College Jocks Brooks and Zane 04

Zane Whitaker: Age 18; dirty blonde hair cut short; blue eyes; 5'9"; pitcher on the baseball team

Brody Kessler: Age 19; wavy, short black hair; dark brown eyes; 6'3" 250 lbs.; heavyweight wrestler

Kent Johnson: Age 31; short black hair; short beard; green eyes; 6'6"; hairy, muscular; State football head coach

Brooks Hayes: Age 20; brown hair; blue eyes; 6'2"; starting quarterback

Zane had left about five minutes earlier, muttering something about meeting up with a friend, moving faster than usual and not offering any details. Brody hadn't pushed. He'd barely looked up. He was too busy jacking his big cock with his new fleshlight while watching lesbian porn.

Now that he'd climaxed and deposited a warm load into the extra-large fleshlight, Brody Kessler sat back in his chair, staring at the ceiling while he caught his breath.

The fleshlight had been a gift from Chelsea, one of the two girls he regularly saw during the week. She'd given it to him half as a joke. It was a specific model, made for guys built a lot girthier than average. He'd stuck it in a drawer and forgotten about it for a couple weeks. Tonight, bored and with the room to himself (until Zane briefly returned), he'd finally tried it.

He got it now. Understood what all the hype was about. It felt fucking incredible, compared to using his own hand. He was going to have to text Chelsea a thank-you. Maybe that'd turn her on and she'd beg him to fuck her again, Brody thought with a smirk.

But first Brody had to deal with the immediate aftermath. He needed something to clean up with. He glanced around the room for something to wipe down with. His own laundry was down the hall in the washer, mid-cycle, useless to him. The clothes by his feet were the clean(ish) clothes he planned to put back on. There was nothing on his side of the room worth grabbing.

His eyes landed on Zane's hamper.

Right on top sat a pair of Zane's white boxer-briefs, worn once and tossed there that morning. Brody decided to borrow them to clean up with. Zane would never know, and even if he did, Zane was a bro.... he'd understand.

Brody leaned over and grabbed Zane's dirty underwear. And as he brought them up, a family scent hit him.

It stopped him for a second. It was faint but distinct.... salty, warm, kind of masculine, and, weirdly, not bad. Not bad at all. It was almost pleasant, in a way he had no framework for.

Brody frowned at the fabric in his hand, puzzled, then decided not about to overthink a pair of underwear. So he proceeded to his roommate's sweaty underwear to wiped himself down.

Then, without really planning to, he lifted them again and took another breath of it, trying to place what it was. There was something about it he couldn't identify and couldn't quite leave alone. It pulled at some part of his brain that didn't usually get consulted.

It took him a second longer than it should have to catch up. When it clicked--when he realized that on top of the unusual, intoxicating scent, Brody was now also sniffing his own semen. He made a disgusted noise and chucked the boxer-briefs back into the hamper like they were hot.

"The hell is wrong with me," he said out loud, to the empty room.

He wiped his hand on his hairy legs and stood there a moment, off-balance, trying to shake off how strange that had been. And that was when he registered the other problem, the one he had absolutely no explanation for.

He was hard again.

Brody stared down at himself like his own body had betrayed him. He'd finished not 60 seconds ago. It was a powerful orgasm and his cock was wrung completely out, done for the night, or so he'd assumed. And yet here he was, ready to go again, some restless heat pulsing under his skin.

He didn't examine it or question why he was getting aroused. Examining things wasn't really how Brody operated. He just crossed to his bed, dropped onto his back, and took himself in hand, figuring he'd jack off one more time and be done with it.

Except this time his head wouldn't cooperate. The porn was still paused on the laptop across the room, but that wasn't where his mind went. It went to Zane. It went there without asking. The stupid part was that it wasn't even anything too dirty at first. It was the curve of the baseball jock's bubble butt, and then, of all things, his smile.... that easy cute grin Zane often sported.

Brody frowned, tried to steer his thought back to the video he just watched, back to the two women in it, and his brain kept splicing Zane into the frame anyway. Zane fucking one of the girls. Then Zane and one of the girls and him, all three of them. And it was that image, that thought of spit-roasting a chick with his roommate, that finished him, hard and fast.

He lay there afterward, chest heaving, more confused than satisfied. Too wiped out and too unsettled to get up and deal with the mess now on his torso, Brody just smeared the cum across his own abs with the flat of his hand and let it be. He'd shower later.

The fucking hell was that, he thought.

His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He grabbed it, grateful for the excuse to think about literally anything else.

It was Zane.

Hey ended up hanging with a friend over in the other dorm. might just crash here tonight. see you tmrw.

And Brody felt his chest sink. He felt a strange disappointment. He read the text again to make sure he had it right, and yeah... Zane wasn't probably wasn't coming back tonight.

That shouldn't have bothered Brody. But it bothered him a lot.

He'd been looking forward to Zane coming back. That was the honest, weird truth of it. After the whole disaster at breakfast, Brody had skipped all his classes and spent the afternoon in a fund. He felt so strangely uncomfortable knowing Zane was upset at him.

And even after they made up over text, Brody was just waiting for the two of them to just hang out like normal again, to prove to himself that they were actually fine. He'd wanted the hang out with his roommate tonight. Now it wasn't happening, and he felt genuinely let down, and he lay there trying to figure out why that landed as hard as it did.

The truth was the fight that morning had messed him up more than he'd let on. Brody didn't usually get anxious. It wasn't in his wiring; he coasted through most things without a second thought. But after Zane had shoved him and bolted out of the dining hall, Brody had spent the whole day with a low, gnawing unease in his gut he couldn't shake, checking his phone, replaying it, feeling off until Zane finally texted back that they were good.

It was very uncharacteristic that Brody spent the whole day thinking about Zane. Like, constantly. Brody Kessler, if he was honest, typically didn't spend much time thinking about anybody except himself and whichever girl he was chasing that week. People drifted in and out of his orbit and he rarely gave them a second thought once they were out of sight. That was just how he was built.

But it was different with Zane, and it surprised Brody. Whenever Brody thought about him, something in his chest went warm, easy, steady. It was a feeling he didn't have a lot of practice with. He thought about the way his roommate actually listened when Brody got going on one of his rants, no matter how dumb the topic, tracking every word like it mattered, asking real questions, even showing concern for him sometimes. Brody had never had a guy friend show concern for him like that before.

Then Brody thought about that annoyed little smile Zane fought back every time Brody needled him, the one that meant he was pretending to be mad and wasn't. The dude was so fucking cute. He realized he was making fun of Zane this morning partly because he loved seeing Zane's cute face blush whenever the dude was embarrassed.

Lying there with the semen mess drying on his stomach, Brody arrived at a realization that would've embarrassed him to say out loud. They'd known each other two months. Two months, and somehow Zane had quietly become the best friend Brody had ever had. He'd never let anybody get that close that fast. He wasn't sure he'd ever let anybody get that close at all, other than Zane.

Then Brody, tired from thinking too hard about his emotions, closed his eyes, and told himself he'd feel normal after a quick nap.

*****

Across campus, Zane was following directions.

DL had been specific. No small talk, no flirting. Just sent a location pin and an address, or as close to one as the situation allowed: the restrooms out by the tennis courts, the ones tucked against the back of the football team's training facility.

Zane knew the spot. The tennis courts had been fenced off for construction all semester, which meant nobody had any reason to be back there anymore. The restrooms had gone from lightly used to completely forgotten. Discreet, exactly like DL wanted.

When DL asked him to meet ASAP, Zane quickly showered off and made sure to apply tons of deodorant. He was paranoid over his scent after what happened with Adam and Peter earlier in the day, and did not want to feel anxiety on whatever effect his scent (if any) might have over this intimidating stranger from the internet.

The walk out there took him past the quiet alleys behind the athletic buildings, and by the time he reached the door his pulse was already up. He told himself, briefly and not very convincingly, that meeting a stranger alone in an empty building on the edge of campus was not the smartest thing he'd ever done. Then he opened the door anyway.

The inside of the restroom surprised him. It was single-occupancy, and it was big. It was the size of a small bedroom, and, weirdly, spotlessly clean. Maybe the janitors kept cleaning the restrooms even though nobody was using them. The light was low and even.

In the far corner sat a small drawstring bag.

Zane crouched down and worked the string loose. Inside was a single item: a soft padded eye mask, the kind meant for sleeping. He turned it over in his hands and understood what it was for before he even needed to.

The blunt instructions had come through earlier. Strip naked. Put on the blindfold. Kneel facing the corner, and wait. Don't turn around. DL would be there soon.

Zane stood in the middle of the clean, quiet room and felt his heart going. He should have found the whole thing ridiculous, or unnerving, or both. Instead something about the situation excited and aroused him. The anonymity of it, the total surrender it asked for, being told exactly what to do and having nothing to decide. It got under his skin in a way he didn't fully understand.

He pulled his shirt off. Toed out of his shoes, stepped out of the rest of it, folded everything into a rough pile by the wall out of some instinct he couldn't explain. Then he lifted the mask and settled it over his eyes, and the room went black, and every sound in it got louder--the hum of the lights, his own breathing, the distant nothing of the empty courts outside.

He lowered himself down onto his knees, facing the corner, exactly as he'd been told, and he waited. Blind, bare, heart slamming, more turned on than he wanted to admit, listening for the sound of the door.

*****

The man behind the username DL was not, as Zane had assumed, some anonymous straight stranger. His name was Kent Johnson, and on this campus, he was about as far from anonymous as a person could get.

Kent was 31 years old and he was enormous--6'6", black hair, short beard, green eyes, a strong chin that protruded out as if to intentionally assert dominance. Somebody in the media had once called him a hairy Superman, and he was endearingly referred to as Clark Kent by many a female admirer.

Kent Johnson been a standout player himself before a knee injury ended that. Soon after he'd gone into coaching and climbed fast, faster than anyone his age had a right to. The year before, State had hired him as head coach of its football program, and he made headlines for being one of the youngest head coaches a top Division I program had ever handed the keys to. A wunderkind. The face of the athletic department's future.

His stardom rose even higher when he led state to the NCAA playoff finals. Their first time making the finals in years. Coach Johnson had made the controversial decision to bench the starting quarterback during the second game of the season, and let Brooks Hayes, an untested redshirted underclassmen, shine. Brooks Hayes ended the season as one of the top 10 rated QBs in the nation, and Coach Johnson was lauded as a genius.

Then, a few months back, the narrative about Kent Johnson had changed.

It came out that Kent had been seeing three different women at the same time. None of them aware of the others, all of them under the impression they were the only woman in his life. When two of women compared notes and realized what was happening, they took it to the press, and in a college town that treated the football program like a religion, it caught fire fast.

For a couple of weeks, Kent Johnson was on the cover of every sports publication in the country. The details and timeline were damning, and by the time the scandal, burned out his reputation was scorched, especially with women.

Now, Kent Johnson hadn't been touched by a girl in months. Not since the scandal. No self-respecting woman would touch him with a 10-foot pole. Moreover, Kent Johnson had been practicing "no-fap" and "no-porn" for the past five years, and, attributing his success to those habits, he refused to break his streak. Kent believed that porn and masturbation overstimulated the mind and led to brain fog and fatigue. He would only allow himself ejaculate if it was inside a warm pussy, asshole, or throat.

Which was how the head coach of State's football team had ended up on Grindr as "DL", hunting for something completely off the books. No face. No name. Just a profile showing off his sexy, muscular, hairy torso and asking for someone discrete to suck his cock.

Now, he found a young college jock who was anonymous himself. Clearly in the closet himself, and possibly a well known athlete. That young jock was now waiting for him, naked, blindfolded and on his knees in a forgotten restroom nearby.

He was already on his way there. Kent was eager to find out if the boy on his knees would prove to be obedient and submissive enough to become his regular plaything.

*****

Zane heard the lock turning, the heavy pull of the door opening and shutting, and then unhurried, confident footsteps that probably belonged to somebody big. He didn't turn around. He'd been ordered not to. And blindfolded corner, he found he didn't want to. The not-knowing sent a thrilling charge through him.

A hand closed on the back of Zane's head. Not gentle. The strong fingers gripped the naked baseball stud's hair.

"Don't turn around," the man said. The voice was deep and even. Older. "Don't take the mask off. You talk when I tell you to talk."

"Okay," Zane said.

The hand tightened in his hair. "Yes, sir. Try again, boy."

Zane swallowed. "Sorry... Y-Yes, sir."

A thick, heavy cock slapped against Zane's cheek. Zane liked the smell. A hint of clean soap over slightly musky, sour scent of fresh sweat. The head dragged across his mouth. Zane noticed it was uncut.

"Look at you," the man said. "Naked in a public bathroom, on your knees for a stranger's dick. That's a what a I call a slut. Open, faggot."

Zane opened. The head pushed in. It filled his mouth immediately. He worked what he could take and felt the rest of it hanging there, long and thick, waiting.

"I'm 9 inches by the way," the man said. "And you're going memorize every curve and vein on it, bitch. Start with the head. Tongue. Now."

Zane licked. He sealed his lips around the ridge and sucked.

The man made a low sound that was almost a laugh. "Ahhh fuck yeah.... like my head dude. I Iike an obedient boy-whore who knows how to follow instructions.... you my obedient boy, whore?"

Zane nodded his mouth still wrapped around the head of the big cock. The man grabbed Zane by his dirty-blond hair, and started guiding his head deeper.

"Ughh yeah, that's it.... that's a good boyyyy... take it deeper, bitch."

The man started fucking his 9-incher in and out of Zane's mouth. Zane could take about half the length before gagging and pushing off. The man took his cock and used it to slap Zane's face a few times, asserting his dominance.

"Come on. Try to take it deep." For the next few minutes, the man rammed his cock in and out of the college boy's greedy lips. The would thrust hard enough to push against Zane's throat, causing a lot of throat slime to build up. But Zane wasn't experienced enough to swallow the head. He would gag each time.

By five minutes in, copies amounts of phlegm and spit were dripping down Zane's handsome face. The stranger pulled out to give Zane a break, and took a second to admire his work. He loved how slutty the kneeling boy looked, blindfolded but with his own throat slime coating his mouth and chin like it was another man's jizz.

A line of mucus dripped from Zane's chin on to his firm pecs. This guy had a nice body, the stranger thought to himself. Wouldn't be surprised if it turned out he was a varsity athlete.

"Do you play a sport here?" The stranger asked.

"Yeah... I do... Sir. I play baseball..."

"So you're an athlete... well then, I'm going to need to push you a bit harder... I know your coaches wouldn't be proud of you tapping out so easily, now would they?"

Zane shook his head, looking a bit tentative. Without warning, the man gripped both sides of Zane's head and shoved back in.

The fat head punched past Zane's tongue and hit the back of his throat. Zane gagged. His whole body jumped. The man didn't pull out. He held Zane there and rolled his hips, feeding him another inch, then another.

"Take it. Open that throat, faggot."

Zane tried. He dropped his jaw and pushed forward on his own. He got five inches. Maybe six. The rest of it was still outside his mouth, thick and wet against his chin.

Taking the full nine inches was not happening. His throat just closed.

The man pulled back and drove in again. Short, nasty strokes. The wet sound filled the little room. Spit ran down Zane's chin and onto his chest and abs. His nose was running. His eyes were streaming under the mask due to the throat stimulation.

"Look at you. Choking on a fat hog like a dirty porn star."

Zane made a broken noise around him and tried again. He took it as deep as he could and held. His throat fluttered. The head sat right at the spot that made his stomach turn. He stayed on it anyway.

A thick thumb and finger pinched Zane's nose shut.

"Breathe through it. Swallow. Let me in."

Zane couldn't breathe through his nose. His mouth was full of cock. The pinch made his throat open for half a second and the man took it, shoving forward hard. Zane got a little more. Not all of it. The last three inches still wouldn't go. His stomach heaved.

The man fucked his face like that anyway. Holding his head. Occasionally pinching his nose. Using the half of his cock that Zane could take to maximum effect. Zane's hands came up to the man's thighs, not pushing off, just hanging on. His own cock was leaking on the tile. He wanted to take the whole thing. He just couldn't.

"C'mon, bitch. All the way. I know you want it."

Zane lunged on the next thrust and got nothing extra. Just the same wall in his throat and a sudden hot roll in his gut.

He gaged and retched.

The man pulled out just in time. Zane folded forward, coughing hard, spit and pre-cum hanging off his lip in a long string. His stomach clenched again. He almost threw up. Thankfully, he didn't. He swallowed a gulp of spit, shaking, drooling on the floor between his knees.

"Easy." The man's voice sounded gentler now. He kept a hand in Zane's hair so Zane wouldn't go anywhere. "Your throat's still a tight. That's fine. For today. Don't puke on my cock. I don't want that."

Zane dragged in air through his mouth. His eyes were wet under the mask. His lips felt swollen. He could still feel where the head had been trying to go.

"You got five inches down," the man said. "That's half of nothing. Next time I'll need more from you though."

He slapped the wet cock against Zane's cheek, then across his mouth.

"Until then you use what works. Tight seal. A lot of suction. Lips and tongue. Stroke what you can't fit. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then get back on it, boy-whore. Earn the dick you couldn't swallow."

This time, the stranger adjusted his approach. The man's voice, calmer than Zane expected, talked him through how he wanted to get blown. Told him to slow down, easy, use his mouth differently, more suction, more lips and tongue and less of the rest. Coaching, almost. And once Zane found the rhythm the man was describing, it worked. It worked well, judging by the sounds the guy started making.

A big hand grabbed Zane's wrist and put it on a wall of muscle. Hairy abs. Hard.

Zane's fingers sank into the hair and the ridges under it. The man moved Zane's other hand up onto his chest. Thick pecs. Dense black hair. A tight nipple under Zane's palm. He could tell that the stranger had an amazing body.

Zane got harder just from that. He felt it in his own cock, leaking against his thigh.

"You like that," the man said. It wasn't a question. "Feeling up a real man while you suck him. That's what you came here for. Isn't it, faggot?"

Zane pulled off just enough. "That's what I came here for."

"What are you?"

Zane's face went hot under the mask. "A... a faggot." Zane felt his own cock twitch in arousal as the humiliating words came out of his mouth.

The stranger laughed. It appeared that Zane was getting aroused by the verbal humiliation. "Louder."

"I'm a faggot, sir."

"Suck."

Zane sucked. He used his lips and his tongue the way he'd been told and took as much as he could without choking. Halfway, maybe. Then the man gripped both sides of his head and guided the handsome face back onto his throbbing 9-inch dick.

Zane reached up in the dark and found the man's stomach again. He could clearly feel six defined abs. Then further up, to his chest... all of it felt hard, and thick with hair. Something about touching this dominant, muscular man's body.... about being blindfolded and used and told what to do... this lit Zane up past the point of thinking.

Zane put a hand on his own pulsing cock and within a few seconds he could feel warmth flood his body. He moaned into the cock and squirmed. His body trembled as orgasm flooded through him.

Several wads of warm semen spurted out of the baseball jock's cock, fast, spilling onto the floor and, Zane would realize later, a little onto the stranger's shoe. The man didn't comment on it.

He just kept his cock in the college boy's mouth and ordered him to keep sucking. "Don't let up, dirty boy. Keep sucking me till I shoot a hot load down your throat."

Within two minutes, the stranger reached climax too. He roared in pleasure as he conquered Zane's mouth. "RAHHHH... FUCK YEAH.... UGHH.... Take my load, bitch-boi.... yeah fucking take it... ughh... UGHHH.... good boyyy.... holy shitt... mmmm."

The stranger shot the first spur of cum down Zane's throat, then pulled back at the last second so the last few cum volleys caught Zane across the nose and chin. Zane knelt there breathing hard, blindfolded, a mess. He reached to wipe the cum off his chin, but the stranger stopped him.

"Hey! Don't wipe that shit off," the man said. "Remember. I want it dry on your face on the walk back to your dorm. Then you can shower off."

The stranger then ruffled Zane's hair, almost affectionately. "You know you got cum on my shoe, you filthy slut?"

Zane's breath was ragged. "Sorry, I--I didn't mean--"

Next, the man reached down, picked up one of Zane's socks off the pile of discarded clothing, and pushed it into Zane's open mouth--gagging him gently. Zane could smell a bit of his foot sweat on the sock. Somehow, it was aroused by getting gagged by his own dirty sock.

"I didn't tell you to cum. And you still can't take a dick down your throat. That's two faults. A boy-whore who shoots on a man's shoe and gags on half a cock. You need some serious discipline to whip you into shape, you know that?"

Zane heard the slide and clink of a belt coming loose from its loops. The belt came out of the loops with a long slide. The man put a palm between Zane's shoulder blades and folded him forward until his chest was toward the floor and his ass was up.

The first strike cracked across Zane's ass. Sharp. Heat bloomed. Zane made a noise into the sock. Then a second time, and Zane jolted, and, God help him, liked it. A feeling of exhilaration washed over the submissive, bent-over slut. The stranger was spanking his ass with a belt, and Zane fucking liked it.

"Count the stokes in your head. And don't you drop that sock."

The third belt-spank landed lower. Zane's ass clenched. He counted six, then eight. His skin burned. His eyes watered behind the mask. He stayed down.

"That's enough. Spit your sock out."

Zane spit it onto the floor, breathing hard.

"There's still your cum on my shoe. Lick it off. That's what boy-whores do when they make a mess on a man."

Zane's face went hot. He felt himself nod before he meant to. The kink of it landed right in his gut.

"Yes, sir."

"Say what you're doing."

"I--I'm uh... licking my cum off your shoe."

"Because?"

"Because I came without permission. Because I'm a faggot."

"Then get on it."

He bent and found the leather with his mouth. He could smell his own load on it. He licked. Slow. He got the streak off the toe and didn't stop until the man said to.

"Good bitch. Sit up."

Zane sat back on his heels. He heard some ruffling as the stranger put his belt and clothes back on.

Then, something plastic tapped Zane's bare chest. A small, cold spray bottle.

"Deep-throat spray," the man said. "Use it before the next time. Twenty minutes out. It'll numb your throat. I expect you to take more than half of me. I'm not wasting another meetup on a throat that taps out."

Next time. The words landed somewhere warm in Zane's chest, and he was surprised by how glad he was to hear them. This this wasn't a one-off, that the stranger wanted him back. He nodded obediently, and felt the man's approval in the pat he got on the head for it.

Then the presence stood, and moved, and the door opened and shut, and the room was quiet again.

"Stay here for five minutes," the voice had said on the way out. "Then you can go."

So Zane stayed where he was, kneeling in the corner, blindfolded, cum and mucus running down his chin, counting the seconds in the dark. Zane felt used and discarded but, to his own bafflement, happier and lighter than he'd been all day.

Five minutes, near enough, and Zane pulled the mask off and blinked into the light.

The room was empty. No trace of the stranger beyond the fact that Zane's whole ass still burned. In the room was just his own clothes in their little pile, and, on top, the little bottle of throat spray. The man himself had already gone, quiet as he'd come. Zane started his face with the back of his wrist, but then remembered what the stranger said. No cleaning it up until he got to the dorm.

He got dressed fast, hands a little unsteady, eager to get back to Harlan Hall. He grabbed the spray bottle and the blindfold on his way out, and pushed out into the evening light.

Zane got a bit disoriented on his way out. He'd followed DL's directions in without really registering the route, and going back out the same way didn't work half as well in reverse. He came out into a stretch of narrow walkways bounded by chain-link and equipment sheds, tennis courts on one side wrapped in construction fencing, something bigger and turf-lined on the other that he didn't immediately place.

Nothing about it looked like the campus he knew. He turned one way, then doubled back, and somewhere in there he wandered past a sign for the football practice facility. He pulled out his phone, gave up on pride, and started typing Harlan Hall into Google Maps.

He was still looking down at it, thumb on the screen, when he came around a corner and walked directly into another person.

The impact was solid enough to knock a water bottle out of the guy's hand and send it rolling, and it knocked the throat spray and the blindfold clean out of Zane's grip in the process. "Oh shit--sorry, sorry," Zane said, already crouching for the other guy's water bottle before he'd even looked up.

"My bad, wasn't watching where I--" The other guy crouched at the same time, reaching for what Zane had dropped, and it was only then that Zane actually looked at him.

He was tall, an inch or two over six feet, brown hair, and a pair of brilliant blue eyes that hit Zane harder than the actual collision had. For a second Zane just knelt there, one hand still wrapped around the water bottle, doing nothing useful at all.

"Here." Zane handed the water bottle over, a beat late.

"Thanks, man." The guy had already scooped up the blindfold and the little spray bottle and was holding them out. He glanced down at the label as he did--Zane watched it happen, watched his eyebrows lift, just slightly, a flicker of recognition and something like amusement crossing his face before he smoothed it over and said nothing about it at all. "You dropped these."

"Thanks." Zane took them back fast, his face going hot, and didn't offer any explanation, because there wasn't one that wasn't mortifying.

It was only once they were both standing again, both a little sheepish, that it clicked who he was looking at. Brooks Hayes. State's starting quarterback, a junior, a guy whose face Zane had seen plastered on banners around campus without ever standing this close to him. He was better-looking in person than on camera.

"You good, buddy?" Brooks asked, and there was nothing but easy friendliness in it.

"Yeah. Sorry again. Wasn't looking." Zane gestured vaguely at his phone. "Kind of lost, honestly. Trying to get back to Harlan."

"Oh, easy, I'll walk you. I'm headed that way anyway." Brooks wasn't headed that way, not really.... but he said it so easily and so naturally that Zane had no reason to doubt it, and honestly wouldn't have argued either way.

Brooks kept up an easy stream of conversation the whole walk. He asked what year Zane was, what he was studying, laughed about how he still got lost around his own dorm freshman year, made it feel less like an escort and more like two guys who'd run into each other and decided to walk together. He was warm in a way that didn't feel performed, funny without trying hard at it, entirely comfortable in his own skin. Zane found himself relaxing into it despite everything, despite the state he was probably still in, despite the fact that he had absolutely no business feeling as good as he currently felt.

"Wait, hold on," Brooks said partway there, snapping his fingers like something had just clicked. "Accounting. You're in my Accounting 101 lecture, right? The one in Fenwick auditorium?"

Zane blinked. "Yeah. How'd you--"

"I knew I recognized you. I usually sit in the back, off to the side." Brooks grinned. "You're the guy who actually pays attention. You just kind of stood out."

Zane didn't know what to do with the fact that Brooks Hayes had noticed him in a 200-person lecture. He was flattered. "Ha! I didn't think anybody back there was paying attention to anything but their phone."

"Most of us aren't, yeah." Brooks laughed. "Hey, real question--what'd you get on the midterm?" The accounting class had three midterms throughout the semester. The first one was last week.

"93."

Brooks stopped walking for a second. "93... shit. Are you serious?" He shook his head, looking genuinely floored. "I got a 69, man. A flippin' 69. I almost threw my laptop into the ocean when I saw it pop up on Canvas." There was no ocean anywhere near campus, but the sentiment landed anyway. "Okay, no, seriously... any shot you'd be down to tutor me? Dude, I'll pay you, I will buy you food for a month, whatever you want."

"I mean... sure.... I could help." Zane hesitated. "Don't we already have tutors for that, though? The athletic department ones. I hear they're pretty good with the intro courses."

Brooks glanced over. "You're on a team?"

"Baseball."

"No kidding." Brooks looked pleased about it, like it explained something. "Okay, so you know the deal, then. And yeah, I've been going." He made a face. "They're rough, man. No offense to them, but I walked out of every session more confused than I walked in. That's probs why I bombed the midterm... trusted the process and the process let me down." He pulled out his phone, already unlocking it. "You clearly know this stuff better than they do anyway. You'd genuinely be doing me a solid. Can I get your number?"

Zane recited it, and Brooks typed it in right there on the path, thumbs quick, and sent off a text so Zane would have his too. Zane felt his phone buzz in his pocket a second later... Brooks Hayes in his contacts list, just like that.

"You're a lifesaver," Brooks said, pocketing his phone. "I mean it."

They kept walking, and it wasn't long before Harlan Hall's front steps came into view, sooner than Zane wanted them to.

"This is me," Zane said, stopping at the base of the steps.

"Told you I'd get you here." Brooks smiled, easy and full, and clapped a hand briefly on Zane's shoulder. Then his eyes caught on something and his smile shifted into something more amused. "Hey--you've, uh. You've still got a little something on your face, bud."

Zane's stomach dropped. His hand flew up self-consciously.

"Right cheek. No, other side." Brooks was fighting a grin now, clearly enjoying himself. "Yeah. Dried on there pretty good, too."

"It's nothing, I--" Zane had no good end to that sentence.

"Bro, I'm not trying to call you out, I just." Brooks huffed a laugh, shaking his head, looking at Zane like he'd just gone up a notch in his estimation. "Whoever she is, she must've really been feeling it, huh? That's a lot of, uh--" he gestured vaguely at his own face, grinning outright now. "That's a lot of pussy juice left on you for a guy just walking around campus. You must eat some serious ass. I mean that as a compliment."

Zane felt his whole face go up in flames. "I don't--it's not--"

"It's okay dude." Brooks was clearly not done. "The little bottle you were holding. The spray. I saw the label when I picked it up." He raised his eyebrows meaningfully. "Deep throat spray.... Dude, whoever she is, you got her doing freaky shit and she's clearly satisfied. Respect."

"Oh my god." Zane pressed a hand over his eyes, wishing the steps would open up and take him.

"Hey now, you don't gotta be embarrassed. That's a flex, dude." Brooks was grinning ear to ear now, clearly getting more out of Zane's mortification than he had any right to. Zane, for his part, couldn't manage a single word of correction--not one syllable that would clear it up--so he just stood there red-faced and let Brooks believe whatever he wanted to believe, which felt marginally less humiliating than the truth.

Eventually Brooks took pity on him, waving a hand like he was calling off the joke. "Okay, okay, I'll let you off the hook. Go shower, man. Seriously."

"Yeah. Planning on it."

"Good meeting you, Zane. For real." Brooks started backing away down the path, still smiling. "I'll text you about tutoring."

"Wait." Something caught in Zane's head, a beat behind everything else. "Where were you even headed, by the way? You said you were going this direction anyway."

Brooks stopped. Something flickered across his face--caught in his lie, almost--before he covered it with an easy grin and glanced off to the side, not quite meeting Zane's eyes. "Huh. I forgot," he said simply, and offered nothing else.

Then he lifted a hand in a last wave and turned, walking off in the direction they'd actually come from, and Zane stood on the steps a while longer, watching him go, his heart racing, for more reasons than he could count.

*****

When Zane got back to the room, he startled Brody. The tall, muscular wrestler jolted up out of his chair. A warm smile formed on his face and he ran over to Zane to hug him. The hug was so enthusiastic, it almost felt like getting tackled. "Duuude, I thought you were stayin' a friend's place."

Zane remembered he might've texted Brody that he was staying the night at his friend's dorm. When he was arranging the meetup with DL, he wasn't sure if DL was going to take him home and have him spend the night. When that didn't happen, Zane forgot to text Brody to let him know he was coming home afterwards.

He quickly thought of a lie. "Yeahhh, I thought I might crash at his place, but he ended up getting a message from a girl who wanted to hookup... so here I am." Zane was getting good at lying, and he reminded himself not to make it a habit.

Author's Note: Thank you guys so much for reading and leaving comments. I really appreciate hearing your feedback/encouragement/ideas so much. It's one of my favorite parts of writing this story.

It took me a while to introduce Brooks, one of the title characters, but as you can guess, Brooks will gradually play an increasingly important role in Zane's life.

I have over 10 chapters of this story already written and am looking forward to posting all of them here over the next few weeks. The story is still nowhere near completion, however, and I expect it to be a 20+ chapter story.