Homecoming

By the time the snow starts to hit the ground, it’s more different than ever.

Like waking up hearing water running the bathroom. My head: pounding, killing me, feeling like a god has taken my skull into his hand and is squeezing it. My state: hung-over, it’s obvious as I swing my head over the bed and hold it over the trash can that has found its way next to. I grip jersey sheets. My dress: boxers, which is rather clothed for a hangover like this, I know. Even the sound of that damn water is making think of waterfalls of vomit. It’s an almost infamous sound to wake up to, now. I don’t have to look around to know my surroundings, I stretch my legs in the bed but other than that, try not to move as to not disturb the hang-over gods. Who are obviously pissed that they let my liver handle all that, and I still didn’t get laid. My jeans I see lying next to the locked door, next to my blue school hoodie, reading ‘Crybaby’ on the back with a number 7. Just by that, I know that basketball season has started- calling for a party.

So maybe this doesn’t seem different, but I notice the little things.

I hear the bathroom door open and turn my head just slightly to see Nate, standing shirtless with a toothbrush and foam in his mouth.

“Attractive,” I mutter in pain with an attempted sarcastic voice, though I mean it.
He smiles, “I could say the same to you.”

I smile before laying my head back down, it’s too heavy. But I smile.

From the bathroom he calls, “I’d kiss you if you’d puked already. I don’t want to risk it deciding to come up as we make out, though.”

It’s different in a good way, because it feels like nothing is. It feels like this was the way things were always supposed to be.

A bottle of pills flies at my head and causes a small earthquake in my brain.

“Sorry,” he calls, loudly, obviously half-heartedly, as I wince. I feel him weight down the bed next to me as I have to lean up to swallow the pills, he hands me a bottle of water.

“Get up,” he whispers, in slight consideration of the natural disasters occurring in my head.

“Nooooooo,” I groan, leaning over, into his side, “I’m dying.”

“Maybe your liver is, but you’re not. We have to evaluate the mess,” he says, softly, but lays next to me, horizontally across his bed. He presses his fresh mouth onto mines, without opening his mouth, as precaution. This, the kissing, not the hang-over (unless I keep this senior year party streak up) has become the new normal.

But we know our boundaries. We know that we don’t do the whole PDA thing, but we don’t deny while blushing that we are together, and we still roll our eyes when the story of our suspension is brought up. I don’t even know why it’s told as a story still anyways, because everyone knows- even my Dad, but it still goes around like the latest rumor. But, like I said, we’re fine with that. We don’t rush into things, and we don’t let ourselves think that we can’t tell each other everything just because we can now push our tongues into each other’s mouths without having a second thought about it. But we don’t have sex.
I fake a sob in response.

“I LOVE YOU!” He screams and I cry out in agony. And we’re allowed to say that
.
“You only want me so I can help you clean up. I should have left before you woke up like every other douche,” I respond to the three words with a mutter. But we’re not allowed to be hurt if the other doesn’t say it back, because we already know they do.

He nods, “That would be the only reason. But you were too wasted to get the memo from your whole basketball team.”

A smirk plays on my lips. “I love you,” I whisper.

“That’s not going to stop you from having to help me, Connor,” he pushes me and I rush over the side of the bed, because it finally all comes up.

“Way to give a warning, man!” He jumps up, or more rolls, stumbles, and stands to exclaim.

“I feel much better,” I say, wincing at my own rancid breath.

“I’m sure you do, now get your ass up!”

I still have slight headache as I lean up to swing my legs around and put my feet on the floor. I look over to Nate and he’s watching me, or more watching every part of me that isn’t covered. And I like that.

Upon standing and stretching, my boxers lower just a bit more and I think I see Nate lick his lips out of the corner of my eye, I can’t be certain, but hell, who wouldn't?

“Yeah,” I sigh as I lower my limbs, “I know you want this.” I’m joking, but I smirk, rushing over to him before he can run to hide and snake my arms around his torso and press a seriously disgusting kiss on his cheek. Believe me, I sparing him by not going for the lips.

“Ew!” He brings his hand up to wipe but stops with a horrified expression, probably thinking that then the mess would be on his hands, “That is the grossest thing, ever, Connor! Get the fuck off me!” He tries to pull away and push me off of him but I hold onto him.

“Give me a kiss and I’ll stop,” I say into his neck.

“No! That’s fucking gross, can you smell yourself?” He wines. Yes, I do, actually, and loosen my grip upon re-realizing that I am disgusting right now.

He uses this to his advantage to break away and scatter to the bathroom to disinfect. I follow him in, but just to get my toothbrush.

As far as we go is this whole dry humping situation that leads to showing some serious will power and one of us going to the bathroom to finish off while the other does the same in the room. Nate calls this taking it slow; I call this because a fucking tease. But I comply, because I slightly agree even though I think that a handjob, at the fucking least, is necessary.

Right after I spit all the foam into the sink and rinse, he attacks my lips with his own; you’d never think that he was just saying how gross I was. I’m pushed against the sink as he bites slightly on my lip before sucking. This is one of those tease moments, I realize just as slowly as my hard-on develops.

“Nate,” I breathe into the kiss.

“No,” He breathes back with a bumping of our clothed groins into each other. I give a slight gasp as he gives a slight smirk, pushing my hips out more to meet his.

He says that all we’ll do is revert back to being awkward, as it used to be, if we start going too fast. And that while the attraction won’t fade, all the guilt of moving as if we’re just pointless fucks to each other, will just lead to us starting over and repeating the same routine. While it makes sense, I say fuck that- I shouldn’t have to wait until fucking college to get a handjob out of my boyfriend.

I know he’s right though, because sometimes I forget that the word boyfriend and best friend are interchangeable now and once I remember, I start thinking of the most perverted things in my head and changing the ‘he’ or the ‘Nate’ or the ‘boyfriend’ to ‘best friend’ and see how I react to it, sometimes it still shocks me, but that’s only on the really um…graphic thoughts. Which I have to relieve myself because my fucking best friend is a tease.

“Tease,” I mutter and am rewarded yet punished with a lower, harder roll of his hips into mines. I wonder how he’s so okay with always stopping at almost, I wonder how he stays so calm.

I’ve had sex with my best friend. Twice.

Provokes a moan instead of a gag and a smile instead of wince and wave of guilt. Nate keeps rocking his crotch into mines, kissing through moans and getting so close. He only stops when our heads fall back in pure bliss as that moment finally comes. He puts his hand around my neck to force my lips back onto his. “I love you,” he whispers against them.

“I love you, too,” I reply.

That’s how I know how far we’ve come.

THE END