Page 43 of College Town

He sits at his too-small desk in his childhood bedroom, the cursor blinking at him, and he feels a familiar loathing for his own work. He has two projects currently underway, one pretentious and first-person that Leo has been encouraging him toward, something he thinks he can place with a friend of a friend who’s in publishing; the other is personal, a guilty pleasure sci-fi space opera thing about childhood best friends turned lovers, completely self-indulgent and pulpy and perhaps his favorite thing he’s ever written.

He managed to eke out two-thousand words on the Literary Drivel, and now he’s going to try and hit the same milestone on his sci-fi novel. But when he reads over the last few paragraphs, it becomes glaringly obvious that, no matter what lies he’s told himself the past few months while working on it, the two central protagonists are very clearly Tommy and him. That hadn’t been so bad – had even been rather pleasant, skirting old memories and transmuting them into a story he could really get excited about – but tonight, Tommy’s sleeping somewhere just a few miles away, back in town and more gorgeous than Lawson ever expected.

Tonight, he keeps hearing the lilt of Tommy’s fiancée’s voice as she saidlover.

“Weren’t you his lover?”

The cursor blinks, and blinks, and blinks…

“Weren’t you his lover?”

Yes. He was.

~*~

McGarry Road wasthemake-out spot in Eastman. Anyone who spent more than ten minutes in town heard about it. Spend more than a week in town, and you’d probably been to it…except for Lawson’s grandma, and dear sweet old Mrs. Parsons who always orchestrated the church potlucks.

In the forties, Albert Louis McGarry tried to start up a gold mine in the foothills. It proved to be a bust. Ever the venture capitalist, McGarry went on to establish the small trade school that would eventually blossom into Eastman University – no one knew where the name Eastman came from, and Lawson didn’t care enough to dig into it – and the mine was boarded up. McGarry road was still there, though, and at the end of it, the broad gravel parking lots terraced into the side of the mountain, a whole network of them, perfect for parking, gazing down at the sprawling lights of the city below, and getting a little wild behind the fogged-up windows of a car.

His seventeenth winter of life, McGarry Road became Lawson’s favorite place on earth.

“Wait…wait, wait,” Tommy panted, fingers tightening in Lawson’s hair.

Lawson passed his tongue one final time over the hickey he was working into Tommy’s collarbone – always beneath their clothes, never up high on each other’s throats, where they really wanted to leave a mark – and lifted his head, reluctantly. They were still mostly clothed, Tommy’s shirt tugged to the side to make room for his mouth, Tommy’s thighs gripped tight around his hips where he straddled him in the back seat of the Le Sabre.

It took Lawson a minute to gather the ability to hum a question, chin resting on Tommy’s heaving chest, gaze filled with nothing but the dim, car-interior loveliness of Tommy’s flushed face, his slick, swollen mouth, eyes big as planets. “Hm?”

Then Lawson noticed Tommy’s steepled brows, the way he looked almost pained, and clarity returned – unwelcome and anxiety-inducing.

“What’s wrong?”

Tommy laid a hand on his face, cupped his cheek so tenderly, the way he never did when they were out in public. A move just for them, just for stolen moments. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, and Lawson was able to breathe again. “Just…” he bit at his lower lip, andoh, he was beingshy. Shy in the way that meant he wanted something but was nervous to ask for it.

Lawson grinned. Skated his hands down to his waist and squeezed where he knew he was most ticklish, for the pleasure of watching him squirm.

“Stop.” Tommy swatted at him, but not hard, and grinned. “No, seriously, stop.”

“What? What iiiiissss it?” Lawson asked in a stupid voice, laying on the drama.

Tommy laid a hand over his mouth, silencing him. “Don’t,” he warned, before Lawson could lick his palm.

He laughed against his skin instead, and Tommy fidgeted some more on his lap, which was doing delightful things to the tent he was pitching in his jeans.

When Tommy arched a single brow, he subsided, hands settling on Tommy’s hips, expression schooled to something meek and cooperative.

Tommy nodded, and pulled his hand away. He looked very authoritative for a moment…and then the lip biting started up against, and his gaze dropped to Lawson’s chest, fingers fiddling with his shirt sleeves. “Okay. So.”

“Okay. So,” Lawson parroted back, tone encouraging.

“I wanted to…try something.”

Lawson swore his brain wentping. “Oh.”

Tommy looked up at him through his lashes, shy again. Painfully pretty. “Yeah. Um.”

“Something we haven’t done before?”

Tommy’s nostrils flared. “I thought ‘try’ implied that.”

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