istarion@hotmail.co.uk
Monday morning. Alex sat up on the edge of his bed, bleary eyed, and reached out an arm to turn off the alarm. Only two days till summer break, he thought… two long, boring days. He wondered if Jay would bother coming to school for the last three days of the semester. He hoped he did. They would be in the same class, since it was a small school. Maybe they could even sit together.
The thought made him feel a little less gloomy, and he heaved himself up. Three days wasn’t that bad at all, really. And now he came to think of it, he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the summer vacation much anyway. He wasn’t going to be going on vacation, and his mom would still be at work. So he’d be stuck in the house, with not much to do. He was really going to have to try and make friends with Jay.
He pulled off his dirty boxers and stuffed them in the laundry basket, then grabbed his towel and headed for the shower.
Jay grinned as he watched. Alex really should be more careful about remembering to close his curtains. He couldn’t see much from here, and Alex had been facing the wrong way anyhow – but he’d gotten a nice view of his ass. And it had been a pretty cute ass – slightly muscular, but still nice and round, as far as he could see. He picked up his towel from beside him and carried on drying his hair.
Jay was naturally an early riser, and since it was his first day at a new school he’d woken especially early. He was a little nervous, but what was on his mind wasn’t the fact that he’d be in a new school in a place he didn’t really know, without any of his friends… it was Alex. He’d been to see the school a couple of weeks before moving here, and he figured he and Alex would be in the same class, since it was a small school.
He’d never really felt nervous like this before, and he didn’t know why he should be doing about Alex – sure, the guy was cute, but he wasn’t scary. If anything, he seemed pretty shy.
Jay had already had some breakfast, showered and gotten dressed, so he went downstairs and flicked on the TV. His dad was in the kitchen, fixing himself a coffee.
“Want me to run you down to school in a bit, Jay?” his dad called, hearing the TV turn on.
“Sure dad, that’d be great,” said Jay. He flicked through the channels. There wasn’t really anything interesting on, and he found he was still thinking about Alex. He absent mindedly rubbed his crotch, feeling a twinge of pleasure as he imagined Alex’s hand brushing against his dick.
Absently staring out of the window, he saw Alex slide a leg over his bike and ride off into the distance, his school bag over his shoulder, and realized it must be nearly time to set off. He grabbed his new bag from beside the sofa and slung it over one shoulder, then headed out to the car. His dad followed a few moments later, locking the door behind him and leaving his briefcase in the back seat, and looked across the car at Jay.
“What’s the matter, son? It’s not like you to be nervous!”
“I’m fine,” Jay replied, but his dad didn’t seem convinced.
“Sure you’ll be OK?” he asked, as they rolled up outside the school gate.
“I’m fine, Dad! I’ll ring and let you know what time I need picking up, okay?” Jay’s dad worked pretty flexible hours, and worked at home in the evenings as well, so he usually came back from work whenever Jay finished at school, but since their new house was a little further from his Dad’s office they weren’t sure quite how it was going to work out yet.
The classroom buzzed with the excitement of a semester about to finish, and Alex was the only person to notice as Jay came in. Alex wasn’t the most popular kid in the class, and there was an empty seat next to him, so Jay took the initiative – and the seat.
“Hey,” said Alex, not quite believing his luck – there were at least four other empty seats in the room. “I’m Alex,” he continued, and then broke off, blushing slightly. Jay knew who he was, they’d met the day before.
Jay wished he’d thought a bit about what he was going to say to Alex when they met. “Hi,” didn’t seem quite adequate, especially when he thought about all the things he really wanted to say; and if Alex actually did like him, what if they were both too embarrassed to say anything? He persuaded himself he was just being wishful, but said “Hey,” in what he hoped could be taken as a slightly suggestive tone.
Alex didn’t seem to have taken the hint, but smiled at him before turning to face the front as the teacher entered the room. The smile was even more heart-melting than the shy one he’d been treated to the previous day, and Jay was only half concentrating when the teacher told the class that they had a new pupil and introduced herself to him as Miss Randell.
“Sorry… what?” he blushed.
“Oh dear,” Miss Randell smiled. “I hope we’re not going to have problems with you, Jay.”
“Of course not Miss,” Jay grinned back cheekily.
“Hmm.” She turned back to the class. “Now then, as I’m sure you all know, the day after tomorrow is the end of the school year, but I want you all to come back with your little heads buzzing with knowledge, so I’m going to set you a research project to do over the summer. I want you to choose your favorite sport and present me with a poster of facts and pictures about that topic. There will be a prize for the most informative and artistic effort. I’ll give you the rest of my classes today and tomorrow to get started. You can work together if there are people who live near you that you can get together with over the vacation, but groups of no more than 3 please!”
Alex’s heart started to sink – nobody from school lived near him, and definitely not anyone who he was friends with – but then he remembered that Jay had just moved in! He looked up at him tentatively, and to his relief Jay turned and grinned at him. “You wanna work together then?”
Alex silently thanked Miss Randell for giving him an easy way to get to know Jay, and Jay secretly and very wishfully hoped he could use this as an excuse to get Alex on his own in his bedroom.
“Sure! What sport you wanna do?” asked Alex. “I only really like swimming and biking. I like watching baseball, I guess, but I’m rubbish at playing it.”
“I love swimming, why don’t we just do that,” said Jay, trying not to be distracted by the images of Alex in swim shorts which were filling his head.
“Okay,” Alex said, and then turned to Miss Randell, who was walking around the class listening to people’s ideas. “Miss, can we use the computer suite please?”
“Sure. Why don’t you show Jay how to use the computers?”
Jay followed Alex to the deserted computer room, and Alex pointed at the button on the front of one of the machines. “Okay, Jay, this is how you turn on a computer,” he said, and they both burst out laughing. Alex pulled up an extra chair for Jay and sat down in front of the workstation. Wikipedia proved a mine of information about swimming styles and competitions, after a few minutes they’d got a pretty decent looking list.
“What about pictures?” Jay asked. Alex typed in ‘swimming’ to Google images, and clicked through a few pages of pictures looking for a decent one.
“Try ‘swimmer’?” Jay suggested, so Alex keyed it in, finding a few good swim race pictures which he saved. Looking for something a bit more interesting, he typed in ‘diver’, and as well as a few deep sea divers, something that looked like an album cover came up, with some naked women posing on the ground in a circle.
“Ick,” Alex said, turning to Jay, “I don’t get why people like that kind of thing”
“Me neither,” said Jay, spotting a chance to find out more, “but then, I’m gay.”
“You’re gay? As in like, queer?” asked Alex, sounding more shocked than he meant to. “How… what… I mean… how do you know?”
“Well, I guess I’ve just always liked guys more than girls. I like dicks and stuff,” Jay said, with the pride of a teenager overcoming his embarrassment at saying the word dick out loud.
Alex blushed, not really used to this kind of conversation. “Eww,” he muttered. “That’s gross.” He’d been having fun just researching for the project with Jay and having a laugh or two, but now he felt awkward.
“It’s not gross,” Jay said, “it’s just different. Here, look.” He leaned across and kissed Alex very softly on the cheek.
“Eww!” yelled Alex, turning red and pushing him away. He got up quickly and gave Jay a weird look for a second, and then turned and walked out of the room.
Jay sat silently for over a minute, biting his lip. He’d just blown the perfect opportunity to get to know Alex better, and he felt really bad about how Alex must feel. He hadn’t meant to do it, it had just sort of… happened. Somehow in the heat of the moment it had felt like the right thing to do, when in fact they barely knew each other – and it sounded as if Alex probably wasn’t gay. As he thought it over, he couldn’t help feeling a tiny spark of hope remembering that Alex hadn’t liked the picture with the women, but it was rapidly extinguished as he realized Alex would probably never want to talk to him again. Why had he done it!? He’d let himself get carried away by his own selfish impulses, and hadn’t spared a single thought for Alex’s feelings.
Miss Randell watched him curiously from outside the door. She hadn’t seen anything that had gone on inside the room, but she’d seen Alex walk out, and decided it was probably best not to interfere just yet. Still, she made up her mind to keep an eye out.
Historical note: At the time of writing the picture Alex found on Google was real and did appear on the first page of results for the search term he used – I’ve no idea why, and I don’t suppose it’ll stay there for long.