ear flaps

When Nikandros emerged from his bedroom, wincing at the morning sunlight, Laurent was stretched out on the couch in the tiny living room. He was reading a magazine, and he was wearing one of Damen’s T-shirts. It came a fair way down his thighs. For the sake of his sanity, Nikandros was not going to think about whether or not Laurent was wearing anything underneath it.

“Sleep well?” Laurent enquired, not looking up.

Nikandros scrubbed at his eyes. “Fine,” he said, making sure the fuck you was audible beneath it.

“What time did you get in?”

“Sometime between harder, Damianos, fuck me harder and oh God, oh God, I’m going to come,” Nikandros said, too irritable to bother with either inflection or shame. When you were sexiled at eight o'clock, you did not expect to be met with that kind of nonsense on returning at just past midnight.

Laurent still didn’t glance away from his magazine, but a faint flush appeared on that winter-fine skin. “Damen has remarkable stamina.”

Nikandros bit down the next three rude comments that trooped obligingly forward in his mouth, and went to pour himself a glass of juice. It had been bad enough when it was just Damen’s exertions that were audible, but in the past month the previously-quiet Laurent had well and truly come out of his shell. So to speak. Nikandros was only grateful that their two-bedroom student apartment was at the end of a corridor and his own bedroom looked out onto the street, instead of sharing a wall with another set of people who might be tempted to have athletic orgasms at the top of their lungs.

There was a knock on the apartment door.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” said Laurent almost at once.

There was also the fact that his best friend’s boyfriend had a habit of making Nikandros feel like a butler in his own damn home. Gritting his teeth, Nikandros opened the door. It was Atkis from the next apartment along. He had the tired and punchy look of a man dragged to the limits of his endurance, and he was holding out a couple of Xbox games and a plastic jug that Nikandros hadn’t seen since a party at the start of the year.

“Thought I’d better return these,” Atkis said. “And let you know that I’m moving. I requested a room transfer, and a single’s come up in Arles Hall.”

“Isn’t that a lot further from your classes?” Atkis was an engineering major, as far as Nikandros remembered.

“Yes,” Atkis said grimly. “But also a lot further from your roommate’s sex Olympics. And singles in the new wing of Arles don’t come up very often. I guess one of the rich law kids whose daddy bought their way onto the top of the housing list has now gotten daddy to buy them a penthouse in town instead.”

Nikandros accepted the games and the jug, wished Atkis well, closed the door, and then leaned against it and looked hard at Laurent.

“Your room’s in Arles, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Laurent looked up. His blue eyes, usually so sharp and dismissive, were outrageously limpid. “What a coincidence.”

Nikandros shifted to an outright glare.

After a moment, Laurent’s mouth twitched. “Well, it’s about time,” he said. “I was starting to wonder if I’d have to break into the place and have Damen fuck me over his kitchen table before he snapped.”

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Nikandros promised. No way in hell was he leaving his best friend alone at the mercy of this too-pretty blond fiend.