Playing for Keeps

Chapter 2: Mark-1

Chapter 2: Mark

Peter Davis leans against the door to his hotel room and giggles as Mark Thompson runs his key card through the lock. Actually giggles. To Mark, he sounds like a damn sorority girl trying to sneak in after a night out. “Keep it down.”

Beside him, Peter covers his face with both hands. “Shh,” he sputters like a leaking tire.

Mark pulls up on the door handle but nothing happens. Peter giggles again. “How many drinks did you have?” Mark wants to know.

“Two.” Peter holds up three fingers to prove it, then frowns. He raises his pinky for a total count of four. Assured, he tells Mark, “See? Two.”

“After two, I stopped counting,” Mark growls. He swipes the key card again and jerks on the door handle as hard as he can. “Are you sure this is your room? The card doesn’t—”

The door opens without warning, tossing Peter into the dark room. “Oops!” Peter cries as he disappears inside.

Mark hears his friend stumble and hit the floor. Seconds later, the giggles begin anew. “Oh jeez, Mark,” Peter gasps, “I shouldn’t drink.”

Mark grins. “No, you shouldn’t.”

Carefully he steps into the room and closes the door behind him. It’s pitch black. He reaches for the light switch but doesn’t turn it on just yet. “Are you going to get up? Or just lie on the floor all night? Your call.”

Somewhere below him, Peter whispers. “I want another drink.”

“You don’t need any more,” Mark says.

“Then help me up.”

Mark steps forward and feels hands brush his thighs—Peter’s arms are in the air, waiting to be hauled to his feet. Mark catches those hands, so warm in his own, and for a moment he just stands there, holding on. How much did he spend tonight? On cab fare to the pub, on drinks for the guys, on tips for the bartender to keep the glasses filled? When the evening started, Mark had had his eye on Seth, but Peter’s the next best thing, isn’t he? The spitting image of his brother, but younger, thinner, less experienced.

Those drinks will pay off tonight, Mark thinks as he pulls Peter off the floor. His friend staggers against him with a laugh. His hands, awkward in the darkness, touch Mark’s chest then pull away. His breath is hot against Mark’s cheek.

“No more drinks, huh?” Suddenly Peter’s voice is low and thick, and Mark smells the alcohol on his breath. “I’m still thirsty.”

Mark takes a step back and reaches out, again finding the light. Closing his eyes, he flips the switch.

“Ow!” Peter cries.

Mark waits a second before opening his eyes again. Peter stands with his face in his hands, covering his eyes to filter out the harsh glow of the overhead bulb. “You could’ve warned me.”

“Sorry,” Mark says.

With Peter’s eyes covered, Mark can study his friend’s thin body without reproach. The boy is cute, Mark’ll give him that. Narrow hips jut from the top of his jeans, begging to be grasped and pulled back against another. A thin waist, long legs, ropy arms. A flat ass, but another few months at college will fill that out nicely. Short dark hair, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes currently hidden behind his palms. The smattering of dark freckles on his hands fascinate Mark. During band practice, the flutists sit in the first row, just in front of Mark’s podium, and he’s found himself trying to count those freckles while Peter plays. He’d like to connect them, see what they spell out, what they might have to say.

Tonight he just might get his chance.

Slowly, Mark smiles. He touches Peter’s shoulder and feels warm skin beneath Peter’s shirt. “You okay, man?”

Peter yawns and rubs his eyes. “Fine.” He sounds sleepy, like his buzz is starting to get to him.

Can’t have that.

“What about some brewskies?” Without waiting for Peter’s reply, he steps into the room and picks up the phone by the bed to call room service.

* * * *

Mark sits cross-legged on the floor nursing a can of beer as he watches Peter. The overhead bulb is out now, replaced by the softer, diffused light of the bedside lamp. Peter lays on the little, two-cushion loveseat by the window, his legs curled up under him so he’ll fit. He’s on his third can of Coors.

He stares at the ceiling and talks in a whispery voice Mark has to strain to hear. “I thought Europe would be different somehow. Older, maybe? It looks just like it does on TV. Like London? I mean, I didn’t know they really used double-decker buses. And the palace guard—what’s with those guys? Can’t talk, can’t breathe, can’t do shit.”

He giggles drunkenly and covers his mouth, as if afraid his mom might hear him cuss. “And those funny little red phone booths. What’s up with them?”

Mark rolls his eyes. Peter might be cute, yes, but he’s turning out to be an annoying drunk. You don’t know how lucky you are, Mark wants to tell him, but he can’t seem to get a word in edgewise. I had my pick at the pub tonight. I didn’t have to wind up with you.

Only that isn’t really true, is it? What Mark wanted tonight was Seth—the trombone player was a bit of a ladies’ man, and from the way he bragged, he sounded like a wild ride between the sheets. Mark wanted a go. Why shouldn’t he? Seth was his best friend, and if something happened between them after a few drinks, who would have to know?

* * * *

Mark met Seth Davis the second week of classes his sophomore year. Seth was a freshman then, as thin as Peter is now and twice as cute. It’s his personality—something about Seth draws people to him, and even in his first year at State, he was always surrounded by friends, or at least people who wanted to know him better.

When Seth enters any room, he causes a scene. Laughing, joking, calling out to anyone who catches his eye, cutting up during class…Seth is anything but quiet. Mark remembers standing at the podium in the front of band class, reviewing the scale changes with Mrs. Canada, when laughter in the hall made him look up. Seth burst into the room with a trail of followers snickering over something he’d just said. For a second, Seth met Mark’s gaze and winked before taking a seat.

Winked. Mark promised himself he’d find out why.

After class, as the students packed away their instruments, Mark wove through the chairs to where Seth was cleaning his trombone. “Big horn you got there,” he teased, straddling a chair from the row in front of Seth’s. “Some people might think you’re trying to compensate for something.”

“They can think what they want. I know what I’m packing.” Seth smirked, turning his heart-shaped lips into a bow.

Mark felt like a kid at Christmas, and he wanted to unwrap that ribbon, see just what it was Seth might be bragging about. He’d been such a good boy all year, hadn’t he?

“You have another class after this?” Mark glanced around the room—most of the other students were gone already, leaving only a handful of band geeks behind. A few were still practicing, but most lingered over their instruments, catching up with friends from the semester before. Mark himself had an Econ class to run to, but if Seth was free…

With a shrug, Seth admitted, “I’m free the rest of the day. What do you have in mind?”

Mark felt his whole body flush at the suggestion he heard in Seth’s words. Wouldn’t you like to find out?

* * * *

As their casual acquaintanceship deepened and they became friends, Mark saw how flirtatious Seth was with everyone. The cheerleaders at the basketball games, the lady behind the counter in the cafeteria, the teachers and other students, everyone earned a smile or laugh, or hearty clap on the back. He knew Seth joked around with others, but he couldn’t quite convince himself there wasn’t something more in the way Seth was with him.

At the end of last semester, he made his move. The week before finals, Mark took Seth to a bar off-campus where he knew he could get in without being carded. The bouncer played third violin in the school’s symphony, and had been one of three other guys Mark had roomed with his first year in the dorm. He could get in, ply Seth with a few drinks, and hopefully take things between them to the next level.

Which meant winding up in Mark’s bed, together, naked, stroking and sucking and fondling each other toward orgasm.

But things never quite got that far. Oh, Seth got drunk, all right, but when Mark leaned heavily on his friend’s thigh, he was gently nudged aside. Leaning against Seth’s shoulder earned him a shrug to unsettle his chin. His hand found Seth’s back pocket, but was plucked free when Seth turned toward him. “Look, man,” Seth said, pushing his empty beer mug aside, “I’m flattered and all, but I’m not like that, okay?”

“Like what?” Mark asked, back-pedaling. “Dude, chill out. I’m not doing anything.”

Seth studied him a moment, suddenly more sober than he’d been when they entered the bar. “Well, don’t,” he said finally. “We cool?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mark waved him away, disappointed but unwilling to let Seth know it. He got it, Seth liked girls—in the two semesters they’d known each other, he’d lost count of how many different dates his friend had been on, and more than half of them had ended with s*x. So what would be so wrong if the two of them got off together now and then? They were friends, right?

But he backed down that evening. He’d wait his turn.