Aspen
AT THE END of queer studies, I packed my stuff into my bag, ready to throw it up on my shoulder and head to my next class, when a shadow crossed over my desk.
“Oh. Hey,” I greeted Isaak once I’d looked up, surprised to see him standing there.
“Hi,” he said back. As always, he looked shy and just a little sheepish, like he was always on the verge of apologizing for the inconvenience of his existence.
“… How’s it going?” I finally asked, after a few too many seconds of him looking hesitant to say anything else.
“Good!” He answered, before clearing his throat. “I, um, I had a lot of fun on Saturday.”
“The party?” I guessed and he nodded. “I didn’t see you there.”
“I saw you, but uh, you looked busy. I didn’t want to bug you,” he said quickly. “But I talked to Maddox and Cyprian! And I met Ren.”
“Nice,” I commented. “Ren’s actually my roommate.”
“Yeah, he mentioned that!” Isaak confirmed.
He was weirdly cute with his big doe eyes and slender frame but also seemed delicate, like he’d crumble at the first sign of hostility or tension.
“You’re lucky. When I was in my undergraduate program, my roommate barely spoke to me,” he recalled, sighing.
“I think he wasn’t too fond of, um…” He hesitated for a moment.
“Well, I think maybe we had different political beliefs,” he finished, looking slightly miserable at the memory.
“Ah, yeah. That sucks,” I said.
I was definitely sympathetic. BBU was generally pretty liberal, as well as the city we were in, but we didn’t live in an enlightened utopia.
Bigots could always slip through the cracks.
I’d seen plenty of it directed at Maddox the year before, and Arie was always getting weird looks and snickers from a lot of the frat boy types.
I was lucky to have gotten someone like Ren as my roommate.
Even before he’d realized he was bi, he’d been friendly and respectful.
“It’s fine now,” he continued. “I’m in off-campus housing.”
“That’s great. I’m sure it’s a lot less stressful.”
“Yeah,” he agreed with a sigh. “I mean, I’m sure you know all about this, but…
It’s so hard when you feel like you have to watch everything you say or how you act.
” I knew what he meant, about not acting too effeminate or saying something that would immediately allow everyone to clock you as a queer person.
“That party was the first time in a long time I could just relax and talk to people and not worry.”
“You know, my friends and I do, like, movie and board games night just about every week. It’s a great group. I mean, you already know most of them and you probably already know Arie Becker. You could come hang out with us on Friday night.”
He blinked, looking surprised at my offer.
No shock there. This guy seemed like the poster boy for Kicked Puppy Syndrome.
But this was kind of on brand for me. I was the one who’d invited Ren into our tiny group last year, and he’d brought along Maddox, which had dragged Caelyx and Cyprian in too, since we’d started having the hangouts at their house.
A very pleasant domino effect I had no regrets about.
“Ah, I…” He trailed off, looking torn. “Well, it’s just that I’m a TA and you guys are undergrad students, and…”
“What are you, like 22?” I guessed, suppressing the urge to snort. I didn’t want him to think I was making fun of him or anything but he didn’t really look any older than any of us.
“I’m 23,” he admitted, in a tone that suggested being 23 was a moral failing he had not yet been able to conquer.
“Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s going to care that you’re 23,” I said honestly. “As long as you like horror movies. Arie kind of forces us to let him pick most of the time.” Bossy little twink.
“Well, I…” He wrung his fingers together nervously. “Oh! Gosh, I’m probably keeping you from your next class, right? Sorry!”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. It was nearby, only a minute or two walk. But I stood up anyway. “Let me know if you end up wanting to hang out. I’ll give you the address.”
“Sure,” he said, nodding quickly. “I’ll let you know.” I couldn’t tell if he would actually take me up on the offer, but I could tell he wanted to. Well, I’d offered and that was that.
My next class was economics, which Caelyx was also in. I slid into a seat, setting my bag on the desk. He was across the room, but his eyes had been locked on me since the second I’d walked in. A flush of heat washed over me, tingles snaking up my spine at the memory of his tongue on my dick.
Staring up toward the front where the professor was preparing to start their lecture, I hoped I wasn’t visibly blushing.
If I was, I knew he would see it since he was still staring at me like a fucking creep.
If he ever found out I was actually letting him do a bunch of firsts to me, I was seriously done for.
He’d tease me until I died of embarrassment, and then he’d probably still stalk me in the afterlife.
But as irritating as he was and as clueless as he seemed most of the time, Caelyx was making it supremely easy to just lean into whatever was going on between us.
There was no pressure, no unpleasant tension, no stress.
For the first time since I’d started having sex, I wasn’t in my head about how my partner felt about my body or if they wished I was something else or could give them something else.
I’d fucked around with more than a few guys since transitioning.
Once I’d started getting bottom growth from T and my top surgery was healed up enough for physical activity, I’d been good to go, although I’d immediately defaulted to topping with a strap-on.
The idea of sex without that physical barrier there had always felt too intimate.
I’d had several guys express interest in going down on me, or topping me, which I’d always turned down.
It wasn’t that I thought they weren’t genuine, but…
There was something incredibly un-sexy about having a guy stare at your crotch like it was a science experiment that hadn’t gone quite right and they were trying to figure out which variable had caused the confusing result.
Even if it was only for a second before they recovered, it was enough to completely take me out of it.
It was even worse when they treated me like a quiz they didn’t want to fail, making me explain what words they were allowed to use and not use.
Maybe some people were into that, but I wasn’t. It felt like a humiliation ritual.
So far, Caelyx was batting two for two. Jerking me off from behind was one thing, but now that he’d sucked my dick like it contained an antidote for an exotic poison he’d accidentally ingested, it was impossible for me to pretend I wasn’t into him.
Well, I was into his fingers and tongue and dick, I reminded myself.
Emotional attachments weren’t my thing and probably wouldn’t be for a long time.
Even if Faulkner was trying to buy me and force me into an arranged marriage with his son like we were merging kingdoms in a smutty romantasy novel.
I wondered how pissed Caelyx would be if he ever found out about that.
I slid my gaze over to where he was seated, and discovered he was still looking in my direction.
Our eyes locked, the brief contact somehow hot and intense enough to speed up my pulse.
I immediately looked away, my teeth digging into my lower lip as my hand curled into a fist on my thigh.
My heart was racing, but after a few seconds of mental pep talk, I turned toward him again.
He was smirking now, his eyebrow quirked up as he stared.
He leaned forward, wiggling his fingers in a cocky little wave before resting his hand on his chin.
His clear blue eyes were sparkling, his infuriatingly perfect lips curved up into that signature fuckboy grin.
Snapping my gaze back to the front of the class, I made it my personal mission not to look over there again.
After an hour and a half of discussing GDP as a means of measuring the wealth of various nations, class was done.
I didn’t even have to look over to know he was making a beeline for me.
It was our last class of the day, so neither of us had anywhere to be.
My stomach twisted with a light touch of nerves as I realized I’d probably agree to hang out if he asked me, even though we’d just hung out and hooked up the day before.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to make it such a regular thing.
We weren’t dating or anything, but I couldn’t pretend like I hadn’t had a good time with him.
Not just the getting sucked off and frotting part, but even just the hanging out and drinking smoothies part.
Still, I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea that we were a thing.
We weren’t, and I wasn’t interested in that.
Plus our regular Friday closing shift together was the next day, followed immediately by the weekly group hangout, so it wasn’t like it’d be any significant amount of time before we saw each other again.
He planted a palm on my desk, leaning his hip onto the side so I was forced to look up at him.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” he replied. We stared at each other for probably way too long before I rose up from the seat, nudging him toward the door. I didn’t want anyone to see us and think we were lovesick morons or anything.
“I hope you don’t miss me too much tonight,” Caelyx started as we walked together, before letting out an intentionally melodramatic sigh. “I can’t hang out, so don’t even think about asking. You’ll tempt me too much.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I said, both relieved and mildly disappointed. “I do have a life, you know.”
“Not me,” he admitted instantly. “I just need to study so I don’t fail the econ exam.”