Considering it was a gray, dreary day at the wrong end of a miserable October, Dylan felt full of the joys of spring from the moment he woke up. It could have been due to the prospect of the Halloween house party later that afternoon. Even though the workload for Dylan, as a final year student, turned out to be greater than ever, he deserved a night off now and again. And better yet: a night off in a home transformed into zombie apocalypse mayhem.
Waiting at the end of the platform to the train, Dylan felt restless. He was excited to see his friend again—the real cause of his joy. He'd missed Jamie far more than expected.
When the station clock clicked over to indicate one minute until the train arrived, and then when he could see it slowly approaching the platform, he paced with excitement. They had known each other less than a year, but were already Best Friends Forever. When Jamie was about, he brightened up the day. Dylan had come to appreciate this over the past few weeks, along with all the truth in the saying about absence making the heart grow fonder.
At the end of September, Dylan had returned to university for his final year, and even though he worked harder than ever, he also thought about Jamie every day. Little things, such as how, if he were there, Jamie would've enjoyed the pilau rice in the canteen on Wednesday or imagining Jamie dancing to the live band that played in the university bar on Thursday.
When he spotted Jamie walking down the platform, Dylan's insides moved in an unfamiliar way. His internal organs seemed to jump. Jamie was not just a best friend, but the bearer of a beacon of light in the dreary autumn.
"Hi. How was the journey?" Dylan reached out, offering to take the bag that Jamie carried in his hand. "Can I take that?"
"The journey was fine if you want to make small talk." Jamie handed over the bag; he also carried a rucksack on his shoulders.
Dylan stepped closer to Jamie and closer again until they were face to face with foreheads pressed together, and he planted a kiss on Jamie's lips. To any onlookers, they may have appeared as boyfriends, as they often did.
"Oi! Dylan, you prooooofter."
Lips still touching, Dylan smiled; he recognized the deep, booming voice behind him.
Breaking the contact with Jamie, but remaining close together, Dylan turned. His eyes confirmed the words were from the person he suspected.
"Jamie, this is one of my housemates, Joe. What are you doing here?"
"Same as you, mate. I'm here to meet my boyfriend." Joe stared at Jamie as if he was speaking to him and not Dylan. "Nice to meet you, Jamie, glad you can make it to our Halloween party." Joe glanced at his watch. "Steve's train should arrive soon, in about twenty minutes if there aren't leaves on the track or some other reason for a delay."
After exchanging a few more words of chit chat, they said goodbyes.
As they walked away toward the station exit, Dylan asked, "Are you hungry? Do you want to grab lunch or shall we go straight back to my place?"
"I don't mind, but if we are hanging out for the day, I've got my Halloween costume in this bag." Jamie jolted his head to indicate his backpack.
"Of course. Back to my place and we'll make plans from there. The Halloween party starts early for the trick and treaters. And we might need to help wreck the house."
"Wreck?"
"You know, make it look scary. We want to be ready by about four o'clock. We expect the kids to come knocking between five and seven."
As they walked back to Dylan's house, they chatted about life.
"Things have been good. I've had loads of overtime. The good thing about that is that I haven't been able to go out spending the money, which is both good and bad," Jamie said.
"Blokes? Tell me about the men in your life."
Jamie tilted his head as he looked at Dylan. "There have been a few; I managed to fit them in between hours at the supermarket."
"Anyone worth more than one night?" Dylan asked and wondered about the pang of anxiety that he felt anticipating the answer.
"Just one night stands and frankly not enough of those, but still no second nights and no one special." Jamie pouted. His bottom lip looked deliciously suckable.
He knew he should feel guilty, but Dylan couldn't help feeling pleased that his friend had not found a boyfriend yet. Not just a boyfriend; he hadn't had a stream of red hot lovers to keep him company every night.
Fuck it! Dylan had the hots for Jamie worse than he realized—they hadn't arrived home yet and he wanted to jump on the dude. And the poor guy obviously had no idea.
"What about you? Up here, away from home. Surrounded by students. You must be seeing some action."
"Nah, mate. Too much work to do, serious. There's been nothing since. You and I, you know." Nothing much that he wanted to tell. Dylan had been too busy to fool around more than a couple of times since moving back to university. "There will be plenty of hot guys in my house tonight. Hot and horny, and Joe's room will be the play room. You'll be able to make up for lost time."
"Play room? Does the Halloween party turn into a sex party?"
"Well, you know how it goes. As it gets later in the night, a few drinks, and it just might."
It was barely early afternoon when they arrived at Dylan's house, and the house already looked as if it could have been the scene of something very unpleasant and gruesome. Sean and Fraser were busy outside the front, decorating the house with zombie themed paraphernalia. Everyone had chipped in some cash to invest in Halloween decorations from the 99p store, as well as a considerable amount of home-made decorations created with fake blood, spray paint, and old clothes.
Inside the house, Dylan led the way to his room, where Jamie could dump his stuff. "There's a double bed here. Obviously, you can sleep with me unless either of us pull, in which case, there's the floor or the sofa downstairs. Otherwise, there will be three or four of us in the bed."
"A threesome don't sound too bad." Jamie winked and sat down on the corner of the bed to take off his shoes.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah fine." Jamie shuffled up the bed and lay down on his back with his head on the pillow. "You want to lie down for a minute?"
It wasn't a sexual invitation. Dylan was mystified as to why Jamie invited him to lie down, but he did so anyway. If Jamie wanted to talk in that position, there must be a reason for it. Dylan lay down on the bed far enough apart from Jamie that they weren't touching at all.
"Do you want a boyfriend?" Jamie said after they lay in silence for a short while.
"Honestly, that is a tricky question. I sometimes like the idea of having a boyfriend, but it seems a bit impractical at the moment. I like to give the impression that life is carefree, but this final year is really intense. I've got the full program of work for the whole year, and when I look at it, I think I haven't got time to do anything else if I'm going to get it all done and handed in on time. And university is just too much of an investment for me to fail. What about you?"
"I'd like to meet someone for more than just a one night stand. A man who wasn't already thinking about his next hook up, or actively seeking him while getting undressed with me."
"That's happened to you too?" Dylan wished he could put a protective arm around Jamie and keep him from disrespectful idiots who didn't appreciate how lucky they were that Jamie gave them more than a passing glance.
"Shit. Is it that common?" Jamie asked.
"I think it is."
Jamie turned his head slightly so that he could see Dylan. "But you don't want a boyfriend?"
"No. I haven't got the time for the distraction from uni, or the time to give a boyfriend the attention he’d deserve."
"What about sex?" Jamie asked.
"What, now? You've only just got here. Buy a guy a drink first!"
Jamie giggled. "You know that's not what I mean."
"I'm not giving up everything to get this damned degree; there's still time to get jiggy." Dylan grinned, he didn't need Jamie to know the full extent of his newfound celibacy. "Plenty of men want casual hookups. Thank God."
Jamie grinned too. "So, speaking of which, is our friends with benefits arrangement still ongoing?"
"Yeah, I thought it was ongoing."
Every guy Dylan drooled over was hyper-masculine; until recently, he'd never been attracted to a guy like Jamie before. And it just left Dylan's head reeling with confusion.
Questioning.
Is this what the Q stands for?
He thought he was only attracted to manly tops, and he preferred to bottom, but Dylan was young enough to be still learning about his desires too. Perhaps he could be attracted to guys who were more femme than masc and were versatile? It was a combination he’d just not considered when he’d gone along with the masc4masc on his profile.
"There should be a lot of guys for you to choose from while you're here, Jamie. I don't want to monopolize you."
"Monopolize me? Is that a new position I need to learn?" Jamie chuckled. "Or are you speaking in board game metaphors that I don't understand?"
"I'm all for racing past Go, collecting two hundred pounds, and continuing the FWB arrangement if you want to."
"I came out more than six months ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. I haven't had a proper boyfriend yet. Or proper sex, for that matter."
"What do you mean you haven't had proper sex?" Dylan rolled onto his side to look at Jamie properly, although as he did so, he realized maybe this was why Jamie suggested they lay on the bed—so that they didn't make eye contact for this conversation.
"You know. Going where the sun doesn't shine. I go home with a guy, and he gets the condoms out, and I panic; I don't know whether to be excited or worried. It's frustrating and embarrassing, right now."
"Oh. You still haven't done that?" Dylan couldn't hide the incredulity in his voice as he realized what Jamie was talking about.
"It's not compulsory to pot the brown ball, especially on a one night stand." Dylan only spoke because he thought he ought to say something, but had a feeling that no matter what he said, it would be the wrong thing. Dylan returned to lying on his back while Jamie continued to stare at the ceiling. "And you know not all guys expect to dip it in when they sleep with someone for the first time."
"But some do, and I want to do it, butt sex, but I haven't met anyone to do it with. All the guys, all the one night stands, it just seems a little too scary to do it for the first time with a stranger, or at least the ones I've picked up."
"You will meet someone one day, you know that, and with the right guy, your boyfriend, you will get to do all those things." Dylan knew that was the textbook answer that parents say to their kids, so he decided to improve his comment. "I thought perhaps you were talking about some kinky BDSM play that you wanted to try out with the right guy.”
Jamie laughed, his head falling back. "Do you think I had a fantasy to cane a naughty schoolboy or something?"
"No. I imagined you as the naughty schoolboy."
"Noooo! Don't laugh. And you can stop thinking about me like that. "
"I'm not laughing at you. You know you don't have to shag, literally hide the sausage. Some guys don't, especially with casual hookups."
"I think you mean metaphorically. I don't literally have a sausage."
Jamie didn't say anything further, so after a period of silence in which Dylan had time to think about what Jamie had said—not a schoolboy and no sausage metaphors—he asked, "Why haven't you fucked with a man if you want to?"
"Doing something I haven't done before with a stranger. Fear of making a fool of myself. Not doing it right. Being inexperienced and having them laugh at me."
The sincere honesty touched Dylan. For all the conversations he had about sex over the years he couldn't remember any one of his friends appearing so vulnerable and trusting him in this way.
Dylan felt a special kind of protectiveness toward Jamie. Almost as if he were a brother. And there was barely an age difference between them. They were like two gay brothers who were close in age, except they'd had sex. And Dylan wanted to do it again so he'd have to stop these fraternal feelings, because that was downright creepy. And there didn't seem any way to end the desire to do adult and unbrotherly things with Jamie.
Dylan was aware of Jamie shifting position. He turned over onto his side to face Dylan, but Dylan continued to look at the ceiling.
"Don't get me wrong. I'm not holding out for Mr. Right. I'm not saving my ass virginity for the guy I'm going to marry. It is just that I don't want to make a complete fool of myself with a stranger. I'm worried about it hurting."
"Is that all?" Damn it. Dylan knew he was saying the wrong thing. He didn’t mean to sound so insensitive. "I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean is that all that you’re worried about?"
"I am concerned that I’ll make a fool of myself. That I won’t know what I’m doing. That it will be awful. That I’ll be shit at it, in every sense of the word."
"Hey, accidents happen. What you need is a considerate, nice guy who’s good with virgins. He might be here tonight. A top."
"Maybe. Maybe I'd like to top."
"Hello." Dylan turned his head to look at Jamie. For some reason, he'd always imagined Jamie as a total bottom.
"I want to try both ways, of course. But I'd like to top."
For months, he’d loved Jamie like a brother. They’d hit it off from the start. But for various reasons, he’d never considered Jamie as a sexual partner. They lacked chemistry and mutual attraction, he'd once thought.
But ever since their last weekend together, Dylan had crazy feelings of attraction toward Jamie. Like Jamie starred in a daily private porn parade in Dylan's mind. And not just sex. Dylan thought about every happy memory he had created that featured Jamie. And it often did come back to sex. He couldn't help that. Dylan was a twenty-one-year-old guy in his prime. And Jamie was fucking hot: sex on legs hot. And right there in his house for the next twenty-four hours.
After Jamie had shared the secret of his sexual frustration, the conversation seemed to be over. He was eager to see the rest of the house and the party preparations, and get ready for Halloween. Dylan was relieved. He wanted to digest and contemplate the conversation.
If he were prone to hyperventilation, Dylan suspected it would happen soon. Hadn't they just had a conversation in his bedroom in which Jamie said he wanted more friends with benefits action with Dylan and wanted to fuck a guy?
Was this Halloween or did fucking Christmas come early?