Tube - 2. Chapter 2

So there we were. Me, Tony Ronnig, and the guy I had pined after for eight months, Rory Geathers, in this tube. Naked. Really close together. And instead of throwing myself into his arms and kissing him, which is what I really wanted to do, we were just hanging there in space analyzing the situation and how it had come to be. UGH.

"Do you know anything about quantum theory, Tony?"

You've GOT to be kidding me.

"Time cones, strings, alternate possibilities?" I asked.

Rory shifted uncomfortably against the tube, which caused his mouth-watering goods to roll slightly and push forward one slow centimeter. Not that I noticed such things.

"Yeah, kind of," he said. He was nervous. I knew that many people considered Rory to be just another dumb jock. It was partly because of the baby teeth and his constant smiling, but also because he had a really corny Midwestern accent that sounded like the slow guy who washed your window at a full-service gas station on the Interstate.

That's what my friend Kyle said about him, and I wanted to punch him when he said that. I knew Rory was smart, because of a report he delivered in class one day a few months ago. I had blissed out listening to his voice.

It wasn't goofy to me. It sounded like sweet honey syrup pouring slowly over his words, and I found it irresistible. But I could also kind of see Kyle's point... if you didn't know Rory was smart, if you weren't head over heels in love with him, and if you didn't see what I saw now -- his absolutely adorable shyness about his intellect -- he might have come across as somewhat thick.

I knew he didn't want to seem smart, but I didn't know why. And all I wanted to do in that moment... besides licking the small bead of sweat running tantalizingly from his neck down the middle of his smooth, pale torso... was to encourage him. So I said...

"You think we may have entered an alternate universe. I don't know if that lets me off the hook."

"It doesn't," he smiled. "You're thinking about magic or the supernatural. But just suppose that there's a cone of possibilities... like what Hawking described, okay?"

I looked into his vulpine gray eyes, which were narrowed in thought. I was intrigued, not the least because he'd already doped out my fear that my lust for him had triggered some weird magical event. I probably read too much fantasy, okay? Anyway, he had me focusing on something other than that bead of sweat, so I was good.

"Okay..."

"So what if you looked at me... we were outside Mrs. Arispe's class, right?"

"Right."

"So when you looked at me..." He stopped, and I could see the blush rising in his cheeks.

"Go on."

"You looked at me and got turned on, right? I mean, not that I think I'm all that, because I'm not..."

I dared to lightly touch his chest with my fingertips, and he didn't flinch.

"But you are," I whispered.

The words had almost caught in my throat. But things were different here.

"Okay," he sighed. "Okay. But you did, right?"

"Yes," I admitted.

"So what if, in that moment, you created another reality? Another ray of possibility for yourself? You looked at me and saw what you wanted to happen. But in that line, I'm with Amanda, we're not really that close... okay, close at all... but you wanted this. Me, you. Naked. Alone. In this tube. I can't run away, I can't go throw on some clothes. Amanda isn't here. Just me and you. You're still touching me."

I pulled my hand away, blushing furiously. Rory grinned, flashing those gleaming white babies.

"It's okay, man," he said. "This is... fascinating. Weird, but fascinating."

"Rory's Big Gay Adventure," I smirked. This was a game to him. Just another theoretical exercise for that amazing brain.

That amazing straight brain. I was starting to get pissed, and he could tell.

"Nah, Tony," he said gently. He clasped his warm, amazing hands on my naked shoulders. I looked into his eyes and fell. "This is your big adventure. I'm just along for the ride."

I thought about it for a moment, but something about his theory didn't ring true. But his hands, those long, perfect piano-player fingers were on my skin, and I was unashamedly hard as steel, occasionally grazing ever so slightly against his toned, pale thighs. And something else. I was grazing against something else, too, and it was warm and soft and velvety smooth and rock hard all at the same time and... but that was the problem, wasn't it?

"I have a problem with your theory," I managed, still blushing.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." I boldly slid my fingers around his tumescent boyhood. "This, for example. I mean, it's amazing and I love it and I've dreamed about nothing else for eight months... but it's bullshit."

Rory frowned briefly, then that ever-present grin appeared once more.

"It's not bullshit," he whispered. "It's true. And it's for you."

"That's the fucking problem!" I was frustrated, and smacked his penis against his smooth abdomen as I released it. "It's not for me. It's for Amanda. And if this is my 'line of possibility' or whatever the hell you're saying, and you're in it..."

Rory cocked his head in puzzlement, and then a slow light dawned in those beautiful gray eyes.

"I'm not really me," he breathed. "You think that I'm not really the true version of myself if I'm here. I'm just the version that you created to fit in with the reality you want."

I looked at him sorrowfully and nodded, a lone tear falling down my cheek. Rory regarded me for a moment with something between pity and empathy, then leaned his head forward and slowly licked the tear away.

"If that's true," he said, "then that didn't mean anything. And none of this..."

He placed his palm flat against my flagging erection, stroking it back to life.

"...none of this does either."

I gasped, but shook my head back and forth, more tears coming now.

"It doesn't! If what you say is true, you might as well just be a clone or a robot! The real Rory... the one I love... he's still back there in that other timeline. He's said bye to Amanda, just acknowledged my presence, and gone on to his seat. If I ever told THAT Rory I wanted him to kiss me, he'd..."

And then he kissed me.

He did. Rory Geathers... or my ideal Rory Geathers... or whoever he was... he kissed me. And he kissed me softly, deeply, and passionately, holding my head in both hands and making sweet, beautiful love to my mouth with his lips and tongue and... his heart?

After a few minutes of amazing bliss, he pulled slowly away and fixed my gaze with his.

"Did that feel like a fake Rory?" he asked, his ebullient grin as wide as ever.

"No," I whispered. "But it wouldn't. Not in my world."

Rory chuckled and wrapped his arms around me, drawing me close to him. He leaned his head against mine, dark hair on dishwater blond, and inhaled deeply.

"Pink grapefruit," he sighed.

"My Rory would know that," I whispered despairingly, leaning in to the comfort of his sweet, warm neck. "The real Rory..."

"Would know that too," he said. "Amanda has breakouts and uses some pink grapefruit scrub on her back. You don't know a lot of things, Tony. You don't know about me and Amanda."

I chuckled bitterly.

"I know enough to know that my Rory even knows Amanda's backscrub in my fucking fantasy."

Rory giggled. "This isn't just your fantasy, Tony."

I pulled away and looked into those steely eyes. They seemed softer now, like dissipating gray clouds.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't think you can just create alternate versions of people. I'm me, and I'm in this too. And in case you haven't figured it out, it's my fantasy too. Or reality... or whatever."

I felt his hardened boyhood pulse against my stomach, and glanced down to see a bead of shiny fluid at its pink, inviting tip.

But my stupid mind just wouldn't stop working.

"In case I haven't figured it out?" I pulled away, at least as far away as the tube would allow me to do. "What are you even talking about? I never got any clue that you would feel this way in real life, and of course you have a boner HERE because this is what I would want to happen."

Rory gave me a seductive smirk, baby teeth and all.

"What else would you like to happen," he asked.

It was then that I knew. Yeah, fuck me. I knew.

"Nothing," I said, and my own stiffness went away to softness. "I don't want anything to happen because it isn't real. I only want you if you're real and you feel the same as I do and you aren't and you don't."

Rory nodded, taking a deep breath. Then it all came out.

"I date Amanda for appearances. My parents want me to be normal. Ever since I told them, they have MADE me be normal. And Amanda... she's nothing BUT normal. Why do I talk to you, Tony? Some random guy who never talks to anyone else but that tool Kyle Coogan? Why do I always stop whatever I'm doing to say hi to you in the halls? It's because I've been crazy about you since the first time I saw your stupid face. So you just..."

He trailed off, his face red, and I saw those gray eyes get wet.

"...you just can't, can you?" he said. "Because this is just what I'd say if this was your fantasy."

I nodded sadly. It was over. The tube was nothing. This was nothing.

Rory lifted my chin with one long, beautiful finger and looked deeply into my eyes.

"I want to try something," he said. "My mom told me about this old Russian actor, Peter Ustinov. He said 'Love is an endless act of forgiveness. A tender look which becomes a habit.' Look in my eyes."

I did, and what I saw was more than a tender look. It was all the love, forgiveness, tenderness, acceptance and desire for which I ever could have hoped, yearned, or dreamed.

"Oh, shit," I mumbled. Even if he was a fake, a clone made up by my stupid, lonely mind, I was falling into those eyes again. I had to stop. I shut my eyes as tight as I could, pushing my naked back against the tube as hard as I could. Shut those eyes, Tony. Tight, tight, tight. Don't look. Don't look. It's not real. It's not real.

* * * * *

I opened my eyes.

Mrs. Arispe was just finishing her lesson, a review of everything we'd studied that semester, and I had missed the whole thing. And the test was tomorrow. Epic.

The bell rang and I got up from my desk, my neck and back stiff from what I imagined was a long and disappointing dream. I glanced across the room at my best friend Kyle, who caught my eye and made that stupid 'tut-tut' motion with his fingers, a wide grin on his pudgy face.

I cracked my neck, looking over at Rory Geathers' desk. He had already left the classroom, no doubt headed to the Pepto-pink lips of Amanda Minkins and whatever joys they afforded. I sighed heavily. I didn't mind daydreams, but did they have to be so fucking depressing?

Rory had left a piece of paper on his desk, though, and my curiosity (and desire to be close to anything having to do with him) drew me over. It was a sheet of notebook paper, torn carefully from what I knew was Rory's green spiral notebook. It lay in the middle of the desktop, face down, and I took advantage of the general post-class confusion to work my way over to it.

Something clicked in my mind, though. Something told me that when I turned that piece of paper over, it would rock the very foundations of my world.

And it did.

Written on the paper, in blue ballpoint pen and Rory's very careful handwriting, was a quote.

"Love is an endless act of forgiveness. A tender look which becomes a habit." - Peter Ustinov.

I looked up from the paper toward the door of the classroom.

Was he there?

Of course he was.

* * * * *