This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons is entirely coincidental. No part of this story may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author. Parts of this story contain explicit descriptions of sex among consenting adults. If you are offended by such content or should not be reading it, please don't.
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Chapter 2
"Let's go through it again, folks," Angie Hollins instructed, again. The final song of the first act required the actors to stretch toward the edge of their ranges, or in some cases, beyond them. They were doing the song for the fourth time tonight, and not improving on the previous attempts.
"OK guys, it's almost nine, so let's call it a night. We'll work on this again tomorrow. Two weeks until we open!" As if they needed to be reminded.
"You sounded good," Austin Thompson said to Nate.
"Thanks, you too," Nate responded.
"You're sweet, but no, I didn't. Good thing it's too late to replace me, because I'm sure Angie realizes how dreadful my voice is by now."
Nate smiled and told him, "Everyone thinks your solo sounds good. I could tell you worked a lot on it this week."
Unlike Nate's blend-in with the crowd appearance and demeanor, everything about Austin said, "I am a gay man." His perfect hair and tight clothes, his exaggerated expressions, and his constant flirting with every guy in the room made it clear. Was he wearing makeup tonight? Austin was petite, with a small waist and shoulders. His boyish face was distinguished by a straight nose, small lips, and manicured eyebrows. He wasn't really Nate's type, but he was cute.
"Mmm, I've pretty much done that song 800 times a day for the last week. My roommates are ready to kill me. Can I come live with you?" Austin inquired.
"Not sure how my roommate will feel about hearing it," Nate laughed.
"I am famished after this grueling rehearsal. You hungry?"
"Actually, I was thinking about going to the gym first. Didn't make it yesterday."
"Oh, I can go with you," Austin exclaimed.
"Do you workout at the same place?" Nate asked.
"I've been known to. I have a really cute workout outfit. The boys love it."
Nate laughed again. "I'm sure they do."
"You're making some progress, stud," Austin said, giving Nate's bicep and little squeeze. "I think they crowd is going to lose it in your big nude scene."
"Shirtless!" Nate corrected.
"Mmmmmm," Austin responded playfully. "Alright, you can have the guys at the gym to yourself tonight, I'll see you tomorrow."
In the last couple of weeks, Nate had not seen the guy with the great ass at the gym again. He was both relieved and disappointed. He knew he was overreacting to something that the other person had probably barely noticed. He was good at that. But he still looked around furtively every time he went into the place.
Tonight he was focusing on his upper body, thinking about the show in only two weeks. The gym was fairly empty by this hour, and the repetitions with the weights were calming after the rehearsal. When someone asked him for a spot, the question didn't register at first.
"Hey, man. Hello. Hi there," someone said to him. "Excuse me, just wondering if you could spot me for a second."
"Huh? Oh yea, sure. Sorry, I was in a zone," Nate responded.
"Didn't mean to take you out of it, sorry!"
"No problem, glad to give you a hand."
The other guy laid down on a bench and started lifting the bar. By the seventh rep, he did need Nate's help to get it back up. He breathed heavily and stood up. "Your turn?" he asked. Nate agreed, and did a set without straining too much. He was making progress, actually.
"That was too easy for you," the guy smiled.
"Two months ago I probably couldn't have lifted it at all," Nate laughed.
"Nice. Always good to see results. I'm Aaron by he way."
"Nate, good to meet you."
The two shook hands and then chatted for a minute about their workout routines. Aaron said he couldn't lift any more tonight and smiled as he went toward the treadmills. Nate went to fill his water bottle and looked Aaron over for the first time as he walked across the large, open room.
Aaron was a couple of inches shorter than Nate and probably about the same age. His had the legs of a soccer player and his mid-thigh shorts showed them off. His upper body was fairly slim, but he had nice shoulders. His round face had a small nose and expressive eyes beneath his short, almost black hair. He was cute. He hadn't come across as gay, although Nate had virtually no ability to decipher people's orientations like some of his friends could.
Nate looked at his watch; almost 10. He was tired, so he decided to call it a night. He thought about walking over to say goodnight to Aaron, but that might seem too eager, so he headed toward the locker room.
A fit man with gray hair was getting dressed, but otherwise the room was empty. Nate started to change out of his gym clothes and noticed the man glance up at him. They didn't make eye contact and Nate stripped down to his underwear. A mirror near his locker showed him the man's second glance, and Nate felt an unexpected bit of excitement. He was about to put on his jeans, but instead he looked through his gym bag and found a clean pair of boxers. Even though he was going home to clean up, he slipped his briefs off and methodically arranged his dirty clothes in the bag.
Nate looked back at the mirror and saw the man checking him out. Rather than putting on the boxers right away, Nate took out his phone and pretended to check a message. He could feel the man's eyes on his naked back. He also felt his cock starting to rise, so he threw the phone in his bag and finally got dressed. Without looking toward the man again, he put his shoes on and walked quickly out of the locker room.
"What was that all about?" he asked himself as he pulled out of the parking lot. He wasn't into the older guy and had avoided giving any signals that he was. So why had he wanted the man to see him naked? Well, whatever turn-on that had been for the guy, Nate was sure his starfish boxers had quickly put an end to it. "What a WEIRDO!" he told himself, and started singing with the radio.
The weekend arrived and Nate had daytime rehearsals but no work. Emily invited him to a party on Saturday night, but he decided that a mud mask and glass of wine on the couch was more appealing.
"Looking good, man," his roommate Andy told him.
"I'm exfoliating," Nate explained.
"I don't know what that is, but it sounds weird," Andy said, grinning.
"I'm going to tell your girlfriend that you need to exfoliate too. I'm sure she'll agree."
Andy laughed. He was as easy going a person as Nate had ever met, and always in a good mood. The two had several mutual friends and ended up living together their senior year of college when Nate's previous roommate moved out on three days' notice.
"Have fun tonight," Nate said.
"Umm, you too. I guess," Andy chuckled.
Nate watched half of a bad movie before he turned the TV off and started wasting time online. He flipped through a few profiles on the dating website he used and then reexamined his own page. Ugh, his pictures were bad. Could he possibly make himself look like a bigger dork? He went into the bathroom and looked at the mirror. Couldn't he at least take a decent profile shot? His features looked nice from the side. He tried a couple of mirror selfies, but those wouldn't work on his profile. He went into his bedroom and got out his small camera and tried a couple of shots with the self timer. His messy room made a terrible backdrop though, so he gave up and went back to the couch.
He looked through one of his favorite gay blogs for a few minutes. It was a shameless mix of celebrity gossip and half-naked guys. At the bottom of an important update on a pop singer's day at the beach, he got an ad for a hookup app. Nate clicked on it and quickly wasted 20 minutes searching through profiles for hot pictures. He clicked on one to see the details and instead got a message saying he was out of free searches.
"Dammit," he said, as he tried to enlarge the thumbnail in the search results. That guy is sooo hot, he thought. He impulsively subscribed and a few second later, he had access to the guy's full page. 6'2", 200 lbs, brown hair, blue eyes, 7" cock.
"Mmmm," Nate said to the guy, "I'd like to see that. He clicked to enlarge the pics and the site redirected him to fill out his profile. He quickly completed a few lines and then reached the point to upload his own pics. Why not, he thought. But he couldn't find a single photo on his phone that he liked. So he went back to his room and tried a few mirror shots. He finally got a decent shot and uploaded it. Most profiles had several pictures, though, including some private ones that you could unlock for other users.
Nate took off his shirt and snapped a couple of pics. Not too exciting, he thought. So he took off his shorts and tried one in his boxer briefs. Then he went to his underwear drawer to find something more interesting. He put on a blue and green jockstrap and tried a reverse mirror shot. Not satisfied, he set the camera's timer and turned so that his ass was in the shot. His backside looked good in that shot and he uploaded it to the site.
Getting into the swing of things, Nate got on his hands and knees on the bed, facing away from the camera with his legs apart. His cock was hard now, so he turned around and took another picture with it sticking out of the jockstrap. He pulled the fabric aside with one hand and squeezed the base of his cock with the other, biting his lower lip. That picture looked good. Nate's cock was about six inches long and thicker than most guys, but not huge. He kept his light brown pubic hair trimmed but not shaved. It looked pretty good popping out his jock, he thought.
Nate uploaded a few of the revealing pics and marked them as private. He'd set up a profile on the app during college but never actually contacted anyone before deleting it. He wasn't much more outgoing online than he was in person. He decided to search for guys in another city to keep checking out pics. He found several that he liked, although most of their public pictures were only PG-rated. He requested access to a few of their private pics and said hi. Would he unlock his for them? He considered the pros and cons as he went to the fridge for something to drink.
When he got back to his room, there were two notifications flashing on the app. He quickly opened the inbox and clicked the first one. One of the guys had unlocked his private pics and they left nothing to the imagination. "Nice!" Nate told the guy.
"Unlock yours?" was the response.
"Well, why not?" Nate thought. So he did. In a minute the guy responded again.
"Hot dude, great ass. Ever come to LA?" he added a winking emoticon to the question.
Nate opened the next message; it was from someone much closer. The guy was 29, good looking, and just on the other side of town. He said that Nate was cute. Nate wrote back to him, complimenting his pictures, as well. The exchange went on for a couple of minutes before the guy introduced himself as Mitch and unlocked his private photos. The guy looked really hot in his first one, wearing tight black briefs--he was muscular, with a fair amount of dark hair on his thick chest and defined legs.
"Wow," Nate said when he clicked on the next one. Mitch's thick, long cock was the unapologetic center of the pic. "You're really hot!" Nate told him.
"Thanks, you're pretty hot too," Mitch said in return.
The chat and Mitch's pictures had Nate turned on and excited. He was getting other messages too and was trying to respond between pauses with Mitch. He came to quick halt at Mitch's next message, though.
"So, you wanna come over?" Shit, Nate hadn't even thought of that. Of course he should have, given the app. But he froze at the question and the prospect of going to meet this guy. A few minutes went by and Mitch asked if Nate was still there.
Nate put down his phone and paced around the apartment. Though he didn't care much for it, he opened one of Andy's beers and started drinking. He sat down on the couch, still nervous and unsure of what to do. The sudden terror of going to meet a stranger for sex had overcome his excitement. What would the guy want to do? What if he wanted to fuck Nate and it hurt? Surely he had a lot of experience, so would Nate's comparative naivety mess things up? What if the guy was some kind criminal or something? Nate finished the beer and went to the kitchen for another one.
The next morning, Nate woke up out of sorts. He'd jerked off and gone to bed the night before. Then he'd felt embarrassed and afraid of Mitch's response to being ignored, so he deleted his account on the hookup app. He was having dinner with Emily that night and counting on her help him get the thing out of his mind.
They nearly finished eating, however, and Nate hadn't said a thing. They talked about the show, and Emily probably thought it was to blame for Nate's unsettledness. He decided not to mention anything to her about the app. As they hugged good night, Nate felt even worse, since he had squandered his opportunity to talk about the thing that was bothering him. So he blurted out in the parking lot, "Have you ever hooked up with someone you met online?"
"What? You mean like on the first date," she asked.
"Umm, yea. Or no. I mean hook up without the date," he stammered.
"Oh, like random sex?"
"Yea, like that."
"No, not my thing," she stated firmly.
"Oh OK."
"Is there something you want to talk about, Nathaniel?"
"Yes, but no," he said honestly.
Sitting in Emily's car, he recounted the entire tale. Emily nodded and asked a few questions, but clearly wasn't confident about the topic. "Look, sweetheart, I can't tell you what to do here. But I do think you need to try some things and open yourself up to new experiences. I'm not saying hookup with random dudes online. But it's a trial and error process, you know. You don't know what you like until you try it. Maybe you would have gone to that guy's house Saturday and it would have been amazing, who knows?"
"Yea," Nate agreed.
"Or maybe he would have locked you in a dungeon or something," she added.
"You're not helping!"
Emily laughed. "Just saying. But seriously, you have to put yourself out there more."
"I know you're right."
"Always am," she kidded him.
Knowing his friend was right and actually putting himself out there were two different things, however.
In the spirit of opening himself to new possibilities, Nate had gone home that night and sent messages to a few guys on the dating website. A couple had written back, and he already had a date lined up for Thursday. Dress rehearsals for the musical started that weekend, but he thought being nervous about a date might take his mind off being nervous about the show.
On Thursday, he arrived at Phoebe's Coffee first and found a table near the back to wait for Ian, a 22 year-old anthropology major with a common interest in music. From his profile, Nate knew that he was tall and thin, with dark blonde hair that he kept just above his shoulders and pretty green eyes.
Ian arrived a few minutes later and greeted Nate with a friendly hug. He had a breezy casualness and seemed as relaxed as if he were meeting an old friend. He allayed Nate's uneasiness by complimenting his shirt and taking an interest in hearing about Nate's role in the production. They had a meandering conversation that turned easily from school to travel plans to their favorite childhood TV shows. Nate enjoyed talking to Ian and also found him pretty attractive. His face was handsome and his lean body had nice definition. Nate let his mind wander for a moment about how Ian looked undressed. He tried to focus on the discussion, but Ian's good looks kept distracting him.
After nearly two hours, Ian looked at his empty coffee cup and said he should probably get going. The two walked out together and chatted for a few minutes in the parking lot before Ian moved to go. Ian said that he had really enjoyed meeting Nate, who returned the sentiment. Ian smiled and touched Nate's forearm, then leaned in and gave Nate a soft kiss on the lips. It was only a momentary thing, but Nate was thrilled. A second later, Nate put his hand on Ian's back and took his lips to Ian's. They kissed passionately this time, pressing their bodies together.
A few seconds or a few minutes went by uncounted and the two separated and took deep breaths. A couple of people leaving the coffee shop laughed quietly at the boys as they went to their car.
A little embarrassed, Nate remarked that you don't get much privacy in a parking lot. Ian agreed, but he was unfazed. He said that Nate was a good kisser, which made Nate quickly forget the other people. Ian said he hoped they could have a second date and Nate attempted nonchalant agreement. Neither of them wanted the first date to end, though, and they both waited for the other to say good night.
Nate finally offered a parting word, "well, guess we should both get some sleep."
Ian agreed, but then said, "Umm, I know this is kind of forward, but I can't help myself. Do you, uh, want to come to my place for a bit?" He looked at the ground after asking, appearing nervous himself for the first time all night.
Nate's first thought was that all of sudden, things were moving too fast. In the next moment, he remembered his talk with Emily.
"Yea, sure," he responded. "I'll follow you there?"
Ian shared a house near campus with two other guys, but the house was dark when the two entered. Ian quietly led Nate back to his room and closed the door. He plopped down on the bed and took his shoes off while Nate looked around. Posters covered one of the walls and books were laid haphazardly around the room. A shirt hung over the desk chair, but otherwise things were orderly for a college guy's space. It smelled faintly of the cologne that Nate noticed on Ian earlier when they had kissed.
Ian held out a hand to draw Nate closer. Nate sat down beside him and they picked up where they had left off in the parking lot, making out and becoming more and more aroused. A wavy strand of Ian's hair fell between their faces and Nate carefully placed it behind Ian's ear. Their hands meandered over each others' backs, around their necks, up and down their legs. They lifted their shirts over their heads and leaned further back on the bed. Nate was entranced by the smooth skin of Ian's chest and his taught pecs. He moved his mouth down and kissed Ian's erect nipples and let his hand stray down to his navel and inside Ian's shorts. His fingers felt Ian's public hair, covered in sticky precum.
He looked up at Ian, who was watching him with anticipation. Nate unbuttoned Ian's shorts and then pulled them off of the other guy's long legs. He reached inside Nate's boxers and pulled out a long, thin cock with a big head. Nate licked the head for a while before taking Ian's entire cock in his mouth. He worked on it slowly for several minutes while Ian moaned his satisfaction. Nate paused to pull off Ian's underwear and then took in Ian's unexpectedly large balls. He could only get one in his mouth at a time, so he gave them attention individually. As he gently sucked on Ian's balls, he moved his hand up and down Ian's wet shaft.
Ian finally pulled Nate off him, saying, "your turn!" He pulled off the rest of Nate's clothes, spread his legs apart, then took Nate's entire cock in his mouth in one try. As Ian moved his head up and down, he also used his tongue to stimulate Nate's dick. Nate put his head back and whispered how good it felt. Ian's technique was amazing, and the sensation pushed anything else to back of Nate's mind. At times, he would lean up to watch Ian, with his hair falling over his gorgeous face as he worked Nate close to coming.
"Let me suck yours again," Nate told him, not wanting to finish yet. They switched places and Nate again tasted Ian's slender dick. He increased the speed of the blow job and Ian responded to him with pleasure.
"Oh fuck man, that feels so good!" Ian told him. Nate moved up and down vigorously and cupped Ian's low-hanging balls in his hand. Ian groaned loudly and warned Nate that he was about to come. Nate pulled up and jerked Ian forcefully for a second before Ian's cock pulsed with orgasm. He shot several times, the first stream of cum nearly reaching the top of his chest. The sight of it was almost enough to make Nate come, too.
"Wow, that was fucking amazing," Ian said, breathing heavily. He relaxed for a moment, then jumped up and grabbed a towel from his closet to wipe the huge load off himself. He was back on the bed in a flash and again had Nate's cock in his mouth. Within 20 seconds, Nate warned him that he was almost there. Ian kept going, though, and Nate erupted in Ian's mouth. The intensity of the feeling washed over Nate's entire body and he grabbed the side of the bed to avoid being swept away. He felt Ian suck every drop of cum from him. Nate yelled, "Fuck!" loudly as the wave of pleasure washed back out to sea, leaving him completely relaxed in the cool air of Ian's room.
"Sorry, was that too loud?" he asked Ian with a giggle. Ian just moved up and kissed Nate before collapsing next to him on the bed. They lay next to each other in contentment for a few minutes.
"Do you like the taste of cum?" Nate asked him finally.
"Not really, but it cuts down on the laundry," Ian responded playfully.
"True," Nate said with a laugh.
Ian invited Nate to stay but thoughts of the busy weekend started to creep in and Nate decided to go home. They got dressed and Ian took Nate to the door, where they kissed one more time. After agreeing to meet again on Sunday, Nate went out to his car and pulled away. It was getting cold, but he drove with the windows down, enjoying the sweetness of the autumn air.
Note: thanks for reading. If you have feedback, you can reach me at micahn404@gmail.com