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"So, what did you do last night?" Liz asks, peaking ahead of the line. It's early, but the Student Center coffee shop is always crowded.
Michael smiles dreamily, and Liz rolls her eyes.
"Oh, no!" she cries, dropping her forehead against his shoulder and shaking her head dramatically. "Not again, Mikey!"
"I can't help it!" Michael laughs. "His voice , Liz!"
"You're gonna blow your stipend calling a phone sex line!" Liz hisses, hooking her arm in the crook of his elbow.
He scoffs and shakes his head, but she sort of has a point.
It had started with a frat party and a tipsy, handsy make-out session. With a guy. Michael has always been comfortable admitting that many men, as well as women, are, objectively, smokin’ hot. He’s an open-minded kinda guy. But that night, sucking on the bottom lip of a very cute, very male English major with striking green eyes while trying to slide his hand inexpertly down said English major’s pants, Michael had realized he might be a little more than open-minded. When he saw a tattered flyer at his bus stop declaring “Talk to Real LGBTQ Folks in Your Area!” he thought it was a helpline and shoved one of the little tearaway strips of paper in his pocket. Leave it to Michael Guerin to call a phone sex line by mistake.
The first time he’d called had been an accident. All the other times—thirteen, by his best estimation—were fate. Because Michael Guerin is in love with Operator 4647. Alex . At least, that’s the name he uses when he takes Michael apart piece by piece with only the low, rumbling heat of his voice that flows like liquid through Michael’s phone and drips down his spine, leaves him boneless and shivering on his too-small twin mattress. And it’s not just the sex. Alex lets details slip if Michael is patient and doesn’t press too hard too fast, and Michael is head-over-heels for the smart, witty, maybe a little haunted man Michael’s constructed from those crumbs. Sometimes Michael makes him laugh, high and breathy, and Michael’s glad he isn’t pursuing music after all because no instrument can produce a sound as sweet as that. Other times Alex is sullen, sticks to the script.
“Oh, yeah,” he assures Michael on a good day, “there’s a script. ”
And Michael quickly replies, “Throw it out.”
On those calls, Michael cradles his phone like it’s Alex’s cheek and whispers, “Don’t. We’ll just sit here. It’s okay.” He’s paid $45 to bear witness to fifty minutes of Alex’s heavy silence.
Michael listens to Liz chat excitedly about their upcoming biochemistry lab, ordering an iced caramel latte for himself and a drip coffee for Liz, and they move to the side to let the next customer, a tan, attractively boyish student with messy hair and dark eyes, approach the till.
“Chai latte to go, please,” Michael hears him order as Liz hands him his open drink.
He freezes. Michael knows that voice. He knows it from his dreams, waking and asleep. He knows it from every dirty fantasy he's had in the past month, when he's working himself over in the shower, leaning against the tile of the stall and biting down on his forearm to keep quiet. He knows it from last night.
He whips around and runs latte-first into the man—into Alex —and his cold, milky, syrupy drink explodes like a water balloon between them, soaking Alex’s tee shirt. When Michael looks up in horror, he even sees drops of it rolling down Alex’s chin and neck.
“What the fuck ?!” Alex growls, glaring at Michael coldly.
“I’m so sorry, Alex,” Michael says, unthinking. “I’m so sorry.”
Alex pulls his shoulders back quickly, spine painfully straight, narrows his eyes, and speaks. But his posture draws Michael’s attention to the impressive width and strength of his shoulders and the way his nipples are hard beneath his wet shirt, and he misses what Alex actually says.
“Wha’?” Michael asks in a daze.
“I said how do you know my name?” Alex demands, and Michael bites his lip.
“It’s me,” he says. “It’s Michael.”
“Michael? I don’t kno-” Alex’s mouth drops open and Michael smiles at him hopefully, but Alex only pales and mutters, “Shit,” under his breath. The barista calls Alex’s name and Michael grabs his drink, holding it out to him and willing Alex to take it, desperate to share something tangible between them. Alex takes the cup by the mouth, carefully avoiding Michael’s fingers wrapped around the base of the cup. Michael is anxious to keep Alex talking, to extend the time that he’s standing right here , in front of Michael, beautiful and solid.
"W-wow," Michael says. "You really don't have a face for voice work."
"Excuse me?"
"You know what they say," he babbles. "You have a face for voice work if you're-uh. If you're not. But y-you're. You're fucking gorgeous."
Alex stares and when Michael glances behind him for back-up he can't even catch Liz's eyes, the curtain of her hair hiding her face as she drops her head in her hands and shakes it slowly.
Very, very hesitantly, though, Alex smiles, looking down into his open drink in what Michael desperately hopes is fond amusement.
“Wow,” he breathes, “You really are you , huh?”
Michael laughs in hysterical relief and even Liz chuckles.
“Ain’t that the truth,” she says, and points over her shoulder. “I’m gonna go. See you in lab, Mikey.”
Michael barely spares her a glance as he waves distractedly.
“Your name’s really Alex?” Michael asks in wonder. “That’s the truth?”
“Everything I told you is the truth,” Alex says softly, his shoulders lifting in a self-conscious shrug.
“Go out with me,” Michael practically shouts, and Alex jumps as though frightened. “ Please .”
“I’m not gonna sleep with you,” Alex says wearily. “That’s just a job. I got massive loans and full class load and work-study during the day.”
Shit , Michael didn’t even think about the implications of his question, of meeting Alex as the guy that talks him off twice a week and then asking him to fucking dinner the first time they meet in person . He raises his hands in the air in a gesture of innocence, the remnants of his spilled latte sliding messily down his arm from the sideways cup still in his grip.
“I won’t even try to kiss you,” he says.
Alex raises a skeptical brow and Michael puts his free hand over his heart.
"I promise," he chants, "I promise, I promise, I promise."
Wow, maybe he didn't need that coffee after all.
The corner of Alex’s mouth lifts in a small smile, and Michael shakes his head, eyes wide.
“I like you, Alex,” he says easily. “I like that you didn’t laugh at me when I called a phone sex line about my sexuality. I like that you actually talked to me about the universe of gender and sexual attraction for, like, twenty minutes. I think you’re funny and really smart, and, yeah, ridiculously sexy, but. That’s not even that big a deal.”
Alex quirks a brow, and Michael takes a slow step closer. Alex allows it.
“I mean, it’s not not a big deal,” he admits. “You know.”
With a quiet laugh that to Michael sounds like the delicate trill of wedding bells, Alex takes his hand and pulls him towards the door.
“Come on,” he says softly. “You owe me a shirt. We’ll see where we go from there.”