by Vivica Dorn
“Oh my god, are you ok? I’m so sorry about that.”
Sam regarded him oddly. What a strange reaction; Finn almost looked like he felt responsible.
“Why are you apologizing? You’re the one who’s been saying all along how that dude’s a menace. I guess I finally see it now.”
Finn looked down, shaking his head.
“Yeah, for real.”
Sam looked at his abandoned beer bottle on the counter. He suddenly couldn’t stomach the thought of drinking it or of spending one more minute in this loud, hot, crowded place. He smiled without feeling at Finn, and muttered a quick excuse and then a goodbye. Finn looked at him, concerned, but nodded somewhat tensely. As Sam got ready to leave, he couldn’t help but notice Finn make a beeline for the door, following the very same path that Lance had taken.
Outside the cold air hammered into Sam, quickly cooling his skin and penetrating deep into his lungs and bones. He hadn’t brought his jacket and he rubbed his exposed arms, swearing. He stood on the sidewalk outside the house where the party still pulsed. The sidewalk glowed, wintry and stark like bone, in the ghostly combination of street- and moonlight. Though it was close to midnight, students still milled through the streets, stumbling and laughing, most of them dressed in some kind of costume or another, shouting complaints about the cold. Once again Sam thought about his own lack of costume. He dressed up for Halloween parties every other year, usually something joke-related or punny. He wondered why he hadn’t put in the effort this year. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood, he posited bitterly, thinking of the gloomy cloud that had hung over him for the past week.
What was Michel doing now? The question came barrelling back into him with a bull-like force he could not ignore. He knew suddenly and with absolute certainty that he wouldn’t make it through the night without knowing the answer. It was the time of year for hauntings, and Sam was totally haunted by Michel. Or rather, he was haunted by his absence. He slipped his phone from his pocket, squinting as the words on the screen swam into focus and he looked for Michel Dubeau’s name in his contacts. I guess since the deal is over I can break some rules now. He ignored the “text” button and instead chose “call”.
The phone rang and rang, two, three, four times, until Sam was sure Michel would ignore him, sure he’d have to either come up with some drunken voicemail message or hangup messily before the tone. But then, just as Sam was fighting the urge to hurl his phone to the pavement below his feet and watch watch it shatter the way he felt his heart was about to, a quiet, hard-edged voice said his name.
“Sam.”
There was no salutation, no greeting. There wasn’t even the inflection of a question in the way he said Sam’s name. It was a statement, flat and disinterested. Sam’s chest throbbed, half in pain at the tone of Michel’s voice, and half in pleasure at hearing that voice at all.
Sam cut right to the chase.
“What are you doing right now?”
There was a pause.
“Are you drunk?”
Sam sighed and looked up at the cloudless dark sky. The stars blinked through the night with clear, sharp eyes. It wasn’t often Sam could see the stars so visibly. He hoped Michel was looking up at them, too.
“Hey, you should look at the stars. They look totally unreal.” He slurred a little on the last sentence and Michel breathed out harshly.
“You are drunk. What do you want, Sam?”
Sam considered coming up with some excuse, that he wanted help with homework, or that he wanted to chat like normal friends. But he didn’t. Drunk Sam was an honest Sam.
“You,” he responded simply.
Sam could hear the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. He could practically taste the blush he was sure was creeping into Michel’s cheeks. My beautiful, beautiful baby.
“How much did you drink, tête du lard?”
Sam wracked his muddied brain. Those words sounded familiar; he was sure he had learned them in French class.
“Head of fat?” What the hell did that mean? “You think I have a fat head?”
Michel laughed, soft and short, and Sam grinned giddily.
“It means something more like idiot, idiot.”
Sam nodded. That made sense. He was an idiot. An idiot for letting Michel go. For telling Michel to go.
Michel’s voice grew more serious.
“But seriously, how much did you drink? Should I be worried about you? Are you... are you with anyone right now?”
Sam answered so quickly he almost cut Michel off.
“I’m alone.” So fucking alone.
Another pause, then,
“Where are you?”
It didn’t take long for Michel to get there. It turned out his apartment was only a couple of blocks away from the house Sam had been partying at. Sam watched him approach with a mixture of elation and dread. He looked angry but so damn pretty that Sam wasn’t sure if he should apologize or crush his mouth against that red frown. So he did neither.
“Hey, Michel.”
He pushed his hands into his denim pockets, hard, to keep from reaching out and falling into the boy in front of him. Michel was dressed just like he had been that night at the library, his jeans skin-tight and dark, his coat’s collar turned up against the wind, his fair cheeks pink from the cold and the walking. The only difference was the expression. It was stony, unforgiving, and absolutely unimpressed.
“Hi. I didn’t come here to hang out. I came to make sure you get home ok. Where is your dorm?”
Michel stood stiffly, his posture indicating that he would broker no opposition. Sam’s heart fell. This wasn’t the reunion he had imagined in the brief time it had taken Michel to walk here. He had thought, hoped, that Michel had felt the same way he did, that he would want to see Sam as much as he wanted to see Michel. But it looked like he was wrong.
“Well, I can’t really go back to my room. My roommate has a girl over tonight.” It wasn’t exactly true, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. Sam’s roommate Daniel hadn’t mentioned anything to him about tonight, but he had girls over all the time.
Michel shook his head, eyes looking upward into the star-spattered darkness.
“Of course you can’t. So what were you going to do? Sleep out here on the street? Or did you just expect me to come and save you?” His accent sounded thicker than usual, Sam noticed blearily.
“It’s not like I haven’t done the same for you before,” Sam replied before he could stop himself. He knew it was a low blow, using Michel’s near-drowning against him like that, but he was desperately unhappy with how things were playing out. He was grasping, clawing, at anything he could think of to turn things around. Even though it was petty as hell.
And that barbed comment hit home. Straight to the heart.
Michel’s brows contracted and his eyes widened. He shook his head again, then began to walk away. As Sam stood dumbfounded, wondering if he should stand his ground or follow, Michel called back, his voice almost lost to the wind, “come on, hurry up, you’ll stay with me tonight.”
Sam didn’t jog to catch up. He sprinted.
Sam was glad in more ways than one when they finally reached Michel’s apartment. For one, he really had been getting cold out there and he was happy to go inside into the warmth. Second, Michel had been silent for their entire walk and Sam was hoping that he may be more at ease and open up to conversation inside his own home. And third, he really wanted to see what Michel’s apartment was like. He bet it would be full of books.
He wasn’t wrong. Books littered the surface of Michel’s small table chairs. They were piled on the floor, too, stacked up where a TV would normally be. The only sign that this apartment existed in the 21st century, besides the appliances in the kitchen, was the small laptop and pair of headphones on the floor near a pile of cushions. Sam smiled. It had a certain European charm to it – so perfectly Michel.
“Well, this is my apartment. You can sleep out here, there are som
e cushions and I’ll fetch an extra blanket for you. The bathroom is just over there.” He gestured to a door just to the left of the kitchen area. Sam’s eyes flicked to it, then to another door.
“What’s in there?”
“That’s my room,” Michel answered snippily. Sam noticed he was working very hard to avoid his gaze.
“Can I see?”
Michel looked at him then, frowning, his lips savagely red. Sam was having trouble putting words to the expressions he witnessed; embarrassment, hurt, maybe even desire? His entire body surged at the thought. Get a fucking grip Hendrick, holy shit.
But he didn’t want to get a grip. Not really. Not unless that grip was tightening on the boy in front of him. His fists clenched.
His voice fell to a near whisper.
“Show me.”
Michel regarded him a moment longer. He didn’t say anything, but turned wordlessly and led Sam beyond that closed door.
Like the rest of the apartment, the room was full of books. The little shelf opposite the bed was positively overflowing with them. Michel stood awkwardly in the doorway, his arms crossed, as Sam entered and went over to the bookshelf, studying the collection. Sam stared at the books and at the wall behind them, unsure of what to do next. He was exceptionally, almost painfully aware of Michel’s neatly-made bed so closeby. The place where Michel slept. What did Michel wear to bed? Did he sleep naked? And what did he dream of there?
Sam turned back to Michel and noticed the TA staring at him intensely, eyes fretful and dark.
Caught you.
Michel blinked and turned away, cheeks flushing bright red.
Sam considered making idle conversation. He considered easing into things. But ultimately, as he drank in the sight of Michel’s expressive green eyes and the sad, stern set of his mouth, he knew he didn’t have time for that. He felt like he was going to die if he didn’t do something, now. With one large step he bridged the gap between them and stood, chest-to-chest, with the shorter boy. He felt his drunkenness ebbing away, sobering up, intoxicated now only by desire.
CHAPTER 12
Why did I bring him here? Michel thought miserably as Sam stared down at him with an expression hard and aching. Sam was definitely drunk. He had slurred his words when he had tried to make conversation on the way over here, and he had seemed a little unsteady making his way up the stairs into the apartment. Was that why he was here, why he had called Michel? He was drunk and horny and wanted some kind of booty call? Michel shivered, disgusted by the thought. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, if Sam was going to try something, he wanted it to be real, genuine, tinged with the echoing cry of my baby.
“What do you want?” Michel asked softly, his eyes falling from that serious, sculpted face to the firm pectoral muscles he could see beneath the thin fabric of Sam’s shirt. He wanted to bury his face there. Why did he want such things? His body felt so at odds with his mind.
He wanted to hold strong. Michel Dubeau had always been proud, almost detrimentally so. He wouldn’t go crying or begging to the person who had ultimately rejected him. Sure, Sam had only ended their swimming lessons, but they both knew it had meant much more than that. It had felt like an ending far more significant. Michel refused to acknowledge the way he had lain in bed the past few nights feeling colder than he ever had, and he purposely forgot the way his hand always seemed to drift to the hardening place between his legs when he remembered the smell and feel of Sam’s skin, and the sorrowful look of want in those tempestuous blue eyes.
Those eyes showed the same expression now. It wasn’t fair. Michel was trying to hold back, trying to pull away, but those eyes were claiming him with their deep and dangerous blue. Michel’s entire body thrummed in response, ignoring his brain’s commands to step back, step back!
“What do you want?” He repeated, quieter this time.
Sam’s eyes were so deep blue and blown that they looked black. His jaw clenched, muscles working beneath his golden skin.
“I told you on the phone,” he said with no further elaboration. Michel shivered as he remembered the way the word had come through the phone: you. Michel lashed out, trying to protect himself.
“You told me we were done, you’re the one who stopped everything! I don’t understand what’s going on!” Absurdly, Michel felt his eyes fill with tears. He swore he had cried more times over the past few months at Kingston College than he had over the past year. What was it about this American that dissolved every carefully-placed molecule of his resolve? He had never felt so weak.
Sam leaned down, not quite touching Michel, his mouth a mere millimetre from the sensitive skin of Michel’s ear.
“I want you, Michel. And I think you know that.”
Michel tensed then, a familiar, bone-deep appetite opening up inside him. His cock twitched and hardened, his heart pounding at the words. But no, no, he would hold fast, damn it.
“Well you should have thought of that before you pushed me away,” Michel grumbled, leaning slightly forward, slightly into the taller boy, without meaning to.
“You’re one to talk,” Sam murmured, directly against Michel’s ear now. Michel gasped, heat flooding his ear, face, neck, and cock. “You’re the one who told me our relationship wasn’t appropriate and that we should stop first. Remember, in the library?”
Michel couldn’t deny the truth in the words. He had been the one who had first tried to pull back. He had pushed Sam away, which had led to the strained nature of their relationship over the past month and Sam’s eventual declaration that they should end things. But he really wasn’t sure what he should have done. Their relationship was inappropriate; he was Sam’s teacher and in a position of authority over the younger boy. He had tried his very best to do right by everyone involved and keep himself sane at the same time. He barely even know this Adonis, this athlete – his saviour.
He saved me. The words sliced Michel with a bright blade, the weight of that fact truly hitting him for the first time. He had felt so awkward about any imagined debt he had owed Sam, and then had been so confused and humiliated by his body’s reactions to the other boy, that he hadn’t really considered the intensity, the significance, of what they had gone through together. And what Sam had done for him.
He saved me. He saved my life. Michel’s heart throbbed painfully in his chest and he was overcome with emotion – a connection to Sam so profound that he thought his entire body would split in two if he tried to move away, and a longing so bitter it tasted like sorrow and ash. He thought of the way those azure eyes had found his that day on the beach, coming into focus above him as everything else swirled, dizzy and blinding. He thought of the patience and pride with which he had taught Michel to swim, his gentleness when Michel was scared, the way he focused so seriously on his books when he studied properly, his easy jokes, his brilliant smile. As Sam nuzzled into Michel’s ear, he realized that Sam had become something superbly important in his life. Whether he liked it or not.
Trembling, Michel reached his hands around Sam’s back and clutched at the thin fabric of his shirt. He felt Sam take in a huge, shaky breath. And then the larger boy was on him like an animal, forcing him down onto the bed, gripping his wrists above his head, his mouth devouring Michel’s with wet, urgent force.
Michel’s body responded with almost absurd quickness. He arched against Sam’s substantial frame, opening his legs to allow a thick muscled thigh between them, pressing firmly against his erection. He had been starved for this, he had needed this, abandoned to the lonely darkness of his room this past week. The usual embarrassment persisted, flooding his cheeks with colour, along with the shame and the guilt, but Michel could feel those emotions moving further and further to the back of his mind, replaced with hungering need. He opened his mouth further, unable to even try to kiss back, able only to submit himself to the fevered onslaught.
And it truly was an onslaught. Sam’s hard mouth moved fervently, his teeth grazing Michel’s sensitive lips, making hi
m gasp. Sam’s hands felt desperate against Michel’s skin as he yanked Michel’s sweater up and over his head before pulling it off and moving back to claim that mouth again. Michel’s hands found their way to Sam’s thick golden hair as the swimmer’s biting kisses moved across his jaw, then down his neck. Michel moaned as Sam’s teeth pressed into his delicate collarbone, and Sam groaned, his hands stroking up and down Michel’s waist. His thumbs came up to circle Michel’s nipples, and the TA cried out again, hips moving against Sam’s thigh.
He could feel Sam’s hands getting tighter on him. And he could hear the other boy’s breath becoming more ragged and uneven. He was coming unravelled, losing control. And the thought inflamed Michel beyond what he would have thought was possible. Seeing Sam coming undone like this, seeing him wracked with such overriding, primal desire, made him feel both delicate and vulnerable as well as immensely powerful. Before self-consciousness could get the better of him, he decided to fan those effervescent flames. He wanted to push Sam over the edge. Wanted to see how far he would go.
“Sam,” he whispered, then moaned directly into the other boy’s ear. “Sam, Sam!”
Sam growled, his hands pinching deep into Michel’s sides.
“If you keep saying my name like that you’re going to make me fucking come just like this.” Sam ground his throbbing hardness into Michel’s hip. Michel’s mouth opened, gasping at the sensation of Sam humping him with such frenetic force.
Sam’s breathing hitched and he pulled back roughly. On his knees on the bed, towering over Michel’s prone figure, he whipped off his T-shirt before undoing Michel’s belt and zipper and yanking his pants and underwear off entirely. Michel’s face burned as Sam drank in the sight of his naked and aroused body, but he didn’t try to roll away or hide. Not this time. He had made a decision to give himself up to this, to give himself entirely to Sam. Michel bit his lip a little, tracking those glazed blue eyes as they roamed over every inch of his skin – his wet mouth, his marked-up neck and chest, his parted thighs, his slim hard cock.