It's been, roughly speaking, two and a half years since part four of "A Closer Shave". Since then I've released two ebooks with Loose Id, "Jock Auction" and "The Hitchhiker", gone through writer's block, started a couple of other stories both on here and on tumblr, and generally struggled to figure out what the hell was going on with me. I'm still not 100-percent sure, but I do know that people regularly ask me if I'm going to write more of Tommy and Andrews' adventures.
I also got some push-back about the scene with Tommy's swim coach in part three. Some readers felt like it stepped over the line from playful experimentation and into something altogether darker and, for some, more uncomfortable. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, but on re-reading it I can't say I disagree with that feedback. So when I decided to pick up where I'd left off, I figured it would be an opportunity to start looking at how to right old wrongs against Tommy in the process.
If you like it, let me know. alexp336@gmail.com or through http://dirtyanon.tumblr.com/ (where you'll also find other stories and such). If you're interested in "Jock Auction" or "The Hitchhiker", there are details at www.AlexPendragon.com/
Otherwise, play safe, donate to Nifty if you can, and enjoy...
-A
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A Closer Shave - Part 5
"Listen, Andrews, we need to talk."
And then there was silence. Tommy knew that he was meant to be filling it - knew that the very fact of the silence was his doing - but none of the vague feelings and fears that were spiraling through his head were proving especially eager to formulate themselves into sentences.
Eventually, Andrews' quizzical expression faded into what Tommy could only see as confusion.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but usually when someone says they need to talk, they... y'know, talk."
It was all Tommy could do not to kick himself with frustration. For a minute - no, for a few seconds maybe - he had felt like he knew what he wanted. Or, if not that, then that he'd at least find out what he wanted. Yet somehow after that spike of determination he was actually saying less than normal!
He clenched his fists, nails jabbing into his palms around the handles of the bags.
"Not here," he blurted out, finally. Looked around at the entrance of the mall, where people were filing in and out around them like water flowing past rocks in a stream. There. A bench. "Over there."
He nodded with his head, and Andrews seemed content to follow. Tommy dropped the bags at his feet and slumped down onto the seat, then glanced up to see the older youth still standing, watching him.
"Will you sit down, you're confusing me."
Andrews sighed, but sat down all the same. "I'm confusing you? Dude..."
Tommy rubbed a hand over his face. Why was this so difficult? He'd just had his dick in Andrews' mouth, for heaven's sake - the guy just swallowed when he blew in his mouth! Talking shouldn't be the tough part, and yet he felt more tongue-tied than ever before.
The words bubbled up, out of order and hardly elegant, but words all the same. "How many, Andrews?"
Another expression of uncertainty. Tommy shook his head, exasperated at himself.
"I mean, how many have there been? Am I swim team conquest number ten? Number twenty? Are you hooking up with Carl, or Ben, or the others while you're hooking up with me?"
Andrews wrinkled his nose. "Who've you been talking to?"
Ugh, this was not going in the direction he'd wanted it to. "Nobody. I mean, I just want to know... I mean..."
He saw a brief roll of Andrews' eyes before the swimmer turned away. "Well clearly it's been Carl or Ben or someone like that," he muttered, voice dripping with scorn. "Tell me, Tommy, what did Carl or Ben or any one of these Good Samaritans on the team warn you about, eh?"
"They didn't warn me," Tommy replied, feeling the conversation spiral out of his control. He made a valiant effort to drag things back on track, even if he wasn't entirely sure what that track was, exactly. "Look, it wasn't like that, okay? They just... implied that I hadn't been the first guy."
Andrews slumped back, still staring away from Tommy, across the mostly-empty expanse of the parking lot. "Let me guess," he sniped, sarcastically. "You're just another conquest, a notch on my bedpost, right?" Tommy winced at the phrasing, words that had indeed run through his own brain when thinking about... whatever it was he and Andrews were to each other. "So am I getting the blame for everything now, yeah? I'm the slut, and you're the what, the confused little freshman who daren't say no?"
"I could've said no," Tommy replied, more force in his voice than he had expected. "Yes I got hard, and yeah, I didn't stop you, but I could've. I know I could've."
Andrews turned to stare at him. "So what, then, Tommy? How come I'm the manipulative fag and you're the... god, I dunno. I just want to know why you're suddenly so pissed at me, okay?"
"I'm not!" Tommy fired back, almost shouting it, and as surprised himself at that as Andrews looked to be. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. "I liked it. I really, really liked it. Sure, it was a head-fuck at times but that was only because, well, I never guessed that I might like it. But I did. And I like you! Only..."
"Only what?" Was there something in Andrews' expression there, something to go along with the softness of his tone?
Tommy shook his head. "Only I worry that I like you but you see me as this freshman kid who's new game, and everything is going so fast. I like what we're doing, I totally, absolutely like it. Fuck, I mean, I haven't cum so hard, like, ever! Compared to when I'm doing stuff with you. But this week... it's been so much."
"I sense a "but" coming," Andrews predicted. Now it was Tommy's turn to sigh.
"There's no "but"... well, not about you, about what we've been doing. And if there was, I guess it'd only be about me wondering how many other guys you're doing this stuff with, and that's..." Deep breaths, don't wimp out now. "That's just because I probably like the idea of being someone special. Y'know, not just some dumb kid whose dick you shaved, even if I guess that's what I actually am."
The expression on Andrews' face was edging a little too close to inscrutable for Tommy's liking, as he examined it for any possible hint of what the older guy might be thinking. He couldn't really blame him for being confused; after all, Tommy himself was even more uncertain about whatever was going on in his head. The week had been a whirlwind, just like your first week at college was probably supposed to be, only Tommy had junk shaving and cock sucking and some very unexpected eagerness in the whole "ass department" that he wasn't quite in a position to understand just yet.
On the one hand he wanted Andrews to understand exactly what he was saying, even though he was saying it so badly. On the other, he was hoping Andrews could just plain explain the whole damn thing back to him, and put him out of his misery.
"Look," Andrews started, then paused. "Have you ever done anything with a guy before? I mean, before this week?" Tommy shook his head. "Ever even thought about doing something with a guy?" Tommy shrugged, not even really knowing the answer himself.
"Did you go through all this? I mean, when you were a freshman?"
Andrews smiled, but the expression was tight, almost bitter. Only for a moment, and then he was half-grinning at Tommy. "I was an early bloomer, I suppose. I knew what I wanted - what I liked - when I was still in high school. Always knew, maybe. I'm not sure, exactly. But anyway, no, it wasn't the same for me. I already knew I was gay when I got here."
He didn't mean to, but Tommy couldn't quite control his wince. Could he really be... gay?
Andrews must've seen it, because for a moment that half-grin looked brittle. Just around the edges. Just briefly. And then his eyes were the same, kind eyes that Tommy remembered from the depths of his embarrassment - no, his complete, and utter mortification - when he first approached him in the library, and rather than laugh him out of the building Andrews understood.
"I'm not going to say I haven't been with a lot of men in the past two years. I really like sex, and guys get horny, and there are upsides to being out and "visible", you understand?" Tommy nodded, mutely. "But if you're asking whether I've been with anybody else this week, since we were playing around, then no. I haven't."
"Was that because..." Tommy started, voice trailing off. Andrews chuckled.
"Don't flatter yourself too much, kid." He gently gripped Tommy's thigh. "You're hot, but some weeks I just have other stuff to distract me. We're meant to be getting a degree, you know?"
If Tommy had been proud of keeping his face blush-free for the past few minutes, all that achievement went up in smoke in a half-second or so. Andrews chuckled.
"What I will say is that, if you did turn out to actually like guys and not just... well... be unable to keep from getting hard when anybody so much as brushes against you... I'd be interested."
It should've been a compliment. Hell, it seemed like it was what Tommy had been hoping to hear, even if he wasn't quite sure whether he reciprocated or not. But something Andrews said had struck a nerve.
"I can't help it," Tommy admitted, his voice almost a whimper. Leaning forward, he covered his face in his hands. "It just happens, y'know? Even when I really don't want it to."
He could hear the frown in Andrews' reply. "Let me guess... Coach Collins."
Tommy nodded, still unable to look up and meet the older youth's eye. "I didn't want it," he whispered, voice muffled by his palms. "But my... I got hard. And I didn't..."
He could feel Andrews' hand slip up, from his leg and up his arm, gently snaking around his shoulders. Before he realized what was happening, the taller guy was pulling Tommy in, hugging him against his side.
"Look, Coach Collins is a bastard. And your dick is basically an animal, okay? Something gives it some attention and it's going to get excited. It doesn't mean the rest of you wanted it to happen."
Tommy turned to stare at Andrews, a mixture of fear and frustration clear across his face. "But what is it about me that makes me so easy? How did he know? How did you know, or Carl, or Ben? Is it like some fucked up pheromone or something? Like, is "this guy is weak and you can use him" written all over my face?"
He held his gaze for a moment, then Andrews turned away. "I didn't set out to "use you", okay? You got hard, it happens. We played around. That happens too. I thought you liked it - just like I thought you liked it when I sucked your cock twenty minutes ago. You didn't tell me to stop."
Tommy squeezed his eyes shut. His voice was so quiet, Andrews could hardly make it out. "I told him to stop."
The silence spooled out, long second after long second.
"Then he's even more of a bastard than I thought."
Andrews had insisted on putting Tommy in an Uber and, even though he'd protested that he could catch a bus, when he checked the time on his phone he realized there wasn't going to be much time to dump the shopping bags at his room and then make it to his afternoon classes. The expression on Andrews' face as he'd paused at the car door was something that Tommy felt like he'd need at least five more years to unpack properly, and even then he wouldn't be 100-percent confident about what the older swimmer was thinking. In the end, the driver's impatience to get going beginning to show, he muttered something along the lines of "thanks for taking me shopping" and Andrews left unspoken whatever it was that had been on his mind.
He had the best of intentions, certainly. Drop the shopping, grab his rucksack, and head out to his physics class. Yet when the door swung shut behind him, the lethargy flooding his limbs felt nigh-on impossible to resist. Tommy stumbled into bed, heedless of the bags toppling and spilling their contents in an unruly heap.
When he woke, head foggy and sluggish, a little more than an hour had passed. Lifting his hips, Tommy pushed his jeans down - thankful that they weren't the muscle-clinging pair that Andrews had made him buy, which he suspected would require some sort of industrial grease to slide off with any degree of grace - and kicked off his socks, then shucked his t-shirt.
There were some questions outstanding. Big questions. Like, life-changing, self-image imploding questions. Tommy had never really given a huge amount of thought to things like sexuality; the assumption that he was straight wasn't so much based on his experiences with girls - few, he conceded, and far-between - but more because that was the default.
Was that naive? Maybe. Was he not, actually, into girls at all? That wasn't so clear cut. There were certainly some very attractive female students he'd noticed while he was moving in, though he'd hardly given university life much of a chance to demonstrate the intrigues of the opposite sex.
Thumbing his phone unlocked, Tommy punched in the school name and "gay", then hit the search button. The results weren't really surprising. An LGBTQ group. A gay-straight alliance. Gay-themed movies at the campus theater. No flashing warnings about keeping your innocent sons from the temptations of the locker room.
But there, at the top of page three, a familiar face. Andrews, grinning a little self-consciously, under a headline proudly boasting of the new star of the swim team who just so happened to be breaking new ground in his anthropology class with his same-sex study. Tommy's eyes skated over the text, the usual filler quotes and "we're so proud and impressed" from the dean, until he found the gallery at the bottom of the article.
Whoever had taken the photos for the school paper had clearly figured out from an early stage that the pickings were a lot richer if the pool was the setting, not the anthropology classroom. Dripping water, Andrews stood in a Superman pose with the float-scored lanes a twinkling backdrop, hands on hips. The colors of the team swimsuit bright against his tanned skin.
Tommy had seen Andrews in his suit, of course. Had seen him out of it, too. But the pool, or the locker room, were public places; it wasn't like he could stare. Everything he'd seen of the older youth in that scrap of stretchy fabric had been the fruit of hurried glances, sly and cautious.
Now, though, he could stare.
Andrews was clearly a prize specimen, that went without saying. Broad chest, exaggeratedly tapering down to a narrow waist. Thighs that stopped just short of being ungainly.
Tommy felt himself starting to stiffen as he examined the healthy bulge in the front of Andrews' swim suit. The brief cut did nothing to disguise it, but he pinch-zoomed in anyway, magnifying until Andrews' junk filled the screen.
It was weird. He'd seen the real thing up-close. Had held it in his hand, sucked it, felt it nudge against his ass. But even with all that intimate knowledge, there was still something about it being barely covered that got his heart racing. The tease of it, or the expectation, maybe. The fact that what the older guy was wearing was right on the boundary of what you could go out in public in; just one step back from obscene.
He zoomed back out, until Andrews' body was fully visible, then slipped his hand around his cock. Mind bouncing between the sportsman on-screen and the memory of that same man on his knees, Tommy's cock buried in his throat as his hips bucked and twitched.
Now Tommy's attention was split three-ways. The screen clutched in his left hand, the mental picture of Andrews' lips stretched around his shaft, and the sight of his shaved dick filling his gently moving fist. Pushing it down with his thumb, he marveled again at how much bigger it looked than before. There was a faint buzz of hair beginning to emerge across his abdomen, but his balls were still smooth as he played with them in his palm.
A thick bead of precum, glistening and sticky, slid across the head of his cock and trickled slowly down to his fingers. Instinctively, he pulled them to his lips, lapping the clear goo from his hand. Another long, languid stroke from base to tip was enough to coax out more, gradually lubricating his strokes.
Without realizing he was doing it, Tommy's legs were spreading. Knees pulling back until, reaching down between his legs, he could slide a greasy fingertip down the crack of his ass. Circling tentatively at the tightness of his hole - somehow torn between wanting to slip the digit in and nudge up against his prostate, and the reticence of someone who still half-thought that playing with your ass is wrong, or dirty somehow.
No matter; the tingling sensations radiating out from his sensitive muscle were enough to make his cock bob and jerk in his lap. Reluctantly, but with the picture of the speedo-clad Andrews firmly lodged in his brain, Tommy dropped the phone on the bed beside him and grabbed his erection instead.
One hand strumming his dick, the other gently teasing his ass, he felt the surge of feelings build. Eyes squeezed shut, he gripped his cock with both hands, bucking his hips up through the makeshift hole they formed. When his fingers roamed back to his hole, precum-slick and eager, this time Tommy didn't hold back, sliding one in to the knuckle.
Fuck, that was it. That was the feeling he'd been looking for. What could have made him wait so long! Legs spreading wider still, he fucked himself with the digit, pausing only to force a second one in alongside the first.
"Yeah, Andrews, fuck my ass," Tommy muttered through clenched teeth, "fuck me." Imagining the older youth above him, body long and lean between his thighs, his erection jutting out over the waistband of his speedo as he guided its thickness into Tommy's desperate hole.
He could feel the tingling of his orgasm beginning to mount, toes curling as the climax built. Somehow his cock felt even thicker, even harder than usual. Tommy stared down at it, where his hand was a blur as he stroked himself.
"Oh god... oh... oh fuck..."
That moment on the precipice, the feeling of toppling over and then the momentum uncontrollable, and Tommy was cumming, hard and strong, thick wet splashes reaching his face and then soaking his chest, and in almost that exact moment - just, in fact, as his screaming lungs dragged in their first breath, all protest and fury - the horrific sound of his door opening and, still knocking as he stormed in, Darren asking "dude, where the fuck have you been?"
And then, a heartbeat later. "Oh. Oh shit."
Little known fact: when you blush, while you're nude, your whole body goes red and not just your face. Tommy felt like he could've lit up a city, he was glowing so brightly.
Cock still rock hard in one hand, the fingers of the other jammed in his ass, Tommy looked up and back over his shoulder at Darren in shock. He could feel the cum dangling from his chin, sliding down his cheeks. His best friend's expression would be comical, his mouth an almost perfect "O" to match his gaping eyes, if the situation wasn't so mortifying.
"Dude," Darren spluttered, the first of the pair to find his voice again, "what the hell happened to your junk?"
Tommy glanced down, to where his hairless dick was on full display, and winced. Okay. Deep breath. Try to ignore the fact that you can taste your own spunk right now. Priorities!
"Can you shut the fucking door!" he demanded. Darren half-jumped on his heels, then turned and slammed the bedroom door. Tommy rolled his eyes in frustration. "You were supposed to be on the other side of it."
"Jeez Tommy, you were meant to be in calculus class, what the fuck?"
Tommy gingerly eased his fingers out of his hole, trying in the process not to make it look entirely obvious what he'd been doing in the first place. "Darren, do I look like I give a shit about calculus right this second?"
"No," Darren pointed out, "you look like you just got done waxing your cock and then decided to have a wank. Which, incidentally, you got all over your face."
Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Tommy succeeded mainly in smearing the mess even further. "Can you pass me a towel or something?"
Wrinkling his nose, the freshman grabbed a bath towel from the hook on the back of the door and tossed it at Tommy, who promptly used it to rub down his face and chest. Standing up, with the towel wrapped around his waist, he felt a little less exposed.
"Have you never heard of knocking?"
Darren shrugged. "I did knock." Tommy's scowl seemed to go unnoticed.
"Yeah, and then you're meant to wait, not knock and just walk in."
"Well maybe, if you're cutting class to jerk off, you should remember to lock the door."
Tommy glanced around to see if he could find where his boxers had landed. "I didn't cut just to jerk off. I fell asleep is all."
"And then woke up and thought you'd play with your dick, I get it," Darren observed, laughing. Tommy flipped him the finger, though made sure to keep a tight grip on his towel with the other hand.
"Like you don't do it," he fired back. Darren smirked.
"Well sure," he nodded, "I just don't wax my dick beforehand."
Tommy rolled his eyes. "I didn't wax it. Just, y'know, shaved it. I told you about that already."
"Nuh-uh," Darren pointed out, "you told me you were going to trim the wild bush back, you didn't say anything about going prepubescent down there."
If looks could kill, Darren would've been on the floor already. "Whatever. It makes it look bigger so who's complaining?"
"I dunno," Darren teased, "who's been looking?"
Now that was the question. On the one hand, Tommy felt like talking through the events of the past week - with someone whose dick he hadn't sucked, or jerked off, or generally perved at in the showers - could only be a good thing. At the same time, though, he wasn't sure Darren could necessarily be counted on to keep an open-mind, and it was a can of worms that, once spilled, would be pretty much impossible to tidy away again.
"Oh, you know," he hedged, "just the usual locker room shower bullshit."
Darren narrowed his eyes, suddenly suspicious. "I'm not sure I do, dude, no. Who exactly has been checking out your dick?"
"Come on, gimme a break," Tommy attempted, turning away to dig through the shopping bags in search of the discarded boxer-briefs Andrews had refused to let him put back on. It proved to be tricky when you were also trying to hold a towel together and avoid exposing yourself again.
"Was it that gay guy?" Darren clearly wasn't going to leave the topic alone. "The one who was going to help you?"
Ugh. The boxers were there, but they weren't in much of a state to actually wear. Andrews had used them to wipe his hands down, and they were at that unpleasant state partway between wet and dry where the last thing you want to do is pull them up your legs and feel a damp patch rubbing against you. Tommy tossed them into the pile of clothes that was as close to a neatly-sorted laundry basket as he'd managed to get, and reconsidered his options.
"It is, isn't it, it's him. He's been checking you out, hasn't he!" Darren clearly felt he'd got to the bottom of a major mystery, and Tommy's silence in response was doing nothing to dissuade his certainty. "I told you that you should be careful!"
Tommy glared at his friend. "There's nothing to be careful about. If Andrews wants to look at me, why should I give a damn about that? Newsflash, Darren, maybe he thinks I'm attractive. Why do you have to be so homophobic about it?"
Now it was Darren's turn to look embarrassed. "Look, I'm not... y'know, homophobic. I don't have a problem with... any of that stuff, okay. You know I don't judge people like that. I just worry about what's going on with you."
And there was the reminder why Darren was his best friend. Even with all the bluster and the appalling timing. Tommy sighed.
"I know you're not. I just wish you didn't say all that bullshit. We're supposed to be adults now; we can't spend the rest of our lives going "eww, gross" every time something or someone different comes along. And anyway, Andrews is a really great guy. I like him."
Darren's eyes were narrowing again. "You "like him", okay. Just how much do you like him, Tommy?"
"Fuck, Darren, give it a rest."
But Darren showed no inclination to do that. "No, come on dude, spill. How much do you like this guy?"
Tommy gave up on looking for clean underwear and stood up, exasperated. "Fuck, I don't know, I like him a lot, okay?"
"A lot... how much is "a lot"?"
"Jesus, Darren," Tommy had to fight the urge to grind his teeth. "Like I said, I like him plenty. And if you're asking whether he did something to me then yeah, he did. He sucked my dick, okay? Happy, now?"
If Darren was happy, then the emotion was having trouble finding room to express itself what with all the shock on his face. He looked, Tommy decided as the silence lengthened, like he'd just been slapped and told a very offensive joke at the same time.
"He sucked..." Darren eventually managed, voice trailing out. Tommy nodded.
"Yeah, he did. And I sucked him too, for what it's worth. And y'know what, I liked it. All of it."
Darren gulped, then blinked a couple of times. "Um, dude... are you..." Another gulp, his Adam's apple twitching nervously. "Y'know, are you... gay?"
Tommy took a deep breath, as much to give himself time to think than for anything else. There was that question again. He still didn't have much of an answer.
"Honestly, I don't really know. I mean, I did stuff with guys and it didn't freak me out like I thought it would've. But I still think about girls some. So... maybe I'm bi? I don't know, okay."
Silence again. And then...
"Guys," Darren repeated. "You said you'd done stuff with "guys"... plural."
Well, shit. Nice going, big mouth.
"Um, just a couple."
"All this week?"
Tommy nodded. "All this week."
"Fuck." Darren looked as though he was lost for words, which was a rarity. "You've been... busy."
"It wasn't, like, loads. Andrews, and then a couple of the other guys from the team, just fooling around." He stared down at his bare feet, suddenly struggling to meet Darren's eyes. "I'm not a slut or anything."
The cogs were almost visibly processing in his friend's head. "And that's it, three people?" Darren asked, eventually. Tommy grimaced.
"Yes. Well, almost. But I don't want to talk about it."
"So four, then. Who was the last one?"
Tommy could feel the flush rising across his chest, the redness flooding up to his face. "Like I said, it doesn't matter."
But Darren wasn't going to let it lie, it seemed.
"Who was it? Someone else from the team?" Tommy shook his head, minutely. "Then who?"
When Darren got something in-between his teeth, he was like one of those annoying little dogs who won't let go. It was funny, Tommy thought, up until you were the thing between the teeth. Then it was just plain annoying.
"One of the coaches," he admitted, quietly.
A sharp intake of breath. "Dude, what the hell?" Darren sounded legitimately shocked. "Aren't they all, like, old men or something?"
Another sigh. "Coach Collins isn't even thirty."
"So you got with Coach Collins? Dude, that's fucked up."
Tommy shrugged. "It wasn't my idea, okay?"
Darren chuckled. "Oh right, because he forced you into it, I'm sure." Silence for a beat, for two. "Shit... he didn't, did he?"
Sitting down on the edge of his bed, Tommy put his head in his hands. Two emotional breakdowns in one day, he pointed out to himself, now that was quite the achievement. His eyes were itchy, but he refused to let himself cry, even in front of his best friend.
"I didn't want it, but... he didn't give me much choice. And then my... my dick got hard, and I couldn't exactly say that I wasn't enjoying it somehow, and I didn't want him to throw me off the team or tell my parents. So I just..."
Silence again. He expected Darren to make a joke, or say that he thought it was all disgusting. Instead, he felt the bed flex as his friend sat down next to him, and the next moment there was an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in against Darren's t-shirt clad chest.
"That's fucked up," Darren said, voice suddenly serious. "He shouldn't have done that to you. I'm really sorry, dude."
It was too much. He could've sat through laughter, or rolled his eyes through disgust, or basically ignored 99-percent of Darren's possible reactions, but there was something in his friend's quiet earnestness that set the floodgates open. Before he knew it, Tommy was sobbing, his face pressed against Darren's shoulder.
"It's okay, Tommy, it's not your fault."
Eventually, the sobs trickled down to sniffles, and then - with only an embarrassing hiccup or two - he was able to dry his eyes on the back of his hand and sit up again. When he glanced across, Darren was looking at him with an uncharacteristically sober expression.
"Look," Darren told him, "I don't care whose dick you suck, or whether you even suck a dick in the first place, or if you like girls and guys, or whatever. But I'm not gonna let some asshole make you feel shit about yourself and... and blackmail you into doing stuff you don't want to do."
Tommy tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. It took a couple of tries.
"That's great, okay, but I'm not exactly sure what you think we can actually do about it."
Darren narrowed his eyes, and suddenly Tommy was reminded of the one time in high school when his best friend got into a fight with a much bigger, older guy who'd said something deeply offensive about Darren's sister. Back then he'd had the same icy, seething anger in his eyes too. It'd taken two teachers to pry his teeth out of the older guy's arm.
"We catch the fucker in the act, and then we get his ass canned."
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We all need good friends, right? Let me know what you thought... alexp336@gmail.com
-A