Love 'N' Stuff [boyxboy]

Love 'N' Stuff [Original Slash] {01}

Matt

So the first few days of college was pretty awkward.

 Freddie and I moved into our campus apartment the Saturday before lectures were due to start, and, given that it was pretty late, our two roommates were already there. I walked into the kitchen first, carrying my two large duffle bags full of shit, followed by Freddie, who had one wheeled suitcase and his backpack.

 'Um,' I started, glancing at the two guys sitting on the couch watching TV in darkened silence. They hadn't even looked up as we'd walked in. 'Hi. I'm Matt, this is Freddie-'

 'Shh!' the darker-haired of the two, whose snakebites glinted in the reflection of the TV, snapped, glancing up at us shortly before returning his attention to whatever show was on. I recognised the theme music of X Factor. Of course; it was a Saturday evening in September, what else would anybody in the country be doing?

 I glanced at Freddie, who scowled. He's always been the more outspoken of us, but he just rolled his eyes and jerked his head back towards the hallway; silently, we turned around and left the room, searching for our bedrooms so we could dump our shit and, I guess, go watch TV as some sort of dud bonding experience with the two kids we'd be sharing living quarters with for the next year.

 'Good start then,' I tried to joke after the door had clicked closed behind us.

Freddie shrugged, then winked suggestively at me. 'At least they're hot,' he said quietly, and I snorted.

I guess Freddie and I have a pretty weird relationship. We're both gay – the only two (out) gay kids from our small town – but we'd never hooked up, like everyone had expected us to. There were some mild bullying incidents when I first came out aged 13, and then again the year later when he did, but mostly the town was open-minded, accepting, tolerant. There'd been a lot of disappointment – particularly among the girls, most notably our friend Asha – when, despite the copious quantities of alcohol we'd consumed at our graduation party, neither of us had broken down and confessed a long-standing, hidden desire to screw the other. We'd taken each other as our dates for the Debs – the only gay kids, remember? – but while I could appreciate the fact that Freddie was hot, we just didn't feel that way about each other. I think it's like when a guy and a girl are best friends but don't hook up. Given the rarity of choice back home though, a lot of people seemed to assume we'd, I dunno, "settle" for each other in the end, or something. No such luck.

I rolled my eyes expressively at my best friend. I've got big brown eyes, and long eyelashes that Asha says are "wasted on a guy", so rolling them is a pretty expressive gesture.

'Do you want the hot one or the cute one?' I asked sarcastically. I don't think either of us wanted either of them at that point – hotness doesn't exactly excuse rudeness when you're from a small, polite little town like us.

We found our rooms – side by side – and dumped our things, not bothering to unpack just yet. My sister, who went to University of Limerick, or UL, further up the country, told me that last year she hadn't bothered unpacking at all. I could believe it, since she hadn't unpacked over the summer either. So even though she had two places to call home, she was living out of bags. The idea didn't really appeal to me, but I could see how it might become practical in the long run: returning home every weekend with a few loads of washing would certainly be easier if the loads weren't scattered all over the room.

'How do you think Asha's getting on?' I asked lightly once I'd landed my bags on my bare mattress and retreated to Freddie's room. Asha was also attending UL, while Freddie and I were going to UCC, or University College Cork.

Freddie grinned in response to my question. 'Probably fine-tuning her gaydar and looking for our replacements,' he said mischievously. Asha considered it one of her greatest failures in life that she hadn't managed to hook us up at any point during our four-year friendship. She was probably hunting down poor gay kids at her new school and setting them up on blind dates already.