Chapter 4: Tight Confessions
The door clicked shut, sealing Harrison into the new silence. He stared at it for a long moment, the ghost of Marcus’s polished, cutting voice still hanging in the air. Then he heard the heavy, slow footsteps on the linoleum outside. They paused. The door opened again, and Gus filled the frame, his face pale beneath his beard, his eyes on the floor.
“Hey,” he mumbled, shuffling in and closing the door softly behind him. He leaned against it, as if needing the support.
“Hey,” Harrison said. He stayed perched on the edge of his bare mattress, unsure of what to do with his hands. He felt a sudden, wild urge to hug this massive, miserable boy. “You okay?”
Gus let out a long, slow breath. It shuddered. “Yeah.No. I’m… I’m really sorry about my dad.”
“Dude, don’t apologize for him.” Harrison’s own voice sounded sharper than he intended. “He was being a real asshole. To you, mostly.”
“He doesn’t mean it like that,” Gus said automatically, the defense hollow and rehearsed. He pushed off the door and began mechanically unpacking a box of sheets, his big hands moving with a rough efficiency. “He just… he has a specific idea of how things should be. How bottoms should be. He loves me, in his way. He wants what’s best for me.”
“By telling you you should dress more like a whore?” The words were out before Harrison could stop them. He winced. “Shit, sorry. That was harsh.”
But Gus just shook his head, a sad, tiny smile touching his lips. “It’s okay. It’s what he thinks. A ‘real bottom,’ like he said. Proud of his body. Available. He thinks my clothes are… a rejection of my nature.” He unfolded a plain grey sheet, holding it up like a flag of surrender. “He’s been on me about it since I hit puberty. Wanted me in thongs and crop tops and shit. Wants me to ‘show off what God gave me.’”
Harrison listened, the pieces clicking into a grim picture. “You don’t like it.”
“I hate it,” Gus confessed, the words a quiet, fervent rush. He balled the sheet up, clutching it to his chest. “I hate feeling like I’m on display. Like every Top is just… staring at me, banging me with their eyes, thinking about how they’d fuck me. I know it’s supposed to be a compliment. I know that’s how it’s supposed to work. Bottoms are supposed to love the attention.” He finally looked at Harrison, his blue eyes swimming with a confusion so deep it was painful to see. “But it just makes me feel gross. And exposed. And… scared.”
A cold, understanding trickle started in Harrison’s mind. This wasn’t just shyness. This was something fundamental. A bottom who didn’t like Tops looking at him? It was like a fish who didn’t like water. Unheard of. Or… not unheard of. There was a word for it. A word his liberal, open-minded dads had mentioned in their talks about sexuality and acceptance, usually with a roll of their eyes at the world’s backwardness.
Lesbian.
The thought landed with the subtlety of a thunderclap. Harrison stared at Gus’s handsome, agonized face. A lesbian. A bottom who only liked other bottoms. Was that it? It would explain everything—the modesty, the discomfort, the tension with his traditionalist Top father.
“So you’ve never…” Harrison ventured carefully, tiptoeing around the revelation blooming in his head. “I mean, with a Top. Besides your dad, obviously.”
Gus’s blush returned, a crimson tide from his neck to his forehead.“No. Never. I’m… I’m a virgin. For real.” He said it like a confession of a crime. “Dad says I’m being prudish. That I just need to ‘get broken in’ by a ‘good, strong Top’ and I’ll love it. But I don’t… I don’t want to just be a whore for some random guy. I want it to mean something. With the right Top. Someone who…” He trailed off, helpless.
“Hey, no judgment here,” Harrison said swiftly, holding up his hands. His heart was pounding. “Seriously. My dads taught me that shit is personal. You do what feels right for you.” He looked down at his own body, at the blue singlet stretched obscenely over his gut, the thong strap cutting into his hips. He felt suddenly, acutely obscene. Like he was rubbing Gus’s face in everything that made him uncomfortable. “Shit, man. Do you… want me to put on some real clothes?I can change. This is probably a lot.”
“What? No!” Gus’s protest was immediate, almost vehement. “God, no, Harrison. Don’t change on my account. I don’t have a problem with… with slutty bottoms. Or with you dressing how you want. You should! You look… you look really good in that. It suits you. You wear it with confidence. That’s what my dad doesn’t get. It’s not about the clothes. It’s about how you feel in them.” He swallowed. “And you look amazing.”
The compliment, so earnest and specific, sent a warm, confusing jolt through Harrison. Was Gus just being nice? Or was there something else there? Was this a lesbian complimenting another bottom’s slutty outfit… and if so, what did that mean? Harrison’s brain spun.
“Thanks,” he said, a little breathlessly. “So, um… your family. You have a big one, right?”
Gus seemed grateful for the shift. He started making his bed as he talked, the mundane task loosening his tongue. “Yeah. Really big. My dad—Marcus—he believes in big families. ‘Fruitful and multiplying,’ all that. Eli, my bottom dad, he’s… he’s pregnant right now, obviously. That’ll be number eight.”
“Eight!” Harrison whistled.“Yep. Four brothers still at home. Two Tops, two bottoms. Then my older brother, Micah, he’s a Top, he’s already married with two kids of his own.” Gus smoothed a blanket, his expression softening. “Eli’s great, though. Really gentle. He does his best to buffer between us kids and Dad. He’s the one who taught me to cook, actually. Lets me hide in the kitchen with him.”
“He seemed sweet,” Harrison offered.
“He is. He just… he lives in that world, you know? Dad’s world. He makes it work for him.” Gus finished with his bed and sat on it, the frame groaning under his weight. “What about yours? Seems like it’s just you.”
Harrison lay back on his own mattress, folding his hands over his belly. “Yeah. Just me. Walt and Barry tried for more, but it just never happened. They dote on me like crazy, as you saw. Walt’s a big softie, even when he’s being all protective. And Barry’s just… joy personified. Our house is always loud and full of food and bad music.” He grinned at the ceiling. “They’re the best.”
“They seem like it,” Gus said, and the envy in his voice was soft, unresentful.
A comfortable quiet settled between them, softer than before. It was Harrison who broke it, rolling over to open one of his final boxes. “Well, if we’re gonna be living in this shoebox, we gotta personalize it.” He pulled out a carefully bundled stack of comics, each bagged and boarded.
“No way,” Gus said, his eyes lighting up for the first time since he’d returned. “You read Frontline?”
Harrison froze, holding a mint-condition issue of Frontline #210. “You’re into the Squad?”
“Are you kidding? Since I was ten!” Gus scrambled off his bed and over to his own boxes, digging frantically until he pulled out a worn trade paperback of The Outcast Squad: First Strike. “This was my bible. I read it under the covers with a flashlight.”
Harrison laughed, the last of the tension evaporating in a shared geekery. “Okay, favorite character. Go.”
“Easy. Vex.”
Harrison blinked. Vex was a powerhouse, a bottom whose mutant ability was to generate devastating kinetic forcefields. He was also, in every depiction, massively fat, hairy, and inevitably drawn in skin-tight uniforms that showed every glorious curve.“Vex? Seriously? He’s awesome, but such a… bottom’s bottom.”
Gus’s cheeks went pink again, but he held his ground. “He’s the strongest one on the team. He protects everyone. And his storyline about accepting his body, about it being the source of his strength and not something to hide… it meant a lot to me.” He was talking too fast, and he knew it. He shrugged, trying to sound casual. “Plus, you know, he’s drawn really well. He’s… attractive.”
There it was again. A bottom finding another bottom attractive. Harrison’s hypothesis solidified into near-certainty. He decided to test the waters.
“Cool. Mine’s Titan.” He held up an issue where the muscled, busty Top hero was front and center, his gigantic pecs straining against a star-spangled bra, his abs like a cobbled road. “For… obvious reasons. Dude’s a fucking snack.”
He watched Gus closely. Gus glanced at the cover, and his reaction was polite, appreciative even, but devoid of the heat that would flash in Harrison’s own eyes—or in Chase’s—when looking at a prime Top. There was none of the hungry fascination Harrison himself felt when he looked at Gus’s stack of comics featuring Vex.
“Yeah, he’s cool,” Gus said agreeably, his eyes already drifting back to his own trade paperback, his thumb tracing the embossed image of Vex’s formidable belly. “Really iconic design.”
The conversation flowed easily after that, a river finding its bed. They talked story arcs, argued about movie adaptations, debated which writer understood the characters best. They stacked their comics together on a shared shelf, a fusion of their tastes. Harrison learned that Gus wanted to be an engineer, that he found solace in the clear, solvable problems of mechanics and physics. Gus learned that Harrison was a communications major, that he loved the messy, unpredictable puzzle of people.
As the afternoon light faded into evening, painting their room in deep oranges and long shadows, Harrison watched his roommate laugh at a stupid joke, his whole face transforming, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners. The protective warmth in Harrison’s chest grew, mixed now with a dawning, terrifying, and thrilling understanding.
He was attracted to Gus. That was the simple, impossible truth. And Gus… Gus might just be a lesbian. A bottom who liked other bottoms. Where did that leave a bottom who was suddenly, bewilderingly, attracted to him?
The question hung in the air between them, unasked, as Gus carefully slid a prized issue of Frontline back into its plastic sheath, his big hands surprisingly tender.