18
The following few weeks spilt away like sand through my hands.
I never slept over at Nick’s studio again, but we did hang out there a lot. It was conveniently close to campus—only a few minutes walk—which meant that if we had a break between classes, we could go to his place to ‘study’, which was Nick’s cute little codeword for having sex. Sometimes I had trouble discerning between ‘studying together’ and actually studying together, but usually the location gave it away. We weren’t so far gone that we’d get each other off between the stacks in the basement of the science library.
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” I asked on Thursday evening. We’d both had classes and lectures all day and had just spent two hours in the library studying— actually studying—together.
Campus was quiet as we walked down the brick footpath, passing vine-covered stone buildings. Nick walked closer to me these days, which meant our hands kept accidentally brushing.
“I hate that question. Just tell me the news,” Nick said.
“The good news is that Elena just messaged me. She’s staying with Atticus tonight.” Apparently, an online version of one of their favourite board games had come out, and they were going to spend the whole night versing strangers on the internet and, in Elena’s words, hopefully crushing their dreams.
The corner of Nick’s lips twitched up. “And the bad news?”
“We don’t have any food.”
“Guess we’re going to have to cook, then,” Nick said, adjusting our course so we were heading towards Aldi.
“I was going to suggest ordering something, but you’re right. Cooking is better for a bunch of reasons. The most important being—”
“It’s cheaper and healthier,” Nick said.
“—it’s hot when you boss me around in the kitchen,” I said at the same time.
He raised a brow. “I didn’t realise you had a thing for culinary domination.”
“That sounds like I want to be spanked with a wooden spoon,” I said.
He laughed. “I don’t boss you around in the kitchen.”
“Last time, you told me I needed to dice the onions finer and that I overcooked the spaghetti.”
“The recipe said al dente, not al mushy.”
“Alright, alright,” I said, holding up a hand in surrender.
At the supermarket, we went for something simple, buying chicken breast and a packet of pre-made salad. Once we arrived at my apartment, both starving, we got to cooking immediately. Every time Nick directed me to do something, I made a point of acting really turned on just to see his outwardly annoyed, inwardly amused smile.
He was so cute. I wanted to pepper his face with kisses. But I couldn’t. Not until we were in my bedroom.
We ate at the dining table, and Nick waved his fork around as he said, “See, the problem is that they’re not building enough houses, which means there’s too much demand and not enough supply, and that’s why the prices are ridiculous and even finding something halfway decent to rent is impossible. So the simple answer is, build more homes, right? But if they do that, then they’ll piss off all the boomers with their investment properties because—why are you smiling?”
I realised I was and immediately forced it away. “Sorry,” I said. “The housing crisis is a serious topic. It’s just… you’re actually kind of nerdy.”
Our first conversation at this dining table had been so stilted. Nick had been quiet, and when he wasn’t, his sentences were clipped. But now he was loud, eyes bright and wide.
“I am not nerdy,” Nick said.
“It’s not an insult,” I said quickly. “What I mean is that… strangers probably think you’re detached from everything. They haven’t heard you ranting about politicians.”
Nick moved some chicken breast around his plate. “I suppose it’s kind of lame.”
“It’s not lame,” I insisted. “I love how passionate you are.”
Nick stared at me, and my cheeks went hot.
“I mean,” I continued, “anyone who cares about something is way more interesting than the people who don’t care about anything. When I first met you, you seemed like the kind of person who was above it all. I feel kind of special because I get to see this side of you.”
“It’s not a special side,” Nick said. “It’s just me ranting about the cost of living crisis, which is hardly glamorous.”
“You could be talking about taxes, and I’d still listen.”
He faltered. “Hayden…”
I felt the air shift. Oh no. Had I gone too far?
“Yes?” My voice was thin.
Something changed in his expression, and he stabbed at his chicken. “I do talk about taxes,” he said in a forcefully rambunctious tone. “Which reminds me, capital gains tax is just another factor…”
We finished off the rest of our meals, Nick talking the whole time, and I couldn’t decide whether he really enjoyed talking about negative gearing or whether he just wanted to avoid lingering on what I had said before. Probably both.
Afterwards, we put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher then headed into my room. It had been a long day, so we didn’t hesitate to flop onto my bed. Nick slung a leg over my thigh so his groin was pressed up against my side, and I was flattered to feel he was already half-hard.
“So, uh…” Nick cleared his throat. “I’ve been doing some research.”
“You sound like me.”
“About sex stuff,” he continued.
I poked him in the tummy. “You really sound like me.”
He rolled his eyes. Then his expression went serious. “Are you satisfied with this?”
I looked around at the bed, the sheets tangled up between our legs. “With what, exactly?” I met his gaze. “The sex we’re having? Of course. Are you?”
“Yeah. It’s just that…”
“Oh,” I said, having an idea of where this was going. “Do you mean butt stuff?”
We’d given each other hand jobs and blow jobs and frotted up against each other until we came, which was one of my favourite methods to have sex, because it meant I could look at Nick’s face and kiss the hell out of it. Sure, we’d groped each other’s asses, but we’d never actually… penetrated each other.
“I’m not opposed to it,” I mused. “I did try to finger myself once.”
He peered up at me. “You have?”
“Just once. I came to the conclusion that there’s no way I’ll be able to stick anything in there. At least, not by myself,” I amended. “Do you want to try anal?”
“From what I researched, it’s what a lot of guys do, and, uh… they seem to really enjoy it.”
“You gleaned that from your research, did you?” I teased. “I bet you had a lot of fun ‘researching’.”
He rolled his eyes again. “Let me just show you.” He reached for his phone and his fingers flew across the screen as he typed. A minute later, we stared at a soundless video of two guys going at it.
I swallowed. “It does look pretty hot,” I admitted, my dick growing hard. “Okay, really fucking hot.”
Nick exited the video and put his phone away. “You want to try it? We don’t have to go all the way. We could try with fingers for today.”
“Okay,” I said. “So, uh… who’s spreading their legs?”
We looked at each other for a long moment. How were we supposed to figure out who was the bottom? Did it have to do with our height? Our build? Our personality?
“Let’s research it,” I said, picking up my phone and googling it. I clicked the first link, which took us to a sketchy-looking quiz site.
“Are you are top or bottom?” Nick read aloud. “Question one: who is your favourite female singer? One, Beyonce. Two, Lady Gaga. Three, Charlie XCX. Four, Celine Dion.”
“Hmm,” I said, pondering the options carefully.
“None,” Nick said. “None of them are my favourite.”
“You have to choose one, that’s the whole point.”
Nick scrolled down to the next question. “Question two: who is your favourite Golden Girl? Who the fuck are the Golden Girls?”
“They look like TV show characters.”
“I’ve never heard of this show. It looks like it came out last century.”
“I think it did come out last century,” I said.
We scrolled through the rest of the questions—what is your favourite fruit, what is your ideal vacation, what is your favourite cocktail. “This is completely useless,” Nick announced. “What does any of this have to do with getting fucked in the ass?”
“It was worth a try,” I said, putting my phone away. “I guess the internet can’t help us with this. We’ll just have to figure it out ourselves.”
“I’ll go,” he said, in a voice so quiet, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it. At my questioning expression, he said, “I’ll go. You can finger me.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Do you want to?”
“Yes,” I said immediately. I was the kind of person who’d try anything once.
He took all his clothes off, flung them over the edge of the bed, then rolled over so he was flat on his belly, legs slightly spread.
I stared at the round globes of muscle. Nick had a great butt. I knew that in the back of my mind, but all the previous times I’d squeezed his ass, I’d been distracted by other stuff—usually his cock rubbing against mine or his lips on my jaw.
But now, all of my attention was focused on one thing.
I reached out and touched him very gently. He shivered. “Hopefully, it doesn’t look too weird,” he said, voice muffled because his face was buried in a pillow.
I shifted back so I had a better view.
“Hayden?”
“Uhhhh.”
“Oh god.” His legs locked together, his back tense.
“No,” I said quickly, reaching for the sides of his thighs. “Sorry, I couldn’t manage proper words. It doesn’t look weird at all.” I wet my lips. “It’s hot as fuck.”
“… Really?”
“Mm-hmm. Can I touch?”
“Yeah.” He sounded a bit breathy as he parted his legs again.
I brushed a fingertip over the pucker of muscle, and his body went rigid.
“Sorry,” he said, a self-deprecating laugh in his voice. “Guess I’m a bit tense.”
“Flip over.”
“Huh?”
I touched his hips and guided him over so he was lying on his back. His dick was soft.
“You want to do it this way?” he asked, spreading his legs, his knees in the air, the soles of his feet flat on the mattress.
“No, I want to do this,” I said and brought my mouth to his groin. Under my exhale, it perked up slightly, and when I started licking and lapping, it slowly hardened until he was fully erect.
The tension in his body loosened, and he slumped his head against the pillow, clenching his jaw as I slid the length into my mouth, sucking until he grabbed handfuls of the bedsheet, knuckles turning white.
This was what I wanted. He was worked up… but he was also relaxed.
I took my mouth off him, which made a lewd wet pop , and reached over for the lube in my bedside table drawer. After spreading a generous amount over my fingers, I returned to my position between Nick’s legs.
“Are you happy for me to try fingering you now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding quickly, eyes fluttering shut.
I stroked his cock with one hand while my other—the one with the lubricated fingers—drifted down to his entrance. When I touched him, he tensed again but relaxed after a few moments as I massaged minuscule circles around the ring of muscle. When I did push forward, I was able to slide a finger in relatively easily. Nick didn’t say anything, but his abdominal muscles tensed.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“How does it feel?”
He draped an arm over his face so I could only see his mouth. “Weird,” he mumbled.
“Good weird or bad weird?”
“It feels like there’s a finger in my butt.”
“Uh.” I fought the urge to say, so is that good weird or bad weird? But I didn’t want to sound flippant. “Should I try searching for your prostate?” I asked instead.
He nodded quickly.
I recalled everything I remembered from casual research to anatomy class. The prostate wasn’t very deep inside, and it was on the wall closest to the penis. I rubbed my fingertip around, trying to be as gentle as possible.
“Does any of this feel good?” I asked after exploring for a minute.
“Not really,” Nick said, arm still over his eyes. The corners of his lips had dipped down, and his cock had softened.
I stilled. “Do you want me to take my finger out?”
He shook his head. “It’s fine.”
“You have to tell me something more reassuring than ‘it’s fine’.”
“It is fine .” He gritted his teeth. “I can take it.”
“I think I should take my finger out.”
He didn’t say anything. So, I did. Once I’d removed it, Nick’s entire body relaxed—I wasn’t sure if he was even aware of it.
I let go of his cock, which was almost completely soft now, then reached over for some tissues to clean up the lube on my fingers. Afterwards, I lay down on the bed beside him.
His arm was still on his face.
“Hey. Look at me.”
“Why.” His voice was toneless.
“Because I want to see your handsome face.” I picked up his free hand and pressed a kiss on the back of it.
After a few seconds, Nick dropped his arm. He wasn’t crying or anything, but he didn’t look particularly joyful either. In fact, he looked… frustrated. Angry, even.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did I hurt you?”
That startled him out of his stupor, and he shook his head quickly. “No, you didn’t,” he replied. “It didn’t hurt. It was just…”
“Bad weird?” I suggested.
Nick’s gaze flitted away. “I just need to get used to it.”
“We don’t have to do this stuff if we don’t want to,” I said. “The things we’ve been doing are already more than satisfying.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Or,” I said, “maybe next time I’ll try bottoming.”
He stared at the ceiling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He didn’t reply for so long I thought he might not answer. “I should have been able to handle it. I’m not used to being bad at this stuff.”
“At anal fingering?”
“At sex,” he corrected with a dry look, and the expression reassured me because that was the Nick I knew.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing to talk about.” He looked down at himself, completely naked, and pulled a sheet over his lower parts. “Maybe I should go home.”
“I thought you were staying the night?”
He shrugged, not meeting my eyes. I tried to think of a way to deal with this strategically.
“Can we cuddle a bit first?” I asked, hoping he found my request cute rather than clingy.
“Okay,” he said, and we rolled into our default position: he was the little spoon, I was the big one. My gaze fell on his countless strands of brown hair and the smooth back of his neck. He had a few faded freckles on the top of his shoulders, probably earned from running around shirtless in the summer.
Sometimes I wondered whether Nick liked cuddling this way because I couldn’t see his face.
I wondered what he was feeling. Maybe he thought that he’d failed somehow.
I wanted to show that he hadn’t, but I didn’t dare tell him in case it made things worse. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. So, all I could do was show him how much I cared through touch. Even though I wasn’t supposed to care. Not too much, anyway. I was supposed to stay firmly on the friends-slash-sex-partners side of the line. He couldn’t know I was deep in feelings territory.
I wanted him to be mine for real. I wanted it so much my entire body ached.
“What are you doing this weekend?” he asked, ripping me out of my thoughts.
“Not much,” I answered.
“My family’s having a party,” he said.
Was that his way of telling me he’d be busy, and so we couldn’t hang out? I supposed I could use the time to actually be productive and get some studying done. Or start my search for an internship for the summer. Or catch up with some of my friends from the Science Students Society, who I hadn’t hung out with in ages, because I spent most of my free time with Nick.
“Do you want to come?” Nick said.
“Oh! Sure.” My voice was wobbly.
He turned around to face me. “You don’t have to if—”
“No, I want to,” I interrupted. “Who’s going to be there?”
He winced. “Like, fifty people.”
My eyes widened. My family had maybe seven people, not including the relatives in the UK I’d never met.
“I have a big family,” Nick explained, “and my yiayia, who’s organising the party, invites everyone, including randoms from her church. It won’t be super exciting, but there’ll be good food.”
“I want to go,” I said. “But…” how did I say this? “Are you okay with me meeting your family?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” His nonchalant voice wasn’t completely genuine, though, because his gaze flicked away for half a second. “I met Lisa. And my yiayia wants me to invite people.” He paused. “I thought about asking Tyler, but he’s been kind of weird lately.”
“Weird, how?”
“Well, he keeps asking about you, and dropping hints that he’s available to talk about anything.” He glanced at me. “But I can take Tyler if—”
“No, I want to go,” I said again. “I mean, bring Tyler too if you want, but… I’d love to come. Should I bring food?”
He shook his head. “There’ll be more than enough. My family cooks enough to feed five armies. It’ll be Saturday afternoon. Yiayia’s place is in the northern suburbs, so we can take a train there.”
“Great,” I said, curling my arms around him, and I couldn’t help the stupid smile spreading across my face.
This had to mean something, right? My plan to slowly win him over was working.