Then again… he didn’t need to read the sheet music, because he knew this piece by heart, and the body he occupied could bring it to life. He closed his eyes and tuned into the soft sounds echoing in his heart. A minute later, he stopped thinking at all, and his fingers produced music as refined as the piano players whose recordings Gunner kept in a secret folder on his phone. Even as the pace picked up, challenging his small hands, he didn’t make a single mistake, lost in this impossible dream where his whole life was as refined as the music he loved.
Both peaceful and passionate. Removed from grit and grime. Fulfilled, overwhelmingly beautiful. There was nobody to stop him. He had no debt, no tattoo covering his face, and no girlfriend whose company he didn’t even enjoy.
In this new world where his fingers glided over the keyboard, he wasn’t a hulking brute you sent to make your neighbor give back that toaster they borrowed, but a graceful boy who could openly walk down the street holding his boyfriend’s hand. Because no one would question him about it. Being gay wasn’t a thing in Gunner’s world. But Caspian? He was slender, cute, polite, and played the piano.
Caspian could be gay.
As the tune changed, turning into a wild, speedy chase of fingers along the keys, each inhale pulled Gunner higher. Off the chair. Off the ground, as if he were floating up to another dimension while his body stayed behind, as alluring as it was material.
But an erratic ping made him drop right back to the bench, and to a reality where Caspian’s elegant iPhone called for his attention.
The fog of music hadn’t yet settled, but he picked up the device and opened the screen with a swipe of his thumb. The message wasn’t meant for him, but in this moment it felt like he could steal Caspian’s life and remain in this amazing dream forever.
The content of the notification threw him right back to the gutter.
[Let me suck your balls]
He stilled with his cheeks flushed, and stared at the message that didn’t sound like something any woman would say to a random stranger. Seconds later, he received a picture of a mouth that most definitely belonged to a male. The young guy in the picture was showing off his tongue, as if begging for something to lick.
Gunner curled his legs and could hardly breathe as he scrolled up the chain of filthy messages on the same app. Caspian went by Chris in all the conversations, and the photos he attached didn’t show his compact body but bulging muscles belonging to someone else.
A part of Gunner thought that maybe Caspian had just bought a stolen smartphone, but people who lived in such a massive house had no need for second-hand electronics.
The messages were all Caspian’s, and the dirty, dirty things he wrote to a whole array of men who clamored for the attention of the fake person Caspian masqueraded as, had Gunner’s body burning.
[I’ll bend you over the hood of my car and fuck you so hard I’ll have to drive you home.]
[Finger yourself, slut. Open up that hole.]
[I want to see my spunk clinging to that stubble. Are you gonna be my bitch?]
The dissonance between the person he knew and the things Caspian had written to strangers made Gunner’s head hurt.
Caspian wanted to be dominant, as hard as it was to imagine. But then again, he was impersonating a different guy, and always avoided meeting guys in person. Was he getting off on the catfishing?
Gunner bit his lip, mesmerized by the filthy nature that apparently hid in this small body.
How many guys had touched it? Did Caspian have sex with a condom or without? Did he kiss his hook-ups? Even though he lived with his parents now and wasn’t out, he’d just graduated from university. He’d surely fucked around while he was away. Maybe he even had boyfriends there?
Gunner’s frantic search through Caspian’s regular text messages found nothing, but he was done reading anyway. He needed to get a better look at Caspian’s body now that he was alone.
He sent the piano a kiss before rushing up the stairs with the phone in hand. Could he find a man to fool around with before this madness ended?
He’d never tried searching for someone, but fantasies about strong male hands, broad chests, and cocks with balls full of cum had always lingered at the back of his brain, trying to creep out whenever he got drunk. At times, he imagined himself as this cute twink with long legs, narrow hips, and soft lips, but he could never be that boy, and the idea of looking for men he could have sex with was so illicit he wouldn’t dare go through with it. In his world, there was no room for weakness or otherness.