by Trina Solet
"It's new to you, but when you see a guy you really want, you'll dive in." Spencer checked around the bar for potential candidates. "What kind of guys are you into?"
Troy looked around again. Judging from the smile he wore, he seemed to like what he saw, but his eyes never settled on any one of the guys. He finally turned to Spencer and grinned sheepishly. "A bunch of these guys look good, but I would feel weird going up to a guy and asking him to get me started. And if I don't say anything about it being my first time, I'll have to pretend I know what I'm doing. I'm pretty sure I can't pull that off."
"OK, don't worry about it for tonight. Just enjoy the atmosphere."
"And the company," Troy added to be nice and raised his beer to salute Spencer. "So what was it like for you when you came out?" Troy asked and leaned across the table like he wanted to hear every word.
"It happened in high school. I kind of felt like everyone already guessed, so it seemed stupid to hide it."
"Did people mess with you?" Troy asked, his brow furrowing with concern.
Spencer shrugged. "I had to deal with a few jerks, got pushed around a little, shoved into a wall once. Never saw who did it."
"Shit," Troy said looking grim and a little bit dangerous, like he was ready to kick some ass if only Spencer would give him the names of his high school tormentors.
"It's all part of being a gay nerd. But it wasn't all bad. Some friends really stuck by me, and my parents were great. Dad said, 'I always thought I'd be giving my boy advice on women. Now I'm kind of out of my depth.' I told him, 'I'm sure mom can tell me all I need to know about picking up guys.' I let him stew for a minute then I said, 'I mean, she picked you, didn't she? She must know what she's doing.'"
"Your dad sounds great," Troy said with a wistful smile.
"He's a nerd dad. And gay or straight, nerds are the same the world over," Spencer told him.
"Is that the secret?" Troy said, looking a little skeptical.
"Sure. Most of my guy friends are nerds. They just shrugged and said, 'Everyone thinks we're all gay anyway, so whatever.' Nerds have nothing to lose," Spencer claimed.
"Don't sell 'em short. I think you have some great friends and great parents."
"I needed them. It wasn't easy. I had the rest of high school to get through. Sometimes just walking down the hall was hell. And I never knew what might be on or in my locker. The things I found slipped in there through the gaps." Spencer shook his head.
"Makes me ashamed that I was such a stupid coward," Troy said regretfully.
Spencer didn't blame him though. "You didn't have the support system."
"Maybe I just picked bad parents."
"They might come around. Don't give up on them yet."
"Until then I need to stock up on some friends who aren't uncomfortable to be around me," Troy said.
"You can start with me," Spencer offered.
"That's a good start," Troy said with a smile.
Spencer lost count of how many beers they had while they talked. It wasn't too many, but being with Troy didn't leave his brain any room for counting. When they went out together earlier in the night, Spencer hadn't expected that they would tell each other about their lives. He thought there would be some forced chitchat and then Troy would ditch him for better company. Now they were leaving together and heading home.
Stepping through the doors of Bottleneck and out onto the sidewalk, Spencer looked up past the glare of the lampposts to the starry sky. He took a big lungful of air to clear out the late night, stuffy smell of the bar that had gotten inside him. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Troy doing the same thing as well as stretching his arms out. That did some nice things for his powerful chest.
Spencer had drunk just enough and stopped short of the stage of drunkenness when he might do something to make a fool of himself. That was a smart move considering the intoxicating influence of having Troy beside him.
"What else is around here?" Troy asked, looking up and down the street.
"I can show you the 24 hour drugstore where you can buy condoms all night and day," Spencer said and pointed out the way to the store.
"I plan to need a steady supply," Troy told him.
"Ambitious."
Troy beamed at him. Spencer could swear his brown eyes got more beautiful the more he looked at them, or maybe that was the beer talking.
Troy might have been halfway to drunk too, the way he leaned on Spencer with his muscled arm heavy over his shoulders. "Thanks for taking me out."
"Thanks for what? You didn't hook up," Spencer said while enjoying the closeness of Troy's big body more than he should.
"It's too much pressure. Who? What? Where? It was easier to just drink and hang out with you," Troy squeezed him a little tighter as they meandered on the empty sidewalk.
"Yeah, you are safe with me," Spencer said ruefully.
"Am I?" Troy asked and turned to him with a meaningful look.
For a while Spencer only stared into his smiling eyes. He hadn't even noticed that they were home until Troy pressed him into the doorway of their apartment building.
Chapter 4
Standing in the doorway, pressed up against Spencer, Troy wasn't sure what to do. With his mouth temptingly close, Troy could kiss him so easily. If only Spencer would give him some sort of signal that it was OK.
But he only stared wordlessly and Troy didn't know what to think. The feeling of having Spencer's eyes focused on him for so long made him feel warm and tingly inside.
To try and break the tension, Troy finally spoke up. "OK. So tell me what I'm missing. Let's start with the basics. Tell me what it's like to kiss a guy?" he asked Spencer in a hushed voice.
"You never kissed a guy?" Spencer said, his voice just as low and intimate. His lips were so luscious and then he licked them, parted them and stepped even closer. Troy blinked and lost his ability to breathe. He was so close. Troy felt dizzy. All he could see was Spencer's mouth and all he could hear was his own heart beating so loud that Spencer must hear it too.
Taking a slow, deep breath, Spencer leaned in. Troy angled his head toward that pretty mouth. Why did that last inch of space seem impossible to cross? He smelled beer as their breaths mixed. Troy watched Spencer's eyelashes as his eyes fell closed.
He didn't know how it happened. Their lips met and Troy was sure that he was no longer conscious. He had dropped into an oblivion of hot, silky lips and tongue gliding over his own forever. His tongue slid into Spencer's mouth, and he moaned around it, sucked on it.
Then, after only giving him a taste, Spencer pulled away. Troy wanted to drag him back, tell him not to stop. But he did have to stop to let Troy breathe.
Troy only now realized that he was completely out of breath, like all the air in his lungs had just been burned away. If Spencer hadn't stopped, Troy might have been gasping for breath. What an amateur.
"So what's it like to kiss a guy?" Spencer asked him in a whisper.
Troy tried to answer, but he just wanted to laugh and cry. What words could describe a feeling like that? He did manage to whisper a sort of answer. "It's hot."
Spencer smiled, closed the space between them again and gave him a hug. The warmth of his body infused him, and Troy had to tell himself to get a grip. It was just a friendly, drunk hug.
"Thank you," he said into Spencer's ear as he hugged him back too tight and too long.
Troy and Spencer made their way upstairs side by side on the narrow stairs, bumping into the railing and the walls. Despite Troy's half-drunk, feverish hopes, they parted ways at their bedroom doors.
After going to the bathroom to get rid of some of the beer he drank, Troy fell into bed with his clothes on. He did manage to pull the phone from his pocket and toe off his shoes. With two loud thuds, they hit the floor at the foot of the bed.
He thought he would be dead asleep in seconds, but the feeling of that kiss wouldn't leave him. It came back to him in sudden tremors that didn't let him drift off. He su
ffered through a few aftershocks and realized there would be no sleep if he didn't jerk off first.
He ripped open his fly, and his hand got busy. He pictured Spencer's parted mouth and his closed eyes. Letting the kiss melt through him again, he started pumping into his own fist. It should have been Spencer he was thrusting into. That's what he really wanted.
In the end, his hand did the trick and his body curled forward as he shot come over his hand and his t-shirt. After carefully taking off his t-shirt and then using it to clean up, Troy slumped back into bed.
To think he never kissed a guy before. Even Troy found that hard to believe. Why did he do that to himself? Because he wanted his life to be easy, and for a while it was.
Troy wasn't used to struggling. School was easy for him, not that he ever challenged himself with advanced classes or anything. He liked sports and even played on the baseball team for a little while.
His straight friends assumed he was one of them. Most people didn't wonder about him, so he didn't wonder about himself. He wasn't super popular or anything, but he had plenty of friends. Too bad they all drifted away after he came out.
Before that, he picked up girls without having to try. He couldn't keep them for long though. They knew something was missing even if he didn't. The breakups never bothered him much though. That should have been a clue, but he wasn't in the habit of analyzing himself.
Even as he told them they were pretty, he didn't question why he didn't want to sleep with the girls he dated. The flash of a boob or a thigh didn't excite him. He didn't usually make a move on them until they got pissed at him.
While he ignored every signal his body sent him, one or two of the girls asked if he might be into guys. He denied it then, but it got so he couldn't deny it any more.
His parents were a different story. They had calmed down a little since their first blow up when he told them he was gay, but they still didn't accept that this was real. Troy felt like he had talked himself hoarse trying to make them understand.
It had been hard enough to get up the courage to tell them. He didn't expect to have to work so hard to make them believe him. Actually he thought that maybe they at least suspected the truth, his mother especially. She had a pointed way of asking about the girls he dated, like she thought there might be a problem.
But once he told them he was gay, both she and Dad were telling him he needed to give girls more of a chance. "You just haven't met the one," his dad said and looked at his mom with a smile. Maybe she was his one, but Troy's one was a guy. He was absolutely sure of that now. Some day he might even meet that guy.
That was a real possibility now that he wasn't wasting his life on pretending to be someone he wasn't. There were tons of hot guys out there, and some of them were bound to be interested in him. Tonight was supposed to be a start of that, but it wasn't the way he expected – Spencer wasn't someone he had ever expected.
Tonight there was laughter and beer and kissing. It was starting – his real life, not some bad impression of being straight. He could still taste Spencer's kiss. He just hoped Spencer wouldn't regret it in the morning after he had a chance to sleep on it and the effect of the beer wore off. If Spencer didn't want complications where he lived, he might be kicking himself for that kiss. Troy hoped he didn't. He didn't want his first real kiss to be someone's regret.
Chapter 5
Spencer silenced the alarm that woke him and rolled out of bed, all with his eyes closed. If only he could go through the rest of the day that way. That's when he tripped over the shoes he kicked off last night and left lying in the middle of his bedroom. If he wanted to make it through the morning in one piece, he better force his eyes to open. Damn. He hated being awake.
And he wasn't sure how he felt about the flashes of the night before. Last night was a hazy, overlapping mess of tastes and sensations. Spencer could easily believe that none of it was real. Maybe Troy wasn't even real.
Groggily pulling open the door of his bedroom, he ran right into Troy. So he was real after all. But that kiss was bound to be a minefield.
"Sorry," Troy said though the run-in was clearly Spencer's fault.
"No problem," Spencer said and he even managed a kind of smile.
In return, Troy gave him his own version of a nervous smile and looked at him questioningly.
"So, good morning," Spencer told him, not knowing what else to say.
"It is? And last night, are we good?" Troy's brow was furrowed as he stared intently at Spencer.
Spencer wasn't sure what kind of answer he was looking for. "Why wouldn't we be?" he said a little defensively. It felt awkward to talk about it. What they said last night was enough. He didn't want to hear that he was only a test case to Troy, and that he shouldn't expect anything to happen between them. He already knew that perfectly well.
"I thought maybe you were worried that I was going to be a horndog all the time and bother you," Troy blurted out.
"So you're not?" Spencer said to tease him.
"Did I say that?" Troy asked.
"Not exactly," Spencer said and wondered what was going on. It was kind of like Troy was flirting with him. Wasn't he supposed to be letting him down easy?
"You look cute when you're sleepy," Troy told him.
Spencer stared at him and wondered if he was joking. That made more sense than flirting. He felt up his hair, and yes it was sticking up all tangled and weird.
"You're funny," he said to Troy while trying to flatten the knotted curls with his hand.
"No, I mean it. It's a sexy look," Troy said. Spencer knew it wasn't true, but he found it really hard to doubt him. He had such a beautiful, honest face.
Now Spencer was on his way to the shower and Troy was heading into the kitchen. Troy brushed against him as he passed, but Spencer knew that the hallway wasn't that narrow. He had navigated it plenty of times while practically still asleep. There was enough room even for a well-built guy like Troy to pass him with no physical contact. Troy had done it on purpose and Spencer couldn't stop smiling at the thought. Troy brushed against him because he wanted to and maybe he wanted more than that. Maybe he wanted all of Spencer pressed up against him. As he got into the bathroom, Spencer wondered if he was delusional.
Through the door, he heard Greg reminding him again about not hogging the shower. It wasn't like Spencer could forget about Troy for even one second. Not while he was stripping for his shower, or getting wet under a stream of water or soaping himself up. It was like Troy was in there with him, mirroring everything he did from getting naked to lathering up his cock until he came.
To be considerate, Spencer shampooed his hair fast, scrubbed down, and rinsed off in record time. He ran the towel over himself roughly and worried a little that Troy would know exactly what he had been up to in there. He could probably guess that Spencer might jerk off in the shower. Hopefully he wouldn't guess that Spencer had been fantasizing about him. Hell, he had been fantasizing about him since before he met him.
Tying the towel around his waist, Spencer was out the door. That's when he ran into Troy again. Bumping into his big, muscular body several times a day might be a nice perk of having him as a roommate, but it did give his dick ideas Spencer had no hope of satisfying.
"It's free now," Spencer said unnecessarily, feeling like he had to say something while being pressed up against another guy.
Troy smiled at him and said, "Thanks." It was almost like he was thanking Spencer for running into him. "You didn't shave," Troy noticed and for a second his fingertips grazed the stubble on Spencer's jaw line and his chin.
Spencer shuddered at the fleeting touch. But that was nothing. Troy was just really friendly. There was no way he was interested in Spencer. The last time Spencer had time to check himself out in a mirror that wasn't completely fogged up, he wasn't impressed with what he saw. Could he have gotten better looking since then? No.
But something made Troy's gorgeous eyes twinkle in his direction as he went into the bathroo
m. Or he might just be laughing at Spencer, shaking his head at the awkward, skinny mess that slept next door to him and harbored illusions of being wanted. Good thing Spencer had no time to worry about that as he went to get ready while catching up on some texts at the same time.
As he came out of his bedroom, ready for work, Spencer heard Greg and Troy talking in the kitchen.
"Don't spoil him. He's already hopeless. If you start hand feeding him like a baby bird..." Greg said but Troy cut him off.
"I don't mind. So far Spencer is the only real friend I've made since I got here," Troy said as he pulled two slices of bread from the toaster.
"Isn't that putting all your eggs in one skinny basket?" Greg asked him.
"I guess, but we get along," Troy said and shot Spencer a smile when he saw him approach.
"What's this?" Spencer said as he returned Troy's smile and glared at Greg.
"A toast sandwich for you," Troy said as he finished making it, wrapped it in a napkin and handed it to Spencer. "You never have time to eat. You can eat this on the go. It's just peanut butter and jam."
"Thanks. Some day you'll make some lucky guy a gorgeous and considerate husband," Spencer said. Greg rolled his eyes, but Troy blushed. How cute was that. Too bad Spencer didn't have time to stay and enjoy the sight. He thanked Troy again and rushed out the door with his toast sandwich in hand.
Breadworks was jam-packed for lunch, but the crowd thinned out after that. That gave Spencer time to brag about his new, hot roommate to his work friend Wanda. If only he had a picture or two to show her and his other friends as they all demanded. That made some of them skeptical, but Spencer didn't care.
Since Troy had fed him breakfast, Spencer came home with a roast beef sandwich for Troy. He hurried up the stairs but at the same time readied himself for disappointment. Troy might not be there. Or he might not like roast beef.
Spencer tried not to jump for joy when he saw that Troy was home. He opted for a casual hello and showed him what he brought.