Gobbling Dick
Chapter eight
Dex
The last few weeks of the semester were busy.
Dex was learning all the ins and outs of his new job, trying to keep up with his demanding dyscus practices, prepping for end of semester exams, watching over Jasmyn, and tutoring Cya every spare evening he could.
He was burning the blunt at both ends—or whatever the saying was—and he couldn’t wait for March.
Nearly four weeks of nothing but work and dyscus; it was going to be heaven.
At the end of February, he helped Gem and Rusty move into their new flat, and the first Saturday of March, he joined some of his colleagues at the soft opening of The Passing Through Cafe’s Greed location.
Their group stayed an hour or so, chatting amicably as they huddled in a tight circle for warmth before they all disbanded at the station.
When Dex moved to follow Toni and his human boyfriend, Jude, to the platform for Gluttony, he spotted Cya standing alone and slowed to a stop. The Sypent studied the departure screens before checking their watch, a delicate gold piece that probably cost more than Dex’s rent.
Their top half was bundled up in a thick coat, a creamy pink scarf, and a fuzzy hat that covered the pointed tips of their ears. They clutched their to-go cup between their gloved hands, their tail curled tightly underneath them as if to conserve heat.
As a cold-blooded Reptyl, they were sensitive to the chilly March weather, and Dex regretted not bringing a jacket with him that he could have shared. Not that they would have accepted it; they didn’t like receiving help—that much Dex had learned over the last few weeks of tutoring.
Although they showed up to every study session, they were combative and got defensive anytime he tried correcting their mistakes. They barely listened to him, and even when they did, they questioned everything he said, like they didn’t believe he actually knew what he was talking about.
Honestly, he would have thought they genuinely didn’t like him, except they arranged the repair of the lift in his building—they claimed it was because they didn’t deserve the torture of climbing six flights of stairs, but it was still a nice gesture—and they were really sweet with Jasmyn, remembering the simple signs she taught them.
Sometimes, they even laughed at his jokes.
Well, they never laughed, but they would smirk and scoff, which might as well have been a laugh.
All of that combined had to be irrefutable—probably scientific—proof that Cya didn’t hate him as much as they pretended to.
In fact, he was convinced they were encroaching on best friend territory already.
Another few study sessions, and they would probably stop pretending they didn’t know him when they passed each other on campus.
“Heading home?” Dex asked, and Cya glanced his way, then back to the departure screens.
“Yes.”
“Fun weekend plans?”
Their shoulders stiffened. “Not really.”
“Oh? No fancy parties where you eat caviar and kwinoah?” he teased, and Cya’s brows furrowed.
“What’s kwinoah?”
Dex frowned too. “Uh, you know, kwinoah. That grain that’s not actually a grain that you like to eat. We texted about it.”
They cocked their head and arched a dark green brow. “You mean, quinoa?”
“I don’t think that’s how you say it,” he corrected them carefully.
With a slow blink, they inhaled deeply, exhaling in a rush through their nostril slits. “You know what? You’re probably right. Kwinoah sounds like a very fancy, very real thing that actually exists.”
Wow, they were taking this really well, considering they usually bit his head off anytime he tried to correct them. Which only added to his conviction that they were pretty much besties now.
“I mean, I don’t know lots of things, but I do know how to read.” He winked and shot them finger-guns.
Like they were fighting a smile, they pressed their lips together and hummed. “Mhm, that must be it.”
“Well, since you don’t have fancy kwinoah plans, you could come to the movies with me.”
Cya’s golden eyes wide with shock. “The movies? With you? Like, us together?”
“Yeah, I gotta take Jasmyn and a few of her friends to the cinema since Mom is working a double.” He tucked his hands into his pockets and shrugged. “So, if you don’t mind kicking it with a couple tweens, you could totally come with us.”
Something complicated played over their face, but Dex couldn’t decipher it before it was gone. “I should probably get home,” they finally said, twisting one of their bracelets around their wrist.
“Okay,” he said easily, bumping their shoulder with his. “Have a good weekend.”
He’d only taken a few steps when Cya called out, “What film?”
Grinning, he half-turned toward them. “I dunno. Some teenie-bop musical with the latest tween heartthrob because”—he started to sign as he imitated his sister—“‘Oh em geez, Dex, he’s just so hot! He donates to charities that help illiterate orphans or abused animals or something, and if I ever saw him in person, I would just die, oh my gods!’” He dropped his hands to his hips, voice returning to normal. “At least, that’s what Jasmyn says.”
To his delight, an incredulous laugh burst from Cya’s throat, and they covered their mouth with a hand to silence it. His tail wagged as he chuckled along with them.
“Well, that sounds riveting,” they eventually said as they brushed flyaways out of their face. “Can’t imagine saying no to watching a tween heartthrob sing.”
“He probably has really swoopy hair and a patchy goatee too.”
A heavily-ringed hand came to rest on their chest as they deadpanned, “Well, if that doesn’t convince me, what could?”
“Oh, so that’s your type? Prepubescent-stache-chic?” He stumbled back when Cya lunged toward him, moving faster than he thought they were capable of, to smack his arm.
“Shut up! That’s horrendous,” they hissed as he burst into laughter. “Someone could hear you.”
“Hey, I’m not judging. Whatever trips your trigger—ow!” He jumped away to escape Cya’s tail, which had whipped out to strike him in the leg. “Watch it with that thing! Your rattle is deceptively hard.”
“Let that be a lesson to you not to piss me off,” they sniffed haughtily.
“Sure, sure. So you coming or what?” He gestured in the direction of the Gluttony platform as the overhead speaker announced a final call.
Conflicted, Cya worked their jaw as they contemplated, then they wobbled their shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. “I guess.”
They caught the train right as the doors were closing, and he followed the Sypent to two empty seats. He tripped over a threshold strip with a yelp, collapsing clumsily into the spot beside Cya, and they bit their bottom lip as they snuffled a laugh.
“Graceful.”
“Whatever, captain fancy pants.”
Posture straight, chin high, they said, “I don’t wear pants.”
“Whoa, was that a joke?”
They inspected their nails. “Jokes are a foolish man’s humor.”
Dex pressed his mouth to the back of his hand and blew, making a wet fart noise, and Cya reared back in offense.
“Excuse you?”
“That’s the noise I’m gonna make every time you say something snobby and prepentuous,” he explained gleefully.
“You mean pretentious,” they said, and he released another fart sound much to their dismay. “You’re a disgusting child.”
“And you’re uptight,” he retorted, ignoring the warning rattle of their tail. “You gotta loosen up. Live a little. Learn to have fun.”
“I know how to have fun,” they grumbled under their breath.
“If you say so,” he said diplomatically, snickering quietly when they hissed wordlessly at him. “So what is rich people humor, then? Since you can’t make jokes.”
Tucking a chunk of hair that had fallen out of their braid behind their ear, they said, “Clever wit and disparaging comments, of course.”
“Bet you’re super fun at parties,” he murmured, snickering to himself when they huffed wordlessly and glared out the window.
They lapsed into silence, and slowly, Cya relaxed out of their stiff posture. Their arms dropped, hands landing in their lap where they twirled a gold-braided bracelet around their wrist.
Dex liked the nervous tell; not only because it made them sound like wind chimes, but because it proved they weren’t actually carved from ice.
They were flesh and bone, just like him, and he wanted to reach out and take their hand, if only to feel the heat of their blood pumping through their veins.
The idea made his palms prickle strangely, like the beginnings of a nervous sweat. Which was… weird.
Sure, he got nervous around pretty girls just like the next guy, but it was still weird that the thought of taking Cya’s hand was causing it now. They were hot—he’d have to be blind not to see that—but they weren’t a girl, and for as long as he could remember, he’d been straight.
If he was being honest, he’d never actually thought too hard about his sexuality. He’d always liked girls and never questioned things further. But if he was into Cya, what did that mean?
Maybe nothing. But also, maybe something?
For a moment, he tried to imagine kissing a dude, a dude with facial hair or fur, a dude with a hard, unyielding body or muscles like his. He wrinkled his nose; he didn’t think he’d be into that. He liked girls because they were pretty and soft and curvy and almost always smelled nice.
But boys could be pretty too. They could be soft and curvy, and they could smell nice.
Propping a foot on his knee, Dex considered kissing a femme guy. One who maybe wore make-up and whose skin or fur was really soft and moisturized. And maybe he wore heels and skirts and smelled like herbs and incense.
Okay, yeah. Yeah, Dex could get behind that.
Except, under the skirt, there’d be a dick, and he’d never considered interacting with a dick that wasn’t his own.
He’d probably be bad at it, at least when it came to giving head, but he could learn, right?
He knew what felt good when receiving a blowjob, and even though he probably had a sensitive gag reflex, that was something he could fix.
“You can train your gag reflex, right? So you don’t accidentally puke on some dude’s dick?” Dex voiced his musings aloud, making Cya choke on the tea they were still nursing.
“Who starts a conversation like that?” they demanded between harsh coughs.
“Well, I had a whole train of thought leading up to it,” he defended as Cya glared at him. “I was just thinking that, if the guy was pretty enough, I could probably gobble dick. I’d just have to train my gag reflex because I’ve never actually, you know…”
He ended his speech by clumsily pantomiming sucking a dick, and the Sypent’s face darkened a shade. “Gobble dick?” they hissed in horror. “Why would you say it like that?”
“Oh, is that offensive to the dick-sucking community? I didn’t mean it as an insult. I was just thinking.”
Molars grinding, Cya stared at him, cheeks aflame with a blush. “Thinking about fellatio?”
“Is that rich people talk for a blowie?”
“Shh, people can hear you,” they snapped as they slouched lower in their seat and half-covered their face with a hand.
Dex looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping, but no one paid them any mind. “Chillax, no one’s listening.”
“I don’t care. I’m not talking about that with you.”
They were sitting so low in their seat that their tail folded on a joint—that would have been their knees if they’d had legs—and pressed to the seat in front of them. The end of their tail flicked erratically, giving away their discomfort.
He lowered his voice to a hushed murmur. “But what if I’m on the verge of a gay epiphany or something? Who else am I supposed to talk to about it?”
“You’re not having a gay epiphany, Dex,” they said, rubbing the space between their eyes.
“How do you know? I just realized that I would be down with a dick in my mouth as long as the dick was attached to someone pretty and femme. That feels like a gay epiphany to me,” he insisted.
They shot him a glare. “Genitals don’t equal gender.”
“I know.”
“So your sexuality isn’t in question just because you could like a woman who has a dick.”
“But what if they were a femme guy? Is it gay for me to be into that?”
They turned their glare out the window and shrugged. “Probably a little, but you don’t have to turn it into a sexuality crisis.”
“It’s not a crisis. I don’t care if I’m a little gay. I’m still me, even if, under certain circumstances, I’m into dick,” he said honestly, and Cya faced him again, brows rising in surprise. “But it’s important to know that kind of thing about myself, right?”
“I suppose, though labels only matter if you want them to. You can be whatever you want and feel however you feel, and it doesn’t have to change a thing.” Their almost-kind tone took on some sass as they added, “Or you can be like Gem and make it your whole personality. To each their own.”
Dex snorted, and the corner of Cya’s mouth tilted in the ghost of a smile. Warmth trickled through his chest, and he relaxed back into his seat, refitting his ballcap on his head between his ears.
“Thanks, Cy. That makes me feel better.”
They rolled their eyes. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel better.”
“You still did.” He knocked their elbow with his, making them click their forked tongue at him. “I knew you were secretly nice.”
“Shut up, Dex,” they mumbled, and he swore the words held ten percent less venom than they usually did.
Slumping lower in his seat until his shoulder was level with Cya’s, Dex grinned at them, tail trying to wag from its position trapped behind and somewhat under him. They scowled at him. He grinned wider.
With another click of their tongue, they turned away to gaze out the window as the train pulled into Gluttony station.
But when Dex shifted his arm enough to brush against theirs, they didn’t immediately pull away.
In fact, they didn’t pull away at all until the train came to a stop, and they had to stand to disembark.
Dex’s forearm tingled where they’d touched, and he decided he didn’t mind it. Not one bit.