Any Other Wednesday
Josh fell asleep to bright upstate sun and woke up to dark. The hall was quiet: it was a Wednesday, and most people were busy studying before their weekend began on Thursday afternoon. The other side of the bed was cold. He wasn't sure where Rubin had gone.
He closed his eyes. He wondered how long he had slept. He wondered what Rubin thought about all this. Josh turned onto his side--he had fallen asleep that way, but had wound up on his back while he'd slept--and curled up into himself. The bed smelled like Rubin--smoky and spicy, with a hint of his soap--and Josh burrowed closer to it.
He was halfway asleep again when the door opened. Josh looked up to make sure it wasn't Barry, but it was Rubin, his hair wet, a towel wrapped around his hips. "I had to shower," Rubin said. "I'm surprised you were able to breathe my air."
"I was wondering if you'd gone to class or something."
"Really, Josh, you ought to know me better than that."
Rubin meandered over to the dresser and started rooting through drawers, trying to find a clean shirt. He located shirt, underwear, jeans, and tossed all three onto his bed. He didn't seem to mind that Josh was watching him.
"Come here," Josh said.
Rubin turned and walked over. He picked up one of the abandoned orange sections and ate it. "What's up?"
"I just... I don't know."
"You look a lot less tired. We slept for like ten hours."
"I definitely feel a lot better." He put his hand on Rubin's hip and then stopped, unsure where to continue. Rubin's skin was the color of very light coffee, and was beaded with shower water. Josh sat up in bed and smelled him and Rubin stood still while he did.
"What are you doing?" Rubin asked after a few moments.
"Seeing what you smell like under the smoke."
Rubin laughed. "So what do I smell like?"
"Um... not sure. Almond?"
"Probably. I use almond Dr. Bronner's."
One of the beads broke and a line of water ran down Rubin's stomach. Josh poked out his tongue and traced its path and heard Rubin's breath go in. Josh found another dot of water and licked it away. He did this several times and could feel Rubin's skin quivering under his mouth. He put his hands on Rubin's stomach, feeling them move as Rubin breathed.
There was a long pause.
He reached up at the same moment that Rubin reached down, and Rubin pushed him back onto the bed. He looped his arms around Rubin's neck as they kissed, and he thought that Rubin tasted like cinnamon, but he couldn't figure out why; then he remembered that Rubin used some kind of organic cinnamon-flavored toothpaste.
Josh was wearing a T-shirt and boxers, but Rubin was only in his towel. This meant he could draw meandering lines up and down Rubin's spine, trace the muscles in his back as Rubin moved on top of him. Rubin's shoulders were bony but he had wiry muscles in his arms. He traced the outline of Josh's face with his fingers. He settled a leg between Josh's thighs.
This was slow, it was warm, there was no hurry. If Rubin's towel slipped a bit, there was a need neither to remove it nor to push it back where it had been. Rubin's tongue was lazy in Josh's mouth, kissing him languidly, thoroughly, in a way that Josh had not been kissed since some long-ago teenage afternoons with Beth.
Rubin's hands moved up Josh's torso and his shirt was rucked up; all he had to do was shimmy a bit, and then it was off. And this was much better; this way he could feel more bare skin against him, the light furring on Rubin's chest. He knew that girls' nipples were sensitive, and he knew that his own were, and he reached up to play Rubin's in his fingers, and Josh knew he was doing something right when Rubin stopped moving for a moment, and gasped.
Josh flipped them over and that was when it happened: Rubin's towel fell open and suddenly there was a naked boy underneath Josh, with narrow hips and skin the color of good tea. Rubin looked up at Josh, and he was smirking, but there was a question in his eyes, too. His thumbs found the elastic of Josh's boxers and paused there.
Josh nodded and suddenly he was naked, all naked, all uncovered skin and soft hair. He could feel the imprecise delineation of Rubin's cock and balls against his thigh. He buried his hands in Rubin's curls and kissed him hard enough to bruise, and Rubin answered with a sigh that was almost a moan. He twisted his legs around Josh's, and Josh could feel it as Rubin got harder. This was even nicer, this was almost perfect: the warm, damp skin, the taste of Rubin, his smell.
He propped himself up on one arm and looked at Rubin, mouth slightly swollen, eyes half closed. Josh trailed his fingers down Rubin's chest, through the light but coarse hair, across his ribs, drawing a line from hip to hip. And then continuing the line: where the hair grew thicker, and Rubin sighed and shifted as Josh's hand found his cock. One of his hands settled on Josh's back, and Josh felt Rubin's fingers curl as Josh touched him. Rubin grew harder, cock lengthening, reddening with blood. Josh watched and realized, maybe, what it might feel like to be a girl in this situation, to see the unmistakable proof of not just arousal but also intent: exciting and a little frightening.
Josh had only ever touched himself, and the angle was different, but when he made a fist around Rubin's shaft, moving his hand up and down, Rubin's sigh became a moan, and he pulled Josh down to kiss him, and Josh realized that their tongues were keeping more or less the same rhythm as his hand. He slowed it down, teasing like he sometimes teased himself, and Rubin shuddered and whispered, "Josh, please." He had never heard Rubin beg--or even really ask--for anything before, and if Josh hadn't been hard before, he was now, just from his name in that breathy voice.
He pulled his mouth away from Rubin's and licked his hand, and this time Rubin whimpered, wordless and helpless, when Josh moved his hand on his cock. There was fluid, warm and pearlescent, on the head of it, and Josh coated his palm with it, and the slickness was unbelievable. He leaned down and put his teeth to the flesh of Rubin's throat, gently, then licked the marks of incisor and canine. He sucked the warm indented skin and moved his hand faster, and that was when Rubin came, a breathy gasp of release and sudden warm wetness on and around Josh's fist, his fingers clenching in the skin on Josh's back. He shuddered into a boneless heap and pulled Josh against him, kissing him breathlessly, his smile apparent against Josh's lips. Rubin smiled so seldom--real smiles, the kind that meant he was actually amused or happy--and here Josh had gotten two in a day.
Josh moved to wipe his hand on whatever he could reach--T-shirt, boxers, pillowcase--but Rubin caught hold of him before he could. Lazily, eyes dark and heavy-lidded with satisfaction, Rubin licked his hand clean, knuckles, fingertips, and palm, as though Josh's fingers were the most erogenous part of his body. Maybe they were, Josh thought, shivering as Rubin's tongue dipped between index and middle finger, or maybe it was just the idea: if Rubin's mouth could do that to his hand, what might it do to other parts?
He hadn't spoken out loud, but maybe the expression on his face had been naked enough that Rubin understood. Or maybe it had simply been Rubin's own desires. At any rate: Rubin kissed Josh's throat, his nipples until Josh's hips were shuddering, kissed his way down Josh's stomach, drawing circles around his navel, warm trails of wetness that made a slow tantalizing promise. Josh realized that his hands were in Rubin's hair the same way they'd been, at various times, in Tiffany's hair and most recently in Beth's, but Josh didn't remember feeling quite so overwhelmed, quite so tantalizingly helpless with either of them. Tiffany and Beth were very different girls with very different hair, but it had still been sleek and soft under Josh's hands; Rubin's curls, by contrast, were plentiful and coarse, and the muscles of his neck strong when Josh's hands wandered.
Rubin's lips traced the line of hair that led downward from Josh's navel--his treasure trail, Beth had always called it, giggling--and Josh caught himself trying to push Rubin's head farther down, but Rubin was strong enough to resist. He bit gently at Josh's inner thighs, first left, then right, and Josh spread his legs wider, willing to beg if necessary.
As it turned out, it wasn't necessary.
Rubin's mouth descended over Josh's cock and it was like being engulfed. Distantly, Josh heard himself moan, felt his back arch and his hips thrust up to meet Rubin. His tongue swirled around the head of it and Josh's fists clenched--one in the sheet, the other in Rubin's hair. He heard himself murmur, "Please."
He wasn't sure what he had asked for. He wasn't sure he had asked for anything, but he was pretty sure he hadn't asked for Rubin's hand to snake around his hip and touch his ass--and not just rest on his skin, but to keep going, and for his slender fingers to touch a part of Josh that no human being, not even himself, had ever touched before. It was a momentary shock out of the pleasure that Rubin's mouth was bringing--but not enough of a shock that Josh could form a coherent sentence on the first try. "What... what--oh God--what are you... ah... doing?"
The warmth and suction disappeared and Josh regretted saying anything at all. "Ssh," Rubin said. "You'll like it. Don't think."
The very small part of Josh's brain that could still process words and thoughts was of the opinion that Rubin Carver had no place telling anyone else not to think--but then Rubin put his mouth back on Josh and Josh felt like he was having the roots of his hair sucked out through his cock and that small coherent place melted into a moan. And then there was a finger, or maybe two, rubbing against the opening, and Josh was rubbing back against them before he knew what he was doing. He didn't know why it would feel good, only that it did, and one found its way inside at the same time that Rubin's mouth worked faster and harder on his cock and Josh tried to tell Rubin that it felt good, oh God, good, and that he didn't know why, but he heard incoherent moans instead and realized that they were his.
When Josh came, he was sure that he would melt: into a fiery puddle, into a shudder and shatter of lights in his brain and heart and groin, into Rubin's mouth. He wasn't sure it would ever end, was pretty sure he never wanted it to end, and it was only several minutes later, lying collapsed on his back with his arms flung over his head, that Josh realized it had. "Oh my God," he said, his eyes still shut.
Rubin kissed him by way of answer. He had never done this before--tasted himself on someone else's tongue. Tiffany had always scrupulously washed her mouth out, and he hadn't come that way with Beth--it had been foreplay, an appetizer, rather than the meal (complete with dessert) that Rubin had made out of an ordinary blow job. Josh almost drew back at the taste of his own semen, but there was something strangely intimate about it, and they kissed, long and slow, for a while.
"That was really incredible," Josh ventured.
Rubin smiled a lazy, only slightly predatory smile. "No one's ever given love to the ass before, huh?"
"It's not something I ever even thought about," Josh confessed.
Rubin settled his leg over Josh's hip, and he felt the slight tickle of hair and the gentle pressure, this time without intent, of cock and balls. Rubin kissed him gently on the mouth. "More things in heaven and earth, Joshua," and Josh had a feeling there was a reference he was supposed to get.
Two days ago, Josh thought, I was straight. Happily, assuredly straight. With videotape to back it up. And now I'm lying in bed with a guy I jerked off and liked it, who sucked my dick and I liked that, too, who put his fingers up my ass and I got off on it, and I'm pretty sure I'd like to do it all again.
Josh's stomach growled. Sexual identity crisis or no, he was apparently not too traumatized to be hungry.
Rubin's lips seemed to invite having a thumb run across them, and so Josh did. Rubin flicked his tongue at the pad of Josh's finger, and sucked it into his mouth. Josh didn't think he could possibly get hard again after having had what felt like the base of his skull sucked out through his cock, but apparently no one had passed that news to his cock yet. "We..." Josh took a breath. "We should get something to eat."
"Shouldn't I make some kind of pornographic comment here about how you just filled me up?" Rubin drawled, and rolled over on his back, pulling his leg away.
Josh blushed.
"We'll need to shower again if we're going to go out," Rubin added. His hand had found Josh's cock, once again willing and eager, and was stroking it desultorily.
Josh imagined Rubin wet and naked, soap dotting the definition of his collarbones, an erection arching from between his thighs. He imagined falling to his knees on the wet tile and taking Rubin's cock in his mouth, maybe pinning Rubin's hands against the wall of the stall so that he couldn't push, couldn't struggle--
"You look like you entirely forgot about food for a few seconds there," Rubin said.
"I think I did," Josh admitted, and then his stomach growled again.
"We'll get something delivered," Rubin said, and then Josh gasped, feeling those clever fingers tracing his balls. "Chinese OK?"
"Yes," Josh said, and Rubin leaned across him for the phone. Josh listened as Rubin ordered what they always got: egg drop soup, kung pao chicken, Szechuan beef, and steamed dumplings. Then he dropped the phone onto the floor and they spent the next twenty minutes kissing, touching, and seeing who could make the other one whimper.
Josh had never imagined that the arch of his foot would be an erogenous zone, and yet he was sprawled back in a heap of pleasure as Rubin traced it with his tongue. He was seeing stars behind his eyelids when the phone rang. Due to Josh's present state of excitement, Rubin had to answer, and when he hung up, he was grinning. "Food's here," he said. "You're not going to make me carry all that up, are you?"
Josh threw his arm over his eyes and groaned.
Rubin tossed a T-shirt at him. "Come on. I'm hungry, too. We can't keep the guy waiting."
Stiffly, Josh shrugged on the shirt with a pair of sweatpants, and was about to head downstairs until Rubin started laughing at him. "Man, you can't wear those, everyone in the living room'll know what we've been up to!"
Josh looked down, and, yes, it was true: very few things are more visible in this world than an erection in a pair of sweatpants. "You could, uh, take care of it for me."
Rubin's grin became even more wolfish, if that was possible. "There'll be plenty of time for that later. Here." He tossed a pair of jeans at his roommate. "And don't worry, it'll get taken care of."
In the halls and downstairs, it was a regular Wednesday night. Some doors were closed, while open ones revealed studious inhabitants at their desks or on their beds, books open and pens out, or unstudious inhabitants in chairs or on the floor, talking to friends, listening to music, talking on the phone. Josh jumped when a few people called their names, but all they seemed to want to say was hello; no one seemed to have any idea that, thirty or forty minutes ago, his cock had been in Rubin's mouth.
Rubin paid and tipped the delivery guy. He carried one bag and Josh the other, and it was much like any other Wednesday night. Except, when they finished eating, Rubin kissed him again, and Josh kissed him back and thought that maybe this wasn't like any other day at all.