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Brad uses hookers because he can. It’s simple. There's less work involved in a sure thing, and an additional set of hands on his dick feels better than the lazy slide of his own calloused fingers.
“It’s easy,” he says to Ray, because Ray is the only person he knows crass enough to talk about sex at work. “I pay them well, I always respect them in the morning, and if, by chance, I get a repeat visitor, they're always happy to see me. I'm a busy guy, Ray. I don't have to waste my time chatting up some girl in a bar who may not even be interested.”
“Paying a woman doesn't always mean she’s interested,” Ray says, rolling his eyes.
“She's a hooker,” Brad argues. “Being interested is her job.”
“First of all,” Ray says, straightening and taking a slug from his thermos. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and adds, “Christ, homes, there are so many fucking first of alls, I don’t even know where to start.”
Brad snorts without meaning to, covering it with a bit of stern throat clearing. He takes a sip of his own coffee, black and undoctored.
“Ray,” he says, but typically, Ray ignores him.
“First of fucking all, homes — they prefer the term ‘sex worker’. I haven’t, like, taken a fucking poll or anything, but unlike some people I know, I read.”
“I read,” Brad replies, affronted without meaning to be. Ray is like a black hole, sucking everything in his path into orbit and crushing it from the inside. Brad has been drawn in without his consent, as usual.
“Sure,” Ray agrees, turning to him with a smile that’s all stretched lips and no teeth.
He doesn’t meet Brad’s eyes, but that’s just because he’s sucking down more coffee, tapping the fingers of his free hand against the metal of the table in double time.
“Sure,” he continues. “You read Wired. You read science journals. You read Popular Mechanics, homes. I read Cosmo. Jezebel. I am fucking cultured. I know what women want.”
“You’re a hick from the sister-fucking capital of the world, Person. All of your parts put together wouldn’t equal even half —”
Sixta wanders into the lab, moving slow but precise, and precisely annoying. Brad sits up straighter in his seat, even though he is on his university-mandated 45-minute lunch break. He’s as allowed to be in here as anyone else is.
Sixta’s eyes flick over them, and Brad tries not to notice the way Ray’s knee bumps into his on every third twitch. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to his forearms, and if that button-down was appropriate once, it certainly isn’t now, worn thin and practically transparent. If Brad were the type of person to stare, he’d be able to make out the edges of the horse inked onto Ray’s arm.
“Gentlemen,” Sixta says, nodding at them once.
“Good afternoon, Professor Sixta, sir,” Ray says, eyes wide and mocking. Sixta huffs out something garbled under his breath.
“Lunch hour’s over in 5,” is what he says at full volume. “I expect you to start your classes on time.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Ray says, before Brad can stop him.
Under the cover of the lab table, Brad drops his hand onto Ray’s wrist, squeezing once before making himself stop. It’s Ray’s fault, anyway. He doesn’t ever know when to keep his mouth shut.
Sixta sees himself out of the lab with a suspicious glance over his shoulder, but at least he goes.
“What a piece of shit,” Ray mutters under his breath, and that’s a concession, at least. A year ago, he would have said it at top volume.
“He’ll retire soon,” Brad argues, even though they’ve had this exact discussion more than once, and Ray always disagrees.
“He’ll retire never, homes. He’s got tenure, and he’s a department head, because the Dean is an idiot dicksuck asshole — wait.” Ray turns to face him, suspicion lighting his eyes. “Did you signal him to come in here or something? You scared I’m going to infect you with my liberal agenda, Bradley?”
Brad blinks at him, taking stock of the situation and very carefully not laughing or running fast in the opposite direction.
“You’re an idiot, Ray,” he says. They’re the easiest words he has handy.
“Sure, maybe,” Ray agrees. “At least I know how to respect women.”
;;
There are some days where every one of the 80 students he teaches drop by during his Office Hours, and some where Brad is entirely alone. Both come with the territory, so he doesn’t really have a preference, but on the day of his lunch with Ray, he doesn't see a single person. He’s even left his door open — a first — but the hallway outside is silent. That’s less surprising, though, really. Both Reyes and Patrick are on sabbatical.
Before he can stop himself, he texts Ray, Christ, I wish I were on sabbatical.
Ray responds within seconds. Nonsensically, of course. If you build it, they will come.
When he’s been watching the wall clock above his door tick down for at least five minutes, he makes the executive decision to call it. He has work he can do just as easily at home. His place isn’t too far from campus, but even pushing the bike past 100 doesn’t shake him out of it.
He’s gone for a five mile run, taken a shower, even watched half of a stupid Viking documentary Ray programmed into his Netflix the last time he was over before he realizes what he needs, and what he needs is to get laid.
The service doesn’t have a spot on his speed dial, but considering he doesn’t call people often, their number is near the top of his recents list, and thus easy to find. The appointment itself takes far less time to book than the dithering it took to decide to do it.
Brad hates to dither.
His escort for the evening arrives less than a half hour later. Her name is Tami. Brad’s seen her a few times, never with any regularity, but enough that he knows she signs her name with a heart over the i, and is completely unapologetic about how her ‘68 Camaro is bright pink.
“Tell me about the car again,” he says, breathing deep through his nose to make sure his voice sounds even.
“I bought it because it made me feel like Barbie.” She’s breathless as she replies, but she’s also rolling her eyes as she sinks down onto him, her small hands pressed against his chest.
Sometimes, she when she digs her fingernails in, she’s silently begging him to fuck her harder. It’s when she's on her back, when he’s plowing into her, when her legs are curved around his back like parentheses, keeping him inside of her. She wants him to know she can never get enough.
“I know all about your Barbie car, Tam,” he grits through his teeth. He nips against her neck, biting where he knows she’ll be sensitive. “I want to know the real reason.”
It gets the desired response. She giggles, real and artless, and he can feel the sound where his mouth is pressed against her skin. He resists the urge to bite down again and risk leaving a darker mark.
“If you have the brain cells to psychoanalyze me, you're not fucking me hard enough,” she says, teeth digging into her bottom lip. It maximizes her pout, and the laugh that gets surprised out of him is real.
He rolls his hips up, curling a hand over her smaller ones and squeezing. He knows just how to fuck her, pistoning up as he moves his free hand to flick at her clit, this side of too much stimulation.
She comes before he does, but that’s not out of the ordinary.
“You can keep going if you want,” she says, but Brad tips her gently to the side, easing out of her slowly, and disposing of the condom. “I’m not going to break.”
She lifts her head up, only one eye visible under the mounds of blond curls, and she’s not exactly frowning, but she looks less blissed out than a well-fucked woman should.
“What?” he asks, settling down on the mattress beside her and jacking himself slowly. She keeps her eyes trained on him, tugging the tangled comforter over her exposed skin.
“Why do you keep calling me?” she asks, and the tone in her voice is teasing, even though the words aren’t. “Is it some sort of dominance thing? You want to prove that you can make me come or something? You’re paying to fuck me, but my vibrator makes me come too, Brad, and it does it for free.”
He doesn’t mean to laugh again, schooling his features as he says, “Money’s on the dresser. Feel free to leave at any time.”
Brad feels the bed dip as she gets to her feet, but he knows her better than to expect that she’ll leave without a parting shot. She’s a lot like Ray that way. He flinches without meaning to, ridiculously grateful, suddenly, for the pillow over his swiftly reddening face.
Shit.
“I know you like me,” Tami singsongs, and it’s so far from what he’d expected her to say that he pulls the offending cotton away from his face to stare.
She’s half-dressed and smirking at him as she tugs on her bra. If he looks hard enough, he can probably make out the teeth marks he’d left on her nipples. There’s no use in trying to find them. Like everything else, whatever mark he’s made is impermanent.
“I like you fine,” he concedes. “You make my dick hard.”
She rolls her eyes at him again, leaning forward and tugging on the hard length of him once.
Her breath mists across his cheek as she says, “Why don’t you let me get you off, Bradley? You know I’d do you so good.”
Beneath her carefully modulated California tones, Brad hears something southern and lilting. He’d bet even more good money that she only lets it out when she sees something she wants.
“I already did us both good enough,” he says, and at least that makes her laugh. He doesn’t bother watching her leave. He’s seen it enough times to have pattern memorized. “Tam,” he calls out when she’s at the door to the bedroom, tugging the strap of her purse across her chest.
“Brad,” she mimics, but he can hear a smile in her voice.
“Do you prefer the term ‘sex worker’?”
He pulls the pillow away from his face. She looks surprised, but not like she’s taken aback by the question. Twisting her hair up in a loose bun, she says, “Yes, I do. Why? What do you prefer?”
“I don’t,” he says and she snorts at him derisively. Brad doesn’t lie on principal, so he adds, “I’ve honestly never thought about it before.”
“Well, what do you usually say?” she asks. She’s looking at him curiously, her head tilted to the side.
Sweat is drying on his chest. The throb in his dick has waned slightly, but he’s still hard and uncomfortably sticky against his own stomach. He could kill Ray. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation.
“Prostitute, usually. Hooker on occasion. Never anything worse. Certainly never to your face.”
“Oh, certainly,” she says. “That would have been very rude.” She looks like she’s holding in a laugh as she pulls on the cardigan they’d discarded by the door. “What brought this on? You don’t usually talk to me after we fuck.”
With her prim green cardigan over tight black jeans and horned glasses, she looks more like one of his students than a woman he’s just spent the evening with. Brad feels his nakedness acutely, though he’s never been particularly ashamed of himself before.
“I talk to you,” he grouches.
Tami nods faux-seriously. “Sure. You say, ‘your money’s on the dresser’, or sometimes, ‘be careful on the stairs’. Not really the sterling conversation of a university professor, you know? I always come over here expecting bigger words. Maybe some Proust.”
“I don’t read Proust,” he says, and then, “Sorry, you’re right. Do you want to get a coffee or something, sometime? Have an actual conversation?”
She peers at him again and instead of answering his question, asks one of her own. “Who told you to ask me?”
“What do you mean?” He sits up straighter on the mattress, his blanket tucked around his chest like he’s a swooning victorian heroine.
Tami leans against the doorjamb, tugging her phone out of her pocket and presumably sending a text. When she looks at him again, her eyes are entirely focused on him.
“You basically just admitted that you’d never thought of it as anything other than ‘hooking’ or ‘prostitution’. Somebody must have tried to change your mind, so… who was it? I don’t really see you as a guy who talks about me to his friends.”
“You’d be surprised about what I talk with to my friends,” he counters.
She grins at him.
“That’s true, but it sure seems like you have some smart ones.”
;;
On the third Tuesday of every month, select students from Ray’s Literature A and B sections, and Brad’s three pronged Applied Microbiology classes meet on the South Lawn at twilight for what Ray has taken to calling a “Shake and Bake.”
“You know,” Poke says, because they’ve always tried to drag someone semi-respectable along. “Some of these kids are baby geniuses, dog. Are you aware that you could be corrupting the brain cells of America’s best and brightest and underaged minds?”
As usual, Ray is a total surprise when he’s stoned, mellow and loose, waving his weed card around like it’s a badge of pride.
“I am prone, Professor Espera, to panic attacks,” he says, his voice low and smoky, the way it never quite gets with regular cigarettes. “It is perfectly within my rights to be smoking this marijuana wherever I please.”
Poke rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling a little, too, like he just can’t fucking help it. Brad looks away, disgusted. If that’s the way he looks at Ray when he’s admonishing him, he might as well kill himself now and get it over with.
“Are these little shits prone to them too?” Poke asks.
Ray doesn’t answer him, because Ray is leaned over one of the spontaneous groups that have sprung up along the green, chatting amiably with a mix of both sets of their students.
“They might be,” he tosses over his shoulder eventually. “Poke, don’t you see what I’m doing? I’m cultivating fraternity without the douchebaggery. I am breaching party lines. I am masterful.”
He’s more relaxed, the higher he gets, but that doesn’t ever shut him up entirely. Brad would probably worry about spontaneous lobotomies if that were ever the case.
“You’re full of yourself,” he calls, but Ray just waves him off without a glance. He doesn’t even bother turning around.
Poke watches the crowd for a while, pausing only a few times to check his cell. He chuckles to himself softly, once, and Brad doesn’t care what his wife has to say, so he doesn’t ask.
The beauty of his relationship with Poke is that they can be quiet together, no need to fill the gaping silence. No need to cram unnecessary words or sentiment into the silent spaces. It’s not necessary for Brad to —
“Gina wants you to come to dinner,” Poke says, casual as anything. “Fuck knows why she needs a giant Aryan Jew around, but she asked, so I’m asking.” Poke’s never shied away from eye-contact, and he doesn’t spare Brad it now. “I think maybe she wants to set you up with her sister, but honestly, dog, Marisol could do so much better.”
Brad agrees easily. He doesn’t know her, but he’s confident that Marisol could do better. He’s not interested in that kind of thing, anyway.
“You can tell Gina I’m seeing someone.” The words pop out unbidden, and he smirks a little to himself, thinking of Tami, thinking of how he’ll surprise her now. She thinks she knows him so well, well. He’ll show her.
“No shit,” Poke hisses under his breath, and the way he smacks his fist into Brad’s shoulder hurts.
“What the fuck,” Brad says, resisting the urge to rub at his arm.
“I can’t say I ever saw this coming,” Poke concedes, sounding like he’s thinking hard. He sends another message to his wife. “But I’m not surprised, you know? It explains the way you look at him, anyway.”
It doesn’t take long for him to get it, and once he knows, the look on Poke’s face is impossible to unsee.
“It’s not what you think,” he says feebly, but the words don’t do anything to stop the sudden and inexplicable racing of his heart.
He doesn’t close his eyes, because he is not a goddamned romance novel heroine, and he doesn’t swoon, because he’s not an idiot. He looks across the green, watches the way Ray’s stretching, how the hem of his shirt bunches when he moves.
“I’m not even pissed you didn’t tell me,” Poke says, and Brad doesn’t bother to avert his eyes, because if he's allowed to look, he's going to take advantage. “I mean,” he continues, smacking Brad again. “Of course I’m fucking pissed you didn’t tell me, dog, but it’s not like I haven’t been friends with your repressed ass for the last ten years. What were you going to do, wait to tell people until you were sending out wedding invitations?”
“Yes,” Brad agrees, because apparently the thought of putting his hands on Ray has made him breathless. Clearly, he’s losing it right now because not enough oxygen is making its way to his brain.
“Yo, Person,” Poke calls, before Brad can stop him or protect himself.
“What?” Ray screams back.
He doesn’t bother to turn to look at them, talking to Brad’s teaching assistant, and a girl that looks vaguely familiar, but not familiar enough that he can place her without the guide of his class roster.
“Dinner at my house on Friday,” Poke shouts back. “8 o’clock, don’t be late.”
Even from as far away as he is, Brad can see the way Ray’s spine straightens, how he blinks. It occurs to him, belatedly, that his ability to catalogue even the most minute of Ray’s motions is probably why Poke thinks they are together.
Ray shakes his head, but he’s laughing.
“Yeah, okay,” he agrees. “Why the fuck not?”
;;
Brad’s been waiting on it, but it takes until Thursday morning for Ray to stop by the lab.
It’s raining out, the kind of storm that appears out of nowhere and just won’t quit. It reminds Brad of summers on the Jersey Shore with his cousins as a kid. The temperament of East Coast weather confused the hell out of him even then.
“What,” he says, instead of hello. “You’re dripping.”
Ray smiles with stretched lips, and Brad doesn’t look at him, because apparently he’s been doing far too much of that over the past ten years.
“Not that I’m opposed to free food and hot women, but who did you have to kill to get me invited to Poke and Gina’s tomorrow night? And, follow-up: do you need help hiding the body? I figured you for a dismemberment guy, personally, but if this is what it takes to cement our friendship, Bradley, I’m in.”
Ray yawns as he come closer. Brad knows him, knows the way he moves, the way he wends through empty spaces and creates his own, even where he’s not wanted. Especially, then.
He could lie. Brad could claim a misunderstanding. After all, Poke never asked for explicit details, not that Brad would have shared them, and they were all fucking high anyway. He could have said anything.
“Gina wanted to set me up with her sister,” he says.
Ray blinks behind his illogically feminine lashes, a single brow raised. “And you invited me along to, what — have a threesome? I don’t know if you know this about me, but I will take you up on that. Who wouldn’t tolerate your pasty ass for a stab at some truly excellent pussy?”
There’s a knot of tension in his stomach, and another in his throat, and Brad would ignore them, except they are impeding his ability to speak. He gets himself a cup of water from the bubbler and drinks it all before he says anything. Ray doesn’t even notice.
“They think we’re together,” he says plainly.
Ray blinks at him.
“Then why are they trying to set you up with her already — oh.”
That’s the thing. That’s the worst fucking part of all of this, what’s making Brad want to cover each exposed inch of the intolerable flush that’s creeping across his skin. Ray isn’t stupid. Brad watches and sees the exact second the misunderstanding dawns on his face.
He’s expecting surprise. Anger, maybe, if Ray hasn’t gotten laid in a while. What he’s not expecting is laughter, even though he probably should have been.
“Are you fucking with me?” Ray asks, finally, when he’s gotten himself under control enough to speak.
Brad doesn’t say anything.
“Oh, the silent treatment,” Ray continues. “Real mature. How the fuck did Poke, and Gina, and Gina’s hot sister get the idea that you like getting fucked up the ass, homes?”
Brad’s skin feels like it’s on fire, but it’s not shame, or the hot, exposed feeling of embarrassment. It’s something else, undefinable. The knot in his stomach only gets tighter.
“Poke made an assumption,” he says eventually. “I didn’t think fast enough to correct him.”
It’s the truth, more or less. Brad leaves out the part where he’d been so blindsided, he hadn’t been able to focus on anything for hours, even after he’d gone home.
“I’m assuming you’ve remembered how to make English,” Ray says, leaning against the lab table to Brad’s opposite. It’s telling, he thinks, that Ray hasn’t left. “Why haven't you corrected him yet?”
Brad shrugs, but he doesn’t have a better answer than, “I don’t particularly care to meet Gina’s sister, Marisol.”
Ray laughs again, loud and raucous and completely unkempt. He looks so young, with his hair plastered to his forehead, and his slicker dripping onto the tired linoleum of Brad’s lab. Sometimes it’s startling to realize how easily Ray could pass for one of their students.
“What,” Ray says, and he’s smiling again, but this time it’s with too many teeth. “You don’t like exotic pussy?” He pauses, like he’s actually going to let Brad speak, but he doesn’t, smacking himself lightly on the forehead for effect. “Oh wait, no. You just like paying for pussy. Is it, like, a kink for you, homes? You get off on money exchanging hands?”
There’s a storm brewing behind his teeth. Brad meets Ray’s eyes and says, “Do I have to pay to get you there?”
;;
u picking me up 4 tonight, the text reads. y/n?
Ray reads constantly; can quote Shakespeare and Wilde and Gil Scott Heron without pausing for a breath or reference points. He’s hands down the smartest person Brad knows, not that he’d admit it, which means the annoying text speak has to be purposeful.
Maybe, he sends back, casting a glance over where his students are taking a practice exam. He could have his TA proctor, but he likes the silence of the usually buzzing lecture hall. It’s a nice change of pace.
dn’t want to disappoint poke bradleeeee, Ray sends back, and Brad blinks down at the screen, pressing his knuckles to his mouth and clearing his throat to keep himself from laughing out loud.
I don’t understand how your autocorrect allows you to text like such an idiot, he responds, and then locks his phone and tucks it into the front pocket of his bag, schooling his features into something more professional.
After the last of his students have passed in their exams, he clips them together and shoves them into his bag, too, tugging his phone out again.
There are another twenty texts from Ray, ranging from stupid to annoyed and back to amused again. Brad grins despite his better judgement. The last message reads, Should we bring wine? What kind of booze do married people and their sisters drink anyway???
Yes, we should bring wine, Brad replies. I’ll pick some up on the way.
It sends something warm and stupid careening dangerously through him, and he deletes the thread before he can do something even more asinine. He slides the phone into his pocket and jogs all the way to where his bike is parked in the lot. Brad knows the way to Ray’s apartment from memory, even though he hasn’t had cause to drop by in a while.
He takes a minute to catch his breath. If he were the type of person to get involved, taking a peek into a fucked up situation for a friend, he’d warn them away from this. It can only end badly. Complicated personal entanglements almost always do.
By the time Ray’s buzzing him up, Brad has a plan. He’ll apologize for the earlier insanity. He's teaching way too many courses this semester. It’s getting to him. Everybody cracks during midterm season at least once a year. Apparently, he was due.
Ray’s door is propped open, but he's not in sight when Brad gets inside, and he calls out, “You know, I could have been a murderer.”
From the bathroom, Ray shouts back, “You still might be, you fucking psycho.”
When Ray makes his way out of the bathroom, it takes every ounce of energy Brad has not to stare. He's barefoot, his hair damp as he rubs a towel over it, and his shirt is unbuttoned and gaping open.
“What are you doing?” Brad blurts, glad they're alone, glad that the imperceptible crack in his voice was only heard by Ray, who won't care, who won't even mock him for it. “Are you moonlighting as an Antonio Banderas impersonator? Button your shirt.”
Ray winks at him, outrageous and beautiful, and Brad winces before he can stop himself.
“What, you don't like what you see?” Ray asks. “How much would you be willing to cough up for a full show?”
“I wouldn't,” Brad says eventually. “I've seen it already. Get dressed.”
Ray frowns, bottom lip tucked out ludicrously, but he’s laughing too hard to really sell it. Brad is more relieved than he wants to believe.
“Get dressed,” Brad repeats, his voice scratchier and lower than he likes.
Ray mutters something under his breath, whining or complaining, but instead of turning back to his bedroom, he looks up and meets Brad’s eyes head-on.
Honestly, Brad’s not sure how long they stand there, in some idiotic parody of a romantic comedy, but he only get shaken out of it when his phone buzzes in his back pocket, a text from Poke that says, If you two assholes are late, I won’t even have to kick your ass, because G’ll do it for me.
“We have to go,” Brad says, thankful to have the excuse. Ray doesn’t argue.
;;
Poke lives a few miles away from campus. Just far enough that the area is more residential and less overfilled with douchebag college kids, but close enough that they aren’t totally isolated. Their place is nice, in a bland way, a squat ranch house with ivy creeping up the sides and a riot of flowers in their small front garden.
Ray parks on the street, muttering something under his breath about Mexican Norman Rockwell, and Brad catches himself laughing and looking at Ray. Ray looks back, swaying like he’s coming closer.
The temptation to touch him is strong. He doesn’t, but even the fact that he wants it so much is incredibly annoying. He should be better at this by now.
“Do we have a backstory?” Ray asks, voice pitched low.
“A what?” Brad hisses, but he’s cursing himself for not thinking of it first.
Ray shrugs. “I’m just saying, homes. Marisol doesn’t know us, but she’s related to Gina, and G definitely knows us. She’s gonna want details. It’ll be a miracle if she doesn’t bring up assfucking right there at the dinner table.”
Brad curses under his breath, and Ray laughs, husky and low.
“Fuck is right, Bradley. They’re gonna want to know how we did it, and since we haven’t yet, as you have not purchased my services for the evening —”
“We didn’t agree on a price,” Brad interjects, his mouth working without permission from the rest of him.
“I’m expensive,” Ray says, tongue dragging slowly across the swell of his bottom lip. Brad’s given up on the pretense of not watching his mouth.
“I bet,” he agrees quickly, and then, “They won’t ask, Ray. I doubt Poke wants the details.”
Ray smirks at him, pushing his way out of the car. Brad watches as he leans into the backseat to grab the wine, his shirt riding up on his hips again. His skin is so pale in the twilight. Brad wants to put his hands all over it. His mouth.
“Let’s go,” Ray says. “Can’t keep our adoring audience waiting.”
The driveway is long, but Brad wishes, foolishly, that it were longer, especially when Ray places his hand to the small of his back, guiding.
“What are you doing?”
Ray doesn’t even bother looking at him again.
“They’re watching from the windows,” he says, the words sliding easily from the side of his mouth. “Gotta give ‘em a good show, huh?”
Poke opens the door before Brad knocks, and maybe that’s good, maybe it’s better just to rip the bandaid off instead of having the choice to wait, but Brad’s resentful all the same. In the darkness, it was him and Ray, alone together. Brad’s resentful at the sudden lack of cover, and then annoyed at himself for it.
“Two minutes early,” Poke says, smug and triumphant. “Hey, G! I won the pool.”
“You placed a bet on when we’d get here?” Brad asks. “Why?”
“I had him blow me real early this morning to get it out of his system,” Ray says with a smug smile, the hand on Brad’s back squeezing tight. “This guy right here? Huge cocksucker. The biggest. He could slurp my johnson all day, homes. It is a treat.”
“Ray,” Brad grits, not entirely surprised to hear Poke echo it.
He’s almost positive that Poke will somehow pick up on his unease, point out the inconsistencies and catch them out right here. It wouldn’t be the worst thing. They’d probably even be able to laugh about it later.
“The last thing I need to hear about is how good Colbert looks on his knees,” Poke says, ushering them inside. “Not that I’m surprised.”
“You’re — what?” Brad asks, caught off guard, and then a second time when Gina glides into the room.
“Guys!” She croons, genuine fondness coloring her voice as she comes closer, kissing both their cheeks in welcome. “I’m so glad you could make it. We never have you over anymore, Brad. At least now I know why. I was starting to think we’d done something wrong.”
As he slides past her, Poke leans over, kissing Gina’s shoulder like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Brad knows Ray is looking at him, and that’s the only reason why he doesn’t look back.
“I just got busy,” Brad says, though there’s no real excuse as to why their bi-weekly dinners had fallen off the radar. “It’s no excuse, G. Thank you for having me,” Brad says, and then course corrects before Ray even has a chance to pinch him. “Thank you for having us. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
“Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.” They both agree.
She doesn’t make him grovel for too long, but she does make him help, leaving Ray in the dining room with Poke as they head into the kitchen to grab the wine, the bread, and the salad bowls.
“You look good,” she says when the door swings shut, leaning her hip against the counter and looking at him appraisingly.
“Thank you,” Brad says automatically, can feel himself flushing again, ducking his head and scratching idly at his neck.
Gina doesn’t say anything else for a while, and they spend some time loading the bowls, and slicing the bread into thick, evenly chopped chunks. He’s not naive enough to think he’ll get out of this evening scott free, but he’s still thrown off guard when she speaks.
“Tony calls you the Iceman, you know.” She is not shy about eye contact either, so Brad has no excuse to avoid her gaze. “He was worried you’d be alone for the long haul. We both were.”
Brad forces a laugh, says, “Sorry, G, but I doubt Poke was that concerned about where —”
He cuts himself off, but she does him the service of completing his sentence, eyes twinkling.
“About where you get your dick wet, you mean? Is that what you were going to say? I wouldn’t have been as crass as that, Bradley, and neither would my husband. What he was worried about was you being miserable and alone in your house with only your years and that bike for company.”
The anger surprises him, but that doesn’t mean it’s coming out of nowhere. This has been simmering for a while.
“What if I like being alone?” he asks, and she blinks, but she doesn’t stand down.
“That’s why this is so great,” she says, calm under her smile. “You don’t have to be anymore.”
;;
Dinner isn’t awkward, exactly.
“I just don’t understand what the debate is,” Poke says, once the food’s been served, and, conveniently, when Brad’s mouth is full. Ray’s never met a mouthful he couldn’t talk around. The only new part about this argument is that his hand is curled loosely against Brad’s wrist on the table.
“Did I just hear you defending Sixta, homes? I won't disrespect you in your own home, but that's a fucking dumbass thing to say.”
Poke holds his hands up like he's surrendering, but Brad has known him for long enough to see the gesture for what it is.
“He's a single cog in the machine,” Poke reasons. “The system isn't broken because one mid-level white man managed to get ahead. That’s all the proof you need that what they're doing already works. If that idiot can get ahead, I can too.”
Ray rolls his eyes, and Brad should say something, but Ray squeezes his wrist again, absently, like it's already a habit, so he doesn't.
“You wouldn't make that argument if the fuckwits we had to go through made decisions in your department. It's bullshit that tenured professors barely get a scratch on their records, even if a whole fucking department complains.”
“I want tenure,” Poke says, casual, easy, and Brad’s not surprised, but it's always a little alarming coming face to face with a person who freely speaks their desires. “I want job security, man. I want to make sure whatever kids I have can go to college for free and never deal with the same fear and oppression Gina and I dealt with.”
Gina laughs, holding her palms up in a mimicry of her husband. “He tries this with me all the time, but I always tell him, don’t look at me, baby. I went to a private catholic boarding school in Connecticut.”
Brad watches as Ray physically restrains himself from laughing. He meets Gina’s eyes across the table, and she's watching Ray, too, but mostly she's watching their hands, and the way Ray has given up on tugging on his wrist to slot their fingers together instead, sloppy and loose, but present. A link.
“You're on tenure track, right?” she asks, changing the subject, and it feels like it takes Brad more than a few seconds to both understand the question and remember how to make words.
“Yes,” he says, and doesn't add more, dropping his hands under the table to disentangle his fingers from Ray’s. He wipes his palms on the legs of his pants and can feel them sweating.
“That's because those corporate dicksucks think numbers are more important than the arts.” Ray takes a sip of his beer, and he's scowling behind it, but he and Poke have been having this fight, in one form or another, for as long as he's known them. It’s under control.
“Ray, you taught a session of Intro to Iambic Pentameter three years ago,” Brad says, stretching his arm along the back of Ray’s seat. “You think the Bard would've been able to get all those couplets down without numbers? Don’t be an idiot.”
Maybe the entire room doesn’t go silent, but there’s enough rushing in his ears that Brad feels like all the air gets sucked out of it anyway. He looks at Ray without really meaning to and Ray’s looking back, eyes wide. His mouth is hanging open slightly, like he’s gotten the wind knocked out of him.
“Gina,” he says, voice scratchy, fingers digging so hard into Brad’s thigh that he might have bruises later. “I think I left my oven on.”
He's up before Brad realizes, both hands pressed against him now, leaned onto his shoulders. The side of his pinkie slides against Brad’s neck accidentally on purpose, and he has to swallow the hiss it elicits.
“Your oven? Well, you need to go then. Fire safety is important,” Gina says. She's grinning at them and swatting Poke on the shoulder when he mutters something Brad can't hear under his breath.
“Thank you for having us in your lovely home,” Ray says, the words flat in his mouth, like he's reciting from a poorly written script.
“You're always welcome!”
“Please tell me you’re not actually leaving my house in the middle of dinner to go screw!” Poke adds, their voices overlapping.
Ray stops in the doorway, his palm pressed against Brad’s back again. “Probably good you didn’t invite your sister to this little party, G. This dude really likes getting dicked.”
They all laugh and say something else, but Brad can’t really hear them. It's like he's underwater. Brad’s self-aware enough to know that he’s never been snowed like this before. Ray’s completely blindsided him, and suddenly they’re outside, the evening providing just enough chill that it should shake him out of the stupor Ray’s knocked him into.
It should, but it doesn’t, and then they’re at the car. Ray says, “Get in, fuck. Get in.”
He feels hysterical, and the control he’s always prided himself in has basically eroded into nothing. Ray is manic in the driver’s seat, drumming the hand that’s not clamped onto Brad’s knee on the steering wheel in no discernable beat.
The silence between them should feel weirder, but mostly Brad ignores it by reminding himself how to breathe. He’s never been the kind of person to talk just to hear himself do it, but at the light two blocks down from Ray’s place, he makes an attempt.
“Do you—”
He tries, anyway. Ray cuts him off with a tight squeeze to his knee and words that come out from behind teeth that are so clenched it’s a miracle his jaw isn’t locked already.
“Don’t,” Ray says. “Unless you’re trying to narrow down a price, keep your mouth shut, okay?”
He seems to be waiting for a response, so Brad leans his head back against the rest and says, “Okay.”
;;
They don’t speak on the walk up to Ray’s apartment. After what seemed like hours with Ray’s hands all over him, Brad feels unbalanced at the loss of them. He wants to reach out, to touch Ray’s neck, his shoulders, to take his hand, maybe, but Ray has his fists balled in the pockets of his jacket, and he’s taking the stairs at double time, like he can’t be rid of Brad fast enough.
“Should I go?” Brad asks, when they hit the landing, and the lighting is better.
Ray scowls up at him. “You want to go, homes, it’s a free country.”
“What is your problem?” Brad asks, trying to keep his voice even.
Ray scowls at him fiercely. “Who says I have one? You’re the one who started all this bullshit.”
“I’m not arguing with you.” His voice comes out smoother than he would’ve anticipated.
“Yes, you fucking are,” Ray counters, sounding pissed. He jams his fingers against Brad’s chest, trying to shove him back.
Brad lets him. They’ve been friends for a long time, but if there’s one thing Brad has learned in his 31 years, it’s that friends come and go. They could bounce back from this, probably, in a while. Ray is persistent. Once he cools down, he’ll want things back to normal, and it will be fine.
“What do you want?” Brad asks.
“Who says I want anything?” Ray counters, but the scowl is starting to drop off his mouth, almost as quickly as it had appeared there.
“Ray.”
“No one’s ever paid to fuck me before,” he says. “I want to see what that would be like.” He keeps his chin tipped up, defiant. This would be easy, too. Easy to do, and easy to dismiss. Brad pays money to fuck all the time.
“Do I get a say?” Brad asks, and the way Ray flinches would be imperceptible to somebody who didn’t know him and wasn’t looking so hard.
“Do you need one?” Ray asks. “I’ll give you the best fuck of your life, homes,” he offers, trying on a smile. “Trust your ol’ pal Ray-Ray. This is a dicking you won’t forget.”
That seems to decide it. Ray unlocks the door to the apartment, and pushes inside without waiting for Brad’s to answer. Brad follows him.
“Who said I wanted to forget it?” Brad asks, toeing his shoes off at the door and shrugging off his coat. Ray’s tossed his hoodie over the back of the couch, and Brad gathers it up with his own and hangs it in the closet.
“What are you doing?” Ray asks, his voice cracking right in the middle of the word, violin-string tight.
“What am I doing?”
“I’m not saying you’re in love with me,” Ray says, and he tips his head back up again, meeting Brad’s eyes head on. If there’s one thing you can say about him, it’s that he faces up to everything, even if he is afraid. “I’m not saying that, Bradley, because it would be crazy.”
Brad nods. It would be crazy. He doesn’t deny it.
“Ask me if I can name a single one of the classes you taught three years ago,” Ray says, and Brad complies.
“Name—”
“I can’t,” Ray says, cutting him off. “The way I see it, this shared hysteria can only be one of two things. One: you’re a Talented Mr. Ripley-type. Leaning my secrets, developing a pattern, earning my trust, and then bam, you smother me to death with a pillow that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow and it’s bye-bye Dickie Greenleaf.”
The laugh comes out of nowhere. Brad’s not a miserable guy, just not one accustomed to laughing out loud. He can’t help it, and Ray laughs too, sheepish and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm.
“Ray,” he says, when he has himself together. “That stretches the credibility, doesn’t it? Why would I give up my name, my money, and my tenure to take over the existence of a goat-fucking ingrate from ass-end Missouri? Unlikely. What’s my other option?”
Ray’s grinning at him like he can’t help it, and for the first time in what feels like days, he turns away, shaking his head and taking a deep breath like he needs to center himself.
“You can’t be in love with me, homes,” he says, taking another breath and then chugging a bottle of water he grabs from the fridge.
“Are you in love with me?” Brad asks, watching the long line of his back.
Ray is graceful in a way a lot of people aren’t, in ways that no one notices. He’s small, and string bean thin, but when he moves, it’s like he’s dancing. Brad doesn’t know how long he’s been watching, but it’s been a while. Long enough to imagine all the different things Ray can do when he twists and shakes. If Ray can pretend he’s not afraid, Brad can do a fair approximation of the same.
He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but it’s not for Ray to say, “Those would be some five dollar words for somebody I haven’t even fucked yet.”
They both laugh again, but the sound is tight and coiled, springing. Standing there, in the middle of Ray’s apartment, Brad moves first, taking the length of the room in three long strides. He presses his hands to either side of Ray’s face, sliding his thumbs up and running them against the hollows of his eyes. He can feel Ray’s lashes fluttering against his skin. It’s the lightest kind of pressure.
“When was the last time you had sex without paying for it?” He croaks the words out like he hasn’t spoken in hours.
“A while,” Brad says, keeping his voice at a similar pitch. “A year, probably? Maybe longer.” Ray nods, like that’s all he needed to hear, surging up so fast it’s sheer luck that their teeth don’t click together. He kisses like he does everything else — domineering and passionate and fast, hands everywhere.
They hit the wall just as Brad realizes they’ve been moving at all, his foot knocking over the half-filled water bottle Ray had left on the floor. It tips, water spilling onto the carpet.
“Ray,” he groans, tugging away to mention it. “The carpet —”
“Jesus Christ,” Ray mutters, biting, the words pressed against the underside of Brad’s jaw. “You think I didn’t notice? You think I fucking care about the floor right now? Kiss me again, and if you feel so bad about it, pay to get the carpet shampooed, Tenure Track. Later.”
Ray’s too short to sustain the kiss like this, so Brad slides his hands down, wrapping them tightly around his hips, and lifting, angling their bodies well enough that Ray can wrap one leg around his waist.
“I have a bed,” he says, panting. Brad kisses him again, and again, feels like he’s been drowning without it, and Ray’s head falls back against the wall with a dull thud. He grunts when Brad allows himself to pull away, sliding down the wall with his eyes closed and his breaths heavy. “Last chance to pull out, homes.”
He snickers at his own joke, and Brad finds himself smiling too. He doesn’t even bother hiding it.
“I don’t want to,” he says. When Ray opens his eyes his pupils so blown that he looks high.
“Fuck, okay. Fuck. I’m not asking again, so if you pussy out on me after we do this, I am kicking your ass so hard.” He pushes both of them away from the wall, tugging off his button-up one handed. His pants are next, and by the time Brad’s followed him into the small bedroom, he’s naked, lounging on his perfectly made bed, stroking himself casually.
“Did you clean up in here?” Brad asks, stalling for time to get his heart to stop pounding. Ray just stares at him, unanswering, and he doesn’t waste time in taking off his own clothes. “Were you expecting this to happen?”
“No,” Ray says, honestly. “But have you seen yourself, you giant beast? If I convinced you to come back here, I wasn’t going to waste any time by offending your neat-freak sensibilities and risk having you leave.”
He doesn’t blush, just tips his head back against his mountain of pillows and strokes himself again. He’s not all the way hard, but he’s getting there. Brad watches the way his hands move, trying to memorize it. Brad drops his jeans and kneels on the bed, crawling up the mattress to fit himself between Ray’s legs.
“Hi,” Ray says, sounding strangled, and leaning up for another kiss. His mouth is unrelenting, his hands don’t stop, and Brad is so hard against the mattress that he’s leaking already.
“Hi,” Brad replies inanely, staring. Ray’s chest is flushed, and his pale skin is flooded with color everywhere. It doesn’t stop at his cheeks, or neck, or throat. The tint spreads further, everywhere, and Brad follows it with his fingers, getting distracted once he reaches the tattoos, and can trace them instead. “What do you want?”
Ray takes one breath, and then another, and then he says, “Normally, this is the part where I say, ‘go to town, just touch me, Ray-Ray likes everything,’ but I have the feeling that you’d spend the next ninety minutes just touching, and that would be fucking unacceptable, Bradley. My dick is so hard.”
“All I want to do is touch you,” Brad says honestly. It’s terrifying to say out loud, feels like he’s allowed himself to jump off the highest precipice imaginable with no safety net, but it feels exhilarating, too.
Maybe this feeling is why Poke just says whatever he wants. Maybe he expects it to feel this good when he actually gets it. The blanket crinkles beneath them like it’s new, probably because it is. Brad focuses on the sound instead of the way his breaths come too fast, or how soft Ray’s skin feels beneath his own.
“What do you want?” he asks, because Ray’s eyes have tipped closed again.
It takes him a while to answer, which is probably a first. Brad takes it as an opportunity not to stop touching him.
Ray opens his eyes when he answers. “A blowjob, world peace, and for the Royals to win the World Series. I’m not picky about the order.”
“Okay,” Brad agrees, sitting back on his heels. “I’ll see what I can do about the last two tomorrow.”
He’d been in eleventh grade the last time he’d sucked dick, so it’s been a while. It’s not exactly like riding a bike, but the feel of a cock on his tongue is familiar enough that his sense memories recall it. When he strokes his own hand over Ray’s dick, they groan in unison, the loudness of the sounds overlapping in the otherwise quiet room.
“Jesus fuck, your hands are big,” Ray mutters, and his voice sounds scratched up again, like he’s the one that’s been sucking dick, like he’s been doing it for hours. “I only got a half a second to look, homes. Please tell me your little guy isn’t all that little, either.”
Brad’s penis is respectable; longer than average, slimmer than average, but overall well-proportioned.
“Not little,” he agrees cheerfully, and then he sinks down, bracketing Ray’s thighs with his forearms, and taking him in. Ray’s cock isn’t small, incongruous with his slim frame. He’s short, and fat, and he’s dripping, chubbed up against Brad’s fingers.
He can’t take all of it in on the first pass, but that seems to be okay. Ray settles his fingers on the back of his neck, not holding, and not tugging, and not guiding, just present, gasping above him. The second time he ducks down, Brad breathes in through his nose, unwraps his fingers and takes all of Ray inside his mouth.
“Can I,” Ray groans, and he’s gasping, rolling his hips up. He’s always been a blur of noise and commotion, and now is no different. The noises out of his mouth make him sound like he’s straight out of porn, and they go straight to Brad’s own dick, hard against the mattress. “God fucking shit. Damn, I am not going to last. Please tell me I can fucking come in your mouth, Jesus, your mouth. Can I, please?”
“Yes,” Brad agrees, pulling back far enough that he can watch his words leave goose pimples against Ray’s skin. He pinches Ray’s hip and ducks back in, hollowing his cheeks and sucking hard, not stopping until the spots start to crowd his vision.
“Fuck,” Ray groans above him, his hand curled into a loose fist that bumps against Brad’s shoulder on every breath.
The rhythm is something only he can hear, but that Brad is finally starting to recognize. It’s easy to lose time like this. Brad gets comfortable hunched between Ray’s hips, works his hand down between his legs to adjust himself, squeezing the base, and his balls, trying to regain some control.
He doesn’t want to come first.
Ray’s hands are looped around his neck in a terrible facsimile of a slow dance, and the noises he makes are harsh and rough, guttural. He hunches in over himself when he comes, thunking a loosely wrapped fist against Brad’s shoulder, and shouting so loud the neighbors can probably hear.
“Fuck,” he says, and it’s like a dam’s burst, the way the words start pouring out of him again. “Did you know you were that fucking good at that? Did you have any fucking idea? People should be paying you, homes. You’re a phenomenon. You’re a fucking record breaker. I’m going to call those Ripley’s people tomorrow before class tomorrow. This has to be —”
Brad comes, bucking into his own fist. He rolls slightly, pressing his sweaty forehead against Ray’s thigh, and pressing a messy kiss there, because the bare skin is in front of him and he can.
“Did you just,” Ray asks, letting the sentence dangle.
“Yes,” Brad agrees, instead of trying for something clever.
Ray’s grinning from ear-to-ear when he says, “So really what you’re saying is that I made you come with just my words and my proximity. Hearing my voice made you bust a nut. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I didn’t actually tell you anything,” Brad says, no heat in it as he rolls onto his back. It doesn’t take long for Ray to push himself up and roll over, creating a space for himself at Brad’s side.
“You want me to get a towel?” Ray asks. His voice sounds fucked six ways from Tuesday. For some asinine reason, that makes Brad grin.
“No,” Brad says, drifting slightly. He rarely naps after sex, but now he feels exhausted with it. He burrows down against the blanket again, keeping his eyes closed, and Ray burrows with him, keeping his head on Brad’s chest.
“Okay,” he concedes. “When you’re gross tomorrow, don’t complain to me about it, homes. This is a,” he cuts himself off with a yawn, and then opens his eyes, turning his face up just slightly enough that they’re staring at each other again. “This is a decision of your own making, babe.”
They should probably talk now, probably. Ray’s given him the perfect opportunity. “Noted,” he says, falling asleep to the soft sounds of Ray’s even breathing.
;;
It’s a seven mile loop between Brad’s apartment and the main campus, and he runs it every morning, weather permitting, and sometimes even when it’s not. His alarm goes off at 4:30am, the way it always does, but when Brad opens his eyes to the incessant buzzing, his surroundings aren’t immediately familiar. The light filtering into the room is different.
The displacement doesn’t last long, not with Ray’s face mashed against his neck, and his words slurring a litany of, “Off, off, off, off, Jesus, turn it off, I don’t have my seminar until eleven, you fucking animal.”
“Sorry,” Brad says, accidentally whispering the words against Ray’s skin. His throat hurts, mouth tingling in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant.
His jaw feels numb and as he rolls toward the side of the bed where his pants are, he rubs idly with his free hand, thumbing off the remainder of the alarms, and turning the phone to silent before shoving it back into his jeans.
“Sorry,” he repeats, and Ray’s not awake enough to sulk, but he would if he could keep his eyes open for long enough.
“I’d say your punishment was a blowjob, but apparently, you like those,” Ray mumbles, rolling closer and fitting his arm against Brad’s belly, pulling him in tight, in a half-horizontal spoon.
“You want one?” Brad asks, and if he possessed the capability of surprising himself anymore, this would do it. He sounds eager, and he’s not the only one who can hear it. Ray blinks one eye open, peering at him seriously.
“Are you some kind of suck-job ninja?” he asks. “Tell me now, homes. I might never let you get out of this bed again.”
“I guess I just like giving head,” Brad says, shrugging as much as is possible with a fully grown man draped across his torso. “A lot of people like it, Ray. It’s not a big deal.”
“Not a big — ” Ray starts, half sitting up and already sounding more awake. “Buddy, I don’t know what those hookers of yours have been telling you, but here in Casa de Ray-Ray, we hold blowjobs in the highest esteem.”
Brad laughs, and once he starts, it’s the kind of thing he can’t stop, not even when he presses his hands to his mouth to keep in the sounds. Ray watches him warily for a while, but eventually he joins in the spectacle, too. He’s never been one who took being left out well.
“Ray, if we’re going to continue sleeping together, I have to insist you don’t refer to yourself in the third person.”
The laughter dries up pretty quickly after that.
Now, they’re both awake, Ray scratching at his neck idly before he says, “So, not a one-time deal thing, then.”
“No,” Brad says, evenly as he can. “Unless that’s what you wanted.” The silence creeps back in again, and Brad breathes through it, eyes closed to protect himself. Instead of answering, Ray burrows next to him again, his head pressed against Brad’s chest.
“Is this some sort of Girlfriend Experience thing?” he asks. “You want to get me off the streets and safe tucked up in your bed? You know it’s going to cost you.”
“I have the money,” Brad says. “You won’t ever have to worry about your brain-dead sister-fucking parents or their caravan of animals having problems ever again.”
“Phew, that's a relief,” Ray agrees, burrowing deeper against his side. “Mama’s tooth problem was getting kind of out of control.”
“There is not enough money in the world to fix that problem, Ray.” He’s watching closely, sees the exact moment when Ray starts to laugh again.
Ray punches him, not quite as hard as Poke had, but in exactly the same spot. It takes more effort than expected to mask his wince.
“Sorry, homes,” he says. “I can make fun of my goat-fucking, inbred relations, but anybody else that does it gets an assbeating.” When Brad laughs, he says, “I don’t make the rules, man, but I do adhere to them.”
It’s a valiant effort, but can’t keep a straight face for longer than a few seconds, ducking his head down and pressing a kiss against Brad’s neck. Brad’s a vocal guy, always has been in bed, and he gasps, closing his eyes and letting Ray’s mouth work its magic.
“You like that?” he asks. He bites down. “You want me to mark you up all over?”
It’s not something Brad’s ever wanted before. At least not out loud. “Yes,” he says. “Please.”