Chapter Six
Many
“WHY, HELLO, STUDY PARTNER.”
Denis fidgets on my doorstep, barely meeting my eyes.
It’s taken me days to get even this much.
Halloween is well behind us, the whole country swapping spooky Jack-o’-lanterns for tasteful fall gourds that will serve as Thanksgiving dinner table adornments.
I imagine Denis’s haunted house is back to being a barn full of hay and horses, and bereft of meddling, potentially voyeuristic spirits.
I still don’t know exactly what happened that night. Every moan reverberated like a chorus of voices. Cool mist brushed against my skin like spectral fingers. Maybe it was the atmosphere and setting. Denis hasn’t said anything about it either.
Then again, he hasn’t said much of anything to me.
I contacted him a couple days after our, ehem, encounter, but I didn’t get a response for a good twenty-four hours.
Then it was a waiting game, the spaces between each text shrinking until I decided my odds of a yes were as good as they’d ever get.
I proposed the flimsy excuse of a study day, hoping he remembered my proposition from the haunted house.
Now, at last, he’s here. And he looks just as good as I remember.
His dorky button-down shirt is tucked into slacks.
His green eyes skitter about nervously, his pouty lips caught in their favorite expression.
He hugs a couple textbooks to his chest, shifting from foot to foot.
He’s so adorable I could take him right here on the doorstep.
Days of waiting twist my guts into a knot of tingling anticipation, and I bite my lip to keep myself under control.
Just as I did on Halloween night, I pluck off his glasses, fold them carefully and tuck them into my pocket.
“Hey, I need those,” he says. “How do you expect me to study if I can’t see?”
I lean close, my smirk skimming the shell of his ear. “That’s the thing, though. I don’t expect you to study. Not from a textbook, at least.”
The flush that sweeps across his cheeks is so delicious I want to lick it off his face.
I make myself back off instead, taking his wrist and giving him a gentle tug to encourage him over the threshold.
I’m sure he’s never set foot in an honest-to-God frat house, and his gaze immediately darts around to take in the empty beer cans, the piles of mysterious clothing, the bags of half-eaten fast food.
I don’t let him linger and fret, however.
He’s new to this, and he’s clearly still processing it.
Hesitation will be the death of this little adventure, and my cock is already letting me know that’s not a risk we can take.
I want him, I need him, and once I get him alone in my room, I’m pretty sure he’ll find that he needs me as well.
He responded, after all. He could have run away, could have pretended Halloween didn’t happen, could have ignored my texts and blocked my number, but he didn’t.
He replied, and he got himself to my doorstep.
Now, it’s on me to take him the rest of the way, to show him what he wants but can’t yet admit to himself.
It’s a responsibility I regard with both excitement and solemnity. My very first convert. Why, I’m practically a priest.
I take him up two flights of beer-stained and creaking stairs to the third floor, where my room lies at the end of the hall.
I made sure this was a time when most of the guys were at class and stuff.
Steven is home, but he’s been in the backyard working out shirtless to impress the sorority next door for an hour, so he’s nothing to worry about.
We encounter absolutely no one as we make our way down the hall.
Denis steps gingerly into my room, like he might find something here aside from a regular bed, a slightly messy desk and a standing metal rack where I hang my clothes. He assesses my space in a quick sweep.
“It’s clean,” he says as though this is some sort of discovery.
“Yes?” I say. “Did you expect a superfund site?”
“I…I don’t know. I guess I expected… I guess I didn’t know what to expect…about any of this.”
He turns toward me, and I close the door softly, cutting us off from the outside world before I step up to him.
It’s just us here, sealed into the quiet, private environs of my bedroom, no one to see or judge us.
I don’t care about that kind of thing, but from the way Denis’s uncertain gaze dances, I know he does.
Some day, I promise myself. Some day he won’t feel this way.
This is only the beginning. There is so much he has never let himself know and experience and embrace, so much I want to show him, so much I want to learn from him in return.
But it’s going to be baby steps, not giant leaps, and I need to be patient.
When I cup his face and kiss him, I know for certain he’ll be worth the wait.
Denis moans softly, not that huge howling chorus like in the haunted house, but a gentle whimper of restrained desire. I love it all the more for the fact that’s it all him, only him. He clings to my shirt while I hold him close, tension melting out of his body the longer our lips remain locked.
We part slowly, reluctantly, but from the way he sighs, I know this night is only beginning.
“So, should we study?” I say.
He swallows, tongue flicking out to lick his lips, to taste me on them.
“Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I think we should.”
He doesn’t ask for his glasses back as I lead him to the bed, and we don’t crack open a textbook that entire night.