Time To Do

Excerpt From: Time To Do

Brennan Talbot was not going to stare at his best friend’s arse. There was a line a gay man didn’t cross while sharing a room with his straight best friend. He was going to stay on the right side of that line even if it killed him.

Turning around, Brennan held back a sigh. If he could just keep Rigby from bending over all the time, his life would be a hell of a lot easier. His friend possessed a truly wonderful backside, not to mention a preference for very tight jeans.

Brennan picked up yet another of Rigby’s text books off the floor and placed it on his desk. “Where do you get all this stuff from anyway?” he asked.

Brennan risked a glance over his shoulder. At least his friend was standing up straight now.

Rigby shrugged. His shoulder muscles rippled under his t-shirt. He added another book to the growing pile on his desk. “It all just turns up somehow. Anyway, quit complaining. You’re the one who insisted we rediscover the floor today.”

Brennan looked around their room. Small patches of carpet were slowly starting to emerge between the layers of Rigby’s junk. “I go home for one weekend and a bomb explodes,” he muttered to himself. He doubted that Rigby was actually listening anyway. “You could at least have kept the debris on your side of the room.”

Rigby chuckled at the familiar complaint. The low deep sound filled the small room and made Brennan smile in spite of his annoyance.

“I was looking for my locker keys,” Rigby offered by way of explanation. “All the other stuff was in the way.”

“So you threw it on the floor?” Brennan asked, putting a folder of history notes on the desk.

“Well, I usually ask you where stuff is and you tell me. You weren’t here so I had to improvise. Are you studying The Fall of the Roman Empire?”

Brennan glanced at the book in Rigby’s hand. “Doesn’t really fit in with a Physics degree, does it?”

“Then I guess this one’s mine, too.” Rigby frowned at it and put it on the shelf above his desk. “I don’t suppose you want to take a break and get something to eat?”

Brennan looked at the containers of food his mother sent back to the university with him. It was tempting, but he knew if they stopped before the floor was clear, the room would remain in the same state until the end of term.

“No,” he said firmly. “Floor first, then food. I’ll even share the cake my Mum made if we finish it in the next hour.”

“That’s blackmail,” Rigby complained.

“I think you’ll find it’s bribery,” Brennan corrected absentmindedly. He picked another folder up off the floor and read the title scrawled across it in Rigby’s handwriting—stuff. Well, that was informative.

Brennan tossed it towards Rigby’s desk. As it landed, the edge of the cardboard folder collapsed. Papers snowed down to the floor. Kneeling on a rare patch of carpet to pick them up, Brennan skimmed over a few lines on the top page.

It wasn’t really snooping when the papers were spread out all over the carpet for anyone to read. Anyway, he’d known Rigby since they started nursery school. They didn’t have any secrets from each other. Or to be entirely accurate, Brennan corrected himself, Rigby didn’t have any secrets from him.

A glance identified it as some sort of to do list. Such a rare sign of organisation in Rigby’s life had to be worth investigating further. Brennan read point number one—get drunk, and grinned. That was more like the Rigby he knew. There was a decisive tick by that point.

When Brennan read point number two—go skinny dipping— there was no chance he’d stop reading. An image of Rigby bare arse naked flashed across his mind and dropped straight to his crotch.

That particular image had been carefully constructed over several months of sideways glances, but it was far from up to date.

Brennan might know he’d never get more than friendship from Rigby, but he wasn’t prepared to lose that friendship by sneaking a peek at Rigby’s cock in the showers after rugby practise. Not when the possibility of passing off his actions as teenage curiosity, or an innocently heterosexual interest in making comparisons, died the day he told Rigby he was gay.