So for my first story I wanted to share about my sexual awakening with my lover.
Ryan was someone I had known my whole life. We had been best friends for most of our lives. It was at a time when acceptance for gay people was something that was just starting to happen but even in areas where it was more acceptable it was still something you had to be careful with. I had a crush on him since junior high but it wouldn't be until college that I would ever tell him about it. We were both true millennials, we graduated right in the year 2000. And when we shared an apartment during our college years, that was when everything happened.
When we were in our Freshman year of college Ryan came out to a select few people he trusted, including me, and that was when I wondered if I had a chance at becoming his lover. I had been wrestling with the matter myself and didn't yet have the courage to come out. I still had some baggage to work through, fighting with myself over whether I should feel this way and it would be a little time more until I had the courage to come out as well.
Sharing an apartment with him was great. When we weren't preoccupied with work and college classes it was like one big hangout. We had a PS2 with our television. No cable, so that was the only real at home entertainment. And getting to live with Ryan was fun. He was a treat for the eyes. He had a lot of freckles which I rather liked and he had short red hair. He was tall and athletic. I loved to see him in swimming trunks and he typically wore pajama pants to bed. We made a weird pair considering I looked every bit like the classic geek with my glasses and skinny physique. As friends we were brought together through love of video games and Magic: The Gathering, one of my baseball playing friend's geek secrets.
Before we officially became lovers I had one "covert" way of being intimate with him. I had a thing for tickling and we were used to roughhousing and still hadn't outgrown it when we were 18 (and still haven't really outgrown it now :D), so sometimes when I wanted to touch or be touched I would tickle him or wrestle with him. But I'm airquoting the covert bit because the truth was that he had figured out both my thing for tickling and my love for him before I had the courage to confess either of them. I wasn't nearly as subtle as I thought I was being.