Love, Hypothetically[Theta Alpha Gamma 02 ] (3 page)

Calvin didn’t have any qualms about embarrassing Paul. Or humiliating, harassing, or tormenting him. He and most of the rest of the jocks at Roosevelt High School—who Calvin had informed tout de suite of Paul’s sexuality—made the end of his senior year hell. Fortunately, it was only a little over a month before graduation. That was a bigger consolation than the fact that Trevor didn’t join in the torture.

Trevor didn’t help him out, either.
He did show up at Paul’s place at 2 a.m. a few days after the locker room incident. It wasn’t like Paul was asleep—he hadn’t slept much since that scene anyway. But it was still a bit of shock when Trevor shimmied up the tree outside his window and tapped on the glass.
“We’ve been having sex in the back of my car for six months when you could have just climbed this tree?” were the first words out of Paul’s mouth. He only just managed to keep his voice quiet so as not to wake his family.
When Trevor started to answer, Paul waved him off angrily. “Never mind, that’s not even important and utterly absent from the list of things I’ve been compiling to say to you. You know, should I ever get the chance to speak with you again.” He sneered at Trevor, not offering to help him over the sill and into the room. When Trevor tried to climb in, Paul blocked him.
Trevor sighed and stopped. “Okay, just say what you need to say.”
“No!” he whispered furiously.
“Why not?” Trevor looked like a confused, nocturnal monkey, clinging to his tree, whispering through his open window.
“Because I can’t,” Paul burst out, his voice nearly breaking the quiet barrier. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that was, Trevor? You think I’m upset because I got forced out of the closet, don’t you? I’m not. You know what, Trev? What destroyed me in that locker room was being sacrificed by my boyfriend for a fucking game.” He felt like breaking down and crying, and he had to turn away from Trevor to keep from showing too much.
Trevor didn’t answer for long seconds. “Paul, I wasn’t really your boyfriend . . .” He sounded as if he was trying to convince both of them.
It would have been kinder to punch him in the chest. Paul whirled around to face him again. “Oh, how could I forget, I was just the guy who was satisfying your curiosity. I hope you figured out whatever you needed to, because any future investigations will have to be conducted with some other handy homosexual.”
“Paul, c’mon . . .” Trevor let his head hang down. “I’m sorry. Really sorry.”
Paul was too wrung out for this. Yes, he generally met everything with a healthy dose of caustic anger, but he was having a hard time hanging on to his anger now that Trevor was actually here. He sat on the floor in front of the window and buried his head in his hands. “I knew fucking baseball was more important to you than anything—I even accepted that—but until the other night I didn’t feel it. Now I know, and I can’t accept this.”
“Paul,” Trevor whispered. “You knew how it was from the beginning. I can’t give up that chance to play.”
“You never thought about being gay and playing?” Paul asked tiredly.
“No. It wouldn’t work. I know someone will someday, but I just . . . I don’t know if I’m that strong.”
Paul tilted his head back and looked Trevor dead in the eye. “Well, good thing you don’t want to be with me then, because I don’t want to be with someone that weak.”
“I never said I didn’t want to be with you,” Trevor replied.
This was the opening he’d been expecting all along: Trevor coming back and offering to keep things going in some fashion. Paul had planned lots of ways to turn him down that involved maximum humiliation for Trevor and, God willing, heartache.
What he hadn’t expected, though, was for it to be this painful. He’d thought, over the last three days, that he’d known pain, but this was worse—it was shared pain. He knew why Trevor had done what he’d done, and—shocking to him, at least—he even understood. He also knew Trevor truly felt badly; he could see it. That made it worse, like ripping open a healing wound and poking at it with a sharp stick. It all just meant one thing: he wasn’t enough for Trevor. Deep down he knew Trevor was enough for him. Maybe not forever, but for now.
When he was silent too long, Trevor said, “We could maybe work this out. I know it’s not exactly what you want, but I’d stop seeing Cherry and we could be together, just us. I want to be with you.”
Paul shook his head. “That’s no longer an option.”
“Why not? I know you’re mad—I’d be mad—but can’t you understand?”
Paul nodded, clasping his hands over his knees. “I understand. And I’d understand why you wouldn’t be seen with me in public at all now. And the next time someone caught us together, I’d have to understand you offering me up again, wouldn’t I? I’d be that crazy fag that couldn’t stop trying to get in your pants.”
He could hear Trevor swallow. “Yeah,” Trevor whispered. “I guess you would.”
Paul closed his eyes and shook his head one more time. “But I wouldn’t. I won’t.”
“I’m sorry, Paul. If I could change things . . .”
Paul rested his forehead on his knees. After long moments, he listened to Trevor climb down from the tree and leave.

n high school, Trevor had the most beautiful body. His pecs were solid and smooth, and something about the feel of them under Paul’s fingers had always wound him up inside, like a spring turning in his gut. Nine years later, in Trevor’s office with the man himself standing in front of Paul, just a little bit too close to really be considered not invading his personal space, Paul remembered what it felt like viscerally. Back then, when he had managed to get Trevor’s shirt off—always a bit of work in the back of a Corolla, or out in a pasture on a mildewy sleeping bag in the middle of the night—and run his hands over Trevor’s skin, it pebbled up under his touch, as if it were reaching up for him eagerly. Trevor’s breath had always caught, too.

Paul had loved his nipples, even though they weren’t that sensitive, but they were large and they puckered under his fingers. Smooth light brown, in perfect contrast to Trevor’s pale-golden skin. As Trevor would come forward for Paul’s mouth, Paul would let his hands glide up and over Trevor’s collarbones, then sinew and trapezoids, until the hair on the back of Trevor’s neck prickled his palms. Even that hair reached out for him, standing on end, hoping to brush against him.

But then Trevor had betrayed him and Paul realized Trevor’s skin wasn’t eager for him, it just reacted to being touched. Anyone’s fingers would do. Maybe even that cheerleader’s had done it.

“I understand why you did it,” Paul said, surprising both of them. He nearly continued speaking and spilled his guts, but he stifled the urge. Trevor didn’t need to hear him admit he’d been a stupid, naive kid who’d thought his high school boyfriend loved him and that they could be happy together in the real world. In reality, he’d just been the best available option, hadn’t he? There’d been three hundred kids in their graduating class—not a tiny school, but not quite big enough for a large pool of similarly romance-minded queer kids to hook up with.

Besides, how many guys were romance-minded in high school? Most were just phallus-minded. Paul had always been an anomaly.

“I didn’t understand what I was really doing that night,” Trevor responded, bringing Paul’s mind back to the present. He reached behind Paul, planting one palm on his office door. “I was scared and I thought I had one solid, socially approved thing to hang on to, so I hung on to it, even though I had to give you up to do it.” He leaned forward slightly, tilting his chin in that exact way he used to when he was about to kiss him.

“You’re entirely too close to me for this to be a professional meeting,” Paul blurted.
“This hasn’t been a professional meeting at all,” Trevor agreed quietly. He traced the lines of Paul’s face with his eyes. “I like the scruff,” he said, lifting a hand to run the backs of his fingers along Paul’s jawline. “You didn’t have that in high school.”
Paul swallowed. “I couldn’t exactly grow it in high school, not without it looking patchy,” he pointed out. His breath got short, and he flattened his back against the door.
“You had hair on your chest.” Trevor inched closer, until Paul could feel his breath on his face. “Dark brown, all over your body except your back, but it was thickest between your pecs and around your nipples. You had the most sensitive nipples. Are they still that way?”
“Stop this,” Paul whispered.
Trevor was so close he was breathing against Paul’s neck. Close enough that Paul could feel the charged air between them, and almost—almost—feel the scrape of Trevor’s jaw against his own.
“I bet they are,” Trevor said. “I bet that doesn’t just go away. I used to think I could get you off if I sucked on your nipple long enough, and used my teeth the right way at the right time.”
“Oh shit,” Paul breathed. He convulsively reached for a handful of Trevor’s shirt, bunching more and more of it in his fist, using all his willpower to keep from searching under the fabric to see if Trevor’s skin still reached for him.
“I never got that far, though,” Trevor said, then kissed the side of Paul’s neck for a second, just long enough that Paul was certain he’d felt lips but not any longer. “Because you’d wrap your legs around my thigh and you’d grind against me and I couldn’t wait to feel you in my hand.” When he ran light fingers over the front of Paul’s cargo shorts, Paul gasped. “You want to know a secret? I wanted to feel you in my mouth so bad it nearly killed me, but I was too scared to try that.”
“Trevor,” Paul forced out through the haze of fingers-ongenitalia. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m going to blow you,” Trevor said against his ear. Then he tongued the lobe. “But first, I get to kiss you.”
“I don’t think—”
Trevor kissed him.
It was exactly the way he remembered: smooth and flowing like liquid. He had a way of twining his tongue around Paul’s and sliding around inside his mouth that had Paul lifting his chin and straining for more in seconds, even though he knew this was a terrible fucking idea.
He wasn’t going to stop him, though. If Trevor wanted to indulge in sexual improprieties in his office, Paul could be a willing partner. He’d waited forever for Trevor to suck him—oh, he’d thought he’d given up, but he now realized he’d actually just been waiting, like his dick had gone into some kind of extended fellatial hibernation.
Trevor pulled back from him, and Paul discovered he had his hands on Trevor’s abs, and yes, his skin still tightened for Paul’s fingers, and Trevor’s breath still caught when Paul stroked it. “You have a happy trail,” Paul murmured, surprised to find it there under Trevor’s navel, leading to his waistband and down. “Is that where the hair from your head went?”
Trevor laughed against his mouth, and Paul couldn’t help smiling. He used to love to do that, make Trevor laugh. He used to be good at it, but when was the last time he’d tried to make a lover laugh? Or anyone? He wanted that back—those days when sex was fun and not about proving something, even though they’d had to keep it secret.
“I missed that. No one ever made me laugh like you,” Trevor said, pulling back and looking into his eyes.
If Paul’s fingers hadn’t found Trevor’s nipple just then, he might have pushed him away. Instead he explored the puckered knot and stared back at Trevor.
When he said things like that, it sounded romantic, but Paul didn’t want romance, he wanted a fucking blowjob. He was way too jaded and hostile for sweet nothings.
They call them nothings for a reason.
He dropped his hand from under Trevor’s shirt. “Are you going to blow me or what?”
Trevor sighed and looked down to where his hand was cupping Paul’s groin, the heel rubbing against his shaft. He tightened his fingers, wrapping them around Paul’s dick as much as possible through the fabric, making Paul gasp, even though he tried to stifle it.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” Trevor dropped to his knees in front of Paul so suddenly he nearly flinched. Trevor did flinch. “Baseball’s hard on your body,” he grunted.
Paul laughed and found himself threading his fingers through what was left of Trevor’s hair. Not that he was really that bald, but he did have one of those insidious thin patches and a receding hairline slowly growing toward each other. Paul traced along it, and Trevor held extra still for him, not even breathing. Paul sighed and dropped his fingers. Dammitall, he was getting nostalgic or something. This was supposed to be about revenge—angry revenge sex—but he was getting all maudlin and killing off his desire. “I don’t know about this, Tre v.”
Trevor looked up at him. “Take it out for me,” he said.
Hello, there was his desire right there. Paul unbuttoned and unzipped while Trevor looked up at him, on his knees, waiting for it—silently begging, even. Beseeching. He slid his hands up the backs of Paul’s naked legs, riffling his hair under the hems of his shorts. Paul reached into his briefs and wrapped his fingers around himself and stroked, but didn’t take it out, teasing them both. “You want it?”
Trevor nodded slowly and licked his lower lip, bright brown eyes not turning away. “Yeah, I want it.”
So Paul widened his stance and let his shorts fall to midthigh, then pulled his briefs down until he was totally exposed in front and could feel elastic cutting across his ass. He held his dick in one hand, thumb resting on his foreskin, glans just peeping out. Trevor watched him avidly the entire time, licking his lower lip. That was sexy; did he used to do that? He’d been really oral, always kissing Paul—a dead giveaway he wasn’t straight, in Paul’s teenaged mind—and sucking on his fingers and earlobes and nipples. It’d been one of the things that had made Paul even crazier to get sucked off by him. Trevor had seemed like he’d be a natural.
“I want to see it,” Trevor whispered.
Paul knew what he meant. He carefully, slowly worked back his foreskin until it was behind the head, listening to Trevor’s ragged breathing the entire time. Or maybe that was his. When Trevor just stared, Paul canted his hips forward enough to brush the tip of his dick across Trevor’s lips. The feel of them vibrated up his shaft into his gut, and he stifled a moan.
This anticipation was killing him—he really had been waiting for this all these years. When Trevor finally lifted his gaze to Paul’s, Paul swayed back, lightheaded, and rested his shoulders against the wall behind him. “Do it.”
Trevor gripped the backs of his thighs, digging in with his fingers just below Paul’s ass cheeks, and leaned forward, leading with his tongue. Paul didn’t know who liked it more when Trevor first tasted him, licking him thoroughly, playing over his glans and trying to tease under his foreskin. When Trevor finally sucked him into his mouth, Paul could feel his moan resonate in his nuts.
Trevor worked himself all the way down Paul’s shaft, until Paul’s head was sinking into his soft palate, and he gagged. All the muscles in Paul’s ass clenched involuntarily and he shoved his hips forward until Trevor had to swallow him. He’d never gotten off on gagging much before, but the thought of Trevor choking on his dick nearly made Paul come right there—he felt Trevor’s throat give way for him and he nearly lost it. The only thing that stopped him was Trevor yanking his head back, eyes watering.
Paul figured it was all over, he’d gotten way too rough, but Trevor dug his fingers in until Paul could feel his nails, and started bobbing up and down on Paul’s cock. Pulling back to tongue the fold of skin under the notch in his head, then sliding all the way back down until Paul could feel that soft tissue just on the edge of giving, then pulling back again.
He was gripping Trevor’s head in his hands, trying to control things just enough, when he looked down and met Trevor’s gaze as Trevor shoved that extra half-inch forward and swallowed around Paul’s head. It pulled the orgasm out of him, the combination of throat action and Trevor’s streaming eyes, practically pleading with Paul to come down his throat, all but reaching in and yanking it out of him.
Paul groaned and shoved his shoulders hard against the wall, muscle convulsions forcing him to thrust his dick farther into Trevor. Once he started shooting, Trevor pulled back just enough to gulp it down, milking Paul with his tongue.
Paul gasped for air, slumped against the wall as Trevor stood up, pressing right against him and forcing him into a full-on, throat-fucking kiss. It took Paul a few seconds to catch up and join in, and then to remember—Trevor always wanted his mouth when he came. Paul fumbled, following Trevor’s forearm into his shorts, finding him stroking his own prick fast with his hand. Paul gripped him, too, and helped Trevor massage himself until he exploded. Trevor groaned in his mouth and shot all over Paul’s hand, his lips and tongue going lax until it was Paul kissing him through it, slowly turning them both until Trevor could lean against the wall too.
Paul watched Trevor pant, propped up next to him. His lips were slick and bloated—in a good way—and Paul could see his eyes moving under his blue-veined lids. He ran his thumb across Trevor’s jaw, then let go of his head, which he’d somehow been gripping still, and dropped his arm.