Best Gay Romance 2013 (21 page)

David exhales, warm breath washing across Tobin's chest, and presses in slow and hard. Tobin moans, arching into it, reaching down to cup his cock. On the way there his fingers clash with David's, moving to do the same. There's a soft, short grunt of laughter from above, and Tobin smiles, groping for David's
wrist and then pulling it down to his cock. Better David's hand than his.

David presses in again, passing his hand over Tobin's cock in a deceptively gentle motion. Tobin hitches his legs higher on David's thighs, then shifts them up to David's hips. The angle forces him to pull in a breath as David slides in another inch without even trying. David's moist fingers—lube? saliva?—find Tobin's nipple and squeeze, eliciting another moan that just keeps going as David slides all the way in.

David always rests, here, and Tobin reaches up to cup his hand over David's nape, breathing with him, finding the rhythm.
We merge,
David had whispered the first time, when he had cradled Tobin in his arms, fucking him hard and slow and so thoroughly Tobin could not even find the words to agree.
We merge like everything else. There is no singular being. Anywhere.

Tobin shifts slightly, aware of the way David's weight begins to move, and then David's hand is on the mattress just beneath Tobin's armpit, bracing him. Tobin grips that upper arm, again half a hand of skin and half a hand of sleeve, and waits. David only starts when he's ready.

The first thrust is slow, learning the way their bodies fit together on this particular night. Tobin tips his hips up encouragingly, and David thrusts again, his breath catching. Tobin pushes his hips up, more forward this time, impatient. He knows what's coming. He doesn't want to wait. His cock is long and full against his belly, swollen and waiting for David's hand. All of Tobin is waiting.

David finds it, that nebulous
it
that slips him into his comfort zone, and the thrusts turn rough and jarring, forcing Tobin to link his ankles in an attempt to keep their bodies joined. David's breaths are harsh, focused, and Tobin reaches up to brace himself against the headboard, gasping as David's cock rubs him
just so. David's free hand goes frantic then, clutching at Tobin's hip, then his shoulder, seeking just the right way to anchor Tobin's body. Tobin works his hips up, fisting one hand in the front of David's T-shirt and yanking him closer, and that seems to do it. David cries out, a harsh, faintly startled sound, and his back arches sharply as he throws himself into Tobin for those final, crucial half-dozen thrusts. Tobin can feel David's semen jetting deep into him, and he moans; we merge, like everything else. There is no singular being. Anywhere.

David breathes, his forehead on Tobin's sweat-slicked chest. Closing his eyes, Tobin pets the back of David's T-shirt, damp and stuck to his skin with sweat. There is a transmutation that happens in these moments, Tobin has decided; there is a kind of magic that happens between when he accepts David's semen and when David coaxes his own out. The circuit is primed but not closed, and Tobin feels the whole of his being aching for completion, something far more basic and necessary than the urge to come.

David leans up and takes Tobin's cock in his hand, letting out a low murmur of pleased surprise at its state. It feels swollen in David's hand, distended like a pregnant woman's belly, as thick and filled with blood as his belt-whipped palms. David presses in again, his cock still half-hard, and Tobin sucks in a breath, waiting, again. Then David begins to stroke, long, tight passes Tobin knows intimately, as he knows the slow, languid grind David offers in counterpoint. Here, there is nothing but David; he is over and inside and all thoughts of a universe beyond him fade. David's hand tightens, working the top half of Tobin's shaft in a perfect squeeze-twist Tobin never taught him but David seemed to intuit, importing the motion from the endless lazy adolescent afternoons Tobin spent sprawled half-naked on his bed, employing the exact same technique till he'd milked himself dry.

Tobin gasps, arching his hips up into David's next press, and David quickens the pace of his hand, thumb working up the underside just below the ridge, over and over till Tobin tenses from head to toe, holding his breath till the orgasm breaks over him, forcing his cock up into David's hand again and again, semen hot on his belly as David strokes it out of him, easy at first, then with a firmer grip, seeking to squeeze it all out.

Drained, Tobin lies boneless, twitching sharply as David works the last of the semen from him. Then David's hand is on Tobin's thigh, and David gently pulls out; Tobin waits, eyes open in the dark, spent but waiting for that crucial closing of the circuit, so close now, David shifting lower and taking the sheets with him, David's breath warm against his cock.

There. David's tongue strokes Tobin's belly as he takes Tobin's semen, licking with a slow, concentrated methodology to make sure he finds it all. Tobin's skin cools where David's tongue has been, his saliva quickly chilling in the open air.

David moans, and Tobin relaxes; it's complete. David passes his hand gently over Tobin's belly as he shifts up and to the side, settling in against Tobin, and then, finally, is the kiss, thorough and quiet, David's hand at Tobin's nape, Tobin's hand at David's hip.

“I love you,” David whispers in the dark, pressing his forehead to Tobin's.

Tobin had asked about that the first time, how love fit into David's mechanical, atheistic worldview. David had smiled, a coy little expression Tobin had rarely seen, and said:
I am a realist. I have experienced love, and therefore it exists.

David takes Tobin's hand off his hip, brings it up to his lips, kisses the still-hot palm.

“I love you,” Tobin whispers in return.

Doug Harrison

 

 

 

 

 

 

My pace quickened as I strode from my parents' car. I glanced back once. Dad waved from the driver's seat, a nonverbal gesture of support nurtured by his desire for me to begin the life experience he never had. He lowered his arm and flapped his hand, figuratively pushing me forward, as he had literally done many times before to urge me onto the field, any sports field. Mom also waved, sorta, a weak gesture, her hand wavering between encouragement, blowing a final kiss, or wiping a tear.

I heard the familiar sound of the engine sputtering before turning over. It was no longer a family car—I was on my own. Carless and clueless. I suppressed a chuckle. My motor mind still coughed up phrases like a nondescript character in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but at least I was near Boston, home of the Lamplighters. Not that I would have time or means to wander off campus—I'd come here to study physics and math, and that was that.

I snickered. Julie was sure in for a surprise. No more dating, even though she was majoring in voice somewhere in the bowels of Boston. So she won the Best Voice in New England Contest—got a full-time scholarship. Big deal. I didn't win any Best Science Student Contest, but I had dug up a scholarship too. I wondered how she was doing during her first week in town. Probably lonely like me.

I winced at the memory of the unending stream of compliments I had shoveled into her voracious ego, and the memory of my inevitable reward—going home with lover's balls, my jockeys glued to my upper thighs with precum. I was wedded to my right hand. Well, to both hands, since I had such a big dick.

Who had the big ego now?

I rubbed my crotch, and then quickly withdrew my hand, hoping no one had noticed. My mind flashed back to the dark corner of the magazine section of my hometown's sole smoke shop, where every month I had crouched over the latest copy of
Physique Pictorial
, pressing my hard-on against the chipped wooden display case, peeking at hunks clad in posing straps. The few nude models with hard-ons didn't outrank me in endowment, but their physiques sure did. God, how I had yearned to look like them. Did that make me queer? I sure wished prissy Julie had given me the chance to find out.

I bit my lower lip. Fledgling students and their parents flowed around me as if I were an implacable boulder in a turbulent stream. No one smiled or said hello. And, of course, I didn't make any effort to engage them.

Then a guy about my height pushed his way toward me: brown hair, like mine, but close-cropped, a tailored crew cut. His freshly pressed sport shirt didn't conceal his gymnast's physique. He held out his hand.

“Hi, I'm Mark. You a new student?”

I stared at one of my suitcases, then the other. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “I'm Brad Chapman.”

Mark unrolled a single-sheet scroll of paper, glanced at it, and shoved it into his hip pocket. “I'm one of the brothers from Alpha Pi Omega, over there.” I followed the smooth arc of his hand across a grassy field and past a cluster of tennis courts to a row of brick buildings. “We volunteered, well, it was our turn this year, to welcome the frosh and get you settled in. The guys, that is. The sorority sisters help the women.” He leered. “And point them toward the frat houses.”

I managed a weak smile.

“C'mon, let's get started.” He turned, faced the building I had been reconnoitering, and swept his hand in a grandiose semicircle.

“You must know this is Samuels Hall,” he said.

I nodded and scanned the
U
-shaped, ivy-covered, weathered-brick building. Its three floors rang with the creak of stubborn windows forced upward, doors slamming, and a few shouts of joy. A long banner, made of wrinkled white sheets held together by large safety pins, displayed a scrawled message: WELCOME, CLASS OF '61.

“A couple brothers from the house cobbled that together,” Mark volunteered.

At least they tried
, I thought.
Four years, four long years of…of what?
My mood was ironically underscored by Elvis's big hit, “Heartbreak Hotel,” blasting from a corner window. I wondered if I dared tune in my favorite program,
Live from the Met
, every Saturday afternoon. I lifted my suitcases.

“I'll take those for you.”

Before I could protest, he yanked them from my hands. I wasn't sure if Mark suppressed a laugh at my bargain-basement
luggage, but I sure did notice the bulge of his well-tanned biceps. I followed him up two flights of stairs, past communal bathrooms, to a three-room suite, my home for the year, like it or not. We entered.

A rail-thin man several inches shorter than me introduced himself. “I'm Jim.”

“And I'm Sam,” grunted the second.

They both held out their hands and we shook.

“We took the room over there,” Jim announced.

A third freshman meandered out of the second bedroom. “I took the lower bunk in the other room. I'm Winston.” He walked back into the bedroom and resumed his unpacking. I took in the undersized living room—two small desks with matching chairs that probably creaked, and an overstuffed easy chair that needed a stitch job. I went into my room: one desk.

“I took the desk,” Winston announced without looking up as he arranged pens, pencils, and a few mementos from home on the small surface. His open designer suitcases occupied most of the lower bunk. I stared at the upper bunk: no ladder. Good thing I'd hiked miles of rocky terrain and learned to hoist myself over obstacles. Mark swung my suitcases onto what was to be my nightly precarious perch, a nest with one occupant.

“Well, here you are,” Mark said, and again offered his hand. “If you need anything, give me a jingle.” He handed me a scrap of paper. “That's the house number.” He smacked me between my shoulder blades, but his slap lingered and his hand slid a few inches down my back. He strode toward the bedroom door, quickly scanned the living room, and smiled at me, a smile that lingered like his slap as his periscope gaze traveled from my face to my feet and back to my eyes.

I blushed. He left.

I scrutinized the bedroom. The bunk beds were shoved into
an alcove. Two bureaus and Winston's desk filled the opposing wall. His monogrammed towels were neatly folded over the two towel racks screwed into the back of the door.

Shit! No goddamn privacy
. I could retreat to the library to study, but where would I jerk off? In the shower? In the bushes at night? I'd managed at home with Mom and Dad downstairs. But I didn't have three roommates there, and I wasn't forced to share an upper and lower jammed into a tiny bedroom to boot. Could I manage a silent quickie under the covers? Would Winston notice? Would he smell my cum? Would he even care?

The four of us finished unpacking and found our way to the cafeteria. I filled my tray with my first nondescript college dinner; Jim, Sam and I sat together chatting about where we were from, this and that, but Winston spurned us for a group of guys wearing prep-school blazers.

After dinner I paid my respects to Jumbo, a huge stuffed elephant—P. T. Barnum's gift to the school—that was part of college lore. Jumbo was ensconced appropriately in the foyer of the biology building and was conspicuously anatomically correct. I placed a quarter in his curled trunk, as my dorm mates had told me we freshmen were supposed to do, and returned to my room to collapse onto my high-rise bed.

Winston, already in pristine underwear, had taken off his black horn-rimmed glasses and was in the act of inserting earplugs. He switched off the light as I entered. I flicked it back on and flicked him the bird at the same time, threw one set of his towels onto his desk, placed my towels on the rack above his, brushed my teeth, and hauled myself into bed. I tossed and turned while Winston snored, and I vowed to find a drugstore the next day to purchase my first set of earplugs.