The first thing Sam always does is kiss Colby's collarbone. Maybe it shouldn't, but the tiny indentation where the hollow of his neck is formed-where girls let their necklaces dangle-evidences a vague vulnerability about the tough persona that Colby has so deftly taken on.

Colby smiles wispily and kisses him on the lips. Sam kisses back, but carefully, until he remembers that they locked the doors. Then, Sam communicates all his enthusiasm into the rushed and about to be broken kiss before there's a resounding thump behind the door.

"Aren't they sleeping?" Colby whispers directly into Sam's ear. His hands can almost fit all the way around Sam's thin waist.

He starts to ask Colby something, and really, that was the intention he had when he opened his mouth, but Colby has other plans, involving a tongue and some lips that Sam knows are very, very talented.

All thoughts of prairies and pints fall from Sam's mind easily. Colby's hands rest languidly on Sam's hips. Sam's arms are looped around Colby's back and hooked on Colby's shoulders. They lean side-by-side against the sink. When they breathe, they smile at each other. Sam glances at the mirror.

Colby, a few inches taller, rests his head on Sam's and pulls Sam so that they're front-to-back. He smiles photographically.

"We can't have one of these for real," Colby says to the reflection of Sam's eyes. They look gray or silver in the slightly dirty glass, not like the bright, wild blue they are when Colby glances down into his real ones.

Sam looks down at the sink. Falling apart, he thinks, this place is falling apart. "I know," he says out loud.

Colby's hands tickle Sam's waist lightly. "Which is not to say I don't want one." He kisses Sam's blonde hair, shining in the light of the bathroom. "I do."

Sam nods and turns around, burying his face in Colby's green t-shirt, kissing his collarbone again. Colby runs a hand through his soft hair.

Colby's well-muscled chest heaves with a sigh. They have done this for a year now, almost, (ten months), and Colby has become so familiar and comforting. He can sit with Colby in silence and be happy, and Colby can give him goosebumps and chills with a single, well-placed touch. It should seem so strange, the constant study in conflict, but it doesn't.

They are in love.

He cringes when he thinks this, because it is a cliché, and he cringes when he thinks that too, because when cliches become cliched, something is wrong.

They're in first love, the kind that someone calls starving and insatiable. Both of these terms fit their affair so far.

Sam is barely eighteen and Colby is still seventeen. He will be until January. Sometimes, Colby teasingly calls him jailbait. Sam laughs. He loves being teased by Colby. It gives him butterflies, like the first time Colby kissed him.

Colby kisses him again now, kisses them both out of the cliché of boarding school and locked doors and into their own reality where nothing matters at all. Sam is most comfortable there. There are no roommates to knock inconveniently on the door, no Adam to make his life miserable.

Adam does not pick on Colby, does not dare take on so formidable an opponent. Adam is 5'11"-still four inches smaller than Colby-and nowhere near as muscular.Colby is steady, with sharp eyes that sometimes shine so blue that they look like they might be real cut saphir, and Sam thinks that they're the closest that the two of them can get to real jewelry exchanges.

Colby's hair is different shades of brown. Colby does not tie his ties at school, rather lets them hang open. Sam finds this sexy and alluring-his boyfriend is a rebel.

Colby is his boyfriend.

These are not words Sam thinks often, because he cannot say them out loud. He cannot say them to his best friends of thirteen years, who know both him and Colby so well that they would probably throw them a coming-out party.

He cannot say them to his little sister, or his mom, or the girls who hand their phone numbers to him on scented stationery in glittery pen. Or even, sometimes, the boys. This only makes Colby slightly jealous.

"I love you," he says at those times. "We'll get kicked out if we tell anyone. And even one person, it'll get out."

And Sam's eyes kind of fill with empty, waterless tears and he says, I love you too.

They are lucky, because Colby rooms with Noah and Sam rooms with Josh, and Noah and Josh have the exact same taste in music. They leave about twice a month to stay at Josh's overnight after a concert that runs until after curfew. These nights, after which Josh and Noah skip a day of school, are Sam's favorite time.

They can have a bed instead of a bathtub, movies instead of reflections. They can pretend that they could be considered normal, instead of meeting late at night to rendezvous in a bathroom lit in a way to sharpen even the soft curves of Colby's chest.

Colby pulls away from the kiss as his watch, the one he won't take off, the plain Timex cloth-band one that Sam gave him for his eighteenth birthday beeps 3 AM.

"We have exams tomorrow," he whispers.

"Yeah," Sam whispers back, "for an hour."

"And it's an English exam." Colby has been in America for almost five years, after emigrating from Ireland, hence the latent accent, obvious, it seems, to Sam's ears. Though he spoke mostly English there, American English tricks Colby sometimes.

Sam, an English scholar of sorts, takes this as an excuse to hold long, deep conversations with Colby. Colby sees right through Sam's pretext and finds it adorable.

Colby kisses Sam's forehead. The skin is heated from their previous kisses, and Sam's skin is beautifully flushed. Colby closes his eyes and resolves himself.

"Goodnight, baby," he says.

"'Night," Sam chimes quietly. They go to their separate doors and turn out the lights in silence, then simultaneously open and shut their doors.

It does not seem like he who would do such a thing, but Colby blows a silly, sweet, sentimental kiss across the darkened room. Their doors close in unison, and they both sleep with smiles.

They are in love.