**Note from the author: This is my first attempt at writing an erotic story, though this is my second draft of it. My sincere thanks to the patient feedback and helpful suggestions neuroparenthetical offered this virgin of a writer; any mistakes in this story are mine. While this is primarily a gay love story, it also includes heterosexual sex and attraction; some parts may be more appealing to whomever finds this than others. It is a personal story and offered with love for the community at large, whatever your identity, even if you haven't settled on one. That said, I hope you enjoy it, identify with it, feel it, and respond.**
Wanting Beauty
Chapter 1: Infatuation
Marshall was a gawky teenager. He dressed like a nerd, wore glasses, and had endured the worst of puberty while also wearing braces, ensuring he would never draw the eye of the beautiful girls he went to school with. He pined his way through high school as one of the caste that wonders at intimacy and compensates with energy. He was sustained, in part, through the poetry he wrote, crafting form and meaning to the world while occupying the schism.
He was kept in tact by his friends. They laughed at his jokes. They indulged his drama. He was the youngest of this chosen family and they were his guidance. Through them, Marshall defined himself: earnest and silly, immature and profound, and seeking. He spent every minute with them, from hang-outs during lunch, to sleepovers with video games, to just carousing about aimlessly with the freedom of youth and a car.
At 17, as Marshall graduated, he was, essentially, still a child.
That summer, Marshall met Trinity, who had just returned from Japan, where he'd been stationed as a military translator. Trinity was the younger brother, though slightly older than Marshall, of Marshall's friend, Cliff, who Marshall often hung out with after school.
On first meeting Trinity, Marshall immediately pressed him with all of his personality, convinced they would be friends and caught up in the excitement of proving that. Trinity, in turn, responded with intense sincerity of his own: talking with Marshall about his poetry late into the night, bonding with him over a shared love of music, and unabashedly being close to him. To Marshall, their relationship felt instantly special and boundless.
He saw the way Trinity acted around and with other people; it was different, even if those differences were subtle. Trinity outwardly seemed the calmest person one would ever meet, but Marshall recognized vulnerability. Trinity's eyes sparkled as he smiled, putting everyone at ease, but Marshall saw a hint of danger. Trinity was sexy and confident, effortlessly drawing every girl's attention to him, which only seemed to make his girlfriend more attentive in turn.
What came as a surprise to Marshall, one day, was that he, too, was feeling drawn in. Trinity looked enough like Marshall that at first Marshall assumed it was a sort of narcissistic fascination. He was lean, like Marshall - though Marshall was taller - but his muscles showed more; he had messy, dark hair, same as Marshall, but his seemed more styled; his eyes were dark and deep, seeming to bore into Marshall from universes within, while the darkness in Marshall's eyes glinted with light reflected.
Trinity was a blazing beacon in Marshall's orbit and, before long, Marshall found he was intractably lost in their moments together.
Trinity laughed when he saw Marshall trying to smoke a cigarette before sympathetically helping him do it without looking like a fool.
Trinity stood up for Marshall when Marshall seemed to drag everyone down with his emotions.
Trinity told Marshall he was beautiful.
Marshall remembered that moment. Marshall would always remember that moment.
Trinity was bold and Marshall was eager to follow.
By the end of that summer, as Marshall turned 18 and prepared to move away, Trinity had become central to the desperate poetry of his soul.
Chapter 2: The Adonis Belt
As exciting as the independence and promise of college was to Marshall, he made it a point to return every weekend to visit his friends - especially Trinity - to share the music of the moment or the new poems he'd written, falling back into the comfort of eager jokes as they whiled away time just being with each other.
Sometimes he would stay with Cliff and Trinity, once opting to sleep beside Trinity in his bed. Marshall's heart thundered with Trinity lying beside him, both of them in their boxers, as Marshall considered the moment, restraining himself from moving an inch. While he lay there, he felt Trinity scoot closer, almost spooning him. The sensation elicited a war in Marshall's head between frozen terror and overwhelming peace.
Anyone might see us!
Marshall thought, but then was impressed with how cavalier Trinity had been.
Is he awake? Is this no big deal to him? Can he feel my heart thumping and sense my secret thoughts?
Trinity had read Marshall's poetry, talked with him about everything, and had studied him as thoroughly as Marshall had studied him in turn.
Was I overconfident in thinking I could know him so fully and hide part of myself?
But Trinity's closeness, whatever his motivation, subdued Marshall's anxiety steadily, allowing him to love the moment and add it to the confusing, volcanic torrent of his emotions.
When Trinity and Marshall's friends visited him in his college town, Marshall shared his bed with Trinity, too. He had an excuse, he thought, since it was just a dorm and there were only two beds, but he knew his friends made assumptions. I
t doesn't matter
, Marshall thought.
Only this matters - this truth. This excitement.
Even the excitement of watching all the girls Marshall knew gravitate towards Trinity's cool charisma was fulfilling. He watched as Trinity lay on his bed with a cute redhead who declared for the whole room - all of whom must have known Marshall's interest - that she loved the indented lines that ran over Trinity's hips down to his pelvis, tracing one with her fingers.
I have those, too
, Marshall thought jealously, but acknowledged seeing them on Trinity
was
somehow more erotic.
Another image for later
