Chapter 6: The New Underwear
The dorm room, in Stiles’ absence, took on a different kind of silence. It wasn’t empty; it was full of his ghost. The stale coffee smell from their mugs, the particular scent of his body wash lingering near the shower caddy, the crumpled notes in his chaotic handwriting on the floor—they all conspired to press in on Scott. The only light came from his laptop screen, a cool, sickly blue that cast long shadows from the stacks of textbooks and the half-empty energy drink can standing sentinel on his desk.
He’d been trying to read a chapter on cellular biology, but the words swam and merged into nonsense glyphs. His focus kept snagging on the plastic American Eagle bag, discarded on Stiles’ bed like a forgotten trophy. Inside, folded neatly atop the pile of absurd patterns, were the race car briefs.He could never admit to Stiles he’d worn these.
The thought was a dare, whispered in his own mind.It was stupid. They were a joke, a physical punchline Stiles had tossed at him. Wearing them would be an admission of something he couldn’t name.And yet, the fabric called to him. It was a challenge from Stiles, and Scott had never been good at backing down from a challenge from Stiles.
With a decisive, almost defiant movement, Scott pushed his chair back. The scrape of the legs on the linoleum was loud in the quiet. He crossed the small space, grabbed the bag, and pulled the briefs out.They were cheap, a thin cotton-polyester blend. The colors were garish: a black background with red, yellow, and blue race cars screen-printed all across the fabric.White piping ran across the fly and leg holes. The waistband was white with a repeated “LAST LAP” pattern in black.
He stripped off his gray t-shirt and dark jeans, the tight black boxer briefs he’d worn all day coming off last. The dorm air was cool on his skin.He stepped into the race car briefs and pulled them up.
The fit was different.They were looser than his usual boxer briefs, less compressive. The cheap fabric clung in a gossamer, insubstantial way.It felt… exposed. He turned to face the full-length mirror tacked to the back of their door.
His reflection was a stranger wearing a cartoon.
The briefs sat low on his hips, the white waistband a stark line against his tanned abdomen.The black fabric did nothing to hide the shape of him.It draped. It outlined. The pouch was roomier than he was used to, creating a soft, vulnerable swell that the screen-printed cars curved over in a ludicrous, vibrant parade. A red race car sped over his left hip.A blue one veered towards the crease of his thigh. The white piping traced the outline of the fly, drawing the eye inexorably downward to the shadowy center where all the cars seemed to converge.He looked ridiculous. He felt a hot wave of embarrassment, the kind that prickles at the back of the neck. But underneath it, thrumming low in his gut, was something else.A thrill.This was a secret. Stiles had given him these as a gag, never imagining they’d actually be worn. Scott was now a participant in a joke Stiles didn’t even know was happening.The power of that secret was potent, intimate.
He stared at his own crotch, mesmerized by the garish print. The fabric was so thin he could see the darker shadow of himself beneath it, the subtle distinctions of his anatomy blurred but not hidden by the riot of colors.His mind, unbidden, skipped back. Not to the mall, not to the bin of underwear, but to their room a few nights before. Stiles on his back, wearing the royal blue Superman briefs. The way the worn cotton had stretched taut over his hip bones, how the fly had gaped slightly as he’d twisted. The raw, panicked confession in Stiles’ voice, high and tight with desperate laughter: “Dude, stop, I’m gonna piss myself, I swear to God—”
The memory was a physical thing. It slammed into Scott’s chest, knocking the air from his lungs in a soft sigh. His skin grew warm.In the mirror, he saw the change begin. It started as a faint, interested stir beneath the black fabric, a subtle shift in the drape. The soft swell began to firm, to push against the thin cotton. The race cars distorted, stretched into new, elongated shapes as he began to harden.His breath hitched.He shouldn’t.This was insane. It was just a stupid pair of underwear.But it wasn’t. It was a gift from Stiles. It was a token of their afternoon, of the shared tension, of the humiliating, human sound of relief from behind the bathroom door. It was all of it, contained in this ridiculous fabric.He gave in.His hand, which had been hanging at his side, moved slowly. His fingertips brushed the thin material, feeling the heat of himself radiating through it. He cupped himself through the briefs, the sensation muted but incredibly lewd. The cars were now stretched taut, a vibrant, ridiculous skin over his arousal. He pressed the heel of his hand down, and a soft, involuntary groan escaped his lips.He kept his eyes locked on the mirror, watching himself. Watching this secret version of Scott McCall, alone in a dorm room, getting hard in the joke underwear his best friend gave him. The embarrassment burned hotter, but it fused with the arousal now, becoming a single, molten wire of need.His mind replayed the scene, embellishing it. He saw Stiles’ face, not just panicked, but flushed, his eyes bright with something more than just the fear of an accident. He imagined the feeling of Stiles’ stomach muscles clenching under his fingers, not from tickling, but from the strain of holding back. He thought of the powerful, private rush he’d heard through the door, but now he imagined seeing it. Seeing Stiles, in just his briefs, finally letting go.The fantasy was vivid, visceral. It tipped him over an edge.He pushed the race car briefs down, just enough to free himself. The air was cool on his heated skin.He wrapped his hand around his cock, his grip firm and familiar. His other hand braced against the doorframe, his head dropping forward for a moment before he forced it back up, needing to watch. His reflection was a mess of contradictions: the determined set of his jaw, the dark hunger in his own eyes, the childish absurdity of the underwear pooled around his thighs.
He started to jerk off, his strokes quick and efficient at first, then slowing, savoring the slide of his foreskin, the precome making everything slick. He was vocal, his breath coming in ragged pants, low curses and Stiles’ name mixing into the quiet room. “God… fuck…” The words were barely whispers, torn from him.
His mind was a loop of sensory fragments: the bright blue of the Superman logo, the sharp smell of Stiles’ sweat when he was nervous, the sound of that desperate, surrendering stream hitting the toilet water. The memory of Stiles in the tacos print boxers, pale and sprawled on his bed after his ordeal, pushed him to the brink.He was close. A tight, coiling heat gathered low in his abdomen.He sped up, his hand a blur, his hips jerking forward into his own grip. He wanted to come on the briefs, to mark them, to complete the secret ritual. But at the last second, a different impulse seized him.He wanted it on himself.On his skin. A truth he couldn’t hide from himself, even as he planned to hide everything else.
With a sharp, guttural cry that sounded too loud in the silent room, he pushed the briefs fully down to his knees. His release shot onto his own bare stomach and chest, hot stripes that landed with soft, wet sounds. He rode it out, shuddering, his legs trembling, each pulse wracking through him as he gasped for air, his forehead now pressed against the cool wood of the door.
For a long minute, he just stood there, panting, coming down from the high. The evidence of what he’d done, what he’d fantasized about, was cooling on his skin. The shame came then, cool and quiet, seeping in where the heat of arousal had been. It wasn’t overpowering, but it was there, a sobering counterpart to the lingering physical thrill.He pushed himself upright, avoiding his own eyes in the mirror now. He grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on his desk and cleaned himself off with brisk, impersonal swipes.The motion was routine, the aftermath mundane.He pulled the race car briefs back up. The fabric felt different now, settled.It was just underwear again, but it was his underwear. He walked to his dresser, found a clean pair of loose black gym shorts, and stepped into them, pulling the drawstring tight. The soft cotton covered the garish print, hiding the secret next to his skin.
He disposed of the tissues, sat back down at his desk, and reopened his biology textbook.The words still didn’t make sense, but the static in his head had quieted. The room still smelled of stale coffee and the faint, ghostly scent of Stiles. But something had shifted.A line had been crossed, alone in the quiet. He had taken the joke and turned it into something private, something true, and he had buried it under a layer of black cotton.
He could never admit to Stiles he’d worn these.He could never admit any of it. The knowledge sat inside him, a warm, heavy stone. He stared at the page, hearing not the words, but the echo of his own choked cry in the empty room, and the phantom, powerful sound of water running in a pipe.