Chapter Nineteen
Banks
“Did you hear that?”
Banks nodded, glancing at the floor where, moments earlier, the telltale whisper of paper being slid beneath the dorm room door had interrupted another gentle kissing session.
“What is it?” Harper murmured, pushing Banks gently away as their naked skin peeled apart, blistered from body heat and splattered with a fresh layer of recently dried spunk.
Banks grunted, tossing his legs over the bed and placing bare feet flat on the floor. “Probably an eviction notice, what with your squealing and hollering.”
Harper lay atop the pillows, the very essence of beauty, golden and radiant in the approaching dawn light that spilled like a spotlight from the open window above the bed. “I squeal,” he pointed out playfully, absently scratching his smooth, flat belly. “You holler, remember?”
“How could I forget,” Banks murmured, bending over to snatch the paper off the floor. He scanned it, quickly, before snickering and turning to Harper with a fresh, beaming smile.
“What is it?” Harper sat up, long legs hanging off the side of the bed, cock pink and soft from his third—or was it his fourth?—climax of the evening.
Banks handed over the day’s itinerary, freshly printed on a still warm piece of Piedmont State letterhead. “Our schedule for the day,” he announced, reaching for the terry cloth robe he’d tugged off Harper earlier that night.
Or had it been morning?
Harper nodded absently, reading out loud from the printed agenda centered on the piece of university stationary. “Buffet breakfast? Field Day? Mocktails with the University President?”
Banks nodded with fiendish glee. “Big day, right?”
Harper made an extreme “WTF” face. “We’re not ... you’re not thinking about doing any of this, right?”
“Of course I am.”
“What about...” Harper glanced at the soiled sheets, twisted and sweaty and stained beyond repair. “We still have butt stuff to do, remember?”
“How could I forget?” Banks chuckled, gathering up the clothes Harper had worn to his room earlier that night and shoving them in his outstretched arms. “And, hey, if there’s no one else in the showers this early, maybe we can get to some of that.
But first we need to wash at least a couple gallons worth of spunk off each other before we’re presentable to the outside world. ”
“Banks, I...”
“Come on, Harper. Let’s do this. Together.”
“I’d rather go to church naked, Banks.”
“Listen, you got to go to the pep rally in a Pride shirt. I respect that. I want that too. Now more than ever.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, Harper. I do.” Banks shrugged into his robe, then the pair of cheap rubber flip-flops he wore to the dorm showers every morning.
“More than butt stuff?” Harper seemed genuinely surprised.
Banks was too, actually. In many ways, all these years, he’d thought butt stuff was the literal end game of his burgeoning gayness.
But suddenly, the genuine affection, even love, he felt for Harper meant more than just checking that off his to do list. There was a whole world out there to explore, and he couldn’t wait to do it with someone he genuinely cared for.
“Not generally, no. But right now? Yes, actually, I do.”
Harper was suddenly suspicious, looking back over the top of his collar as he tugged on his wrinkled V-neck tee. “Why?”
Banks softened, grabbing both of Harper’s hands and holding them in his own.
In all his days, Banks had never done anything so spontaneously romantic.
Nor had he ever wanted to before. Harper noticed, softening too.
“Listen, I can’t wear a Pride shirt yet because I don’t have one and I doubt the campus bookstore of this religious ass college is going to sell me one in the first place, okay?
But I can hold your hand, and walk with you to some cheap buffet breakfast. We can sit together, and sip coffee and be. ..”
“Together?” Harper’s voice trembled, slightly.
“Yeah, Harp. Together. You. Me. Here. Today. Right now.”
“You’d do that?”
Banks stood between Harper’s legs, reaching out to clutch his soft, smooth face between his hands. “For you, Harper? I’d do anything. But actually? This one’s for me.”
Harper smiled, nodding gently in Banks’s tender embrace. “I can get behind that, Banks.”
“And later, after sack races and mocktails, when we’re both hot and sweaty from another day of Welcome Week, maybe you and I can finally do some butt stuff?”
Harper nodded, wriggling into his skivvies and checkered shorts as he stood to his full height. “Or maybe, Banks, we take our time.”
“Yeah?” Banks was almost relieved.
“I think so, yeah.”
“But your V-card?”
“Can wait. As long as you’re still the one to take it from me.”
“It’s a deal, baby.”
Harper snorted, chucking a hand over his shoulder toward the open window. “You gonna call me that out there? In the real world?”
“Maybe not today,” Banks admitted, grabbing the little shower caddy that held his toiletries. “Maybe not tonight. But tomorrow? Or the next day? Sure, maybe. Possibly. Hopefully.”
“I can live with that,” Harper murmured, pausing at the front door to lavish Banks with one of his deep, wet, probing kisses. “As long as there’s a tonight, and a tomorrow, and a next day...”
“I’m game if you are.”
“Then I guess it’s official.” Harper smirked, whisking open the door.
“What is?”
Harper winked and stole one last kiss before they tumbled into the hallway, still deserted at this hour, but feeling very much more public than their sweaty, sticky, funky sex den of a dorm room. “Welcome Week is officially my favorite week of the year.”
Banks chuckled, joining his new friend as they strolled down the hall toward the bathrooms around the corner.
Lazily, familiarly, their hands brushed one another as they walked, until eventually, perhaps even inevitably, their fingers laced and they strode toward the Men’s Locker hand in hand, smiles to match their quickened pace.
It might not have been love, yet. Or even butt stuff.
Yet.
But Welcome Week? Suddenly, it was most welcome indeed.
The End