Platonic (15 page)

His phone vibrates on the coffee table and he glances at the clock. It’s eight p.m. on a Thursday and he grumbles as he walks: this could only be work with a last-minute emergency.

Except it isn’t work. It’s Daniel. He stops dead in his tracks because until now, he has completely avoided thinking too hard about the fact that in the months of becoming best friends, in the six weeks since Daniel got back from London, they still haven’t seen each other since their meeting in the bar. They haven’t even heard each other speak. It’s been all emails and texts, photos of random things they see around New York and London, the most inane nuances of their lives. The weirdness of that is hard to deny when his phone rings and he sees the name “Daniel O’Shea” plastered over a stock photo of a daffodil.

He stops breathing for a second and hesitates, but even though he has a mouth full of noodles and he’s not wearing any pants, he has to answer. He swallows hard and says, “Hello?”

It’s weird for about sixty seconds. Daniel hesitates and then Mark hesitates, and then it’s inane questions about family and work that they’ve covered in emails. Silence stretches too long until Mark coughs and says, “How about this storm?”

Daniel laughs, then, and Mark’s toes curl in the rug on reflex, his heart stuttering over half a dozen beats because that laugh is just as melodic and breathless as it ever was and he can’t remember if Daniel laughed when they met at the bar but he knows he hasn’t heard him laugh at all since.

“Is this weird?” Daniel wonders aloud.

Laughing back at him, Mark says, “Yeah, kind of.”

There’s a silence, still awkward, but it feels good anyway. “I just thought you of all people would appreciate what happened at work today.”

“Oh.” Another beat. “What happened?”

And then they talk for hours. Mark’s meal goes cold, and Daniel wanders into his own kitchen and turns off the stove, deciding he doesn’t really need the soup and telling Mark so as he does.

It’s easier than emails because Mark can hear the inflection of Daniel’s voice and every time he laughs and they can interrupt to ask questions and give opinions. They talk until two in the morning and then they hang up, but only because Mark’s phone warns him his battery is down to five percent and they both have work the next day.

***

There are more phone calls and fewer emails and neither one of them asks what exactly they’re doing, what exactly this is. A week after the first time Mark calls Daniel it is still the same back and forth, recounting their days and commenting on the most inane things just because they can.

Daniel tells about two of his models getting caught fornicating—that’s the word he uses, and Mark can practically hear him rolling his eyes—in one of the janitor’s closets at a show. Daniel tells the story because he was so mortified he had yelled at them until his cheeks were hot and they were cowering and now he wonders if he yelled too much.

Mark means to tell him they were being unprofessional. Instead his voice just drops a little and goes quiet, conspiratorial: “Do you remember that time your sister walked in on us?” By this point, Mark’s most of the way through a bottle of red. He’s been sipping at it as they talk, and another clink of the bottle on the coffee table as he tops up his glass makes him wonder if he’s overstepping. But then he remembers the story about Lukas the barista and thinks he is well within the realm of appropriate discourse. After a moment of hesitation, Mark thinks he hears Daniel’s breath catch, and a voice in his mind is screaming for him to step back, that this is dangerous and could ruin whatever it is they’ve built up between them. It’s screaming because this is a story about
them
.

Then Daniel says, his own voice appropriately low, “That time at school? In the locker room?”

Shutting out the voice that begs
don’t,
Mark leans back into the sofa, his hand pressed to his belly, hungry but warm and tight. It moves up over his chest and into one soft squeeze of the muscle of his pectoral and a tweak of his nipple as he shakes his head and replies, “No, the time before that.”

“Oh my God.” Daniel’s voice comes out breathless and high and Mark can hear it. “When she came home from college to surprise us all? And just walked in like she owned the place…” He trails off.

“That’s the one.” Mark blushes at the memory. At least, he feels a blush. “You had me completely naked. Your sister must have copped an eyeful.”

Daniel scoffs at him. “Karen had seen plenty of naked men before, though I shudder to think about it. I’m just not sure she was ready to see one that…” He trails off and then coughs. “That naked, I guess.” He pauses and Mark can still hear him breathing. “It was gay-sex Mark, and she was still getting used to the idea of actually gay me.”

Mark patently ignores his half-hard dick because it
is
creepy and a little bit confusing. He jokes, “She was so not ready to see it.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever be ready to see
that
. If she was, I think it would make her very strange indeed.” Daniel laughs, but his voice catches again and remains high.

Mark bites his lip for a moment. “That was the last time you sucked me off, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Breathless, why does he have to sound breathless? “I remember that night. You made me do it,” Daniel accuses. “You
begged
.” Why does he have to sound as if he’s reliving it?

Mark doesn’t mean to say it, but he does: “Can you blame me?”

“You still really…” Daniel trails off, whatever he was going to say dying on his lips as he seems to realize what he’s talking about and with whom. “Wow,” he says, and then coughs to clear his throat. “This is really inappropriate, I’m sorry—”

Cutting him off with a laugh, Mark rakes a hand through his hair, messing it up even more, and stumbles over his words. “Yeah. But… I mean, it was, it is. But yeah.” Daniel is laughing at him, his voice high and melodic again. “You taught me a lot,” Mark continues. “About myself. I never thanked you for that.”

Silence stretches between them and Mark wonders if he’s even more out of line now than he was during the earlier part of the conversation.

“For our relationship?” Daniel asks.

“Yeah. It was… it was a highlight.”

Daniel all but whispers, “I’m glad.” And then, “Me too.”

There’s another stretched-out silence, but Mark can hear Daniel’s breathing and he knows that they’re both smiling. Then Daniel makes his excuses and hangs up.

That should be the end of it. It should actually be a good thing, a step in the right direction for two men who are fast becoming best friends again. But still, Mark can’t quite seem to shake the baggage that they accumulated in high school. It was a decade ago! Mark has had almost a dozen men since then, and if the tales Daniel has told him about his own sex life are anything to go by, Daniel has had more than twice that.

That shouldn’t make him feel jealous. And it shouldn’t make him feel turned on. And mostly it doesn’t—the story with Lukas really didn’t—but them, talking about them…

He can only tell himself so many times that this is purely physical, that Daniel is a very attractive gay man and that is why he is reacting to him now, except that doesn’t make sense because he doesn’t
know
why he is reacting, not really. The only time he’s seen Daniel since they were kids was on a busy street corner and in a bar, hardly an adequate amount of time to check him out.

Friends: that is all they are, and he has no right to be sitting here with tented sweatpants after less than a minute of anecdote that is more funny than sexy.

He presses the heel of his hand to his crotch, hoping to quell his erection, but only moans at how good it feels. He swallows the last of his wine and stares at a nothing-point on the wall.

It can’t really hurt, can it? Getting off now, with Daniel gone and alcohol in his blood and that perfectly imperfect memory of sloppy mouths and teenaged blowjobs so fresh in his mind? He has, in the past, indulged in fantasies about judges and colleagues and random men on the street. Guys at the gym and at the club and in restaurants. There have never been ramifications.

And he’s seen Daniel naked. Albeit a younger Daniel; the last time he had him, Daniel was only nineteen and he was even younger. But he’s seen Daniel come. He’s seen Daniel wrapped around his body and arching for him and getting him off.

Without any further deliberation, but already anticipating the telltale twinge of guilt that makes the fantasy slip to some nameless, faceless man, Mark slides his hands down and slips his pants to mid-thigh.

His cock is hard and red and it bounces from the confines of his underwear to lie heavily against his belly. There’s pre-come and an ache that usually takes him a few minutes to build up to. With his fingers wrapped tight around himself, he moans low and deep and lets his eyelids flutter closed.

“You just had to bring up the sex, didn’t you?” he murmurs to himself, picturing Daniel. His broad shoulders… he’s so beautifully lean now… skin tanned golden and hair pushed back behind his ears, naked and wide-eyed on his knees with his fist around Mark’s cock.

Vision flickering, he works his hand and tries to keep Daniel nineteen and inexperienced and his boyfriend. But it’s too difficult and, fighting the heat, he pulls his shirt over his head with his spare hand and twists his wrist expertly just below the head of his cock.

With two dozen different conquests under his belt, almost-thirty-year-old Daniel would be so very, very good at this—assuming he wanted to be. Mark is sure Daniel could just lay himself out and be taken, let men come from the sheer perfection of his body, the tightness and the fluidity hiding beneath the teenage awkwardness that Mark remembers too well. Fuck: by the sound of things, exactly that happened in London.

He’s panting as he strokes, trying and not trying to imagine just how Daniel does this now. He imagines Daniel naked and on his knees between Mark’s legs, stroking him with deft, talented fingers so used to sketching fast and beautifully, and so perfect around a cock; he imagines Daniel’s wicked grin, his eyes that know and judge and calculate and are such a complicated mélange of brown and gold and green. Stubble. Mark wonders if Daniel ever gives head with a few days’ growth of beard and he whines at the phantom rub of whiskers on the insides of his thighs as fantasy Daniel mouths over his balls.

Daniel’s hands—Mark hasn’t had the chance to look at them in ten years, but Daniel has always had long, beautiful fingers with long nails, thinner and more nimble than Mark’s, which always made him a better pianist. Now perhaps they’re rougher, calloused from too many hours with pencils and thread and a sewing machine. Strong wrists, Mark hopes , and long nails, perfect for punctuating the burn on Mark’s skin left by Daniel’s stubble.

“Oh God,” he mumbles, wishing he had lube and then curling over himself and letting saliva drip from his mouth to his dick and deciding very quickly that’s something he wants to see Daniel do for him. He wants, so desperately, to know whether the inside of Daniel’s mouth tastes the same, as good as that fleeting press of lips hinted it would.

He wants so much more.

He loses track of his own hands, just lets them pull and squeeze however it feels good. He closes his eyes and allows himself this one indulgent fantasy. He refuses to waste it. Skips from Daniel’s hands on his dick to his mouth, fucked red and open. Daniel would be over the embarrassment of spit and come dripping down his chin by now, he must be; he’ll chase the wet sounds of flesh moving together instead of trying not to giggle.

How many inches can Daniel take now? All of them? On his knees with his own hand between his legs while he hollows his cheeks and sinks all the way down, blocking his own throat as he watches Mark’s face? Mark never got to experience that with Daniel, but now maybe dozens of other people have.

More.

Mark would pull him up onto his lap and fuck him from below so hard. Have Daniel straddle his hips and ride him as they kiss until they are lightheaded and their orgasms take them by surprise.

Daniel on his hands and knees, getting fucked hard enough from behind that he ends up on his belly, the friction of the bed against his dick making him writhe and push back and beg. “Oh God, please, Mark,
please.
Like that, fuck me like that, Mark.”

Coming when Mark lets him and then going lax in his arms when Mark doesn’t stop, twisting around just enough to capture Mark’s mouth in a messy kiss and beg against his lips, “Come for me. Come inside me.”

Mark moans, his hand moving hard, fast and desperate over his own cock, fingers slipping down and toying with his hole, pushing saliva inside with just the barest press of his middle finger.

Daniel pushing him back against blue satin sheets in some nameless hotel and stretching him open with his fingers, making him beg and arch just as he did the first time back in Illinois, on his bed, except this time it would be on purpose. Finger after finger and kitten licks to the head of Mark’s cock and the crease of his thigh and watching him, knowing him so well he can read the angles of his body without even thinking about it.

Still stretching him out, not just so he’s ready for Daniel to push deep inside with one fluid thrust, but teasing him so that when he does pull Mark’s hips down the bed and fucks him hard, Mark comes with a surprised shout, his dick untouched and pulsing as Daniel kisses him through it and thrusts deeper and deeper.

Come kissed from off Mark’s belly, into his mouth. Daniel bent over him, fucking him deep and slow and languid until Mark stops shivering with overstimulation and telling him it’s too much and pleading for a break and now instead his voice starts breaking over the words—

Keep going. Don’t stop. Fuck me. Don’t ever stop.

He’s saying those words and he’s saying them loud and clear in his empty apartment, panting for breath, his hips fucking up off the couch into his hand and a finger inside him, a placeholder for so much more but, God, it all feels so fucking good.

He stumbles onto the memory, so stark: Daniel’s voice crashes through reality, whispering so close to his ear just like the last time they fucked on Thanksgiving.