The Bones: Chapter One

A free chapter for all subscribers. Max Granger, golden boy, has problems—a horny roommate, an angry history teacher, and a thorny new subject for his cub investigative reporting: the Bones.

In honor of the of The Bones launch, I’ve extended my promotion through Monday 5/25. That’s 50% off an annual subscription to DS.

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I sat bolt upright in my bed, light beaming in through the windows of my dorm room. I glanced at the clock.

Fuck. I was late.

My laptop was still beside me, my assignment that was due for fifth period—today!—unfinished, cursor blinking on a blank page.

Shit. Fuck.

I must have nodded off.

I rose, throwing on the first pair of shorts I found, almost slipping on the piles of clothes and books that lined the floor.

Where the fuck was my backpack?

Not again. Not…again…

“Max…”

My roommate Reed’s voice came from just outside as I scurried about in vain.

“What?” I asked, annoyed, trying to find a shirt that wasn’t totally soiled.

“Come here…” he whispered.

I paused, gazing out the doorway to see him—head hanging off the bed, eyes closed, mouth wide open.

Reed would have been exceptionally hot had he not looked like a dolt most of the time—wire rimmed glasses that concealed half his face, his googly, if sea blue eyes.

But that body. Oh, that body. He was a diver, the main reason he’d even been admitted here—Hanover Prep, the boarding school of boarding schools. At 6 feet 3 inches, he was all lean muscle, towering above me with his high, tight pecs and lean six-pack. Oh, and he was a third-generation legacy to boot.

That, to be fair, was the main reason we were roommates, because so was I. While I was actually here on my own merits—straight A’s, debate society, the newspaper—and Reed was not, he was one of the few classmates who understood the pressure I was under, given my long family lineage.

It didn’t hurt that we’d started hooking up—first at night, and then in the mornings, and then whenever we were horny, which, frankly, was all the time.

It was a convenient arrangement if there ever was one.

But not this morning. No, this morning it was the opposite, because this morning I was late.

Again.

“I have class!” I called out, now on my hands and knees, checking under the bed like a maniac.

“Nice view,” said Reed, admiringly.

Mercifully, the black canvas of my bag came into view, and I grabbed for it, hoisting it in the air like a trophy.

“Got it!”

I shoved my books and laptop inside and zipped up the top before grabbing a grey sweatshirt off the floor and throwing it over my sleep-wrinkled body.

I was halfway to the door when Reed pulled down the covers to reveal himself—cock tight, fully erect, his length straining against his stomach, already wet at the tip.

I stopped short.

“Please,” he said, still half asleep, his mouth opening wider, eyes barely open—blind, hungry for dick. “Stay for just a second.”

Fuck.

I’d woken up with a boner, having slightly receded amidst the impending doom of being tardy for the third week in a row.

“Dude,” I started, “if I’m late for one more of Dr. Campbell’s classes, he said he’s going to write me up.”

My words barely registered, Reed ignoring me and instead extending a hand—grasping, searching.

I shifted, dodging his fist while I looked at my watch.

7:55. I only had 10 minutes to get to class.

But then Reed actually made contact, his fingers finding the thin layer of fabric and my boner underneath.

My dick jumped, and a satisfied grin came across his dumb face. At his touch, I was powerless to resist.

Fuck it.

Reaching for my waistband, I let my cock spring loose, its length almost hitting Reed in the face.

“Yeahhhhhh,” he bellowed, and then he was on me, taking me inside in one long, slow suck.

My breath caught in my throat as he clamped around me. The kid may have been a C-student at best, but he earned advanced honors in sucking cock.

I slid in and out of him, practically using him, his hand feverishly jerking himself at the same time.

That stupid fucking face with that stupid fucking mouth, I thought to myself. I need to get a real boyfriend.

But then I found a rhythm, placing a hand behind his head and increasing speed, face fucking him, my roughness seeming only to please him more. He curled his tongue around my dick—remarkably long, practically touching his chin when he extended it—a velvety taco around my swollen chimichanga.

I glanced at my watch. 7:58. It was now or never.

“Reed…I’m close…” I muttered. He began working doubly hard, his mouth tightening like a Hoover.

“Yueauhhuehh—” he replied, garbled, trying to nod but too consumed with…me.

And then I finally let it rip, load filling Reed’s cheeks, each thrust of his head taking more and more of me inside him, my body barely able to contain my convulsions.

And then, as if in slow motion, a synchronized event, a ribbon of cum shot out of Reed’s dick, leaving its head and flying upwards, outwards, extending well past his face.

For a moment, I stared at it—in awe. The distance, it was impressive— admirable.

Until it continued forward and hit me squarely in the chest, a long dark slash along the light grey of my sweatshirt.

“Reed……no….”

I tried to stop him, but it was too late. He continued slurping on my cock—happily, blindly—while he busted, one shot and then another and another flying out at me like gunfire until my entire front was streaked in his seed.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I might have been flattered, impressed even—the height! the distance! all inspired by me!—but I wasn’t.

I was just pissed.

I looked around the room for something, anything—a towel, something else to wear—but there was no time.

8:01.

“Dude, I gotta bounce!”

I pulled my dick out of Reed’s spitty, cummy mouth, unceremoniously stuffing it back into my sweatpants before grabbing for my bag and making a run for the door.

“Sorry!” I called out behind.

But it hardly mattered.

He turned over sleepily, lazily, immediately falling back to sleep as if nothing had ever happened.

I cannonballed out of my dorm, Stearns House, hustling up the long hill towards the main part of campus—dick bouncing, still half-hard within my sweatpants, my breath steaming in the October chill.

It was five weeks into the semester, and already I’d proven myself a liability. Too many late nights working on the newspaper, too few actually getting school work done. It was a catch-22—either prioritize the credential of working for one of the best high school verticals in the country, or the grades good enough for admission to the Ivy League school of my choosing.

As of now, I was erring on the former at the expense of the latter. And if I wasn’t careful, it was going to screw me.

I ran into Samuel Phillips Hall, the main campus building, shuffling down the hallway to my classroom. 8:07. Only two minutes late. Maybe Professor Campbell wouldn’t notice.

I opened the door in a rush and assumed stealth mode, employing the best tool at my disposal—plausible deniability.

If I pretended nothing was wrong, nothing really would be.

Dr. Campbell was bloviating from the front of the room, back turned, writing down a series of dates in quick succession on the dry-erase board, and so I booked it straight to my assigned seat at one end of the room.

I sat down, whipping out my notebook and pencil, my best friend Nolan beside me.

Nothing to see here. I’d been here the whole time.

“What the fuck, dude?” he whispered, looking at me like I was a psychopath. “Third week in a row…”

“I know,” I mouthed, raising my hands like I was being mugged.

His eyes left mine and trailed down to my sweatshirt, narrowing as he noticed the slashes of dark grey all across my chest.

“Did you spill something…?” he whispered.

My face flushed crimson, and I was about to answer when I was cut off by the low cough of Campbell from the front of the room.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asked.

Nolan and I turned, caught.

“No…” I stammered.

“Mr. Granger, you are late, yet again…”

“Only two minutes,” I protested.

“What did I say last time that you were late?”

My eyes flicked from side to side, face motionless. “That the next time you would write me up.”

“Indeed, I did. And would you say I am a man of my word?”

“No.” He glared at me. “I mean, yes…but you’re also a benevolent man, a kind man. Understanding, most would say.”

He looked back, unfazed. “See me after class.”

I sat low in my chair, defeated, as Nolan shrugged and began feverishly taking notes.

My god, what a brown-noser.

It was irritating, sometimes, having such a goody two-shoes as a best friend, but they didn’t get much better than Nole. He had my back without question, even if he was judging me for my misbehaviors. Because, after all, Nolan and I were polar opposites.

Hanover was one of the oldest boarding schools in the country. Presidents went here. The first American president attended the first graduation here. It had history. It was history. And it had money, enough money to attract any kind of student it wanted, the best of the best, no matter who could pay. And while I was the beneficiary of years of former relatives walking through these doors and advancing to great success, Nolan was not.

He was a scholarship kid, first generation from Ghana, and here entirely on his own merits. Not a day went by that he didn’t let me forget it. So while I lived with a certain comfort level, a familiarity, a privilege that my attendance was an almost foregone conclusion, for Nolan, it wasn’t. He worked twice as hard and with much greater care, his entire future resting on his performance in these four years.

Because attendance at Hanover was more than just high school—it was an audition for life. If you performed here, you got into the best colleges. And from the best colleges, you got the best jobs. And with the best jobs, you eventually came to rule the world and become…the elite.

At every stage, you were being monitored, evaluated for admission into an ever more exclusive club bound for the same destination.

Success.

No, Hanover was more than just high school. It was 1,000 young men being groomed for their futures, all competing and duking it out in one epic battle royale that set the course for the rest of their lives.

No wonder the energy could get so intense.

On one of the most picturesque hilltops in all of Massachusetts was a hotbed of masculinity and testosterone, the only remaining prestigious all-boys boarding school left after all the rest had co-educated. When asked why it stayed single sex, the trustees demurred, the rumor always having been this—women would have softened what was already one of the most brutal environments.

Misogyny, still alive and well.

That part always roiled me, and so I ignored it. It hadn’t been a choice anyway, my matriculation. No, my attendance was a foregone conclusion from the moment my X and Y chromosomes linked. At least the school had evolved some since 1778, namely that fact that I could be an out gay kid and not be burned at the stake. Not that being out didn’t come with its consequences. Being a legacy of my caliber afforded me a certain protection, a certain insurance policy against total social suicide, but I remained keenly aware that my sexuality set me down a few rungs on the totem pole.

Despite being full of exceptional students, Hanover was like any other school.

Jocks ruled the campus, nerds in power positions (student government, newspaper) played a close second, and being gay, well….that was its own demerit, landing me squarely on the third rung, at best. I hardly minded. Almost everyone here was essentially a means to an end. It was all about where everyone could get you, and those douchebags all played nice to my face at least, even if their own homophobia simmered just below.

Except for Nole. He was as genuine as they came, which is why we were best friends. And why I still loved him even though he was a kiss-ass.

I looked up. 40 minutes had passed, class nearing its inevitable conclusion. I’d barely absorbed a thing. What war were we on? Did it even matter? It was all just old dudes trying to dominate and control shit. If my peers here had taught me anything, nothing had changed. No one had learned from any of these lessons. Same shit, different day.

Why even bother?

“And what do you think, Mr. Granger?”

My eyes darted up, Campbell’s mug suddenly coming into focus. I squinted, the dates behind him giving me nothing.

“Surely you have an opinion on the subject?”

Nolan nudged me, turning his notebook to share his copious notes, as if I could read his chicken scratch.

But before I could reply, the bell rang for the end of period, and the room already began to disperse.

“Until next time, then,” Campbell said, his smile bordering on sadistic. Man, he loved to ride me, every bit of torture a special pleasure. “Please join me at the front.”

I tossed my notebook into my backpack—so much good finding that had done me—and collected my things before making my way to the front.

Campbell barely looked up from his papers.

“Do you have disdain for my class, Mr. Granger?” he asked.

“What? No!” I replied, flailing in my attempt to salvage an ever-deteriorating circumstance.

“History in general, perhaps?”

“No, of course not, it’s just…I have this sleep apnea thing, like Kendall Jenner…”

I was grasping.

He held up a piece of paper. “Take this to the dean of students. He will do with you what he will…”

I stared at the paper—small, yellow, sinister— before claiming it with my free hand.

“I’m really…I’m so sorry…” I pleaded, hoping for a reprieve. But he held his hand out to silence me.

Defeated, I turned and left.

“Dude…” Nolan was waiting for me outside, hands tucked behind his backpack straps. “What’d he give you?”

“Censure, probably,” I replied, stuffing the slip into my pocket, trying to pretend like it didn’t exist.

“Dick. And what the fuck happened to your shirt?”

I’m almost forgotten. The discoloration had gone away, but the remains had crusted over. It was distinctly less visible but slightly more gross.

“Reed,” I replied sheepishly. “Reed happened to my shirt.”

Nolan stared back, confused, before his face finally turned.

“Dude…gross!”

I shrugged. “You asked!”

It had been pretty hot, actually, seeing Reed come so hard while swallowing me. He was like my own personal Japanese sex doll, only variably more intelligent.

“I guess if I had someone to get me off every morning, I’d be late too…” Nolan trailed off as we made our way down the hall, its confines filling up with students heading towards second period.

“See!” I replied, justified, gripping his face in gratitude. “Thank you!”

“Nope! Nope!” he said, pulling away my hands dramatically. “I don’t know where those have been!”

We exited the front doors of Sam Phil, the day having already grown warmer, frost softening atop the grassy quad and the vast campus visible from those very stairs.

If Hanover was the most elite school in America, the campus was that reality made manifest. The buildings were Georgian in style and planned by Frederick Olmsted at the end of the 19^th century. I could remember arriving here two years prior and about six inches shorter. How small I felt walking across the expansive quads to class, as if the entire thing might gobble me up, never to be found again.

It had come to feel less gargantuan, but it still dazzled, particularly on high-fall days like this when the foliage had turned just so. The view out into the rest of campus was an explosion of color—burnished reds and deep yellows jumbled together as far as the eye could see.

“We closing tonight?” Nolan asked.

He, too, was newspaper staff—a deputy editor, just like me. Every Wednesday night, a select few closed the issue, finalizing the week’s stories and layout and setting it for print. Some questioned why we even made physical editions anymore, but I liked it, the nostalgia of it all. We’d been printing since 1870. Who were we to say when that streak ended?

“You know it,” I replied, realizing I was probably headed for another interminably late night and later morning. I needed to set my alarm louder. I also needed some coffee. Some serious coffee.

We turned across campus towards Sanders, the math building. Oof. My brain didn’t have the energy for Pre-Calc. It would be another 45 minutes of phoning it in, that was for sure.

And then, just as we were about to make it inside, I noticed a group gathering further afield, voices raised, a trail of smoke emanating from within.

“What the—” Nolan’s voice trailed off as he saw it too. We started walking faster, closer, the crowd growing thicker and fuller with students.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” I said, assuming an air of importance only possible from a true cub reporter. We made our way to the front, pushing aside oblivious freshmen and the occasional jock until there was a clearing, the circumstance in question just before us.

There, in the center, was a flag, a skull across the front of it, burning on a makeshift pole buried deep in the ground.

“Christ,” Nolan said, shaking his head beside me.

I stared at it. I knew that insignia. We all did.

It belonged to the Bones.

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Continue the story and read Chapter Two here.