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It was meant to be beta-testing.
It was dumb because it was all set up through Penny's dumb app that she'd made for a class she'd aced anyway, though Ian guessed at least the photos didn't turn him orange like a fricking oompa loompa. But there he was, at Thumpers 'cause he was still persona non grata at the only gay bar in Orlin after the wingman incident, and back then Mark was still looking at him like he's stuck gum in his hair at recess and not like he'd tried his best to get him laid. He really had tried his best. He totally hadn't torpedoed him at all, just like he totally hadn't had a crush, nuh-uh, not ever.
But anyway, there he was, drinking a disappointingly lukewarm beer at the bar and waiting like a total tool for a guy who was probably never gonna show 'cause he was probably, in reality, Penny sitting in her room laughing her ass off at his expense and all because he'd told her their home network probably didn't need a hardware firewall with a fan that sounded like a fighter jet taking off and anyway, why did the wifi password reset every twelve hours and kick him out of Warcraft? And it was hot and he was sweating and that was totally just 'cause the temperature in the club was kinda like the surface of the sun, not 'cause he was nervous. He wasn't nervous. Ian Manachewitz did not get nervous.
Except Ian Manachevwtz had never met a guy before. He'd met guys before, sure, he met guys all the time while he was on shift at JoJo's, there were guys on his Zoology course, there were guys he ran into at the gym pretty regularly, but there was meeting guys and there was meeting guys. He was trying to do the second thing while he'd only ever done the first and Mark would've told him latter and former except screw Mark and his undergrad English 'cause the dude was totally dating his anatomy professor like some kind of a porno cliché come to life. Not that he was thinking about Mark. No sir. Not for a second. He wiped his palms on his jeans and almost dropped his beer. He wasn't sweating, he wasn't nervous, and he wasn't thinking about Mark.
"Ian?"
He turned, and his gaze connected with a guy's expansive chest. He tilted up his head and jeez, the guy had to be nearly six-five and built like a freaking quarterback. Then it dawned on him: he was a quarterback. He was the quarterback. He was the Orlin Otters' quarterback. 'Brad' from Brofinder with the in-the-mirror selfie of super-hot abs holding his shirt up with one hand and no head like all he was was was muscle and no brain (like Ian had never been accused of that himself before), who listed his interests as "sports" and who Ian half expected was just Penny being a dick or a fifty-year-old accountant with a beer gut and a collection of mint-condition lunchboxes, was Brad fricking Melnick.
"Wow," Ian said.
Brad grinned. "I'll take that as a good start," he replied.
---
It was meant to be beta-testing.
It'd taken Ian months to even admit he was bi-curious, let alone anything else. It'd taken a heart-to-heart with Zoe, who'd been as unsurprised as the time she'd found him drinking her $200 wine straight from the bottle 'cause she'd run out of beer and all alcohol was the same to him or the time he forgot New Mexico was a state and not a different country, then a couple of months of concerted pining for his gay roommate who was was hot for teacher as Van Halen had ever been. Then he'd gotten caught downloading porn over the home network and Penny had had some stern words about bandwidth and keeping secrets from your friends. When Mark turned down the beta test, she went to Ian. Considering how she'd gotten the download speed on his pornography to double, he'd been pretty sure he didn't have a choice.
"Yeah, I guess I wasn't expecting the Orlin QB," Ian said, smiling sheepishly. "I thought maybe my roommate was just setting me up with her cousin Philbert."
"Now that's a name," Brad said, brows raised. "Just not mine. I'm Brad." He held out his hand in Ian's general direction. "Pleased to meet you."
Ian shook Brad's hand. "Ian," he said, with a flash of a grin. "But I don't think a lot of guys shake hands around here."
Brad looked around the place, at the guys out on the dancefloor under the lights, at the guys drinking in booths, at tables, a little way away along the bar, bodies just a bit too close together for them to just be casual acquaintances except hey, who knew, maybe they'd all just met fourteen seconds earlier the way the Brad and Ian had, maybe even on Brofinder. Brad looked around then he looked back at Ian and jeez, the guy looked just as nervous as he was. Wasn't. Was. Man, he was nervous. He'd never been that nervous with a girl.
"Yeah, I guess I see what you mean," Brad said, then he got closer, stepped right up beside him at the bar. Ian swallowed. Brad put one hand on the top of the bar by Ian's elbow and close up the dude seemed even bigger. Ian wasn't small, he was six feet on the nail in his bare feet with a tape measure though he was definitely only admitting to using Penny's tape measure for his height, but Brad made him feel like he'd just lost a full twelve inches. He made him feel like he'd just woken up from that dream where they had a pop quiz in biology class and the whole thing was written out in Klingon when his second language was Esperanto and all Penny had taught him was Qapla'. "This better?"
Ian nodded, wide-eyed. "Sure," he said. "That's great. That's really...great."
Brad grinned. Ian grinned back.
Jeez, he was in trouble.
---
It was meant to be beta testing.
"So, can I get you a drink?" Ian asked, and Brad said yes, and pretty soon they were both stood there at the bar drinking lukewarm beers and making chit-chat about the Otters like either of them had gone there to talk football. Ian was pretty sure he hadn't, at least. Who knew about Brad, maybe he didn't get what Penny's app was for. Except he was standing so close Ian felt even hotter.
"Hey, can I ask you a question?" Brad said. "Why are those guys glaring daggers at you like you just scored the winning touchdown with three seconds on the clock then mooned them on the big screen?"
Ian glanced in their direction. The guys looked familiar. He blanched.
"I'm pretty sure they recognize me," he said.
"From this place?"
"You know Charlie's?"
"I've never been, but sure."
"Well, I was winging for a friend and I guess maybe I told a little white lie."
"About what?"
Ian winced. "I guess maybe I made insinuations about the size of his..." He paused and made a gesture that had seemed a whole lot better in his head and turned out to be a whole lot more obscene in reality. "Well, the size of his member."
Brad smirked. "You told everyone he had a schlong the size of your forearm?" he said. "I'm guessing it turned out he didn't."
Ian shrugged. "Yeah, not so much," he said. "I guess those guys remember." He snickered. "Heh. Remember the member."
Brad snickered along for a minute then they sipped their crappy warm beers and looked at each other over the top of them. They finished them off and ordered two more, perched themselves pretty precariously up on bar stools and looked at each other some more. Ian smiled. Brad smiled. They shifted on their seats. Brad cleared his throat.
"So your friend turned out to be, like, average-sized?"
Ian nodded. "Yup," he said. "And he was pissed at me. I'm pretty sure he's still pissed at me."
Brad smiled half-awkwardly. "Y'know, I'm pretty big," he said.
Ian rubbed at the back of his neck, got condensation off of the bottle on his skin and scowled for a second. "Yeah, I heard that," he said.
"You did?"
"My ex-girlfriend knows a girl who knows a girl who blew you once."
"Girlfriend?"
"Yeah." Ian tilted his head. "BJ from a cheerleader?"
Brad nodded. "Okay, good point," he said.
But Ian totally wasn't thinking about comparing notes on their sexualities at that exact moment. He was thinking about the things he'd heard about Brad Melnick. Jeez, he was thinking about something totally different 'cause okay, he had a whole box full of sex toys sitting back home in his room now they'd come back from Zoe's and maybe some of them were pretty big and maybe some of them were a really tight fit and he was thinking, oh hell, he was thinking about the things he'd heard about the thing that lurked in Brad Melnick's jeans and how different that might feel. He was thinking about how Brad might feel in him.
His cheeks were burning, and not just 'cause he was overheating like the time he fell asleep on the beach at spring break with his sunglasses still on and woke up hours later with big white circles in the ran around his eyes like a panda in reverse.
Man, he was in trouble.
---
"This was meant to be beta-testing," Ian said.
Brad looked really hot when he was confused but Ian explained it to him anyway.
"So you're not really...?" Brad said, after, tearing at the label on his crappy beer.
"No, yeah, I'm really," Ian replied. "Just 'cause I'm Penny's lab rat, that doesn't mean I'm not. I think. I've just never..."
Brad raised his brows. "You've never?"
Ian gave his best sheepish smile another workout. "Whatever you just assumed, it's probably right," he said, then he frowned slightly. "What did you assume? Just out of, y'know, curiosity."
Brad shrugged his pretty expansive shoulders. "You've never done it with a guy?"
"Yeah, true." Ian put his empty beer bottle on the bar and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Have you?"
"Once. But it was a while ago."
"Dude, that practically makes you a pro next to me."
Brad snickered. Ian grinned. They looked at each other, Ian's stomach all tied up in knots 'cause hey, it was his first time meeting a guy and it was Brad fricking Melnick. He wasn't totally sure what he'd been expecting but it wasn't the college quarterback even if he wasn't wearing his letter jacket, and he looked kinda different close up and not just watching the game from the nosebleeds with yet another foam finger. He had a collection. It was pretty vast. Brad looked younger but still not really young, his hair looked brighter and he was bigger, fricking huge, slim but built and Ian felt just a momentary pang of jealousy over his pretty impressive physique. Except then he felt something else, and his face flushed. Fortunately, the light was pretty dim.
"Am I even your type?" Ian asked.
Brad bit his bottom lip as he thought that through. "I'm not totally sure I have a type," he said. "I'm pretty new to this."
"Do you find me attractive?"
Brad took a step back, his hands on his hips. Brad looked him over, slowly, head to toe, and then back up again. He rubbed his stubbly chin like he was considering the question really carefully and jeez, Ian blushed harder though he hadn't realized that was even possible because there he was, his first time out, his first time out, and there was a guy sizing him up, assessing his assets, judging him.
In the end, Brad nodded. "Yeah," he said, his voice sounding kinda strained. "Yeah, all signs say I find you pretty attractive." He tilted his head and shoved his hands into his hip pockets kinda awkwardly, just like Ian was doing. "Do you... y'know?"
Ian laughed out loud. He couldn't help it, even though Brad looked like he'd just slapped him in the face and he took a step back like he was about to flee so Ian pretty much leapt forward and grabbed Brad's huge biceps in his hands. They both looked surprised at that. Brad didn't flee.
"I just..." Ian said.
"But you..." Brad replied.
"I didn't..." Ian said.
"But why..." Brad replied.
So Ian kissed him, which shut down that idiot conversation.
It wasn't like he'd meant to do it. He really hadn't meant to do it at all. He'd meant to say something witty and laugh off the laughing but there he was, his hands at Brad's waist, up on his fricking tiptoes to get at his mouth. Brad got his fingers into Ian's hair and stepped in closer and jeez, he hadn't expected that, one of Brad's big damn hands hooked over his shoulder from the back and one in his hair as they kissed and dude, Brad's stubble caught against his and they both tasted like that crappy warm beer and Brad was huge and solid and really good at kissing. He nipped at Ian's bottom lip, licked it with the tip of his tongue and then they were fricking Frenching in the middle of a club and Ian's pulse was beating like a military drummer had just taken up residence in his chest.
It was dumb. It ranked up there with some of the dumber things he'd done in his life like telling his best friend he'd been thinking about kissing him while he had a threesome or the time he asked his high school biology teacher if narwhals were real. He had two handfuls of Brad's already tight shirt and Brad walked him back up against the bar and man, he didn't care that the lip of the bar was digging into his back or he was pretty sure the back of his shirt was getting beer-stained. He'd deal with that later, he thought, feeling Brad press up against him, and jeez, oh man, he could feel Brad's cock starting to get hard against him.
Someone wolf-whistled. Brad stepped back with a cough and blushed pretty much as red as the ketchup Ian had gotten all over his shirt at lunch.
"Um..." Brad said, raking one hand over his hair. His t-shirt pulled up at the front and Ian's gaze went right to the patch of bare skin above Brad's belt buckle and the red hair leading down underneath.
"Yeah," Ian replied. "I...yeah."
They ordered two more beers instead of talking.
---
It was meant to be beta-testing.
"Hey, is this meant to be a date or a hookup or totally something else?" Brad asked, suddenly, halfway through their next warm beer, as they stood back side-by-side at the bar and watched the dancers dance.
"Yeah, I'm not sure Penny's clear on Brofinder's USP," Ian replied, and he glanced at Brad sidelong. "What did you want it to be?"
"I guess I don't know," Brad said. "Can't it be both?"
Ian raised his brows. "Are you asking if I want to hook up with you?"
Brad smiled nervously. "Maybe?" He sighed and put down his beer. "Man, this stuff's so much easier with girls."
"I know, right?" Ian put down his own beer and rubbed his face with both hands, peeking at Brad from between his fingers. "You wanna get out of here?" he asked, though it kinda felt like his heart was gonna burst right out of his chest as he said it.
"And go where?" Brad asked.
"Your place? My place?"
"Your place?"
"Sure, my place."
So they left together.
It turned out they'd both called cabs to get out there in case they'd wanted to drink so they caught one together, sat in the back in silence as far apart as they could get while the driver eyed them in the rearview mirror like he expected the two guys from Thumpers to start going at it right then and there the instant he looked away. Ian paid him and they got out. Ian led Brad into the building, led him up the stairs, led him right up to the apartment door and then fumbled his keys except Brad stepped right up behind him and caught them in one hand. Brad handed them back but then, well, Brad was standing right up behind him, right up against his back, big and warm and there and wow, Zoe would be proud he'd gotten out there and done this. Not that she'd've been proud he'd thought of her when he should've been thinking about the guy behind him pressed half-hard to his denim-clad ass.
He opened the door, half expecting Penny to assault him with questions or Mark to be sitting there on the couch with his anatomy textbook but Mark was probably out with Penny, doing who knew what with who knew which app. Ian hoped it was the one that got them lost on campus. Preferably for the whole night and they could resurface in the morning all covered in goo with tales of horror from the campus sewers that no one wanted to hear over breakfast. Ian flipped on the lights. They went inside.
Ian's room was like a disaster zone and he might've cared when he opened the door and Brad went inside except the first thing Brad did, while he was looking around, was take off his shirt and toss it onto the desk.
"Wow," Ian said, and Brad grinned, hands on hips.
"Yeah, you said that once already," Brad said, and then he said, "C'mon, man. Your turn."
Ian took off his shirt and dropped it to the floor, feeling oddly exposed for a guy who didn't even flinch at the gym's communal showers. "Now you?"
So Brad took off his sneakers. Ian did the same. Brad took off his jeans. Ian followed suit. Socks next. Then Brad took a breath and he took off his underwear and Ian just stared. He gaped like a fricking idiot from across the room 'cause it turned out Zoe's friend's friend who'd blown Brad once hadn't been exaggerating. Jeez, if anything she'd downplayed it. He was big and long and thick and and Ian's stomach fluttered just looking at it.
"Wow," he said. "I...wow."
Brad snickered. "You keep saying that," he said, and hesitantly wrapped one hand around the base of his cock. He stroked himself a couple of times and Ian's eyes went wide as he watched. "Hey, you're not freaking out, are you?"
Ian shook his head. And to punctuate the point, he took off his boxers, even though he kinda felt like the runt of the litter in comparison. Brad looked at him. Ian looked at Brad looking at him. He was all adrenaline and watery alcohol and nerves and he had no idea how he'd ended up with Brad Melnick in his room but he went over there, marched himself over there, and when they kissed their noses bumped but they got over that pretty quickly. Ian could feel Brad's enormous peen against his abs and while they kissed, while Brad hand one hand caught up in Ian's hair again and the other one wandered down to squeeze his ass, Ian was flicking through a mental inventory of every toy he'd ever had or used and if he'd ever gotten anything as big inside him. Eesh, just the thought of it made his cock give a little jump, and Brad chuckled against his mouth, nervously.
Brad's hand wandered down. He wrapped it around Ian's cock and he stroked, slowly, but Ian caught his wrist.
"You don't..." Brad said.
"I do." Ian replied.
"But you..." Brad said.
"Lie down on the bed," Ian replied.
So Brad did exactly what he was told. Ian watched, and then he joined him.
---
It was meant to be beta-testing.
It was meant to make sure the app worked as intended, to see if guys would contact him, if the chat function worked, if photo integration from users' phone cameras actually did what it was meant to and didn't just squish the images till they were as wide as they were tall. His mission had been to get a message, chat, meet a guy someplace, test the app's functionality and report back so Penny could include a user report in her class project work, but there they were, in Ian's room. Naked. Hard. Ian's stomach flipped. He rubbed his face. Man, this was pretty far from a beta test.
He knelt on the bed and Brad watched him lean over to the drawer there by it to fish out a tube of lube. Brad watched him, his hands up above his head, fingers wrapped around bars in the headboard, his thighs spread apart a little and jeez, he was like a fricking god the way he looked, flushed and hard and man, the muscle in him was just awesome. As Ian uncapped the lube Brad shifted his thighs wider apart, he pulled up his knees till his feet were flat to the mattress and Ian's brows rose.
"Wow, did you think..." he said, gesturing.
"You mean you're not?"
"Well, no."
"So you're..."
"I thought..."
"It's just..."
"You don't want..."
Brad's eyes were wide with surprise. His face was a picture. "No, I want," he said. "I just didn't think you'd... Y'know, it being your first time."
Ian grinned. "I've got this," he said. "Just lie back."
He lubed Brad's cock. He did it really slowly, with great attention to detail, swirled it over the head and stroked it right down to the base, made Brad's hips shift a little to push up against his hands. Then, when he was done, he slicked up his fingers and he lubed himself, spread his knees really wide and straddled Brad's thighs and he looked away, looked at his laptop's screensaver making weird shapes across the room, looked at his overflowing laundry basket and the box of toys Zoe had brought back peeking out from under his desk and he circled his hole with his fingertips while Brad lay back and watched. He pushed one finger up inside himself and blushed like he had some kind of a genetic link to a stop light and he took a shaky breath. Brad's hands went to his thighs and squeezed and before he knew it he was looking down at Brad with two fingers shoved inside himself and Brad was just looking at him like that was the single hottest thing he'd ever seen in his life.
Then he shuffled up. He pulled his fingers out and he shuffled up till he had one knee either side of Brad's hips and he sat there, rubbing Brad's fricking ridiculous member between his cheeks. He caught it in one hand and jeez, he had no idea what he was doing except he pushed the big, broad head up against his hole and willed himself to relax, bit by bit, slowly, so fricking slowly, till he could feel it stretching him out, till he could feel it pushing in. And man, it was big, it opened him right up and filled him, stretched him, made sweat stand out on his brow as he sank down and down and down, eyes closed, breathing through it, his own cock so hard it almost hurt.
Then, it was in. Brad was in him as far as he could go and wow, he'd gone and done it, finally, switched the vibrators for a real human cock attached to a real human and the thought of it almost as much as the feel of it made his cock jump. He opened his eyes. Brad was watching him.
"Wow," Brad said. "Wow, that's hot."
Ian grinned a little goofily. "You're telling me," he said.
He rode him slowly. It took a while till he could do it harder, till he'd adjusted to Brad's insane girth so he could pump his hips and really go for it, squeezing around him, making them both groan out loud, but when he got there it was so fricking good he couldn't believe he'd waited so long to try it. Brad's big hands went to Ian's waist and he braced with his heels and he pushed up against him and jeez, that was even better, somehow got him in deeper till Ian's whole damn body was tingling with it. He spread his hands over Brad's chest and looked down while Brad looked up and grinned and Brad grinned and they did it harder, Ian getting hold of his own cock to jerk himself and when he came over Brad's chest, Brad didn't take too much longer, either. Ian could feel Brad's cock jerk and pulse inside him. Jeez, that was hot.
After, Ian went down on his back right there next to him, stretched out his tense muscles and turned his head to look at him. Brad grinned. They kissed. And when they were done, when they'd wiped themselves down with tissues and stopped breathing hard like they'd just run a fricking marathon and not just had sex, Ian grabbed a couple of cold beers from the refrigerator. They drank them in Ian's bed, still naked, shoulder to shoulder, talking football scores and how much they both hated writing essays. When they kissed again, it at least tasted like good beer.
And when they did it again pretty soon after that, Brad took him from behind with his hands at Ian's hips, skin slapping skin while they snickered to themselves about tight ends and wide receivers. They talked for hours after, over some crappy action movie playing on TV that they both agreed would've been fifty times better with gay sex and then they watched fifteen minutes of porn on Ian's laptop till Brad went down on his back on the bed and Ian did him just like that, face to face, deep and slow, flushed bright red and ignoring lurid porno moans drifting across the room from his computer.
It turned out Brad had never done that before, just like Ian hadn't. Maybe it'd all been a beta test after all.
---
In the morning, round about 6am, Penny and Mark got home looking like they'd just battled a giant octopus or something not a million miles from that. Brad was just leaving; he had to be on the field early for practice.
Brad flashed Ian a grin. Ian stepped in close and kissed him right on the mouth, right there by the door. Mark and Penny gaped.
"How about I help you beta test again tonight?" Brad said.
"Around seven?"
"I'll bring pizza."
"Bring lube, too."
Brad laughed. They both blushed, but it wasn't enough to make them stop. And when Brad was gone, Ian closed the door and turned back around to his roommates.
"Guys, there's something I've been meaning to tell you," he said. Given that they'd just caught him macking on the Orlin quarterback, what came next wasn't exactly a huge surprise.
It was meant to be beta testing. And okay, so three months later their relationship was still kinda lingering in beta, but they'd ironed out some of the bugs, at least, and Penny made a fortune.
It was meant to be beta testing, but three years later they were still together.
Ian was grateful it was one test he hadn't flunked.