[ 9 ]
“A,” Andrew asks me, “or B?”
This brings us back to our little study game of guess-the-right-bone. “A for absolutely horny, B for boner,” I reply wittily, squirming.
He puts a foot on the bed, an elbow propped on his knee, and leans over my restrained body to say, “A for agony, B for belt.” Then he snapped the belt in his grip for punctuation, sobering me.
Over the course of our year as roommates, the dorm game has taken a turn for the scary. Now that he’s around me all the time—and, being his roommate, I have nowhere really to hide—he has introduced me to a score of alternative and vastly worse consequences for wrong answers, laughably small ways to reward me for right answers, and an arsenal of wicked items with which to inflict joyful, frustrating, and oftentimes surprising torment on me.
I learned it wasn’t the pain he enjoyed; he was, so he claimed, not really a sadist. It wasn’t the pain that ever turned him on. It was the thrill of the win and the reward—or the loss and the humiliating punishment that followed.
“Were you ever bullied as a kid?” I ask him, my feet twirling around playfully, pulling against the sock-binds that had them so bound to the bed. “And more pressingly, are these socks clean? I’ve been concerned about that ever since you used them to tie up my hands and feet, seriously …”
“Yeah, about as clean as they get after one of my four-hour workouts,” he says, moving over me and baring the worst of his forceful stares onto me. “That might explain the man-stink of them. You like my man-stink?”
“When it’s yours,” I say, smiling sweetly. “Not so much your socks’ stink.”
“Learn to love it. You get this next question wrong and I’m tying those socks to your face when you sleep tonight.” I blanch, rolling my eyes. “You will learn to love every part of me whether it makes you sick or not.”
“Love?” I screw my eyes back onto him, lifting a brow. “Love, did you just say? Andrew, is this your way of confessing the ‘L’ word to me?”
He tosses the belt onto the other bed, suddenly choosing to ditch it, I guess. “Change of plan. Wrong answer’s earning you a tickle.”
Fuck. I hate his tickles. I hate them so, so, so fucking bad because he’s so good at it. The last time he gave me a harsh tickling, we had a complaint from the R.A. who had to come to our room to tell us to keep down the noise—the noise being: my hysterical screaming and laughing and begging Andrew to stop. Why does he have to be into weird shit like tickling and sock-sniffing and questions and betting and jerkoff-races and belt-flogging and stripping games and fuck-knows-what-else?
“A,” he says, the flashcard pinched between an eager forefinger and thumb, “or B?”
“I don’t even remember what the choices were,” I complain. “What’s the name for which bone in the body?”
“In the hand,” he answers. “And if you weren’t paying attention to the choices, not my problem. You’re fucked. A or B?”
“How does that help me learn? This whole thing is supposed to be about me learning,” I argue back, my blood rising. Quite suddenly, in fact, I find my face flushing with the long-pent-up anger and sexual frustration spawned by Andrew, master tormentor and owner of my fucking soul. “You do this for your entertainment. You don’t give a shit if I fail or pass any of my classes. You never gave a shit, not since Intro to Psych, not since ever. Hell, you wouldn’t give a deep-fried fuck if I flunked outta school, wasted all my scholarships, drew a noose around my neck … just as long as we keep playing your stupid fucking dorm game.”
“Wrong answer,” he says, as if he can’t tell how angry I’ve suddenly gotten, as if he let every word of my impassioned spiel go unheard.
And then he’s on me. I cry out, shocked because I was genuinely not expecting him to go through with tickling me. But really, why the fuck am I surprised? I scream at once as his fingers dig into my exposed armpits. I pull and pull against the socks that are tied so tight at my wrists and ankles, pulling and yanking until I’m quite sure one or all of my appendages are likely to break.
“GET THE FUCK OFF!” I scream, howling with noises that land somewhere between agony and joyous unintended laughter.
“You love it,” he says, his fingers unrelenting. “You love it so much. A or B, the choice was simple,” he goes on, unworried, casual as a boy with his feet kicked up on a desk while he makes sweet torment of his roommate beneath his sinful fingers. “Tickling’s the punishment, I was pretty fucking clear. But oh no, you preferred to just talk and talk and talk …”
The sock at my right ankle pulls loose. I thrash my right foot, kicking, but I can’t get him off me. Then the hands seem to come loose at once, and in a movement that’s so fast I can’t see it, I’ve punched Andrew square in the face.
He falls back, tumbling off the bed and landing on the carpet.
I sit up, alarmed. He puts a hand up to his nose, finds it bleeding. Quickly, he gets to his feet and turns away, bringing his hands to his nose to stop the bleeding. I’m staring in horror at Andrew as he moves to the box of tissues at the desk, pulls a fistful and brings them to his face.
“Oh fuck,” I exclaim, a hand of my own going to my mouth. “Andrew. I’m so fucking sorry. I just, I was just … You were tickling me and I …”
My left ankle’s still tied to the bedpost and all the aching and pain of being tickled is gone in an instant. Andrew’s naked backside is all that exists.
“Andrew, please, say something. You okay?”
“Yep,” is all he says.
I stare at him for a while. He doesn’t move, just standing there with his back turned, pushing tissue after tissue into his face. I notice a handful he sets on the desk—notice the amount of blood drenching them. Fuck, I think, studying the wad in horror. I hit him really hard.
“Andrew?”
“Right in the nose,” he grunts. “Won’t stop bleeding,” he adds, but it sounds more like an observation, less like a complaint. He’s trying not to sound hurt, I realize. He’s acting all manly, all you-didn’t-hurt-me, all no-big-deal … but his nose is basically pouring blood, right?
“Andrew.”
Suddenly he goes for the bathroom, says, “I’m alright,” just before shutting the door behind him. The faucet turns on. It’s all I can hear now.
I grab at the sock at my left ankle, untie it, and free myself from the bed. Suddenly ashamed of my outburst, I don’t feel right being all naked anymore. I fetch a shirt off the ground, slip it over my head, and pull a pair of boxers on. Quickly, I move to the bathroom door and press my ear to it.
“Andrew?”
He doesn’t respond. I close my eyes to listen better. Through the running water, I hear tissues crinkling. I hear the water breaking, perhaps with his hands plunging into its gushing stream. Maybe he’s taken to a washcloth or a towel. Did I break his nose? What the fuck did I do?
“Say you’re going to be fine,” I call through the door, desperate and helpless.
After a moment too long, I hear: “Gonna be fine.”
“Tell me you’re going to be fine and mean it. Tell me if you’re not going to be fine, either, please. Do I … Should we … Should I call the campus medics or—?”
“No.”
“Alright.” I pull away from the door. Maybe I’m overreacting. I have no fucking idea. I’ve never hit anyone before. Not even in high school, or elementary school, never. The impact of my knuckles against his face, I can’t even remember it. My hand throbs a bit, but I can’t tell if it’s from being restrained or if it was from the impact of my bones hitting the beautiful face of my roommate, Andrew Knudson.
Flashcards season the floor, answered right or wrong, forgotten. I pick up the last one he’d asked me, read it with absent eyes. A, I see. The answer was A. I wonder if I can name the possible bones I could’ve broken in my hand … in my wrist. The bones I could’ve broken in his face.
I sit on the bed and wait.
Only four minutes later, the bathroom door opens and Andrew emerges. He plops down on his bed, stares at the floor. A tiny wad of toilet paper is shoved into either nostril and he stares at the floor listlessly, emotionlessly, a big muscled troll turned to stone.
“You alright?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah,” he says. He seems to be just staring at the flashcards on the ground, or staring through them, or staring at nothing at all.
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Maybe the games are stupid,” he says back.
“They’re not always stupid,” I reason. He’s still staring at the floor; his eyes won’t meet mine. Maybe he’s embarrassed. Maybe he’s ashamed too. “I mean, sometimes they’re really hot. I just wonder sometimes if …” I trail off, unsure how to put it. The air conditioner comes on, fills the room with a gentle, unassuming hum. I don’t welcome it, shivering against the sudden draft that now kicks through my already quite chilly room.
“I can find another dorm,” he says.
I stammer. “N-No, Andrew. You don’t have to move out. That’s kind of … That’s kind of an overreaction, really.”
His eyes flick to the other side of the room. He still won’t look at me. Comfort him, I tell myself. He needs your reassurance. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Andrew. I … I think we’re actually—you and I, we actually have a lot in common.”
He plucks out the tissues, sniffs, then looks back at the flashcards on the floor. It’s so strange, for someone with so much cockiness and dominance and power to be so in need of comfort.
I stand, cross the room and lower myself next to him on his bed. He turns his head slightly, but still won’t meet my eyes. “Andrew …”
Ever since the day I got him drunk and earned a tongue-wrestling session from him, his lips have yet to meet mine again. Maybe the craving for an honest, genuine, physically-loving relationship between us has driven me somewhat mad, and I’m lashing out at him for not giving me what I need.
“You meant all that,” he states suddenly.
I look at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“All that about me not caring about you. That the only thing I care about is the playing. That I don’t … That I wouldn’t care if, like, you flunked all your classes, or … or …” He bites his lip and squints at the floor pensively.
“Well, I didn’t say it to hurt you,” I point out. “I just … I just meant that, sometimes, I want …” A sigh escapes my lips. Maybe I shouldn’t have said a thing at all. I mean, really, is it that bad what we have? The hottest guy on campus is my roommate and he’s constantly wanting to put me in situations that get one or both of our clothes off somehow, and oftentimes it involves him or I jerking off or being jerked off. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with him at all; maybe it’s something wrong with me.
“I care about you.”
I study the side of his face, surprised. “What?”
“I care about you,” he repeats. “So, like … tell me what it is you want from me.”
His blue eyes are so intense, even looking at them from the side, I can still feel his influence. If you only knew what I want. Maybe this is another of his games. But really, when you think of it, isn’t kinda everything in life a game? Whether you win a friendship by saying the right thing, or lose a lover by saying it all wrong? Whether you score the job by wowing your interviewer, by dressing the part, by winning yet another game? When does the playing stop? At what age do we graduate from playing games with one another and, instead, reap the benefits of all our years’ rewards and lessons and personal triumphs?
“I just want to know what we are,” I tell him.
“We’re roommates.”
“We’re so, so … so much more than that, Andrew.”
“Why? Because we get naked and do stuff? Because I have certain sexual interests and, like …” He swallows hard, presses his lips together before forming his next words. “I don’t see why we gotta call it something. Why the fuck’s a person gotta be straight or gay. Lovers or friends. Why the fuck?”
“Just makes it easier for me, I guess.” I place a hand on his thigh. His gaze shifts, now focused quite intently on my innocent hand. “I guess calling us something is a game in and of itself, don’t you think? Except … it isn’t required to have any rules. I don’t want a rule telling me when I can kiss you or—”
I close my eyes. I’ve said it. I want to kiss you, Andrew Fucking Knudson. I want to kiss you and I want you to kiss me and, just for this moment, I don’t want alcohol or belts or flashcards or dominance involved.
That’s when I feel his lips touch mine. With my eyes closed, I feel his mouth open and a tongue greets my lips, traces them, tickles them.
I open my mouth to his, and the heat between us becomes one. When I breathe, he breathes, and our heads tilt gently as we kiss. Even our noses seem to kiss—lightly, of course, minding the ache that surely still lives in his—and our faces caress one another, mouths attached, tongues greeting.
When at last we part, I confess. “I cheated on our first game. The thought game. You’d gotten what I was thinking right and I lied and said you were wrong.” He lifts his brows in mock surprise. “I just wanted to see you naked so badly.”
Unsmiling, he regards my anxious face for a long, agonized moment. Then, finally: “We’ll make a new game of it,” he offers. “Rule is, when you want me naked, you just ask. When you want to kiss me, you just fucking go for it.”
Even this little offering of his, he makes it sound like an order, his voice strong as stone. My thighs squeeze together. I wonder if one of the many flashcards on the floor includes the bone that’s now formed between my legs.
“Your terms are accepted,” I say. Then, as prompted, I fucking go for it, crashing my lips into his. The hand I’d so strategically placed on his thigh, I let it gently slide between his legs.
He responds with a sigh of pleasure.
Feeling smart, I push him down into the bed and climb over his body like a beast. Yeah, I’m the beast now. Mounting Andrew, I make quick work of his face, my hand opening up his clothes below to claim my prize—all seven inches of it. It’s my turn now to part lips and bathe his cock with my tongue, generously. I open my mouth to him, one inch of him in, two inches, three. He quivers under my grip, and I feel a moan cascading down his body. My hands reach up, desperate, grabbing, and as I swallow and tongue and suck his seven inches of glory, my hands discover his rippling abs as if for the first time. My hands discover his pecs, making a game out of his left nipple, then his right. Grabbing his hips and rocking myself up and down, I put Andrew where I want him and nowhere else.
I give him no choice but to enjoy it.
And when he cums, the thunder from his voice shakes the walls. For now, Andrew is under my control. I’m the one whose game we’re playing tonight. And in my game, there are never losers.
The end.
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