On New Year’s night the dorm felt strangely hollow, like someone had turned the place inside out and shaken out all the usual noise. The corridors, normally full of slamming doors, loud laughter, and someone’s eternally-burnt popcorn, had gone still. Every now and then the quiet was cut by the faint pop of fireworks drifting in from somewhere beyond the campus fence, followed by the delayed echo of people cheering in the cold. It all sounded very far away, like I was listening through a thick wall.
I was basically the last living soul on the entire hallway. My US roommate had packed up and flown out two days before the break officially started. I watched him go with a mix of envy and relief — envy because, well, family gatherings and home-cooked meals are not the worst thing in the world; relief because suddenly I had the rare luxury of four walls all to myself.
On New Year’s Eve we made our way to our professor’s house, the one place off campus that always felt a bit like neutral territory — not quite home, not quite school. His wife opened the door before we even rang properly, as if she’d been standing guard, waiting to grab our coats and usher us in from the cold. She always treated students like long-lost relatives, but this time she had clearly gone into overdrive. The table looked like she was preparing to feed a regiment.
There were the classic layered salads--with mushrooms, cheese, salami, and crabs--plus three different plates of chicken done three different ways, a couple of meat dishes whose aromas filled the whole apartment, and a cake so big it barely fit on the sideboard. And, of course, there were bottles everywhere — champagne cooling by the window, a bowl of some sort of punch she’d kept adding things to, claiming it “needed one more note of flavor.”
By the time the clock showed the last minutes of the year, the apartment had turned into a cheerful, slightly chaotic circus. Someone dragged us outside to light fireworks in the courtyard as the clock struck midnight. After that, music appeared from somewhere — probably the professor’s old speakers — and the entire group drifted into singing. Not polished choir singing, just loud, semi-drunk, good-natured shouting of familiar Christmas songs in five languages of those present.
Eventually we ended up circling the Christmas tree in the living room, half dancing, half stumbling, the ornaments jingling every time someone’s elbow brushed a branch. It was messy and warm and very human, the kind of night that sticks not because anything grand happened, but because it felt like everyone let their guard down at the same time.
It was there that I met Ed, my classmate Lena’s new American boyfriend — and honestly, he looked like he’d stepped straight out of some handbook on “How to Be a Decent Human Being.” Mid-twenties, clean-cut without trying too hard, he wore thin-framed glasses that gave him a thoughtful, attentive look, as if he was always listening just a little more carefully than the rest of us.
From the moment he walked in, he had those soft, deliberate manners that aren’t showy but make you instantly relax. He held the door for people without making a big deal out of it. He thanked our professor’s wife with this earnest warmth that made her beam. When he shook your hand, he did it with both hands, like he was genuinely glad to meet you — not performing, just built that way.
And while the rest of us tore into the champagne like we were trying to set personal records, Ed stayed slow and steady, taking small sips, nodding along to conversations with that quiet smile he seemed to wear naturally. Most of the night he hovered near Lena, his arm lightly around her shoulders, checking in with her in these small, almost invisible ways — making sure she wasn’t cold when we went outside, passing her a glass without her asking, brushing a stray hair from her face when she laughed too hard. Not clingy, not overdone — just attentive in a way that made you think, wow, she really found herself someone good.
And yet, he wasn’t stiff or reserved. Once he realized our chaos was sincere and welcoming, he jumped straight into the mix. He helped us set up the fireworks with the concentration of a man defusing a bomb, then laughed harder than anyone when the first rocket whizzed off sideways. He hummed along to songs he didn’t know, and when someone pulled him into a circle around the Christmas tree, he didn’t protest — he just followed the rhythm with slightly awkward, well-meaning steps, looking like the kind of guy who would never mock a tradition even if it was completely foreign to him.
By the end of the evening, it was impossible not to like him. He had that gentle, steady presence that just made everything feel calmer, even in the middle of our New Year circus. One of those rare people who never try to be the center of attention — and somehow end up being the one everyone remembers anyway.
Lena couldn't let him stay in her room because her roommate was a fellow international student, and Ed's own room wasn't paid for the break. So she came to me and asked me if I could let Ed crash in my room. Even before I met him, I said yes, and now when I almost fell in love with him, I was actually looking forward to it. God only knows what could happen, I remember thinking. I was hoping at least to catch a glimpse of the bulge, or, perhaps, some morning wood... anyway, I was all ready for that night.
"You've met Augie," Lena said at the end of the night. "He'll let you stay in his room, and I'll pick you up tomorrow morning."
Ed smiled shyly, and on the way to campus he apologized for the intrusion about six times before he even got through the door. His voice was so soft I had to lean in to catch what he was saying. Wound up after the party, we talked for an hour—about books, his thesis, indie games, the ethics of AI art—while sharing a bottle of prosecco each of us got before leaving. Every sentence out of his mouth ended in a little smile, like he was afraid of taking up too much space. When the bottle was empty he thanked me again, asked which bed was his, and waited for permission before sitting on the edge of it.
We undressed in the dark out of mutual shyness, the only light a thin orange stripe from the streetlamp outside the window. I heard the rustle of his belt, the soft thud of shoes, the whisper of fabric. Then the creak of his mattress as he slid under my spare blanket. “Good night,” he murmured, so gently it felt like being tucked in. “Happy New Year.” I answered the same, rolled toward the wall, and pretended to fall asleep to the sound of far-off fireworks.
Sometime after three a rhythmic creak made me perk up my ears. Not the bed frame exactly—something subtler, like the blanket shifting. My eyes adjusted slowly. Across the narrow gap between our beds, Elias was on his back. His knees were now up and apart, one arm moving in a slow, steady arc beneath the blanket. The streetlight painted everything in monochrome: the soft shadows slid over his chest, his breath came in careful, measured huffs that grew deeper each time his wrist twisted. I should have closed my eyes, pretended to sleep. Instead I watched, heart hammering. His rhythm stayed polite even now—never frantic, just relentless, like he was solving an equation with his fist. The blanket rose and fell in a small, perfect waves.
Then the blanket slid to the floor with a soft hush, and the orange streetlight spilling through the blinds gave me just enough to work with: shapes, edges, motion. Ed’s cock rose out of the dark like a pale, straight column, no curve at all, a rigid upright line dark against the meager light from the window. It looked thick but elegant, the circumcised head clearly visible under his fist rotating around the quietly slurping glans.
Everything below the shaft was shadow, but I could see the steady rise and fall of his wrist, the small, controlled pump that made the whole column flex and gleam at the tip each time. Then his hips lifted a fraction, his spine arched, and he made the smallest sound I’d ever heard a person make during at the height of passion: a single, breathy “ah” that barely qualified as a moan. Three bright fountains arced up in the orange light, catching the glow like liquid sparks before they splattered silently across his stomach and chest. One, two, three—clean, high, almost elegant. His hand slowed, milking gently, and the room smelled suddenly of warm skin and prosecco and something sweet.
The sight punched the air out of my lungs; my own cock was already aching against the mattress. I didn’t even think—just shoved my right hand under the waistband and stroked twice, three times, embarrassingly fast... It took me mere seconds: I came with my face buried in the pillow to muffle my own groan. Watching a straight guy jerk off and cum seemed so horny to the drunk me that I had to repeat the whole process an hour later when Ed was blissfully asleep.
Morning arrived too bright and too innocent. When I woke up, Ed was already up, folding his blanket with hospital corners, hair damp from the communal shower. He smiled the same gentle, perfect smile, asked how I’d slept, thanked me for the hospitality, and offered to buy me coffee downstairs. Nothing in his eyes hinted he knew I’d watched, nothing suggested he’d heard me come seconds after he did.
He hugged me lightly at the door—quick, polite, smelling like citrus soap—and disappeared down the hallway humming under his breath. I locked the door, leaned against it, and slid a hand into my pajama pants before the echo of his footsteps had even faded. I pictured him with Lena: gentle Ed on top, glasses fogging as he moved slowly and carefully inside her; then behind her, long fingers gripping her tiny tits while she pushed back against him; then her riding him, his soft voice breaking on her name as he came exactly like he had last night—three perfect arcs, half on her back, half on her folds, almost silent and very polite even in ecstasy. I lasted maybe thirty seconds before I painted my own stomach again, allowing myself a long lonely moan of a wolf in a winter forest.
I'd pay a lot of money to have his slim body next to mine, that cock moving inside me. Hell, I'd even moan in a feminine voice for him. Sorry, guys, a jerk off pause. Will be back.
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