mmm, tim hudson
Lick his shoulder. Shake the salt. Take your shot. Lick his shoulder again.
Deep breath.
You’re trying not to show it, face winced manfully. Drinking tequila, goddamn right. This must be Mexico.
“Tell me something, man.”
You look over at him. He’s wearing his blue hoodie with nothing on underneath, unzipped halfway and pulled off one shoulder. Easy access, and the wet stripe above his collarbone. His neck’s flushed and his eyes are barely open, eyelids gluey.
“Tell you what?”
He pushes his knee against your side. “Fuckin’, I’m supposed to be the fuckin’ rookie, you’re supposed to tell me stuff.”
“Is that how it works?”
He grins, palm-rasps a hand over his head. You remember when Tim Hudson first showed up with his head shaved and you kept putting him into a headlock, rubbing for good luck. You remember months of your ribs being bruised, ‘cause Hudson throws elbows by instinct.
You pour a shot. “Drink that.”
He takes the glass, makes his eyes big. “Do the lime thing.”
You fish a lime wedge out of the plastic cup, and your foot is on top of his on the floor, but you don’t think he’s noticed. Bony pokey guy’s foot, little curls of hair on his toes. You fit a hand around the back of his neck, you say, “Go.”
He tosses back the shot, his neck bending against your fingers. Before his eyes can water, you push the lime into his mouth. He sucks hard, cheeks hollowed, and there is one tear that leaks out the corner of his eye, rolling down into his five o’clock shadow.
You can feel his tongue against your fingertips, everything’s getting mixed up and he’s sucking on your fingers, teeth scraping at the calluses.
You pull your hand free and hold it under his chin for him to spit the desiccated lime out. He smiles at you with watery eyes and there are pale green pieces of lime between his teeth.
You touch your hand to his chest. His skin’s so hot you expect to see steam. You press the seam of the zipper with your thumb and he jerks a little bit, cold metal. He looks confused and you think of Tim Hudson saying, “Get down on your knees.”
You stand up, walk over to the window. There’s an awful lot of neon out there, and because you’re not really that drunk yet, you realize that the signs are in English.
“This isn’t Mexico.”
He laughs behind you, and you can hear the bed murmur as he lies down. “Jesus, how’s a guy get as smart as you?”
You turn back. He’s got his glove on and is tossing a ball up, snatching it out of the air. The good familiar sound, probably you know that as well as anything.
“Weren’t we going to Mexico?” you ask, because you’re not entirely sure.
He tips his head back, looks at you upside-down. You can see down the open vee of his sweatshirt, the tensed shadowy muscles of his stomach.
“We got sidetracked. By tequila. Or something.” He snickers at his own little joke, scratches at his chest. You can see the pale red marks of his nails, and they fade so quick. His glove is resting on his hip, and the ball trips out onto his stomach, bouncing off when he breathes.
This fucking kid. What the fuck are you doing down here?
You go over and sit back down on the bed next to him. You pull his glove off and thump it to the floor. He moves to sit up and you put your hand on his bare shoulder, holding him down. “Stay.”
He blinks up at you, and you think he hasn’t learned half what he should have for being a year in now, because he still trusts you and still does what you say.
You get the bottle and the salt shaker off the nightstand. You lean down and drag your tongue on his chest, dead in the center where his sternum is dented. His breath hitches and his hand goes to your arm, but when you straighten, he lets it fall.
You tap out a thin scatter of salt on the damp track, and take your shot straight from the bottle. It rips your throat open and you gasp. Your eyes are closed when you lean back down, your knuckles on his side, the hoodie soft like something owned since high school. You find your way by smell, by taste, clean sweat, the sudden sharp bite of the salt, and you lick hard, feeling him shudder a little bit.
You lift your head and your hand is still on his side, your thumb pressing up under his rib. He stares at you, his mouth wet and slightly open, and you smirk at him.
He bites his lip and looks past you to the ceiling. He’s let the chin scruff grow back in again. You remember being drunk and a rookie yourself, way the fuck back when, pulling on Hudson’s scruff, until he knocked your hand away and said, “Christ, lefty, just ‘cause you can’t grow facial hair, leave mine alone.”
You can grow facial hair, goddamn it.
You balance the tequila bottle carefully on his stomach. It rocks back and forth gently, before he folds his hand around the neck of it and keeps it still. “Your turn,” you say.
He sits up. The hoodie is still falling off his shoulder and it should make him look like a girl or something, but his shoulder is hard and so is his chest and there’s really no mistaking him.
You’re not expecting it, and he fists his hand on your back, in the material of your shirt, and he levers against you and his forearm braced strong and he pushes you facedown on the bed. You go without protest, burying your face in the sheets. Your legs are still over the side of the bed, your hips cocked and you’re all twisted up. He hooks his thumb in your belt loop and rolls you all the way over.
You taste the rough of the linen, and the whole surface of your skin is tingling. He’s edging your T-shirt, sliding it up. You can feel his hands hot on your back, the cotton brush of his hoodie sleeves. When your shirt is bunched up at the back of your neck, there’s a pause, and then his mouth is on your shoulder blade.
It’s not the casual sweep of tongue for a body shot, it’s open and slick and bracketed rakes of teeth, and you push your face as hard as you can into the mattress. When he moves away, the air hits and goosebumps itch across your skin. You hear him moving and he’s straddling one of your legs. The salt rustles from the shaker, tickles you but you keep still, and you hear the gurgling sound of the tequila, the three clicks of his throat swallowing, and he takes a bigger shot than you would have thought he had the stomach for.
Your hands are clenched in the sheets and you’re waiting for his mouth to come back.
It comes back and feels like a brand, his hands curved in parentheses around your sides. His fingers tap and tatter and he licks the salt away, breathes for just a moment on the wet skin. You shiver, you bite the sheets, you squeeze your eyes shut.
It’s worse now, his mouth shaping your shoulder blade and then sliding down into the valley, following the path of your spine. His five o’clock shadow scuffs and his tongue counts each notch. His fingers slip into the waist of your jeans and he tugs impatiently.
He gets to the small of your back and this is fucking impossible, it must be. It’s all teeth and tongue and his hands are on your ass and you’re mumbling into the bed, “Tim, fuck, Tim.”
He stops.
He rests his chin for a moment on your back, and you’re shaking, making these terrible little mewling sounds and pushing back against him.
He sits up and you moan as he takes his hands away. He leaves your shirt pulled up and your back feels licked all over, gleaming. The bed shifts as he stands, and you roll over, staring at him. He’s deeply red, the blush stretching down his neck to his chest, and his hands are unsteady as he jerks the zipper of his hoodie up.
“What the fuck,” he says. “Is that why you brought me down here?”
You push up on your hands. “Is that why you came along?”
His mouth snarls. “At least I know who I’m trying to fuck.”
You don’t care. You should be embarrassed but you aren’t. You wish he hadn’t heard, so that he would have still fucked you. If you only had a little bit more of the covers in your mouth, muffled just a little bit more, he would have heard his own name, even though their names are nothing alike. But he would have heard what he wants to hear.
“Don’t be so fucking picky. This isn’t even Mexico.” You’re not sure if that makes sense, because maybe you’re drunk now.
He shakes his head. It doesn’t look like he understands that, but you can hardly blame him. His face looks strange, tight and angry, and you think about his forearm across your back, pressing you down. You think about winding your hand in Hudson’s jersey and pulling him off balance, just so that he would get irritated and flip you into the wall, the flat strength of his hand on your chest.
“So . . . you and Huddy,” he says, digging his hands into his pockets.
You twitch involuntarily. “No.” He raises an eyebrow, and you scowl. “No me and Huddy.”
He doesn’t believe you, but he doesn’t really want to talk about it, anyway. “Then what the hell, dude?”
You make a violent joyless smile, your eyes feeling burned dry.
“A guy can dream, can’t he?” you say, and you’re thinking about Tim Hudson’s hands in your hair, clawed fingers on your ears, and his throat-deep growl when he comes that’s pitched so low it’s vibration more than sound. You’re thinking about perfect taut skin and small teeth gnawing on your shoulder. You’re thinking about Tim Hudson, smaller and stronger than you, holding you down and his frayed breath scalded on the back of your neck.
A guy can dream, when a dream is all a guy’s gonna get.
THE END