Peter Russell stepped out of his car and looked up at the building before him. 'Block G, level 4, room 417,' he muttered to himself under his breath, glancing down at the key in his hand.
All around him anxious parents were fussing round their kids, helping them with boxes, bags and suitcases. Pete slung his backpack over his shoulder, pulled his case from the back seat of his battered Peugeot, and slammed and locked the door of the car. 'His car,' he thought proudly to himself. Weeks of hard work at his local supermarket over the summer had paid off. He was mobile and independent, and not reliant on his mum and dad to get him off to University.
As he'd locked the car door he'd caught a glimpse of himself in the door mirror. He was 19, five-eight and slim. Straight black hair hung down to his collar and fell across his piercing, blue eyes. His thin, pointed chin and full lips gave him a strange, serious look, he thought to himself. 'Not bad, for a nerd, I suppose,' he thought to himself. 'A virgin nerd..." unbidden the thought popped into his head, and he lost himself in a moment of thought.
--
The matter of his virginity had been much on Peter's mind in the past year. In his last year at sixth-form college, when all about were losing theirs, he had remained strictly, if unwillingly, virginal. It was not as if he wasn't getting plenty of sex as such, but somehow Pete didn't think that extended solo sessions on the internet really counted in the virginity stakes, no matter how many times a week he managed to orgasm. ('Thirty-five,' he grinned inwardly to himself, parenthetically. That had been a the most memorable week of the summer, when his parents had left him at home while they went off to the family holiday cottage in Devon, and he'd done nothing much except wank, eat pizza, drink beer and sleep for the entire week.)
The trouble wasn't that no sex was on offer, just that Peter somehow never seemed to work up the enthusiasm for it. Even when Tracey Bingham had, at an otherwise unmemorable summer party, pulled up her top and thrust her bare, and very ample, breasts at him, he'd just gone a pink in the face and turned away, with Tracey's laughter ringing in his ears.
The real trouble was that girls such as Tracey and her gaggle of giggling friends didn't really do anything for Peter. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but one of the main attractions to him, of spending extra time in the Physics lab at college, was that the lab looked out over the sports field, and from the benches along the window he could gaze out at the sports field, where there were always groups of muscular, sporty guys in tee-shirts and shorts running about or kicking a ball...
--
Pete shook his head and came back to the present. He really didn't want to follow that thought where it was heading. Picking up his suitcase, he lugged it into the building and climbed the stairs to the 4th floor.
'Room 417,' he thought to himself, looking up and down the corridor. 'Shared room 417, dammit!' He'd hoped for a single room, but there weren't enough for everyone, and in the lottery of university rooms he'd lost out. He'd be sharing with another boy. He didn't relish the lack of privacy, but he supposed that he'd get through it somehow. He and his room-mate would have to work things out. 'Hang a tie on the door-knob when we want to be alone!' he laughed to himself.
He came to the door of his room, put the key in the lock and pushed the door open. Clearly his new room-mate had already arrived. Standing by one of the beds, busily unpacking a suitcase, stood a tall, muscular lad, with a mop of unruly, straw-coloured hair. He was obviously around the same age as Peter. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of his tee-shirt, and as he was wearing shorts Peter could see that his muscular legs were covered in a light and soft-looking down of hair.
As Peter entered the room, the guy looked up from his unpacking, glanced across to Pete and smiled. 'Hi I'm Sam, Sam Miller,' he said, holding out his hand to shake Peter's. 'Hi, I'm P... P... Peter Russell,' Pete managed to stammer out, momentarily reduced to incoherence for reasons that he could not quite put his finger on.
'Nice to meet you,' said Sam. 'Great to be here finally, and away from home and college, isn't it?'
'Yes, I guess so.'
'What are you studying?'
'Physics,' Pete replied.
'OK, I'm doing Sports Science,' Sam said. 'I guess that they like to mix people up a bit when they share rooms.' 'Still, a bit of a bugger that we didn't get single rooms, hey?'
'Yes, I guess so,' said Peter, not entirely sure that he meant it!
'We'll manage, I guess,' Sam continued. 'Mind you, It'll be fucking awkward when one of us wants a wank - unless either of us is into exhibitionism I suppose!'
Pete didn't know where to look. 'Mmmmm...' he mumbled.
Sam roared with laughter. 'Don't mind me,' he chuckled, slapping Peter on the shoulder. 'You'll get used to my sense of humour - I hope!'
'I guess!' said Peter, sheepishly.
How he was going to get through the next few days, let alone a whole year, sharing a room with Sam, Pete wondered to himself.