Only a Kiss
Story by K.M. Hirosaki on SoFurry
_ Only a Kiss _
by K.M. Hirosaki (kmhirosaki@hotmail.com)
AUTHOR\'S NOTES: This story and all characters are copyright © 2007 K.M. Hirosaki
The fox\'s ears were tilted back as he knelt before the skunk. He leaned forward so that he wasn\'t just resting on his haunches, and the look on his muzzle, with his lips spread around the thick spike of black flesh that stuffed his slender vulpine snout, was one of sheer, unadulterated contentment.
Conversely, the look on the skunk\'s face was one of a more active sort of pleasure. The young, well-toned black-and-white male had what must have been half of a piercing parlor\'s worth of adornments on him, his ears, muzzle and face all glittering with silver that accentuated rather than broke up his stark monochrome. The job of breaking up the color scheme fell to the shock of fur that was spiked up and forward from between the skunk\'s ears, dyed a vibrant electric blue.
As Trevor looked furtively at the pair, he wondered if he\'d prefer to be the skunk or the fox.
The loud knocking on his bedroom door made the raccoon squeak in alarm, and he pounded his paws on the keyboard, quickly closing down all of his web browser windows before whoever it was (either his mom or Sandra) saw fit to invade his sanctum without first asking if it was okay to open the door.
When Trevor heard the nasal sigh, he knew without looking that it was Sandra and not his mother. The raccoon wasn\'t sure which would be more awkward: getting caught looking at gay porn by his mother or by his girlfriend. He wasn\'t sure he\'d be able to convince either of them that he really didn\'t normally do that sort of thing.
The coyote hovering in the doorway just shook her head, causing Trevor to feel an upwelling of guilt before he realized that she couldn\'t have possibly seen the fox-and-skunk duo he\'d just been looking at (or the two wolves who looked like brothers in the window that had been behind that). Regardless, Sandra still loomed, emanating that aura that girlfriends seemed intrinsically able to emanate whenever they had caught their beau in the act.
\"You\'re playing that game again, aren\'t you?\"
Trevor blinked, looking back and forth between the coyote and his computer screen, still angled just out of view from the doorway. \"Huh? No I\'m not. I\'m just checking my email.\"
Sandra sighed and shook her head as she waltzed into the bedroom. Trevor snuck another look out of the corner of his eye, ensuring that the only icon showing on his taskbar was the one for his email application. \"You said you weren\'t going to let yourself play that thing during finals,\" the coyote said.
\"Finals don\'t technically start for two more days,\" Trevor pointed out. He knew that he was lucky to even have a girlfriend—and even luckier, considering that he was a chubby comp sci major and that his girlfriend was a total bombshell, but at moments like these, when she was being the Queen of the Harpies, it was easy to take that all for granted.
\"Yes, but I know how that thing works,\" Sandra said, motioning dismissively to the raccoon\'s monitor. \"You\'ve got to plunk hours and hours into it for days so you can go do your raves and stuff.\"
Trevor bit his lip. \"Raids,\" he corrected. \"And honestly, I\'m not playing. See?\" He scooted back in his chair and pointed with both palms toward the monitor.
Sandra just took a cursory glance at the desktop and scoffed. \"Oh, and like you didn\'t just shut down the program when you heard me knock just now?\"
At least she knocked, the raccoon thought to himself, and then he sat back upright in his chair. \"You can\'t just close the program,\" he explained. \"There\'s a logout timer so you can\'t just disconnect if something\'s about to kill you.\"
\"Whatever,\" Sandra said. \"Look, you\'d just better not let that thing suck up all of your time when you should be studying. And remember, you gave me your exam schedule.\"
Once more, Trevor moved to speak, but he let his muzzle shut with a click before he could say a word. Not only would Sandra not understand the intricate mechanics of an MMORPG, but also, the raccoon realized that it was probably better if she did think he\'d been playing computer games. \"I won\'t,\" he said. \"Promise.\"
Sandra managed only a partial (if still honest) smile, then turned around. \"Anyway, I just came to see what the holdup was. Your mom says that dinner\'s going to be on the table in five minutes.\" Her tail gave a flick as she walked back out into the hall.
\"I\'ll be right there,\" Trevor called after her, hoping his voice would also carry down the stairs.
He sat for a few moments longer, thankful that the panic at nearly getting caught had more than handily killed his erection.
It\'s not like you can jerk off at Mom\'s house, anyway, he told himself as he started to head downstairs toward the kitchen. Besides, once you get back to the dorm with Sandra, you\'ll be back to normal in no time.
Even after telling himself that, though, the otherwise delicious and pleasant dinner with Mom and Dad and Sandra was marred by his mind continuing to wander where it shouldn\'t throughout the whole thing.
\"Finals,\" he\'d told them in order to explain it away.
Kenny was a skunk, too, but he wasn\'t all decked out with piercings like the skunk in the picture with the fox had been. He\'d had one ear piercing; Trevor remembered that because he remembered having touched it.
No, Kenny wasn\'t outrageous or anything like that. He was just a regular, cool, down-to-earth guy, just like Trevor. Okay, so he wasn\'t exactly like Trevor, but that didn\'t make him a bad person. He was... nice.
It was only a kiss, Trevor reminded himself. It didn\'t mean anything.
Home was an hour and a half drive from campus: far enough away to be outside of the coddling clutches of the parental units, but close enough to still be convenient to drop by unannounced and have Mom do a load of laundry and whip up a good, home-cooked meal.
An hour and a half really wasn\'t all that much time, but with Sandra in the passenger\'s seat, the numbers on the digital clock couldn\'t tick up fast enough.
\"I think we should put a study group together,\" the coyote said. \"Us, Charlene, maybe Dave and some of your other friends if they\'re not too hung up on playing that stupid game, too.\"
Trevor tried not to sigh audibly, putting more attention on the road than was strictly necessary. \"Maybe,\" he said.
\"Maybe?\" Sandra parroted back in a shrill tone that succeeded in making Trevor wince outright. \"Come on, we need to go over this stuff, and you know it.\"
\"We will, don\'t worry,\" the raccoon said. \"But it\'s not like we\'re all taking the same classes. We can—\"
\"You and Charlene are both in Professor Wittenberg\'s history class,\" Sandra said.
Trevor stifled a growl. \"Yes, I know,\" he said, keeping his voice as level as he could muster. \"And I\'m sure we\'ll do some studying together, don\'t worry.\"
\"Yeah, but if we have a group, we\'ll be able to get on each other\'s backs and make sure we all study.\"
The phrase \'get on each other\'s backs\' made Trevor\'s mind reach for a mental image, but he stopped himself before allowing it to congeal. \"Tell you what,\" he suggested. \"Tomorrow at breakfast or lunch or whatever, we\'ll go over what classes we\'ve all got, and figure out when it\'ll be most convenient for people to study together.\"
\"You mean as a group?\"
Trevor\'s fingers gripped harder at the steering wheel. \"If that\'s what\'s most convenient for folks, then sure.\" He didn\'t know if he even wanted to offer to let her stay over at his room tonight if she was just going to yammer on about study groups until three in the morning.
\"You know, after this semester, things are going to be a lot tougher,\" Sandra said. \"Junior year is when things start getting really serious.\"
\"Our GPAs are fine,\" Trevor said. Sandra just snorted a distinctly canine and unladylike snort.
Trevor felt his heart fill with relief when he finally approached campus. Sandra urged him not to speed as he drove by the outer edge of the quad, advice that he actually heeded, since the last thing he needed was a run-in with campus police. He slowed down, then, until he reached his dorm. He slipped his parking permit into view atop his dashboard, and then got out to fetch his bag of freshly-washed laundry from the trunk.
When he walked back around front, Sandra was standing just outside the entrance of the dorm. \"Hey,\" she said, gently taking hold of the raccoon\'s wrist. \"I\'m sorry to harp on you. I\'m just really nervous.\" Her tone had changed, now, to the more calm and considerate Sandra that made Trevor feel like a very lucky fellow, and not like the utter nag she\'d been all weekend.
\"It\'s okay,\" he told her, giving her a peck on the cheek. \"I know you mean well.\"
Sandra turned Trevor\'s head and gave him a more proper kiss, and then she smiled. \"Hey, so Doug isn\'t here right now, is he?\" she asked, winking.
In all of his fretting, Trevor had nearly forgotten that his roommate wasn\'t around. \"I don\'t believe he\'s due back until tomorrow,\" he told the coyote, returning her grin before slipping past her and into the lobby. She fell into step behind him, and his goofy smile made the vixen working student security roll her eyes as Trevor signed his girlfriend in.
Upstairs, with laundry and books all put away and Doug nowhere to be seen, Trevor and Sandra sat on the raccoon\'s bed. They basked in the familiar glow of the lava lamp that she\'d gotten him for his birthday earlier that year, the intentionally-gaudy decoration the only source of light in the room for the time being.
\"So,\" Sandra said, setting her paw on Trevor\'s hip.
\"So,\" Trevor said back, brushing his fingertips against the coyote\'s belly through her shirt. He started to run his claws in a slow, meandering line up toward her chest, but then he stopped himself, hesitating before ultimately falling back.
\"So,\" Trevor said, feeling his ears and cheeks burn with embarrassment along with vodka, schnapps, and a few beers.
Kenny canted his head and smiled a quirky smile that just made the the tingling in Trevor\'s ears get worse. \"What?\" the skunk asked, his big, black-and-white tail blocking the view of whatever might have been behind him, forcing Trevor\'s hazy vision to stay firmly up front. It was like his world was confined to the frat house couch, the rest of the party some distant thing that existed only beyond the haze.
The raccoon fidgeted his paws and played with his shirt, suddenly self-consciously aware of his belly. Sandra never complained about it, even though eating in the dining commons and spending hours in front of a keyboard was never going to be any help in shrinking it (and despite his claims that raccoons were just \'bigger\' than other species in that regard, they both knew that he could stand to drop a few pounds). He might never be as slender as Kenny, here, but he didn\'t need to let himself be fat.
Forcing that self-consciousness out of his eyes, Trevor looked shyly back at the skunk. \"You know, I just... I wonder what it\'s like.\"
Kenny smiled and laughed. \"What what\'s like?\" he asked, and then leaned in closer to the raccoon. \"Doing it with a guy, you mean?\"
\"No!\" Trevor yipped quickly, his blush unable to get any worse than it already was. Of course, he wondered what that was like, too, but he wasn\'t trying to get into that now. \"I just mean, like... what\'s it like in general? Being gay, I mean.\"
The skunk giggled, the little laugh both girly and effeminate. Trevor had heard Kenny laugh before, of course, but he\'d never quite noticed that quality. Was he only ascribing it now because he\'d just learned that the skunk was gay? \"I don\'t know if I could really explain it,\" Kenny said, never once losing his casual smile. \"I mean, can you tell me what it\'s like to be straight?\"
Perhaps because of the alcohol, Trevor stopped and thought about that for a few seconds, and then he, too, giggled in spite of himself. \"Er, well, I guess not, no,\" he said. \"I mean, I guess it just all boils down to liking girls, if you think of it that way.\"
\"And I like boys,\" Kenny said. \"Simple as that, right?\"
\"Right,\" Trevor replied. So Kenny liked boys. He was still Kenny, after all. Here he was, sitting in the middle of the Psi Kappa party, and nobody was looking at him twice or getting ready to throw him out the door.
Just then, Doug stopped in front of the couch that Trevor and Kenny were sharing. The wiry cacomistle\'s more raccoon-like traits again made Trevor aware of just how thin he wasn\'t. \"Hey, so Josh and Boony are heading out to make another run to the liquor store,\" Doug said. \"You guys got any requests?\"
Trevor tried to think about what he\'d like, beyond what he\'d already had. \"Um, whatever that cider stuff they had a couple weeks ago,\" the raccoon said. \"Boony\'ll know what I\'m talking about.\"
\"We\'re running low on orange juice, too,\" Kenny pointed out.
Doug nodded. \"You can just give me a few bucks later, okay, man?\" he said, slapping Trevor on the shoulder. \"Back in a few.\" With that, Doug disappeared back through the throng of partygoers, his extra-long tail disappearing a moment later.
There was an abrupt break of silence as someone on the other side of the living room switched out one CD for another. In the meantime, the chatter made Trevor\'s head hurt before the music came back on and drowned most of it out again.
\"You\'d be surprised at how many parties I\'ve been to where they run out of mixers,\" Kenny said. \"They\'ll have more than enough vodka, sure, but nothing to mix it with.\"
\"Well, at least they won\'t run out of beer,\" Trevor pointed out. His own beer was empty, he remembered, but he was too lazy to get off the couch to get another right away.
Kenny snorted out another chuckle that still managed to hold a mildly feminine tone. \"Frat party beer is even worse than regular beer,\" the skunk said. \"Besides, you\'re way less likely to throw up if you stay clear of it.\"
That was the thing about Kenny: he\'d always just been so mellow and chill that Trevor had never stopped to think twice about anything. If he hadn\'t been a friend of a friend, maybe Trevor would have caught on sooner instead of hearing about it earlier that night, but... he was still just one of the guys. He was sitting here talking about drinking and throwing up, not throwing his sexuality in Trevor\'s face. That was cool.
\"So, like, have you ever had a boyfriend, then?\" the raccoon asked.
Trevor ran his paw up the front of Sandra\'s t-shirt, the soft yellow turned an ugly orange thanks to the reddish light radiating from the lava lamp. He cupped his paw at one of her breasts, then, as he leaned in to kiss her. She kissed back, moaning very softly, lips trembling with a soft, inviting hum.
The coyote slid her arms around Trevor\'s shoulder, her fingers teasing at the back of his neck. The sensation made him giggle, but he held the kiss, their tongues entwining as he rubbed his thumb at her nipple through the tight fabric. She\'d talked about maybe getting it pierced, he remembered, probably sometime after the end of the semester as a reward to herself for keeping her GPA up. She\'d asked for Trevor\'s permission, and he\'d told her that he didn\'t mind.
The raccoon brought his paw back down to Sandra\'s belly, and this time slipped it underneath her shirt. The teasing of claws at the back of his neck got more eager as his fingers slip up along the fur of his girlfriend\'s torso. Sandra liked to wear bras that clasped in front, something that Trevor could appreciate since he wasn\'t the most lithe and acrobatic guy on campus.
Before he moved to undo the bra itself, Trevor again stroked over the coyote\'s breast, imagining what it would feel like to have a tiny metal nipple ring there. As his fingers closed in around the bra clasp, though, the thought of that piercing-to-be brought to mind the pierced-out skunk. His kiss faltered, but he quickly compensated, even as his fingers fumbled and failed miserably at getting Sandra\'s bra off.
He kissed more hungrily, then, sucking a bit too hard on her tongue as he willed the scandalous image of that blow job out of his mind, but the harder he tried to purge it, the clearer it became. With a whimper, the raccoon pulled away, his teeth accidentally catching on Sandra\'s lower lip. The coyote winced and brought her fingers up, touching the spot, the fur on her fingertips darkening with just a tiny spot of blood.
\"Sorry,\" Trevor mumbled. \"I didn\'t mean...\"
Sandra licked the inside of her lip a few times, then just shrugged and smiled. \"Not your fault. Just a little eager there, is all,\" she said, leaning in to kiss him again. They kept it brief, though no less passionate, even if Trevor had already been pulled out of the moment.
When their muzzles parted a second time, the raccoon lowered his head. \"You know, it is late,\" he said. \"Should we maybe—\"
Trevor didn\'t have a chance to finish his sentence as Sandra pushed him down onto his back, pinning him to the bed with one paw on his chest, the other undoing his belt. \"Relax,\" she commanded with a wily canine grin. \"We\'ve only got a couple more days until finals, so let\'s enjoy them.\"
While Kenny probably had a point about parties running out of mixers, Trevor was at least glad that this one hadn\'t run out of vodka. Doug and Boony had apparently gotten back a few minutes ago, but the raccoon hadn\'t gone to check on whether they\'d been able to track down the cider he\'d asked for, as the last two shots of vodka (in rapid succession) had brought his buzz back into full effect, and he didn\'t need to get too drunk.
Being tipsy always made things better, especially towards the end of the semester.
\"So, then, how many people know that you\'re gay?\" the raccoon asked the skunk.
Kenny furrowed his brow, and his ears twitched. \"Um, well, not that I keep it a huge secret or anything,\" he said, \"but you also don\'t need to announce to it everyone else within earshot.\"
Trevor tilted his head. \"I\'m not being that loud, am I?\" He asked. Kenny didn\'t say anything, but the look on his face was answer enough.
\"It\'s okay,\" the skunk said, waving it off with a paw. \"Like I said, I don\'t make a secret out of it. It\'s just part of who I am, and I\'m not going to go out of my way to hide that.\"
\"That\'s pretty brave,\" the raccoon said. \"I mean, I think it\'d be scary to, you know, have people, uh, know that.\"
The expression Kenny\'s face shifted back from guarded to genial. \"At first, I suppose it was,\" he admitted. \"But it feels like it\'s been forever since I first came out; it\'s almost like I don\'t remember what it was like to be afraid.\"
\"How long have you been out, then?\" Trevor asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he spied Doug\'s tail, and he thought again about maybe tracking down some of that cider.
Kenny\'s reply brought the raccoon\'s wandering mind back into the moment. \"Almost two years, I think. Year and a half, maybe? It was at the beginning of sophomore year, at the Johnson Hall Halloween party.\"
\"You came out at a Halloween party?\"
The skunk chuckled. \"It was more of a de facto coming out, really,\" he said. \"There was this guy there, and I\'d been jokingly flirting with him because I thought he was cute, and he kept jokingly flirting back, and before long... well, I started to think that he wasn\'t just joking, and we\'d all been drinking anyway, so I just grabbed his face in my paws and planted a big ol\' kiss on him.\"
Trevor\'s jaw dropped a little, and the last shot of vodka must have kicked in, too, because he suddenly felt a bit lightheaded, as well. \"You mean, like, right in front of everyone?\"
\"Right in front of everyone,\" Kenny repeated with a grin. He looked almost proud. \"Well, at that point, I couldn\'t really hide the fact that I was a fag, so I just... went with it.\"
\"And your friends were, like, okay with that?\"
\"Well, sure,\" he said. \"I mean, yeah, most of them were teasing me about it at breakfast the next morning, but I was more concerned with my hangover than anything else.\"
Trevor smiled. \"You must have cool friends.\"
\"I guess,\" Kenny said. \"Though if they were going to be all bent out of shape over me kissing a guy, I don\'t think I\'d want to have them for friends anyway.\"
The raccoon rolled the skunk\'s words around in his head, acutely aware that he was lolling his head side-to-side as he did so. \"Is that why you\'re okay with being out, then?\" he asked.
\"You could put it that way, I suppose. I don\'t think it\'s something that I need to analyze.\" He patted himself on the chest. \"This is who I am, and so that\'s who I\'m going to be.\"
\"And you\'re really not worried about what people will think about you?\"
The skunk nodded to toward the huge gathering of fellow students that filled the room around them. \"Hey, here I am, hanging out at a frat party, chatting and drinking, and nobody\'s kicking me out or calling me names or beating me up. Doesn\'t look to me like I have much to worry about.\"
Trevor looked out at the crowd of students and wondered if anyone else besides Kenny here was gay. He looked back at skunk and smiled. \"That\'s cool,\" he said. \"I bet that feels nice.\"
It was a good thing that Doug wasn\'t going to be back, because otherwise, Trevor would have felt really self-conscious about the scent lingering in the room. Not that his roommate didn\'t know that he and his girlfriend had sex or anything like that; the thought just made him feel weird, almost like whenever Sandra would kiss him in front of his mom.
Trevor\'s body was nice and relaxed, now, even if his mind was anything but. His big triumph just now had been keeping it together long enough to be able to keep it up. And while Sandra had been going down on him, he\'d even managed not to imagine that it was a male fox\'s muzzle wrapped around his dick instead of his girlfriend\'s.
Well, except for a few seconds somewhere in the middle, but that hardly counted.
\"Seems like you needed that, Trev,\" the coyote said, running her painted claws up and down through the fur of the raccoon\'s chest. \"I hope I didn\'t tucker you out too much.\"
\"Is there such a thing?\" Trevor responded. He let the smirk show through in his voice since Sandra\'s eyes were closed.
Sandra stroked lower, petting over Trevor\'s belly, which again felt uncomfortably fat when brought into focus like that. \"You usually babble a lot more afterwards, is all,\" she pointed out, smiling as she nuzzled at his soft chest.
\"Well, you\'re usually a lot less... assertive, too,\" he pointed out.
At that, the coyote opened her eyes, sat up, and grinned proudly back down at him. \"I wanted to cut to the chase,\" she said. \"A gal needs to take the reins every now and then, right?\"
Trevor chuckled. \"You\'re not hearing me argue, are you?\"
\"All that stuff cluttering your head about gaining levels is bound to mess with your stressing out over finals,\" Sandra said. \"I thought it would be best to force you to unwind by forcing you to just lie back and let me do all the work.\"
\"So you\'re saying I did a good job, then?\" he asked, winking.
She reached down and slapped him lightly on the chest. \"I\'m saying that I\'m glad we had the room to ourselves, that\'s all,\" she said, and then she bent down to kiss him. He kissed her back, screwing his eyes tightly shut as he did so. There was still some lingering muskiness and saltiness on her tongue that he thought should have gone away by now. Normally, that sort of thing didn\'t really bother him, but now, he found it very distracting, more so considering that Sandra was particularly eager about this one kiss.
\"Wow, I did tire you out,\" Sandra said after she released the lock on Trevor\'s muzzle. \"I\'ll have to remember how to do that.\"
The raccoon just hummed, then rolled over and pulled the covers up around them both. He shut his eyes and slowed his breathing, wanting to project the image of resigned sleepiness to his happy girlfriend.
\"Hey, so tomorrow, do you promise we\'ll talk about the study group thing?\" she asked.
\"Let\'s not talk about studying now,\" Trevor murmured, drawing himself further into a cocoon of bedding, shielding himself from added prying.
\"I like your earring.\" Trevor\'s fingertip traced the tiny metallic hoop and bead for several long seconds, and then it started to brush and stroke at the fur of ear itself, bristling against the guard hairs on the inside.
Kenny\'s face scrunched up as he let out a partial squeak through his nose. \"Careful there,\" he said, his ear flicking. \"It\'s kind of sensitive.\"
\"It doesn\'t hurt, does it?\" the raccoon asked, quickly ceasing his touch but leaving his paw within range of the skunk\'s face.
\"No,\" Kenny replied, shaking his head, \"but if you keep it up, it can be a little, er, distracting.\"
A few fuzzy moments slipped by before Trevor keyed in on what Kenny meant by that, and he immediately folded his own ears back when he caught it. \"Oh, gosh, I\'m sorry,\" he stammered. \"I didn\'t mean to, ah...\"
The skunk just laughed again, though. \"Oh, no, don\'t worry,\" he said. \"Just, I mean, we are still surrounded by people.\" True to his word, the party now was even more crowded than before, no doubt due to already-drunk students from other parties wandering on by the Psi Kappa house on their way to or from wherever.
Trevor stuffed the neck of his bottle of cider into his snout and canted his head back, gulping some more of it down. It tasted better than he remembered, with almost no burning from the alcohol. He pulled the bottle up in front of his eyes and gazed at the label. He thought it was the same brand, at any rate. Labels all kind of looked the same after a while. It still tasted good. Besides, Boony would be able to tell him what he\'d picked up.
\"I think it\'s nice that skunks have tiny ears,\" he said, sticking the bottle down in place between his thighs, since the end table behind him was full of empties and he didn\'t want to lose it.
\"Nice?\" Kenny looked embarrassed now. Or maybe that was ashamed. The distinction made Trevor worry.
\"Like, not in a weird way,\" the raccoon said. He tapped his own ears with his fingertips. \"It\'s just, like, when I touch my own ears, I\'m used to them feeling a certain way, and yours... yours, like, feel different, because they\'re little.\"
Kenny broke into a quick fit of giggles, and his head wobbled dizzily, requiring him to steady himself against the arm of the couch. \"That\'s a stunning, starting observation,\" he said, leveling a finger at the raccoon\'s nose. The slight slurring of the skunk\'s voice, combined with Trevor\'s cottony hearing, made it hard for him to hear what Kenny said next after that.
A small splash of cider got on Trevor\'s jeans as he yanked the bottle back out from between his legs to take another long sip. He let it clear his throat, and then he focused his gaze back on Kenny, who by this point was like a too-distinct black-and-white form that stood out starkly from the amorphous blobs behind and to either side of him. \"Wait, what?\" the raccoon asked.
\"I said bigger ears can be nice, too,\" Kenny said (and presumably repeated). \"I guess I\'m kind of jealous that foxes and rabbits have so much... real estate when it comes to ears.\"
\"Sandra\'s mom has, like, I swear, eighty-seven piercings in her one ear,\" Trevor said. \"It\'s just ridiculous. She looks like... like a chandelier.\"
That description made Kenny fall apart in another burst of laughter. He grabbed for his own drink on the floor next to the sofa, making a few failed attempts before succeeding. He put a stop to his chuckling by taking a few sips, but his nose wiggled a few times with some residual giggles even when his mouth was full.
When the skunk had calmed back down, Trevor reached out and rubbed at his earring some more.
Sandra\'s scent was still heavy in the room. That was the second thing Trevor noticed upon waking up, right after discovering his uncomfortable case of morning wood. The raccoon knew, though, that the two weren\'t connected.
So strong was the coyote\'s scent, actually, that Trevor thought that she was still in the room. It was only after he rolled over in an attempt to hide his erection that he realized that he was alone in the bed. He took a few more sniffs, confirming that the familiar canine scent was still fresh and recent, and then he rolled over onto his other side and tilted his head to look upside-down at his room.
The coyote\'s sandals were still over by the front door; that right there told Trevor that she hadn\'t left yet. The shirt she\'d worn yesterday was lying on the floor, too, and her pants were slung over the back of Doug\'s desk chair. She had to be in the shower, then, since there was no way she\'d have put on an entirely new outfit just to run to the bathroom.
Trevor rolled back over once more and buried his face into the pillow Sandra had slept on. He tried to associate that warm, feminine scent with the pesky erection that was pressing down against his mattress, but the new stimulus couldn\'t replace the old cause. The raccoon tried again anyway, and then rolled onto his back and whined in frustration.
If these thoughts were going to keep coming back to haunt him, he may as well just let them run their course. It was probably the only way to speed the process along.
The raccoon\'s fingers slid up the inside of his own thigh, and despite already being hard, he teased himself, getting closer gradually, closing his eyes, pretending he didn\'t know where things were going. Maybe it could be that little fox—_no, it\'s the skunk, and you know it is—_could be touching him there, right at the crease between his thigh and his crotch, whispering into his ears about how it was over for Trevor to just relax.
With that in mind, when Trevor\'s fingertip first came in contact with his hard flesh, he actually got a gasp out of himself. Dampness soaked into the short fur as he brushed with a single digit, up and down, just underneath his drizzling tip. Normally, when he was still freshly awake, he lacked sensitivity, but this morning was already shaping up to be very different.
Before he could stop himself, he wrapped all of his fingers around his shaft and squeezed, making himself whimper in a way that made him flush up with embarrassment, even though he was alone in his room. His grip reversed itself, then asserted itself again, stroking as the raccoon pictured a black-and-white face sinking down into his lap.
He wasn\'t entirely sure what to imagine in terms of what things were \'supposed\' to feel like. It wasn\'t a stretch of logic to assume that a guy would know what a guy liked better than a girl would, though, was it?
So, Trevor pumped his paw up and down, imagining a naturally-talented muzzle bobbing up and down his length. The raccoon bit his lip as he found his unoccupied paw hovering just above the sheets, thumb and forefinger rubbing together in the spot where a certain pierced ear would be.
The sound of a slamming door shook Trevor free of his fantasy, making him sit bolt upright with a cry of alarm. He was already lightheaded, what from all of his blood being redirected between his legs, and so the adrenaline rush that came next made him so dizzy as to approach full-on nausea. Still catching his breath, he felt supremely stupid when faced with the look on Sandra\'s face, standing there with a towel wrapped around her torso.
\"Er, yeah, good morning to you, too, sleepyhead,\" the coyote said, closing the door behind her without turning around. The fur between her ears was still damp.
Trevor blinked away his shock. There was a brief but discernible intellectual process that he went through before he remembered that, no, Sandra couldn\'t read minds, and so he was still safe. \"Sorry,\" he said with a chuckle. \"I must\'ve been in the middle of a dream.\"
\"Must\'ve been a nice dream.\" The coyote smirked and nodded down toward the bed.
The raccoon\'s fist was still firmly wrapped in place around his cock, and he\'d been leaking so much that he\'d soaked a visible damp spot through his sheets. With a sheepish chuckle, Trevor released his grip, but the wet tent formed by his erection was still very obvious. \"Sorry,\" he murmured.
\"Oh, don\'t be,\" Sandra replied, letting her towel fall away as she approached the bed. \"You don\'t need to take care of that all by yourself, though.\"
\"Does it still count if I was dreaming about you?\" Trevor asked.
\"After last night, I\'d hardly be surprised.\" The coyote sat by Trevor\'s feet and peeled back his sheet and looked down at the drizzle-smeared shaft that the raccoon had been working away at. \"Though if you don\'t stop thinking with your dick, you\'re going to have a tough time studying.\" Saying that, she let her own fingers slide up and down the side of his member.
Trevor closed his eyes and leaned his head back onto his pillow. \"Well, wouldn\'t you help me out then, too?\" he asked, realizing now just how close he\'d been to orgasm when Sandra had walked in.
Sandra laughed. \"Not when the rest of the study group is around, at least,\" she said as she started to tease with her own dainty fingertips.
As pleasant as the coyote\'s touch normally was, Trevor\'s erection—which previously hadn\'t wanted to go away—proceeded to soften bit by bit, and no amount of fantasizing (in either direction) had any results in stopping that.
\"Sorry,\" Trevor said, noticing Sandra frown as she pulled her paw away. \"Guess you got everything out of my system last night after all.\" He smiled at her, and when he didn\'t see a reaction right away, he added a wink. That, at least got a crack of a smile.
\"Come on,\" Sandra said, patting the raccoon on the tummy. \"Get in the shower. I want to make sure we catch the guys at the dining hall so that we can talk about setting up study groups.\"
With that, the last pathetic remnants of Trevor\'s hard-on vanished entirely.
\"So you really just kissed that guy in the middle of the party?\"
Kenny looked up from his red plastic cup, having seemingly been distracted by its contents. He looked back at Trevor, then, confused for a few moments before light dawned on his face. \"Oh! That.\" He sat his cup back down. \"Well, yeah. Like I said, we were pretty drunk, though.\"
\"Yeah, but that... that still has to take courage, right?\"
\"Or just a raging hard-on,\" the skunk said with a giggle. \"Honestly, I don\'t think a lot of thought went into it.\"
Trevor turned his attention back on his own paws. He held another empty bottle of cider. He knew that he\'d had enough several drinks ago, so he clutched his empty like it wasn\'t an empty at all, hoping that nobody would force another into his paws. As he peered at the green-tinted glass, he tried to picture Kenny, in a party like this, kissing some guy who looked like... like...
\"So what species was this guy, again?\"
\"A wolf,\" Kenny replied. \"Although I don\'t think I said, before.\" He took another sip from his cup, smacked his lips, and then looked deep into Trevor\'s eyes. \"How come you keep asking about that? It was only a kiss.\"
Trevor felt his train of thought grind to a halt for a second. What was he supposed to say? How simple could he say something in his current state of mind. \"It just sounds... nice,\" he said, and when he saw the look on the skunk\'s face, he continued babbling in order to backpedal. \"I mean, like, in terms that it, y\'know, makes for a good story. Like you were saying before, I mean, about it... um, making a good story.\"
Kenny, though, didn\'t seem terribly convinced. A few moments later, though, his dubious expression switched back over into a smile. \"You don\'t seem weirded out by it, at least,\" the skunk said. \"That\'s the important thing.\"
\"I just think it says a lot about you, that you\'re able to do that sort of thing,\" Trevor said. \"I know I\'d be way too self-conscious to make out with a guy in public.\"
The skunk giggled.
\"Um, I mean, to make out with someone in public,\" Trevor said.
Kenny stood up from the couch. \"Come on,\" he said, reaching down, offering Trevor a paw.
\"Huh? Where are we going?\" the raccoon asked.
The skunk waved his offered paw. \"Just come on,\" he repeated with a smile.
Trevor took Kenny\'s paw and stood up. Kenny immediately let go and started to walk off, and so the raccoon followed, feeling just how drunk he was with every step of the way. He\'d have one bitch of a hangover in the morning.
After some dodging through the living room and the parlor, Kenny ducked into the hallway by the stairs, the one that led to the lower bathrooms. The skunk stepped aside to let a tall badger make his way through, and then he leaned against the wall, watching Trevor catch up.
\"Um, okay,\" Trevor said. \"Do you have to puke or something?\" he asked, looking toward the bathroom.
Kenny put a paw on the raccoon\'s muzzle and turned his head forward again. There was a single, alcohol-clouded moment where Trevor just looked back into the skunk\'s eyes, and he was more surprised than he really ought to have been when he felt their lips touch.
At first, Trevor\'s addled mind tried in vain to figure out why Kenny had decided to kiss him, but he soon stopped bothering to wonder and just let himself kiss back, his tongue shyly exploring the blunt little muzzle that was locked with his own.
Trevor had only kissed two people before: Linda, the raccoon he\'d taken to senior prom, and Sandra (and really, Linda had been only a half-kiss at best). So, kissing Kenny was very different, but Trevor wasn\'t sure if it was because Kenny was a skunk or because Kenny was a boy or because Kenny was just Kenny. He was a nice kisser, though, and his short muzzle was so cute, and the slow way that he moved his tongue was so different from the passion that Sandra liked to exhibit, and the more masculine scent went well with the alcohol taste in his mouth.
When the skunk did finally pull away, Trevor let out a sad squeak through his nostrils.
\"There,\" Kenny said, beaming back at the raccoon. \"Now you know what it\'s like.\"
It occurred to Trevor that, while Kenny had done him the favor of dragging him over into the side hallway instead of kissing him in the living room, at least one or two people had still probably seen them kiss. Word may well have gotten around, and that made the raccoon a little paranoid as he and Sandra went to sit with the crew at the dining hall.
If anyone had heard anything, nobody was crass enough to mention it in front of his girlfriend, but nor did anyone flash him any knowing looks. It wasn\'t as if Trevor could ask, \"Hey, nobody said anything to you about me making out with a guy at the Psi Kappa party last weekend, did they?\" though.
Dave had just scarfed down breakfast and run, the otter\'s first class being held clear on the far side of campus. The rest core of the morning\'s conversation revolved entirely around Sandra\'s study group plan.
\"Well, Trevor and I are both in Professor Wittenberg\'s class,\" Charlene, the ever-chatty fennec said in between quick, minuscule nibbles of toast. \"And we can all probably go over Calc together, since that\'s pretty much the same across the board, yeah?\"
\"Doug\'s taking Calc this semester, too, right, Trev?\" Sandra asked.
Trevor shook his head. \"No, he dropped,\" he said. \"Again. I know,\" he added, in response to Charlene\'s rolled eyes.
\"Well, fine,\" the short fox said. She jotted some notes in the back of her assignment notebook. \"There are still plenty of us taking it in some form or another, so that should be okay. Is anyone else taking Biochem?\"
\"Trev\'s taking Bio for Non-Majors, right?\" Sandra said.
\"That\'s so not the same thing,\" Charlene said with a clipped laugh. Then she looked around the table for further acknowledgment. \"Fuck. I knew I shouldn\'t have taken it early.\"
Sandra swirled a spoon through the discolored milk that sat at the bottom of her otherwise empty cereal bowl. \"Hey, Doug\'s friend Kenny is a Bio major, right, Trev?\"
Trevor almost spat out his mouthful of bacon. \"Kenny?\" he parroted back, choking down the bacon. \"I\'m not sure. I don\'t think I\'ve ever asked. What makes you think I\'d know.\"
\"I... just thought you might know,\" Sandra said, nodding very slowly, staring into Trevor\'s face as she took a long sip of coffee. \"I\'m pretty sure he is, though.\"
Charlene\'s oversized ears perked immediately. \"Oh, and he\'s in my Calc class, too!\" the fox squeaked. \"He\'d have taken Biochem last year, then, yeah? Oh, that would work out perfectly!\"
\"Trevor, ask Doug to ask Kenny if he wants to join the group,\" Sandra said, nudging Trevor with her elbow.
The thought of having to see Kenny on a regular basis made Trevor wonder just how much overtime Sandra would need to pull in order to remove the raccoon\'s distractions. \"Doug\'s still not back, remember?\" he said.
\"Well you can ask him,\" Sandra said. \"You know him, too, right?\"
Trevor flinched. \"Yeah, but he\'s a junior,\" the raccoon pointed out. \"He\'s not going to want to hang out and study with a bunch of sophomores.\"
\"Oh, please,\" Sandra said, slapping Trevor on the shoulder. \"This isn\'t high school. It\'s okay to hang out with people older or younger than you, you know.\"
\"Yeah, didn\'t they cover that with you at Orientation?\" Charlene asked. Trevor was so annoyed that it took him too long to realize that she\'d been making a joke.
Sandra gently took Trevor\'s paw in her own, then, and squeezed. \"Come on, you can at least ask, can\'t you?\"
One look back at Sandra\'s face succeeded in winning Trevor over by means of sheer guilt.
After rejoining the party, Kenny made no further mention of what happened, nor did he make any additional overtures of flirting. It had been the perfect clandestine maneuver, flawless and almost effortless, even.
For the rest of the night, Trevor was out-and-out giddy. He was drunk, which usually had him silly and happy anyway, and so he knew that he could get away with being sillier than usual. Not only did thinking back to the kiss (as he was doing pretty much constantly) make his heart beat faster, the mere fact that he had that little secret made him... well, kind of proud.
Doug came back with a pitcher full of margaritas, carrying it into the living room, fresh from the blender. The cacomistle went right for Trevor and Kenny, a stack of fresh cups in his other paw. \"Don\'t worry,\" he assured them. \"I mixed \'em myself.\"
After Doug had handed off the drinks, Trevor shot a look over at Kenny before smiling back up at the cacomistle, delighting in the knowledge that his roommate had no clue whatsoever that their friend had just slipped him some tongue a few minutes ago. With all of his compunctions having gone right out the window, the raccoon silently lorded that over him, over everyone at the Psi Kappa party, and it was enough to make him degenerate into incomprehensible giggling.
\"I\'m not helping you clean up if you throw up all over our floor tonight,\" Doug teased, hitting Trevor on the shoulder before walking off with the half-empty pitcher of margaritas.
Trevor just clutched his bright plastic cup and preened.
Standing in front of the door to Kenny\'s room, waiting for the skunk to answer, filled Trevor with a very distinct sense of nausea. He thought he was going to swallow his own tongue, and he counted the seconds, his mind at war with conflicting hopes that the skunk either would or wouldn\'t be in.
The jostling of the doorknob made Trevor\'s heart stop, and when the door swung open and the raccoon saw Kenny standing there, his pulse went right through the roof.
\"Trevor?\" Kenny asked. \"Hey man, what\'s up?\"
The raccoon had to remind himself why he was actually here. \"Um, so, like... Biology.\"
The skunk raised an eyebrow. \"Huh?\"
\"I mean, you\'re a Biology major, yeah?\"
\"Yes,\" the skunk replied, looking no less confused. He took a step back. \"Er, here, come inside.\"
Trevor stepped on in and clasped his paws together. The dorm room smelled mostly of Kenny, with unidentifiable undercurrents of someone else that the raccoon could only assume was the skunk\'s roommate. He looked around at the posters on the walls, the textbooks on the desk, and the two computers in either corner. Just another normal room, like just about anyone else\'s.
\"So, what\'s going on, exactly?\"
Kenny rested up against the frame of the bunk beds. Trevor immediately worried whether the skunk was trying to appear relaxed or if he was just actually relaxed. \"Oh, yeah. You took Biochemistry with Professor Iyer last year, right?\"
\"Yeah,\" Kenny replied. \"Wait, I thought you were Comp Sci.\"
\"No, I am,\" the raccoon explained. \"It\'s not for me. It\'s for, um... friend. You know, girlfriend\'s friend... Charlene, fennec fox, she...\"
Kenny pushed off of the bed frame and put a paw on the stammering raccoon\'s shoulder. \"Hey, are you all right?\" he asked. \"Do you need to sit down?\"
Trevor looked down at the lower bed, and then he looked back up at Kenny, and the look of innocent concern on the skunk\'s face made the raccoon\'s composure fall right apart. Pressure started to build up behind his eyes, and an uneven whimper rose from his throat as he mustered a weak, \"Kenny, I...\"
\"Yeah?\"
The raccoon screwed his eyes shut, unable to look at the skunk any longer. \"Kenny, I... I can\'t... I haven\'t been able to stop thinking...\" He opened his eyes again.
For several seconds, Kenny\'s face was blank, and then his paw fell away from Trevor\'s shoulder and he let out a quiet sigh. \"What?\" Trevor asked, his throat so tight that he barely managed to even squeak the word out. \"What is it?\"
Kenny took a seat on his bed. \"This is about the Psi Kappa party last weekend, isn\'t it?\" he asked. \"Look, I\'m sorry about what happened.\"
Now Trevor was confused. \"Sorry why?\"
\"You seemed just obviously really, really curious,\" the skunk said. \"And I thought it might just be fun to show you. I probably shouldn\'t have done it.\"
Trevor shook his head and sat down next to Kenny. \"No, no, it\'s okay,\" he insisted. \"I\'m not mad.\"
\"You\'re not?\" Kenny blinked a few times. \"So, then what...\" The skunk\'s face went blank again. \"Oh.\"
\"It\'s okay,\" the raccoon said, forcing a smile, already beginning to feel all control of the situation slip right out of his fingers. \"I... I liked it, y\'know? I mean, yeah, okay, I\'m a little—\"
Kenny cut him off. \"Hey, Trevor, look, I think you might\'ve gotten the wrong idea.\"
\"The wrong idea?\" What was the right idea, anyway?
\"I\'m not... I mean, I wasn\'t...\" Trevor hadn\'t seen the skunk so at a loss for words. His snout and his brow wrinkled with exasperation and frustration, and his bright eyes were all too evasive. \"I mean, come on, we barely know each other, right?\" The chuckle that he tacked on to the end there sounded nothing like the happy laugh that had seared its way into Trevor\'s thoughts over the last week.
Trevor felt like he was shrinking. \"I\'m... I\'m not saying it\'s something that it\'s not,\" he said, his mind backpedaling so quickly that he could barely keep up with what he was saying. \"But, just, like, given what happened, and all, I thought that maybe you and I might, ah...\"
\"Didn\'t you just say you had a girlfriend?\"
Thinking of Sandra was the last thing the raccoon wanted to be doing right now. \"Well, yes, but I mean...\" What did he mean?
Once more, Kenny put a paw on the raccoon\'s shoulder. \"Hey, Trevor, listen,\" he said. \"You were drunk, I was drunk, and I was just trying to help satisfy your curiosity. I know that was kind of stupid of me. It was only a kiss.\" He patted the raccoon\'s shoulder. \"I didn\'t mean to confuse you or anything.\"
\"But... you...\" Trevor started to protest, but he felt all of his resolve dying already. \"Didn\'t we...?\" He wasn\'t even supposed to be having this conversation. \"Well, I mean, what about your story? About you and that wolf at the Halloween party?\"
The skunk chuckled and shook his head. \"Like I said, I kissed him at the party and everyone saw us,\" he said. \"You don\'t see me dating him now, do you?\"
\"Oh. Well, no.\" He hadn\'t thought about that, had he?
Kenny stood up from the bed and started to pace the room antsily. The air in the room was much more uncomfortable now. \"Look, I never thought that I\'d be leading you on by kissing you,\" he said. \"I thought that since you had a girlfriend that it wouldn\'t be an issue.\"
So, was that what it all came down to, then? To Kenny, had that all just been some drunken, throwaway moment? \"But what if I don\'t want a girlfriend?\" Trevor asked. He could feel tears threatening to come.
\"Well, do you or don\'t you?\" Kenny asked, turning to look back at him. \"I can\'t answer that for you.\"
\"But how am I supposed to know for sure?\" the raccoon whimpered. He could feel a soft trickle of weeping amidst the fur of his cheeks. \"Ever since last weekend, I haven\'t been able to stop thinking about you, haven\'t been able to stop wondering what it would be like to come find you and... do more than just kiss.\"
The skunk sat back down and put an arm around Trevor, the look of sympathy having returned to his face. \"Hey now, it\'ll be all right,\" he said, his warm breath washing over the raccoon\'s ear as he spoke in his quiet voice. Trevor wasn\'t quite sure if he was actually still crying or whether his eyes were just still wet. \"It\'s normal to question yourself, you know?\"
\"But I just want to know,\" Trevor said. He turned his head and looked into Kenny\'s eyes, searching them, pleading wordlessly with the skunk.
Kenny, though, just shook his head. \"I can\'t just be your experiment, Trevor,\" he said softly, without any accusation in his voice. \"And I\'m not helping you cheat on your girlfriend, either.\"
A little sniffle escaped Trevor\'s nose, and the raccoon folded his ears back. \"But I think you\'re really cute,\" he said. No longer was he trying to persuade the skunk to change his mind, though. He choked out a little chuckle despite himself at how silly he sounded when saying it.
\"Thanks,\" Kenny replied, giving Trevor a chuckle of his own, along with a sympathetic smile. \"If you\'re really not sure of yourself, though, then you need to be honest with yourself and sort things out.\"
Trevor nodded. \"How am I supposed to do that, though?\"
\"Well, I won\'t lie to you,\" the skunk said, rubbing the raccoon\'s shoulder. \"It might take a long time. And it might not be easy, either. Though I think you see that part.\" Trevor let out another chuckle, glad that Kenny\'s sense of humor wasn\'t lost on him in his current state.
\"I\'m so confused,\" the raccoon said, staring into his own lap. \"It\'s like nothing makes sense anymore. Shouldn\'t I just... know?\"
Kenny\'s arm fell away, then, and the skunk leaned back with both of his paws on the mattress behind him. \"Well, I can only really speak for myself, here,\" he said, \"but you\'re probably not going to just wake up one morning and have a clear answer. I spent a few years wondering, myself, and eventually, I realized how I really felt.\"
Trevor squeaked. \"A few years?\"
The skunk smiled again. \"Hey, given the way you were acting last weekend, I\'m going to go out on a limb and say that you\'ve been curious for more than just a week,\" he said, poking a single finger at Trevor\'s belly. For once, the raccoon didn\'t worry about his being fat. \"You\'ve probably been curious for longer than you think, even.\"
\"So, then... do you think that means that I am?\"
\"That you\'re what?\" Kenny asked. \"That you\'re gay? Maybe. Like I said, I can\'t answer that for you. But if you\'re gay, you\'re gay. Maybe you are, maybe you aren\'t. Maybe you\'re bi. Maybe you\'re actually just curious.\"
\"But what if I don\'t want to be?\" Trying to figure out what he did want was what landed him here in the first place, wasn\'t it?
\"Hey, you are what you are,\" the skunk replied. He leaned his head in closer, then, and Trevor\'s heart skipped a beat, thinking that the skunk was about to kiss him again after all, but instead, the raccoon just got a quick peck between the eyes. \"And trust me, if you do decide that you\'re interested in guys, it won\'t be the end of the world.\"
Trevor\'s reactionary chuckle surprised himself. \"You make it seem so easy.\"
\"Now you sound like my ex,\" Kenny said, and whatever expression Trevor had on his face made the skunk clear his throat and add, \"Sorry. Bad joke. Seriously, though, if you do need someone to talk to about all this, you know where to find me.\"
\"Are you sure it wouldn\'t be quicker to let me try kissing you again?\"
Kenny laughed and patted the raccoon on the shoulder. \"Nice try. I\'ll have to remember that one.\"
\"Thanks,\" Trevor said with a weak smile. \"Sorry about coming here and making a scene and all.\"
\"It\'s no trouble,\" Kenny said, helping Trevor up from the bed. He paused over by the door. \"Er, speaking of which, why did you stop by here again, exactly?\"
Charlene sat on the edge of Sandra\'s bed, her short legs only just skirting the floor. \"So, Kenny\'s not interested, huh?\" she asked. \"That\'s too bad.\"
Trevor nodded. \"Yeah. He said he appreciated the sentiment, though,\" he said, and then opened up his backpack. \"He did at least say you could borrow this.\" He reached in and pulled out a neat red notebook and tossed it to the fennec.
\"What\'s this?\" Charlene asked, rifling through it, her ears perking and eyes widening almost instantly.
\"Have you ever seen anyone take such detailed notes in your life?\" Trevor asked with a grin.
Sandra looked up from her computer and smiled back at Trevor. \"Thanks so much, Trev,\" she said. \"I\'m really glad that you\'re taking this seriously.\"
\"Well, of course,\" Trevor replied, taking a seat on the other end of Sandra\'s bed. \"I just wish he\'d taken some Comp Sci courses, too, is all,\" he added with a quick laugh.
Charlene flipped through the pages of Kenny\'s notebook a few more times before setting it aside. \"Hey, call up Dave and see if he wants to go over some Calc stuff before heading to dinner,\" she said to Sandra.
\"Actually, I think he\'s online,\" the coyote replied, turning back to her monitor. \"Let me ask him.\"
Trevor smiled at Charlene and then looked at Sandra, gazing at the back of her head. With only a week and a half left in the semester, he\'d do her the favor of waiting until it was all over before broaching the subject of very likely wanting to take the summer ‘off\' with their relationship—assuming, of course, that he still felt the need to do so a week and a half from now. He had the distinct impression that his mind would flip-flop on that point countless times between now and then.
In the meantime, then, he pulled his Calculus textbook out from his bag and set it atop the mattress, welcoming the highly-needed distraction that studying for finals was sure to bring.