Let Me Be Yours Read online

  He became comfortable enough to share his poems with me. I, though a poor judge, thought they were beautiful, but that wasn’t what I said out loud.

  “That’s awesome,” I said, holding onto the print-out of something he’d called a sestina.

  “It’s like a puzzle,” he told me. “You gotta find where the words fit, and when you get it right, it makes the whole picture.”

  I thought about how we fit together. I thought about how I was certain that, if I let myself be that stupid, there would come a time when I could no longer tell where I ended and he began.

  The intimacies were subtle at first. That reassuring hand on my shoulder while I sat at my desk, writing an article, trying my best to be objective. Me, holding the door for him, my elbow so knobby on my outstretched arm. And still we existed as any roommates might, not minding the near-nudity, minding our own business and vacating the room when one of us needed to get off. And I hated myself, alone in there, unable to help but think about him, no matter what lewd images were actually in front of me. It was always him. I couldn’t stop the fantasy.

  The lust was so constant that, when it finally did happen, I was certain for a while afterwards that it had been a dream.

  There seemed to be no clear impetus for it. It was, I realize now, inevitable. From the moment he stepped off that train and I felt within me that happy dread, there was nowhere else he could end up but inside of me, and inside of my heart.

  He came back from class one evening when I was just getting undressed from the day. I stood there, before the mirror, inspecting the bones of my own body and finding them wanting. My hair, ever a mess, was pushed behind my ears, and the bags beneath my eyes I’d had since birth seemed to be twofold heavy from stress.

  As the door opened, I made no attempt to cover myself. It was as if I wanted him to see my shame, and the reason for it, even though he’d seen it before. But when he saw me, the look on his face seemed full of reverence. He smiled, his eyes half-lidded and softly gazing, and dropped his bag on the floor as he approached me. I turned to him expectantly, trying desperately to glean the meaning from his movements. Hoping he was coming toward me with the same hunger I’d been trying to hide since late August.

  Both of us nervous and unsure, we faced each other. Ryan ran his hands down my arms, and I felt as if he could utterly snap me in two, if he wanted. I would let him. I was his.

  “You really gotta stop being so down on yourself, bud,” he told me then, as if between us we had developed some telepathy. With one of his strong fingers, he lifted my chin to look me directly in the eyes. He seemed to drink me in, then, staring at me in a way I’d seen before, but could never name. I gave it many excuses, the staring. That he was spacing out, that I had something in my teeth. But I realized then that it had been nothing but a mirror.

  He laid a palm flat on my sternum, and I swore I could feel his pulse, so strong from his wrist, racing away at a rate unsustainable. My heart, against his hand, beat just as fast.

  “I mean, I think you’re…” He gulped. “You know…”

  Seeing him falter was a revelation. The rose-colored glasses were torn from the bridge of my nose, and I saw him not as the unflappable Southern charmer I’d thought he was when we met, but as a real, whole, terrified person. The look in his eyes was familiar to me, that fear. I, of course, had experienced it years before him. The fear you feel when you realize you want something that, according to others, you shouldn’t.

  “God damn, bud, I dunno…” He bit his lip and ran that hand down my chest, my stomach. I felt, in the light of his subtle worship, very brave.

  “Say it,” I said, gently begging. I stepped closer, daring to lift my hands to surround his cheeks. They felt hot to the point of burning. I pleaded with him to say it, to say anything, to cut the heavy fog that seemed to have permeated through the windows, bringing the vast and open sky into our room.

  He said nothing. He slid his arms around my waist and kissed me. Nervous, at first, a single peck on my parted lips. Clumsy, and with poor aim. And then another, and another, as if chipping away at his fear. It sent through me a shiver that radiated to my every limb. I curled my toes, and with a heavy exhale, I helped him get past the sheer terror of the risky feat of kissing your roommate.

  I felt him open his jaw, felt him sink into me, no longer afraid, knowing then that this was what I wanted, what he wanted. I tossed my arms over his shoulders and bent them around the back of his neck, tilting my hips into his, giving myself up. When I felt his tongue slide along my lower lip, I could not help the happy groan that left me.

  The sound seemed to thrill him, and he curled his fingers into my naked back, pulling me toward him, bidding me to walk until he was against the wall. I had never before experienced him this way: subject to anything, anyone, and miraculously, it was me. In his apparent adoration of me, I saw him made weak for the very first time. I slid my hands back over his neck, feeling the smooth plane of his skin, running my thumb over the shivering apple of his throat.

  He bravely pushed his tongue past my teeth. The hot, wet sensation elicited from me another warm gasp, and his breathing seemed to grow heavier and more labored. With our hips pressed together, I began to feel him growing stiff against me. I too, began to give myself over to the pulsing feeling, every drop of blood my wanting body could spare, rushing between my legs, leaving my head all dizzy and light from his affections, from my own excitement.

  He seemed to hold me so sweetly. As he slid his hands back up my chest, I felt the rough, workman’s callouses of his fingers, in direct contrast to my own untrained skin. Just then, as his hands reached the sides of my neck, he pulled away from the long, wet kiss, and licked away the string of saliva we’d left between us. He stared me down, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him.

  Overwhelmed with adoration, my hands seemed controlled as if by some invisible tether, drawn to press my palm against the struggling fly of his jeans. At the first touch, he leaned his head back against the wall with a subtle thump and grinned as if in rapture. He looked almost relieved, as if these past few months had, in his mind as well, been leading to this. Like maybe his daydreams and his sleeping were also filled with me, and maybe I was better than his imagination.

  I had to prove that to him, then. I used both hands to unbutton his jeans, and he looked down as if in disbelief at my eagerness. Once his zipper was down, I slipped my hand beneath the waistband of his underwear, and finally, I felt it. Almost coyly at first, hiding my face in his neck to kiss, I ghosted my fingers over the tip. He shuddered, curling his fingers into my shoulders yet again, holding me there so desperately, as if terrified I might stop touching him.

  Elated by the feeling of his taut skin, I surrounded his cock-- and God, it seemed just the perfect size-- with my fingers. I gripped him, firm but tender, running one thumb up and down the length of him, giving him just a taste.

  A taste. My throat felt empty.

  He guided me by the jaw, away from my hiding place, to kiss him again as I began to jerk him off. Not with the same hastiness I’d done with myself. I treated him as one might handle something precious. Pumping away so caringly, ecstatic at the feeling of his warm skin and the rock-hard lust.

  I had to see it. I had to taste it.

  Pulling out of the kiss with another moan, I looked down between us, saw him fully erect there, his skin awash with the soft red glow of want. As he removed his shirt, pulling it clumsily over his head, I dropped to my knees.

  At first, I just admired it. Held it in my hand like a prize, and let the tip brush against my flushed cheek, my tongue shyly slipping from the corner of my mouth to drag it along. I felt as if I was standing on the edge of a welcoming void. That, once I did this, there would be no turning back. It was so god damn perfect. I measured it with my eyes, too flustered and dizzy for the math of it, and decided that it might be the dreamiest cock I’d ever seen.

  And before I could take him fully into my mouth, I looked up. He had a hand pressed to his forehead, the other running through his now-messy hair, utterly disheveled and radiating awe. I felt, for the first time, not so ugly in comparison. No one looks at someone that way, no one squirms like that, if the person kneeling before their dick isn’t beautiful to them.

  I kissed the tip, first. He twitched, and I grinned, parting my lips just enough to take it in, tightening them just-so around the entire head. My mouth wet, I allowed my hungry tongue to circle him, slowly taking more and more of him past my lips, milking my throat for saliva, coating him thickly, parting my jaw farther than it ought to go.

  I felt hands in my hair. He tucked some stray strands behind my ear then. So enamored of his sweet touch, I could no longer wait. I gripped gently onto his hips and descended on him in full. I felt him in the back of my mouth, that most satisfying, full sensation, and I could not help but smile around him, my brow stitching into an overjoyed curve, just so happy to be there, so happy to taste him.

  I pulled down his jeans all the way, just wanting more of him, however much of him I could get. With one hand, I reached beneath his dick to hold his balls. Even his strong and sturdy legs seemed to shake, and his fingers ran through the knots of my hair, the slight stinging of my scalp making me happily hum as I surrounded him.

  “Lucas…” he said, if only to hear my name in a new light. One’s name takes on a new sound, once you’ve been down their throat. It sounded more like a prayer, and not a way to get my attention. He already had it. All of it, and in my glee at that moment, I thought maybe he might have it forever.

  As I bobbed my head, changing the shape of my mouth to fit whichever part of him I passed over, I sucked, hard, humming happily all the while to show him how I loved the taste, how I felt the strength of his dick push
ing past where my gag reflex ought to kick in. For him, I ignored the involuntary feeling. I’d always been good at sucking dick, but in blowing him I felt I had advanced to some new level of skill, where I could choke on him and never feel sick.

  “Holy shit--” he gasped. I felt him begin to tilt his hips into me, and I moved along with his rhythm, enjoying the feeling of his strong hands surrounding the back of my head, but never pulling or pushing too hard. We worked together that way, and I felt him grow impossibly in my mouth, tasted the first few leaking drops of cum and heard the weak, whining noises from his throat that told me he was almost finished. I tried not to be too proud of myself but could barely help it. With a few final, grunting thrusts, I felt him explode, and then he held still, as if waiting for me to pull away and be unwilling to swallow. But I kept him in my mouth, one hand still on his balls, the other wrapping around the base of his dick as he came. I waited until the final joyful spasms, waited for him to give me everything he had, and then tilted my head back to release him back into the cool air of the room.

  I looked into his eyes as I gulped it down. His gaze was glossed over, his skin flushed from his chest up, his knees threatening to knock together.

  I sealed it with a kiss, and he laughed as he shook, still so sensitive from orgasm.

  He exhaled, and dropped to his knees as well, to meet me. His breathing still heavy, he kissed my cheek, and then the other, covering me in a flurry of appreciative kisses. Speechless, but still wanting somehow to thank me.

  For the first time, then, he hugged me. Arms wrapped tight around my slender shoulders, resting his nose in the curve of my neck. And though I was still achingly hard, I felt no immediate need to come. I simply basked in the joy of being impressive, the joy of having gotten my fill. Eventually, we dressed. We headed chastely to the dining hall, sharing a new bashfulness between us, but still not daring to carry our intimacy into public.

  Chapter Five

  Things continued on similarly for the rest of the semester. We would attend class, go about our days as if nothing at all had changed, and then in the evenings, rush back to our dorm and into bed. We always stopped just short of actually fucking, as Ryan still seemed kind of wary of embracing what I could only assume was a newly-discovered part of himself. I wasn’t brave enough to ask, or to beg for him to tell me he cared for me, maybe even could love me.

  All I wanted to do was blow him. He, in his kindness and beauty, had hypnotized me into adoring his cock as if it were made of something divine. All I wanted to do was be near him, but I couldn’t get myself to ask if he felt just as devoted.

  I pretended that he was. I collected the evidence. How he would sometimes fall asleep on my bed, how he would pet my hair after I made him come. He even touched me, nervously, laying there with his head resting on my chest, looking down as he stroked my cock.

  When December arrived, the sadness settled in with the cold. We would soon be leaving for nearly a month on winter break, going back to our respective homes. Or, in my case, Angela’s home. I’d been invited to stay in the guest room at my mother’s house, but the thought of spending an entire freezing cold month in the place that contained the memories of some of my worst times was fairly unappealing.

  After our last finals that semester, we were packing up what we would need for break, deciding what could be left behind until we came back. In my usual fashion, I stuffed whatever clothes I felt like I would wear into a suitcase, while Ryan folded his neatly into categories.

  “You really not gonna see your folks, bud?” he asked me, hoisting himself up onto my mattress as I packed, still using that simple, friendly nickname as if it had become something much more tender. “Like, at all?”

  I shook my head.

  “We don’t exactly get along,” I told him. I’d given him the skeleton of the story in a few vague installments. But just then, he had such a look of sympathy on his face I couldn’t help but explain. I sat beside him, my head on his shoulder. I told him about my stepfather, how he thought I was some sort of deviant, how my mother tended to mold herself into whatever he wanted her to be. How I’d always been a lonely kid, voluntarily. Anxious all the time, sometimes brooding and inconsolable. I was a frustrating child. Being gay was just the final reason they needed to justify why they didn’t want me. Ryan put an arm around my shoulder.

  “That’s shitty,” he said, and he kissed the top of my head. I decided then that he loved me, and I didn’t have to plead with him to say it out loud.

  We promised to text. It was so unlike our generation to actually make a phone call unless you were about to die and wanted to confess something you’d been keeping inside for years, so I didn’t try to bargain for more.

  He kissed me goodbye. His train was leaving soon. Down to Grand Central, then Penn Station to get on an impossibly long bus ride back to Charleston. His father’s obsession with work ethic kept him from having the luxury of plane tickets.

  Again, like a voyeur, I watched him walk onto the train platform from the window where first I saw him, and I lit a cigarette. I was down to one a day, and I always saved it for the hardest moments.

  As the door slid shut, as the train jolted into motion, I mumbled to no one that I would miss him.

  Angela lived in a raised ranch farther upstate on the outskirts of Utica. Utica always seemed to me like a place just pretending to be a city, a hodge-podge of ugly buildings where it seemed to always be raining. She hated it, too, but her family was just as broke as mine, so they had no choice but to stay.

  I was greeted by a tight hug from Angela’s mother, and then she showed me to the couch in the basement as if I had never been there before. She was a gracious host, very obviously missing her only child, thrilled to have extra one to dote on when she came home.

  “So, Lucas,” her father asked in his booming voice over that first dinner. “How’s your love life?” He always asked that and sounded as though he felt obligated to make the extra effort to show that he didn’t disapprove of what he still, in his advanced age, called my ‘lifestyle.’

  “He’s got a hot new boyfriend,” Angela interjected, chewing on her steak with a wide, proud grin on her face.

  “Angela Marie, keep your mouth closed when you chew,” her mother said. “Is that true, Lucas? You’re seeing someone?” I shrugged, still feeling as though I didn’t have permission to call him my boyfriend. Boyfriends went out together holding hands, didn’t they? They called home to gush about each other, and they told all their friends.

  “Kinda,” I admitted. “We’re not really putting a label on it or anything.”

  “That, my boy, is some bullshit,” Angela’s father said, pointing his fork at me. “You either like someone enough to be with them, or you don’t. Back in our day we didn’t fuck around with ‘not putting a label on it.’”

  “George, you always cuss after a glass of wine,” Angela’s mother scolded, though she was smiling adoringly at him.

  “Back in our day you just dated each other and no one had to make a big deal about hiding their feelings and all that shit,” he went on. “‘A label.’” He scoffed. “Angela, don’t tell me you ever let some guy spend all his time with you and refuse to call you his girlfriend.”

  “Dad.” Her eyes were wide and she slumped in her chair a little bit, desperate for him to drop the subject.

  Together, the three of them cut the tension with happy laughter. I joined in, and the rest of the dinner conversation was muted by the echoing of Angela’s father’s advice in my head.

  That first night when I went to lay down on the couch, I checked my phone, finding a few texts from Ryan, and a paragraph-long guilt trip from my mother. I ignored the latter and opened the texts from Ryan. One of them was a picture of the Charleston skyline at sunset. Another was asking if I made it to Angela’s safely, and it warmed my heart. The third was an absolutely intoxicating picture of his erect penis, held gently between his fingers. I nearly spat, blinking in surprise, pressing a hand to my chest as if so happily scandalized. I licked my lips.

  I couldn’t care, in that moment, what our label would end up being. I was too distraught that I was about to spend a whole month only being able to look at him and not touch. But I texted him back with a photo of my own, and the sweetest words I could think to say without being too needy.