Thank you for reading this story.
Feedback, comments, and questions are appreciated and welcome at romanjwrites@gmail.com
October Freshman Year
As soon as I heard the low, lewd, catcalling whistle, I came to a stop and waved at my teammates to run ahead back to the gym without me. I looked around and couldn't see him, but I knew Pete was here. My whole team recognized his whistle by now. Hell, half of them had taken to imitating it themselves, using it instead of my name whenever they referred to me.
On the days like today when our team runs would take us past the tennis courts where Pete would be practicing, the whistle was inevitable. Sometimes, it would be just that, Pete not interrupting his play at all, his eagle-sharp eyes still tracking the ball as he chased it down around the court. I wondered how he could always time it so perfectly without even breaking his concentration to turn and look at us. Other times, if he wasn't in the middle of a drill, Pete would do a little something extra for dramatic effect, like making lovesick puppy eyes at me while running in exaggerated slow motion along the inner edge of the court until he pretended to collide smack into the metal fence at the end. My teammates, the bastards, would always laugh, thereby encouraging him to try to outdo himself even more the next time.
My friend Pete, the sideshow.
But I wasn't near the courts now, and there hadn't been any follow-up to the whistle. I thought maybe I was getting off easy today because Pete hadn't shown himself yet either. I raised a defiant middle finger to the air and started up to run after the rest of my team.
Then, out of nowhere, I heard a rush to my right and felt strong hands gripping my bare torso and pushing me backward. I tried to fight, to steady myself, but he'd caught me too off guard. I felt myself stumbling and then a rush of air as I was falling hard onto my side. The landing on the ground was soft, though, almost spongy. And wet. Reaching out my arms to push myself back up, I realized he'd pushed me into a pile of mud and leaves still sloppy from the morning's rain. I heard Pete's laughter, too: Loud. Unrestrained. Pure evil.
I was back up on my feet in a second, charging after him. He reacted too late, too busy bent over in his shaking mirth to give himself the head start he'd need to outrun me. Pete only had time for a few frantic steps before I was on him. I grabbed his shoulders from behind, pulled him toward me, slid my hands down his bare torso, and hugged him tightly against my own half-naked body. The soft skin of his muscled back slid wetly over the muscles of my chest as he strained and struggled against me. But I had him, though, and I dragged him back over to the same heap of muddy leaves he'd thrown me in. Flexing my arms tightly to crush him against my torso, I lifted him up off his feet as he kicked against me and then released him down onto the ground.
Now it was my turn to laugh as he sputtered and spit dirt out of his mouth. But just as quickly as he was down, Pete sprung up on his knees and encircled his arms around my waist. He then dropped backwards down to the ground and pulled me down on top of him.
It was a mess... A muddy, maddening, magnificent mess. Both of us were thrashing against each other, trying to pull ourselves up while pushing the other back down. But we were too evenly matched, though. Our mostly naked bodies just slid wetly and smoothly over each other as we struggled for leverage in the spongy soft leaves.
... And it felt good.
Very good.
I stopped abruptly, feeling the hot adrenaline coursing through my body and panting for breath.
I stopped myself because I realized I didn't want to stop. I wanted to do something... well, something else.
I rolled away from Pete onto my back, releasing my grip on him and looking up into the grey afternoon sky. I heard Pete catching his breath next to me, and I propped myself up on my elbows to look over at him. He had this totally exuberant, little-kid-at-Christmas smile lighting up his whole face and he was still laughing his deep, full-bodied laugh.
"Aw, come on, dude, you know you love it..." The warm light of his eyes glinted with his laughter. And as I felt my own gaze being drawn deeper into them, I had one immediate, purely reflexive thought: yeah, I do.
My immediate action, though, was to throw a large fistful of leaves in his face, hoping that some of them would fall in his open, grinning, infuriating mouth. I pulled myself up to my feet as Pete sputtered and tried to spit out the little bits of leaves. He took the hand I extended down to him and pulled himself up so that we were now standing face to face, bare chests still huffing only a few inches apart.
I looked down at his toned, well-muscled body, taking in the defined chest, his rounded shoulders and biceps, and his tight abs, all streaked with muddy handprints I realized were my own. I jerked my eyes back up to his, and they squarely met mine. I'd never seen anyone else with eyes like Pete's. They were this complex, almost three-dimensional color that went from a golden hazel-amber near his pupils to a darker, almost mahogany brown that became an even darker ring where they met the whites.
I couldn't look away.
... And Pete was looking right back.
It may have been for only a second, or it may have been several minutes for all I knew, because it felt like I was completely unaware of anything else. Pete broke the contact, though, with a slight upward tick of his eyes. They still were looking in mine, but not quite the same, as he spoke:
"So did you win, or did I?"
I glanced from his body down onto my own. I saw his muddy handprints painted all over myself. Inwardly, I felt his strong hands on me all over again, too.
"I guess we'll have to say we both won..."
My breathing was finally slowing down now, and I could feel the warming adrenaline start to fade. I wiped the dirt off my hands onto my running shorts until I realized the tugging on the thin fabric was stretching them taut over my too-full package.
"Don't you have anything better to do than terrorizing other athletic teams?"
"Not really," Pete smirked, amused with himself. "... It's so much fun."
I smacked him in the arm.
"... Actually, I was out here working," he explained.
"Working? ... Shirtless?" I looked around me and then back at him, taking in the muscles of his broad bare chest once again. It was October now, and the damp air wasn't warm if you weren't running. Pete's brown nipples were pointing stiffly out from the curves of his pecs, and, by the look of them, they must've been pretty hard. "... Where? Were you out here turning tricks or something?"
"Oh, if only you were that lucky..." Pete rolled his eyes. "No, with the grounds crew, smartass. And I took my shirt off because it got wet..." Pete lifted an arm and pointed over at one of the college's maintenance crew golf carts parked over by some trees next to a crumpled shirt, a rake, and some other landscaping equipment. "... Wanna go for a joyride?" Pete cocked an eyebrow suggestively and gave me his best attempt at a sleazy leer.
"Wait... You work with the grounds crew, too?? Dude, how many jobs do you have here?"
"Three," Pete said, shrugging nonchalantly.
Up until now, I'd only known about one of them, and I was surprised to find out about it in the first place. Even though Pete never talked about money himself, by everyone else's account his family was loaded. So it was hard to imagine him needing a job because he was strapped for cash. Besides, in all the time we'd hung out together, I'd never seen him really spend money on anything. Not that there was much to spend money on in this town besides pizza and beer.
"Umm, isn't that a lot of time? I mean, with your classes and tennis and everything?"
"It's not that bad..." He shrugged. "... The athletic department just has me go record player stats at my friends' games, and I'd probably be going to those anyway..." That had been the only job I'd known about before now. It'd actually been nice for me, too, since it sent Pete to record times at our home cross-country meets this season. It'd been cool to have someone there cheering us along since spectators for my sport tended to be so sparse.
"... And there's this one, which I like because it's outside... And then I also work a shift at the desk down in the archives at the library too, which I guess I never told you about. No one ever goes down there, so it's quiet and I can usually spend the whole time getting my own reading done without anyone interrupting me."
It all sounded pretty logical when Pete explained it that way, but I still wondered how he managed to fit it all in. He was doing well in his classes, was having a great season in tennis, had a social life, and it seemed like he even slept sometimes. I just didn't know why he thought he needed to take all this on too. I mean, we hung out pretty much every day, so I was sure he didn't have some secret drug habit he was hiding from me. I had a work-study job of my own doing data work in the Admissions Office as part of my financial aid package. It wasn't terrible or anything, and I made just enough off it to pay for necessities and keep myself afloat. I didn't exactly feel compelled to seek out more jobs to eat up what little free time I had left these days.
"Are you sure you're not running yourself too ragged?"
"Nah..." Pete shrugged. "Everyone's an over-achiever here, right? ... And it actually helps me stay focused if I don't have too much time to dick around."
I glanced back down at his muddy handprints on my body: "Yeah, seems like you still find time to be a dick..."
"For you? Always." Pete laughed. "... But if you're done takin' out all your repressed aggression on me now, I really should go finish up over there so I don't slow down the rest of the crew."
"My aggression?? You're the jackass who was hiding in the bushes waiting to jump me."
"Only because you're so damn irresistible," he smirked.
"Yeah, clearly," I said, smacking him in the arm again as I spoke. "... It's a shame you're all talk `cause you'll never even know the half of it..." I then bid him goodbye and turned to head back to the gym so I could clean myself up.
Pete called after me, "Hey, you wanna meet up for dinner later?"
I paused and mentally ran through everything I needed to get done this afternoon.
"Yeah, if you don't mind going late... I've gotta stop by the library first and get some books for class."
"Cool, I'll hit you up later then..." Pete turned and headed back towards the golf cart. Before he got too far, he stopped and called over his shoulder, "Just try to stay awake this time!," and I could hear him laughing as he walked away.
As it turned out, my roommate Mike was pretty popular with the women at our school, which meant I'd been frequently displaced from our room when he needed the space. I didn't begrudge him at all, but being sexiled so often was making it tough to get enough sleep during normal hours. Lately, I'd caught myself drifting off more and more during the day as the deprivation caught up with me.
So, yesterday, I'd been fighting a losing battle with my exhaustion at a table in a deserted corner of the library where I was working on a paper. Eventually, I decided it'd be okay to put my head down for just a minute. When I actually did wake up, several hours later, I felt something pulling at the stubble on my cheek. I reached a hand up and pulled off several bright yellow sticky notes with dicks drawn on them. Then I noticed the plain white paper with a note written in thick black marker lying on my table. It read "CAUTION: WET SURFACE" in large block letters with an arrow pointing to where my mouth had been hanging open against the table. I wiped my mouth hastily and then noticed all my books and papers were gone. Standing, I scanned around the room, looking for my things. It took me several minutes, but I eventually found everything neatly stacked, with my place bookmarked in the book I was reading, on a desk a few tables from where I'd been. On top, there was a note in Pete's handwriting: Aren't you glad I'm looking out for you?
I flashed Pete another finger as I walked away in the direction of the gym, trying to shake some of the leaves out of my hair. By the time I got back to our locker room, the rest of my team had already cleared out, leaving the place deserted and quiet. I was glad. I needed time to think.
Grabbing a towel, I kicked off my running shoes, peeled off my damp shorts, and headed into the shower. Before I turned on the water, though, I stood there naked and looked back down at the muddy handprints painted all over my body. There was one smeared across my chest where I'd felt Pete's hands sliding over my pecs and brushing over my hard, pointed nipples as he'd tried to push his way out from underneath my body. I could still feel his solid grip on my shoulder, and, glancing behind me, his hands raking and clawing at my back. The dirt just above my hip, cut off at the line where my shorts' waistband had been, marked where Pete had also grabbed me, pulling my crotch up against him until I felt the rough denim of his muddy jeans through the thin fabric of my shorts as he'd tried to roll on top of me.
My dick stirred at the memory, pulling me back into the present. I quickly turned on the shower, stepped under the spray, and watched the dirt and the water drip off my body. Almost unconsciously, I brought my own hands up to where the prints had been, retracing the path Pete's had taken over my body only minutes before as my muscles relaxed under the warm spray. I rubbed my hands over my arms, my neck, chest, and abs, everywhere that the mud had marked Pete's touch, but I intentionally did not drop them down lower to my dick. I groaned softly under the water and closed my eyes. Inwardly, I saw Pete's hazel eyes directly meeting my own, and I felt the same lazy spin in my head all over again. I saw Pete's mouth, his open, playful smile, his disheveled sandy blond hair. And then I heard his voice, light with his infectious laughter: `You know you love it.'
My eyes snapped back open, and I pulled myself up from the shower wall I'd been leaning back against.
What the fuck was I doing back there?
I swallowed guiltily and replayed that moment just before I'd stopped our wrestling on the ground- the moment when I'd been on top of him, our chests and stomachs pressed against each other, my stiffening dick rubbing against his hip, my hands gripping his forearms as his muscles danced underneath their soft coating of golden hair, and our faces hovering barely an inch apart. I'd stared down at him as he stared back, laughing, exuberant, still defiant. I'd looked down at him and I had wanted, suddenly, to bring my lips down onto his, to feel how they would feel against my own, to crush my mouth over his and have him respond and open his mouth to accept mine.
And then, a mere moment and a few inches away, Pete had shifted underneath me and I snapped back to reality.
Pete was my bud. My closest friend here. I wasn't supposed to be thinking about how his muscled body had felt underneath my hands, about how good his skin had felt against mine, about what his eyes looked like. I wasn't supposed to be thinking about anything like that because the honest truth was I really was glad to have Pete looking out for me. And I really didn't want to fuck that up. Especially when I had no idea what the fuck this was that I'd been thinking about him lately.
During the few months I'd been at school now, I'd made plenty of new friends, but they'd all been pretty much the casual kind of buddies I would hang out with in my dorm, on my team, and at parties. It was fun, and I really did like them. But it was always just about joking around and having a good time in the here-and-now. I really couldn't say I felt all that close to any of them yet, and I definitely didn't feel like any of them really knew me all that well either.
But to be fair, a lot of that was because of me. I'd held back on people here as I was getting my bearings in this place, just like I'd always done with new people. I was a reserved, private kind of guy- not necessarily shy since I usually didn't have any problems being friendly and joking around with people. But the thing was that I always just kept it at that. I never opened up to anyone, never let them get close to me, and I never, ever let myself start to feel close to them.
But then there was Pete.
Things with Pete had been different from the start. At first, I'd just been disarmed and caught up by how much fun he was to be around. With Pete, you could hardly help it. He was smart and hilarious. I'd seen any number of other people be carried away by his charisma as well. But, for whatever reason, Pete and I had seemed drawn together. Whenever we were in a big group together at dinner in the dining hall, or hanging out in the dorms, or just moving in those packs that all freshmen still traveled in to make themselves feel more secure, we'd usually drift off from everyone else and find ourselves ripping on each other, laughing together, and trading stories.
Hanging out with Pete had always been fun, and Pete had this way of putting me so at ease that I'd often been surprised when I found myself talking about things I'd never even thought of mentioning to anyone else here. It's not like I ever set out to have deep, personal conversations with Pete. I mean, that's not really how it happened. Being here surrounded entirely by people I'd just met, I'd been constantly explaining myself to everyone because no one here knew anything about me. And it'd definitely begun to feel like a chore to repeatedly talk about how I got that scar on my arm from rock climbing, why I'd lived in so many different places growing up and why I'd gone to so many different schools before I came here. But with Pete, I'd find myself actually wanting to answer those questions and to tell him those stories.
For a while, I'd wondered if all this interest was only on my side, if it was all in my head, or if Pete was just like this with everyone. But as I considered it, it certainly seemed like I must be different for Pete, too. Our other friends seemed to pick up on that, at least, since they'd started jokingly referring to us as the "evil twins" in spite of the fact that we didn't look anything alike. Whenever it was just the two of us, Pete seemed happy, like he pretty much always did, but also somehow more relaxed. It'd been hard for me to put my finger on it, but Pete seemed a little less like he was "on" and more like he was just letting himself go with the flow of being with a good friend.
Thinking about that, of course, just brought me back to that oddly serious conversation we'd had out on the fire escape. We hadn't mentioned it again in the weeks since it happened, but I knew that I, at least, had thought about that night a lot. Mostly, it just made me realize how much I'd been opening myself up to Pete all along and been almost unaware of it as it was happening. And, what surprised me even more, he seemed to understand me completely. Pete and I came from different worlds and were very different in a lot of ways, but we clicked... really clicked. I couldn't think of a better way to describe it.
As for Pete, I'd been thinking just as much about what he'd said about himself out on the fire escape. As I started to look at things in a different light after that night, it was abundantly clear that Pete really was different around me. In front of other people, Pete was unfailingly friendly, outgoing, and full of mischievous fun. But around me, there was this other side to Pete, too. He could be quiet, determined, thoughtful, and deeply humble. I'd also noticed that Pete only talked about Montana, where he really was from, with me. His whole face lit up with a different kind of light and even his voice would change as he talked about what he thought of as his real home, and I realized he must love it and be as attached to it as I was to mine.
Pete was, hands down, the best friend I'd made here. And that came exactly at a time when I really needed a great friend. I hoped I was returning the favor to Pete, and every indication seemed to suggest that I was.
... But then why the fuck was I here in the shower, naked with my dick chubbing up, thinking about the color in Pete's eyes and how his chest had felt under my hands? Why the fuck did I keep having these kinds of weird, hormonal thoughts about Pete?
And I didn't just mean this afternoon, either. Truth was, I'd caught my mind wandering off into this territory before. One minute we'd be just hanging out, having a great time like we always did, and then all of a sudden I'd catch myself noticing how his smile got a little crooked when something made him really laugh. Or, sometimes I'd caught myself mesmerized by the way the defined muscles in his forearms shifted and danced under his tanned skin and golden hair when he would be writing in one of his notebooks as we were studying. This was fucking weird shit to be noticing about another guy.
Deep down, I'd always known Pete was good looking. Hell, that was one of the first things I noticed about him when I'd just seen him around campus before we'd actually met. But when we did meet, and as we quickly became such good buds, I'd subconsciously pushed aside any awareness of that except for an occasional feeling of pride at what a stud my friend was. It was a fact that I knew about Pete but not an especially remarkable one.
Looking down now at the water dripping off my still semi-hard dick, I was confronting the proof that maybe something about Pete was more remarkable to me than I wanted to admit. But that just brought me back to my original question: what the fuck was I doing?
I wasn't gay. And I'd never had any reason to think that I was. Before now, I'd only ever been attracted to or done things with girls, and that always felt natural for me. I could recognize a good looking guy when I saw one- and I wasn't one of those guys with too many macho hang-ups to admit that- but I'd never been attracted to one. And I'd definitely never thought about doing something with a guy. My real life, my internet porn searches- it had always been girls in the picture. No guy had ever been even a blip on my radar.
Okay, but now, maybe, something in me was reacting to a guy. Fine. That was my own business. I didn't want to freak out about it, even if I was surprised at myself. Yeah, this was different, but I was young and hormonal. This was probably some passing fluke because I hadn't really hooked up with anyone since I'd broken up with my girlfriend, Juliana, shortly before coming here. There was no reason to go on some head trip about this. Except...
Except the problem was that it wasn't just any random guy catching my attention. It was Pete. My friend Pete. That was a big fucking problem. Pete had been the highlight of my time at college so far. I didn't want to spoil that with this fucking weirdness.
Sighing, I shook my head as if to toss away these thoughts and turned off the shower. I already felt like a jackass because of this. It was frustrating. It felt like I was betraying the bond that had formed between us. And I was sure as hell that if Pete knew what sometimes went through my head, it would royally fuck things up. It's not that I thought Pete was some kind of homophobe or anything. He wasn't. After all, he was always just as genuinely nice to the out-and-proud guy who lived down the hall from me as he was to everyone else. And half the jokes we made at each other's expense were rooted in sexual innuendo. But that's exactly what they were: jokes. It didn't mean Pete at all wanted his good friend Max thinking about how his ass had just looked with his wet jeans clinging to it... Nope, there was no chance things would just go on business as usual with us if Pete knew about any of that. And it simply wasn't a possibility that he might like it if he did. I mean, I'd seen him make out with girls at the parties here too. Pete wasn't the kind of guy who would be having thoughts like this.
I wrapped a towel around my waist and walked out to my locker to get dressed, glad once again that the rest of my team was already long gone.
No, I would get over this. This was just some weird phase, like that dumb cliche about experimenting in college. I was probably just confusing the closeness of our friendship with something else. Pete and I were good, and that was important to me. Nothing had to get in the way of that. I'd never been the kind of guy who just blindly thought with his dick anyway. I'd get past this because I wanted to, because it was the right thing to do. Pete wouldn't ever have to know anything about it.
I rearranged my now softening dick in my jeans before I closed my locker and headed towards the door. I'd wasted enough time. I needed to get my work done at the library so I could meet Pete for dinner. It would be a good time, like always, and I would forget about all this shit I'd just been thinking.
I'd get over whatever the fuck this was.
Right?