Feeling Comfortable in My Own Skin - 3. By Leaps and Bounds

I don’t know how long I’d slept before I woke again, but this time it wasn’t to pee. I just had this feeling that something was different. When I began to look around, I quickly discovered that Aiden had his arm draped over my side and his body was pressing firmly against mine. Oh, my God! I almost creamed my underwear right then and there. Now, I wondered how he was going to react when he awoke and found us like this. I was just about to slip out of bed so he wouldn’t know what had happened, when I heard his voice.

“What time is it?” Aiden asked, in a hoarse whisper.

I glanced over at my digital clock.

“It’s 7:12,” I told him.

“It’s Saturday, so let’s just stay in bed for a little longer,” he mumbled back.

‘What?’ I thought to myself. He’s okay with us being in bed together like this? Maybe he doesn’t realize what’s happening or whom he’s with. Shit, he probably thinks he got lucky and picked up some girl last night and scored. Fuck! How will I ever explain this to him? I started to move again.

“Peter, just relax and go back to sleep. Will you?” he basically ordered.

Shit! He does know it’s me and he’s fine with it. Is he really ok with this or is he only piecing part of this puzzle together? Maybe he remembers he was helping me with my studies, but doesn’t realize we actually slept together. Yeah, okay so we only slept and didn’t do anything else, but still. Will he continue to be cool with that when he’s fully conscious? I had no way of knowing and was too scared to think about how he might react when he put everything together. Regardless, we stayed this way for another half hour, until I heard him speak.

“Shit! I’ve got to get up and take a leak. Sorry, I’ll be right back,” he uttered.

He crawled over my body and then stood facing me, grinning broadly. I only noticed his grin when I looked up, because up until that moment I’d been staring directly at his crotch.

“Ummm, morning wood,” he joked. “Happens to all of us,” he added, before he turned around and headed out the door.

Damn! Did he just intentionally show me his erection? I could see the outline of it very clearly through his underwear and could even tell he was circumcised. I can’t fucking believe it. Not only that, but he’s certainly got a healthy piece of meat. Holy shit! Is this really happening? No fucking way. This has to be a dream. This guy can’t be doing this. Either he’s sleep walking or I really am dreaming. About this time, Aiden came back to the room.

I looked up at him expecting to see an angry reaction, now that he had time to put everything together, but he was still grinning. He walked directly toward me and suddenly grabbed his package.

“Back to normal,” he joked, just before he crawled over me again. As he got comfortable, he once again draped his arm over my side.

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked.

I was tongue-tied, as his hand slid up my chest and tweaked my nipple. I moaned, involuntarily and he giggled.

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, while chuckling softly.

Then, he got comfortable and spooned up behind me again. I was just too dumbstruck to speak. This gorgeous hunk of a guy is in my bed, tweaking my nipple and cuddling with me? Come on. I have to be dreaming. There’s no way this can be happening. So many thoughts were racing through my mind, along with many more questions. I don’t know when it happened, but I must have fallen asleep again, wrapped up in Aiden comforting embrace.

“Hey, wake up sleepyhead,” I heard Aiden say a little while later.

I was only partially awake when I felt him kiss me softly on the cheek. Wait, he just did what? About the same time as I was thinking that, Aiden hopped over me again and slapped me on the butt as he did so.

“Come on, it’s after 10:00. Aren’t you hungry?” he wanted to know.

Actually, I hadn’t thought about it.

“Come on. Grab you towel and we’ll go down and take a quick shower and then head over to the dining hall for breakfast.”

Having said that, Aiden pulled the sheet off of me, looked down and laughed.

“See, I told you we all get morning wood,” he teased.

Suddenly it dawned on me. He just learned as much looking at me in this condition, as I had about him.

“Come on. Get out of bed,” he urged. “Am I going to have to strip and wash you when we get down there too?” he asked, as he grabbed my hand and pulled me off the bed.

There I was, standing in front of him in my tented boxer-briefs, when he threw my towel at me.

“By the way, not bad,” he said, while pointing at my erection again.

I’m not sure if I should be embarrassed or proud. This is all happening so quickly, but Aiden seems to be enjoying it. In fact, he seems to be taking particular delight in the fact that it makes me uncomfortable, but he’s doing everything he can to let me know it’s ok. Since I was just standing there, he stepped behind me and started pushing me gently, to get me moving toward the bathroom facilities.

Accepting the inevitability that he wasn’t going to give up or take no for an answer, I did as he wanted. We walked down the hall clad only in our boxer-briefs, carrying our shaving kits and towels. I’ve never been much of an exhibitionist before, but this boy is rapidly changing all of that. He obviously feels very comfortable with his body and sexual identity. Man, do I envy him. No one knows about me, but I guess they’re going to know soon enough.

Well, at least there’s one good thing. No one from my hometown goes here, so besides the other students and maybe a few of the professors, no one else will ever know that I’m gay. That’s because most of the people on campus don’t give a shit about what I’m doing or whom I’m with anyway, so who are they going to tell?

Once we got inside, I trotted over to the urinal to piss and Aiden headed toward the showers. I watched as he put his towel on the bar, took off his underwear and draped his boxer-briefs beside the towel.

“Come on, hurry up,” he urged.

I was only able to stand there gawking at him from the urinal. However, after regaining my senses, I finished up and started toward the showers to join him.

“Get a move on,” he urged, as I made my way there.

I was busy checking him out and I was right! He is circumcised and has about five or six inches just hanging limp. His body is almost completely smooth, except for his pubic patch and a small happy trail, as well as the hair on his arms, legs and head. He’s even more gorgeous and perfect than I’d thought when I first met him, now that I’m able to behold him in his raw, naked beauty.

“Are you going to join me or what?” he teased.

I quickly picked up my speed and walked a bit more briskly. After I threw my towel on the rack too, I took off my underwear and hung my boxer-briefs over the bar beside my towel.

“I take it you’ve never done this before?” he asked.

I looked at him questioningly. I wasn’t quite sure what he was getting at.

“I’ve showered with guys in the locker room before,” I admitted, somewhat hesitantly.

“I don’t mean just getting naked with another guy, but admitting you might like him too,” Aiden said, with equal ease.

Man! Did he just ask what I think he did? Not only is he able to get naked without a care in the world, but he can joke about it too?

“What are you talking about?” I shot back.

“Have you ever admitted to another guy you’re showering with that you’re gay and might be interested in him?” Aiden followed, just as soon as I finished speaking.

Damn, he isn’t going to let this drop, so I did a quick scan of the area to see if anyone else was around, but quickly discovered we were alone.

“Hey, I never said anything about being gay,” I protested.

“You didn’t have to,” he replied.

“What? You mean I’m that obvious?” I asked, while lowering my voice to half its previous volume.

“Don’t worry. Only guys who know what to look for would pick up on it,” he answered.

I guess I was relieved that I wasn’t as easy to spot as some raving queen.

“How could you tell?” I wanted to know.

I asked this because I thought maybe it was something I could correct.

“I followed your eyes,” Aiden said, coyly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I challenged.

“It means your eyes kept glancing at my crotch and you only seemed to notice other guys, not the girls, no matter where we are. You even did it in class,” he explained.

“Damn! Am I really that obvious?’ I wanted to know.

“As I said, only to those who are observant, know what to look for and can read the signs,” Aiden reiterated.

“Does that mean you’re gay too?” I blurted out next.

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” he teased. “Yes, I am. Why else would I have not only slept with you, but also climbed back into your bed, even after going to the toilet this morning? I thought I made that fact perfectly clear when I cuddled with you and later when I kissed you on the cheek.”

“It’s just that no one has figured me out before and I didn’t think anybody knew I was gay,” I confessed.

“That you know of,” Aiden countered.

“Well, I think if they did know they would have been deep in my shit,” I informed him. “There was only one openly gay kid in my school, but there was no way he could hide the fact. He was just so flamboyant, so his time in the public school system was a living hell, because he was constantly being picked on. I’m sure he was very glad when he finally graduated.”

“So you never tried to help him?” Aiden wondered.

“And put myself in the line of fire too?” I gasped. “My mother may have raised a homo, but she didn’t raise a fool. No, I didn’t try to help him, but I never picked on him either.”

“And that didn’t make everyone else wonder about you?” Aiden wanted to know.

“They just thought I was a sensitive pansy, but no one ever called me queer,” I explained. “I guess they didn’t put the two together, because I’ve always refused to do anything mean to anyone. I stopped jumping in to help others though after I attempted to defend this girl in elementary school. When I tried to stop these three boys from picking on her, they did end up leaving her alone, but then they beat the crap out of me for ruining their fun.”

Aiden looked semi-disgusted and his reaction made my heart sink to my feet.

“You’ve got to learn to stand up and defend yourself and others. You’ve also got to learn to be comfortable in your own skin,” he told me. “You are who you are, so you might as well accept it. When you run across those who can’t accept it then you have to know how to protect yourself from them.”

“And how do I do that?” I challenged. “I’m not some he-man bursting with muscles now, am I?”

“Peter, do you remember what I told you earlier, when I stopped that guy who was bothering you?” Aiden began. “When I first came out to my parents, I was in seventh grade. Even though I’d only done the typical exploration with the other kids in my neighborhood, you know, ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ type of stuff, I still knew that seeing girls naked didn’t do anything for me. I also realized that I got all excited and felt really warm inside whenever I saw a naked boy. Once I realized that’s who I am, I told my parents.

“When some of the other guys at school found out, they began to pick on me, so my father enrolled me in karate school. He wanted me to learn to defend myself from the bullies that came after me. In ninth grade, I wasn’t even as big as you are now, but I stood up to a senior football player. There are moves you can make and places on the body you can hit that will bring down any guy, I don’t care how big or strong he is.”

“Maybe that works for you, but I’m not so sure it will work for me,” I protested. “I’ve never been what you might call, coordinated. You’ve already seen how clumsy I can be. Remember? The first day when I dropped my books and all that crap started.” Aiden laughed.

“Look, I’ll work with you and teach you some basic moves,” he offered, “just like I’m helping you with psychology. I have faith that you’ll do just as well with that as you are with your studies and then that will give you even more confidence and you’ll be able to come out. It’s really easier than you think.”

“It better be or else I’ll end up a dead man,” I countered, which caused Aiden to laugh again.

“I see you’re always looking at the glass as being half empty, instead of half full,” he observed. “We’ll work on that too.”

I have to admire his confidence, in that he thinks he can handle any situation or solve any problem. I’m just not so sure about his judgment. Will I be doing the right thing by listening to him or will I be setting myself up for disaster? I guess I want to believe that he knows what he’s talking about, but only time will tell. In the meantime, I’ll give it a try. Why not? If it means we’ll continue to be this close and I’ll be able to spend more time with Aiden, then it will be worth the effort.

“Ummm, what does this make us now?” I asked him next.

“Let’s see. We’re roommates, best friends, tutor-pupil, soon to be trainer-trainee and shall we add boyfriends?” Aiden followed, with a grin.

“You really want to be my, uh, boyfriend?” I repeated, almost whispering the last word.

“Yes,” Aiden responded, also in a whisper, and then burst out laughing. “I hope you get comfortable with this soon, because I want the whole world to know about us.”

Unconsciously, I looked around to see who else might have come in and heard him say that.

“It’s okay, Peter,” he assured me. “It will just be our secret, at least until you’re ready to let others know.”

Damn, this is a lot to have happen in just my first week of college.

I was in a daze for the rest of the day and felt as if I had just fallen into a fairy tale. I hope it’s one that ends ‘happily ever after’ and not one of the others where the evil queen or some monster wins in the end. I wonder if I should be looking for a troll under the bridge?

By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I let Aiden know I wanted to be alone for a while. I just needed a little time to consider everything that’s happened thus far and there’s so much to consider. With Aiden’s help, not only am I learning psychology and now martial arts, but I’m also learning, as Aiden puts it, to start being ‘comfortable in my own skin.’ I mean it helps that no one here really knows us yet and we haven’t made a lot of other friends in the short time we’ve been here. At least this way, anyone we do meet and make friends with from here on will know us as a couple. If they don’t like that we’re together then we don’t need them as friends anyway. Aiden taught me that too.

My biggest concern is how I’ll eventually tell my parents about this. They’ve never said anything negative about gays; at least not in front of me, or that I can remember. The pressure I feel about coming out to them stems from the circumstances surrounding my birth. You see, I have three older sisters, but my parents kept trying until they had a boy because they wanted someone to carry on the family name. Once I was born, they stopped having more children and all of that weight fell upon my shoulders. That’s why I’m so leery about telling them I’m gay. I know when I do I’ll be shattering their dream.

Let’s face it. I’m never going to get married, at least not in the traditional sense to a girl, so I guess that means I won’t be having any children. Well, I imagine I could always donate my sperm or use a surrogate. That would be one way I could have a child and keep from feeling so rotten about telling my parents that I’m gay. Thanks to medical science, and hopefully an understanding partner who wants to raise children too, I may have just thought of a reasonable alternative. I suppose now I’ll have to talk this over with Aiden and see how he feels about the idea of having kids.

Doing that, however, is way down on my current list of priorities. There are much more immediate needs that have to be addressed first, beginning with how our dorm room is going to be arranged. Aiden is pushing me to make a decision.

“Peter, I’m not sure how you feel about this, but I’d love to be able to sleep beside you every night and cuddle,” Aiden began. “The problem is, the beds are so small that it doesn’t allow for cuddling AND getting a good night’s rest. What would you say about putting our two beds together and making it into sort of a double bed?”

I looked at Aiden as I considered his suggestion.

“You know, there are people going by all the time and they can see in here when we’re coming in and out of the room,” I replied. “If they see our beds together then they’re, uh, going to know. Right?”

“Yes, and your point is?” Aiden countered, sarcastically.

“Do we really want everyone to know what we’re doing?” I finished.

“Peter, let’s be honest here,” Aiden began. “Do you see us holding hands, touching, kissing and doing other things like that?”

“Yeah, in our room,” I replied.

“But only in the room?” Aiden challenged.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I mean, I’d like to do it at other times too. I really would, but…”

“Let me finish that sentence for you,” Aiden interrupted. “But who the hell cares what anyone else thinks about what we do.”

I could see Aiden felt very strongly about this, even if I still wasn’t sure. Yes, I was feeling better about being gay, but to flaunt what we were doing?

“I know you’re cool with who you are, but I’m still new at this,” I confessed. “I’m willing to give it a try, but just don’t make fun of me if I get uptight about things some times. Just remember I’m trying. I really am. It’s just this isn’t as easy for me as it is for you. You’ve been building up to doing something like this a lot longer than I have. Fuck! Until you practically forced me to admit it, I didn’t think anyone else had a clue that I was gay.”

“Okay, I’ll be patient and take baby steps with our relationship,” Aiden agreed. “You’re right. I have had a lot more time to discover who I am and become comfortable with it. I also have very supportive and loving parents who are patient with me, so I’ll try not to push you into anything until you’re ready. So it’s up to you then. Do you want to do this or not?”

I thought about it again.

“If I agree to do this, then you’ll cuddle with me every night?” I asked.

“Every night – all night long,” he stated, with a grin.

“And what else?”

I wanted to know his full intentions, but I’ve never asked him this before.

“I’ll kiss and hug you, if you’re willing,” Aiden confirmed.

“What else?” I demanded.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to push you into having sex,” he offered, reassuringly. “I don’t want to complicate things, since we’re already on somewhat shaky ground here as it is. I want us to be friends and comfortable with each other first, but more than that, I want our relationship to be built on friendship, love and trust. Is that ok with you?”

“It sounds perfect,” I agreed. “Ok. I’ll try it for a while and then decide if I want to change things back or keep it the way it is. Are you alright with that?”

“Sweetie, I’ll do whatever you want,” Aiden agreed. “I told you I’ll be patient and not force you into anything until you’re ready. I’m fine with what you’ve suggested, as long as you allow me to hold, kiss and cuddle with you in bed.”

“You’re totally sure you’re alright with this?” I asked.

I just had this nagging doubt that he wanted more and I was ruining his plans.

“Did you ever read Aesop’s Fables in school?” he asked, in response.

I had no idea what this had to do with anything, but I answered anyway.

“Yes, we read some of his stuff,” I confirmed.

“Did you ever read ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’?” he asked next, and I nodded.

I now had a pretty good idea where he was going with this.

“Well, we’re both going to be tortoises in our relationship,” he stated, while looking very serious. “We’ll go very slowly and I’ll wait until you’re ready before I speed up.”

I really appreciated his approach, so I threw my arms around his neck, squeezed him hard and planted my lips over his. When we broke the kiss, he looked surprised.

“That was a little faster than I was planning to go, but I’ll let you set the pace,” Aiden teased. “Drivers start your engines.”

After that, we slid the beds together and made one much larger bed out of it. The problem was – the bedding. We only had sheets and blankets that fit them as twin beds.

“Not a problem,” Aiden assured me. “We can spend tonight using what we’ve got, but tomorrow we’ll take my father’s credit card and buy whatever items we need. We’ll get sheets and blankets to fit a queen-size bed, because I think that will solve our problem. If it doesn’t, then we’ll trade them in for a king-size set.”

This sounded like a good plan to me, so I agreed.

It turned out to be the best night I can ever remember spending anywhere. Once we got in bed, Aiden scooted over beside me and we started making out. I’ve never kissed with an open mouth before, except for what I’ve done with Aiden so far. Up until I met him, I’ve only kissed female relatives and you don’t kiss your mom, aunt or sister with an open mouth. Yuck! Anyway, Aiden taught me how to use my tongue when kissing and it made the kiss so much better and very special. I guess if you’d told me before tonight that I was going to end up kissing him in this fashion I’d probably have said, ‘Ewww. Gross!’ However, now it seems like the most beautiful and romantic thing two people can share with each other.

Yeah, yeah, I know. If you’ve ever taken a health or biology class then you’ll know that you’re passing untold numbers of germs back and forth when kissing in this manner, but what the hell? We’ll just use Listerine first and screw the germs that survive.

During the time we were kissing, and even afterward, Aiden held me. His arms were strong and reassuring, so I felt as if nothing bad could ever happen. I just loved the feeling of lying in his embrace and would be willing to stay in his arms forever, if I could.

When we finally decided to go to sleep, we stripped down to our underwear and I got under my bedding, while Aiden got under his. I then backed up to where the two beds joined and Aiden slid over so he was right up behind me. I felt his arm as it slid under my bedding and snaked over my side, until it finally came to rest with his elbow on my navel and his hand touching my shoulder. Damn! Could it possibly get any better than this?