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Tesur cuts through the evening air with a familiar whiirrrr.
Look at him now, zipping over the family-run businesses that line Manhattan’s Tenth Avenue.
Don’t be impressed though.
This particular drone isn’t here to protect and to serve; he’s sent by the powers that be to do one thing and one thing only—surveil and amass bytes of data.
Try as he may though, Tesur won’t find anything of consequence—at least, not in this semi-green zone.
He never does.
Because today’s Hell’s Kitchen isn’t a rebellious community.
Its denizens are just folks—everyday folks, pursuing everyday lives, coping with everyday challenges.
They’re just a nostalgic bunch, trying to be a little bit more conscious than some of their fellow neighbors.
Let’s take a look at one of these folks now.
Timothée Chalamet.
When he was a petit garçon, he went by Timmy Tee. Adorable, right? He won’t admit it now; these days, his friends and acquaintances refer to him as Timmy.
Like his mother before him, Timmy was born and raised in this community.
Look at that jaunty pep in his step as he struts up the avenue and makes a few hurried stops along the way.
Timmy belongs here and it’s like goodness awaits him.
~ ~ ~
Timmy enters the local wine merchant’s shop.
“Dion!” he exclaims, as the bell mounted over the front door claps out a brassy ring.
He walks over and hugs the convivial owner, an older man, plump with ruddy cheeks, a spirits’ man, from a line dating way back, before Prohibition.
“Timmy!” Dion returns cheerily. The familiar mood of the shop is like that television show from the eighties, the one about the bar in Boston, the one where everyone knows everyone else’s name.
“I need a special bottle of red for tonight,” Timmy declares.
“Well, whatcha you plan to have with it?” Dion asks, stroking his stubbled chin.
“Armie won’t say.”
“A surprise…,” Dion says, drawing out the word, almost sinisterly. “Then, may I interest you in a locally made Pinot?” He holds up a bottle, and on the label is a charcoal drawing of an old style rooftop water tower, a type of tower no longer in existence throughout the city.
“The grapes were cultivated here, on a rooftop, right over in Brooklyn,” Dion declares. Then he goes on to rhapsodize about the wine. “Timmy, this wine is delicate, graceful and so so ready.” He reaches for a screw cap opener, the vintner in him tingling with excitement. “Do you want to give it a taste?”
“No, I trust you,” Timmy says, holding up his hands. “I’ll take a bottle.”
“Great, next time you pass by, drop in and tell me everything, what you had, how you had it, and did it (the wine of course) deliver to your satisfaction.”
“Will do.” Timmy chuckles, convinced he’s hearing a double entendre in Dion’s request.
Dion rings up the purchase on a shiny vintage cash register. As he does so, he begins to gush about the theater. Living close to Broadway, he and many other Hell’s Kitchen residents are avid fans of the theater. “I can’t wait to see your Achilles and Patroclus next season,” he says. “But Timmy, soon, you must adapt the story of Hadrian and Antinous…the full story, no sugar coating,” he warns.
This is an old conversation between the two. Dion has been asking Timmy to adapt this story for years; Timmy isn’t sure when he’ll ever get around to it.
There are simply too many stories to tell and to retell.
Dion places a protective mesh around the bottle of wine and carefully hands it to Timmy. With the same care, Timmy places the bottle in his backpack.
“We’ll see,” Timmy teases. “Later,” he says and heads to the door.
“Enjoy the wine and Armie,” Dion calls out. “And if you ever get tired of him, tell him I’m here…waiting.”
“Dion, I’m never going to tire of Armie,” Timmy yells back and steps out into the crisp evening air.
Back off my man, he thinks (playfully).
As Timmy makes his way pass an outdoor playground and over to the bakery, where he’ll banter with Amy, the red-headed shopkeeper, for several minutes before picking up a loaf of freshly-made French bread and mouth-watering mi-cuit au chocolat for dinner, let’s go about a half mile north. To one of the low-rise prewar buildings in the neighborhood. Then up to the top floor, to the apartment in the front of the building—the one facing East.
Meet Hell’s Kitchen's newest member. Look closer, through the window of the small kitchen. See the man hunched over the cutting board deep in thought. He’s six-five, and you really can’t miss him.
That’s Armie Hammer. Timmy’s lover and a huge part of the reason for Timmy’s high spirits.
Armie has just taken up residence with Timmy. After the lease on his Flatiron apartment expired, he shuttled his monstrous sofa and his few other belongings into a storage facility on the nether region of Manhattan Island and moved in with Timmy. The plan is that the lovers will find a new place together as soon as they can sell Timmy’s apartment. In the meantime, they have to find a way to live and be together in a relatively small L-shaped studio.
After college, the starter apartment was perfect for Timmy. But for the relatively new lovers—grown men still earning and learning each other—well, these two could find themselves in a sticky and slippery situation.
No, not the seminal fluid kind of stickiness.
Well…they’ll find themselves in that…okay, they’ll find themselves in a lot of that.
But also, another kind of situation. The kind where two people have to coexist day in and day out in tight quarters. The kind where one man exalts and does whatever the other wants, and the other man clings and fusses when anyone dares look at what he has claimed as his.
Make no doubt, they love each other.
Armie would say he fell in love the moment he saw Timmy. It was outside a pick-up spot, an automat where boys meet boys under moonlight over machine-made coffee.
Timmy isn’t so sure when it happened for him. Was it that same night, over the threshold of his doorway, when they fluid-bonded for the first time during a deep wet kiss? Or did it happen more slowly and surely, up until a punch in the gut moment during a virtual reality realm months later?
It really doesn’t matter.
When love happens, it happens.
Right now, Armie is preparing one of his lover’s favorite meals for their first evening living together. Armie is a born gourmand, and he enjoys cooking immensely, despite the shortcuts he’s forced to take since he works ridiculous hours as a full-time lawyer.
Let’s zoom in and watch him closely at work.
He unwraps a thick red round from its brown butcher paper and allows it to fall to the cutting board with a fleshy thud. He reaches for a cleaver and skillfully whacks the beef into manly chunks. Next, he unwraps a small slab of pork and easily wields the sharp blade through the lardy belly. He turns on the stove, igniting a flame under a heavy cast iron skillet, swirls a spoonful of aromatic oil into it, scoops up the pebbles of pork and tosses them into the pan. Once the pork has been sauteed, he slides it out of the skillet into a small bowl and meticulously browns each piece of beef in the rendered fat.
“Sorry Grand’Mere Chalamet, no three hours in the Dutch oven for your Timmy’s boeuf bourguignon tonight,” Armie whispers to himself.
He pulls out the latest instant cooker—designed to stew meats and vegetables to perfection in minutes, no annoying degreasing and staging necessary—and plops the caramelized meat into the cooker. He steps over to the wine rack and grabs a bottle of burgundy and opens the bottle with a pop. He pours a taste, swirls it swiftly, and holds it up to the angled light leaking in from the long narrow window to admire the ruby hue. He turns the glass to his mouth, rolls the warmth around in it and swallows. He exhales an appreciative aah.
Satisfied, he pours the bottle into the cooker. He adds artisanal beef bone broth, and then tosses in fresh herbs, smashed garlic, tomatoes both chopped and pasted, Timmy’s favorite French butter, pearl onions, and cremini mushrooms.
He apologizes one last time to Grand’Mere Chalamet, begs for forgiveness for the liberties taken with the traditional French stew and turns the cooker on. Pleased that one of Timmy’s favorite dishes will be ready soon, Armie removes the apron from his endless torso, flings it on a nearby hook, and disappears behind a closed door.
As Armie disappears, Timmy enters their building and jogs up the five flights to their apartment.
Timmy is home now and the young lovers will carry on.
Here’s how their newfound domesticity and evening dinner plans unfold.
When Armie emerges from behind the closed door, clothed in nothing but a waffled terry bath sheet, Timmy is awaiting him.
“Honey, I’m home,” Timmy calls out with a devious smile.
When he sees a bare-chested Armie, beads of water dangling off him for dear life, he licks his lips lasciviously, and says, “What a homecoming!”
He walks over to Armie and kisses him, readily parting his lips and drinking him in thirstily.
“Welcome home,” Armie echoes, with a moan.
Timmy takes Armie’s hand in his and leads him to the alcove. There, their bedroom is ensconced in the corner of the apartment behind a large case overflowing with old books. Drawing on the law of inertia, as if carrying out an old magic trick, Timmy whips the bath sheet down and away quickly, leaving Armie standing before him in all his naked glory.
Tada.
Timmy tosses the towel unceremoniously to the side, not taking his eyes off Armie.
“Bed,” Timmy commands.
“But dinner…”
“Dinner can wait.”
Armie lays out on the bed, with his hand behind his head, as if posing on a chaise lounge for a nude painting by an old master. He watches Timmy. He’ll never tire of watching Timmy. What is he up to now? Seeing the glint in his lover’s eyes, Armie knows that an adventure awaits and this excites him. Timmy always excites him.
Timmy walks over to a dresser, opens the narrow top drawer and pulls out lube, wipes and a deep red velvet pouch. He rests the play items on the bed, strips out of his own clothes, and lets them fall carelessly to the floor.
“And what’s that?” Armie asks, once he’s able to take his eyes off Timmy’s smooth body. He nods to the pouch.
“Your moving-in gift.”
“Thank you, but I’m going to need more information.”
Timmy grabs the pouch, opens it and removes a device, a sleeve, one of the latest models in teledildonics.
“It’s called The Third Hand, it’s voice activated, and it only follows commands from yours truly,” Timmy says. He gyrates his lean torso and gestures to the device with a shoulder roll and a flash of the hand.
“I beg your pardon.”
Timmy grabs the lube and squirts a generous amount into the small opening on the sleeve.
He climbs up on the bed, crawls over Armie and straddles his lover’s waist.
He looks down at Armie. They lock eyes and Timmy can't help but lean over and bite a kiss from those lips.
“How did your trip go?” he asks.
“We’re off to a...start. This Virtual Reality Commission is going to be a process. A lot of people are already protesting the measures being proposed to protect the vulnerable.”
“When do you return to DC?”
“The end of the month.”
“How was your day?” Armie asks.
“Negotiations. Negotiations. Negotiations. We think we may get a high-profile name to play Achilles. I don’t want to jinx it, so I’ll leave it at that.”
“Oh, come on, tell me, who?”
“Not saying.” Timmy says playfully. He swipes his finger across his pursed lips as if to zip them.
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
Timmy slides back and their naked cocks graze each other. He closes his hands around their joint manhood and strokes them until there’s a single and steady seep.
Armie closes his eyes, and groaning ensues.
Timmy’s fist tightens and he pumps them until they’re both throbbing and rock hard.
Before Armie’s groan has a chance to fade, Timmy locks the lubricious sleeve around him—click, click, click—and it molds into the contours of Armie’s long, thick shaft and flushed, plump head.
Armie’s eyes jolt open. “Aaah…,” he says in surprise.
Timmy places a finger over Armie’s lips. “Shhh.”
“How does it come off?” It’s a practical question Armie can’t help but ask.
“You want it off already, we haven’t even started, “Timmy teases. But he goes on to reassure his lover and explain that it comes off at Timmy’s command.
“And what if you don’t command it to?”
“I wouldn't do that to you.”
“And what if you can't command it to...unlock. I don’t think I want our first evening living together to turn into a Stephen King flick.”
“Armie, you’re not handcuffed and we don’t have a dog.”
“By the way, we should get one.”
“Handcuffs?” Timmy asks eagerly.
“No.” Armie chuckles “A dog, I’ve always had one, I lost him in the divorce.”
But Timmy doesn’t want to hear this.
“Tease,” he says, to quiet Armie. This is not the time to discuss horror and exes.
The Third Hand ripples gently along Armie’s shaft.
“Oh.”
Timmy slicks his fingers. “Armie?” he says, wiggling his moist hand. Armie nods his consent for Timmy to take him on whatever adventure he has planned.
Timmy loves Armie like this.
All his.
Timmy crawls between Armie’s legs and spreads him. He swirls his slick fingers around Armie’s opening and gently presses one and then two fingers into the puckered cave.
“Okay?”
Armie nods again.
Timmy scissors his fingers.
Armie moans hoarsely.
“Stroke.”
The Third Hand moves up and down Armie’s shaft.
“Fuuuck,” Armie moans out into the alcove.
Timmy sits up and then as if in prayer kneels between Armie’s legs, his sanctum. He slicks his hand and runs it along his own hard cock. He tosses the bottle of lube to the side, then pats his shoulders.
“Feet,” he commands.
“Timmy...” Armie says. He’s reluctant, afraid that he’ll hurt Timmy if he loses control.
“Feet,” Timmy says again.
“You’re bossy tonight.” Actually, he’s always bossy during their lovemaking.
Armie raises his legs easily and rests them on Timmy’s shoulders. He grips the side of the bed with one hand and braces along the headboard with the other.
“Relax,” Timmy whispers.
Timmy holds his hard cock and pushes it into Armie slowly until he bottoms out.
They moan as Timmy fills out the tight heat.
“Pump.”
As Timmy moves in and out of Armie slowly, The Third Hand increases its intensity and pumps up and down Armie’s shaft.
“Baby, I want to see if we can come together.”
“I don’t know…” Armie says. His breath is uneven and he doesn't finish the words as a deep moan claws at his throat struggling to escape. “I won't last long,” he warns and the moan breaks free.
“Blow.”
The Third Hand works Armie over at its maximum intensity. Chest-red, pupils dilated, Timmy grips Armie’s legs firmly, lifts him, and hammers, grunting and plowing into and out of him—relentlessly.
Armie’s feet bounce in a wobbly dance.
Moans and groans turn into a heavy pant.
“I’m gonna…”
“…come.”
And for the first time, they scream out in unison. Armie pours into the sleeve and Timmy pours into Armie.
Timmy kneads in with a final spasmic grunt and reluctantly pulls out of his lover.
He quickly wipes him of his ooze and tidies his own cock.
“Release.”
The Third Hand splits open in half and Timmy removes it from Armie’s shaft, tossing it to the side of the bed.
Timmy crawls up to Armie’s side and falls into him languidly. Armie entangles his arms and legs around him.
A nice haze levitates around the couple.
“Wow, that was…”
The words, unnecessary (really), fade like an outro into the evening.
After some time, Timmy says, “It unlocks after fifteen minutes of no commands.”
“What?” Armie is confused.
“My third hand!” Timmy clarifies.
“Oh.”
They continue to laze in bed, returning to quietude, snuggling closely together.
“Do you think we’ll be okay living together?”
“Yes,” Armie says confidently. He doesn’t give it a second thought.
“Do you really want a dog?”
Armie nods. “A dog would be nice.”
“OK, we’ll get one in the new place,” Timmy promises.
They’re in no rush as they lay together.
They continue to bask in their haze. No more crosstown runs necessary to visit each other; no more overnight bags to pack and lug.
~ ~ ~
Timmy and Armie are seated at their small round dining table for their late-night dinner.
The table is set simply with old French China and silverware, hand me downs from Grand'Mere Chalamet, anchored by linen napkins and stemless wine glasses from a thrift shop in the neighborhood. The fresh bread relaxes in a tea towel the color of Buffalo plaid.
Timmy scoops up a forkful of the tender beef swimming in its wine-red pond of herbed warmth and tastes it.
He smiles.
“How long did you cook this for?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“This is good Armie, really good, it tastes like you’ve been at it all day,” Timmy gushes.
He leans over and they kiss.
“Anything for you.” Armie smiles, happy that Timmy is pleased, happy that the cooker worked as promised.
Timmy breaks the crusty bread in communion, gives Armie a piece and takes a piece for himself.
Famished, they clink their glasses then dunk the fleshy dough and dig into the hearty boeuf bourguignon. Between bites, they quaff on the Brooklyn-made Pinot.
“They made this on a rooftop?” Armie asks incredulously. He licks his wine-stained lips.
“Yes, right over in Brooklyn. We should visit the ‘vineyard’ one weekend,” Timmy says as he tops off their glasses.
As they wrap up their main course in domestic bliss, Tesur zips by their undrawn picture window.
Armie looks towards the window and frowns.
“My firm will be looking into that drone; we’re going to see what we can do about it.”
Timmy reaches over and turns Armie’s head away from the window and back to their meal. He grazes the back of his hand ever so lightly over the shadow sprouting along Armie’s lovely jawline.
“Forget about that for now, tonight is about us,” Timmy says.
“Yes...you, me, us, we…”
“Yes, now let’s have some chocolate…”