GENERAL DISCLAIMER: This story contains sexual situations between adult males involving various aspects of the kink and fetish communities. If you find material of this nature offensive then you should not read any further. All characters in this story are over the age of 21. If you are under 18 years old in the US or under 16 in the UK you are not legally allowed to read this story. This is purely a work of fiction, any resemblance to persons living or dead, or to any events that may have occurred, are purely coincidental. The author claims all copyrights in this story and no duplication or publication of this story is allowed (except by the websites to which it has been posted) without the consent of the author. Nifty does not exist without donations. If you enjoy these stories, please donate here: http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
CONTACT/FEEDBACK: I enjoy getting feedback and I try to incorporate as many suggestions about the story and characters into subsequent chapters whenever possible. Feel free to e-mail me at carterpodeski@gmail.com.
The Brownstone on Union Park
- Chapter Sixteen -
Michael extended his right hand, still moist and sticky, to go in for a handshake and finish off the deal. Matthew foolishly brought his right hand forward to accept the handshake.
"I hope you really enjoy the fridge, microwave, and coffee maker. I've had a really good experience with them and they've held up really well throughout the years," Michael said in a somewhat sarcastic tone all the while shaking Matthew's hand up and down in what seemed like an inordinate amount of time.
Matthew began to raise his eyebrows and question the excessive handshaking and withdrew his right hand from the shake noticing the dampness.
"OK... I should probably be going now," Matthew said as he turned around and left not quite sure of what just happened.
Michael stared down his back while Matthew receded into the distance of the hallway and then slammed the door a moment later.
He thought to himself, "Well, that was worth five bucks!"
The last days of August before Labor Day weekend in Boston was a scorcher with almost every day that week in the nineties; it technically was a heat wave. The humidity was also relentless and the air just seemed to hang in place. Michael escaped to the library and the campus center during the day to cool down but the nights were brutal in the dormitories. Even with a window fan blowing fresh air into his room he had trouble sleeping. The only way he could even begin to get any rest was to strip naked and lie on top of his sheets at night with a table fan blowing on his body.
He woke up Thursday morning to sweat stains on his sheets and felt parched. A visceral desire to drink something cold swept over him and he got out of bed to get a bottle of cold water from his mini fridge. He opened the door to the fridge and realized he was out and that he needed to throw away the leftover Chinese food that he was never going to eat. He looked around his room, got some gym shorts on his dresser and slipped them on along with his shower sandals. Michael took the takeaway container of old fried rice from the fridge. He exited is dorm room door remembering to take the key on the hook by the side.
On his way to the trash, he took a long drink of cool water from the water fountain. He passed the trash container in the hallway and chucked out the old Chinese food that was well past its prime. Next stop, he went to the bathroom and took a piss in one of the urinals. He was still thirsty from sweating so much last night and stopped by the water fountain again before returning to his dorm room.
He opened the door and looked around; almost everything besides what he needed to get ready for today was packed and ready to go. It would be the final day of this college life of sleeping like a zoo animal without air conditioning. He just had to make it until the end of the day and then he could move into the brownstone on Union Park. And then, life would be different.
Michael stripped the sheets off his bed and balled them up into his laundry basket along with the rest of the worn clothes. The thought of having a washer and dryer in his new home seemed luxurious. No more hoarding quarters to do a load of wash. He could do laundry whenever he needed to and not even have to step outside. It would be another lavish perk when you lived in a place like Boston.
The heat was beginning to build and it was not even eight-o-clock in the morning. He wanted to shower and get ready for the day thinking he could escape the worst of the heat by splitting up his time in the dining hall over breakfast and the campus center near the middle of the day. As long as he could finish boxing up everything now when Carter came later it would be all set. So, Michael got his last change of clean clothes ready and placed them on his desk and threw the rest of his odds and ends into another cardboard box. He took the shower caddy with all his toiletries and a towel to the bathroom. It would be the last time he took a shower at Cramden in his residence hall.
A battery pack connected to his phone gave him enough charge to get through the day. It was close to six-thirty in the evening and he had not heard any updates about the move from Carter. Michael stayed most of the day in a booth by the fast food stations at the campus center and was trolling around on Grindr looking for new faces, or more accurately, new shirtless chests without heads. Late August in Boston was always an exciting time to be on the hookup apps to see what new freshman meat had arrived in the city for the start of the school year. He was looking at an interesting profile that was only six hundred and thirty-two feet away when his phone flashed, it was Carter calling him.
He quickly accepted the call.
"Hey, Michael! How's it going?"
"Good, I finished packing up everything this morning."
"Nice job! I knew you'd be on top of things."
"Thanks, its only about five large boxes, mostly clothes, and books."
"I'm sure it won't take us too long to move. So, I got your new mattress for the extra-long bed frame today. It's actually in the back of my Wrangler now, just put it in a second ago when I got to the parking garage."
"Oh nice, thanks for getting that again. I really owe you one."
"No strings attached, it was free anyway."
"Thanks."
"So, with city traffic, I can probably make it over to the main Cramden campus by seven or seven fifteen according to my phone. Does that work for you?"
"Yeah, it'll only take me five or ten minutes to get back to the dorm. I'm in Franklin Hall, by the way, there are signs for all the residence halls once you get on the main campus."
"Sweet, so can you meet me in the front of your building on the steps or whatever?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"Oh, and one more thing, can you get some waters or something cold to drink. I'm sweating buckets today with this heat."
"Of course!"
"Great, I'll see you in a little more than a half hour."
"Ok, see you soon. Bye!"
"Bye."
Michael hung up his phone and a spring returned to his step. Carter gave him a mission to get drinks and he was going to make good on his promise! It was such a simple thing but he really wanted to do well.
Luckily the college bookstore was nearby in the campus center and he could get everything he needed there. Michael walked into the back where the freezer cases and cold drinks were stored and picked up a couple of neon yellow and blue sports drinks along with some generic bottled waters. He paused for a moment and then put the generic bottled waters back to get the larger square bottles of Fiji water instead. Nothing was too good for Carter.
Michael checked out of the bookstore with the drinks in a big white plastic bag and made his way across campus. The stroll through the quad and academic buildings did bring back some fond memories of his time there but he was more than happy to move on. He had gotten all he wanted to from this place in four years and was ready for the next chapter.
Franklin Hall where he lived was nothing spectacular in terms of architectural achievements. It was built in the nineteen sixties and resembled communist housing stock or some other weird modernist design movement that never quite caught on. It was actually pretty ugly compared to the other beautiful and elegant buildings in the rest of the city.
He arrived at the front entrance where a large placard read "FRANKLIN HALL, est. 1963" and waited on the front sidewalk. By his estimates, Carter would still take about ten to twenty additional minutes to arrive. He inspected the bag again to make certain the waters and sports drinks were alright. They were fine, not as cold as when he first got them, but they would be OK.
Michael's phone beeped and he received a text alert notifying him that Carter's car would be arriving soon. He tapped the link from the text and it brought up a map of Boston showing his driving path in a thick purple line from Chandler University by the theater district to Cramden College. It looked like he was able to cut through the Back Bay and get on Storrow Drive and save some time. If the app was live updating he was no more than a few minutes away.
Michael stood up and began to look out for a Jeep approaching from the distance. Sure enough, an army green Jeep Wrangler pulled up to the side of the curb. It beeped it's horn twice and the engine cut off. A moment later, Carter popped up in his usual outfit: athletic shorts, tight shirt, and strappy black Chaco sandals. If he was not so muscular and tall he could have easily passed for a college student based on the way he dressed and overall carefree demeanor.
"Hey, Michael! Got here a little earlier than I thought. Happy to see no one has gotten their moving truck stuck under Storrow Drive yet!"
"Yeah, well I'm sure that will happen this weekend, it always does."
"Anyway, is it cool if I just put my blinkers on and park here? I'm not sure where else to."
"Yup, the campus police won't ticket this time of year for move ins and move outs."
"What you got there?"
Michael opened the bag and brought it closer to Carter so he could see. He reached in and pulled out a water and one of the blue sports drinks.
"Oh! Fancy Fiji water!" Carter remarked and then placed it back in the bag and added, "Even better, you got my favorite sports drink."
"I did?!" Michael questioned in an excited tone.
"Yeah," Carter said as he held up the blue bottle, "Windex flavor, it's the best!" and laughed at his own cheesy joke.
Michael smiled not quite knowing if he was being sarcastic or not and then said, "I think it tastes like berry."
Carter tousled his hair while laughing and said, "I know that! I'm joking, Michael."
"Oh."
"But seriously, I do like the blue stuff. OK, what floor are you on?
"The second."
"OK, you lead the way."
Michael carried the bag of drinks up with him while Carter easily downed half of the Windex blue sports drink that tasted like blueberries. They made their way up the wide stairs with ease; Carter followed Michael into his dorm room.
"So, this is it, huh?" Carter asked.
"I guess so," Michael replied and looked around trying to figure out which box of things to start with.
"The dorm rooms here are nicer than the ones at Chandler. Or, at least, they're definitely bigger, especially the singles."
Michael shrugged; he did not think they were anything special and was simply happy to move out. He looked around and tried to figure out which set of boxes he should start with.
"Which boxes are the heaviest?" Carter asked surveying the room.
"Probably the ones with all my textbooks, it's on the desk over there," Michael replied and pointed.
Carter easily grasped the sides and began to lift it when he noticed the taping on the bottom was a starting to give way from all the weight.
"Hey, do you have any more packaging tape. I think this box is approaching its limit," he explained and placed the box back down on the desk.
"Yeah, I think so," Michael replied and opened up another box to get out some office supplies including the red plastic roll of clear packaging tape.
"Great!" Carter exclaimed, took the roll, and applied a couple of extra layers of tape to the bottom and sides of the box.
The unrolling of the tape began to make a funny screeching noise as Carter unrolled it against the cardboard. Michael was bizarrely mesmerized by the action of Carter's arms working with the packaging tape based on how fast and efficient he was at the job. The box was well secured now and he threw the tape back to Michael to put away again.
"Is this the heaviest one or are there others about the same weight?" Carter asked.
"No, that's the worst one. The rest of the boxes are mostly clothes and lighter things," Michael said in response while reading the labels he wrote in black marker on the other boxes.
"Oh, too bad, I always liked securing things with tape, although I generally prefer duct tape," Carter smiled with a devious grin and laughed while picking up the box of heavy textbooks and exited the room.
Michael immediately understood the innuendo. It was maddening for him to hear Carter casually joke around with things like that when he knew he could not act on his impulses after being told he would have to cool it for a while. Michael exhaled and stacked two medium-sized boxes of clothing together and carried them out of the room to the ground floor.
Outside, Carter was already putting the heavy cardboard box into the back doors of his Jeep. He was able to get the mattress in there by folding down the back seats and curving the mattress up toward the back of the Jeep.
"Do you need any help with the door?" Michael asked looking at Carter's progress.
"It's all good," Carter replied and shoved the box through resting on the mattress.
Michael approached and set the two smaller boxes down on the curb and waited for Carter to readjust the position of the heavier box.
"Can I see the mattress?" Michael asked.
"Yeah, no problem," Carter replied and back away from the door allowing Michael to approach and get a better view.
Michael stepped closer and could see that the mattress was blue in color and about nine to ten inches thick. He placed his hand on the surface and pushed down to get an idea of how springy it would be. The mattress rebounded from his touch and surprisingly felt solid for standard issue college furniture. Perhaps he would not be able to escape his dorm room feel altogether. The humidity in the air caused his hand to stick a little to the surface coating when he retracted his arm.
"What's up with the shiny plastic-like coating on the surface?" Michael asked as he turned around.
"I'm not sure, I think all the mattresses they get at Chandler are like that. It's probably just a hygienic thing. You know how college life is with drinking and stuff," Carter replied with an indifferent tone.
"Yeah, but this seems a bit excessive. My hand actually stuck to it when I lifted it up," Michael explained.
Carter shrugged, smiled, and replied, "Well, if you end up wetting the bed you'll be all set!"
Michael grimaced and raised his eyebrows in rebuke. Carter tousled his hair and laughed trying to make him feel better.
"Look, it's new and it's free. I can take it back tomorrow if you don't like it," Carter offered.
"No, I'm sure it'll be fine. Besides, I need to use my savings for a new work wardrobe," Michael explained and then picked up one of the medium sizes boxes he brought down and placed it inside the Jeep on top of the mattress.
Carter picked up the other cardboard box on the curb, placed it next to the one Michael placed while pushing the lighter two boxes to the back, and said, "OK, one more trip and that should do it."
The two of them went back inside and got the last two remaining boxes from his dorm room. Carter grabbed the white bag of waters and sports drinks on the way out. Michael dropped off his set of keys at the residential office on the first floor and signed out of Franklin Hall for the last time in his life. It was a wonderful feeling. He was done with that place for good.
Carter skillfully arranged the last two boxes in his Jeep and closed the rear side doors. Michael was sweating from the humidity and from lugging all his stuff down the stairs. He wiped the sweat from his brow and hopped in the front passenger seat and waited for Carter to get in on the driver's side.
"Hold on a second," Carter said and took out one of the bottles of Fiji water as sweat dripped down his face.
Michael looked at him from the inside of the Jeep with the windows down. Carter proceeded to uncap the water bottle and dumped it over his head while bending over slightly so that the water channeled down his face instead of his neck keeping the rest of him dry. He quickly shook his head from left to right like a dog coming in from a rainstorm causing some of the droplets from his hair to splash against the vehicle and get Michael a little wet in the process.
"Oh, sorry about that man. It's just so damn hot out right now and my sweat isn't evaporating with the humidity," Carter said in apology realizing he splashed Michael in the process.
Michael wiped his face with his forearm causing some of the shaken off water to drop down the curves of his smile lines into his mouth. He could actually taste Carter from the droplets that accumulated on his face. It was wonderful but not nearly as good as his last deep mouth kiss on Saturday morning.
"It's fine, I'm sweating to death too," Michael replied trying to downplay things.
Carter got into his Jeep on the driver's side with the remaining drinks in the white bag. He opened up the cap of the yellow sports drink and downed the entire container in a few large audible gulps. He screwed the cap back on and looked at Michael.
"Oh shit, I'm sorry, I didn't even ask if you wanted any," Carter apologized.
"I'm fine, besides, there's still a water left if I get thirsty," Michael said in response as the engine started and the AC kicked on.
"Oh damn, that feels soooo good," Carter replied as he pressed the side buttons to retract the windows and placed his head near the source of the AC vents that were starting to get cold.
"Yeah, I'm really looking forward to sleeping in AC tonight, it will be different for sure," replied Michael.
Carter put his foot on the clutch, shifted the manual transmission into gear, and began to drive off campus leaving Cramden College behind in the rear-view mirror.
"It's going to be different for you Michael," Carter replied.