Flux - 4. Chapter 4

June 6, 2002

Stanford University, CA

“Sup?” Tony asked as I walked into our room. He was sitting at his desk studying, wearing just a T-shirt and boxers.

“Hey,” I said, and put down the empty boxes I had in my hands. “I’m moving back to Escorial.”

“Bummer,” Tony said. “Been good having you around.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Been good being around.”

“This mean you and Wade worked things out?”

“Kind of,” I said, even as I started packing stuff up. “We’re not together, but we’re friends.”

“You fucked him,” he said with his sexy leer.

“Damn straight,” I said, winking at him.

“How’s that going to be, being at Escorial with Will there?”

“I had a long talk with him last night,” I said nervously. “We worked things out.”

“Does he still hate me?”

“Dude, I told Will I wasn’t going to talk about you, and I don’t want to talk to you about him either,” I said.

“So how come he can forgive you for us fucking, but he can still hate me?” Tony was pretty good at keeping his emotions to himself, and didn’t say much about shit like that, but it had been obvious from the beginning that his rift with Will was like an open wound for him.

“Because I’m basically his brother, and he has to do it for family,” I said. “Dude, I’m sorry.”

“Whatever,” he said, and went back to studying. When I was pretty much done packing things up, he helped me haul it all down to the GMC.

“See you ’round,” he said casually.

“Tony,” I said, stopping him. “Thanks for everything. You really helped me out through a pretty tough time.”

He grinned. “It’s all good.” Then he sauntered off, looking like the sexy beast that he was.

I opened the door of the GMC and paused, glancing at the dorms and the people around them. I got in the GMC and shut the door, knowing that I was shutting the door not only on the dorms, but on this life. I drove back to Escorial in an introspective mood. These had been mostly good times here at Stanford, and I’d changed a lot as a person. I couldn’t blame the university for the totally shit things that had happened in my life, especially losing Robbie, but I worried that I’d link Stanford forever with Robbie’s death, and with Wade. Time would tell if the link to Wade would be a positive or not.

I got back and parked the GMC by the garage. I was about to unload it when Pedro and another one of the staff members came walking up with a dolly. Pedro was this totally hot Latino who technically worked as a driver here, but he’d been basically monopolized by Will, so everyone thought of him as Will’s personal valet. “We got this for you,” Pedro said.

“I can carry this shit,” I objected. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I have my orders,” Pedro said with a smile, referring to Will. “Professor Crampton asked you to see him when you got back. He is in his study.”

“Alright,” I agreed. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure,” he said, flirting a bit. I raised my eyebrow suggestively to let him know that I’d noticed his attention, and then strolled through the familiar halls to JP’s study. The doors were open, probably because he was expecting me.

“You wanted to see me?” I asked.

“Ah Matthew,” he said, and got up to greet me. He gave me a hug, a nice one, and I appreciated that because JP was stunted with people he didn’t like, so by putting himself into the embrace, it was his way of telling me he still loved me. He directed me to have a seat in one of the chairs in his sitting area, and closed the doors before joining me. “I wanted to talk to you about your future plans.”

“You worried that my move here is permanent?” I joked.

“I would love it if you came to live here with us,” he said, then seemed to switch gears as he got back to the topic at hand. “I try not to pry into the lives of others, but I am curious about what you are going to do, such that it has overwhelmed my normal good manners.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you asking me about this stuff,” I said. “This deal with the University of Chicago screws up my original plan.”

“What are your other options?”

“Stef wants me to come to work for him, but he thinks it would be a good idea for me to get some experience at other places first,” I said. I was worried that Stef was just using that as a way to blow me off, but I decided that he wasn’t.

“You’ve worked with him, off and on, during your time here at Stanford,” JP observed, as evidence that Stef genuinely wanted me around. “I think he merely wants you to have another perspective before he claims your talents.”

“That makes sense,” I agreed. “We talked about me working toward my CFA designation, doing a master’s degree along with it.”

“That is probably good training for working in their business,” JP said.

“I’ve got a few options, but the two best ones, until I heard from Chicago, were in New York and Boston. Stef helped me line up opportunities to work part time in both cities. If I lived in New York, I could work on my CFA through a program at New York University, and in Boston, I could do it at Boston College.”

“And now you have an opportunity to do that in Chicago as well,” he concluded.

“I do,” I said. “I’d pretty much decided on Boston until this morning, and now I’m confused again.”

“Going to the University of Chicago is an exceptional opportunity,” he said.

“How much money did Stef have to give them to let me in, or was it you that pulled strings?” I asked. I wasn’t stupid; this was all too convenient, and while I was grateful, I wanted him to know that I figured it out.

“You are suggesting that a few well-placed phone calls are inappropriate?” he asked, which surprised me, because I figured he’d try to worm his way out of it.

“No, I just wanted to know who to thank,” I said.

“No thanks are required,” he said.

“You think I should go to Chicago?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I am not going to tell you what to do. This is a big decision, one that is entirely yours.”

“I’m not asking for orders, just your opinion,” I said.

“Perhaps if you talked through your pros and cons with me, I could give you some guidance,” he suggested.

“Chicago offers me an incredible opportunity. No matter what happens, having a finance degree from the University of Chicago is stellar, and combined with Stanford, it cements my resume,” I said. He nodded. “Boston College is a good school too, but not as good as Chicago.”

“Those would seem to be accurate assessments,” he noted.

“But Wade is going to be in Boston,” I said.

“I do not mean to pry, but you seem to have reconciled with both Wade and Will last night. Is that reconciliation with Wade expansive enough for you to move to Boston with him?”

“No,” I said sadly. “We basically are really good friends, with benefits.” I raised my eyebrows when I said those last two words, making him chuckle.

“Then you would not really be moving to Boston with Wade,” he noted.

He was dancing around on this, and it was starting to frustrate me. “How is that different?”

“Moving with him involves picking a place to live together, one that works for both your lifestyles, and setting up your lives such that they revolve around each other,” he said. “As it stands now, you’d both be moving to Boston, but doing it largely each on your own.”

JP and Wade were very tight, so if he was having this conversation with me, it was largely because he was worried about this issue. And that meant that Wade was worried about it too. “Has Wade talked to you about this?”

He frowned. “I am not going to share what Wade tells me, just as I won’t share what you tell me.”

“Alright,” I said. “But I feel like you have something to say to me and you’re holding back. I’m suggesting that if you just told me what was on your mind, it would take a lot less time, and we could both go do other things.”

“At this point in the semester, that is probably a good thing for both of us,” he said, while he smiled, then he got serious. “I think that if you go to Boston, it will be to chase after Wade. Wade will know that, and I think he will feel very uncomfortable about it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said honestly. I saw his frustration, so I changed things around. “Let me ask you this. If you were going to Boston for school, and a dude you’d just broken up with was going there too, what would you think?”

“I am not Wade,” he objected.

“That’s not what I asked you,” I said.

“I would feel as if he were making decisions based on my relationship with him, which was tenuous at best. That would bother me, and I would assume some level of responsibility for that decision,” he said. “I would probably try to discourage him from making the move.”

“And if he still did it?”

“I think I would try to discourage him more actively,” he said. And then I got his message. If Wade thought I was going to Boston to chase after him, he would completely shut down on me, and block me from having anything to do with him. That was completely in character with him, and with JP. What he was telling me was that if I ever wanted to have a chance to have a relationship with Wade in the future, I should go to Chicago, or at least not to Boston.

I stood up. “Thanks JP. I haven’t made my decision yet, but you helped me see things much more clearly.” Even though I knew what I had to do, that conflicted with what I wanted to do, and I was willing to see what the next few days with Wade turned out like before I announced for Chicago.

“Excellent,” he said. I left his study, not a little disturbed, and headed toward the room Wade and I used to share. I’d vacated that one, so it only made sense that I’d move back in there.

I saw Will talking to a guy outside the Great Hall. Holy shit, was this guy attractive! He was tall, with dark hair and bulging muscles. He had a day or two of beard growth, but it just made him look sexy and masculine. It was hard to peg his exact age, but he looked like he was under thirty. “Hey!” I said to Will, and put my left arm around him, then held out my right hand to this other guy. “Matt Carrswold.”

“Ben Carter,” he said, as he gripped my hand firmly.

“We’ll let you get back to work,” Will said, and led me off toward his room.

“Dude, who the fuck was that?” I asked him.

“He’s working on the wood in the Great Hall.”

“He can work on my wood anytime,” I joked.

Will rolled his eyes. “Of all the people who live here, who’s the scariest?”

“The scariest?” I asked, confused.

“Who would you be most afraid to have pissed off at you?”

I thought about that, and my initial instinct was to say JP, since he was so fucking smart, but he was also restrained, so even if he was mad at me, he wouldn’t go postal. I worked my way through the other people there, and came to a conclusion: “Your father.”

“Good answer,” Will said, laughing. “Dad’s spending the day with Ben on Saturday.”

I laughed with him. “Alright. Ben is off limits.”

“Look how well you learn,” he joked, making fun of me. He led me down to the room that was next to Wade’s. “You’re over here.”

“You moved me?”

“Stef’s been going through and re-doing all the rooms,” he said. “Your old room is under construction, and this one is done.” He opened the door to a room that was beautiful, redecorated with very modern touches. I thought of the room Wade had, which was more traditional. This one was more like Will’s.

“This is awesome. Thanks!” It was also really nice of him to put me near Wade, but I didn’t comment on that. Pedro was there with the other guy, stacking the boxes around.

“Time to get to work,” Will said. He dismissed the other staff member, but made Pedro stick around and help us out. I focused on the task at hand, but also spent some time watching Will and Pedro. It was pretty obvious to me that there was more to their relationship than just an employer-employee deal.

Pedro finally left us, and it was just Will and I putting my stuff away. “You must have been spending some time with Wade,” I said. “You’re almost as good at organizing shit as he is.”

“No one is that good. I figured we’d better do a good job in case he does an inspection tour,” he joked.

I laughed. “True that.”

“I’m putting your socks in this drawer. You can take care of putting your underwear away.”

“You know you want to,” I said.

“As if,” he responded. I was having a really good time with him, which was cool and freaky at the same time.

“So is Pedro off-limits too?” I asked. He frowned at me. “Dude, I don’t want to hurt you again, but you have to let me know who’s not available.”

“Pedro and Zach,” he said. “They’re off-limits.”

“So Pedro is the dude that takes care of you when Zach’s not around?”

“Uh, not exactly,” he said nervously.

I shrugged. “I’m not trying to get all into your shit, but nothing you say is going to shock me.”

“Pedro’s a good dude,” he said. “He’s mostly straight, but he’ll do a hot dude if he’s horny.”

“You’re a hot dude,” I said.

“I am,” he agreed, cracking me up, and then focused briefly on sorting out some of my socks. “Zach’s into, uh… never mind.”

“Threesomes?” I asked. “Dude, I know all about those.”

“No doubt,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Zach’s into felching.”

I nodded. “I knew a couple of guys at Stanford who were into that.” I didn’t tell him that one guy just about drove Tony and me crazy to get him off with it.

“I mean, it’s not really my thing, but I’m into it because he is,” Will said. I was amazed at how much he was opening up to me.

“That’s cool. Good for you, for doing that for the guy you’re with,” I said. “The only thing is, sometimes guys that are into that aren’t really all that safe.”

“Yeah, and that’s kind of an issue for me. But since Zach and I aren’t barebacking, it’s not a problem.”

I worked that around in my mind. “So Pedro fucks you, and then Zach sucks his load out of your ass?”

“Pretty much,” he said, and was uncomfortable since I’d been so blunt about it.

“Dude, that must feel fucking incredible, to have him do that to your ass,” I said.

He smiled shyly. “It’s pretty hot.”

“So there’s really not a problem?”

“No, other than I think its kind of gross,” he said. Only he didn’t, he just wanted someone to validate him.

“That’s bullshit,” I said. “Guys are pretty gross, when you get down to it. If it makes him happy, and you think it’s fun, and you’re safe, what’s the problem?”

“I guess there isn’t one,” he said.

“Dude, I fucked up so bad last night.”

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“I should have fucked you when I had the chance,” I said. “Probably missed one of the best times I could have had.”

“Probably,” he said, grinning at me. “But you made the right decision.”

“I know,” I said. “In the meantime, I have some jack-off fantasies.”

He blushed, which was really cute. “I think you’re good,” he pronounced, looking at my closet and how nicely things were laid out.

I gave him a nice kiss. “I think I will be.”

June 7, 2002

Escorial, CA

I was going to walk into my room, but instead I went straight to Wade’s. Then again, it’s not like it was a big deal, since it was right next door. I knocked on the door, and then waited for him to say ‘come in’. I walked in to find him lying on his stomach in his bed, while Brad sat about five feet away from him in a chair. I felt my anger rising, since Brad and Wade had fucked around a while back, and that had damn near ruined our relationship. I barely managed to keep my brows from furrowing when I saw them together.

“Hey,” Wade said cheerfully. “How was your final?”

“I think I did pretty good,” I said, trying hard to be as cheerful as he was.

“I’ll see you guys later on,” Brad said. He walked by me and patted me on the shoulder, which just about set me free, since it was like he came in here to hit on my boyfriend, and then when he was busted, he gave me a patronizing pat on the back. I watched him leave, even as I reminded myself that Wade wasn’t my boyfriend, then turned back to see Wade staring at me. Fuck.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Doing great,” I said, forcing my jealousy out of my head, no mean feat. “Thanks to your help and motivation, I think I made it through that lit class without totally fucking up my GPA.

“That’s great!” he said. His enthusiasm seemed fake, like this was some big act to hide the fact that he and Brad were about to fuck.

“I was going to go take a shower, then start studying for the next final,” I said.

“There’s a party tonight I was thinking of going to,” he said.

“Seriously?” I asked him. Wade never partied during finals.

He shrugged. “I’m almost out of here, I’m already admitted to law school, so I figure what the fuck.”

“Where’s it at?”

“The Kappas are throwing it,” he said. Those girls were total snobs, and most of them didn’t like me.

“Cool. Well have fun. I’m going to shower, and then study some more.” I walked out of his room and went into mine, tossing my book bag down in a pretty violent way. I stripped off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, then went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Stef had redone this as well, and it matched the showers he’d put in at their house in Claremont. It was a steam shower, with all these cool panels that shot water out from the sides, and a nice rain shower head above me. I messed around with the aromatherapy, finding a scent I liked, then relaxed and let the water soothe my mind.

Was Wade trying to test me with this shit? Was Brad in there just to annoy me, and was Wade going to this party just to see if I’d freak out? I could totally see him doing that, pushing at me like that to see if I really could handle a relationship with him based only on friendship. That really pissed me off, that he would stoop to manipulate me, but the water and aroma worked their magic, helping me get to the point where I could shrug it off.

Then I internally bitch slapped myself. Wade and I had made love again last night, and this morning. He’d been totally into it. And based on our deal, there was nothing to prevent him from going to a party, or even from fucking Brad, although after all the attitude I got from him with that Will-Tony deal, I had grounds to have some serious issues with Brad. Then I calmed down again, reminding myself that this was exactly the kind of shit that would piss Wade off.

The shower door opened, scaring the shit out of me. I jumped up and actually threw the soap in the air. “Fuck!” I yelled, trying to get my pulse to go down.

Wade laughed. “Sorry. If you don’t want company, I can leave.”

“Get your ass in here,” I said, playfully at first, but then I saw his expression, and knew what he was in the mood for. I turned off the water, but the shower held the heat in, keeping it warm, then I tackled him down onto the wet floor.

“What the fuck,” he said, but he knew what I was doing. I pinned him down on his stomach, on the tile, holding his arm up behind his back. I saw the soap next to me and grabbed it, then started getting my cock really soapy. He struggled, trying to get away, but I had him pinned, and he didn’t really want to get away. I soaped up his hole. “Knock it off!”

He said that, but that was bullshit. He knew the safe word, so if he really wanted me to stop, he’d say it. My mind flashed back to Christmas, the one and only time he’d used it on me, but I managed to move beyond that. “I’m gonna fuck you, fuck you hard,” I snarled in his ear.

“No!” he shouted.

“Shut the fuck up. You know you want it,” I said, even as I lined my cock up and gently pushed into his hole. “Yeah, that’s what you want.”

“Ah!” he shouted, but an excited shout. I lay on top of him, gnawing on his ears and his neck, not enough to hurt or leave a mark, but enough to let him know I was in charge, while I just pounded away at his sweet ass.

I stopped, pulled out, and grabbed his hip, pulling him up into a kneeling position, and then slammed my dick back into him again. I fucked him for as long as I could, and then pulled out again. “Roll over!”

He did what I said, and lay on his back, with his dick standing straight up and throbbing. I put some soap on it, then on my hole, and knelt over him. I took him slowly, savoring each second of his movement, until I had him fully in me. I sat on his pelvis, forcing him to really work to thrust up into me, making him lift my entire weight if he wanted to gain any friction in my ass. I knew Wade so well, and he loved this. His face was bright red, and he was breathing heavily, signs that he was about to blow. I stroked my cock two or three times, but I was so fired up, that was all it took. I blasted my load all over him, watching as it landed on his chest and his abdomen. I rode the orgasm for a long time, and feeling him straining to thrust his cock into me deeper just made me go on that much longer.

When I was done, I scooped up glops of my cum and made him eat it, or smeared it on his face, while I lifted up enough to let him really fuck me. “Ahhhh!” he shouted, probably loud enough for Will to hear, and then he came, blasting on and on, shooting his load inside me. When he was done, I stood up and smiled down at him, then turned the water on so it sprayed all over him. “Fuck!” he said, and jumped up, while I couldn’t stop laughing.

“You deserved it for scaring the shit out of me,” I said.

“I’m sorry. Next time I won’t bother you,” he said, pretending to be petulant.

I pulled him to me, hugging him, and kissed him. “Interrupt me whenever you want.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. We kissed again, and then he got nervous. Only my conversation with JP had helped me figure him out. He loved me, and he really loved having sex with me, because I knew just which buttons to push to really set him off. At the same time, he didn’t want to lead me on, and he didn’t want to be my partner.

I forced myself to not let that upset me. That opportunity, to be partners, had passed for now. There was no way I was going to resurrect it between now and when he moved to Boston, and if I moved with him, it would just ruin us. I had to be realistic. “If you want to go to that party you can,” I said, “but if not, I was thinking we could go out and grab a drink.”

“Just the two of us?” he asked, like that was the most boring thing we could do.

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about my plans for this fall, and I wanted to run them by you,” I said.

“You don’t need my approval,” he said hastily, which told me I was reading him pretty damn well.

“I don’t want your approval, I want your opinion. But hey, I don’t want to fuck up your big night. We can talk later.” I was forcing myself to be casual, to play him like I would play a dude I was hitting on who thought he was hot shit.

“I’ll go on one condition,” he said. “There has to be food involved.”

“Get dressed,” I said, and slapped his ass. He gave me a dirty look, but I saw his smile in the mirror as he walked out of the bathroom.

I took him to this pub on the El Camino, hoping that this went better than our conversation last year in the diner. That’s when we’d pretty much ended as a couple. We made small talk, mostly about our finals, until we got there. We ordered beers and some appetizers, and pretended to relax. “So tell me about your plans.”

“Well, I have three options for grad school, and each one comes with a pretty cool internship.”

“Alright,” he said, to urge me on.

“The first is in New York, where I can go to New York University,” I said. “The advantage to that is that I’m close to you, I can stay at the condo in Tribeca, and I have friends there. Carullo still lives there.” I saw Wade frown briefly at that, and it made me smile to see that he was still a little jealous of me. John Carullo had been a football player at Stanford, and he’d been a good friend and a great fuck. Wade knew that if I was around Carullo, there was a decent chance my relationship with John could become more serious.

“I can see the benefits,” he allowed.

“The second choice is Boston,” I said. His eye twitched a bit, and my heart sank, since that was the only sign from him I’d probably get that told me he didn’t want me to be there. “I could go to Boston College, and I’d be around you. I mean, I’d get my own apartment, but I think it would bug you to have me around.”

“Don’t make this decision based on me,” he snapped, being uncharacteristically bitchy.

“Wade, knock it off,” I said firmly. “Even if we’re not partners, you’re really important to me. Is it so wrong for me to want to be around you?”

“No,” he said, “but I don’t want you to short-circuit your own career just so you can hang out with me.”

“You’re saying that I’d bug the shit out of you if I was around all the time,” I said, teasing him.

“That’s not it at all,” he objected, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t the whole story, but it was part of it, and we both knew it.

“The third option is the best option,” I said. “I can go to the University of Chicago, and work in the Loop.”

“So you’re going to do that?”

“What’s it worth to you to actually get me to go to Chicago instead of Boston?” I asked, teasing him about it.

“It’s your decision,” he said grumpily.

“Yeah, but it seems there should be some sort of bribe to keep me out of your hair,” I said.

He caught my playful mood. “Alright, what’s the price so I don’t have to put up with your sorry ass?”

“You come visit me once every semester, and I get to visit you once.”

“What if our situations change?” he said. “You could meet someone, I could meet someone…”

“Then we’ll still have to visit, we just won’t fuck,” I said, winking at him. He chuckled, then smiled, then really laughed. He wasn’t laughing at my stupid line, he was laughing because he was happy that he’d worked this out, that he’d gotten me to move to a different city. It was really hard not to let that disappoint me.

He held out his hand, and I shook it. “Deal,” he said.

“You could have bargained for less time,” I said. He made to say something but I stopped him. “Too late now!”

“Shit,” he said, pretending to be annoyed at driving such a bad bargain. “How was I supposed to know you’d do the smart thing?”

“I know, right?” I joked. “Dude, can you imagine how pissed off Stef would be, after he bugged those poor bastards in admissions until they let me in, if I decided not to go?”

“How do you know he did that?” I just stared at him. “Alright, he probably did.”

“Probably? It’s a given,” I said.

He nodded, and then got serious. “I know you’re doing this for me too. To give me some space.” I was going to argue, but I decided to say nothing. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. And even though I’d just had amazing sex with him, and even though we were communicating really well, I couldn’t help but think that I was watching him slip away from me forever.