Chasing Rusty Parker - 1. It Must Be The Gay

Summary:

Rusty Parker has one big-ass problem, unlike any other big-ass problems he has ever had in his life. No, it’s not the impending sense of doom that comes with senior year and the fact that he has no idea what to do after or that he’s running out of kink ideas. No, it’s a very peculiar issue.

Ever since Maddox Kingsley, his bestie and the most awesome guy alive – nine out of ten college kids would agree – got all mushy over Jonathan Hamilton, one perfect GPA score and amazing cook wrapped in the same sexy package, and the two became joined at the hip, Rusty has been experiencing certain… twingling feelings. It’s not about what they do in bed or whatever, ‘cause he has already tried everything (except that! – at least not with a dude).

No, the reason why he dreams of sneaking between those two while they lie in bed and stare at each other with stars in their eyes is not… very clear. It’s not the sex stuff; no, Rusty’s sure. It’s just something worth chasing and that Rusty’s also sure about. Just that he has no idea what it is.

That is until he gets the most insufferable tutor in the world. And meets a cat boy. Yeah, finally.

Chapter One - It Must Be The Gay

Up. Down. Right. Left. Repeat. Rusty swung his head around, but the landscape didn’t change. Yup, it was the first day of the last year of his life, as he knew it. After that, it was all a blank, so you could say that it had to be a different life, one he had no idea what it was going to be like. So, senior year was like the last year of his life as Rusty Parker, the king of Sunny Hill.

“Would you stop that? You’re making me dizzy,” Dex complained.

To piss Dex off a little more, Rusty began swinging his head faster and then stopped abruptly. “Better?”

Dex shrugged and shook his head. Kane, as usual, rushed to his bestie’s help. “How about you go get us some sodas from the counter?”

“Am I your errand boy?” Rusty declaimed out loud, making heads turn. A few laughs here and there, and the usual. The interested looks from all the freshies and the others alike. So, business as usual.

He smirked and got to his feet.

And, after just a couple of steps, he promptly smacked into someone, who seemed to be not that well acquainted with his own feet because he landed on his ass. Rusty looked, slightly horrified, at how the guy’s glasses slid on the polished cafeteria floor like a curling weight.

Quick thinking was one of the main perks of the king of Sunny Hill. Without hesitating, Rusty threw himself on the glasses, protecting them with his body, and preventing any walkers from crushing them under their feet. Without changing his position, he turned his head toward the dude sprawled on the floor. He looked slightly dizzy and confused, but what truly registered with Rusty were a cute as a button upturned nose and a pair of the most hazel eyes in all hazel eyes history. He smiled. “Are you all right?”

The hazel eyes finally landed on him. “My glasses,” the guy stuttered.

“Safe,” Rusty replied. “They’re right here.”

More confusion rolled from the hazel eyes. “Um, could you please give them back?”

Rusty rolled to one side, gracefully uncovering his protected charge. Then, he slid them cautiously over the floor until he bumped the other’s hand with them. A sigh of relief left the guy’s lips, and Rusty found himself staring. Too caught up by the upturned nose and hazel eyes, he had missed that perfect Cupid’s bow arch.

The dude quickly put on his glasses, with the cautiousness and hurry characteristic to people whose proper navigation in the outside world depended greatly on such accessories. Then, the guy finally looked at him.

Rusty expected a ‘thank you’, but the hazel eyes just turned bigger, or maybe it was the glasses. Their owner pushed himself backwards on his ass, eventually bumped into someone, jumped to his feet and ran away.

“What the fuck?” Rusty asked himself out loud.

“Do you need a hand down there, or is the floor your most recent best friend?” Dex called for him.

Hadn’t anyone noticed that weird thing with the boy with glasses? Rusty turned toward Dex and Kane, but they seemed to be engrossed in something on their phones. Probably the class schedule for the semester. Nerds.

Disappointed that his valiant act had gone unnoticed - not by the freshman year and/or most girls around - Rusty dragged himself to his feet and sauntered toward the counter. He searched for the boy with his eyes, but he had already been swallowed by the crowd.

***

Matty put his palms over his ears and kept his head down while rushing toward the table in the corner where Zoey was already seated. He plopped himself down across from her and breathed heavily like he had just run a marathon.

“What’s with you?” she asked, scutinizing him with keen eyes.

Zoey was petite, but she packed a punch. Everyone who didn’t know them thought they were a cute couple. Probably they thought so the same way they thought of a pair of hamsters being cute. Just like him, Zoey wore glasses, and had what people called a harmless pretty face. In his case, the harmless comment was right on point. In hers, not so much.

Matty leaned over the table, causing his best friend to do the same. “Zoey, you won’t believe it!” Overly conscious of his voice being too loud, he dropped it to a whisper. “I crashed into Rusty Parker.”

Zoey didn’t look impressed. Her brown eyes inspected him, like he was a bit of a lunatic. “Matty, you’ve been crushing on,” she emphasized each word, “Rusty Parker since freshman year.”

Matty waved desperately. “Any louder and this will end up in Xpress. Ah, wait, maybe I shouldn’t bother shushing you. Xpress doesn’t even know I exist.” He deflated considerably. “Just like Rusty Parker has no idea I exist.”

Zoey pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Are you going to tell me what happened or should I hit you with the list first?”

Matty knew all about the list. After confessing, complaining, and wallowing in semi despair, Zoey had forced the list on him at the end of sophomore year. It served as a wakeup pill or whatever. “Hit me with the list first,” he admitted morosely and sank back into his chair, arms over his chest.

Zoey cleared her throat with importance and leafed through an imaginary document in front of her. “Rusty Parker is a shallow, good for nothing, popularity chaser,” she said in a sing-song voice and waited for Matty’s reaction.

Matty bit his bottom lip. “He’s not,” he protested right away. “I can tell that he’s not shallow,” he continued. “His popularity is due to the fact that he has natural charm. And I can see in his eyes that he’s very smart. Who would think of a butt slapping contest and manage to win it?”

Zoey grimaced and shifted in her chair. “Don’t remind me of that. I could only take like five with that paddle. And then I couldn’t sit for a week.”

Matty nodded in understanding. “That’s why I gave you that new pillow.”

“Shut up,” Zoey mumbled. “You were such a scaredy cat you didn’t even come with me to that party. Now, just for the sake of argument, why would such a completely moronic contest would make Rusty Parker smart?”

“You know. Because he thinks of all kinds of things no one else thinks about.” Zoey was on his side. She didn’t want to corner him, but he was the one asking for it.

“Yeah. Like having a luau party. In December. Even Judy Dartwood said she froze her tits off. And she has some melons.” Zoey gestured surreptitiously to make a point. “You know, there’s a lot of protective fat there.” Part admiration, part envy commingled in her voice.

“Zoey, I’m not talking to you about melons,” Matty said in resignation, knowing that it wasn’t entirely up to him if they did or did not.

“Melons are a perfectly healthy fruit,” Zoey commented. “So, we concur that Rusty Parker is super smart, right?”

Matty nodded. He was feeling a bit better already. “Next.”

“All right,” Zoey agreed. “Rusty Parker is a complete meathead,” she recited from the invisible list.

“That’s not true,” Matty protested again. “That’s not where the meat of Rusty Parker is.”

Zoey grinned and her eyes glinted with mischief. She pedantically lifted her long hair and wrapped it into a bun on the crown of her head. Then, she pushed a pencil through it to keep it in place. “Am I rocking the sexy librarian look yet?” That was random. That was Zoey.

Matty looked at her and made a suffering face. “Wrong dude to ask, Zoey. But, if it helps, I think you might be able to scare off some crows if you choose your location well.”

She threw a French fry at him. “Shut up, virgin.”

Matty grinned. Since they were considered hamster-weight, it was okay for all of their matches to consist of hits below the belt. They could hardly hurt each other. “Really,” he said with a sigh, “even if Rusty Parker plays basketball, that doesn’t mean he’s a meathead.”

“As you say, my friend,” Zoey said with a shrug.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be the devil’s advocate here,” Matty reminded her.

“Right, right. Let’s continue. Rusty Parker is a total womanizer.”

Matty deflated considerably. Yeah, he could extol on Rusty’s amazing looks and intellect - which the guy used mainly for throwing some of the hottest parties on campus - all he wanted, but he couldn’t deny that. “You really had to go there,” he said, but without any real reproach.

Zoey offered him a sympathetic smile. “Come on, Matty, you know what to do.”

“Zoey, I’m not putting on a cat boy suit. Xpress is talking shit.”

Zoey groaned in frustration. “Could you at least try? Maybe, just maybe, this one time, Xpress is not talking shit. If he’s into cat boys, and you dress up as a cat boy, that’s your best chance.”

“Of making a fool of myself? And where would I even wear such a costume? While attending Mrs. Lane’s class on human resource management?”

Zoey took a long sip from her soda. “That’s some really forward thinking there, Matty. I like it.”

“Oh, come on,” Matty groaned and rolled his eyes. “Not even in a cat boy suit would Rusty Parker ever acknowledge I exist.”

Zoey narrowed her eyes. “He totally would. Come on, you have the perfect body for wearing a cat suit. Wait, didn’t you just say that you crashed into Rusty? How did that go?”

Suddenly, Matty felt less in the mood to share, mainly because he knew what Zoey would say.

“Come on, was all this build up for nothing?” Zoey insisted.

“All right,” Matty admitted reluctantly. “I bumped into him by mistake, I landed on my ass, and he gave me back my glasses.”

“Did you introduce yourself?” Zoey asked, this time with wide excited eyes.

Matty sank low in his chair. “I ran away.”

Zoey didn’t say anything but let her hands speak for her. Her small fists cut through the air, mimicking a strangling motion, then they shook up and down, only to spread into open palms as if she had just dropped Marty into a heap of self-loathing. “That’s it,” she said. Matty shrank in his chair at the determined look in her eyes. “This year, you’re going to get Rusty Parker to know who you are. You’ll wear a cat boy suit, a bear boy suit, a pelican boy suit, I don’t care. You’re going to do it.”

“Um, says you?” Matty asked cautiously.

“Come on, Matty, do you really want your college years to end on a ‘what if’ note? And what are you afraid of, anyway?”

Matty knew very well what he was afraid of. But could Zoey understand him? Once he learned for a fact that Rusty Parker would never be interested in knowing good ol’ plain Matthew Han, was there anything else left? Sure, he was cute, Zoey said that much, he took care of his body, lifting weights and whatnot, but his genes could only do so much. He had a feeling that even if he were ever into guys, Rusty Parker would like some muscle god or someone like that.

Zoey snapped her fingers in front of him to bring him back to reality. “Matty, no one says you have to do it all in one step.”

“What steps are we even talking about when it comes to cat boys? Should I start communicating through meows of varying intensities?”

“No, but you could start getting out of your nerdy clothes more, and into cooler ones. You really have a nice body.”

“Yeah, if you’re into Korean boy bands,” Matty mumbled.

“Which I totally am,” Zoey said. “Do you have any idea how much I envy you? It’s because of your grand-grandfather that you have perfect skin. Don’t make me want to kill you in your sleep so that I can peel off your skin and dress myself in it.”

“Wow, that turned into Silence of the Lambs fast,” Matty commented.

“Silence of the what?”

He wouldn’t go on a tangent now and talk about old movies. “Never mind. Come on, Zoey, it’s my curse. I’m just pretty enough for girls to like me. It would be so much easier if I didn’t like guys, right?”

Zoey leaned back into her chair and crossed her arms. “Matthew Han, you’re not saying what I think you’re saying. Grow some guts, or some balls, or whatever. Get a cat boy suit. Try it on, study in it, until, you know, it feels like a second skin.”

“It sounds to me more like a recipe for a descent into madness,” Matty said and buried his face in his palms. “But I suppose you’re right. This year is now or never. Who knows if I’ll ever get to see Rusty again once we finish school?” The answer was pretty obvious. “All right,” he said, trying to sound as determined as possible.

“For real?” Zoey clapped her hands in glee. “Look, you’ll have to dish out some real cash. You’ll also need a wig, okay? None of that cheap stuff, not when it comes to something as important as this.”

“Great.” Matty let out a sigh. “I suppose I can continue to tutor, at least for some time.”

“Do that. It will be money well spent.”

“Make sure my folks never hear about it. They’ll blow a gasket.”

“Does it say ‘traitor’ above my head?” Zoey pointed to an invisible point up in the air.

“I’m counting on it, okay? They told me ‘no tutoring’ this year. They want to make sure I graduate with a good GPA.”

“They shouldn’t worry,” Zoey said. “You’re like only second to Jonathan Hamilton in this place.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” Matty murmured. “Why does that guy have it all? Looks, intellect, and a boyfriend like Maddox frigging Kingsley? I can’t even hate him. He’s too nice.”

Zoey shrugged. “Yeah, together, they’re any fujoshi’s wet dream.”

Yeah, Zoey was right. Jonathan and Maddox made an amazing couple, but how would he look side by side with Rusty Parker? No, he couldn’t even picture it. He was in a very public place and couldn’t afford letting his heart beat faster. Zoey might threaten him with mouth to mouth resuscitation.

“Put up those ads for tutoring. And let’s go shopping. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and I know about your hefty cash stash you put away for such occasions.”

“That money is not for such occasions,” Matty argued, but then he sighed. “Where are we going to shop for a cat boy suit? Hopefully, in another city. Or country. I would never live it down if anyone else, except you, finds out about my unlikely hobby.”

“Online, obviously. And I told you, no cheap stuff. So our best bet is to have something custom made. You know, it needs to look great on you.”

Matty put his head on the table. “Will that make a difference?”

“Of course.” Zoey ruffled his hair. “Rusty Parker is a perfectionist. You must make a good impression on him.”

“How do you know he’s a perfectionist?” Matty asked, always hungry for hearing other people talking in admiring terms about his crush.

Zoey gave him an all-knowing look. “How many people would take thirty-seven swats with a paddle after turning his underwear into a self-inflicted wedgie?”

“What? Wait, you’re talking about that ass-slapping party? You didn’t give me the details!”

“I didn’t want to give you more wet dreams than you already have. Yeah, Rusty pulled at his boxers until his butt cheeks were as good as naked, then bent over and took it on his bare ass.”

“And who gave him the spanking?”

“He wouldn’t have anyone else but Dex, of course, just to make sure that he had the dude with the heaviest hand give him the spanking.. You know, so that no one would say he cheated or something.”

What if Rusty was crushing on Dex? He was a muscle god, and everything Matty wasn’t. But they were both straight guys…

Zoey chatted away, unaware of the new mental torture Matty was giving himself. “Even Dex got tired around twenty-five, though. Kane took over, and he really made Rusty cry. It looked like Dex was going easy on him.”

“Rusty cried?” Matty couldn’t believe it.

“It was a sight,” Zoey assured him. “He was also laughing his ass off, so you didn’t know whether to feel terrified or laugh your ass off, too. But overall, it was very sexy. Rusty has a very sexy ass. Wanna know more?”

Matty shook his head energetically. “You could have taken a picture.”

“It didn’t cross my mind,” Zoey said airily.

Matty didn’t press further. For all he knew, Zoey might just have a picture of Rusty’s reddened ass on her phone, stashed away. But, as long as he didn’t ask for it directly, he was safe.

***

Rusty threw himself on the bed. It was still early in the afternoon, but he felt like taking a nap. He closed his eyes and willed himself to chase away the dream that had recurred so often lately. Maybe he was to blame, because he never let go of something if it irked him or made him curious.

The fact that he was willing to revisit it although he knew it wasn’t doing him any good said a lot about his penchant for self-flagellation. Yeah, those were the kind of words he liked to look up in online dictionaries. Since he enjoyed a bit of pain in his sandwich, he didn’t see a lot of harm in self-flagellation, which was a bit like going in a roundabout, or fucking yourself in the ass with your own dick. If he could do that, he’d totally go for it.

Maybe that would cure him of this dream constantly torturing him. Every time, it was the same. The door to Maddox’s room would be open, and he would first sneak a peek. He would see Jonathan and Maddox sleeping on their sides, facing each other, doing that thing that Rusty couldn’t define or understand. Maybe Maddox would rest one hand possessively on Jonathan’s hip. And Jonathan would smile in his sleep, as if he knew his boyfriend was feeling him up.

If he were a sane person, he’d close the door and go about his own business. If. Oh, what a big if. But dream Rusty couldn’t be too different from real Rusty, or else he’d be somebody else. So, in the dream, he would sneak into the room and walk close to the bed, so close that he could see their big peepees, busy seeing each other eye to eye. Then, he would slowly climb into the bed, pushing himself slowly between them, making sure to gently maneuver their peepees so that they stopped smooching each other while the owners were asleep. Sure, he’d be tempted to play a little Ken and Barbie or, better said, Ken and Ken with them, but this wasn’t about dicks and what people usually did with them.

So, the next thing he would do, he would stay there, between them, feeling their breathing, steady and content. He wouldn’t even look at them; no, he would close his eyes and try to feel whatever it was that they were feeling for each other.

And he’d fail every time. Sure thing, the sex thing would be easy to imagine. Sometimes, he would imagine being Jonathan and having Maddox call him ‘babe’ and make doe-eyes at him; or he would imagine being Maddox and having Jonathan kiss him hard and firm. That would make his dick hard every time.

But it wasn’t the sex, though. No, sex had no secrets for Rusty Parker. That other thing, though, the one they called ‘love’ and all that. Nah, that one he couldn’t get. At all.

He’d dream the same dream anyway.

Rusty didn’t realize when he fell asleep, but he could tell he was dreaming. It was the same thing – he had trained his mind well to dream of whatever he wanted – so he knew the drill. He walked up the stairs, stood in the door for a few moments, and then walked into the room.

Only that, this time, his dream just wanted to play a prank on him. When he snuck into the bed, between Jonathan and Maddox, he realized something was different. He turned his head to look at Jonathan. What the hell? Was he wearing his glasses in bed, now? But no, those weren’t Jonathan’s glasses. Actually, that wasn’t Jonathan at all.

There was no point in freaking out. Rusty calmly turned his head toward Maddox. Then, he looked up. That wasn’t Maddox, either. No, left and right, he was flanked by the boy in glasses from earlier today, and a cat boy. Okay, this dream was getting sexual, after all.

But why a threesome with the boy in glasses and the cat boy? He knew where the cat boy was coming from, but the other dude? This was one weird-ass dream.

All right, he got this. He turned toward the cat boy. “Hey,” he whispered, “can I touch your tail?”

There was no answer. Quite disappointed by that, Rusty turned toward the boy in glasses. He looked really pretty with his eyes closed like that. Why was he wearing glasses in bed? Whatever, weird-ass dream. “Sorry for asking, but why are you here?” he asked.

The boy shifted in his sleep and, as he did that, he threw one arm over Rusty’s belly.

“Are you going for the Mighty Thor?” Rusty asked. Finally, the dream would make some sense.

The boy did nothing. Rusty continued to examine him. Too bad his imagination didn’t have much beyond cute nose, eyes, lips, and glasses. He didn’t remember much else, at least not in his sleeping form. Deciding that he was the one who was supposed to do something after all, Rusty took the boy’s hand and pushed it downward. “Do you mind if I do that?” he asked courteously.

The boy moved again and this time he slapped Rusty by accident. Not hard, but enough to count as a surprise.

“Now that was a bit kinky,” Rusty commented.

The dream boy seemed to have a life of his own, and without opening his eyes, he moved and placed his soft lips on Rusty’s mouth. He tasted nice. Rusty smiled and decided that he could allow himself to be molested in his dream. The stranger had a nice, lithe body that pressed to him hard. Rusty could feel the Mighty Thor getting ready for action.

“It must be the gay,” Rusty commented, not stopping to wonder why he was getting hard over a dude kissing him all of a sudden. A dude who wasn’t either dream Jonathan or dream Maddox, obviously.

“Hey, hey!”

Rusty squirmed, annoyed by the intrusion of another voice into his dream. It couldn’t be the boy in glasses, nor the cat boy. “Go away!” he said sharply.

Whoever it was, he was bent on messing up his sex dream and didn’t stop. Rusty opened his eyes abruptly. Maddox was shaking him and grinned when their eyes met.

“What the fuck, dude?”

“Really, dude? I’m saving you!” Maddox replied.

Rusty blinked and rubbed his eyes. “Saving me from what?”

“You were thrashing in your sleep and crying out ‘it must be the gay’,” Maddox explained. His smirk was starting to get a bit annoying.

Rusty pulled a blanket over himself and put on an offended face. “Why did you have to barge into my room like this?”

And stop my dream just when it was getting good.

Maddox laughed and pulled at the blanket. “Seriously, dude? You’re in my room. My bed.”

Rusty looked around. Yeah, something was very wrong. This room was too neat. Just as primly, he threw off the blanket and got to his feet.

He didn’t miss the look of amused and very much fake horror in Maddox’s eyes.

“Why do you have a stiffy, Rusty?” Maddox pointed down between them.

“I don’t have to explain shit,” Rusty declared and walked toward the door as stiffly as his stiffy. He could practically feel his dick swinging to and fro. Then, he remembered that he could do something. He turned, grabbed the blanket and threw it over himself like a cloak. Whatever, as long as he could get out of the room without losing any more face, he’d save his dignity.

“Could it be the gay?” Maddox called out after him.

Rusty flipped the bird at Maddox without a backward look. “Screw you, Maddie.”

He even closed the door without giving Maddox a full-frontal of his stiffy again. Phew, now that had been close or something. Close to what, he had no idea. But what the hell, was he walking in his sleep now?

Or maybe he had just walked into Maddox’s room without thinking twice. Whatever. That could have happened, only that it needed not to happen again. Not because Maddox would ever get mad at him for something like that, but because it would be freaking humiliating to shout in his sleep ‘it must be the gay’ again and be heard by his best friend.

Maddox would just get the wrong idea.

Nah, he wouldn’t. He was a cool guy.

***

Eventually, he had managed to find his own room, only that sleep was elusive now he had just had a weird gay dream. He had seen that boy in glasses for like, what? Half a minute? So why was he walking into his dream like there were no better places for him to be?

Rusty looked around his room. Damn, he was getting bored already. Maybe he could convince those nerds downstairs to do something fun already. Everyone was behaving like the end of the world was near. It was just senior year, end of college, yada-yada.

Wait, Maddox had just entered the picture, and Jonathan must have come with him, too. The least Rusty could do was to continue his research on whatever those two shared. They had gotten engaged at the end of summer break, and that party had been uber lit. Rusty was sure he would remember it forever, despite being the tamest thing he’d ever attended in his life.

So, being engaged meant that they would also get married, and in the world of the living, normal beings, and all that, it was the most serious shit ever. Not even Kane had fast-tracked like that with Louise.

Therefore, the questions still remained. Sure, Jonathan Hamilton was sexiness incarnate despite fighting it with every fiber of his aristocratic self. Of course, Maddox was the man, cool and handsome, and everything, but why, oh, why, couldn’t they live without each other? What was that all about?

Not that he was jealous or anything. Not in that sense of the word. No, Rusty just couldn’t understand it, even if he had heard – and even provoked – Jonathan into saying the words out loud. He could get liking someone. Yeah, that was fine. Rusty himself liked his friends enough, maybe even to the point of giving them all a hand if they found themselves in casts with both arms broken or something.

Hmm, more research was needed. With a little bit of luck, he would find Jonathan all over Maddox when he went downstairs. But first, he needed to check for Dex and Kane. Already, without him provoking them in any way, they had started piling on him, telling him that this year was no joke, and he should study, and all those things that could make him want to kill himself from boredom, Deadpool-style – like in the sense that he couldn’t really die, just take a break from their incessant droning.

Making sure to tiptoe to the top of the stairs so that he could examine the troops from a superior vantage point, he walked over to the rail. Clearly enough, the large living room was populated, and voices could be heard.

“I don’t mind tutoring Rusty.”

That was Jonathan. Wow, Dex and Kane had moved like really fast.

“Babe,” Maddox intervened, “Rusty would have you wrapped around his little finger in no time.”

“It’s worth a try,” Jonathan insisted. “You are all saying that you’ve tried in the past. We are not giving up on him, are we?”

“That’s true,” Dex admitted.

Now that gave Rusty a bit of a sense of triumph. What did Kane have to say about it, though?

“He’s pigheaded and annoying.” Kane would never disappoint him. Rusty felt a grin threatening to go around his head. “If he doesn’t want to do something, he just doesn’t do it.”

“There must be a way,” Jonathan said. “At least for a few of his classes where he might be struggling.”

It was a bit touching that Jonathan didn’t want to give up.

“Should we find a cat boy and ask him to tutor Rusty?” That was still Jonathan.

Rusty thought that he liked the guy more and more. Just in a bro way. What happened in dreams stayed in dreams. There should be a saying for that.

“That’s a difficult call, don’t you think?” Dex asked, always the unbeliever. “I doubt cosplayers are necessarily excellent tutors. And that any of them who are attend Sunny Hill. The probability of finding someone like that is pretty dismal.”

“Maybe we could convince the tutor to dress as a cat boy?” Jonathan offered.

“Rusty would smell foul play right away,” Kane said, sounding pretty much convinced.

He totally would. Yeah, Kane knew him well. But he was starting to take a little pity on the guys’ predicament. He understood they wanted to do him a boatload of good or something, but he just didn’t like studying boring stuff.

Hmm, he needed to think of a solution before they started banging their heads against the walls. So, he nonchalantly began walking down the stairs, making everyone turn their heads to stare at him.

“Yeah, before anyone asks, I heard you,” he said.

“Look, Rusty--” Jonathan began.

Rusty put one hand up. “All right, all right, you’re good people. I get it. I’m just not the kind that can be tutored.”

He expected some denial, but Dex, Maddox, and Kane all looked at him like they totally agreed with him.

“What if,” Jonathan continued, not knowing Rusty as well as the rest, or just being stubborn, “we find someone who can tutor you?”

Rusty considered the question. “Like a contest? A contest for all the tutors on campus?”

Jonathan smiled. Ha, let him believe that he had something there. “I’ll personally offer to triple the fee if anyone gets past the first lesson with you. What do you say?”

“I’m in,” Rusty said brightly. The prospect of driving a few people mad who dared to go up against him sounded pretty swell. It would only be one session with the bravest on campus. It would be fun. “Wait, what if no one manages to do that? What do I get?”

“Nothing,” Jonathan said naturally. “Isn’t it the fact that you want to win enough motivation?”

“True,” Rusty admitted. “Still, Hamilton, you could have thrown me a bone, you know.”

“I’ll make sure to make some treats for you shaped like that,” Jonathan promised.

Rusty shuddered for a moment. He didn’t even have to close his eyes to imagine cool and collected Jonathan enticing him with dog treats while Rusty knelt at his feet. Jeesh, this fucking imagination could be a nightmare at times.

“Did you just think of something dirty involving my boyfriend?” Maddox asked.

Rusty bristled. “Totally not,” he denied. Maddox squinted and stared at him. “No, I didn’t,” he insisted. “Bring on your best. I have some tutors to put in their places.” He cracked his knuckles for show. They had no idea what they were going to be putting those people through.

TBC

And... this is how Rusty's adventures start! I hope you will have fun with this one, because I sure am having fun while writing it. Expect a boatload of silliness and all that means Rusty Parker. A bit of drama, too. If you're here, you must know me by now.
All ready? Hop onboard. And bring on safety equipment. Or at least some safe words. Just not let that be 'winner winner chicken dinner'. You know what I mean
All the best,
Laura.