Autumn Fire (6 page)

Besides, even if some part of him wanted to pursue more with Kyle, it would probably mean Dustin would have to come out at some point—something he didn’t want to do. It would also mean Kyle would have to come out as well—a step he would be adamantly against, as he wasn’t even certain of his own sexuality.

For all Dustin knew, Kyle could be in his own dorm right now, thinking through what happened and deciding it’d been just a blip in his life and he was still straight. He could even be prowling the campus, hunting for pussy.

However, even if Kyle wasn’t gay, Dustin hoped they’d get to play together at least once more. Not just to share in their sexual energy, but to sate the unrelenting hunger the experience awakened.

He knew not to get his hopes up. He refused to let anything happen unless the other man made the move and he knew Kyle would never do so.

Dustin scolded himself for falling into this tailspin of conflicted feelings and disappointment. He pulled up his pants and locked the buckle in place. He shut down his computer, threw on a clean shirt, and went for a walk in the cool afternoon air. He needed to clear his head, to think about something else, to get his mind—and erotic energy—off of Kyle.

Kyle, his tutor and nothing more.

Four

Tuesday

“Are you going to call Stefenie?”

Jason toweled himself off, his shower-wet skin glistening in the bright morning sunshine piercing through the half-closed blinds. His limp penis and low-hanging testicles dangled between his legs. Dustin couldn’t help but wonder if Jason would be so open if he knew Dustin was gay. Dustin could enjoy the view for now, though, especially as Jason turned around and bent to dry his lower legs, leaving his plump ass sticking high in the air.

Other than for a quick peek, Dustin didn’t stop packing his bag for morning lectures. He wished the Stefenie discussion never started, but since Jason brought it up, he packed faster, to be out as soon as possible, cutting conversation mercifully short.

“I don’t know, Jas. She’s definitely hot, but I just didn’t feel a spark.” Unlike with Kyle. He wished he could fast-forward through his day to the tutoring session.

“Hmm.” Jason tugged up a pair of plaid boxers. “Angela said the same thing about Stefenie—she thinks you’re attractive, but just wasn’t feeling it.” He tilted his head, deep in thought. “I wonder if part of it was because Angela and I were there? Maybe if just the two of you went out, you’d feel more comfortable making a move. Sparks might fly, then. If not, there’s still the chance for sex.” He winked at Dustin. “I don’t think you’ve gotten laid the entire time we’ve been roomies.”

“Getting laid isn’t so crucial when you’ve got a soft hand with a firm grip.” Dustin hoped, yet again, to throw Jason off-topic.

He chuckled. “Seriously, bro, you should call her. I think you’d be good for each other. You’re both smart and nice. And she’s a fantasy chick—you read that shit, don’t you?”

“I do read that...shit.” Dustin took one last covert glance at Jason’s torso before he threw on his shirt and unfortunately hid his jock flesh from wandering eyes. “I’ll think about it, Jas. I gotta go. Got class and then meeting my tutor.”

“See you, man.”

Dustin threw his backpack over his shoulder and opened the door.

“Oh, and Dustin?” Jason called. “Call Stefenie.”

Dustin glanced over his shoulder, trying to give an indecisive look to convey he would seriously consider it. “We’ll talk later.”

He went to his morning class, Renaissance History, and paid scant attention, writing down sparse notes while his mind wandered elsewhere. Over the years, a couple crushes captivated Dustin, but never to this extent. His every waking moment for the past couple days—and every sleeping moment, if his extra-hard morning erection spoke for his dreams—consisted only of thoughts of Kyle. From their brief closeness, to what it would be like to do it again, but fully naked and without the urgency of a random bathroom hookup, he entertained more fantasies than he dreamed possible.

Thankfully, Dustin’s history prof lectured endlessly, rarely calling on students to supply answers or comments, allowing him to coast through the period and stay lost in his fantasies. As the lecture wound down, Dustin carefully and quietly packed up his bag. He’d sat near the back exit so he would be the first one out the door.

As soon as the words, “See you all on Thursday,” passed the professor’s lips, Dustin stepped across the threshold. Like every break between classes, the corridors instantly crammed full of people. Normally, Dustin would take his time and allow the current of people to help him flow along, but today he charged ahead, squeezing through bodies and striding ahead, apologizing every time he jostled someone.

A thin sheen of sweat covered his forehead by the time the cafeteria doors were in sight. His heart beat rapidly and his breath came heavy. He hadn’t exerted himself much, so he could only chalk his physical response to immature hormones. Dustin felt like such a child sometimes. All his self-criticisms melted in the light of Kyle’s eyes.

“Not bad.” Kyle glanced at his phone. “You’re a minute early.”

“What can I say?” Dustin flashed a grin. “I’m speedy when I’m motivated.” Instantly, he regretted his choice of words. He didn’t want to lay it on thick, especially with no plan or ephemeral hope of pursuing Kyle for something akin to a relationship. The chance of gaining a regular hookup buddy loomed equally, if not more, hopeless.

Kyle either didn’t catch the hidden meaning or chose to ignore it. “The cafeteria’s crowded today. Too noisy for linear algebra.”

Dustin glanced through the glass doors and walls to the room beyond. People eating and chatting filled nearly every table and the noise spilled into the hallway. “We can go to the study hall outside the library.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the room.

Kyle agreed and they hiked their way over. As they approached, loud voices met them. It seemed some sort of career fair occupied the study hall.

“Fuck,” Dustin muttered to himself, fearing his quality time with Kyle might be finished before it started.

“We’re running out of study locales. I guess the next best place is in the library—it tends to be quiet in the back.” Kyle’s voice faltered with those last few words, likely stumbling as he remembered what happened at the back of the library a few days prior.

Dustin’s heart skipped a beat. He remembered Kyle’s cock in his mouth—the way it felt, the way it tasted. “Sure, let’s see if there’s a table open.”

They found the back of the library mercifully empty. A few students wandered the stacks in search of various tomes, but the study tables were devoid of people. Dustin and Kyle sat next to each other on one side of a long table. Dustin winced slightly. Their seats gave them a perfect view of the door to the men’s room.

When Kyle’s posture stiffened, Dustin wanted to break the tension and discomfort with a comment like, “It seems higher forces want to remind us of the good times,” but chose not to. The last thing he wanted was Kyle’s unease to bubble over. He struggled to figure out his own turmoil of emotions, he couldn’t imagine the chaos in Kyle’s head.

“Hmm.” Kyle seemed to study the door. “It seems we can’t escape the past.” He chuckled awkwardly.

The emotional torrent subsided with Kyle breaking the ice. He forced a few chuckles to share their mutual discomfort.

They both avoided looking at the door, staring instead at the papers set before them. After reviewing yesterday’s questions and firming up Dustin’s row operations, they moved on to the more advanced topic of vector geometry.

His attention drifted from Kyle’s words to the yellow painted door opposite them. Dustin forced his attention back on the page, but he couldn’t make sense of the numbers. He blinked several times, trying to clear his mind.

When the blood flow returned to his head, Dustin realized Kyle stopped talking. He, too, looked at the door.

Kyle tapped his pencil on the table. He looked nervous. “Do you...um...do that stuff often?”

Dustin glanced around before answering. He could feel his cheeks warming in embarrassment. He never discussed such things openly.

“I’ve done it a few times. Well, more than a few. Not normally in a public bathroom, though. I usually go to the guy’s place.” Dustin turned his head when he heard a thump behind them. A student pulled a book off a shelf. He watched the woman flip through a few pages and slowly wander off.

Kyle didn’t say anything. Dustin felt a need to fill the silence. He leaned toward Kyle and lowered his voice. “I’m not a man-slut. I really don’t do it, uh,
frequently
, but I have gathered up experiences over the years. Before Saturday, I hadn’t hooked up since the start of term.”

He glanced to his left when he thought he saw another person wandering through. Kyle still didn’t respond, so Dustin kept talking. “I don’t want to get caught up in any gay drama on campus. It would make staying in the closet kind of difficult.”

Dustin forced his lips tightly shut, deciding not to say anything else until the other man said something.

Kyle watched the door for a long time and then fixed his luminescent eyes on Dustin. “It was my first time.” Kyle diverted his eyes again. Dustin struggled to hear him, his voice very quiet even in the funereal silence of the library.

“Your first?” Dustin repeated as his blood rushed through his ears, reminiscent of when he’d first met Kyle. “I’m your first guy?”

Kyle chewed his lower lip. The twitch seemed to mean he carefully thought through things. He quickly scanned around them. “It was...hot. I’m not going to deny it.”

Dustin couldn’t bring himself to look at Kyle.
My face must be blazing red by now.
“Thanks. Thanks for exaggerating to make me feel good.” They chuckled. “My first was lousy. I think for most people their first is pretty bad. It was with some limp-dicked first timer who kept approaching the edge of an anxiety attack. At one point, I even asked him if he was okay and offered to call it quits.’ He took a puff of his inhaler and told me he would be fine.”

Kyle laughed aloud, slapping his hand over his mouth when he remembered they were in the library. The shared humor seemed to melt something within him, and he spoke with more ease. “So...you’re gay?”

Dustin tilted his head from side to side, thinking of how to phrase it. “Let’s just say,
if
I was a fan of labeling people, I wouldn’t fit under the ‘straight’ label. ‘Gay’ probably fits best, yeah, but I really prefer to be label-less. It takes a lot of the stress of orientation and identity out of the equation. I can just live how I want to live and do what I want to do.”

“You don’t think you’re going to have to, I don’t know, own up to a label at some point?”

“Probably. And probably sooner than I really want. For now, though, I think I’m doing just fine.”

Kyle’s voice suddenly got even lower. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Dustin shook his head. “No. Never. And I don’t want one. Aside from probably having to come out in order to have a boyfriend, I feel it’s just not worth it. All a guy really needs is good friends and good sex and sex is easy to find on the internet.”

Kyle seemed to mull those thoughts over.

“And you? You’re straight? Bi?” He purposely left out ‘gay,’ figuring it might scare him from the depth of this conversation, this baring of souls. If he’d truly been Kyle’s first, then he probably had a history with women. It would be beyond odd for a man as hot as Kyle to be a total virgin into his twenties.

“Let’s go with...label-less. I like that.” He glanced at Dustin, tentative smile on his lips. “My girlfriend and I were together for three years. We broke up back in August because I wouldn’t commit. She wanted a ring and I wasn’t ready to give her one. I, uh, wasn’t sure she was the one.”

“No? After three years?” Dustin’s dashed hopes at the mention of girlfriend quickly mended when Kyle said they broke up.

“Have you ever been in a relationship? Like, even with a girl?”

Dustin shook his head.

“How do I explain this? After three years—hell, after three months—I feel I should find some sort of comfort, some security in my relationship, some sense she was the one. I should have felt a longing to tie myself to her, to be with her forever.”

“But?” Dustin prodded in the intervening silence.

“But...I don’t know. I almost felt like I went along with it out of some sense of obligation. I started dating her and it certainly wasn’t bad, so I figured I should just keep going with it. The relationship itself was all right and the sex adequate, though…” Kyle paused to blush and glance around them. “She never gave a blowjob like you.”

“So...” Dustin pieced things together, all the while remaining conscious he couldn’t push Kyle too far too soon. “What made you log on to a website and hit me up?”

“I don’t know.” Kyle rubbed the back of his neck absently. “I’ve always been kind of...curious about what it would be like to do it with a dude. Combined with the monotony of shoddy porn and my lubricated fist, as well as three months of sexless singlehood, and it was the perfect combo for a desire to experiment.”

Dustin decided to test the waters. “Would you ever want to do it again?”

Kyle visibly shut down—his body language, his expression, and his energy all slammed into a wall. “Um...”

“Never mind,” Dustin cut off the rejection, hoping he hadn’t just destroyed everything he’d attained with Kyle. “Forget I said it, okay? I said it would stay in the past, so let’s just leave it there.” He wanted to make more reassurances, but he didn’t want to come across as too much, as overcompensating.

Kyle closed his books. “I think we’re about done for today, right?”

“Yeah.” Dustin tried to hide his dejection. He watched the other man out of the corner of his eye, trying to assess his thoughts. “Can we set up another tutoring session?”

He could sense an uncertainty hovering on Kyle’s lips. Dustin desperately wanted to hold on, to fix the damage he’d done. Perhaps a few days apart would make it work.