He was raised Catholic, but calls himself a “lapsed Buddhist”. The only evidence of this supposed Buddhism Phil’s seen is a weird meditation cushion on the window seat in Conrad's bedroom. According to Conrad, it’s called a “zafu”, but Phil’s pretty sure he made that up.
Conrad is horniest in the morning, and Phil frequently wakes up to find Conrad spooned around him, lazily rubbing himself against Phil’s ass.
He’s got a very sensitive back and he likes for Phil to scratch it- lightly when they’re watching TV or reading together, hard enough to leave marks when they’re fucking.
He’s strong enough to lift Phil and hold him up against walls, doors, shower stalls, but his favorite thing is to sit on the couch and pull Phil onto his lap, to kiss him deeply and touch him everywhere while Phil writhes on (or against) his cock.
He suffers from frequent bouts of insomnia, the origin of his interest in sleep psychology, and sometimes Phil finds him doing strange things in the middle of the night- drawing or staring out the window or cooking a soufflé in the nude.
Somewhere along the way, Phil kind of forgets one fundamental thing about Conrad- the fact that he’s Phil’s professor.
It’s not that they’re indiscreet- they don’t fool around on campus or go on dates to places where they might be spotted by people from the university, but Phil’s pretty sure he wouldn’t do those things with anyone he was dating. It doesn’t feel like a loss, not when he’s allowed to spend days at a time virtually living in Conrad's house, ducking out to the guest house when he needs a few hours to himself for homework or uninterrupted sleep. It doesn’t really feel like they’re hiding anything, or like they ought to be.
He still goes to class, of course, but The Psychology of Sleep and Dreaming starts to feel more and more like The Foreplay to Conrad and Phil Fucking. Phil uses it as an opportunity to stare at Conrad while sucking seductively on his writing implements, and Conrad seems to think of it as just... something they have to get through every few days before they can be alone together again.
He still works at the lab, but he doesn’t really think of Conrad as a superior in that environment. It’s more like having a relationship with a co-worker; they just try to keep their work professional and their personal lives private.
Phil knows, on an intellectual level, that what they’re doing is technically against the rules, that Conrad could get in a lot of trouble for it, but that knowledge doesn’t impact his daily life or his behavior- he just sort of puts it out of his mind. Like most unpleasant realities, it’s easy enough to ignore. Until it’s not.
It all comes crashing down for him the last night of the semester. Phil’s packed and ready to leave for winter break first thing in the morning, but he hasn’t seen Conrad in days- he’s been spending every free minute in his office, grading papers and tying up loose ends- so Phil decides to head over to the lab to say goodbye in person.
It’s late, close to eleven, and the building is empty and mostly dark. A lot of people have already gone home. It reminds Phil of the day he left for Thanksgiving break. He can’t believe it’s been less than a month, that he’s only been with Conrad for three and a half weeks- how is that possible?
Unsurprisingly, Conrad's office light is on, and Phil finds him at his desk, buried under stacks of dream journals and papers and a couple of random doggie toys. Penelope’s resting in her bed near the door, but rises onto her haunches to greet Phil with a customary crotch sniff.
“I’m leaving in a few hours,” Phil announces, and Conrad gives him a puzzled expression over the tops of his reading glasses.
“You what?” he asks. “I thought you’d be here till Friday.”
“It is Friday,” Phil says.
Conrad pulls off his glasses and rubs his eyes. “Oh dear,” he says. “What time is it?”
“Around eleven.”
“AM?” Conrad asks.
Phil shakes his head. “You really need to ask for a window next semester.”
Conrad smiles, then sighs. “How long will you be gone, you think?”
Phil shrugs. He doesn’t want to be gone at all, but he hasn’t been able to come up with a good enough excuse for staying here. “I’d rather be with my boyfriend,” doesn’t seem like a very acceptable reason to skip out on Chanukah.
“I’m gonna see how it goes,” he says. “See how long I can take it. My sister-in-law wants to go shopping in New York, so, that’ll be something.”
“I’ll be in New York for a few days,” Conrad says. “Going to see Gwynnie’s show.”
“Really... Could she get me and Michelle tickets?”
“Well, yes, I would imagine so,” Conrad says. “Is that something you’d like to do?”
The thought of Conrad meeting his sister-in-law, of the four of them hanging out together, should probably be a lot more alarming than it is. Weirdly enough, it actually sounds like fun. And it’s a way for him to see Conrad over the break- he thinks he’d probably jump at any opportunity for that.
“Absolutely,” he says. “Maybe, um... we could do it around New Years?” It’s a not-so-subtle way of asking what Phil’s been wondering about all week. He’s never really cared about having someone to kiss on New Years’ Eve, but now that he has someone in particular that he wants to kiss, he feels like he’d be missing out if they weren’t together. He’s kind of nervous about bringing it up, but Conrad is giving him a crooked smile, looking pleased.
“Phil, I think that’s a brilliant idea,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Sounds like the perfect way to begin the year.”
“Great!” Phil says. He’s stupidly, ridiculously relieved. “So um, I guess I’ll call you.”
“Please do,” Conrad says. And because that’s out of the way, Phil doesn’t really have an excuse to be standing here anymore. He needs to be up at six in the morning, and Conrad is obviously busy.
“So, I guess I’ll see you,” Phil says.
“Mmm,” says Conrad.
Phil jams his hands into his pockets. He really doesn’t want to leave. At all.
Conrad has a Christmas tree. It’s full of giant, 1970’s style blinking lights, Peanuts ornaments and gold and silver tinsel. It’s the ugliest monstrosity of a Christmas tree Phil’s ever seen and he wants to spend the whole winter break sitting in front of it, drinking egg nog and having sex.
“Okay, I’m really going now,” Phil says, with a self-deprecating laugh.
“No good-bye kiss?” Conrad asks, leaning back in his chair with a kind of leering expression. Phil feels himself flushing immediately. He takes a quick glance out the window, into the lab, but of course there’s nobody there. The whole building is deserted.
“S’pose it wouldn’t hurt...” Phil says, but he knows it’s an epically bad idea. They haven’t been together in three days; if they start kissing, Phil’s pretty sure he won’t be able to stop. Sex in the lab was excusable once, but it would be dangerous to make it a habit.
Still, Phil finds himself moving behind the desk, putting his hands on Conrad's shoulders and leaning in for the kiss. As soon as their lips make contact and Phil feels Conrad's hands on his waist, he knows this is going to get out of control really fast. Conrad licks his way into Phil’s mouth with a low groan and Phil gets hot all over. It doesn’t take long for him to forget about his qualms and climb onto the chair, straddling Conrad's lap.
Conrad cups Phil’s ass in his hands and Phil circles his hips, grinding their cocks together, and Conrad starts nipping at his lips, making these little panting noises that cause Phil to feel even more feverish. Of all the amazing things that Conrad can do with his hands and his mouth and his cock, nothing gets to Phil as much as knowing how much Conrad wants him- of being able to see it and feel it and hear it.
He could come like this, he thinks, fully clothed with Conrad panting into his mouth. He could come right in his pants, it feels so fucking good, but if this is the last they’re going to see of each other for wee
ks, maybe he should at least try to get his cock out.
He pulls back a little and starts wrangling with the suddenly infuriating button-fly on his khakis. Conrad actually picked them out for him, shopping in Boston. Another “vintage-cool” idea.
He makes a frustrated, whining sound, then Conrad starts helping him, hands brushing against his crotch, and it turns into a whimper.
“Let’s see that gorgeous cock,” Conrad says, and then, inexplicably, Phil hears a female voice.
“Oh...” the voice says, and Phil thinks well, that’s probably it then. I’ve finally started to lose it. It must be in his head, because what else could it be?
But Conrad- Conrad seems to hear it, too. He stops what he’s doing, his eyes go wide and his mouth drops open. The voice keeps talking.
“I’ll just... um,” it says.
Conrad is looking past him, and Phil finally turns and sees the source. It’s not a voice in his head, not a hallucination. It’s Angie, standing in the doorway to the office, a stack of paper in her hands.
Fuck.
Chapter 12
Angie flees the scene in a hurry, after dropping her pile of papers on top of a filing cabinet near the door. Conrad wants to go after her, but Phil volunteers to do it himself.
“We’re friends,” he says. “It’s okay.”
Phil doesn’t really know if they’re friends. They talk at the lab sometimes. He shared earbuds with her once. She likes the same music he does, and hates most of the same people and things. Conrad is almost certainly closer to her than Phil is, but the truth is it feels wrong for Conrad to go- shadier somehow.
He catches up to her in the stairwell, and once they’re face to face he realizes he has no idea what he’s supposed to be saying to her. He’s sweaty and short of breath, his clothing still askew. He feels like he might throw up.
“It’s not what it looks like,” he tells her, because that’s what people always say on television when they get caught in situations like this. Of course it’s exactly what it looks like- what else could it be?
“Jeez, Phil,” she says. “You’re lucky it was just me.”
The knot of tension inside him loosens a bit. She’s not going to tell, thank god. He has to make sure, though. He has to make absolutely fucking sure.
“I know,” he says. “I know. You won’t say anything, right?”
She crosses her arms over her chest and rolls her eyes at him, leaning back against the concrete wall. She looks exhausted, he notices. Dark circles under her eyes and her hair in a messy ponytail. She’s wearing an alpaca sweater and long johns.
“Of course not,” she says. “But seriously, Phil, you should be more careful.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you know he’s up for tenure in the spring?”
He’s not sure what he expected from Angie, the same Angie who was laughing and teasing him about his crush just a couple of months ago, but it wasn’t this. She sounds genuinely pissed, almost disgusted with him.
“Yeah, I- I know,” he says.
“Do you know how hard he’s worked to get that? And that, like, half the people in the department think he’s a flake?”
Phil rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably. He didn’t know that, not really.
“He’s not really my professor anymore,” Phil says, weakly. “I mean, the class is over.”
“Nobody’s gonna care,” she says, and he knows that’s true. He knows it doesn’t matter. If they’re on the fence about him anyway, finding out he’s fucking around with a student- any student- would push the whole thing right over the edge. And there would be questions if people knew. They’d want to know when it started, if Conrad had been grading Phil’s papers ten minutes after fucking him (he had).
“Look,” she says. “I’m not trying to be a bitch or anything. But he’s my friend and he’s an amazing teacher. I’d hate to see him lose his job over a fling.”
“It’s not a fling!” Phil barks, louder and more defensively than he’d intended. His voice echoes and bounces around the stairwell. He remembers the rest of their conversation at Conrad's party- the fact that she thinks he’s some kind of sleazebag who fucks people without learning their names, and maybe that was true once, but that’s not how it is with Conrad. The very notion makes him surprisingly angry.
“Well then what?” she asks. “Are you, like, in love with him or something?”
Last Saturday Phil woke up at four am, shivering and alone on the left side of Conrad's bed. The bed was empty because Conrad was crouched on the floor with his book light, watching Penelope. She was sleeping on her side in the doggie bed, her paws racing frenetically in place, and when Conrad noticed Phil looking at them, his face broke into a huge grin and he mouthed the word “dreaming”. Phil thinks of that, and he thinks yes, I am, yes and he wants to say it, but he can’t- not here and not to her.
“Aren’t you graduating in a few months anyway?” Angie asks. “I mean, aren’t you leaving?” And that is something he’s been pushing to the back of his mind ever since this whole thing started, in spite of his father’s frequent email inquiries about employment possibilities and Dr. Miller’s numerous grad school suggestions.
It’s another reality he’s been ignoring, and Conrad hasn’t asked him about it either. Maybe they’ve both been dreaming, for too long, and now he’s late for reality.
He’s going to have to leave, he’s going to have to leave Conrad because there’s really nothing here for him after graduation, and he loves Conrad and Conrad is risking his entire career for a few months of… what? What are they even doing?
“I- I dunno,” Phil says. He feels sick, suddenly. Sweaty, even though it’s freezing in this smelly, horrible stairwell, and sick in his heart, sick with dread. He’d almost managed to forget that this was all, ultimately, a terrible idea, and that he was bound to get hurt because that’s what fucking happens.
Angie’s expression softens a bit, probably noticing that Phil is about to vomit, or burst into tears, and she uncrosses her arms to touch his sleeve companionably.
“Just be careful, okay?” she says. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Uh huh,” Phil says. “Thanks.”
She squeezes his arm and gives him an uncomfortable smile, and then she’s gone, her sneakers squeaking down the steps, leaving Phil with the feeling that his entire world has just been knocked over by a tiny gust of wind.
The thought of going back to the lab and facing Conrad when he feels like this, when he might actually start crying at any moment, is just too awful to deal with, so Phil does the only thing he can think of- he walks back to his car and starts driving to New Jersey.
Conrad calls him on the road about seventeen times and Phil finally answers his phone at a rest stop McDonald’s somewhere in Connecticut. He’s at a booth, staring at a cup of coffee and a rapidly congealing Egg McMuffin. Outside, it’s started to snow.
“What the hell happened?” Conrad asks, when Phil picks up. His voice sounds tinny and so far away.
“I dunno,” Phil says. “Nothing. I mean, she’s not gonna tell anyone.”
“I meant what happened to you,” Conrad says.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” Phil says, and starts picking his McMuffin apart. “I was running late, so, you know.”
“All right... ”
“Sorry,” he says, because Conrad sounds upset, maybe even worried. It was probably a pretty shitty thing to do, just running off like that. In fact, Phil’s sure it was extremely shitty, but that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, should it?
“Are you okay?” Conrad asks.
He’s not, he’s really not. He’s less okay than he’s been in a very long time.
“Yeah,” he says. “M’fine.”
“All right, well… call me when you get in?”
“Yeah,” Phil says. And then “No- I... I dunno.”
“You dunno?”
The cheese on an Egg McMuffin peels right off in
one solid chunk, if it’s been sitting around long enough. Phil pulls his off all at once and starts rolling it up into a revolting ball. He feels like throwing it at someone, one of the other sad faced losers hanging around at this rest stop at two in the morning, or chucking it at the window, seeing if it breaks.
“I was just kinda thinking,” he says. “Y’know, maybe you were right in the first place.”
Conrad is quiet for a long time, so long that Phil starts to wonder if he’s hung up or gotten disconnected somehow, but that would be too easy wouldn’t it? He starts to shiver even though the heat is blasting. The snow is starting to pile up outside. He’s going to get snowed in at a fucking rest stop and probably get murdered by one of the weirdo miscreants eyeballing him from the trucker’s lounge and he thinks that might actually be easier than having this conversation.
Finally Conrad clears his throat and says, “Why? Why d’you say that?”
“I kind of forced you into this,” Phil says, and Conrad barks out a harsh sounding laugh.
“That’s ridiculous. Phil, I--”
“You could get fired,” Phil says.
“Yes, I know,” Conrad says. “We’ve been through this. I’ve already decided---”
“Well I didn’t!” Phil interrupts. “I didn’t decide, I never--”
“Never what?” Conrad asks. “You knew the risks.”
“But I didn’t! I never...” Phil squeezes his eyes shut and mashes the cheese ball against the table with his palm, turning it into a cheese pancake. He swallows back a grainy, acidic lump in his throat. “I never really thought about it,” he admits. “Not really. I just—I just wanted you, and I was selfish. And stupid.”
“Phil, come on,” Conrad says. “I don’t care about the job.”
“Well you should!”
“Well I don’t!” Conrad snaps. “Bloody Christ, Phil, I made this choice already. I chose you!”
“Well you shouldn’t!” Phil chokes, and he is crying now, he has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep from sobbing out loud into the phone, and the craggy, mean-looking man in the booth across the aisle is staring at him, but what is he really supposed to do about that? He takes a few deep breaths and wipes his face with a scratchy napkin from the dispenser. “I’m not worth losing your job over,” he manages to say. “And I have to get a job or something. I have to get out of here! I can’t... I-I dunno what I’m doing.”
Dreaming of You: M/M Gay Romance Page 11
