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It’s two in the morning when Matt calls, and Gabe just knows that he’s up to something.
The kind of ‘something’ that you don’t come back from– that Gabe doesn’t want to, no matter how hard he tries to convince himself. And by the time they’re done, he’s changed; reformed. Reduced completely to whatever Rempe makes of him; babbling and useless, coming in his pants while he suffers through the most debauched phone sex he’s ever had.
It’s downright unhealthy, whatever they have. It’s got to be.
This happens a lot, anyway. Matt lets his thoughts go to places they shouldn’t, and Gabe’s a willing accomplice, taken wherever he leads. They don’t talk about it after. They don’t need to.
It’s an accident that keeps happening, a tsunami that swallows you in phases, tides. Matt slurring over his words. Jokes that don’t quite land. Back-and-forth without purpose. And then, at some point, there’s a beat of silence.
Silence that sits charged between them, that says something, but Gabe’s not quite sure what. It’s a message that neither of them knows how to put into words, with so much meaning and nothing to show for it. Or maybe not nothing, because then Matt starts running his mouth, groaning quietly, telling Gabe all the fucked-up things he’d do if he were there. He’s not-so-silent anymore at that point.
Gabe’s eyes flutter closed, pulse hot in his veins. And that’s how he knows he’s in for it.
He’s half-awake now, cheek pressed to the side of his pillow while Murder She Wrote plays on the shitty hotel TV. They only run old lady shows this late at night.
A gut-wrenching 3-2 O.T. loss against Detroit, Gabe running back and forth across the ice, and yet, six hours later, he still can’t sleep. Insomnia’s a bitch.
He’s thrown everything and the kitchen sink at it over the past few months– gone through half a dozen doctors and prescriptions and vitamin gummies you buy for twenty dollars at Target. His mom says his throat chakra’s blocked. Whatever that means.
Angela Lansbury’s on TV with her raspy little voice and her trans-Atlantic accent, sending a riddle to the woman who killed a hitman for her unrequited love. She was tall and handsome and had eyes like Matt’s; daring and bold in a way that just screams Matt Rempe without ever meaning to.
Gabe thinks that if Matt ever killed for him – which is, in fact, a very real possibility – everyone would know who it was. Subtlety isn’t his strong suit. He does things in capital letters, with passion and intensity and so much of himself put into it that it makes you wonder how much is left. If there is any.
He’s a giver, is all. A sharer. The kind of guy who eats Gabe out before he rails him stupid, slick dripping down his thighs; gentlemanly and all that. You can imagine, then, how easy it’s been for Matt to keep this thing they’ve got under wraps.
He lets his hands wander at bars, and he accidentally mixes his hoodies in with Gabe’s, and he tells his mom stories about the smiley, dark-haired, five-foot-eleven smokeshow of a girlfriend he’s got from NYC who doesn’t actually exist. (Okay, she does exist, technically , but, well. She is less of a she than a Gabe .)
He’s not very subtle, is all Gabe’s saying. And maybe that’s the way he likes things. Semi-serious, if nothing else. Not obviously there, but not quite not-there, either.
So now he’s dead weight on the hotel bed, eyelids turning heavy while he thinks about Matt– his deep, resonating voice in Gabe’s ear while he’s getting fucked so good he’s pathetic, squirming from underneath– and that’s when the call comes in.
Things start the way they always do. Matt’s sleep-thick voice on the phone, words stumbling and stammered-over, like he’s drunker than he’s trying to let on. That’s the only way this thing really works; late at night with liquid courage blurring the lines between too far and not far enough.
“Gabeee.”
Last week in Pittsburgh, Rempe elbowed a guy so hard his collarbone snapped. Now he's off in Hartford for the next ten games, ‘sitting in a corner and thinking hard about what he’s done’ or something like that. Which is good news for Gabe, anyway, because the only thing worse than doing this over call is doing it in person.
“What are you doing right now?”
Gabe mutes the TV. “Important things,” he says. Matt hums knowingly.
“Y’know, I was at the bar before.”
Gabe huffs out a breath. “Yeah, no kidding, bud. You sound hammered.”
“I’m a lightweight,” Rempe tells him in his own defense, which, like, isn’t even true. Gabe goes drinking with him enough to know. “Hey, and I saw this chick there, Gabo. She looked just like you, man, swear to god. The eyes and, like, the vibe, and everything.”
"A girl, huh?"
Gabe doesn't want to picture her. Matt in a bar, plastered to her side with a toothy little grin, stumbling over his words and trying out dumb pick-up lines. Looking at her like he looks at Gabe, like he’s counting down the seconds in his head until he decides to pull something stupid. One, two, three, then he whispers something downright sacrilegious in her ear, just like he does with Gabe; breath like melted butter on his skin.
Whatever he’s got with Matt, he wants to keep it. Even if he can’t, even if he shouldn’t, even if it doesn’t mean anything and only exists when they’re drunk and tired and trying to ruin their lives.
“Her name was Ashleigh,” Matt says whimsically. “Ashleigh with an e-i-g-h. Weird, eh? Reminds me of you.”
Gabe takes a slow breath. He’s doing it on purpose at this point.
“Are you trying to tell me I look like a girl?”
“Yeah, but, like, in a good way,” Matt hums, as if it's a compliment. His voice softens then. “Aw. If it makes you feel better, Gabo, you’d be a very sexy girl.” Matt starts laughing before he’s even finished.
Gabe scrubs his face tiredly. “God. Fuck off, please,” he tells Matt.
This is Gabe’s life, and it’s ending one phone call at a time. One nod of the head, one lock on a bathroom stall, one look that lasts too long. One call coming in at two in the morning, and all the sudden you're coming closer, closer, closer. Closer to death, to paradise, to Matt, and as close as you get, you know it will never be close enough.
Gabe clears his throat. “So, hey, uh. How’s Connecticut?”
Matt hums dismissively. “Connecticut-y. As you might imagine.”
“Figures.”
“Ah, Gabe, you’d love it here. Everyone keeps calling me the Ratt. Get it? Matt Rempe. Ratt. Kinda sweet, eh?”
Gabe smiles a little. “People are going to think you’re a Florida fan.”
“There are worse things to be,” Matt says. “And, hey, you know what? That’s kind of bogus anyway, because there are way more rats in New York than there are in Florida, I’m pretty sure.”
“Maybe you should count them. Just so you’re sure.”
Matt scoffs. “Yeah, okay, Gabo. I will.”
Gabe can hear rustling over the line.
Every time this happens, he thinks it’s going to be the last time. That Matt’s not serious enough to stay, to keep this ball rolling when he could have anyone he wants, anyone but Gabe.
But now they’re doing it over the phone, and now his organs hurt, and now every time he hears Matt’s voice, he thinks of getting fucked in the backseats of a dirty red pickup, of getting on his knees in Matt’s jersey, begging for it with come smeared across his cheeks.
And worse of all: now he thinks about the after.
About the lopsided, open-mouthed smile on Matt’s face and the way his bedsheets have this very distinct smell– best smell in the world – like freshly cut ice on a full home stadium. He thinks about when Matt presses a kiss to his forehead, and oh, his stomach fucking twists . Butterflies and everything.
Gabe’s been half-hard ever since the call came in, anyway. It’s Pavlovian at this point.
And he doesn’t really want to admit it, but Matt’s also kind-of-totally-completely ruined his ability to have sex with anyone else, on the phone or otherwise. He shifts his legs uncomfortably, arousal squeezing tight in his gut.
“Hey, whatcha wearin’?” Matt eventually asks.
Gabe swallows, hard. “Clothes.”
“Aw,” Matt says. Gabe doesn’t even want to know what that means.
He huffs out a breath, glancing down noncommittally. “Actually, your stupid– Hartford tee. Didn’t even notice. You’ve got to stop mixing your shirts in with mine, Remp, someone’s going to get the wrong idea.”
“You know, my clothes swim on you, man. You should be able to tell the difference.”
“Well, I’m bulking up.”
“What for?”
“What for? Uh, I dunno, Matt, my job ?”
Matt clicks his tongue. “Alright, bud. You get pissy when you’re tired.”
Gabe feels the need to defend himself. “I’m not tired,” he says. He kind of is, now that Matt’s on the line with him. He could easily fall asleep to this; Matt’s low voice in his ear, his breathing even and faint over call. It's lulling; therapeutic, almost.
“C’mon. I know you sleep like shit when I’m not there,” Matt says. Then, quieter: “It’s kind of cute.”
Laying on his side, erection pinched between his thighs, Gabe can feel the blush he’s got on his face. He bristles, blood burning hot in his veins. God, if Matt were here… “It’s not because of you, ” he says.
“No?”
“It’s not ,” Gabe puffs.
Matt’s sounds so fucking sure of himself. He puts on this voice, semi-serious, (like everything they do is), dropped slightly, and he thinks it drives Gabe nuts or something. Like he’s that obsessed.
Just because he's right doesn't make it okay. Gabe’s hard-on twitches painfully as he palms it through his sweats, tired and sloppy and full of pressure with nowhere to put it all.
And now here it is: the silence. The drop in the roller coaster, the part where the track skips and the movie ends and everything goes quiet for one very long, very still, very intense moment.
The tone changes, tectonic plates shift beneath your feet.
Gabe’s pulse picks up. Traffic blears outside of his hotel. He clumsily wraps his fingers around the head of his rock-hard cock, picturing that it's Matt taking him instead. He’d do it gently at first, both of them at the same time, leaning over intermittently to kiss Gabe on the mouth, lazy and deliberate and sweet. He’s slow with it, because he’s an asshole, and he only speeds up after Gabe’s on the verge of tears, begging and babbling and saying please.
Fuck. He can picture it now: Matt’s breath hot on his skin, the smell of his bedsheets, the way he smiles when he’s kissing Gabe, like someone’s just told him a joke he couldn’t resist laughing at. His dick next to Gabe’s always makes it look so small, and he thinks it’s funny when Gabe gets embarrassed about it.
Gabe thrusts loosely into his fist, precum running down his wrist, sweat damp on his back.
He’s so hard it’s nearly painful, and he’s going to come fast, he just knows it; thinking of Matt’s body, his smell, of how he grabs Gabe’s thighs and eats him out like he’s crazy for the taste, starved for it, constantly lying in wait until he finally gets to bend Gabe over, and–
“Hey, Gabe. You still have it, don’t you?”
Gabe’s voice comes out as little more than a whisper. He swallows thickly, trying to stifle all the depraved noises Matt’s drawing from him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Matt grunts quietly over the phone. “Yes, you do. C’mon,” he breathes. “I can’t decide whether it’s creepy or adorable that you haven’t given it back yet. Not like I’m complaining. You know you look fucking insane when you’re dressed in my shit, jerking off with my jersey on you. I know you took it on purpose.”
“Matt,” Gabe gasps, hips jerking. He strokes his painfully hard dick where it’s drawn taut against his stomach, helpless and desperate and in dire need. In need of Matt; his voice, his hands, his stupidly big dick lined up against his own. Of everything he is, everything they are together, everything Gabe wishes they were. He lets out a guttural moan.
“C'mon. I think it's hot. I know you do it. You get off thinking about me, even when I’m not there, huh? You need it that bad?”
Gabe can’t suppress the whine that comes out. He grinds hard into his hand, closer and closer and never close enough. “God. Shut up , Matt. You think you know everything, man.”
Gabe can hear Matt smile. His eyes squeeze shut, breath too light for his lungs.
“I know you wish I was there. I wouldn’t even have to touch you, and you’d be gone for me, fucking wrecked, like you always are. I’d just be watching, standing there while you make a mess out of yourself, crying for me, helpless,” Matt drawls. “And, bud, I bet you don’t even fuck yourself anymore because you get upset that you can’t reach like I can. I bet it drives you fucking nuts, huh?”
This is Gabe’s life, and it’s ending one hand stoke on his dick at a time. It’s pulsing wildly in his too-dry palm, leaking hard as he tries desperately to channel the feeling of Matt’s touch, his thumb brushing up and down the length, his wrist doing that thing that it does when Gabe gets close. He groans woundedly, trying not to give in but doing it anyway.
Gabe’s muscles draw tight, and he’s close, so fucking close, and then Matt goes:
“Don’t come.”
Gabe lets out a heavy, choked-off breath, dick trembling in his grasp.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Wha– Matt ,” Gabe complains.
“Don’t come, Gabo. I’ll know if you do.”
Gabe thinks about it for a second. “I don’t have to listen to you, y’know.”
“But you want to so, so badly. I can tell.”
Gabe scoffs. “No, you fuckin’ can’t, Matt.”
Matt sounds like he’s getting off on this, which is unfair on so many different levels. Cockiness suits him, but it also makes Gabe want to punch his teeth out. “Yeah, I can. You’re kind of a bitch for me, bud, no offense.”
Gabe feels like his dick is about to explode. A shudder runs up his body, too much and not enough at the same exact time.
After a minute or so passes, sweat cooling on Gabe’s stomach while he tries desperately to avoid coming, an alarm goes off on Matt’s end. It rings once, twice, then turns itself off.
“What the fuck was that?” Gabe cries.
“Okay, you can keep going now,” Matt says in lieu of an answer.
“I swear to god, man.” Gabe’s throat is peeling raw, cock aching. Longing. Every inch of his body fills with a burning, bone-deep hunger that can’t be sated. “Fuck. It’s not even funny.”
His back curves needily once his hand clasps around his hard-on again, neglected and tortured and dripping, all messed up for Matt. Gabe’s eyes fly open, stomach lurching in a way that can only be described as excruciating.
“God, I bet you’re so fuckin’ wet, Gabo,” Matt says in awe.
The phone is on speaker now, placed next to his ear while he fucks sloppily into his own fist and digs his nails into the bed covers. Gabe only makes a disgruntled, frustrated noise in response.
“Come on," Matt continues. "You probably have it with you right now, don’t you, bud? You got my jersey, took it with you all the way to Detroit?”
Gabe’s breath comes in ragged, choked-out gasps. He can’t even deny it, in this state. “Yeah,” he goes, worked-up like never before. “It’s in my bag.”
“Jesus,” Matt whispers, gutted, pained. He sounds like sin, like the worst decision anyone could possibly make over and over and over again.
Gabe imagines the look on his face as he jerks himself off, somewhere in Connecticut where the hotel walls are too thin. He had a girl at the bar, probably hanging off his every word, and still, Matt was sitting there, sipping his drink, thinking of Gabe. Of getting to do this to him. Of ruining him live on call, pathetic and red-faced and teary.
“Fuck. It’s like you’re doing it on purpose, Gabo,” Matt groans. By the sound of his voice, Gabe can tell he’s getting close, desire filling out his lungs. “Hey, you know what I’m going to do when I get back? I got this mirror coming to my apartment, floor to ceiling, and all I’ve been thinking about is taking you back there and bending you over in front of it. You’re always so fucking loose– fuckin’ perfect, and, god, Gabe, you have got to see what you look like when you’re taking my dick, touching yourself for me, or when you’re on your knees, sucking me off, crying. Shit’s in- sane .”
“Shit,” Gabe cries, strangled, on the edge of bliss and he’s sinking under, suffering, completely owned by Matt, and he’s not even here. The hotel bedding is soft, too soft to be Matt’s, and it doesn’t smell like him at all. He whimpers miserably into the off-white pillowcase.
“What? You like that? Let me hear you, Gabo. C’mon.”
Gabe buries his face deeper, red up to his ears, cheeks burning. “Shut up, Matt.”
Matt growls loudly over the phone, because of course he likes getting told to shut up. Sometimes Gabe feels like a sex freak, but then there’s Matt being Matt, which is inherently more homoerotic than anything else Gabe could possibly come up with.
“God, I wish I could see you,” Matt says. “You have no idea how much it sucks not being able to fuck you all the time, Gabe. It’s tragic, fucking Shakesperean .”
Gabe huffs out a laugh, pulse fluttering. “Sure it is.”
His hips stutter as he ruts into his fist– loose, but not loose enough, not loose like Matt’s hands are loose, and all his senses feel shaken-up and fuzzy, thousands of miles away. He brings up the collar of Matt’s Hartford shirt and soaks in its lingering smell, breathing him in through the nose. It’s Matt’s detergent and sweat mixed in with Gabe’s, and, fuck, it’s completely doing him in.
Matt chooses that moment to tell him, voice rich and dark and breathless: “Okay, stop.”
“Matt!” Gabe cries. His hand flies to his mouth and he sinks his teeth in, deep, tears running down his cheeks. The pent-up arousal of it all, of Matt, of being denied, has him reeling, toes curling, sweat sticking to the bedding. Matt sounds equally as wounded.
“You want it that bad, bud?” he says through a grin. A frustrated noise creeps out of Gabe’s mouth.
“Laugh at me and I bite your dick off the next time I see you,” Gabe says.
“Kinky.”
“You’re not funny,” Gabe mutters, panting slowly as he claws at any and everything he can get his hands on. “ Fuck .”
Matt lets the seconds pass. Colors flicker onto the TV stand in Gabe’s hotel room. There’s a light sweat ghosting over his forehead and now he’s melting, senses on overdrive, nose buried into the collar of Matt’s T-shirt. He’d get the jersey out, at any rate, but his legs might give under the pressure; all feeling in his body completely focused in on his dick. His poor, poor, Matt-less dick.
“What are you doing right now?” Matt asks.
“...You know what I’m doing, Matt.”
“Yeah, but I want you to tell me.” The alarm goes off again, and then Matt starts in a low, thick voice, crusted with honey and glazed with caramel: “If you do, I’ll let you come.”
Gabe sighs loudly, release a hair trigger away. His body feels sore, restless, blood pounding in his throbbing, spasming cock.
“I’m jerking myself off,” he says lamely.
“Go on.”
He whines in frustration, the noise ripped from his throat. “I’m on my back, on the hotel bed, in your shirt, fucking into my fist, ‘cause when I fuck myself, I can’t reach like you.”
“Yeah?” Matt sounds ravenous. Fucking animalistic.
“And, I’m thinking about– about when you get back to New York, and the first thing I’m going to do is get on my knees for you, and take your dick with my mouth. And I’m thinking that you’d be so impatient that you’d only let me for, like, thirty seconds, because you’re a neanderthal and all that, so you’d fuck me then, raw, no prep or anything, ‘cause I know you’re fucking starving for me.”
“Gabe,” Matt breathes out.
“And, and I’m thinking about how you’re always thinking about this. Even at a bar, with a girl sitting next to you, you’re thinking about fucking me because it’s the only thing you ever want to do. And, god, when you eat me out, man…”
Gabe glances over to his phone, pressure building in his stomach, desire burning hot. Jesus. He’s been getting edged for thirty minutes now. Tears break out in his eyes.
“Matt. Fuck, c’mon,” he complains, voice weak and thinning. His skin feels so hot, so cold, so tight, enlightenment barely within reach. “ Matt . Please,” he begs.
Matt remains quiet for one very long second, pensive. “Yeah, okay, Gabe,” he says, voice gone coarse. “You can come. I wanna hear you.”
His whole body shatters then, before Matt’s even done giving permission. He’s spilling, broken to pieces, torn in half, snapped in two. He comes in spurts onto his stomach, splatters hitting Matt’s shirt. Stomach-deep, depraved sounds slip out involuntarily, high-pitched and filthy, tortured in every sense of the word. He feels flayed open, raw, burying his face into the pillows to stifle the noises he makes as the orgasm tears through.
Matt's breath hitches over the call, and Gabe knows it’s pushing him over the edge as well.
He pictures Matt’s face: eyebrows pinched, eyes squeezed shut while his muscles tremble, pressure exploding as the climax hits. If he were here, he’d sink his teeth into Gabe’s neck, nails digging into his side possessively, holding very still as he spills into the condom. Sometimes, he does away with it altogether, railing Gabe raw and leaving him slumped over on the mattress, come leaking out his ass.
A full-body shudder courses through Gabe’s body before he finally drops onto the bed, racked with a lightheadedness; a cottony, too-soft feeling that makes everything look sort of fuzzy around the edges. He lets out a deep, labored breath.
“Motherfucker,” Gabe whispers. He can hear Matt faintly laughing. “Just wait ‘til I see you, man.”
“Oh, I’ll be waiting,” Matt grins.