Off Campus

by Amy Jo Cousins

  That boy slipped in through the open curtain a moment later as Tom tilted his head back under the warm spray, eyes locked on the gap in the curtain. They didn’t speak, only watched each other, the boy’s nakedness a slim white flame collecting a wet shine as the spray bounced off the shower walls, off Tom, and slowly gathered in drips on his skin. Tom was hard, had been hard since he’d decided back in his room to clear the way for this very moment to happen, by announcing himself casually to a room full of boys that included the one boy who always watched him, eyes drifting over him but never a word said out loud. He dropped a hand to his dick and stroked himself almost roughly, feeling the muscles in his legs, in his ass, twitch with the sudden surge of pleasure as the boy’s eyes dropped to his hand. His cock.

  As if that were the signal, the green light, the kid dropped to his knees in front of Tom, floppy blond hair immediately darkening with wet as the shower splashed against him where he knelt, one hand braced lightly against Tom’s thigh, the other sliding under Tom’s hand on an upstroke to take over the pulling stroke on his cock, so hard now he felt like he’d burst right through his own skin. Tom braced himself, suddenly unsure of his legs, one hand on each shower wall at his sides, and hung his head forward, eyes closed to focus on the soft small hand stroking him. The movements were more tentative than his own hand would be, which somehow made him burn with the hotness, the strangeness of having this boy’s hand on him. This boy who was pulling him forward to his mouth.

  “Ahh! Okay. I don’t care. Stay here.”

  Tom’s mind snapped back to the present with a crack that had to have been damn near audible. He opened his eyes and saw a different boy, mouth hanging open as he panted, Reese’s hand deep in his pants and pumping him hard. The boy’s back arched away from the closet door suddenly.

  “Stop,” he hissed, eyes screwed shut tight. “I’m gonna come in my fucking pants. Stop. We can stay. Just fucking wait. You said you’d suck me off.”

  Reese froze, one hand still high, pinning the boy’s wrists, his head tucked in the curve of the boy’s neck. After a moment, he pulled himself away with a sudden step back and jerked his head toward his bed. His face was blank, his voice low.

  “Get on the bed.”

  The kid stripped his pants off as Reese shut the door, cutting the light from dim to near darkness. Tom closed his eyes, knowing they’d adjust quickly to the thin light that spilled in the window from the street. The sounds of one boy getting naked—he realized suddenly that Reese was always dressed, or at least mostly dressed, when he kicked his nightly visitors out of their room and wondered if his roommate ever got undressed at all—rustled loudly in the quiet room. Tom concentrated on keeping his breathing slow and even, and the movements of his hand under the sheet, sliding up and down his dick with barely enough pressure to tingle, not enough to bring him close to the edge.

  “Spread your legs.”

  His eyes flew open.

  The short sharp catch of a breath in a throat followed by the creaking springs as Reese climbed over the boy’s leg to kneel between his spread knees. Tom watched Reese press down on the boy’s hip with one hand and wrap the other around the base of his cock, which was standing up and begging for a touch as the kid wriggled and squirmed, panting.

  “You touch my head and I’ll bite your dick off. Got it?”

  “Jesus. Yes. God. I hope he doesn’t wake up.”

  Reese ignored him.

  “Hold on to the rail if you need to.”

  The kid grabbed the rail above his head and held on for dear life. Reese curled over and opened his mouth, swallowing half the kid’s dick in one swift motion.

  “Fuuuuck.”

  Tom had already been forgotten, if that loud groan was anything to go by. The boy arched up, trying to push more of his dick into Reese’s mouth, who shoved his stomach back flat against the mattress with one hand and pulled off with a sucking pop.

  “Stay still. If you don’t move, I’ll suck your balls inside out through your dick. You’ll come so hard you can’t walk. But stay. Fucking. Still.”

  “Okay. Shit. I knew you were weird.”

  “Shut up.”

  Reese cut off the rest of the kid’s bullshit by sucking his dick into his mouth again. And someone was paying attention, because the guy stayed still, skinny arm muscles and abdominals clenching against the pressure to move, move, just fucking move as Reese held true to his word and hollowed his cheeks while sinking deep over the kid’s cock. Tom could see the moment when the boy’s dick must have pushed into Reese’s throat because the muscles in his neck jumped as he gagged himself on it but didn’t pull back for a second. He curved the palm of his own hand around the tip of his dick and pushed against it, squeezing and imagining it, the hot wet press of Reese’s throat against him and felt his own spine arch as pleasure shot through him and out his mouth with a small, soft, “Ahh.”

  Reese’s bobbing motion faltered and his eyes stared hard across the room as he slowed his motions, pulling back with one long, slow suck, his tongue visible for a moment at the end, swiping a fast circle around the head of the kid’s dick. Reese kneeled up for a second and turned his head to look straight at Tom, his hand still moving up and down absently as he narrowed his eyes.

  Tom knew his eyes were barely open, the crack in them invisible in the dark room as he lay feigning sleep, his arm still, his hand beneath the sheet. If he held still, breathed evenly, Reese would never know for sure whether or not he’d been awake and watching them.

  He opened his eyes.

  Reese dropped his shoulders back, pushing his chest out, his hands moving sharply to brace themselves on the mattress behind his own hips. He looked ready to shove himself off the bed and to his feet in an instant. His gaze was locked on Tom.

  Tom held his breath. And didn’t blink.

  After what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been more than a minute, the spell between them was broken by the demanding whimper of an ignored boy with a rock hard penis. The kid whose legs were spread and arms were stretched over his head gave a short whine and a buck of his hips.

  Reese’s look veered from Tom back to the boy sprawled out in front of him and then back to Tom. He bit his lip. Leaned forward. Sat back on his heels again. Tom could hear his thoughts again, a dark swirl of lust and control and the pure hot exhibitionism that led him to blow boys until they screamed while his roommate sat in the hall, now ramped up a thousand-fold by that roommate opening his eyes and watching from the bed ten feet away.

  Tom held his gaze for a moment and then looked deliberately down, staring at the kid’s dick where it quivered hard with his no doubt racing heartbeat, before looking back up at Reese. He didn’t flinch as Reese returned the wandering gaze to Tom’s own body, wishing for a moment that he were spread out on his back so Reese could see him, see his cock tenting the sheet over his lap, and know that he’d done this to Tom. But he was curled up on his side, the wall of his body draping the sheet discreetly over him and rolling over might draw the one-night stand’s attention and bring this entire strange adventure to an end. So he lay there, eyes locked on Reese, willing him to understand.

  “Don’t stop.”

  The boy’s words could have flown directly out of Tom’s mouth.

  He saw the moment Reese made up his mind. The last long look he shot across the open space between them before running his hands down the outside of the boy’s thighs to curl them around his knees and lift.

  “Pull your knees back.”

  The boy reacted without thinking, curling his legs up, which hid his dick from view as Reese leaned down again and sucked hard and audibly, once.

  “What?” His muscles loosened and his legs started to drop. “But you said—”

  “Do it. Now. I’m not going to fuck you.” He sank his mouth deep over the boy’s dick and moved a hand between his legs, cupping the kid’s balls
in a gentle grip. “Do it or I’ll stop. Grab ’em.”

  “No,” the boy’s whine was faint, barely audible over his harsh breathing. “Don’t stop.” He pried his hands off the rail and clasped his own knees, pulling them back to his shoulders until his dick was visible again, harder than ever, practically twitching with need.

  Tom watched Reese’s hand slide out of view, moving down from the boy’s balls to the pulled-wide crack of his ass, only guessing at what his fingers were doing by the kid’s sudden strangled gasp. “Fuck. Hurry up. You’re gonna make me come.”

  Fuck, yeah.

  Ghost fingers trailed over Tom’s balls and slid back between his cheeks until his asshole clenched because he’d swear he could feel a single finger rubbing him there. Holy shit. He closed his eyes for a second and squeezed his dick hard in his fist, not sure if he wanted to come while imagining Reese’s finger playing with his ass or not.

  “Yes, that’s the general plan.”

  The sudden rich tones of laughter that swelled Reese’s voice made Tom grin and he clamped his lips between his teeth to keep from laughing out loud with his roommate, while the pleasure surged from his dick to his ass before sweeping his entire body with a wave of heat so intense he felt the sheen of sweat break out on his skin.

  “Well, fucking do it already.”

  Look who was dishing out commands now. Bending himself in half brought out the bossy in that guy apparently. Tom could hardly blame him, since he was about ten seconds from shooting all over his sheets himself.

  Reese tucked a grin away at the corner of his mouth, pulled his hand back a bit and then slid it forward again. The boy gasped and Tom felt it in his own hole, the burn of two fingers stretching him, and then the wet heat of Reese’s mouth sliding down his dick, sucking so hard it turned him inside out as those fingers got moving and stroking in his ass. Heat pooled in his belly and a rushing sound whistled in his ears. He opened his mouth wide enough to keep his heaving breaths quiet as his dick grew rigid and his fucking toes curled, pleasure lighting him up from head to toe. Wet heat spilled over his hands and soaked into his sheets as his orgasm ripped through him in total silence, the muscles in his throat turned to steel with his need not to shout.

  He didn’t even hear the guy come. Eventually, the roaring in his ears settled to a dull thumping pulse while he lay in the puddle of melted wax that used to be his bones and muscles. Maybe they’d find his teeth someday, the only thing not blasted to jelly by that orgasm. He heard it when Reese shuffled his latest willing victim out the door minutes later, too tired to open his eyes and watch what he was sure would be a fucked-out stumble by the smaller boy.

  A soft whap on the edge of the bed in front of his face and the faint puff of air against his skin had him prying one eye open.

  A tossed hand towel was sliding off the edge of his bed.

  The crawl of heat over his face felt like it ought to be visible even in the dark room as he slid his wet hand out from under the sheet and caught the towel before it fell off his bed. Jesus. How twisted was this?

  Reese didn’t say a word. Just crawled on top of the covers of his own bed and curled up, fully dressed, his back to Tom. After a moment, he twitched, as if he could feel Tom’s eyes on him. Or maybe he was aware of how vulnerable sleeping with his back to the room made him. He rolled all the way over onto his other side. Tom snapped his eyes shut, not ready to look at his roommate. Not now that the kid had tossed him a towel to clean up the come that still coated his fingers and his dick and Reese’s sheets.

  Apparently Reese didn’t want to trade longing glances either, because after a moment he flopped over again. Tom cracked an eye open and saw him, head uncomfortably tilted up on his thick pillow as Reese tried to lie on his back, still moving restlessly. He looked about as comfortable as a guy asked to stretch out on a bed of upside-down thumbtacks.

  Tom pulled the towel under his sheet and scrubbed himself down roughly, trying to be silent about the dirty cleanup job but knowing Reese could hear him. Finished, he didn’t know what to do with the towel. Sitting up to toss it in his laundry box was way too public a statement about what had just happened, but he couldn’t see himself dropping it on the floor either, a sort of smack in the face for the ever-neat blowjob king across the room.

  In the end, he tucked it between his knees and curled his hand under his cheek as he tried to fall asleep, listening to Reese’s breathing slow.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict what was going to happen next. They wouldn’t speak a word to each other, post-voyeurism jack-off session. Reese would disappear for a day or two and then show up out of the blue, both of them pretending that nothing had taken place in the dark shadows of their room. Maybe they would find their way to one of those nights when scattered sentences could almost make up a normal conversation, or maybe they wouldn’t speak for weeks.

  Every time they crossed a line, they jumped back over it to safety even further away from normal than before.

  But there was no denying that the lines pushed further and further into the wilderness each time.

  Tom fell asleep, not knowing if Reese ever did, a little afraid of what line was next.

  Chapter Six

  In the end, it took a month for one of his old teammates to figure out he was back on campus and track him down.

  He didn’t know who had told them. He hadn’t called anyone, not even Coach. But the fact was, there was only so much hiding out you could do when you had to show up for class and collect the occasional piece of mail in the P.O. Plus, in the senior econ seminars, he was going to run into the same students he’d had classes with for three years and some of them were going to know the guys he used to hang out with. Gossip traveled like wildfire through a dry ocean of prairie grass, so he wasn’t surprised when someone found him, only that it had taken so long.

  He was surprised that it was at his room and that the banging on his door came with no warning.

  Tom was reading on his bed, a pillow bunched under his chest as he lay on his stomach and stared at the driest text about the effects of tax law on non-profits in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His brain felt like a bowl of oatmeal and was probably taking in about as much information as a pile of mushy grains would too. The early morning light was shining in his eyes. He’d have to move soon or get irritated at the squinting, but he hadn’t been motivated yet to get up. Had simply dragged the textbook onto the bed when he woke and started studying. Reese was up, pulling on a pair of skinny jeans, shirtless yet, and Tom was deliberately not watching him get dressed.

  Which didn’t mean he missed the way Reese spooked at the sudden pounding, pulling the desk chair between himself and the door.

  “Hey, Worthy! I know you’re in there. Open up!”

  Reese looked at him, hands white-knuckled on the back of the chair.

  Fuck.

  Tom sat up and ran his hands through his short hair, tugging on it. There wasn’t much of a chance Cash would go away. The guy had followed him around like a puppy, a freshman trying to make the team when Tom was a sophomore. Running together his junior year as teammates, they’d become the kind of casual friends that gave each other shit about girls and challenged each other to drinking contests at frat parties.

  Not a goddamn bit of which interested Tom these days. Cash had been one of the few people who’d bothered to call him up or come see him more than once after the news about his father broke. The guy didn’t know the meaning of give up, the reason he’d made it on the team in the first place. He’d kept coming around until Tom had flat out told him to go away, back in days when he couldn’t tell the difference between those who were flocking around to gloat and anyone who was actually still a friend.

  Having tracked him down to off-campus housing, he wasn’t going to go away without seeing Tom, even if it was seven o’clock on a Monday morning.

  “Fuc
k,” he repeated out loud and stood, heading for the door. “Sorry, kid.”

  Cash was almost too much to handle at the best of times. Inflicting him on his roommate before breakfast was a punishable offense for which he’d have to make amends.

  “Dude!” Cash yanked him into a one-arm bro hug as soon as he opened the door, pounding on his back and then pushing back to look him up and down. “You look like shit. What, you couldn’t run a lap or two in bumfuck wherever you were?”

  He pushed past Tom and walked into the room backwards, still talking with the motormouth that never quit.

  “Coach is gonna shit when he hears you’re back. Last year sucked, man. We got our asses handed to us on a fucking platter without you. But we got this new kid on anchor now who can suck my dick, he’s so good. You’ll have to sack up and fight for your job, man. Whoa!”

  Cash’s eyes flew open and Tom knew what was coming as his buddy stared at the wall he’d backed past. If Tom remembered correctly, there was a poster of a naked male model hung there, stretched across a bed, sheet barely draped over his crotch, pubes peeking out as he stared with heavy-lidded eyes at the photographer.

  “What the fuck, dude?”

  He spun around to take in the other posters of mostly naked men that covered the walls. Tom didn’t notice them anymore and didn’t have anything of his own to hang up, so he’d never bothered to ask Reese to take them down on his side of the room. But seeing it with Cash’s eyes, it looked like an all-gay, all-the-time revue in here.

  And that was before Cash spotted the half-naked boy with the slim hips, pink lips, and leather cuffs on his wrists, standing with the chair between him and Tom and Cash.

  “Seriously!” Cash threw his hands up in the air. “What. The. Fuck.”

  “This is my roommate, Reese. The guy with no filter is Cash. We used to run together.”