He recognized that not thinking about shit right now wasn’t exactly the same thing as denying the thought entirely. He dropped one hand to his lap and squeezed his dick through his jeans, shivering with the splash of pleasure that shot through him. Fuck. This was not the time. He hadn’t busted his ass for the past fifteen months to find a way to make it back here only to blow his focus by spending his time thinking about cocksucking. The shit that had gone down in the middle of his last semester at Carlisle meant the school was allowing him to retake those classes without penalty and Tom was determined to ace his classes. Graduating after three more semesters with an academic record that shone was the only thing standing between him and a job making ten bucks an hour after graduation.
He’d had plenty of alone time in the past year to realize how much nicer his life was when he hadn’t had to fucking scrape and suffer because of money, and he was going to walk off this campus and straight into the ranks of the gainfully employed in a job he earned all on his own.
Sex could wait. It wasn’t that hard to find anyway, if he needed to blow off a little steam. But all this deep fucking thinking that he just knew would be required for him to address the fact that imagining his male roommate sucking his dick gave him a hard-on faster than any porno with chicks he’d ever watched? Yeah, that shit would have to wait.
He’d managed to ignore it most of his entire fucking life up until now, hadn’t he? No sense changing speeds simply because his dick finally woke up after a year of sex drive-killing stress and pretty much constant homelessness. Crashing on someone’s couch or sleeping in a car were surefire lust dampeners. He could vouch for that.
Besides, it was clear his pretty roommate loathed him. And since he wasn’t about to give up his spot in Perkins House and go back to the surefire chaos of being in the dorms on campus where he could run into a hundred people who knew all about him and would be ready to spark a wildfire of gossip the moment he showed up, it seemed likely that Reese was going to go on hating him.
He inhaled deeply and then let it out in a long, slow shhhhh through his teeth.
Focus. Focus on class and scoring straight A’s. There wouldn’t be time for anything else. He’d still have to head into the city every weekend and put in round-the-clock hours driving the cab if he wanted to be able to pay for the second semester by the time the bill came due. Solo sessions in the shower would do, if his dick insisted on staying awake after all, or he could always hit a bar and pick up some girl with an apartment or room of her own. He’d never had a hard time doing that and was perfectly aware it wasn’t because he was so smooth with the ladies. He knew he looked good, tall and blond and built from the middling amount of weightlifting he did in addition to the running. He’d had more than one chick hit on him before he even thought of hitting on her.
“You have sad eyes,” a girl had told him this past summer, before pushing him down on her bed and climbing on top of him.
Sad eyes. No shit. If exhaustion and a constant fear that he wasn’t going to quite be able to pull this shit off gave him happy eyes, he’d have signed himself up for the psych ward.
Sitting long enough with his eyes closed and his head down had made him sleepy. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed when he finally lifted his head, hard-on mostly gone, and paused the music cautiously to check on the porn scene.
Silence. Thank God.
He turned the music back on, able to enjoy it now that he wasn’t wondering if he could hear anything beneath the sounds of his favorite bands. If Reese’s fuckbuddy didn’t head out in a little while, he’d be giving a courtesy knock before going in. This little “my gay testosterone is tougher than your straight (‘ish’ he thought, but pushed that firmly to the side) testosterone” throwdown Reese was determined to have with him was not going to make the kid happy.
After the battle scars he’d earned in the past year, a little guy-on-guy action wasn’t going to make him run screaming. Nothing short of a crowbar and a pile of dynamite under his ass was gonna pry him out of this room.
The “heads up, I’m coming in” knock turned out to be unnecessary. A surprisingly short time later, the door at his left shoulder opened and an even slighter, shorter guy stepped out, before leaning back in for what Tom assumed without looking was some kind of goodbye kiss. The kid looked even younger than Reese and had a short shock of bright pink hair that was clearly messed up bedhair, parts of it standing straight up in the original style.
The guy was startled to see Tom camped out on the floor outside the room, if his backward hop after almost stepping on him was any indication. He grinned down at Tom, eyelids at half-mast with what Tom recognized as “I’ve just had my brains fucked out and if I could, I’d be out cold right now” sleepiness. He was a walking ad for sexual satisfaction and he’d probably crash as soon as he made it back to his own bed.
Shoving his book in his pack and putting the iPod carefully away—if that thing broke, he’d be hard pressed to replace it—he felt Reese standing over him, watching him with what were no doubt laser eyes of fuck you.
“You sure you wanna come in? Probably smells like come in here.” The attempt to gross him out, to scare him off, wasn’t even subtle now. Tom sighed and braced a hand against the dusty floor and stood.
He didn’t enjoy using his size to push a smaller guy around, but he stepped in close to Reese, who didn’t back down, and leaned in to loom over him. The kid was right. He could smell sex on him and he told his dick to settle down when it showed tingly signs of waking up again. Reese’s lips were puffy and red, his eyes narrowed and unblinking as he stared up at Tom.
“Listen, kid. You have no idea the shit I’ve dealt with lately.” He pushed his face down even closer until he saw Reese’s nostrils flare and his skin pale. Shit. He was actually scaring the kid. He took a step back and shook his head. “A room smelling like sex doesn’t even make the list of crap that bothers me, so don’t go getting hopeful that I’m gonna run screaming down the hall at the idea that you blew some dude in our room.”
“My room.” Still battling.
“If it makes you feel good, call it whatever you want.” He entered the room and slung his backpack over the back of what he was now calling his desk chair. “But I’ll be sleeping here every night. And if I get tired of sitting in the hall, I’ll probably remember to knock before I come in.”
Reese scoffed and slammed the door shut as he followed Tom in.
“Maybe I’ll keep going. What are you gonna do? Sit there and watch me suck off some guy?”
He was running out of energy to laugh. Tom scrubbed his hands over his face and yawned. The sight of his bed was shutting his brain down.
“Jesus, kid. Don’t flatter yourself. Most days I’m so tired you could be gagging on the cocks of half the school and I’m not even gonna notice the line out the door before I crash.”
He caught a glimpse of Reese as he stripped his T-shirt off over his head, a little self-conscious, yes. Two guys had just been full-on naked in their room and taking his clothes off felt…awkward. The kid was chewing gently on his lower lip and frowning, looking unsure about what to do next. Clearly his big plan fizzling out like a dud firework wasn’t something he’d anticipated.
He kicked off jeans, socks, shoes all in one go to a pile on the floor, feeling like Groundhog Day for repeating the exact same move as last night with a still-pissed off roommate watching him undress. Good to know he’d made exactly no progress in twenty-four hours.
“Also, you’re a slob. Can’t you put your clothes in a laundry basket?”
Tom kept his back to Reese as he climbed into bed. It felt like progress, having the kid bitch at him about who was the bigger slob, a regular roommate issue. Maybe the fact that he hadn’t backed down at Reese’s sex challenge had convinced the kid that he wasn’t going anywhere. They were never going to be BFF’s obviously, but maybe they could settle into a
regularly acrimonious roommate relationship, where neither of them really liked the other but they mostly ignored each other’s presence. “Don’t have one. But I’ll get a box or something, okay? I’m hitting the sack, kid. Have a good night.”
He didn’t even care that the overhead light was still shining bright, lighting up the whole room. A pillow over his head was darkness enough and even if Reese kept up the put-upon heavy sighs and general sounds of stomping around their room, Tom knew he’d be out in minutes.
Before he could slow his brain down enough to let sleep in, he heard a faint click and the light seeping in under the edges of the pillow vanished.
Ahhh, sweet. He slid the pillow back under his head and stayed curled up on his side, facing the wall. He could hear Reese moving through the dark room, the sounds of clothes being removed loud in the darkness. Tom refused to picture it. The rustle of skin sliding on fabric was an audible shush as Reese got into his own bed. Tom told himself he was imagining being able to hear their slow breaths mingle in a counterpoint that gradually drifted into synchronized easy inhales and exhales.
And, listening to his roommate breathing in the dark, he fell asleep.
Chapter Three
After three more days of sharing the room with Reese, Tom was fucking hanging by a thread, and he hit the road in his carefully maintained BMW early Friday morning with a deep sigh of relief and guilt.
Reese hadn’t given up on his plan to get Tom to move out by battering him with his gayness, but he’d only brought a guy back to their room on one of the past few nights. No notebook paper sign on the bulletin board, but the pink bandana still tied defiantly on the doorknob. Guess the kid didn’t really want to give him the shock of walking in on a full-on gay sex, naked dude extravaganza, no matter what he might threaten. Tom had sighed and settled down again in the hall, determined not to be run off. He’d gone through the book on lap, buds in ears routine but had found himself hesitating with a finger over the iPod on switch before leaving it off.
He felt kind of pervy, eavesdropping on his roommate’s sex life, but wasn’t this what Reese wanted? To force him to listen in? And Tom couldn’t deny the irresistible nagging curiosity that had its claws in him.
Once again, the only voice he heard was not his roommate’s. A different male voice this time, not as wordy as the last guy, but into almost nonstop moaning and groaning and this guy definitely didn’t care who heard him. His shout at the end was loud enough to be heard on the floors below them and Tom had found himself again with a hard-on that wouldn’t quit until he pinched the tip of his dick through his jeans and squeezed hard enough for the pain to block out some of the thick, sticky pulses of heat that had him thinking he could feel his heartbeat in his cock.
Reese had only looked at him for a second while hustling his latest pick-up out the door just minutes after that final orgasm yell to wake the dead, as if he already knew what he’d find. They’d locked eyes for a moment, neither of them blinking. The skin under Reese’s dark eyes was shadowed a deep purple and his face was paler than usual. Whatever thrill he got out of trying to fuck with Tom’s head with this game, it clearly wasn’t giving him much joy. Either that, or he was lying awake all night, plotting Tom’s ultimate demise, instead of sleeping.
Not Tom’s problem. Sooner or later the kid would settle down and they could get on with their lives. Or at least Tom would. If Reese wanted to simmer and seethe with resentment for the rest of the year, he could knock himself out. Tom had work to do and all he needed was a safe place to crash in the hours when he wasn’t busting his ass to catch up on his thesis work.
Not his problem.
Right.
That’s what he told himself as he finally gave up on sleep and grabbed his towel on the way out of their room, heading to the showers at two a.m.
He left the lights off, not wanting to draw any attention. Or maybe it was that he didn’t want to look at himself in the mirror and see his own face as he hung his shorts and his towel on the hook outside the shower stall and stepped naked into the dark cubicle. He cranked on the water until it was so hot it scalded him and suffered under the hard stinging spray for minutes. But in the end, he gave in. He’d known he would. Turning the water to warm and leaning against the wall with his head braced against his forearm, he grabbed his dick and stroked it slowly, almost painfully, with the drag of his hand up and down until he shuddered hard and came so fast it hurt, his mind full of Reese. Reese’s slim hips in those low-slung sweats, the bones of his pelvis visible because he didn’t weigh enough, even for a skinny guy. Reese’s hair, always falling in his face, his way of blocking out the people around him, Tom thought, and pictured pushing it back with fingers plunged deep and curving around Reese’s skull.
Reese’s mouth. Those lips he’d seen twice now, puffy from sucking cock and bruised reddish-purple with the force of wrapping his lips around his teeth. He knew that mouth would be full of heat, wet, and the strong muscle of a tongue that would stroke his dick while Reese sucked him until he came.
He was so fucked.
The warm water was raining down on him, sluicing the sweat from his body as he shook a little in the aftermath of the hardest orgasm he’d had in years, just from a two-minute jerk session and thoughts of his roommate’s mouth.
He kept his thoughts to himself about this little late night fantasy session. Or rather, put to the side the admission that he’d given in to the urge at all. He hadn’t had sex worth fantasizing about in months. He’d been too worn out to get excited about much of anything, but a bed and a roof were apparently rejuvenating to the sex drive.
Then, if someone was gonna shove their own private sex show in his face, of course he was gonna get hung up on the idea of getting a blowjob. And if there was someone in the room who, although it didn’t sound as though he did much getting off of his own, clearly had a thing for sucking guys off, then it shouldn’t surprise Tom to find that person pushing his way into Tom’s masturbation fantasy.
Only to be expected really.
He snorted and called bullshit on himself as he angled the showerhead to rinse his come off the tiled wall and down the drain. Even if he wanted to, there was no fucking point denying that he’d jacked off to a gay sex fantasy. Who the fuck cared? What a guy did in the privacy of his own head didn’t have anything to do with what he did in real life. Every guy he knew had fantasies of hot threesomes with chicks stacked like Playboy bunnies and the only guy he knew who’d actually had a threesome had ended up spending most of the night holding one girl’s hair back as she puked in a toilet, because everyone had been so drunk no one really knew what they were doing.
Real life was way less fucking hot than fantasies. Which was why people had them.
It didn’t mean your real life was ever going to match the things you got up to in your head.
Still, when he made it back to their room, he’d turned the handle with all the care he could muster to make the sound soft and unlikely to wake anyone. He’d dressed and thrown clothes in his bag with the same hush and snuck out of the room without looking more than once at the sleeping sprawl that was Reese in his twin bed on the opposite side of the room, his sheet pulled up barely far enough to cover his ass, his shoulder blades outlined delicately by the faint light that spilled in the window from the street lights.
Tom would drive a cab all weekend and catnap in his car when necessary to save money on a motel. He’d drive until he was too tired to think of anything at all before he sacked out on the backseat and then wake up to an alarm after a few hours, still tired and disoriented with a need for sleep. He wouldn’t have the energy to think about anything except socking enough cash away in his checking account to be able to write that next tuition check. And maybe almost seventy-two hours of privacy would let Reese adjust to the idea that Tom was going to be there during the week, and not frequently even then. Surely he’d noticed Tom only came back to the ro
om to sleep, trying to give the kid as much space as he could.
The sun was sliding up over the horizon as he cruised east on the Mass Pike to Boston, the gentle rise of the hills undulating like waves to either side of the highway as traffic slowly built the closer he got to the city.
He had seven hundred plus pages of reading to do over breaks the next three days. Between that and trying to make sure none of the late night fares he picked up were going to puke in his cab, he wouldn’t have any trouble keeping himself busy.
That was the plan.
Sunday night he’d have to get back in the pool again, head back to his room and hope things were smoothed over with Reese. Until then, he had nothing but work, for school or for cash. His focus was clear.
Easier said than done. But by the time he was heading back to Western Mass on Sunday night, Tom felt settled in resignation to the fact that he was going to wake up from hazy dreams of hard, slim bodies and a male mouth, sporting the kind of erection that didn’t go back down until he did something about it. It hadn’t really even taken the second night to make it clear that this was his burden for the foreseeable future. And if he were honest, it wasn’t exactly the first time he’d had a dream about another guy. He’d known for a while now that his dick was an equal opportunity pervhouse, something years at prep school had made clear.
Hey, even sharing a room with another boy wasn’t going to keep a teenage kid from jerking off in the middle of the night.
The first time he’d heard the smothered gasps of his roommate and felt himself get hard right along with him—finally reaching down to tug on himself until he came in his boxers, hoping the other boy was too caught up in his own self-induced orgasm to hear him join in—the light had gone on that maybe it wasn’t only girls that got to him.
He ignored the voice in his brain that reminded him that jacking off in the dark wasn’t exactly as far as he’d gone and cranked the stereo high, blasting some old school Run DMC and letting the fast pitch word play blow all other thoughts out of his head like the wind roaring in the windows as he headed back to Perkins House. He didn’t let himself wonder for a moment if his doorknob would have a pink bandana looped over the knob when he got there.
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