid ground he had left undisturbed along the garage wall while also trying not to look like he was being deliberate in his path. 

“I just want to see the route the water takes as it heads down toward the road,” he explained. Brandon tried not to gape at the faint seam in the sod that he could see running beneath Kyle’s left boot. It was hard to say what the significance of the joint was—it could mean nothing at all. Perhaps the water that had dumped into the trench had moved on. Dried up. Or it could mean that Kyle was precariously balanced on the edge of a pool of glop, with only a thin skin of turf between him and a messy fate. One thing, however, was certain: now that Kyle was there, Brandon had to see if the trap would work.  The idea of postponing had evaporated. 

“How exactly?” Brandon queried, trying to keep Kyle there. And distracted. 

“Well the entire property is on a slope, right?”  He took a step back as he extended an arm toward the rear of the property. Brandon saw the grass give slightly under the chunky tread of Kyle’s boot. He may have even heard a small ‘splat,’ but it was hard to say with the symphonic cricket performance coming from the fields. “So water is definitely heading down this way from the fields above here. But how much, I wonder.”  

Kyle turned and headed toward the back of the outbuildings and the patch of yard beyond. The hidden trench was only a few feet wide, so it had been easily cleared in a few steps.  Brandon looked sullenly at the single muddy imprint that the Brunt boot had left behind. To say this had been anticlimactic was an understatement—it was felt as though his efforts and anticipation had been wasted. 

Like the burnished treetops in the failing daylight, his glow of his smoldering excitement began to extinguish.  He followed Kyle to top of the yard, which sloped more abruptly behind the garage until it ended with the field. 

“So a lot of water comes down right here,” he surmised as he surveyed the area.  “The question is…” he scaled the slope and stood with his back to the cornstalks, their dry, papery leaves rasping against his shirt, “…which way does it go around these buildings?”  He studied the rectangular plot of yard before him, and Brandon took in the gleam of the coppery leather at his feet in the blushing sunset as Kyle stood elevated over him, as if spotlit on a dais. 

“I think…between the buildings?” Brandon suggested helpfully. 

Kyle nodded slowly in agreement. “I think you’re right. So…the water leaves the field, and funnels between the garage and the shed…” he scuffed down the slope and headed back toward the house. Brandon trailed behind.  Kyle stopped directly next to the rain barrel, his boots coming to rest in damp grass.  “So now we need to know if it’s all heading toward the swale, or…”

“…it’s going straight toward the house,” Brandon finished, staring at the ground beneath the boots. Again, nothing obvious was happening. 

“Right,” Kyle concluded.  Brandon was beginning to check out, his disappointment like a wet towel slapping unceremoniously across his evening. Clearly the trap had failed, and solving a water runoff issue was not something he was actually interested in—it had simply been a ruse. Having concluded that he would not get out of this visit what he had bargained for, his mind began to naturally flit to other things—anything from how many more salads he could get out of his last bottle of dressing to signing the lease on his studio later that week.  Though his mind was no longer prioritizing his hormones, it was evidently still in overdrive. 

That was when Kyle did something unexpected. After removing his cap and running a hand through his hair yet again, he crouched down. The fat domes over his toes creased and his cream-soled heels left the ground.  Brandon could see the tops of the boots jutting against his gray jeans at the shins as they pulled tight in the squat.  Kyle was studying the slope of the backyard, squinting at the light dappled grass that stretched toward the patio and the covered porch. He was also unaware of the dark water rising up through the grass and beginning to swirl under the balls of his feet. 

“I think the yard slopes very slightly toward the west,” Kyle murmured, almost to himself.  The broad, rounded toes of boots were darkening and beginning to submerge beneath the filmy puddle, which gathered quickly around him now that his weight had shifted on the sod.  Somewhere several feet from where he crouched, a gurgling sound issued from ground. Brandon flushed with a fresh wave of heat as Kyle glanced around for the source of the noise, then looked down and noticed the water accumulating at his feet. 

“Whoa, what do we have here?” He straightened, a loud squelching noise coming from one of his heels as they flattened to the ground.

“What?” Brandon asked innocently, craning his neck. 

Kyle lifted a boot and studied the wet blades of grass of that clung to its bottom. “We seem to have a lot of water here.”  

“That’s odd.” Brandon’s voice held a slight quaver. He could feel the space beneath his waistband rapidly filling to capacity as he watched Kyle look perplexedly at his glistening boot. “I don’t think I’ve seen that happen here before.”  His words trailed off as Kyle began to probe the swampy indentation with his foot. 

“Definitely not that I’ve ever noticed,” he agreed. The ground had started to make a curious slurping sound akin to a large sponge being continuously saturated and then wrung out as he pushed harder.  The previously dark and somewhat clear water had churned to a liquid mud that crept over the toe of his Brunt, the patch of grass slowly disappearing beneath a circular pool like molten chocolate. “It’s definitely a significant drainage problem of some kind.”  

Brandon had not anticipated this. He had thought—in a best case scenario—that his little trap would have worked quickly, successfully trapping a boot and wrenching it off when Kyle stumbled in. But this less dramatic outcome was rapidly proving a far more titillating one. It toyed with him that Kyle was now engrossed in what was happening at his feet. Brandon ogled as he continued to test the depth of the problem area, seemingly unconcerned as the mire coated the immaculate leather boots and began wick up the hem of his jeans at the heel.  In several places, small geysers had started to burble from the seams in the sod across the length of the hidden trough. Kyle shuffled along the area of turf, which now visibly undulated with his disturbances. 

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Brandon practically squeaked. 

“There seems to be an entire area here that’s really saturated,” he marveled, paying no attention to Brandon or his obviously bulging pants. “Is there some kind of water main running under here?”

Actually, there very well could have been. It was reasonable enough to assume that the line to the garage utility sink was buried in that vicinity, lending plausibility to the abrupt boggy state of this very localized spot. But Brandon was now beyond employing his mind for scheming. Or articulating words, for that matter.  He managed a small grunt in acknowledgement of the question and stifled a groan as Kyle’s right boot suddenly punched through the weakened turf and he was claimed up to his ankle. 

“Oh, wow,” he muttered, trying to shake the Brunt free on the sodden turf that now encircled it. The bottom two inches of his crisp jeans were now black and plastered to the shafts of the boots.  Brandon’s cock surged. He had no cover for his excitement. He was vaguely aware of his predicament, but was too spellbound by Kyle’s struggle—one he had orchestrated—to do much about it. 

“Kyle, your boots…” he finally managed. It was meant to feign concern, but came out almost wistful. 

“It’s no problem,” he said nonchalantly, dragging his boot across a section of drier grass to remove the globules of mud.  “They’re waterproof.”  

It was at that point that Kyle extricated his left boot from the bubbling swamp. But as he was unaware of the depth and breadth of the sinister trap beneath him, his trust in the drier grass where he had planted his right foot was misplaced. Unfortunately for him, and to Brandon’s astonishment, Kyle had unwittingly stepped directly over seam of sod, which quickly gave way when he shifted his weight. In a fraction of a second, he his leg was swallowed by the concealed mire beneath and disappeared nearly to his knee.  He had barely had time to utter a surprised “What the—?” before he lost his balance entirely.  He tumbled back to sit hard on the compromised ground with a tremendous ‘thwock.’  Kyle stared up at Brandon in amazement as dark brown slurry heaved between his legs from the impact and slapped over his shirt and the thighs of his jeans.