Author's Note: this story was written for the gay shoe fetishist.
***
Cameron hated that he was spending his summer in his old high school. But even with financial aid, college bills were stacking up and his parents had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn't be able to rely on them for a financial buffer of any kind. If he was going to have a functioning car to drive himself to class next semester, he needed every employment opportunity he could get, and joining the summer custodian staff at Wheatland High was as good a place to grab a paycheck as any. That coupled with his late night movie theater gig was enough to accumulate some cash.
Cameron somewhat miserably brought the mop down with wet thwock. Artlessly, he proceeded to thrust it back and forth, watching the soggy gray head dragging across the tiles like a drowned shitzu. These halls weren't exactly saturated with good memories for him. He wasn't particularly athletic, didn't fit in with the computer science geeks, and he wasn't a drama or band nerd. He had spent four years here just...surviving.
"You're just pushing the dirt around doing it that way," a voice sliced through the cluster of misery bunching up in his mind. Cameron turned to see Jesse leaning against a locker, hands in his pockets and watching him with an expression that was a blend of bemusement and mild disgust. Cameron felt minor irritation, but he was still new on the job and Jesse technically oversaw him, even though he was only a handful of years older and had never attended a day of college.
"Oh," he mumbled. "How am I supposed to do it?"
Jesse pushed himself away from the lockers and extended a hand for the mop. Cameron relinquished the handle and watched as Jesse deftly dunked the head in the bucket, squeezed it through the wringer, and then began to arc it back and forth in a series or quick, swirly switchbacks. "You have to mop towards you and without lifting. That way, any dust that was left behind by the dry mop will get picked up. Floors'll look like shit if we wax crap into them."
"Okay." Cameron was partially annoyed at how perfect Jesse was at everything, and partially in awe. He was attractive in a way Cameron knew he probably never would be. The rakish way his uncombed hair clumped up in attractive wavy locks, the cropped t-shirts that showed his curvy biceps as he drew the mop handle back and forth. And of course, there were the shoes.
Jesse had a seemingly endless supply of sneakers that looked like they had never been worn, in spite of the fact that he mopped and waxed floors all day. Today blue and white Air Jordan's with black swooshes and laces stepped backwards toward him as Jesse showed Cameron that he could even mop better than he could. Yesterday, it had been a handsome pair of all white Under Armour running shoes. The day before, retro-looking suede Reeboks. All of them flawless, all of them punctuating Jesse's muscular legs with very little help of no-show socks.
Cameron took the mop back from Jesse and nodded his head. "Thanks. I'll do it like that." Jesse clicked his tongue and made a little gun with his finger in acknowledgment before he stalked off. Cameron watched him leave. He was so fucking arrogant. Yet that made him even hotter. Cameron hated himself for being attracted to him and even more for wanting to be him. Being gay was a mess. Being a closeted gay was almost unbearable.
He plunged the mop into the bucket, wrung it out, and then did his best to emulate Jesse's moves, knowing that his arms didn't bulge like his, and his own beat-to-hell Adidas didn't look remotely sexy as he backed his way down the hall.
That evening, Cameron lay on his bed and feverishly pumped his fist up and down on his cock as he thought about Jesse. He saw the powder blue soles of the Air Jordan's on the hall tile as he stepped back. Watched Jesse in his mind's eye as he entered an entire room lined with racks of immaculate shoes and selected that particular pair for the day, carefully sliding them on his feet, his no-shows disappearing behind the tall padded collars and that little crease that ran along his calf muscle rippling as he bent to draw up the laces. In his mind, Jesse turned and looked at him in a bored kind of way, as though looking into the lens of a movie camera, and he glared at him until Cameron drew in his breath with a hiss and creamy semen jumped over his hand and stomach.
The following day did not start much differently. Another long stretch of stripped hallway tile stretched before him like a dull highway ushering him toward a dismal future. Jesse had stopped by briefly to supervise and stood in quiet satisfaction as he observed that Cameron had successfully adopted the signature arc-and-swirl technique with the mop. He announced he would be applying a second coat of wax to yesterday's hall if he needed anything, and left. Cameron watched him go, today's shoes--a pair of cream Puma running shoes with orange and navy accents--softly clomping around the corner.
Twenty monotonous minutes later, Cameron had reached the end of the hall. Leaning the handle of the mop against a trash can, he went in search of Jesse for his next menial task of the day. When he approached the hall he had mopped yesterday, he found it barricaded off with a few chairs strung with masking tape and a paper proclaiming "wet wax" scrawled in fading marker. Jesse was not in view, but the tang of the floor sealer in the air--a little like burnt sugar--told Cameron he could not have gone far. That's when Cameron spotted his Pumas parked along the wall near the barricade. His heart skipped a beat.
Shoes were never worn during the applications of wax because the previous layers--while dry--were not yet fully cured. While Cameron had seen Jesse in his socks performing the task before, he had never been alone with his abandoned shoes. He glanced around to confirm that no one was nearby, and then bent down and seized a shoe. Honestly, it was hot just holding it. Cameron savored the feeling of the meshy upper under his fingers, picturing how they shimmered under the day-bright hall lights when they bent as Jesse walked. It was a slip-on design, the opening yawning wide at the heel like an opening crocus. Cameron put it to his face and breathed in the scent of Jesse's sweat mingled with the rubbery smell of the soles.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Jesse demanded from behind.
Cameron whipped around, wide-eyed and horrorstruck to see him standing in his no-shows with a screwed up look of disgust on his face.
"Nothing. I, uh, finished the hall, and--." As Cameron spluttered, Jesse ripped the Puma from his grasp.
"What are you? Some sort of perv?" he demanded.
Cameron opened his mouth, willing some sort of response to materialize on his lips, but his retreating hard-on gave away his secret before he had a chance to speak. Jesse glanced at his shorts and slowly raked his eyes up toward Cameron's. To Cameron's surprise, his face relaxed. But a sneer curled on his lips.
"Oh, I see. That's exactly what you are." He shook his head slightly as though in extreme disappointment. "Start wiping down lockers in the science wing hall before I'm convinced you need to work somewhere else."
Cameron shuffled away, heat scorching his cheeks. But just before he rounded the corner, he turned back and watch as Jesse jammed his black ankle-socked foot into the Puma, mashing his heel against the lip of the shoe until it finally popped up over his Achilles like a fat lip. Cameron's erection throbbed on as he headed for the science hall in disgrace.
To his relief, he hadn't seen Jesse for the rest of the afternoon while he tirelessly ran a damp rag over 85 salmon-colored louvered doors. His arm ached and his fingertips were puckered and pale with damp as he clocked out in the mechanical room that doubled as the custodial staff lounge. When he turned to leave, Jesse's frame filled the doorway.
"Supply closet, perv," he commanded, indicating the dark little room behind him that they used for storing rolls of paper towels and clean mop heads.
Cameron trained his eyes on the narrow door over Jesse's shoulder before daring to look him in the eye for the first time that afternoon. "Can it wait until tomorrow? I gotta go since--"
Jesse cut him off, placing a cream Puma on a chair next to him and further barring his path to the hall. "Do you want to even come back tomorrow?" The was shockingly little malice in his voice, which compelled Cameron to answer.
