Human Behavior

Nathan is there in the kitchen, waiting for him, unwrapping his hands. The smell of sweat comes off him in a solid wave, cut through with the high reedy note of alcohol – Caleb doesn’t know enough about the human metabolism to determine whether he’s been prepping for his workout with a few vodka tonics or if this is last night burning its way out of his system with a vengeance.

“You’re welcome to join me out there, I was just switching off, you know, and you seemed like kind of an indoor guy.”

Caleb halts at the distance of a couple paces, squinting in the glare. “I’m doing okay. Maybe later we can go on a hike or something.” And then Nathan can catch a fish with his bare hands, or show him how to harvest lichen using the principles of higher mathematics. Caleb has entertained brief fantasies of taking Ava out by the water once they’re done with all the tests, but he doesn’t even know if she’s water-resistant, and as far as he knows she’s never been outside of her room. Taking her out in the open in the middle of the wilderness might be a little too much.

“You should give it a shot, while you’re here. Might get your juices going. You might like it. I was once a simple egghead–” (He gestures like he’s pushing a pair of glasses up the bridge of his nose, though his own glasses stay fixed where they are.) “–like you, Caleb.”

“You’re kidding me. I can’t believe that – no way.” This is clearly the expected response: polite admiration. His own workout regimen is mostly half-remembered yoga and a lot of sit-ups, but it’s not likely he’ll be bulking up any time soon.

“No, really.”

“Maybe when you were a kid.”

“Not so long ago, my friend. But physical fitness is now an essential part of my process.” Rubbing with a knuckle against his buzzed temple. “Sound mind in a sound body.”

Caleb laughs politely, and Nathan strikes a pose, squaring off with feet apart and center of mass low; he looks like nothing so much as the star athlete on the side of a Greek vase. He also looks like a crazy person, the kind of guy Caleb would give a wide berth on his way past the company gym.

“Come on, let’s wrestle.”

“I’m not going to wrestle you, you’d– you’d wipe the floor with me, come on–”

Nathan’s weight knocks the laughter right out of him. His muscles are every bit as tanklike as they look and Caleb topples too hard to recognize the impact as painful, only the moment where his bare feet break contact with the floor. He’s got him on the ground inside of a second, and Caleb takes the fall badly – you’re supposed to redirect the force or something, and all he does with that force is tap the back of his head on the stone floor so hard he glimpses a flash of white. But it’s all in good fun, for a given quantity of fun. Nathan Bateman comes perilously close to fucking tickling him, though Caleb’s spasms of protest deflect this into a brisk scraping with his knuckles. Caleb jerks back and knocks his head against the floor again, and suddenly the meat of Nathan’s hand is pillowing his skull.

“Come on, come on, come on. Don’t thrash so much, for fuck’s sake. Didn’t you have any brothers or sisters?”

Caleb gasps with laughter, trying in vain to wriggle out from under him, but the grip of his body crushes like a vise – his arm snags around his throat in one of those schoolyard wrestling moves Caleb can’t remember the name of and when he flexes his muscles his bicep presses into Caleb’s windpipe. It must be cutting off the oxygen to his brain, because he’s laughing and laughing while wanting to do nothing so much as claw at him until he lets go. The pressure’s too much for a guy who can barely wear a necktie without panicking. Nathan’s up to something, obviously, but it’s hard to get a bead on what.

“No, no I didn’t–”

“I know you didn’t.”

Nathan’s knee nudges his leg forward a little into a less painful position, but he’s still got him there good. Caleb’s high school had a wrestling team, but it always looked kind of goofy from the outside. Not that he spent a lot of time as a spectator. Feeble complaining erupts from him again, as he paws weakly for purchase on the microfilament tile. He’s got to look ridiculous.

Nathan’s erection is digging into his thigh.

Caleb sucks in a thin breath and feels the muscles of his arm gouge into his throat like a stone. “Nathan, I think you need to let me go now. I think I need to tap out.”

“Don’t freak out. I mean, you can touch it. What’s mine is yours, dude.”

“I don’t want to touch it!”

“There’s always time for new stimuli, right? You don’t think that shit can change over the course of a person’s life?” He sounds almost sulky now, and he shifts his weight forward onto Caleb’s ribs and off his ass. Nathan is crushing him.

“I don’t know how–”

“The fuck do you mean, you don’t know how. Look, I’m not asking to fuck you, just help me out here, all right?”

He’s shown him such wonderful things and now here they are. This is the man who made Bluebook. This is the man who signs off on his paychecks and who brought him here seven hundred miles from anything at all to show off the robot girl he keeps in his basement. If Nathan wants to fuck him, he’s going to fuck him. Caleb reaches for it weakly, groping blind, and Nathan eases up his hold.

He’s so fucking heavy. No wonder he likes women so small.

Caleb twists up onto his side. He’s already dizzy and the sharp clean vodka-sweat smell fills his nose and mouth. It’s horseplay, this is just horseplay, it’s not like anything else. This is just a joke at his expense. This is the portion of the test designed for Caleb Smith, just to check in and see if he’s really as cool as he seems, if he’s a chill easygoing man’s man or an uptight prick who can’t take a joke.

Nathan’s beard scratches against his tee shirt. He’d slept in this shirt. He’d gotten almost comfortable here.

He starts rubbing him off through the cloth of his sweatpants, which have got to cost more than a month’s installment of Caleb’s rent. Unsteady strokes at first, like he’s not doing what he’s doing. Nathan’s hung like a fucking donkey, the outlines of it are clear enough to the touch that Caleb knows this is the kind of dick he’d avert his eyes from under the best of circumstances. Because he’s straight, he’s straight and he’s not the rough-and-tumble jackass kind of straight guy who gives male friends handjobs as a joke. This is a shitty joke.

It’s a tight enough squeeze between the two of them that Nathan might as well be fucking him; Caleb’s knuckles keep slicing against the metal hardware of his right back pocket and Nathan’s hips press into his feeble backward touch to take up the slack.

The heavy weight of his cock and balls falls against Caleb’s palm. Caleb works back against it, trying to make it work and not knowing how – he knows nothing about this man and now he’s grabbing his dick and maintaining eye contact with the freckles on his right inner forearm because he’s too freaked out to close his eyes. Backwards and twisted and half-blind, scared to lift his skinny hips off the floor in case Nathan takes it as a cue to grind on him harder. The friction’s transferring into awful heat. He is being punished, probably.

Maybe this is something he’s sparing Ava. She couldn’t understand this. She shouldn’t have to. Better for it to be him.

Nathan groans against his chest, an awful animal sound. The steel frames of his glasses are digging in like a knife, and Caleb tries to focus on that again, that sharp thumbnail-press of pain.

It doesn’t take that long, in terms of time elapsed from shooting the breeze by the patio doors to being done jacking off his boss. When he’s shot his load, Caleb doesn’t recognize until a couple seconds after the fact. The cascade of microscopic signs are all there, but Nathan’s breath drops back to normal and his barrel chest sags heavy against Caleb’s side.

Caleb shuts his eyes. He doesn’t know for how long.

“How was that?” Nathan asks as if solicitous. He isn’t even going to return the favor, which is great because Caleb’s never been less hard in his life.

“Great. Oh, great.” Caleb opens his eyes again, rubs his palms against the denim of his jeans, hoping to eradicate the lingering impression of damp heat.

“Not so bad, am I right?” Nathan hoists his weight off with a groan of more satisfaction than effort. He pulls his shirt down for him with a tug. “Thanks for being a pal, man. You’re really demonstrating your commitment to this whole endeavor.”

“Right.” (Caleb’s on his hands and knees before he can straighten up, gasping and swallowing past the knot caught in his throat like a stone. The press of Nathan’s arm has left a raw line across the base of his throat.)

“Feel free to make yourself a juice or something. I’m gonna hit the showers.”