by Rob Rosen
Chris’s laugh is as low and satisfying a sound as any of our machines warming to life. He’s an accelerator in human form, a loop from which I can’t seem to scatter free, cycling my personal particles with speeding pulses. We shared a room at university, then shared classes and a viciously competitive friendship. We shared more, too, on certain riotous nights of booze-soaked theorizing, as passion confused into colliding kisses and groping hands. I try not to think about it now, but I could no more do that than rewrite the fundamental laws of physics. He slurps up a noodle and I shiver.
“How’s CERN?” he asks.
I resolutely avoid looking toward the stack of logs awaiting my attention. “Busy,” I tell him, shoving a hand back through wiry black curls to clear them from my face, eyes on the ceiling. “There’s a whole herd of Austrian engineers visiting.”
“Is that the proper term for a group of engineers? A herd?”
“Maybe just for a group of Austrians.”
“An assemblage of Austrians.”
“An entourage of engineers.”
When Chris laughs again, I lean back and rest my free hand on my chest. My heart beneath beats a swift staccato, clicking faster under my fingers. I spread them, but the attempt to rub that unwieldy muscle to peace again only stirs it more, spiraling pleasure tightly upward from the pit of my stomach. If I close my eyes, I can see him slouching with his pot noodles, deliberately dweeby glasses weighted heavy on his nose and a swath of pale hair peeking from under his ubiquitous black hoodie. He has the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen, though when we were shoved tightly together in one of our twin-size beds, they were nearly black.
Christ, a year apart and he’s still going to be the goddamn death of me.
We talk about our work—the real work we’re doing, not the administrative necessities. Our days off are spent meeting with scientists and professors, grinding out equations and fomenting theory in tiny offices piled high with reams of data. He’s writing out algorithms that could have resonance on the study of dark matter. I tell him about doing mechanical checks on stretches of the Large Hadron Collider with an entourage of engineers. My cheeks heat when he laughs again.
We were a good fit, he and I, when our hyperspecific interests merged together rather than antagonized. His muttering, pensive focus on mathematics—fingers pressed to his eyes as his hand moved, as if possessed— harmonized in strange synchronicity with my fixation on tangible creations, turning his equations into physical tools. We were a good fit the first time we rutted hard against the other’s hip and sucked marks against the other’s skin, watching as they blossomed red where our lips had been. I was the dark matter to his light, our symmetry balanced, despite our differences. He preferred to lie against my back, his golden-haired chest pressed against my spine and his cock seeking entry in stiff stabs against my ass. I was all too willing to bend for him and push out my hips, and kiss him clumsily across my shoulder as he worked himself inside me and stretched me open until I ached.
Chris scrapes the empty Styrofoam cup with his fork and sets it back to the desk. I hear all this.
“I thought I might come visit soon,” I say, like it’s a passing thought.
“Why?”
We’ve never talked about it, never addressed at any point those many nights together, but it’s all I can do not to call him an asshole and hang up from sheer reflex. We’ve danced around it for the whole time we were in school together. We dance around it now. Neither of us has ever acknowledged those nights once the moment ended. It’s late. I’m exhausted and over-caffeinated, jittery nerves prickling. I’m behind on work that has to be done by morning, and rather than doing it, I’m on the phone with him again, talking about nothing, just to hear his voice.
I’m tired in a way that goes beyond the need for sleep. If he won’t say it, I will.
“Don’t you ever think about it?” The words tilt higher than intended, teetering on almost pathetic desperation. If he says no, then I won’t ask again. Maybe I’ll answer the flirty philosophical texts I get from the cute guy who works at the Prévessin site. Maybe I’ve just wasted years of my life on someone who saw me as an easy fling.
“Think about what?”
I know he groks what I’m saying, and my jaw aches, clenched tight. I want to groan. Instead, I answer tactfully. “University. The time we spent there. Together.”
His pause lingers long, and I nearly crumple to my desk as he finally says, “Sometimes. Yeah.”
“I think about it.” It’s still too vague. Scientists don’t work in anything but absolute specificity, and that’s what Chris is looking for now, too stubborn and too rational for anything less. Screw it. We’ve already started the accelerator, and there’s nothing but wasted energy if we shut it down now. “I think about you,” I tell him. “I think about us. Up late in the dorm, arguing and . . . ”
“Raj,” he sighs.
“And I wonder if coming here instead of staying there was a terrible idea.”
He huffs a note of disbelief. “That’s absurd.”
“I know. I know it is, objectively. Rationally.” I laugh, helpless. It sounds weak. “But I—”
He interrupts, taking the words out of my mouth. “I miss you.”
Said words throw our yearslong acceleration into such a stop that my head spins. My lungs expand so quickly with the force of shock that my ribs feel as if they’ll crack from the sudden collision. We’ve finally connected, the energy of thought and voice smashing together in a big bang of our own making, superseding our history of clumsy bodies crashing together, fueled by alcohol and youthful lust. He’s missed me. He misses me. My throat clicks dry when I swallow.
“I miss you, too, man.”
We both exhale in unison, connected despite the distance. For a few moments, we say nothing, giving ourselves pause enough that time starts to move again after its jump. I swear I can hear his heart through the phone. I swear I can feel his lips moving across my ear when he finally speaks again.
“I think about it,” Chris says. “I think about all of it. All the studying we should have been doing, and how glad I am we didn’t. How your hair always stood up wild when we were done, and you’d stumble around the room in just a sweatshirt, trying to find your clothes.”
“I was a mess.”
“You were beautiful.” The energy in his voice creates a vacuum that pulls my pulse into a void. I’m dizzy. His words are bright moonlight through the starless dark behind my eyes. “I always wanted to tell you to stay. I almost did, every time. I think about that, too, every chance I had and every chance I didn’t take. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what to say. ‘Hey, I know we’re friends who like to fuck, but maybe you should stay and cuddle this time’? ‘Hey, even though we have to face each other in class tomorrow, I really want to try a thousand different words to tell you how I feel about you’? I didn’t know how you’d react. I’d rather have you as a friend than have you be weirded out by me,” he says. I know he’s smiling. I remember all too well how that crooked grin felt pressed against my bare shoulder as we lay together in the few quiet moments postcoitus, spent and sweaty and breathless. “I didn’t even know if you liked dudes.”
“I let you fuck me in the ass,” I remind him, with a laugh, brows raising. “Frequently.”
“Which probably should have been a sign, I guess.” There’s a pluck of tension that vibrates in Chris’s voice, not at all displeased. When he sighs, it’s a heavy sound, unlike the ones before. The strings that connect our particles sync in movement, and I slip my hand between my legs and squeeze gently to ease the rising ache there. “So, what do we do with this new data, Mr. CERN?”
“I wish I knew,” I say, and I bite my bottom lip to hold back a sound that threatens to spill forth when I press my palm a little harder against my cock. “Same thing we always do when we discover something unexpected. Analyze it. Study it. Dissect and define it.”
I pause, and after a moment, add, “We repeat the experiment, to see if we reach the same conclusion.”
The quick jerk of his breath confesses; his quiet moan declares. We’re both alone, together, sparked by the newly stoked flames of memory that have never stopped simmering. Chris says my name as if it were an apology, and all I can do is laugh and lower my zipper.
“Are we really doing this?”
“I am.” He laughs. “It’s going to be weird if you’re not, too.”
I slide my hand beneath my underwear’s elastic waistband. Dark curls spread coarse between my fingers as I squeeze the base of my cock, huffing a breath of pleasure. We really are doing this. Me and Chris, Chris and me, the way it should have been from the start. The way it was once, and might be again.
“You know you’re the reason I didn’t date anyone during college, right?” I said.
Chris snorts, a grin lightening his words. His chair creaks through the phone. “I just thought you were especially dedicated to studying. And being better than me in all our classes.”
“That too.”
“Are you doing it?”
“Yeah,” I sigh, shoulders pressing back to the chair as I slump comfortably, phone cradled in one hand, dick squeezed in the other. “Are you?”
He hums agreement, and I let myself imagine him as I have so many lonely late nights before. His stomach muscles defined with quivering pleasure, his erection proudly stiff and his expression soft. He likes to play with the head, thumbing across the slit and tugging in firm, slow squeezes from base to tip.
“I wish you were here,” he says. I wish I were there, too. I would go to my knees for him, right under his desk. I would sit across his lap and let him slip stiffly inside me. I would kiss him.
God, I would kiss him. Suckling his bottom lip between my own and teasing it with teeth. Twining our tongues together until we couldn’t breathe. Pressing my mouth to the corner of his, to his lightly freckled cheeks, to his brow, smelling his hair and rubbing my cheek against it.
“I’m here,” I tell him, hips arching to push my cock into the tunnel of my hand. “I’m with you. I’ve always been with you.”
“Sap.” We laugh. We moan. We touch ourselves, and over the near-silent electric static of the phone line, over the quickening rush of our own pulse in our ears, we strain to hear the sounds of skin sliding against skin, clicking transmissions to the other as evidence of our desire.
Our excitation builds, creating heat beneath my skin and light behind my eyes. Fundamental forces of nature pull our gasps to matching rhythm. I stroke myself, fingers tightening beneath the corona of my cock, spreading along the thick veins that line it. I touch myself, but I think of him, his pupils wide and inky black, lips pink and parted, damp. It’s not my own dick I’m touching, it’s his, thick and hot and curved where mine is straight, circumcised where mine is not. It never looked imposing, but when he was inside me, I felt so full that there was hardly room in my body for breath. He always pressed his hand against my heart when he pulled me back against him. He always slowed when I set my hand to his hip, and sped when I dug my nails against his thigh.
Electricity ripples beneath my skin, tightening my muscles in spasms of broken symmetry that move my sounds, my masturbation, my heartbeat out of time with his. His moans are superconductive, prisms of sound formed from little whimpers and long groans, from him saying my name and peppering it with quiet curses. My balls tighten, twitching up against my body. My cock slicks with precome, beading copiously beneath my fingers as I pull my cock to the sound of my best friend’s voice.
I want to taste him again. Suck him again. Lick him clean and watch as he bows his blond head over my cock and takes me between his lips in turn. I don’t know what I’m telling him anymore, particles of sentences bursting forth half-formed on every breath. Fragments of feeling and fondness filter through declarations of desire. I want him inside me. On top of me. I want him to hold my face in his hands and make me feel in his kiss how much he’s missed me.
And just as quickly as this formed, we disrupt. Sudden resistance slams hard through my body, and I whimper at the force of it, come spilling in thick ribbons of white against my fingers. I stroke myself through it and listen as he groans, long and low, imagining his shoulders hunched and his lashes fluttering against his cheeks. But unlike every other time we’ve shared a climax, I don’t wonder how quickly he wants me gone. I don’t want to be gone. I want to be here, right here, or there, or anywhere so long as he’s there with me. He must hear my thoughts broadcast loud, because he laughs.
“I want you to stay, Raj,” he whispers. “I should have told you a long time ago.”
As our new formation cools and takes solid form, I think of the Higgs field. We’ve found our own equivalent quantum space, confirmed as reality by the other’s presence in it. Call it friendship. Call it love. Whatever its name, it’s ours, made manifest by the discovery of our matching particle.
“I think you’re my boson, Chris.”
“That shouldn’t be so romantic.” He laughs, a sleepy chuckle that sounds like a warm blanket feels on a cold day. “The Chris boson. I can’t wait to see the proofs in that paper.”
“You’ll just find ways to poke holes in it,” I say. “Egomaniac.” I stretch to gather napkins from my desk to wipe my hand clean. “So, should I try to come?”
“I thought you just did.”
“Shut up.” I smile. “Should I come to California,” I ask again, “or are we going to console ourselves with the idea of manifold realities, and accept that in some other iterative universe, we’re already fucking each other senseless and telling each other embarrassing confessions about all the times we could have ended up apart?”
“You make string theory sound so desolate. Isn’t it enough to know we’re the other’s cosmological constant?”
“Not when you could be inside me.”
“Fair point,” Chris says. “Don’t come.” I draw a breath, a joke perched on my tongue, and he interrupts, amused. “And don’t tell me it’s too late for that because you just did. You’re so predictable.”
“You don’t want me to visit?” I ask instead, brow creasing. He doesn’t give me enough time to analyze this error in function before he speaks again, and soothes my heart with words that feel like his hand pressed against my chest.
“You’ve been here before,” he says, and I feel the smile, “and I’ve always wanted to visit Switzerland.”
HARD CASE
Landon Dixon
“No! Please! You’re hurting me! Stop!”
I grabbed the guy tighter around the neck and hammered my cock even harder into his ass. He, just barely in his early twenties, was playing the victim of the anal reaming I was dishing out, and we were both loving it.
I twisted his puffy pink nipples with one hand, choking him with the other, ramming my huge cock back and forth into his hot, tight, sucking chute. We were both standing naked, me behind fucking his ass, while he arched back against me and screamed out the open office window, his taut little buttcheeks shuddering as I slammed my thighs against them over and over, faster and faster, harder and harder. Let’s call it a down payment on the dirty case he’d delivered to this dirty PI, namely me.
“Please! Please!” he cried out.
I pleased him, pumping quick and deep and brutal.
Tears ran down his pretty, anguished face, his boyish body bouncing on the end of my churning, sheathed cock in his sweet ass. I twisted his tender nipples, bit into his slender neck, spanked his mounded bottom with my corded thighs, driving his anus with my thundering cock all the while.
I hadn’t had a young dude in a while, and I was getting his fucking money’s worth.
“Oh my god! No! Please!” he shrieked, tugging frantically on his own jutting pink cock to the banging beat of my pile driver that was drilling his ass.
“Yeah! Yeah!” I sneered in his tender pink ear before almost biting his delicious lobe clean off.
Then his slim young body spasmed out of control in my arms. “Ooh!” he shrieked up at the wide blue sky, semen shooting out of his hand-jacked cock before sailing out of the window.
I grunted and gripped his quivering shoulders and pistoned his butt, savagely sawing his chute until I quickly caught fire.
“Fuck! Yeah!” I bellowed in his burning ear, hard-riding his gyrating bum.
I bucked and blasted, my ramming cock blowing off steaming semen into the guy’s petulant portal. Jet after jet of white-hot jack jolted my body and soul, my head reeling with incredible bliss. Hell, I just about bumped the coming kid right out the window with the force of my own blistering orgasm as I creamed his ass.
“Think I got the ‘tools’ for the job now?” I hissed, my spent cock packed in rubber and sperm inside his ruptured ass.
Jamie bobbed his head up and down, gasping for breath.
I confirmed the terms of our agreement, rutting my cock around in the warm, lubed-up mess of his asshole. “I seduce and fuck your ex’s new husband, get it on video, give it to you to get your revenge on your ex; meanwhile, you give me one thousand dollars. Now.”
He nodded, and I eased my still-hard hammer out of his manhole and wiped off. He padded over to his pants and pulled out his wallet, spilling one grand out of his recent divorce settlement onto my desk.
The guy apparently still “loved” his ex, and he didn’t want his ex loving anyone else.
I was the hardcase PI he’d hired for this hard case.
The ex-husband was named Tom Jordan, a tall, distinguished-looking, older gent with plenty of money and personality, and a willingness to use both. Jamie had been married to the guy for two years, until Tom had laid hungry eyes on young Evan Andrews as he cleaned his pool one day. After that, Jamie’s relationship with his wealthy Daddy had gone down the drain.