Shared Crisps

Andy was in a visible huff as he sidled up to the news and snacks rack at the bus station kiosk. He’d left Reggie’s apartment in such a rush of packing and throwing insults and recriminations at each other that he hadn’t even thought about the long bus ride to York. Now he needed something to read and something to calm his nerves and unruffle his feathers while he was waiting for the bus to pull in to the station.

What was it that Reggie had said? That he rushed to judgments and ran hot and cold all the time? OK, so maybe Reggie had brought him Valentine’s Day flowers and chocolates and he’d flown off the handle thinking he hadn’t. But Reggie had just had to tease him by not bringing them in right away, pretending he hadn’t even known it was Valentine’s Day, and not saying anything about the sexy red shirt that was so filmy Andy’s nipple bars Reggie said he liked so much could be seen and the tight white trousers he’d paid a day’s salary for and was wearing on purpose, just for Reggie.

Maybe it was the way he’d said Andy made wild assumptions that made him unload his long-held resentment of Reggie’s insensitivity and take-take-take attitude. Anyhow, he’d known the relationship was coming to an end for some time. He suspected that Reggie had known it too—that he hadn’t been unaware of how Andy had been paring down what he had in Reggie’s apartment to what he could fit into one suitcase. It had been a mistake to move in with Reggie in his flat to begin with. They should have kept separate places or Reggie should have moved in with Andy. No, he thought, that wouldn’t have been good. Reggie wouldn’t even have noticed that someone needed to move on. Andy wouldn’t have been able to get rid of him. Reggie seemed to be a bit thick about Andy’s feelings. Well, more than a bit thick.

No, it was better that Andy go camp out with his sister Abbie in York for awhile. It was a good thing that a hospital emergency department nurse could get work on short notice almost anywhere. Andy had had enough of “here.” It wasn’t just Reggie. Andy needed to burn these bridges down to the waterline. What was it that someone said to him the other day—that he’d gotten to be boring when he once was so spontaneous and fun easy? Whatever “fun easy” was to that guy. The guy, Dennis, had said, “You did it so naturally that sometimes I wondered if you realized you were doing it at all.” “You fell right into bed and opened your legs when I no more than touched your dick,” he’d added, leaving no question what he’d meant by “doing it naturally.”

Andy wasn’t about to go there, though. His “easy” days—if he’d ever had them—were over. He and that guy had had a whirlwind thing going for a while that was best not delved into. The guy had “just” touched Andy’s dick a lot. Is that what eight months with old boring Reggie had done to Andy—made him as boring as Reggie was?

Andy pulled a book off the stand with such angry force that it and three others hit the floor together. A young man stooped and picked them up. He gave Andy a smile, which Andy only half returned, and put the books back in the shelf for him. They’d been in alphabetic order by author, though, and, as if to prove how ordered and pedantic Andy had become, he rearranged them with a “Marian the Librarian” show of irritation that couldn’t have been lost on the young man, who shrank away from Andy and gave a hurt puppy dog flash of a reaction. This was quickly covered with one of apology on his part and another smile.

To Andy, the young man was being forward without reason. There were times—before Reggie, when Andy was in what that old boyfriend had called a “fun easy” state—that Andy had put out signals to a cute stranger. This wasn’t one of those times.

So, there was nothing in return signaling from Andy. But the young man was still looking at him with a silly grin on his face. Andy was about to ask, “What are you looking at, Bub?” when he realized he’d left the flat in such a rush that he was still wearing the sexy shirt and trousers he’d donned for Reggie’s benefit. Well, we’ll just let someone else’s tongue hang out in appreciation for those, good ole’ Reggie, Andy thought. But he did give a tug to the lapels of his jacket to cover himself a bit better.

That the guy would apologize for helping to straighten up Andy’s book toss in a snit of irritation irritated him further, and he blindly pulled one of the books out of the rack—reaching a new level of irritation when he saw the guy smile again—grabbed at a snack package of potato crisps, and flounced off to the sales counter with them. Andy didn’t look around to see what the young man was doing, but the image of him flashed in his mind again: nice looking, irritatingly engaging smile and pale-blue eyes under a blond mop with a lock falling down into his face, good build—not bodybuilder good like Reggie’s was . . . but why the hell did he care? All men were scum.

Andy found a seat facing the arrivals board, which would keep him informed on the change in arrival time for the bus to York. There would always be a rolling delay in the arrival of a bus one needed to get on—just like for trains and airplanes. There was an attached table in the seating unit on his left, with a seat on the other side. He pulled the paperback novel he’d just bought out of the floppy bag he’d brought to carry his incidentals for the trip and slapped it down on the table, only now looking at the title, which gave him pause and made him chuckle. He hadn’t thought they’d carry gay erotica in a bus station. He could tell this one was just from the cover art and because he was familiar with the author. It was Shores of Tripoli by Dirk Hessian—randy pirates and such. Andy had read a few by this author and enjoyed them, but he wouldn’t have bought a book like this to read on a bus where anyone sitting next to you could see the gay sex leap off the page.

He reached in the open bag of potato crisps on the table, took one out, and plopped it in his mouth. Only now did he realize that the young man from the news kiosk had sat down in the chair on the other side of the table.

The nerve of him, Andy thought. Coming on to me in a public place like this. He could have sat anywhere. But, looking around now, Andy saw there wasn’t much of anywhere else he could have sat. Several buses were scheduled to leave in the next hour, and the waiting room was buzzing with other people.

Andy was about to calm down and tell himself that the young man wasn’t following him when he looked at the guy’s face and realized that he was looking at the book he had put on the table—the gay erotica book that was pretty well known to be that by anyone familiar with the author. The young man seemed to recognize the author’s name—which told Andy something about the preferences of the young man and confirmed that he had been coming on to Andy at the news kiosk.

Blushing—and irritated—Andy turned the book over to hide the cover. Worse, as he did so, he saw that the young man had his hand in the bag of potato crisps. He pulled a chip out, and in doing so, their hands brushed against each other. He plopped the chip in his mouth, smacking his lips slightly at the pleasure of the taste.

Andy shrank away from him. The nerve of him, he thought. Taking one of Andy’s potato crisps. It’s something Reggie would have done without a thought, as well—the familiarity and signaling of dominance and possession in it. A stranger in a bus waiting room. And that little tingle Andy felt when their hands had brushed against each other. What was up with that? Such conflicted sensations he was having. Andy had felt aroused by the touch. To be honest, he had felt aroused by the feeling of submissiveness flowing into him by the dominance the young man reflected in freely taking of Andy’s potato crisps. The thoughts he was having were of that “fun easy” period one of his formers had spoken of.

Still, the brashness of the young man without provocation. They were, after all, Andy’s potato crisps. This was his territory the young man was invading. Making a big to do to rustle the bag, Andy extracted two potato crisps and gave them a noisy chomp. There, that would show him.

But what was he doing now? The other bloke was in the potato crisp packet again and had pulled a couple of them out . . . and he was eating them! And the bastard was giving Andy a sly little smile!

The challenge was on. Andy attacked the potato crisps again. A whole handful now. Maybe all of them. He’d taken too many out to eat all at once, so he ate them individually, slowly, making a production of it, savoring each one, making sounds of sheer pleasure as, one by one, they passed his lips and met their grinding fate. He did a sensual job of it—purposefully—moaning his pleasure, teasing the presumptive young man. He’d give the guy a hint of what he wasn’t going to get by stealing and ravishing his potato crisps. But then Andy was gripped with the realization that he was being turned on by all of this himself—and not just the tug of war over the potato crisps but also at how cute and arousing the young man was, despite his forwardness and crass possessiveness with Andy’s crisps.

He looked out of the corner of his eyes to see how the selfish thief would react to this. The cheeky bastard was smiling at him. Damn it, why did he have such an inviting, impish smile? Andy intentionally had a pout on—the whole thing with Reggie and the impetuous way he was running away. He wasn’t in the mood for flirtation with another Reggie. Why didn’t he just go away and leave Andy to wallow in his pout? Why didn’t he take his cute butt somewhere else? Andy did a double take in realizing that he had, in fact, previously observed and unconsciously absorbed that the young man tormenting him had a cute butt.

The young man had discovered that there was one potato crisp left in the bag, a big one. He pulled it out, and they looked at each other for a moment like they were going to have a showdown over who would get it. He smiled again, though, broke the chip in two and handed Andy the bigger half.

They chewed together, eyeing each other. Then the man smiled provocatively at Andy, saluted him, rose, and left.

Andy slumped back in his chair, overwhelmed by a feeling of exhaustion and completion. It felt almost like having had sex. But he also was feeling a sense of loss. Why did he feel a sudden loss? The forward guy had been just another Reggie. A flirt and a taker. But why did Andy feel deflated as he picked up the paperback book, turned, and slipped it into his bag? . . . only to find, still nestled in his bag, the packet of potato crisps he’d bought at the kiosk. The unopened package of potato crisps.

The bag of potato crisps Andy and the young man had dueled over hadn’t been Andy’s potato crisps at all—as he had assumed. They’d been his potato chips.

Aghast and burning with embarrassment, Andy looked around the waiting room, both wanting to see the young man so he could apologize and not wanting to see him because of the depth of his embarrassment in having run with a misassumption. He wasn’t to be seen.

Andy still hadn’t seen him when they called the boarding for his bus. He was still feeling a sense of loss when he climbed up into the bus and found a window seat. As he settled in, he sensed someone sit in the aisle seat next to him.

It was, of course, the young man from the waiting room. He turned and smiled at Andy. He was holding his hand out, extending an opened potato crisp packet to Andy.

“Would you like to share these crisps with me?” he asked. “My name is Jack. I think we should know each others’ names if we are going to share crisps intimately.”

Blushing, Andy answered, “Hi, Jack, I’m Andy. Yes, I’d love to share crisps with you, thanks.”

“Where are you bound to?” he asked.

“York,” Andy answered.

“I’m glad,” he said, “That’s my destination too. Do you have someone waiting for you at the station in York? I don’t.”

“I don’t either,” Andy said.

Andy, of course, realized that Jack had a hand on his knee. He didn’t mind that at all. As the bus pulled out into the road, Andy widened the stance of his legs and gave Jack a smile, showing he didn’t mind at all as Jack turned his body to block the view from the aisle and slid a hand up Andy’s thigh and to his core. No, thinking of the term “fun easy,” Andy decided he didn’t mind that at all. After all they’d already intimately shared a crisp.

* * * *

Jack pulled his right arm from under Andy’s neck, where he’d been holding the young man to him in an embrace and his right hand from Andy’s lower belly, slowly withdrew his cock from Andy’s hole to the sound of a deep sigh from Andy, and, picking the package of his cigarettes up from the nightstand after pulling the used condom off his cock, turned from Andy and stood up from the hotel room bed. As he did so, he knocked the packet containing the next condom onto the floor from the nightstand. Leaving it there, he walked over to the window of the small room overlooking the narrow street of the small hotel in old York. He leaned into the window, lit up his cigarette, and peered, reflectively, down into the street.

Andy rolled over onto his back, spread and bent his legs, and played with his cock. He looked across the room to where his sexy red shirt and white pants were neatly folded on a straight chair. Jack must have done that, he thought—while he was in the toilet after the first time Jack had fucked him. Andy was neat and appreciated that in a man—god knows Reggie had been a slob about taking care of his clothes. But Andy hadn’t folded the red shirt and white pants. He’d been lost in how good Jack had fucked him.

It had been just as Dennis said it was. Once he and Jack had gotten beyond the misunderstanding about the potato crisps—Andy’s misunderstanding—and Jack had touched him intimately in the bus and said he wanted to fuck him when they got to York, Andy had been easy. Jack was cute and had a nice cock, which made it all the easier.

He looked at the nightstand, hoping to see another condom packet there and was disappointed in not seeing one. The potato crisp bag was there—Andy’s potato crisp bag—but it was empty now. They’d eaten the crisps after Andy came back from the toilet and Jack had fucked him the second time, taking him up to dance on the clouds just as Jack had done the first time. Nobody had done it better—not Reggie, and certainly not Dennis.

Andy then looked over at the window, where Jack’s slim, yet muscular body lounged in the frame of the window highlighted by late-afternoon light streaming into the room. He thought he should warn the young man to come away from the window, as he was naked and someone down in the street surely would be able to see him. But Andy didn’t want Jack to move away from the window just yet. His body was perfect and the pose was perfect—sexy. Andy could hardly believe that such a perfect body had held him close and that such a perfect cock had penetrated him twice and taken him to heaven.

Jack turned his head toward Andy and smiled.

“You look perfect; so sexy, lying like that, fondling your dick,” he said.

“Come back to the bed,” Andy said, reluctant to give up his view of Jack in the window, but needing him again.

“In a minute, love,” Jack said. He finished smoking his cigarette, still lounging in the window, his back to the frame and his hips jutting out, his left knee raised to the side of the frame opposite. His free hand had taken his cock and was slow stroking it back to hard. Andy shivered—they’d fuck again if Jack had another condom packet somewhere. Andy had come away from Reggie’s unprepared, not giving any thought that, on the same day, he’d be in bed in a York hotel with a stranger.

The cigarette finished and his cock erect, Jack stubbed his cigarette butt out in an ashtray on the bureau next to the window, came back to the bed, picked the condom packet up from the floor by the nightstand, and slit it open.

Andy smiled as he saw that there was another condom after all.

“Is that the last one?” Andy asked, teasingly.

Jack reached over to the nightstand and brushed the empty crisps packet off the top of his toilet kit. He opened the kit, took out another condom packet, and placed it on the nightstand.

“For next time,” he said. “Can you do four in one day?”

“Are there others in that kit?”

“Yes, as many as you’d like.”

“I’d like as many times as you want,” Andy said. “You fuck amazing.”

“You take it amazing,” Jack said. “You make love to it while I’m inside. It makes me want to live inside you.”

Andy watched as Jack rolled the condom on his cock. “Come to me quickly,” Andy murmured. “Take me fast and hard.”

Jack came onto the bed, sliding his knees under Andy’s buttocks, lifting the young man’s pelvis. He took Andy’s legs up and hooked the young man’s ankles on his shoulders. Andy was flexible and could raise and maintain his legs raised with ease. He was whimpering, “Yes, yes. Do it, fuck me hard.”

Running an arm under Andy’s waist, Jack raised Andy’s torso. Andy arched back, letting his arms dangle to the side and his head arch back as well, exposing his throat to his lover if he wanted to tear his teeth into him and devour him. He gasped and gave a little cry as Jack entered him strongly, moved deep inside him, and began to fuck him hard—just as Andy had requested.

Afterward as they lay side by side, resting for the next condom, Andy played his fingers through Jack’s chest hair and kissed his nipple.

“Tell me, Jack, do you find me fun easy?”

“I don’t know what ‘fun easy’ is,” Jack murmured. “But I’m glad I found you.”

“I could be convinced that I’m hungry,” Andy said. “I think we need another packet of crisps.”

“Later,” Jack muttered. He had a hand between Andy’s thighs, stroking Andy’s legs there. Getting the hint, Andy spread his legs to Jack’s touch, which went up to Andy’s cock.

Andy moaned. “Screw the crisps. Fuck me,” he murmured. Dennis had been right, he thought. All a man had to do was touch his cock and he’d open his legs. Of course Jack wasn’t just any man. He spread his legs wider, bent them, and put his feet flat on the mattress, ready to use the leverage of his feet to move his pelvis with the action of the fuck.

Jack reached over to the nightstand for another condom packet.