Screwups (6 page)

So he moved a bit, as if he was just waking up. The sound of Jake’s stroking immediately stopped.

Fuck
.

S
HIT
.

Danny was waking up. Jake was really close, but he froze. His hand still gripped his cock and he was unable to avoid flexing his fingers to give it gentle, rhythmic squeezes, but he didn’t dare move his arm. He lay there for a while, hoping Danny would fall back asleep. Though how he’d know, Jake wasn’t certain. The bastard didn’t snore.

But as he listened in the dark, he became aware that the sounds coming from Danny’s bed were no longer just the sounds of someone shifting around in his sleep or waking up. Those sounds had been replaced by a quiet, rhythmic… stroking.

He was jerking off.

Fuck you! I thought of it first!

Jake wasn’t sure what to do. Did Danny know Jake was awake? It seemed like a weird coincidence that Danny just happened to wake up horny and decide to beat off at the exact time Jake was doing it. He supposed it was possible, though. And if Danny didn’t know Jake was awake, then it wasn’t really cool for Jake to just listen to him. That seemed pretty perverted, actually.

So he made a soft, clearing noise in the back of his throat.

The rustling stopped. But then Danny made a similar noise in the back of his throat. And he started stroking again.

Jesus! He knows!
More than that, he wasn’t stopping!

Jake listened to the sound of Danny masturbating for a minute, realizing that Danny was cool with him listening. And that drove him over the edge. As if it had a mind of its own, Jake’s hand began stroking again.

They were both being quiet, but not quite as quiet as before, now that they were no longer hiding it. Jake couldn’t believe what was happening.
I’m jerking off with another guy.
It was the first time he’d ever done it and it was incredibly hot. He couldn’t really see Danny in the shadows across the room. The windows let in a faint light from a streetlamp way up the hill, but the light cut through the center of the room and left both their beds in darkness. Danny wouldn’t be able to see him either.

But just listening to Danny’s stroking and increasingly ragged breathing was driving Jake to orgasm. When he heard Danny push his blankets down so he wouldn’t spray on the sheets, Jake did the same. They both came at the same time and Jake was unable to stop a soft moan from escaping his lips. But he no longer cared. In fact, he
wanted
Danny to hear it.

T
HAT
SEXY
low moan Jake gave out was one of the hottest things Danny had ever heard in his life.
God, if only I can convince you to do this with the lights on!

That might not happen, of course. Jake might be so mortified by what they’d just done, even without looking at each other, that he might never want to talk about it or repeat it. But as Danny lay there, catching his breath and feeling his come cooling on his belly and chest, predictably but inexplicably losing its consistency and running down his sides in tiny rivulets, he heard Jake clear his throat and laugh nervously. “Was it good for you?”

Danny laughed quietly. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

He watched Jake’s silhouette sit up and reach for something on the floor. Whatever he picked up, it looked as if he rubbed it on himself—probably using a shirt or his boxers as a come rag. Then he tossed it back on the floor and lay down again. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

M
ORNING
WAS
awkward.

They hadn’t really had sex, but Jake kind of felt as if they had. Part of him wanted to talk about it, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound stupid or embarrass him even more. He couldn’t even look Danny in the eye as they got up, dressed, and hit the bathroom. But somehow Danny was able to act as if nothing had happened, so Jake eventually decided to do the same—or at least try to.

Fortunately, by the time the two of them joined Eva and Paul in the lounge for the trek up to the dining hall, things were starting to feel more normal. As Danny had predicted the day before, Paul no longer seemed irritated about Jake/Berengar’s miraculous recovery from death. Whenever he spoke about the game, he seemed to take Jake’s continued participation in the campaign as a given.

Jake suspected it was as much to change the subject as real interest on her part that Eva asked, as they settled at a table in the dining hall, “Have you thought about your project?”

“My dorm project?” Jake asked.

“Danny always plays something on piano.”

“I’m majoring in piano,” Danny protested. “What do you want me to do? Juggle?”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with that. Everyone loves it. I’m just saying nobody’s surprised when that’s your project.”

Danny raised his eyebrows at her, but she’d already moved on to her next victim. “Paul tried to run a game for the dorm last year.”

“They’ll never let you do that again this year,” Danny told Paul.

Paul frowned. “They’re idiots. That would have been a great campaign if more than you two had shown up to play it!”

“Danny’s right,” Eva said. “You’ll have to think of something different this year. I may do face painting. The henna tattoos I did last year were popular, but the girls downstairs were bitching at me for days, because they didn’t wash off right away. I
told
everybody before we started—henna lasts about three weeks!”

Paul rolled his eyes. “Idiots.”

Jake had been thinking about it since he moved in. The last thing he needed was to be kicked out because he didn’t meet the yearly project requirement. But he didn’t really know what to do yet, so he fell back on being a wiseass. “I was thinking of running through the dorm covered in nothing but marshmallow fluff and calling it ‘performance art.’”

“Oh my God!” Eva exclaimed. “If you buzz the girls’ wing, I’ll be your friend for life!”

Danny laughed. “I’d love to see that, but it probably won’t pass committee approval.” The committee, Jake had already learned, consisted of students living in the dorm, so they were pretty lax. But Danny was probably right about them not approving a streaking project.

“I don’t really know. Could I sketch or paint something?”

“Sure,” Danny replied. “You could do a mural—”

Paul groaned. “Not another mural.”

“Or you could do something like gather people in the lounge with a live model for them to sketch,” Danny continued. “Or whatever else you can think of.”

Jake was still thinking about the mural thing, and that reminded him of a question he’d been wanting to ask since he’d moved into the dorm. “So what’s up with that phone booth downstairs, anyway? Why does it say ‘Police Box’ on it?”

The other three stared back at him for a long moment, as if too shocked by his ignorance to formulate coherent responses. At last Paul said, “Are you kidding me? You have no idea who Doctor Who is?”

“Doctor who?”

B
Y
MIDAFTERNOON
,
Danny had brought Jake up to speed on the marvel that was Doctor Who—and made certain that he knew Tom Baker was the best doctor. “An argument can be made for Jon Pertwee,” he added, “but if you end up preferring Peter Davison, we’ll have words. And if you mix up Tom Baker and Colin Baker, you’ll have to find another roommate.”

“Jesus!” Jake said with a laugh, “I didn’t realize this would be so dangerous.”

“Doctor Who is serious shit.”

They were on the lawn near the dorm, enjoying one of the few warm days left in the season. The leaves had changed and the trees were radiant in hues of red, gold, and orange. It was beautiful and peaceful.
Almost romantic
, Danny thought before shoving that into the back of his mind.

Jake was stretched out on the grass, looking up into a blue sky streaked with wispy, fast-moving cirrus clouds, while Danny sat cross-legged beside him. “So when are you going to start doing things
I
like to do?”

He sounded a little petulant, as if they were boyfriends rather than just roommates trying to build a friendship. It made Danny a little uncomfortable that they were settling in so quickly—particularly because he did feel something growing between them and he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea—but he covered his discomfort with highly inappropriate humor. “I thought we did that last night.”

Jake blushed, but he smiled and gave him a playful punch to the leg. “Fuck you,” he said lightly.

Danny rubbed the spot on his leg. He wasn’t really hurt, but he wondered just how hard Jake
could
hit someone if he were angry. “Well, what do you like to do?”

Jake seemed to be mulling it over. “I don’t really have a lot of specific interests. I like movies and TV—
Seinfeld, Home Improvement
. I like sports.” He lifted his arms over his head and stretched, causing his shirt to ride up and expose a delicious-looking patch of firmly muscled stomach with an adorable pink belly button nestled in the middle. Danny had to force himself not to stare at it. “I don’t know,” Jake continued. “I like to be outdoors, and you guys are always hanging out in the lounge or in your rooms.”

“True,” Danny admitted. “Do you want to go for a walk? The college woods are just over the railroad tracks.” The tracks ran right by the minidorms behind Richardson.

“Sure!”

So they just got up and started walking. The minidorms were loosely clustered around a circular drive, so they had to cross this and climb the hill to Richardson, and then continue uphill past that to the railroad tracks. Trains still used these tracks, but they were fairly infrequent. It was possible to walk along them at certain times in the day without seeing a train for two or more hours. On the other side of the tracks, a path led down to a service road and then split off from that to enter the woods.

They hadn’t walked far into the forest before the path forked. Jake turned to Danny and asked, “Which way?”

“That would be cheating.”

Jake gave him a sour look. “You’ve never been here before, have you?”

“I’ve been here,” Danny answered truthfully. “Dozens of times. We used it for a LARP Paul made up last summer based on Norse mythology, and I like walking around in here when I want to be alone.”

“So which way?”

Danny shook his head. “Uh-uh. You wanted this adventure. Lead on! If the sun starts to go down before you’ve found the exit, I’ll start tossing out suggestions.”

“You’re a nutjob.” The corner of Jake’s mouth quirked up and the look in his clear blue eyes was disturbingly affectionate. Although perhaps it was only disturbing because he was the first boy to ever look at Danny that way.

It wasn’t really difficult to navigate through the woods. The paths were well traveled and there were just a few main ones. They were long and could take a while to hike, but it was difficult to really get lost. The main path followed the river, past a hollow tree that had enough open space in its trunk to hold a full-grown man, even though the tree was somehow still alive, and an enormous boulder that had probably been deposited there by a glacier twenty thousand years ago. At another fork, one direction led toward the river and a wooden bridge that spanned it. Jake was drawn to the bridge. They ended up sitting on it for a while, dangling their feet above the shallow, slow-moving water and talking.

“I love being outside,” Jake said. “I mean
really
outside, away from houses and cars and noise.”

“I do too. But you have to remind me that I do. Otherwise, I’ll stay inside reading or playing piano all day.”

Jake laughed and said, “I’ll remember that. Not that I’d ever want to stop you from playing piano. You’re fucking brilliant!”

It wasn’t often that Danny was embarrassed by compliments, especially about his music. He knew he was good. He’d always had a talent for music, ever since he was a little kid, and people frequently told him how good he was. He tried not to be arrogant about it—he knew he wasn’t good enough to compete against students from Berklee or the New England Conservatory—but he knew he was one of the best pianists at UNH. Still, Jake’s effusive praise embarrassed him, perhaps because it mattered to him that Jake liked his music.

He decided to reflect some of it back. “Your sketches are really good. Why don’t I see you doing more of that?”

“I’m doing it,” Jake said defensively. “Just in class or in the library.”

“Dude, you moved into a creative arts dorm. You should be sketching in the lounge or setting up an easel somewhere and oil painting.”

“I know. I just feel awkward when other people are watching me draw.”

“You shouldn’t ever feel awkward around me,” Danny said, realizing after he’d said it that it sounded a bit… gay. Certainly a bit hyperbolic. But Jake didn’t seem to mind.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s kind of lame for me to be afraid of doing it in my own room.”

“Especially when you seemed perfectly fine with doing it in your room last night.”

All right, that was twice now.
Why am I being such a dick?

Fortunately, Jake was able to see the humor in it. “Dude!” he said, laughing and shaking his head. “Why do you keep bringing it up?” His face had turned bright red again.

“Sorry. It just slipped out.”

“You did it too!”

“I know. I’m just an asshole who likes to tease people. I’m sorry. It was a stupid joke.”

Jake groaned and let himself fall back onto the wooden bridge, bringing his hands up to cover his face. “I’m never going to whack off again.”

“That’ll be a challenge.”

Jake sighed and dropped his hands. He looked up at Danny and asked, “So what am I supposed to do? The showers aren’t exactly private.”

Danny shrugged. “Do what you’ve been doing.”

“I haven’t been doing
anything
. That was the first time I tried since moving in, and you caught me right away.”