Chapter 5: Midnight Confessions
The ceiling of the dorm room was a map of cracks and shadows. Noah lay perfectly still on his back, the thin sheet kicked down around his ankles, the humid night air sticking to his skin. The roar of the rodeo crowd was gone, replaced by the relentless buzz of a faulty wall socket and the distant laughter from a frat house down the street. He could still smell the girl’s perfume on his collar—something cloying and sweet, like rotting flowers. He’d wiped the kiss off his cheek the moment she’d turned away.
It hadn’t worked. None of it worked. The flirting, the easy laughter, the performance of it all. It was like trying to fill a canyon with a teaspoon.
His eyes closed, and it wasn’t the blonde’s face he saw. It was a flicker from hours before, a slice of a moment he hadn’t even known he’d captured: Taichi, standing alone by the concession stand, his head tilted back as he took a long drink from a water bottle. The line of his throat. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. The sheen of sweat on his sun-warmed skin. And his mouth. God, his mouth. The full, soft curve of his lower lip, the water droplets clinging to it.
A low groan escaped Noah’s chest. He turned onto his side, facing the wall, but the image followed him, projected onto the peeling paint. Taichi’s mouth, parting slightly. Taichi’s dark, observant eyes, locked on his from across the dusty arena right before he’d turned and vanished into the crowd.
“Fuck,” Noah whispered into the darkness.
His hand drifted down, palming himself through his boxers. He was already hard, a thick, aching length straining against the cotton. The denial was a familiar song, a few ragged verses he chanted to himself. Don’t. Stop. This is wrong. The words were empty shells, hollowed out by years of the same secret war. His fingers hooked into the waistband and pushed the fabric down.
His cock sprang free, hot and heavy against his stomach. He spit into his own palm, the sound crude in the silent room, and wrapped his fist around the base. A sharp hiss left his lips. He started slow, a tight, slick glide, his calloused thumb rubbing over the leaking slit.
He let the fantasy unspool, no longer fighting it.
He imagined it was Taichi’s hand, smoother, smaller, but strong from soccer. He imagined those clever fingers exploring him, tracing the thick vein on the underside. In his mind, Taichi wasn’t shy. He was looking right at Noah, those warm brown eyes blazing with a hunger that mirrored his own. He’d kiss his way down Noah’s chest, his tongue flicking a nipple, his teeth grazing the rigid plane of his abdomen. Noah’s hips jerked off the mattress, his fist moving faster.
“Yeah,” he breathed, the word torn from him. “Right there.”
He pictured Taichi on his knees between Noah’s spread legs. He saw the hesitation, the beautiful flutter of his lashes, before he leaned in and licked a bold, wet stripe from root to tip. Noah’s breath caught. In the fantasy, he tangled a hand in Taichi’s messy brown hair, not forcing, just guiding. Taichi’s lips, those goddamn lips, finally closed around the head, hot and impossibly soft.
Noah fucked up into his own fist, imagining it was that wet, tight heat. He could see it perfectly—Taichi’s cheeks hollowing, his jaw stretching to take him deeper, a tear escaping from the corner of his eye as Noah nudged the back of his throat. The image was filthy, devastating.
“Take it,” Noah gritted out, his muscles corded tight. “Take all of it, you pretty fuckin’ thing. Swallow me down.”
His rhythm became frantic, brutal. The bedsprings squeaked in protest. He was gone, lost in the vivid, shameful pornograph of his own making. Taichi gagging, spit-slick, looking up at him with absolute surrender. Taichi letting him use that perfect mouth, letting Noah fuck it raw until his eyes were glazed and his lips were swollen and red.
The pressure coiled, lightning-hot, at the base of his spine. A sharp, animal sound ripped from his throat.
“Tai—fuck!”
His release hit him like a rodeo blow, a brutal, unseating force. Thick, hot stripes shot across his stomach and chest, pulsing out with each ragged thrust of his hips. He rode it out, every muscle locked, seeing stars behind his clenched eyelids.
Then, collapse.
The silence rushed back in, louder than before. The buzzing socket. The distant laughter. The smell of his own come, sharp and salty in the air.
He lay there, sticky and spent, the fantasy evaporating like mist, leaving behind the cold, hard bedrock of reality. Shame washed over him, a frigid tide. He stared at the mess on his skin, at his own softening cock, and felt a nausea so profound it made his throat burn.
He had just come harder than he ever had with any girl, thinking about a man. A teammate. Taichi.
The guilt was a physical weight, crushing his lungs. He saw his father’s disapproving frown. He heard the locker room talk, the casual slurs tossed like footballs. He was a Callahan. A rodeo champion. This wasn’t who he was supposed to be.
With a furious, disgusted snarl, he grabbed a dirty t-shirt from the floor and wiped himself clean. He hurled the cloth into the corner, then rolled over, punching his thin pillow into a shapeless lump. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to summon any other image—the blonde from earlier, a girl from his hometown, a generic, faceless body.
But only one face floated in the darkness behind his eyes. Taichi’s. Looking at him not with judgment, but with a quiet, knowing loneliness that mirrored his own.
He was utterly, completely fucked.