I can't believe this is happening. Happening again. I can't believe, after the confused mess he left me in last time, I'm in a store cupboard being pressed up against the door, being ravished again.
This time, he is hungry. His mouth is on mine, hot and searching, and his hands are acting out some strange rhythm on my torso, a cycle of palming, grabbing, and scratching.
"Theo," I gasp, because just as I find a single word to say, he thumbs my nipples through my shirt, and I think fuck, he's got me, this is too much.
His kisses are so unique to me. I've not been with too many girls but kisses with them had all been so pliant and sweet, usually something artificial tasting finding its way into my mouth, maybe a few strands of long hair. I would always need to take the lead, which has never been something that comes naturally to me. I'm much more of a follower.
Theo doesn't wait for me to lead. He just knows what it is that I want, and right now, it's him, all I want is his mouth and his hands and the feeling of his hard cock against my own through four layers of fabric.
In this moment, I can forget so many things, like the mounting pressure of my portfolio and the fact I am three weeks behind on my assignments, I can forget that I have a severely homophobic best friend and I can forget that it's coming up to five years since I've exchanged a single word with my bastard dad.
"Stop thinking so much," he whispers in my ear, his breath humid against my skin. He uses this break to take his shirt off, exposing a solid body with dark brown nipples, a flat stomach, and a line of dark hair going from his navel into the waistband of his jeans, which he has begun to shuck off, revealing a pair of tight black trunks, which are hugging his lower area perfectly, just hinting at what's beneath - when did I get so gay? He stands there momentarily once he's moved his jeans away, looking me up and down, before closing the distance between us, forcing me flat against the door.
"Do you want me to undress you?" He asks voice sultry, hands tugging on the hem of my t-shirt. "You want me to do it for you?" Suddenly one of his hands is cupping me through denim, and I nod, telling him I do want him to do it for me, because I can't even remember how the hell I do any single activity in this moment, when his hand is holding me so perfectly and I can't recall the last time I felt so good in my own body.
He pulls my t-shirt off, mouthing at my shoulders and neck as he slowly undoes my jeans. He draws it out to torture me, I can tell, but I don't do anything about it because who am I kidding - this is what I need.
I take the courageous move of reaching to grab at him, intending to run my hands over his back, but my spatial reasoning seems to have disappeared as my hands close over his arse, pulling him closer to me. He's so firm in my palms and I can feel the heat of his skin through his jersey underwear.
"I can't get your jeans off if you pull me so close to you" Theo chastises, and I release him. This causes him to fall to his knees, face level with my crotch. He pulls my jeans down, finally, but he also brings down my underwear, meaning I'm stark naked in front of him apart from the jeans pooled around my ankles, effectively restraining me.
My face flushes, and he puts a hand on my torso, dragging it down slowly, slowly, his dark coffee eyes flickering between my face and my cock, before he fools me by taking it into his mouth when I was just expecting him to touch it. I moan, and he taps two fingers against my chest as if to reprimand me. I forget we're in a store cupboard in the middle of the theatre department during the quiet hour and a half where people are off having lunch. I forget that someone could be using the hallway and will be able to hear me if I keep moaning like that, like I've never been touched before.
God, I've never been touched like this. Never. He's enjoying it, he's glad he has my cock in his mouth. One hand is braced against the area where my stomach ends and my crotch begins, thumb rubbing against the blonde mess of my pubic hair, and he's using his other hand to palm his package through his trunks. The sight of him, compared with the sensation of that mouth around me, is too much.
"Stop," I gasp, because the heat flushing through my lower half is threatening to spill over, and he can tell this, so he pushes me even further, pulling his own cock out of his underwear and jacking himself off, and I'm watching him do it, watching his mouth around me and catching glimpses of his cock, which I am both drawn to and terrified of.
I cum in his mouth, pressing myself back into the door so hard I'm expecting to be able to see an imprint of my body left there when I move away, and I shout his name, my voice carrying the word out into the hall.
He looks up at me, his eyes big, his mouth still around me, his hand moving fast between his legs.
I want to be able to make him cum like he did for me, so bold and intense, so much more than usual, but I don't know what I'm doing.
I wind his hair in my fingers, because I feel awkward just standing there and I don't know what to do with hands and he likes that, closing his eyes and letting my cock slip out of his mouth. Suddenly he gasps, a soft exhalation of air, his head falling forward and knocking my thigh, and I guess he's cum, because his breathing is almost laboured.
I presumed that getting dressed afterwards would be awkward, but he's exactly as he is outside the store cupboard; a total sweetheart.
"That was really good, Ryan," he comments, as I pull on my underwear, only to find that they're sticky with what must be his cum, with what must be a rogue splash. My faces burns red again at the feeling of his semen pressed against my skin. I don't have time to change them before my afternoon classes.
"It was," I reply. He's dressed faster than I am. My head is spinning. All the things he made me forget are rushing back to me. They're now compounded by the fact I just had a man give me a blow job despite having quite vehemently declared myself straight my entire life.
"I'd like to see you again," he says, and once I'm fully dressed he draws me close and kisses me again, but softly, affectionately. "Outside of the department, of course." This reminds me that I'm going to see him near enough every day, what with the theatre studies and set design courses being held in the same building. I'm reminded of the fact that he often comes to hang out in the workshop when he's in a quiet period, because his friend Indira is in the same class as me, and that's how we started talking, because she wasn't in today and he didn't know that, so he sat with me instead and watched what I was doing.
"I don't know," I respond. I don't know what it means to be gay in the city I live in. I don't know what people are going to think if they see me with him. My friend, Kieran, calls Theo all kinds of horrible names, despite not actually knowing Theo at all. What would he say about me? About someone he knows?
He smiles, which I don't expect. "You're going to want to see me again," he says, his mouth moving to plant heavy kisses against my face, before finishing with a delicious kiss as he reaches my lips. He's intoxicating.
My eyes have fluttered shut and it can feel myself getting hard again, but I'm jolted out of that by the click of the door behind me. He ushers me aside, and I step away, to let him leave. He looks at me over his shoulder as he walks away, and once he's facing forwards, I watch him walk down the hallway. I watch his firm behind, his strong back, and his confident gait.
I'm so gay.
-o-
The next time I see Theo is in the city centre. I've come to meet my friends, four guys I went to high school with. They attend the technical college on the other side of the city to the university I'm enrolled in. We all live in a town 10 miles north of the city.
Sometimes I wish I'd gone to a university away from home. I like my friends, and it's good to live at home and not have to share with people I don't know, but there's some kind of stigma attached to staying at home rather than going and losing control of yourself in a city far away, like most people from my year did.
I can justify not leaving though, because I'm fortunate enough to be able to do the exact course I want at the best department for it in the country. So I can't feel too bad. I mean, Theo didn't move away, either. He went to high school with us, was in the same year. He was never someone I associated with though, because he was always hanging around with the pretty popular girls, and I was usually messing around with my friends behind the canteen or in detention because of something I did with said friends.
Four of us are sitting on the steps outside the big Primark waiting for the other one, Brandon, to get his sandwich from a deli chain. The rest of us are content with McDonalds, but he's a little holier-than-thou when it comes to food. I'm sure he'd sooner die than eat a Filet-o-Fish.
I'm fishing around in the brown paper bag for French fries when I see Theo approaching with his friends. Our eyes meet, and he turns to one friend, a girl with bright red hair in topknot, to say something. She nods, and then he breaks away from the group.
Fuck, he's coming over. It's been four days since our encounter in the store cupboard, and we haven't seen each other since. He added me on Facebook, though, which was interesting because that means he had at one point deleted me, since I know we were friends on there when we were in high school, as I was with most people from our year.
"What the fuck does that queer think he's doing?" Kieran asks, nudging my side to alert me to Theo's movement towards us, as if I wasn't already painfully aware of the fact he was about to speak to me in front of my friends, and they know he's gay, and I haven't had a girlfriend for a while, so what if they start thinking? What if they can tell?
"He's in my department," I tell Kieran. "He's probably just going to say hi." As Theo approaches, it's worse than I thought, because he's wearing make-up. Eyeliner and a purple mouth. His hair is pushed off his face by a black headband, and there's a thick layer of purple glitter covering his forehead.
"What the fuck have you got on your face?" Kieran's question is directed towards Theo, because he's close enough now for them to address one another.
"I've just been doing a production," he tells Kieran. "At the Little Theatre." Kieran doesn't look impressed.
"It makes you look even more bent," he states, and Theo raises his eyebrows, which are pasted down against his face with makeup.
"That's actually what I was going for," he says, and I think I detect a little sarcasm, but I'm not sure. He looks beautiful, though his face starkly contrasts his clothes, which are just a normal pair of light blue jeans and a burgundy jumper.
"The hell do you want, anyway?" Kieran asks. "None of us are interested in sinking to your level, if that's what you're hoping." Theo's eyes move to me, and I nearly choke on a French fry.
"I just need to talk to Ryan, actually," he replies. "It's about university." I wonder if that's some kind of insult towards Kieran. He's currently doing a diploma in Travel & Tourism, and he's in the first year for the third time. Despite the fact he's not very good at it, Kieran is determined to do that course.
Kieran scoffs and rolls his eyes.
"Ryan, do you think we might be able to somewhere to sit down?" Theo asks, and I look to the space on the step beside me. "I'm not sitting out here," he states flatly. I look to Kieran, but he's talking to Alfie. I stand up, grabbing my bag, and I feel so frumpy compared to Theo. My t-shirt is too big and I got mustard on it when I was eating my burger, and my jeans are worn out ones from the supermarket. From looking at the boy in front of me, I can tell he puts a lot more effort into his appearance than I do. In his left hand is a branded duffle bag. My backpack is from Sports Direct.
I tell my friends that I'll find them later, but they don't particularly care. We go to a coffee shop that's about a five minute walk away.
When we're inside, I don't really know what to do with myself. I don't drink coffee.
"What are you having?" he asks, looking up at the board behind the counter as we queue up. It's fairly busy in here, full of hipster looking people having loud conversations, and I look around the tables, trying to see something that looks familiar. The words on the board are all in a foreign language, French or Italian or something, and it doesn't make any sense to me.
"I don't usually drink coffee," I tell him. "I don't know what there is." He smiles, shaking his head.
"You're probably the biggest fidget I know," he remarks. "You're seriously telling me that's got nothing to do with caffeine?"
"I'm just nervous," I reply, because that's the truth. I fidget when I'm nervous, and he is so new and unfamiliar that he makes me incredibly antsy. But somehow, I don't want to get away from the situation. "You make me nervous."
"Don't be silly," he says, and his plum coloured mouth stretches into a smile that is so attractive I have to look away, lest I make an idiot of myself by kissing him in the middle of this queue. "Well, I'm having a caramel latte," he tells me. "It's sweet and milky, so if you haven't really had coffee before that might be a good place to start."
"Alright," I reply. "I trust you." I do trust him, not just with beverage choice, but I realize that he now knows something about me that I've recently only discovered myself. That I like boys. It's not just a Theo thing, I realized last night, as I was lying in bed. I've just never felt the same towards girls as my friends did. The sight of a girl in a bikini was enough to get them to do all this stupid preening and make these sounds like they were in pain, and that was never something I related to.
When the coffees come, he tells me to find a seat and dashes off to the bathroom. I go upstairs, hoping to find it a little less noisy than the lower area. Luckily, there's hardly anyone up here, just a man typing on his computer and a couple sharing a pot of tea and reading thick novels. It's not that I'm not wanting to be seen with Theo. I mean, we're just getting coffee, it's not like we're doing anything to give anyone the impression anything is going on between us.
I sit down at a table that faces out of the window onto the street below. I like being able to watch what's going on outside. My attention being on the people walking past means that I'm startled when a hand touches my shoulder.
Theo has removed most of the make-up, and what's left seems to be there purely because it won't come off. His forehead is still speckled with violet glitter.
"So what did you need to talk to me about?" I ask, remembering why he wanted to see me. "Is it to do with your production?" He looks confused.
"What?" his brow is furrowed.
"You said you needed to talk to me about university," I recall. "I presumed it's got something to do with the set for your production?" The course I'm on means my class creates all the props and sets for the productions the theatre students put on. His friend, Indira, and I are in the same group for the production Theo is putting on, an original written by a student from the English department.
"Oh, no," he shakes his head dismissively. "I just said that so I could drag you away from your god-awful friends without them being suspicious."
"God-awful?" I repeat, turning the offensive remark into a question.
"Sorry," he says, taking a sip of his coffee. "I just don't particularly enjoy being in the presence of homophobic-" he cuts himself off. "Sorry. I shouldn't be rude about your friends." I find myself sighing.
"Kieran's an arsehole, I know," I return. "I should be apologizing for how he spoke to you."
"You don't think I've heard that kind of stuff from him before?" he asks. "We were in the same form at school."
"Still," I respond. "You shouldn't have to hear stuff like that from him."
"If you give me your number I won't have to approach you in front of your friends," he says, smiling wickedly. "We can be all hush-hush so you don't have to worry about Kieran." His knee knocks against mine under the table, and I don't move it away, because way it feels just resting there is nice. I ask him about the production he was in today, and he talks for a long while about it, as well as the people he was performing alongside. I like listening to him talk, because he's very well spoken, much unlike me.
My coffee goes cold, and when I draw attention to this, Theo jokingly chastises me for wasting it. I drink some of the whipped cream off the top, taking him a little seriously. The hint of coffee that's there isn't entirely unpleasant, though I prefer hot chocolate as far as hot drinks go. I don't know why I didn't just order that. I'm sure my brain just collapses in on itself when I'm with Theo, because nothing I do in his presence seems rational.
"You've got a cream moustache," he observes, putting extra emphasis on the first word. I wipe it off, cheeks reddening. Of course I make myself look an absolute idiot in front of Theo. While he's so calm, so calculated in his every movement, I'm just a fidgety mess.
I'm suddenly acutely aware that he's moving closer to me, and his finger comes up to my face to swipe away the last bit of cream from my upper lip. I watch his finger, surprised I missed so much. So alongside the loss of my brain power, Theo has weakened my ability to even use my hands properly.
I watch as his face gets closer to mine, and my heart starts going fast, because I'm a little concerned he's going to kiss me, and although there's no-one here that I know, it's still public, and you never know who knows who.
He doesn't kiss me. Instead, he puts his finger to his slightly open mouth and licks the cream off. The sight of his tongue goads me in the direction of becoming inappropriately aroused for a public place. He closes his lips around his finger and pulls it out of his mouth with a soft pop. I swallow, hard.
He watches my face the whole time, eyes darting to take in every shift in facial expression. I guess he sees something he likes, because he moves closer to me, his mouth next to my ear.
"I think," he murmurs, his voice gravelly. "I think you ought to come back to my house." I can feel his breath on the side of my face. It reminds me of being in the store cupboard with him, of feeling him pressed against me, of those hot kisses.
"I think that's a good idea."
-o-