The bad part about being a genius is that it's really hard to ask people about things you don't know, like sex. The other kind of sex, with guys. Rodney thinks about it, but he draws the line at stalking the skinny Astronomy major on the floor below him, who he's pretty sure has a boyfriend, because that would just be weird, so instead he takes a walk to the really good independent bookstore downtown, because while the campus bookstore is well-supplied with some things, like Oreos, it is lacking in others, like porn.
He feels sort of like when he built his first particle accelerator out of pie plates, only then he wouldn't let anyone even open the garage door and he prefers to think he's matured since then, so he just denies that he's looking for anything in particular when the clerk asks him. The gay-and-lesbian shelf is squeezed in next to the "science" fiction, which is weird, and he's sure the clerk is watching him in the big curved mirror, but he's doing nonchalant as hard as he can and ignoring her. He pulls out a few books that look likely, and grabs an Orson Scott Card to laugh at, on the way past, and takes the whole stack over to the counter and thunks it down and pays cash. And asks if he can get a bag.
Reading this at his desk seems -- it's not that he doesn't take it seriously, but that's a little too serious, and besides, the desk is already covered in experimental graphs. So he sits on his bed with his back against the wall and The New Joy of Gay Sex in front of him, and at first he's reading, and then he's reading, and he flips ahead a little, and impatiently, reluctantly, gracefully, clumsily, and he feels heavy and warm in the arches of his feet and behind his eyes and in his dick when he opens his fly and slides his hand inside, glossy from the thundering water, his hair never lies flat, even soaking wet under the emergency shower when the vial of iron-59 smashed, and oh god, he smelled good when Rodney got close to ask if he was okay, he pulls you still closer and the permanent wrinkles around warm brown eyes from the way he squints at things too close even though he doesn't need to, and the tiny accidental ballpoint-pen tattoo on his right palm, and Rodney comes curling forward, comes all over his hand and his shirt and on the edge of the book where it's on the floor now, and the high-pitched noise can't be him, because he doesn't make noises like that, but oh god.
Rodney sits for a minute, breathing hard, and then he stands up and cleans up and gets a beer out of the tiny fridge, because it's midafternoon and Paul's still engaged to the pretty Biochem major with the glasses and the thick blonde braid down her back.
He's read a *lot*.
He feels sort of like when he built his first particle accelerator out of pie plates, only then he wouldn't let anyone even open the garage door and he prefers to think he's matured since then, so he just denies that he's looking for anything in particular when the clerk asks him. The gay-and-lesbian shelf is squeezed in next to the "science" fiction, which is weird, and he's sure the clerk is watching him in the big curved mirror, but he's doing nonchalant as hard as he can and ignoring her. He pulls out a few books that look likely, and grabs an Orson Scott Card to laugh at, on the way past, and takes the whole stack over to the counter and thunks it down and pays cash. And asks if he can get a bag.
Reading this at his desk seems -- it's not that he doesn't take it seriously, but that's a little too serious, and besides, the desk is already covered in experimental graphs. So he sits on his bed with his back against the wall and The New Joy of Gay Sex in front of him, and at first he's reading, and then he's reading, and he flips ahead a little, and impatiently, reluctantly, gracefully, clumsily, and he feels heavy and warm in the arches of his feet and behind his eyes and in his dick when he opens his fly and slides his hand inside, glossy from the thundering water, his hair never lies flat, even soaking wet under the emergency shower when the vial of iron-59 smashed, and oh god, he smelled good when Rodney got close to ask if he was okay, he pulls you still closer and the permanent wrinkles around warm brown eyes from the way he squints at things too close even though he doesn't need to, and the tiny accidental ballpoint-pen tattoo on his right palm, and Rodney comes curling forward, comes all over his hand and his shirt and on the edge of the book where it's on the floor now, and the high-pitched noise can't be him, because he doesn't make noises like that, but oh god.
Rodney sits for a minute, breathing hard, and then he stands up and cleans up and gets a beer out of the tiny fridge, because it's midafternoon and Paul's still engaged to the pretty Biochem major with the glasses and the thick blonde braid down her back.
He keeps the books anyway.
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