Chapter 6: Breaking Point
The night air was cold, a sharp relief after the suffocating warmth of our room. I walked for blocks, my hands shoved deep in my pockets, replaying the look on Mikey’s face when I’d left. The entitled confusion. The hurt. It should have felt like a victory, this small act of defiance, but it just felt hollow. A weird, fucked-up blip. His words echoed in my head, taunting me.
When I finally trudged back up the stairs, the dorm hallway was silent, lit by the sickly glow of fluorescent lights. I stood outside our door for a full minute, listening. Nothing. I braced myself for the awkward silence, for his back turned to me in feigned sleep.
I turned the knob.
The scene that greeted me was not what I’d prepared for. The main light was off, but his desk lamp was on, casting long, distorted shadows across the room. Mikey was on his bed, but he wasn’t sleeping. He was propped up against the headboard, his face a mask of pained concentration. His shirt was off. The waistband of his sweatpants was pushed down, and his cock, painfully hard and slick with precum, stood against his stomach.
He was trying to use the hard edge of his cast to rub himself. It was a clumsy, desperate motion, the plaster scraping against his sensitive skin. He flinched with each awkward stroke, his breath hissing through his teeth. He hadn’t heard me come in.
My resolve, the righteous anger I’d nursed on my walk, evaporated. It was just… sad. And unbearably hot. The conflict twisted my stomach into a knot.
He finally saw me. He froze, his face flooding with a deep, mortified red. He tried to yank his pants up with his wrists, but it was a futile, fumbling effort. “Ben. Shit. I thought you were…”
“I see that,” I said, my voice quiet. I closed the door, the click echoing in the sudden stillness.
“I just… you weren’t here, and I…” He trailed off, his chest heaving. He looked utterly defeated, his athletic pride reduced to this helpless frustration. The ‘lifesaver’ comment, the ‘weird blip’—it was all just noise. This was the reality. His reality.
I walked over slowly, my heart hammering against my ribs. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him, at the clear evidence of his need, at the pathetic, aborted attempts his body had made without me.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “It’s not working,” he mumbled, the admission seeming to cost him everything.
“I know.”
I knelt on the floor beside his bed. The familiar position. The scent of his skin, mixed with the faint, chalky dust from his casts, filled my senses. I didn’t move to touch him. I just waited.
He finally looked at me, his eyes wide and vulnerable. “Are you… are you gonna…?”
“Do you want me to?” I asked. It was a new question. It demanded an answer, not an assumption.
He held my gaze for a long second, a war raging behind his eyes. The excuses were gone, burned away by sheer physical necessity. He gave a single, jerky nod. “Yes.”
That was all I needed.
I leaned forward and took him into my mouth. He cried out immediately, a sharp, guttural sound that was half relief, half surrender. His whole body tensed, his hips bucking off the mattress. It was faster, more frantic than before. There was no pretense, no post-game commentary waiting in the wings. This was pure, undiluted need.
He came quickly, with a force that startled us both, his back arching off the bed. His shout was raw, unfiltered, echoing off the cinderblock walls. It was the most honest sound I’d ever heard him make.
For a long time afterward, the only sound was our ragged breathing. I stayed where I was, my forehead resting against his thigh, feeling the tremors still running through his muscles. He didn’t speak. He didn’t try to explain it away.
Finally, I felt the gentle, awkward pressure of his cast against my shoulder. Not pushing me away. Just… resting there. A weight. An acknowledgment.
I looked up. His eyes were closed, but his face was softer than I’d seen it in days. The wall was down. For now.
“You should get some sleep,” I said, my voice hoarse.
He just nodded, his eyes still shut tight. As I stood to turn off the lamp, I saw his hand, the one not touching me, clench and unclench slowly on the rumpled sheet. A silent pulse in the dark. A question without words.