Andrew rubbed his eyes and downed the last of his latte. He glanced back at the clock and saw it wasn't even one yet. Looking back at his unread emails, his eyelids drooped.
Working from home had a lot of perks, but it was still tedious. The office at least had gossip and noise. Enough to get him through the workday, at least.
He stretched out a pair of long, pale limbs, brushed his bangs aside, and went back to it.
Andy had always had features that leaned a bit... ambiguous. If you wanted to be generous.
Petite, with pale, smooth skin. He kept his hair a little too long. His eyes were wide, with long, heavy lashes. Baggy shirts hid his chest, like he was insecure about the flatness beneath. And he always wore his jeans skin-tight.
He didn't think of himself as particularly feminine but, if it was just a brief glance from afar, he could understand. Most men realized their mistake before the first line was even out of their mouths. Then they would scurry away in embarrassment and look determinedly away. It was adorable.
Andrew slipped his headphones into his ears and readied himself for another long meeting. He barely had them on when a stranger collapsed into the seat beside him with a hard sigh.
A man the size of a truck had sat at Andrew's table.
The stranger wore jeans and flannel that reeked of sweat and earth. He wore the neon orange vest of a construction worker over the top. And he towered over everyone in the room, even sitting down.
"Ignoring me already?"
His voice was low and rumbling. He nodded to the boy's headphones.
Andrew smiled back, just to be polite, and pointed at his screen. The stranger's eyes didn't follow it. They held onto Andrew's without blinking.
"Meeting," Andrew whispered.
The man leaned in and whispered back, "You're meeting me. And I'm much more interesting."
Andrew gave a tight smile and glanced back at his screen. Over a hundred forty people were already on the conference call. It wasn't likely to be anything important, but this stranger certainly didn't need to know that.
The man offered a hairy slab of a palm across the table. "Samuel."
"Andy," the boy replied, touching his pale fingertips briefly to the hand.
The man grunted. "Andy. I like that. That's a very pretty name."
Andrew nodded and looked back at the screen.
"You're a very pretty girl, Andy," the man purred.
Andrew's teeth clenched together.
Men didn't like to be told that he was a man. It was just a fact.
Confusion led to disbelief, and then to outrage. They would say Andrew was the one coming onto them. They would get embarrassed and they would blame him for it. Sometimes they'd get mean.
The more aggressive a man was in their pursuit, the more delicate his pride seemed to be.
Andrew smiled again. "Thank you."
He turned back to his work, pressing the headphones in tighter. Samuel's hand slipped beneath the table and stroked at Andrew's knee.
The boy's eyelids fluttered. His breath let out.
Despite all reason, the man's touch was melting his brain like butter.
The hand stroked out again. Rough callouses dragged against the fabric of his jeans. The hand felt like it weighed more than all of Andrew put together.
He's as hairy as an animal, Andrew thought.
The warmth of a blush crept up his neck. And blood flooded down between the boy's legs.
"I've seen you here before, Andy," Samuel went on.
Andrew didn't look up. Didn't even nod.
"And you paid me just as little attention then, too. I thought to myself, what could this sweet little thing be working so hard on? I just had to come find out."
The man's elbows were on the table now. His forearms were wider than Andrew's waist. The fur that ran down them was like a carpet. He smelled like old sweat and heavy cologne.
Andrew looked up and spotted curls of chest hair slipping from the man's open collar. He could picture what the rest of it looked like, further down. Any words Andrew meant to say vanished all at once.
"I'm a big old bear, aren't I, Andy?"
The man had caught him staring.
He certainly wasn't going to leave Andrew alone now. It had gone too far.
"You are," Andrew admitted, clearing his throat. "And this was fun, but I was about to take my meeting somewhere quieter."
Andrew smiled politely again and stood up.
But, as he rose, he hit the side of his empty cup. It teetered dangerously at the edge. He snatched for it on instinct. As he moved, his napkin swept from the table. It circled through the air as he grabbed for it and fell under a chair two tables away.
With a sigh and as much dignity as he could muster, he marched across the room and bent over to grab it. As his fingers brushed the ground, he felt Samuel's eyes on him.
Samuel was leering at his ass. He could feel it. And, bending over like this, he was giving the man quite a show.
Andrew shot back up, blushing harder, and returned to the table. As he sat down, for the first time, Samuel seemed beyond words.
The boy logged out of everything and shut down his laptop. He pulled his bag open and the man's meaty hand grabbed him by the wrist to stop him.
"Do you want to taste a real man, Andy?" Samuel purred.
The line was absurd.
