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Tommy looked at the phone in his hand. Then at the piece of paper.
He'd found it in his pocket earlier tonight while shedding his work clothes for his civvies at the end of a long shift. His heart in his throat, he'd hidden it from Sal's sight immediately, almost making a scene in the changing rooms. Not that there was anything overtly discriminating about it, but Tommy couldn't believe his past self for bringing it in such close proximity to the station. He’d kept it in the palm of his hand and his hand strictly in his pocket – picturing the paper burning a hole in his flesh – till he was alone and locked inside his apartment.
He'd forgotten about it. How had he forgotten about it?
He looked at the numbers again, jotted down in his nervous chicken scrawl. The headboard behind him was digging into his spine, almost saying, This is the lowest thing you've ever considered. Another voice piped up immediately, eerily like Hen’s, berating him for the first thought. Not that Tommy knew where she stood on sex work or people making use of services of the kind, but he knew where she stood on gay sex. And if Tommy was being honest with himself, that was what got him all twitchy tonight. This morning. The sky beyond the single window in his shoebox studio was still dark but in the way its gloominess promised daybreak soon.
Tommy squirmed on his bed.
Then muttered, “Fuck it,” and entered the digits in his phone. Before he could stop himself, he was hitting the dial.
The first ring came and startled him, making him hold the phone tighter to his ear. Ring, ring, ring, then the call connected with a pre-recorded voice saying, “Welcome to gay phone sex hotline 1-800-GAYNIGHT.” Tommy, with his face aflame, started cursing the day he’d found the number in his email and – for some forsaken reason – noted down. In his self-damning, he barely heard the rest of the message, except for the tail-end reminder about getting billed on his second call and the following “To enjoy your 30-minute free trial, please press four.”
He pressed four.
Another ring. A string of rings. No on-hold music but long long rings.
Then the line connected.
“Hello-oo. You dialed the right number if you were looking for some fun, this is Buck.”
Tommy felt a snort leave him. “Isn’t that too on the nose?”
A surprised laugh came. “What?”
“You're a phone sex operator called Buck? What’s the next guy called? Hump?”
Another laugh sounded through the line. It was more of a huff, really, and there was something airy about it. Something young. “You don't think it's my real name?”
“I don’t think your mom said, “He looks like a Buck,” when they put a baby in her arms.”
“You're right, she didn't,” the voice said, bemused. “It's a nickname I'm trying out, though.”
He spoke in low words, gentle words, soothing if not alluring in Tommy’s ear. There was no doubt a technique to it, a line manager back in the past who’d taught him how to carefully cradle every note. How to make it sound all melodic. Lingering.
Tommy decided it was a good voice. “Hm.”
“Well,” the kid said, laughing again. “What’s your name, caller?”
Tommy thought for a beat. Honesty compelled him. “Tommy.”
“Tommy,” echoed back at him, pleasant and pleased. “I take it you don't find ‘Buck’ sexy, Tommy, so what would you like to call me, baby?”
The word sat in Tommy’s throat; he swallowed.
He looked up at the sky, the inky blue color of it.
“What's your real name?” left him before he could think. In the heartbeat he didn’t get an answer, he realized how invasive the question must’ve sounded. He was overstepping. He was being a creep. “S-sorry, that’s crossing a line. It's just my first tim—”
“Evan.”
Inky blue. And the faintest hint of indigo in the horizon Tommy could see.
“Evan,” he repeated, as if weighing it on his tongue.
“Yes.”
Tommy didn’t know what the name meant, but it came with the pictures of fresh water, a soft exhale on his cheek, the gentle green-blue of a creek touched by light. And for some reason, with no rationale whatsoever, Tommy believed the kid – Evan – was telling him the truth.
“That's pretty.”
“Hm,” Evan hummed, voice soft. “So, this is your first time, Tommy?”
A beat too late maybe, Tommy remembered.
You’re on a sex hotline. With a guy.
His throat went dry. “Y-yeah.”
“That's okay, Tommy,” Evan said soothingly. “We're just talking.”
“Y-yeah.”
“Why don't you tell me about yourself, hm? Tell me what you like other than making fun of people's names.”
Tommy laughed, but it sounded small and nervous. “Uhm…” he said and looked around the room. “I work out? I just started doing Muay Thai.”
“Hot. What else?”
“I… like movies?”
“That’s nice, Tommy,” Evan said. There was nothing different in his voice, but Tommy realized – too late – that he’d been probably prompting Tommy for dirty talk. Not asking about his hobbies.
An embarrassed laugh escaped him. “That's probably not what you were asking for, was it?”
“I'm willing to take whatever you give me, baby,” Evan said, mirth in his voice making the double entendre impossible to miss and Tommy roll his eyes. He felt a pleasant heat crawl under his skin. “So a cinephile with the muscles of a martial artist, hm?” A rustling sound came, like the kid was getting comfortable. “Tell me more, Tommy. Tell me what you look like.”
“Uhm, I'm tall.”
“How tall?”
“6'2”
Evan hummed. “Nice. Tall and muscley. You're a big guy, aren’t you, Tommy?”
“I guess.”
“That's what I thought. Just my type.”
Tommy narrowed his eyes. “Like all your other callers are just your type?”
A cloying honey laugh filled his ear, reverberated against his cheek, down his spine, through his body.
“Touché,” Evan said. “But I’m not lying. I love a beast of a man. Someone who can throw me around a bit,” he said, making Tommy wonder what that would look like – what Evan looked like. “Can you, Tommy?” His voice dipped lower. “Or are all those muscles just for show?”
Tommy exhaled.
Allowing himself to scoot down on the bed, he put a hand on his bare navel.
“No answer?”
“Not for show,” Tommy said and cleared his throat. “I'm a firefighter.”
A throaty sound came from Evan, with some more rustling. For a heartbeat, he didn’t say anything.
Tommy felt himself frown. “What?”
“N-nothing,” Evan said and laughed. “It's just, I'm-I’m a trainee.”
Tommy nodded, tracing the tight skin over his muscles. Then he frowned again, harder.
“You're good at this, aren't you?” he asked with an impressed laugh. “Adapting to what the caller tells you?”
This was the name of the game, after all. Tommy had known it when he’d gazed upon that email for the first time. Someone on the other end of the line who could bring all your fantasies to life. The kid had clocked Tommy was older than him, a firefighter with the nerves tweezing at his words likely betraying his inexperience, and pulled out the hot young thing at the fire academy card. It was a solid gamble.
“You think I'm selling you a firefighter fantasy?” he asked Tommy, sounding bemused. “Wouldn't a firefighter be the worst buyer for that?”
Tommy had to give him that. “So you're just bad at your job?”
Evan laughed again, deeper than before. “I don't think so. I think there's something in you that would love to get down and dirty with another fireman, isn’t there, Tommy? Maybe in secret? In the fire engine?”
The huskiness of the words, that was new. Tommy wondered if Evan had been trained for that too.
His shorts felt tight; his chest felt tight.
“E-evan,” he breathed.
“Just talking,” Evan said; Tommy could almost see his mischievous shrug, the devil curve of his grin. “So, Tommy, did you just finish a shift?”
Tommy breathed. “Yeah.”
“Yeah? You're home now, then? In your bed?”
“Hm.”
“What are you wearing, Tommy?”
The question, as predictable as it was, rolled in as heat through Tommy’s spine. The air in the room felt prickly on his bare skin. His dick was strained in its confines, not deterred by Tommy’s nerves.
“Just shorts.”
“Hm. Nothing else?”
Tommy made a sound. It’d meant to be a no but almost came out as a whimper. His fingers on the elastic around his hips, Tommy caressed the hair on his navel leading down to his crotch.
“All that real muscle on display just for me, Tommy?” Evan asked, almost breathless. The kid was good. “All naked in your room?”
Tommy nodded. “Hm.”
“Are you hard, baby?”
He was tenting in his shorts. It’d happened so quickly but he felt like a live wire already. A stroke of a hand over the fabric, he knew, and it would dampen and darken immediately. “Y-yeah.”
“Are you touching yourself?”
“N-no,” Tommy said and pulled away his hand. “Not yet.”
He drew in a deep breath. A steadying breath. He didn’t want it to end yet. He wanted… something else from this. He didn’t know what it was yet but want was settled in his chest, a sense of seeking.
Evan laughed. “Well, aren’t you a tease?”
Tommy swallowed and smoothed his hand on his ribs. He gazed at the ceiling, at the window frames, at the sky. A dusky purple was brushing at the edges of the dome now, just as Tommy’s fingers brushed his skin, gently, tentatively, keeping the nerve endings alive, but not firing. He wanted all thirty minutes of Evan’s time.
“What— what do you look like?” he asked.
Maybe it was the wrong question in trying to calm down, but he felt taken over by this need to know. To know what Evan looked like, the color of his hair, the set of his jaw, the span of his hands. He wanted the full picture, a face and a body to match that sound both youthful and deep, fizzy and light one moment, a fire stoking in Tommy’s gut the next. Tommy needed it, for the image in his mind’s eye, to picture Evan here, in his gloomy bedroom, on his monochrome bedsheets, bringing momentum to the steady pulse of the hour.
“Why don't you tell me, sweetheart?” Evan asked instead. “What do you want me to look like?”
Tommy shook his head, as if the kid could see him. “No, no. I want you to tell me.”
Silence lingered for a beat. Tommy knew he was doing this wrong. He was meant to paint his own fantasy on Evan, that was how it went. A short brunet if he was into that, an Asian, a redhead – Evan was supposed to be his chameleon. What Tommy was asking for was the truth of his likeness instead, so he could pretend what they were having was a real conversation. Real laughs, real breathlessness. A real moment of connection.
He felt bad, he did. But Evan had started it.
He’d told Tommy his real name.
“Well,” he murmured now. “I'm tall as well.”
“6'2?”
A two-beat laugh, soft. “Yeah, actually. I'm big like you, I guess, but… I— I don't know Muay Thai.”
“I could teach you,” Tommy heard himself say.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He bit down on his lip. It was threatened with a smile. “What are you wearing?”
“Just gray sweats.”
Tommy snorted. “That's so cliche.”
“That's because I'm telling the truth!” Evan whined.
Staring at the sky, Tommy let the curve of his lip go free. He was just echoing Evan, really; it was impossible not to hear the smile in the kid’s voice, the cheek, the flirt, the chime of a million bells and the charm of gemstones.
Tommy knew he was just doing his job.
He still wanted more. “What else, Evan?”
“I'm blond. It's turning darker with age though.”
“With age?”
“I just turned twenty-five.”
“Oh,” Tommy joked. “The horror.”
Evan laughed again, beautiful. “And I have blue eyes.”
For some reason, Tommy felt like he knew this already. Like he knew Evan was the kid’s real name. Selfish, he clung at the piece of truth. “What kind of blue?”
“Uhm,” Evan murmured. “Light blue? My sister calls them baby blues.”
Like the flecks of light in Tommy’s eyeline. The sky stretched beyond his window was a canvas of purples and indigos now, violet, royal blue. With a stroke of cerulean in the horizon line, a hint of dawn, a precursor to the baby blue that was going to take over the following hours.
Tommy couldn’t help but picture that entire motley mirrored in Evan’s eyes, every hue and every shade.
“Do you like that?” the kid asked, voice airy again, words rounded around the edges. “Blue eyes?”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. Then, “And I assume you have a good smile.”
“A good smile?”
“Yes. You sound so…” Radiant. Lively. Sunny. “Smiley.”
“I g-guess so,” Evan said with a breathy laugh. “It works on both the ladies and the gents, I'll tell you that.”
Just like that, Tommy felt a bitter taste.
His mouth flattened, and he swallowed, hard.
Vulnerability not belonging to this hour, this line, or the boy at the other end compelled him for some reason. “Evan,” he said. “I— I haven't been with a guy before.”
For a beat, he only heard silence.
Then Evan’s soft voice saying, “That's okay, Tommy.” There was a new smile in it. Something gentler. Kind. “What about women?”
“Y-yeah. Back in school and I tried dating a few times. It’s just—” Tommy exhaled. “It just never felt right.”
“There's nothing wrong with that.”
He blinked against the sky. Maybe it was the time of the day. Maybe it was that voice he’d heard before he’d even placed the call telling him this was the lowest thing he’d ever done. Mostly it was desperation to say it to someone, though. And it was Evan. Fresh water, green creek, soft exhale Evan.
Tommy didn’t know what it was about him, but he made Tommy feel terribly honest.
“I tried,” he muttered into the receiver, his hand clammy over the phone. “With a guy last week. At this club. I-I chickened out.”
Evan’s breath was gentle in his ear. “You didn’t like him?”
“No. Ah.” Tommy laughed. He’d been this huge guy, with blue eyes and a killer smile. “He was exactly my type. It’s just— I thought I could blow him, or something, but he…”
“Wanted to fuck your face?”
Tommy’s breath stuttered. “Y-yeah.”
“I know those types,” Evan huffed. “That's not an easy thing for a first-timer.”
Tommy swallowed again, trying to untangle the knot in his throat. It wasn’t just the vulnerability anymore, it was…
“Do you like it?” he heard his strained voice.
“Getting fucked in the face?” Evan asked, that word on his tongue again. “Yeah. People say I have cock-sucking lips. You forgot to ask about that, didn’t you?”
Another swallow. The image was just too vivid. Evan, with all his mass and stature, kneeled on the bed between Tommy’s legs. His hand big and calloused – a firefighter’s hand – gripping him around the root, and his generous lips – a cerise pink in Tommy’s imagination – mouthing at the crown of his cock. He would look up at Tommy through wet lashes, gold lashes, his blue eyes big and blown, and run the flat of his tongue up his glistening shaft before swallowing him whole.
Tommy couldn’t help himself; he pressed a palm on his cock.
With a caught breath, he asked, “What about fucking someone… in the face?”
Evan didn’t say anything for a moment. He was weighing Tommy’s words, Tommy knew, to figure out what he wanted from this.
Tommy barely knew it himself.
“Yeah,” Evan answered in a wisp at last. “Yeah, Tommy, I love it.”
Tommy licked his lips. “Wha-what do you like about it?”
Evan took another moment; Tommy pinched his nipple, to give his hands something else to do other than grab himself. He wasn’t going to, not yet. He couldn’t.
“I love…” Evan laughed. “I love the feeling of a slick tongue under my cock first, resting there for a moment, teasing them. I love rocking forward bit by bit, feeding them an inch and pulling back and feeding another inch. I love the look in their eyes when I do that, how desperate and hazy they get.” Tommy heard him gulp. “I love gripping their heads, the feeling of their skull in my hands and n-nudging their throats. The spasm around my cock, Tommy. The-the warm grip.” He laughed again, breathy. “Then going wild, yeah? I love pulling them on my cock and pistoning in fast and ragged, making them writhe under me. Tear up, maybe. All those little noises a man makes for me, Tommy. Noises he makes around me.”
Tommy bit down on his lip, making it bleed. “Are you– are you big?”
“My cock?”
His hand moved down his stomach again. “Y-yeah.”
“Well, I considered going as Firehose before Buck.”
Tommy laughed; the sound straddled a choke and a gasp. He was leaking in his shorts profusely now, his cock damp and begging, but did not touch himself. Forcedly, he kept his hands to his chest, digging in his nails, not letting them run an inch down.
His jaw was trembling.
“Are you touching yourself, Tommy?”
“N-no,” Tommy answered.
“Touch yourself, baby.”
As if that was what he’d been waiting for – permission – Tommy groaned. Pulling his shorts under his balls, he gripped himself, feeling a rush of breath escape him. He rubbed his thumb over his head, with a groan again, a broken sob, spreading the slick.
“Good, Tommy,” Evan praised him. “So good.”
“Ev-Evan. Keep talking. Please.”
“Shh. Don’t worry, sweetheart. You got my attention. Just stroke your big cock for me, Tommy, touch yourself as you want.”
Mouth dry, sweat beading his forehead, Tommy gave himself a hard squeeze. He tried not to go too fast, but pleasure shot up in his balls, up his spine, making everything but the sensation of his hand on his cock hazy. That and Evan’s voice. Evan’s voice that kept on drawling in that low, husky tone.
“Do you ever do this in the station, Tommy? During the quiet shifts?”
“N-no.”
“No? Oh, come on. You must. With your shirt between your teeth, snaking a hand in your pants? While all the other guys are asleep in the same room as you, with their breaths so close to you, hm?”
Tommy whined. He stroked himself, root to tip.
“What would they say if they caught you like that, Tommy, hm? Fucking into your hand all desperate and needy? Whining like you’re doing right now?”
Tommy bit his lip, swallowing back another noise. His hand felt like a match on his cock with his every pull, the catch of Evan’s voice kindling just the same, but he couldn’t slow down.
“Maybe one of them would join you, huh? Give you a hand?”
Tommy shook his head. “N-no.”
“No?” Evan laughed. “Maybe I could, hm, baby? Once I graduate, I can be there with you, Tommy. Replace your hand with mine? Would you like that, baby?”
Tommy nodded like Evan could see him. His hand was quickening over his cock now. A choked “Evan,” escaped him.
“Keep going, Tommy. Are you wet?”
“I’m leaking.”
“Good. Good boy.”
A violent shiver went down Tommy’s spine.
“Don’t come, baby, not yet.”
“Evan,” he sobbed.
“F-fuck.” On the other end of the line, something dropped, something rustled. Evan’s thick words of “God, the noises you make,” came a second later. “You should be doing this job, Tommy, you’re so so good, baby.”
“I— I wanna come.”
“No.”
Another sob made it out of Tommy. His eyes were teary, his cock aching and pulsing in his grip.
“Just tell me, baby.” Rustles and choked exhales continued on Evan’s side. “Tell me what you want me to do, hm? When I’m in the station with you, Tommy? Do you want to fuck me in the quarters, huh, s-sweetheart? Do you want it in-in the fire engine?”
“T-the showers,” Tommy choked out.
“Oh, the showers?” Evan laughed, not airy, not smooth, but hacked at the edges now. “Yes, baby, I’ll sneak up on you in the showers. You want me to corner you, don’t you, Tommy? Hold you against my chest?”
Tommy imagined it. Him standing in the showers of the firehouse, water gliding down his skin intimate and warm. Evan, naked and beautiful, crawling behind him without him knowing. Evan with his stature like Sal’s, with Howie’s skilled hands, with the gentle authoritativeness of their new captain. Evan with all the qualities Tommy had seen in men and liked, all the masculine features he’d tried not to dream about, all the things he’d been taught was taboo to desire.
His cock jerked.
“Yes. Yes.”
“What else, Tommy?”
“You-you touch my nipples.”
“I do, baby. Do you feel my hands on your chest, Tommy? Do you feel my cock pushing against you, hm?”
Tommy wasn’t sure if his eyes were closed but that was all he could see. Not his room, not his ceiling, not the sky beyond. Just Evan in the shower with him, stealing Tommy’s water, his body heat, his breath. Holding Tommy’s hips tight, rocking himself against his ass. The drag of his cock against Tommy’s skin burning a line, enflaming him.
“Yeah,” came out; it was barely a word.
“What else, Tommy?”
Tommy fucked into his hand. Desperate, shaky, unsteady.
“Facef—” He licked his lips. “Face—”
“Ah,” Evan said, there with him. “You want me to spin you around, baby? I do. I turn you around, so you face me, Tommy, and I push you down on your knees. You like that, baby?”
“Yes.”
“I grab your jaw—”
“Sho-shove your cock in me.”
“Yeah, y-yeah,” Evan breathed out, broken. “I shove my cock in your mouth, Tommy. I fuck— I fuck your face. You gag but I make you deepthroat me instead.”
“Y-yeah.”
“And you’re so sloppy, Tommy, so green but so so desperate, aren’t you, baby? You don’t care. You just want my cock.”
“Ye-yeah,” Tommy sobbed, arching into his hand. “Hit me with your cock, Evan, please.”
“I do. I hit you.”
“You have five minutes left of your free trial.”
“I beat your face, baby. I pull on your hair. I make you moan so damn loud, Tommy, you’re gonna wake up the entire station.”
Tommy cried, hardly breathing. “Ev-evan.”
“I can come down your throat, Tommy. I can burst on your face.”
“Ev— Ev—”
“Come, Tommy, come for me. Hump into your hand. Oh, fuck—”
Tommy bowed off the bed, with a final snap into his fist. He spurted all over himself, his hand, his stomach, his chest. Twitching through the last of it, he milked himself, shaking, grunting, feeling his knees trembly and weak.
With an almost blackout, he dropped back down. His breaths chopped gasps, his chest heaving like a beast’s, he felt his mind staggered, dizzy, sated.
“Back with me?” Evan’s voice came, teeny over the phone Tommy had dropped.
“Yeah,” Tommy breathed. Then picked up the phone.
“That was fantastic, wasn’t it?” Evan said, grin bright in his voice. “You got me hot too. Which never happens.” He laughed. “Not too shabby, probie.”
An exhausted, rumbly laugh left Tommy.
“Don’t laugh,” Evan chided. “Next time, I’ll make you call me daddy.”
Tommy rubbed a hand on his face. He didn’t have a gram of energy left to tamp down his fond grin. “Whatever you say, kid.”
Evan laughed again, cheery like he hadn’t just come. Oh youth, Tommy thought, and inhaled, deep, steady, slowing down his heartbeats. In the aftermath, that was all that was left.
“Hey, Tommy,” came Evan’s voice after a moment passed. He was calmed down from the high of his orgasm; his voice was softer, cozier, pleasant. “I know I’m a stranger, so this probably doesn’t mean much but…” He exhaled a laugh. “Just hang in there. I think everything will be okay.”
Tommy blinked. “Y-yeah?”
“Yeah,” Evan said, his smile in every letter of the word. “I don’t know w-what it all means for you, but I think one day you’ll be able to look around and just say… who cares.”
He laughed again. Maybe for the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes. If Tommy was being presumptuous, though – and he’d been all night – he’d say this laugh was choked a little, happy but teary.
He didn’t know how it made him feel.
A stranger, this kid, Evan was reassuring him for a future Tommy rarely had hope for on a good day. It had a wave of emotion rising in Tommy, making him blink again. His lashes, wet, touched his skin, and maybe for the first time during this hour of the day – right before the sun rose and the veil between what he felt and what he showed was thinner than a breath – Tommy didn’t feel alone.
“You have one minute left of your free trial.”
“Are you gonna call again?” Evan asked.
“I don’t know,” Tommy said honestly.
“If you do, give the lady asking for your credit card number my name. Buck. Not Evan.”
Tommy smiled. “Hm.”
“Or just leave it to fate,” Evan said. “I don’t know about you, but I have this feeling our paths will cross again.” He breathed, soft and sweet and familiar in a way it had no right to be. “Talk to you later, Tommy.”
“See you, Evan,” Tommy whispered and watched as the once-black-turned-blue-turned-periwinkle sky glowed a pink blush, a tender peach, a gold of the sun’s imminent arrival. They melted together, dissipated into a white, a soft powder, a baby blue, and eventually daybreak.