Chapter 20: Midnight Research
The truck’s tires had crunched on the gravel of the dorm parking lot fifteen minutes ago. Noah’s goodbye had been a rough whisper, a hand squeezing Taichi’s thigh through his jeans before he pulled away. “See you tomorrow, soccer star.”
Now, Taichi lay stiffly on his narrow dorm bed, the thin mattress offering no comfort. The single blue LED strip he’d stuck to the wall hummed faintly, casting the room in an underwater glow. It lit the edges of his posters—a blurry Shinjuku skyline at night, a figure running in a downpour from a film he couldn’t remember. From the common wall, he could hear the muffled thump of country bass and a burst of male laughter.His cowboy neighbors.A different breed from Noah. Louder, simpler.He stared at the popcorn ceiling, but he wasn’t seeing it. He was back in the truck bed. The memory wasn’t a linear thing; it was a sensory assault.The scratch of the wool blanket against his neck. The shocking warmth of Noah’s palm on his bare stomach.The hard press of Noah’s hips against his own. The taste—like cold air and spearmint gum and something deeper, uniquely Noah.His body responded instantly, predictably. A flush of heat swept from his chest down to his groin. He was hard again, the fabric of his boxers taut and uncomfortable. He groaned, rolling onto his side and pressing his face into the pillow.It smelled like cheap laundry detergent and his own shampoo. Not like diesel and pine and sweat.This was ridiculous.He couldn’t just lie here. The aching need was a live wire under his skin.
With a frustrated sigh, he pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.The linoleum was cold under his feet. He grabbed his laptop from the desk, the glow of the screen washing over his face in the dark room.He paused, listening. More laughter next door.A door slammed down the hall.
He clicked the browser open, then hesitated, his fingers hovering over the keys.His heart was pounding a clumsy rhythm against his ribs. This felt more dangerous than the kiss.This was premeditated.He opened an incognito window. The void of the empty search bar mocked him.
He typed slowly, each letter a confession: h o w t o p r e p a r e f o r g a y s e x
He hit enter before he could lose his nerve.The results flooded the screen.Articles. Forums.Reddit threads.Medical websites. A dizzying array of information that was at once too clinical and terrifyingly intimate.His face burned.He clicked the first link.
Anal douching is a common practice for receptive partners…
He skimmed, his eyes snagging on words.Lubricant.Relaxation.Communication.Cleanliness. Diagrams, simple and anatomical, made it seem like a logic puzzle. But his mind kept overlaying the images with sensation: the imagined scrape of Noah’s calloused fingers, the possessive weight of his body.
He opened another tab, a forum this time.Real people, with usernames and questions. First time with my boyfriend, nervous about pain.The answers were a mix of crude encouragement and genuine advice. Use lots of lube.Go slow.It’s not like the porn.
Taichi’s hand drifted from the trackpad, down his own stomach. He slipped it beneath the waistband of his boxers.He was already fully hard, his skin fever-hot to his own touch. He stroked himself slowly, his breath hitching.
He read another post as his hand moved, a rhythm building without conscious thought.“The prep is about dignity for yourself. It’s about being ready, so you can be in the moment and not in your head.”
He bit his lip, stifling a moan as he imagined Noah being the one to do this. Not his own familiar, hurried touch, but Noah’s slower, rougher one. Noah’s hand, which could wrestle a steer, wrapped around him. Noah’s mouth, which had kissed him with such devastating hunger, everywhere. The fantasy spiraled, incorporating the clinical terms from the screen: relaxation, lube, preparation.But in his head, it wasn’t clinical. It was Noah whispering in his ear, low and sure, his green eyes dark with intent. It was Noah’s patience, his cowboy’s focus, turned on him alone.
A sharp, breathy sound escaped him. He came suddenly, messily, into his own hand, the laptop screen blurring as he squeezed his eyes shut. For a second, there was only the pulsing release, a blank white noise in his mind.
Then it rushed back in: the silence of the room, the humming mini-fridge, the glow of the screen.The cold, sticky reality on his skin.
He let his hand fall away, wiping it hastily on the sheet beside him. A wave of shame, hot and prickling, followed the pleasure. He stared at the browser windows, still open, the words glaring back at him in the dark.Diagrams of intestines. Shopping lists for lube and enema bulbs.Stories of pleasure and pain.This was the roadmap. This was the reality behind the dizzying, starlit kiss.It was logistical.It was messy.It was terrifying.
He closed the laptop with a soft click, plunging the room back into the sole dominion of the blue LED light.He lay back, the afterimage of the diagrams burnt into his vision. His body felt hollowed out, tired.
He thought of Noah’s easy grin in the daylight, the way he slung an arm around a cheerleader’s shoulders for a picture after the rodeo. He thought of the feral, hungry look in those same eyes in the truck bed, only for him.Was he really going to do this?Not just kiss in the dark, but all of it? The planning, the secrecy, the potential for a pain he couldn’t yet conceptualize, all for a guy who might never hold his hand in the campus dining hall?
The fluorescent light above his sink flickered once, buzzed, and went out. He was left with just the blue halo and the distant, indifferent thump of music through the wall.He had no answer. Only a quiet, trembling resolve forming in the deepest, loneliest part of him, where the memory of Noah’s touch now lived, warm and insistent.