Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 02:31:40 -0500
From: Eric Smith <uscboy41@hotmail.com>
Subject: Nothing Special, Chapter 3

Caveats: same as all those other stories: don't read if you're underage.
Events portrayed only mildly represent reality and any resemblance to real
people or events is--well--you'd have to be clever to pick up on it.  I hope
that you're enjoying it so far, tips, hints, suggestions and encouragement
are always welcome--and, while always heard and appreciated, may not
necessarily be followed.  It is my story after all.

---

Nothing Special, Chapter 3
by uscboy41 (uscboy41@hotmail.com)

There were tables and chairs in the lobby of the gym, everything only a few
months old--public universities in the south being, as they are, eager to
entice young college students who generally look first for fancy new gyms,
student unions, and dormitories at the university rather than an antique
collection of manuscripts or the leading expert on gender roles in
Shakespeare.  A lofty ceiling led up to a rotunda that shed natural light on
the entire lobby: and in my eyes the first ray fell on Jon.  Sappy, but you
get the picture.

"Heya Alex," he said.

"Yo.  How are you, Jon?" I asked with a smile on my face.  One of those
smiles that can only come from a having a really good day--you got up on
time with plenty of sleep the night before, you've impressed a few people
during the day, got a compliment from someone and given a few.  You can't
help it but smile, and then a little bit of that joy begins to spread.  And
I got to see Jon.

"Had a good day today?"

"Of course!  Just like every day."

"Sounds great.  As for me, let's just say that I'm glad to be here now
rather than sitting in class.  You can only get so much out of sitting in a
lecture room with two hundred other people."

"Don't worry, you'll get out of it soon enough.  Third, fourth year you
don't really have any lectures--unless you've put off Western Civ or
something."  I was a year ahead of him, so I could offer a little advice.

"Yeah, can't wait for that."  As we were walking down the stairs to the
locker room, we must have jabbed on for a little bit; eventually we got into
the locker room, found a suitable place and opened up the lockers.  It was
still a bit busy--we had come in the early evening, around dinner time,
although when you're in college, dinner is just as often at 11pm as it is at
6pm.  We should have plenty of time to swim before the pool closed.  We
skimmed down to our suits, each wearing a light regular suit over our
speedos.  Ah--he was wearing a speedo.  So was I.  I can control myself, I
promise.  I had to keep telling myself that.

Standing next to him at the locker, I actually got a decent close look at
him shirtless.  It's more priceless than any pic you can find on the
internet--no matter how vivid, how many terapixels (or whatever it is these
days) the picture has, the real thing is so much more real.  To touch him,
to reach out and rub against his chest, to pull him into a tight embrace,
and seal it with a kiss...now that's what fantasy is about.  But to take
hold of that fantasy and make it real, here, now--now.  Now that's what this
story is about, isn't it?

But I couldn't--well, I didn't.  Not there, not then.  Not yet.  My glance
was only for the fraction of a second before I was back pulling out a water
bottle to take with me to the pool.  I didn't ogle, I didn't get distracted
there.  Thinking back, now, I always linger at that moment, drawing it out,
imagining him doing the same to me.  But what did I have for him?

He has blonde hair, and I realized that he had a light coating of hair on
his chest.  But it was that beautiful light blonde, so it could only be
noticed if you were able to look at it up close.  I was dirty blonde,
turning a bit brown now and again.  I didn't have much hair on my chest or
stomach; what I did have I shaved off as my own secret personal act of
vanity.  It wasn't really noticeable anyway.

We both agreed that we wanted to start out easy on the swimming.  If we
could keep it regular then we could work up to something more, but for now
we wanted to actually manage to still be alive after swimming for an hour.
I wasn't worried about Jon, of course.

"This is great!" I panted, forty minutes into it.  We were between sets, I
grabbed something to drink.

"Yeah, I love getting in the pool.  Thanks for giving me the reason to get
out here."

"No problem.  I feel the same way--it makes a big difference having you
here.  I mean, for the company and all."

"It's great cardio, and swimming actually helps your body as a whole a lot.
It's really hard to damage your muscles in the pool."

We'd had these kind of conversations before.  I mean, he's really into
lifting and all that--he's the sort that can do something really well if he
puts his mind to it.  Besides, he's a biology major, so he cares about this
stuff on a personal as well as an academic level.  I'd learned a lot
already, about nutrition, diet, working out.  Gym visits were still
sporadic, but he was making me want to go after it more.  I liked cooking,
which goes hand-in-hand with nutrition, and I could come up to his level
there, too.  I mean, there's more to a high protein diet than eating a pound
of chicken for every meal and some crappy-tasting powdered whey protein
milkshake, which seemed to be his approach.  I enjoyed thinking things
through, too, and though I was in the liberal arts, not the sciences,
analyzing approaches and learning more about how the body works is really
cool.  If only I could get to the gym more.

But here I was.  We started the next set.  He was outpacing me, but I was
keeping up.  We were doing longer-distances and keeping the pace slow, so it
wasn't too bad.  Although here I was at the best I had and he was still
making it easy.  It was fine art to watch, though, when he started the next
length of the pool, even with his chlorinated hair and goggley-eyes.  His
chest rounded just right, and when he stretched out his arm to the full
length, the muscles in his torso curved in just the right places; his abs
carved out carefully, individually, making a v down into the bathing suit.
When I stretched you just got a big plain view of ribs, but his back muscles
curved carefully into his triceps and biceps, forearm muscles carefully
woven in each stroke.

Maybe that's what attracted me to swimming in the first place.  The
movements are extremely graceful and to do them well you have to have just
the right touch so that the power you have is carefully focused into the
right places at the right times.  Get the rhythm off and you're gasping for
breath and going nowhere.  If you swim, you have to swim with style.

"That's the end of that set, do you want to call it a day?" he asked.

"Sounds good to me.  Looks like we're the last to leave anyway--the
lifeguard probably wants us out, too."

He got out first and his legs and ass tightened up as he jumped out off the
ledge of the pool, giving me a first-rate glance to check out his
tightly-covered glutes, obviously the result of some work on his part.  I
jumped out after him.

"You know, no matter how hard you try, you can't get that chlorine smell out
of your hair until about the third shower after you swim," I added as we
headed to the showers to attempt to get the reek out of our skin.

"Yeah, I hate that.  Especially back in high school when chances are you'd
be swimming the next morning anyway, so you never got the smell out for the
whole season."

When we got to the shower area, we both hung our towels on the rack and
walked over to the nozzles.  I got to one first and waited for the water to
get warm.  He pulled up to the one next to me and started doing the same.
We talked about this, that, the other thing while we were rinsing off--not
wanting to be shy about the locker scene, I pulled off my suit before I
started soaping up.  I turned around and noticed he'd done the same, not
because I was ogling, but because his back--flaring out at the top where it
met his arms--tapered down to the most beautiful curve right into his ass,
where each cheek had a little dimple on each side, rounding out in a tight
mound right above his thighs.  Nobody could've ignored that--least of all
this closet-case.

I was enjoying the shower, cleaning the chlorine out of my skin pores,
feeling refreshed in the warm water.  We'd both been silent up to this
point--so I looked over at Jon.  As I turned, fantasy met eyes with the deep
blue sky.  He was looking straight at me, and I couldn't look away.  He'd
been checking me out!  And he didn't mind; he didn't look away like he'd
been caught.  Were my eyes really as captivating to him as his to mine?  For
the first time, uninhibited by fear of being caught, I looked at his face,
how the water was falling down his hair and dripping across the curves of
his forehead, his cheeks, and his lips.

>From one showerhead to the other, suddenly our lives were no longer the
same, and time slowed down for a pure, unadulterated expression of--

love?  (that seems too cliched)

He turned off his shower and approached mine, removing the trance that had
come up between us.  I was scared, not by the kind of fear that you have of
hurricanes, or scary dreams, but a fear of the unknown; it may be bad, but
it may very well be good.  But whatever happens, you still don't know.  He
walked behind me, I never moved from my spot, and he started rubbing down my
back, massaging my shoulders with a firm but supple touch--so his powerful
hands worked out the knots in my neck and back.  His hands worked their way
down, seeming cool in the warm water, and he stepped closer and began
kissing my neck, carefully, slowly, still working his hands against my lower
back.

His lips on my neck first tensed it up from the surprise (the touch of his
lips was so soft!), but soon I was as relaxed in my neck as I was in my
whole body.  He took a nip at my ear, as he worked his way up my neck, but
tenderly, like between a kitten and his mother.  He pulled away for a
moment, and I turned around suddenly (catching him by surprise--or me?).  I
took his head in my hands, ran my hands through his wet hair, pulled his
face to mine and, looking into his eyes, we locked lips.  His tongue met
mine, and we hold close to each other; his hands gripped my back and pulled
me against the tight, flat muscles of his stomach and chest.  Held so
tightly in his embrace I felt needed and fulfilled; completely reliant on
his strength and his support, I clung onto him as well, lost in the moment
of passion, watching the time stretch slowly past.

A locker door slammed shut in the distance, bringing us out of the
dream--the kiss broke, not suddenly like it was interrupted, but casually
and gently.  He gave a smile and, as I smiled back at him, he tousled my
hair (how did he manage to make that sexy?) and I half turned my head to
hide the blushing that wasn't even showing through the heat of the shower.

"Let's go, buddy," he said playfully, "it's late."

"Yeah--sure," I replied, a bit giddy, but keeping myself composed.  My
heartbeat was still racing; but my heart beat for when I could get back into
his arms.  I could wait.