Speech and Debate

The Shattered Expectations of New Locations

Sometimes, living inside your mind can be far preferable to reality. For most people, that's one of the main purposes of dreams: to live out the things we would never do, or say, or feel, when forced into the real world. We can be anything we want to be, change the parts of ourselves we wish were different, and explore our deepest desires, all in the comfort of our imaginations. No consequences. I lived in that dream world a lot, and not only while sleeping.

While my physical body was beginning to come to life on the now familiar hotel room bed on my final night in Boston, my mind tried desperately to remain in my fantasy. I remember my voice in my head saying, "No! Please! Not yet, don't wake up. Just give me a few more moments here!"

But as is always the case, when you try to grasp at something as ephemeral as your dreams, they dissipate all the quicker, leaving you with only a dim, vague, misty remembrance of the happiness you traveled through while the moon reigned in the skies.

On this morning, our last together, I awoke from the alternate life in my head and fought against it's fading for only a moment. For once, and maybe for the last time, my body was in a reality that my dreams themselves couldn't hope to match. My contented interior journey was given the permission to continue.

My head rested on Daniel's chest, and I wondered at how he could feel so hard and so gentle at the same time. My body was wrapped around his like a koala clinging to a tree, every limb and appendage finding a place to take hold and pull him closer into me. My eyes were itchy and I rubbed them as I got my bearings. I felt Daniel shift under me, turning his neck awkwardly to look down at me as I began to stir.

"Hey there. Morning," his voice was soft and gentle, pitched so that only I could hear it, even as close as we were. His hands traveled the open space of my back and he rocked me gently into him so he could kiss my hair.

"Hi," I replied when I realized this was not, in fact, a dream and I possessed the power to speak. "How long have you been awake?"

"A little while, now." His hand came to rest lightly on my ass, squeezing gently.

"You should have just pushed me off."

"I like you right where you are."

I smiled and nuzzled into him again. We lay like that in the silence for a while, my fingers tracing the outline of his pecs and his lazily tripping over my back and shoulders. I think that neither one of us wanted to move from there because we knew, if we did, that it would mean what I feared was truly about to start. If we moved, we would have to leave this place, go back home, and this world we created together would come to an end. So we stayed there, together, for as long as we could.

When the time came that we could hold out no longer and our obligations to life, no matter how cruel they seemed at the time, were truly before us, Daniel moved first.

Quietly and with a gentleness I will always remember him for, he unwound my limbs from him and rose to his feet. I took a final look at his splendid nakedness, knowing this could be the last. He reached back to me and held out his hand. I took it silently.

I don't know why we didn't speak, why we didn't say the things that I know I wanted to say to him. But it seemed sacrilegious to spoil this time with speech. He pulled me to my feet and steadied me against him, my palms moving to his chest, rubbing the hairy mounds tenderly. Daniel brushed a light kiss against my lips, looking up at me through his bright brown eyes. He retook my hand, his fingers easily weaving into my own, and lead me to the bathroom, our bare feet on the carpet the only soundtrack to my waking dream.

Daniel's hand never let go of mine as he turned on the shower, checked the temperature and pulled back the curtain. He pulled me gently into the spray, the water barely registering against my skin, so entranced was I by him. I leaned my head back into the water and felt Daniel's fingers, finally released from my embrace, rake through my hair, pushing it back from my face.

He stared at me for what felt like hours as the water splashed against us, his palm pressed to my cheek. When he turned his head and leaned in to kiss me, I was there to meet him halfway.

His lips on mine, as they had been so often over the past few days, were somehow terribly new now. Our tongues began their familiar dance, but the music they danced to today was full of loss and regret.

It felt like a goodbye. One that I didn't want to end and that I intended to draw out until the sun turned cold.

Soon, the bond we had formed began to overpower even the possibility of its own destruction, and I felt Daniel's cock press against our stomachs, the sensitive parts of me rubbing into the sensitive parts of him. My kisses moved from his lips to his neck and I pulled him into me. My hands prodded at his ass, spreading his strong muscles and exploring the valley between them, easing close to and lightly pressing on his hole, making him sigh.

I slipped my finger inside him and felt him go onto his toes, his hole squeezing me, his hand grabbing my face and pulling my lips back down to his. My finger worked in and out, feeling him relax and get used to the pressure. When he released my face, he reached between us to grip my hard cock and gently pushed my shoulders against the now slick tiles of the broad wall.

Daniel turned gracefully, the bulk of his muscles betrayed by the lightness of his movements, and guided my cock head towards his willing hole. There was none of the hesitance or teasing as in the previous sessions, and none of the animal lust and passion either. Just a tenderness and eagerness that set my nerves to singing before I'd even entered him.

Pressed as I was to the wall, Daniel had complete control and he used it. I felt his ass expand around my cock as he slowly pushed himself back against me. His body responded on instinct, opening for me and mixing our two beings together without conflict. His hips rested on my own in a matter of seconds and I felt myself fully encased in him, the pressure of his body milking my shaft in soft waves.

Daniel reached behind him with one massive arm and craned his neck around, drawing my head down so he could kiss me. He rocked his hips forward and back against my hardness as we kissed, causing him to moan into my mouth as he found his rhythm.

I could have lasted for hours like that. The slow and steady pace Daniel set for us seemed designed to fire each nerve in turn, dialing up the tension in ever-so-slight amounts. I watched the muscles in his back and shoulders contract, felt his ass press against my hips and reveled when my cock head brushed against his prostate and he'd convulse around my tool.

Though I loved his dirty talk previously, even heard it on repeat in my mind when we were apart, it was out of place that morning. Instead of speaking, I simply listened to his body and my own as they fought the rising pleasure and postponed their imminent separation.

Language has it's limits.

Daniel must have felt every minute adjustment my body made while pressed inside him. Without saying anything, he sensed when I was nearing my orgasm and gently removed himself from my cock, turned, and sank to his knees. He jerked my shaft for only a moment before I felt it rising.

He tilted his head back and opened his mouth with my cock on his outstretched tongue. His eyes stared up at me, the water beading on his smooth olive skin, trapped by his morning stubble. I had the pleasure of watching as stream after stream of my cum flew into his mouth, coated his tongue in white. He groaned and took half of my length inside him, swallowing my seed despite his full mouth. Gently, he kissed and licked my cock clean, careful not to spill a drop of me.

When he rose to kiss me again, so I could taste myself on his tongue, I was racked by a wave of what I can only describe as gratefulness. In that moment, I was so blessedly thankful to be where I was, with him. It felt as if everything I'd been through till that point, all the hardships and heartache, the happiness and misery, joy and pain, everything that stitched together into what we humans call a life, all of it had lead me to be there, Daniel's lips pressed to mine, where I was supposed to be.

Yesterday, he had made me feel wanted and desired. Today, he made me feel...right. I will be in his debt forever for that alone.

The mediocrity of the hotel towels wasn't an issue when Daniel pressed the fabric to my skin and began to dry me off. My chest and stomach trembled under his placid touch. First one arm and then the other, he wrapped in the terrycloth. He knelt down before me, crouching easily on his heels, his skin glistening wetly in the harsh fluorescent lights. He slowly drew the towel up my legs, working from my ankles to my calves and then encircling my thighs. My cock he saved for last. The fabric on my throbbing, post orgasm tingly member sent my head back and my eyes fluttering closed.

All of this, the attention he lavished on my inferior body, he did in silence, only looking up at me from time to time, his eyes and face inscrutable.

I found myself paralyzed where I stood, transfixed by his eyes, caught in the web he didn't seem to realize he had spun around me with chords of iron. Daniel seemed to understand that I was unable, maybe unwilling, to budge from the spot where I stood, glued to the floor in awe. He retrieved another towel and held my gaze as he dried himself.

He must have known that he didn't need to ask me to follow him when he turned and reentered the bedroom. He simply sent me one of his half-crooked smiles, pressed his palm, fingers spread, to the center of my chest, over my heart, and exited the bathroom.

Have you ever been in one of those situations where you just knew, if you opened your mouth, you would set off a chain reaction the likes of which you were simply incapable of handling? That is where I was as Daniel and I picked out our outfits and dressed in the growing morning light. So many times, I came near to speaking, screaming, shouting what was roiling inside me. But my tongue remained lead in my mouth.

We collected our discarded clothes and belongings from wherever they had been thrown in last night's marathon sexploits and tucked, folded, or threw them into our suitcases. Daniel packed away the vibrator and lube he'd bought, and tossed me the stainless steel cock ring he'd gotten me, as yet unused in the confusion and rush of the weekend.

His zipper wound around his luggage and we stood, him on one side of the bed, and me on the other. His hands rested easily on his hips and I pushed mine nervously into the pockets of my jeans.

"Daniel, I...," I started in a rush.

Daniel shook his head and I quieted.

"Please," he begged, his voice breaking a bit and shattering my heart in my chest when it did. "Please, don't. I can't take it. Okay?"

I nodded.

My luggage seemed to weigh more than I did as I pulled it from the bed, extended the handle and rolled it to the door. My hand reached for the handle, but hesitated just centimeters from the cold silver metal.

If I turned that handle, I knew what it meant. I...couldn't.

I felt Daniel behind me, waiting for me to open the door so we could meet our group in the lobby, as we both knew we must. I could hear his breath, long and deep, as if he was trying to calm himself against a tide of emotion. I felt the tears coming to my eyes again and silently cursed myself for allowing this. Three times in as many days, I had let Daniel see me cry.

Fuck it. Fuck it all.

I turned, my luggage abandoned behind me and grabbed his face in between my hands, smashing myself into him with a roughness I didn't intend, but have never regretted. His arms clasped instantly around my waist. I fought to breathe between our kisses, sucking in air when I could but never wanting to pull back from his lips. I grabbed at him, clawed at his clothes with abandon, everything else forgotten but the feel of his lips. My tears came hot and fast and, had Daniel's mouth not covered and devoured mine, the sobs would have wracked me.

To my surprise, Daniel's cheeks shone wetly with his own tears. When the moment subsided, I held him to me, my forehead pressed to his, our noses nearly touching, chests heaving in time, punctuated by a falling drop of liquid sadness from either him or me. It didn't matter anymore.

I would have been perfectly happy to stay like that until I died of hunger or old age. All else seemed meaningless. I don't know if this was love, but whatever it was had pierced me and destroyed what I thought had mattered before. It all seemed like dust, now.

Daniel's last kiss, as soft as breath, drove what was left of my mind from me.

Daniel must have opened the door and lead me to the elevators. I don't remember moving. Part of me is still standing in that hotel room in Boston, holding Daniel against me and feeling that last embrace of his lips on mine.

The ride to the airport was uneventful. The security checkpoints and check-in counters passed me by in a daze. My classmates chatted amiably around me, but their words were like so much buzzing. I heard none of it. When someone called my name, I tried to smile half-heartedly at them, but they each seemed to recognize that I was not my self and were unwilling to press me further.

I don't know what I would have said if they had been.

The wait for our flight seemed both interminable and instant. Walking the causeway towards the airplane door felt like I was walking to my execution. I could sense Daniel plodding along behind me but found little comfort in his presence.

Daniel had somehow found the presence of mind to arrange our seats together again. This plane was much larger than the one we'd taken to get here: three seats on the outside of two aisles and rows of five abreast snaking down the middle. I found my place on one of the window seats about halfway down the plane and leaned my forehead to the ovular glass.

I watched the people scurrying about the tarmac below, hauling luggage and waving flashlights. I'm sure it was all very important but I paid it no mind. My hands came to my face every now and then to dislodge the unshed tears I couldn't keep from appearing at my eyes time and again. We readied for take off and I still sat, head against the window, staring blankly.

I hadn't heard Daniel ask one of the flight attendants for a blanket, so when I felt it brush against my left side, not covering my lap, but pooling beside me and obscuring my left hand beneath it's navy blue lengths, I jolted a bit.

Daniel's strong fingers searched for mine beneath the cover, found them and clung to my grip. I turned to look at him and he smiled at me, squeezing my hand tightly in his own. His thumb worked lazy circles over my fingers, tracing my knuckles.

"I'm not going anywhere, nerd," he said quietly. "It's going to be alright. I promise."

Our fingers remained laced together for the entire hour and forty five minute flight, though we still held our silence. I would have caused a scene if I had spoken. Even if we could have engineered a repeat performance of our bathroom antics from our first flight, I wouldn't have been able to. I tried to take what little strength I could from Daniel's sure grip on my hand and began the attempt at putting my life together again, futile though that seemed to be.

The flight ended too soon and our grip on each other had to come to an end. Even the excitement of baggage claim and the chatter about school in the morning did little to lighten my mood or unshackle my tongue. The hour long ride back to campus was spent as the flight had been, Daniel next to me, our fingers gripped together until my knuckles were white from the strength of it.

The wide gates of our school, with the well manicured lawns and majestic fountain soon came into view and the van we'd hired to drive us from the airport pulled into the mostly abandoned Senior Parking Lot.

My used Toyota Camry seemed out of place, even in the almost empty lot. Escalades and Beamers, Mercedes and Audis were more the style for my prestigious private school. Several parents sat in their cars, most of them of the brands listed, waiting to retrieve their younger children. Daniel's well known red Jeep stood out almost as much as my own economy car, but only because it was covered in mud. The luxury cars all gleamed pristinely in the afternoon sunlight.

When I got my bag from the back of the van and headed towards my car, the urge to break into a run suddenly took over. My pace quickened and I very nearly lifted my suitcase from the pavement as I hurried towards the relative safety. I felt every eye on me, as if all the parents and other students knew, could sense, that I was a basket case dangerously teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I threw my bag into the back seat, yanked my seatbelt around me and started the car. It rumbled to life slowly, and not for the first time, I cursed my inability to afford a more reliable ride. The car was in drive and I nearly pushed the pedal to the floor in my haste to escape.

I hadn't even said goodbye to Daniel. I couldn't have. If I had spoken, I would have lost it. I just...I needed to go. To get away from it all somewhere. It may seem so petty or dramatic now, nearly a decade on, but I can assure you, if you think back to when you were just 18, you will recall those times when your hormones and conflicting emotions ruled your brain and made you do, feel, and say things your adult brain never would.

I pulled out of the school parking lot and drove to the nearby highway. I merged onto it and soon found myself nearing 80 MPH and headed in the opposite direction of my house. I turned the radio to its highest volume, uncaring what mindless pop drivel assaulted my ears, rolled the windows down and felt the chill air blast against my face.

The tears were unstoppable, but I took some small measure of pride in keeping my sobs internal.

A vibration in my pocket startled me and I nearly swerved into the next lane. It vibrated again. It my state, it took me a moment to realize that I had my phone in my pocket and it was apparently still set to vibrate.

I fished it out and flipped it open. Yes, there were flip phones when I was 18.

I had 1 unread text message. I pressed the button.

DANIEL: Come back. Varsity locker rooms. 15 mins.

It was sheer dumb luck that I didn't cause an accident as I raced towards the next off ramp and reversed direction back to school. I had been speeding on my escape from the parking lot. I was damned near to breaking the sound barrier on my return.

Daniel's red jeep was the only car in the parking lot by the time my little Camry screeched to a halt. My adrenaline from the lightning fast trip back mixed with the incomparable high of reading Daniel's text. It seemed to me that I had been living on the fringe edges of the emotional spectrum since I'd roomed with him.

I didn't care who saw me as I ran towards the gymnasium complex.

The first set of doors I pulled were locked, as were the second and third. I remembered that there was a small "Coaches" door around the back, facing the football, soccer, baseball, and lacrosse fields. I'd never been a very athletic person up to that point, but I sprinted for all I was worth towards it and yanked it ajar.

The smell of the locker-room, with it's mix of sweat and pheromones, sex and competition, washed over me like a flood and made me swoon a little as I entered. Only a few emergency lights were buzzing along the ceiling. I hadn't ever been to this part of the gym, much less when the school was closed, but I had a general idea of where to go.