Cupid

Round about eight o'clock I was standing up in the twilight looking out of my apartment window wondering if I was going to get to sleep tonight. I should have been able to after the last two nights of getting up and down and prowling around restlessly from room to room. I could feel the edge of fatigue in my shoulders, which should have meant deep and sudden sleep, but I could also feel the same tightness at the base of my skull that had kept me pretty much awake around the clock for the last two days. That tension didn't seem to go away. I couldn't stop replaying the moments in my head: Me, on my knees scrabbling towards HT and the gun; the ambulances pulled up between the black and whites on the street below; the wet dark stains from the sprinkler in the sodden carpet; the pink and puckering mouth of the bawling receptionist.

It wasn't the scariest moments that kept coming back. It wasn't the moments of panic when half the office had been screaming, struggling and kicking to get through the door. It wasn't the sound of shots. It wasn't that kind of stuff. It was almost the trivial details. I'd get an image of that crumbly dried smear of brown blood on Ron Thompson's hand. I kept thinking of that stupid artificial fichus tree that had stood in the hall with us during the five hours when I'd been a hostage. Or Ron stripped naked, standing on one foot, pulling me off balance, wearing only one sock. We'd both made it out alive, but the one set of images, which kept coming back to me over and over were full of Ron Thompson.

This is why I should have recognized his voice when he called me.

The phone rang, I picked it up and a man's voice asked, "Gordon?"

"Yeah?"

He didn't say anything, long moments, long enough for me to squint, switch the phone to my other ear and think, well it's not another cop calling about getting another revision on my statement. The cops would have used my last name and they would have known what to say. Who the hell is it?

"Are you okay?"

"Christ! Ron!" I almost dropped the phone. "Man! Yeah, I'm okay... Are you?"

"Well, yeah. I'm fine." He said.

I switched ears again, as if that would make me able to hear him better. I could hear him as plain as plain. "You back home?" I said. "Looked after? You didn't take any hurt, right? I mean, it was HT's blood, right? You're fine?" I stopped short. Of course he was home and of course he wasn't hurt. They'd taken him off in another police car, not an ambulance. I sounded inane.

But Ron's voice didn't tighten up at my babbling. He sounded amused. "Yeah, I'm doing okay, Gordon. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright..." He paused. "What do you mean, HT's blood?"

"Uh..." I had been remembering the tiny scarlet pin dots spattered over the side of Ron Thompson's face after the police bullets had hit HT in the side of the head. "When they shot him there was a little bit of blood, got in the air. I think it hit you."

"Oh."

He didn't know. How could he? When we'd landed in the road he'd rubbed his face on my jacket and the blood had come off. "Yeah, well it wasn't much blood, like just a couple of dots. I knew it was from him, not you." I was still flailing.

I heard the man take a breath. "Hey Gordon... I was wondering. You want to meet somewhere, someday? I just want to talk to you about it, you know, about HT."

"Right." I said. I knew what he really wanted as soon as he said that. While we were waiting for the stand off to end HT had gotten bored and mean, and demanded we screw around. And that was when Ron had made me promise I wouldn't tell anyone. I knew what he wanted and I could have reassured him, told him right over the phone that he was okay. I wasn't going to tell anyone about the sex. That was all I had to say. But I didn't say it.

You see I wanted to see Ron Thompson, just for a few minutes. Talking to him, that was nearly enough, but I wanted really badly to see him, just for a few minutes, so I could see him with my own eyes. There wasn't any other way I could do it. After all, it wasn't like he'd be finishing his co-op placement, with the company indefinitely closed pending re-organization. I wasn't going to see him again unless I took this chance. This way I could get the guy out of my head.

"Sure." I said. "Where do you want to meet?"

"Neutral ground?" Suggested Ron.

"Dunkin Donuts?" I said.

"That would do." He agreed. "Only I was hoping some place a little more private, so we could say a couple of things, not be overheard."

That confirmed it. He wanted me to make my promise again.

"The one on Orange Garden Avenue is pretty quiet," I said. "At least in the evening..."

"Is it too late to meet tonight?" He said.

That was how I ended up sitting in the Dunkin' Donuts, bobbing a jelly donut I really didn't want up and down in a cup of coffee I definitely didn't need. I got there before Ron did. He lived somewhere over the other side of the university. I had time to wonder how the heck he got my phone number. Normally he could have just got it through the receptionist at switchboard, but pending new carpets, new computers and a couple of new people in middle management positions I was out of a job and the company phone was being picked up by an answering machine.

I sat there thinking of ways to tell Ron that his secret was safe: "It never happened." I'll never forget it, either. Or maybe I should just apologize that it had happened at all. "I'm sorry HT forced me to fuck around with you." You have a beautiful cock. "Just because you were forced to mess around with me doesn't mean you're a fag." You got a hard on before I did. No, nothing I thought of was the right thing to say. I knew what I should say, but I kept thinking of what I wanted to say instead.

By the time Ron came in I had prepared a dozen different ways to apologize and screwed up on all my mental rehearsals. He was wearing a brown jacket. He glanced about until he found me, turned sideways to get around the tray holder at the end of the booths and came and sat down. His lips were held in straight little line. He didn't say anything. He just looked at me and sat there looking. Ron was just as tongue-tied as I was.

Spit out that apology, I ordered myself.

"Thank you." Said Ron.

Breath half way out of my mouth I stopped short. "For what?'

He pulled in just a little tighter. "Oh, for meeting me here tonight so I could get another look at you. And for trying to keep in the front, between me and HT all those times."

I was so floored I must have looked goofy. I said, "I thought you'd want an apology for what HT made us do together!"

"No," he said. "No. We both did what we had to. We had to follow his orders. Jubal and Mike Stewart and Crayman Turnicott were dead. If either of us had said no to him he might have put bullets in us too."

I remembered then how different his experience was from mine. HT had killed, not just taken hostages. Ron had been the first one he had forced to walk through the building with him rounding up the survivors. He'd been the one who had knelt on the carpet beside the three dead men, with HT's gun against the side of his head. For me the humiliation of being forced to suck cock at gunpoint had been the worst. But he'd been seeing the experience in a different way altogether. He was finding it harder to forget how close he'd come to being murdered, than that he'd been ordered to play with my prick.

"You look okay, Ron." I said. "You look like you're not fucked up. Right?"

"Yeah, I bounce back fast." He said. "I fell apart a couple of times while it was all going on, but I got over the panic as soon as it was over."

"You didn't panic." I said.

"You know what I mean." He grew shamefaced. "Like I got you to hold my hand when we came out of the elevator. And I couldn't look at him after I shot him. I just couldn't. His... his fucking head was off. I wanted a happy ending, you know what I mean? And it was just sick. The whole side of his head was gone."

I gave a nod. I knew what he meant.

"I wasn't able to be as tough as you. I didn't have the balls. But you –I mean that's really why I wanted to see you. Just to let you know. The whole time he had us sitting in the hall you were being patient, trying to keep him distracted, talking to you. And you let me hold your hand like that. I know I'm a pussy. But fuck, I couldn't tell which way we'd get hit from. The cops shooting us, or HT shooting us. You didn't have to keep trying to make him look at you instead of at me. But I really fucking appreciate your courage doing that." His voice grew thick.

"You weren't a pussy." I said. "Holding my hand. Fuck, I wanted to hold your hand too."

"Anyway." He said with a deep breath. "I got a good look at you again. And now I know my feet are on the ground. You're really alive; I'm really alive. I can walk away from this."

The clatter of trays was behind us, and the smell of coffee around us, and it was all orange Formica. "I wanted to see you too," I said quietly. "And to apologize for sucking your dick."

He leaned in, not leaning away. "Thanks." Said Ron with a crooked smile. He had such a mobile mouth. Every time he changed expression, half smiles, wry smiles, tight, controlled fear, all that was visible in the flicker of his expressive lips. "I guess that sucking means a lot more to me than it does to you." He said. "You've done that stuff before. I had no experience at all compared to you. But I'm learning." He added humorously.

"You didn't hold it against me?" I said.

"Oh I held it against you." He cracked a joke, still speaking quietly. "The handcuffs made sure I held it against your leg or your butt every time either one of us moved. You sure you're not sore at me for accidentally humping your leg every time you tried to stand up? Man! What a place to have to work up a hard on!" His voice kept dropping and he kept leaning closer. "I don't know what I'd have done if you weren't such an expert cocksucker. That wasn't the best way to lose my gay virginity."

"You're not gay." I said.

"I'm not –much." He agreed. "I never had a chance to fool about with another guy since my boy cousin..." He broke off and twisted around sideways uncomfortably. There was no one near us, just three guys at another table engrossed in a newspaper, but Ron couldn't talk. His mouth quirked again. "This is just not private enough."

"We could go outside. I mean if there's anything you want to say."

So we went outside. He never even ordered coffee and I left an overflowing cup full of soggy donut on the tray. We stood outside in the cool night air; stars above hammered glittering on the sky, and car headlights sweeping around ghostly and blue. He told me about his boy cousin. There wasn't so much to tell. They'd been barely into their teens, and the other kid had desperately wanted something, but neither of them quite knew what he could want, or how they could do it. From the sound of it they had spent most of a summer hanging out together, not having sex and not thinking about anything else. Ron told me this as we walked along really slowly. He told me about his boy cousin being sure if they got a hold of a porn magazine they could use it for an instruction manual, but they never got a hold of one. By and by we stopped talking and stood by a bare brown hedge amid the dead yellow winter grass, and Ron told me that his boy cousin had turned out straight, the guy already had two and a half kids, and he took an amazing number of business related weekend road trips to San Francisco.

"We weren't boyfriends, or nothing like that," he said. "We were way too young."

And then he said, "You got a man, Gordon?"

"No." I said.

"You do casual sex a lot?" He asked.

"Not a lot." I said.

Ron looked up at the building above us with the mostly dark windows. His collar was up and his chin line was smooth and he said. "I'm not gay. I couldn't be gay. My dad would die."

He looked down again. "I mean that." He said. "Literally. He'd take another heart attack or something."

Then he looked at me and said, "Why are we standing here?"

"I live here." I said.

"Can I come up?" Ron asked.

We walked up, me looking back at him. I didn't know what he wanted or how far he wanted to take it, but I had figured the deal out. He didn't want me coming onto him, but he wanted to be seduced. When we got inside my lights were off and we tripped over the carpet. We blundered over across to the couch and sat down on it and Ron said, "If you want to get some sex, how do you do it? I mean, is there a place where you pick guys up?"

"I don't do that much." I said. "There's bars."

"Yeah." He said. "Like, how do you make sure you're not going to get rolled or gay bashed or nothing?"

"You just size the guy up before you go anywhere with him." I said.

"And size matters, right.' He smiled again, faint in the dark, cracking another joke. "What do you call it, being a size queen?"

"Yeah." I agreed. "But that terms a bit old."

"My size, was that big enough for you?"

"You've got a beautiful cock." I said. I said what I'd been thinking while I sat in the donut shop.

"Can I see yours?" he asked.

I took it out. It was hard by then. He slid off the couch onto his knees in front of me and touched it tentatively. He leaned in, traced his fingers down the side of my shaft and made me shudder with their warmth. He breathed on me a moment before he nuzzled me with his lips.

"You want a rubber on it?" I figured as soon as I said it he'd flinch and back off. He'd remember how gross it was, how he wasn't gay, and he was only looking. But I said it anyway, because I wasn't going to let him forget the rules about putting a cock in your mouth.

"Not yet." He said.

Then he started licking me, up and down the side of my prick, staying down from the pee-slit. His tongue slid smoothly up and down. I'd been keeping my hands back, to myself, because I didn't want to make him flinch back. Now I laid them both on his shoulders and he sighed. I rubbed his shoulders through his brown jacket while he tongued my prick.

He started on my clothes, getting my pants open. I lifted my ass up when he tugged and he got my pants down on my thighs. He took my balls in his fingers and rubbed them while he tongued on my shaft.

"You're so clean." He said.

"Hmm?" I said surprised.

"I mean, normally if you can smell a guy, he smells pretty raunchy, if you're on a bus or something and you get close enough. But you've got a clean smell. I thought it would smell stronger."

"Well, I showered." I said.

"I'm going to want that rubber soon." He said.

But then he stood up and dropped his pants. I figured he wanted me cocksucking him again. I leaned in. I took it in my mouth. I didn't mind taking his prick bare into my mouth again. I already had. I just wasn't going to let him take mine bare into his. His cock was soft tipped, hard shafted, salt and male. I slid him down my throat and heard him exhale. He arched his back and jutted his hips forward for me. And then he climbed on top of me so I could lean back and he reached down and rubbed me while I sucked him.

But he wanted to explore, so he took it out of my mouth and began pulling all my clothes off. I pulled on his and he glanced at me and let me pull and he tugged hard at mine until all I had on was my shirt bunched up under my shoulders. He took his own clothes off while he knelt on the couch, straddling my leg with the hard length of his cock sliding against the top of my thigh.

Then he wanted to explore my ass and he did that, taking my ass cheeks in his hand and rubbing them, and all the while softly humping, bumping the hard head of his dick into me, bump, bump, until I grabbed the shaft in my hand and I worked him, jerking him. Then he thrust into my hand and nuzzled my cock again.

I was so hard my tip was getting sticky and every time he moved over me my cock swayed. Ron kept taking my cock in his hand and rubbing it against him. But he didn't take my cock into his mouth. Instead he sort of turned around sideway and started rubbing my prick against his hip and against one cheek of his ass. He had a tight, smooth ass, almost boy like. But he wasn't boy like, with the taut muscles in his legs, and the swell of his adult jaw and shoulders. And his crotch wasn't boy-like at all with the thick size of his prick and the full fuzz-covered orbs below them. He squeezed my cock as he rubbed it against his ass. I was breathing hard.

I got up, pushing him off. He slid off the couch and sat there on the floor, smiling at me crookedly and hopefully while I went into my bedroom to get some rubbers. I got them from the dresser, and when I had them in my hand, about to turn around he landed on my back, cock up into the crack of my ass, arms around my chest and shoulders, breath moist and tickly on the back of my neck. He humped my ass. I couldn't walk with him like that, so I just turned around and we toppled onto the bed.

He humped harder, driving it against my ass and the back of my leg. I pulled apart, trying to get the condoms out. He joined me at that, taking the package. I tore it open; he took it from my fingers and bent over my tall swaying stalk. He licked, laid the condom in place and licked again. He rolled it down. I dumped him on his back and got the second condom on his prick, sucking and slurping as I put it in place.

"Oh man!" Ron groaned. "Teach me how to cocksuck? Okay, Gordon?"

I gulped and guided him down. He sucked me. I guided his head. I worked him up and down. He used his tongue. I'd tighten my hands to show him it was getting more intense. His eyes were seamed shut as he bobbed on my prick. Ron slid up and down hard. He sucked blind, concentrating on the sensations in his mouth, nostrils flaring with the strokes. I stroked the side of his head, controlling his speed. I needed it hard. I was getting near cumming but he gasped.

"Do me again...?"

So we broke apart again and I got between his legs. I took his tall, latex covered cock into my mouth. I cupped his balls while I gave him head. I went up and down, a smooth building rhythm.

"Oooh. Rub my ass!' Ron gasped. "'Kay? Please Gordon?" So I got him half on his side so I could grip and squeeze his ass cheeks. He ground into my mouth, humped back into my hands with his ass, back and forwards, groaning and gasping. "Uh, fuh... Uh, Fuck me with your finger." He gasped.

I got one up, poked and got it where he was clamping and tight and his groans grew frantic. I only used one. He was squirming hard, cock sliding right down my throat so I swallowed with every stroke. His legs were clutching me around the body like he was riding a horse while he thrust with his hips. I kept the rhythm building, tightening and sucking harder. I slid on his cock until he lost control of his breathing.

"Uh...uhhh!" His whole body shuddered as Ron came. His cock had trembling spasms in my mouth. I kept the suction as he stopped thrusting and froze with his hips ground forward so my nose was in his belly. The shocks vibrated through him. He quivered into stillness.

I got my mouth off him, feeling the big soft bulge of fluid in the condom tip. He lay out, chest heaving, eyes rolled back. His hand pawed the air reaching for me, too knocked out by cumming to reach effectively. I lay myself on top of him, prick against his hip again. Ron's skin was blazing warm. His heart was thudding. I kissed his neck, watching him recover. He was so sexy laid out like that. He was still just lolling on his side when I started humping his ass.

He gave a moan. I kept humping, watching him closely for reaction.

"I want to fuck your ass, Ron." I said.

He gave another moan. He wasn't pulling away from me.

"I'm going to fuck your ass." I said.

"Do it." He said. "Do it... easy. Make it good for me. Use lots of lube. I've never been fucked. Show me I'd have been alright if you'd done it then."

I kept humping him while I squeezed on the cheeks of his butt. He got up on all fours when he felt the cold touch of the lube. "Eee..." He gasped. "Wow." I worked it in his crack. I probed at his opening. I smeared it on the condom on my prick.

"Drill me." Ron said in a voice that trembled.

"Okay." I said. But I worked my fingers in his ass while I humped him instead. I did that, massaging, loosening his virgin hole. I kept it up while he stayed on all fours waiting for it, head bobbing with the thrust of my fingers.

"Oh god..." He groaned.

I got my cock in place and humped.

"Uh..."

I pushed my cock in: tightness, the warmth of his butt cheeks, the firm peeling back sensation as pushing into his hole pulled back my skin. I worked it inch by inch, watching him minutely. He could take it. He pushed back while I pushed in. A great shaking inhalation rode with my penetration. I drove it steadily up until I had my cock encased in his ass all the way. Body heat enveloped my prick.

Thrusting made Ron breath deep and spread his legs. I began the rhythm, slow for the first four or five strokes. Then I started hammering. The man grunted and pushed back hard. Stroke... stroke... stroke... He stayed clamping tight, just eased enough that I could move it smoothly by leaning on him hard. He was clutching the wrinkled bedcovers under him. I fucked him smooth and steadily, getting faster. Faster.

"Yeah..." Ron said.

Deeper and deeper, steady and hard, I ran my cock into his asshole. He fell onto one shoulder, back tilting as he reached under himself to grab his own cock. He clutched himself, while I fucked him. I kept it going ass-fucking Ron until great breaths were making me rock back and forth. His ass muscle was clamping, squeezing. My load was getting ready. I opened my mouth wide, working so hard that I felt the sweat shine on my belly and chest. The shock came down so that I felt my balls tightened, felt them clench in that perfect tightness. Wave after wave of my surging cum pulsed up and out, into the man's ass. The pulsing shocks made me shudder. Ron kept pushing back at me until the last shockwave had passed.

My prick popped out of him with a wet sound as we both collapsed. He looked over his shoulder at me, a sly smile now, a little twist of satisfaction on his face. I closed my eyes, drunk with the warmth of his body.

I felt him moving after a few moments. I almost tightened my arm instinctively to keep him there, but I didn't want to hold him down if he wanted to get up. He was seeing to the rubbers. He looked after his own first, and then he looked after mine. I let him take it off me, opening my eyes to see him. I was smiling amazed by his long, lean young body. He tossed the condoms, looking at my face, smiling back and climbed onto the bed again. He climbed not just onto the bed, but on top of me. He sat straddling me, looking down.

"Now that's going to be better to remember than the gun being pointed at us." He said.

I nodded.

"That's your reward for being so decent with me when we were hostages." He said. "It's not much. I think you deserve more, but it's what I had I could give you."

"You didn't have to do it." I said.

"Okay, it was my reward then for getting through it alive." Said Ron. "Thanks, Gordon." He leaned close. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but he chickened out. He drew back again, looking embarrassed.

"You think you could teach me how to cocksuck a bit better. I still don't know how you take it so deep." He remarked.

"I could try." I said.

"I'd like you to try." Ron told me. "Can we be jerk-off buddies?" He said.

"We sure can." I agreed.

"Can we be monogamous jerk-off buddies?" He said. "For awhile, anyway?"

"Absolutely." I said.

Which is how I ended up with Ron Thompson, sharing an apartment. We shared the apartment purely to save on expenses, of course. And we shared a bed, purely because cumming is more intense when you do it with another person, and not because he had any gay tendencies to distress and alarm his family whatsoever. On the other hand, as I told him, I'm not sure how he could ever justify the extravagant little love letters he wrote to me, particularly the one I got three weeks later, just before the middle of February. But the main thing is the love letters never left the apartment and never fell into his family's hands.

"I do like eating your crotch hair." Ron said.

"Don't be gross." I said.

"Can I eat some now?"

"Alright." I said.

"You know," said Ron. "I'm sorry for HT. I forgive him, right? He was a nasty asshole. What he did to other people... Mike Stewart's wife, she was a wreck at the funeral. Like, there's no excusing him for that. But I forgive him what he did to me."

"I forgive him what he did to me." I said. "I'm not sure I forgive him what he did to you."

"There's no point holding a grudge.' Said Ron. "Kick your shoes off. I want to get your pants down all the way."