A Teacher and a Poet

by Cy Blanca

  No words. Just mouths, wet and reaching. Curt kissed like a writer: passionate, overindulgent, arrogant, as if he knew he could get Antony begging for more even before he got him to their bedroom. The throaty moan Antony poured into Curt’s mouth was proof enough of that.

  First mouths, then hands—Antony’s seeking more of Curt’s body to hang on to, Curt’s steady at the bend of Antony’s back, solid and secure, ensuring Antony he wouldn’t let go.

  They stood there, lips suckling, tongues seeking refuge in each other’s mouths, lapping at teeth and gums as if they were milk and honey. Antony broke away, another moan riding the hush of a hot breath. He tilted his head back, eyes shut tight as Curt nipped and licked at Antony’s throat.

  “Aah, baby….”

  Whatever control Curt feigned snapped and crumpled to the floor in the negligible space between them. With a growl he picked Antony up, hands gripping his waist like an ultimatum: wrap your legs around me or be dragged.

  Curt saw the moment Antony had surrendered all control. It was in the arch of his neck, the looseness of his limbs. Curt knew even if Antony had had a choice, he was incapable of moving his legs of his own free will. Curt’s body thrummed, a taut violin string waiting to be plucked and humming with an energy that made him demand control over Antony’s body. He grabbed him by the hips, bent low, picked him up, and swung him over his shoulder.

  The bedroom door was nonexistent. All Curt saw was a bed and how empty it seemed without Antony in it. So when he unceremoniously dropped him right in the middle, there were no arguments, barely any noises. Only haggard breaths.

  “Curt….” More mouths in hot pursuit of something to suckle. Teeth and lips and tongue dancing, almost a fight it was so violent and… hard. Like a punch to the teeth—brutal and messy. Curt knew what Antony needed in these moments. Rough and dirty, something solid, something to make his body his once again. When the kisses moved from lips down to Antony’s skin, the sound Antony made was filthy, a moan twisted and spiced with red wine and sin. “Baby. Now. I need you.”

  “Yeah… yeah….”

  Even if he’d heard the rip of fabric, Antony’s dilated pupils showed just how far gone he was. He’d only ever seen Antony this shaken once before, and in the moments after, he’d needed to be stripped completely bare. The look in his eyes had been primeval, and it honestly scared Curt the first time. When he came to his senses, Antony had told him his clothes kept him trapped in the moment. Now Curt knew better, was ready to give Antony what he needed to escape the ugliness tying him to the fear. For Antony, clothes were a thing of the other world, where he was somebody’s victim. He knew Antony needed the chill of the air on his skin to bring him back to this moment, where he was simply a man, naked and clean, nothing of Topeka—hell, of planet Earth—marking him or making him ugly with fear.

  Curt wasted no time. He left a few openmouthed kisses in spots from Antony’s neck to his torso, lapped at his cock, then took the head in his mouth for a moment, suckling enough to coax a small pool of spiciness from the slit. He’d always loved tasting Antony, his flavor heady and deep, like the earth. Aromatic and full, no confection. Curt couldn’t help the moan that slithered past his lips or his mouth’s indulgence in Antony’s length, the skin sparsely fuzzed, then more thickly furred. Curt relaxed his throat and engulfed Antony to the root. Antony’s sac was moist, a thick musk seeping from the skin, made more pungent with the heat pouring off him.

  “Baby… baby, now. Please. In… inside….”

  Needy mewls broke Curt’s fixation on Antony’s savory flesh. He lifted and released the swollen bulb with a final lick and a slurp. “I’ve got you, nene. I’ve got you.” He put two fingers in his mouth, moving the digits in and out from the cusp of his throat and back again to his lips a few times. When they were sufficiently wet, he reached down between Antony’s legs and sought out his hole. It pulsated, as if anticipating the intrusion, so Curt obliged and plunged both fingers into the tight space.

  A long hiss and a stuttered gasp signaled Antony first resisting, then inviting the rude push into his body. As Curt slid into Antony, a throaty moan told him Antony was ready for more, needed more. Curt removed his fingers, then licked up his own palm, taking a moment to taste the deepest part of his lover still painting his fingertips—God, did he ever love the way Antony tasted. He used the mixture of sweat and spit to make his own cock wet enough to squeeze into Antony’s channel. Curt grunted as he slowly slid in.

  Antony gasped. Curt growled at the clench of his boyfriend as he came to rest against him, completely stuffed in Antony’s heat. “Curt!”

  “Fuck… fuck, babe.” Curt’s voice was rough, harsh. Again he made a vain attempt at control. Again the sound of Antony’s voice, cracking and thirsty, ripped that control to shreds. Curt pulled almost entirely out, then slammed home. He pounded into Antony, gritting his teeth as he grunted through the punishment he was putting Antony’s body through.

  It was brutal, bodies slapping against one another. Each stab into Antony’s core pulled a howl from his guts, like shouting out a litany of prayers loud enough for all the angels to hear. This wasn’t lovemaking. This was a rough fuck meant to rip the body apart and make his lover brand-new. To wipe away the stain of the world around him and leave nothing but the burn and sweat of Curt’s body against his.

  He threw his head back, matching Antony scream for scream. Each pass into Antony’s hole was a divine scrape, a scratch at an itch that went far beneath the skin and nestled in his core. There wasn’t any intention to drag this out. He needed to come just as Antony needed to be completely and utterly fucked, obliterated, and reborn.

  “Ant… ¡coño! ¡Te haré acabar, baby!”

  The sound Antony made was inhuman, garbled and twisted like he was screaming while struggling to breathe. When Curt made one last solid stab to his prostate, Antony howled, a stuttered yelp punctuated with spurts of thick cum on his belly, the ropes smearing all over his skin as Curt moved against him, continuing to slam into him.

  Antony tightened his legs around Curt’s hips, ankles crossed as he flexed around him. Curt slid deep, then froze, his body trembling as he held his breath, waiting for the final jolt to his cock, nestled inside Antony. With a guttural roar of his own, he filled Antony up.

  THE SQUISH stuck to every corner of Antony’s insides, burning a liquid tattoo to his core. He pulsed with the feeling of Curt’s spend swimming inside him, the thought of carrying a bit of him in his body making his tired cock perk up enough to spill just a bit more.

  The emptiness that came when they separated was always odd for Antony. The void was true, a definite loss of heft and thickness, leaving him stretched, his hole gasping and begging for something else to fill it. But the release sated the burn of Curt sliding out of him. The slow slither and drip tickled his rim, making the mess—their mess—welcome, almost as satisfying as the moment of release. As he panted in Curt’s arms, licking at the salt on his shoulder, he knew there was nowhere in the world as beautiful as the sticky, sweat-dirty sheets of his bed after Curt had made him cry out a jubilee of completion.

  Curt left kisses full of moist breath across Antony’s collar, then his chest, taking a taste of a pert nipple and moaning at the spice on his dusky skin.

  Antony brushed at Curt’s hair, combing long fingers through the thick, tight curls from the top of his head to the back of his neck, then did it once more.

  “It kills me sometimes how much I love you,” Curt said, the words chasing a sigh he let shudder through him, the aftershocks leaving tremors in his lungs.

  “Mmm…,” Antony hummed in bliss.

  There was an odd bit of electricity in the silence. As if they could feel the molecules in the room rubbing against each other, mimicking the exertions of the spent couple sharing their space. The hot moment cooled between them, the air leaving small nips on their sweat-coated skin.

  “I swear I’m gonna kill whoever did this to you,” Curt said, breaking the pleasant
quiet.

  “Don’t, baby,” Antony said softly, eyes closed, mind still milky with ecstasy.

  After a few more moments of holding each other, Curt said, “We could leave, you know. Just pack up the Grand Dame and get the hell out of this place.”

  Antony’s sigh was heavy and thick. He’d almost forgotten. Forgotten why he’d needed to take Curt into his body, let Curt’s mark sting all of his parts until there was simply no more room for all the badness of the week.

  “Damn, babe. I was almost able to let go of all this shit until you started talking.”

  “Sorry, nene.” Curt lifted enough to leave a small kiss to a patch of skin. “I know it’s been hard for you. For your kids.”

  “You too, Ram. It’s been hell for us all.”

  “So let’s do it, then.” Curt rose a bit more, resting his weight on his elbow to better look into Antony’s eyes. “I mean, what’s the alternative? We stay, yeah. Then what? We go through all the shit this town throws at us, probably never be able to teach again—not kids, anyway. And I know you love the babies even more than I do.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Do you really wanna stay here, fight until you come home broken and sore, then end up with less than nothing? I mean, I don’t want to see you suffer anymore, baby.”

  “What about you? You could just leave, just like that? No looking back? No regrets that maybe you didn’t fight enough because you didn’t want to do the hard thing?”

  “I’m not going to lose you to this, Ant. I can’t. I refuse to lose you.” There was a heavy, pleading crack, madness in Curt’s words. The softness of his fingers on Antony’s cheek belied the hardness in his voice, the stone in his conviction.

  The force of Curt’s words stole Antony’s breath from him. “I don’t want to lose you either, baby.”

  The tension in Curt’s neck and shoulders eased. “Then let’s just go, huh? I mean, we’ve got enough saved up, and I’ve still got that prize money from a couple years ago. Let’s get out of here and leave all this shit behind us. Go somewhere where I can love you and you can love me without worrying if someone’s gonna come after us. Besides, you and I both know if it was a question of being safe or staying for the sake of our families, your mom and Mama would demand we get the hell out of here.”

  Antony hated to give up on this. He wasn’t a quitter, and he was furious—mad as hell—that the town he’d grown up in had taken an almost perverse pleasure in not only turning its back on him but attempting to break him, then ultimately driving him out. And they had the nerve to call him a deviant.

  “You’re right. I don’t want to live in fear and anger anymore.”

  Curt smiled.

  “But….”

  Then just as quickly Curt’s smile faltered, and the hardness slid back into his eyes. “What but? What else is there to—”

  “I’m not leaving my hometown with my tail between my legs. Topeka is as much my home as it is all these bigots’, dammit. They’re not gonna just scare me away.”

  “What are you thinking in that head of yours?”

  “We can leave. But I’m gonna make some noise first.”

  When Antony got it in his mind to do something, his face always transformed from model-fine to the grit of a prizefighter. On nights when quiet was comfortable and they whispered to each other, Curt had told him how much he reminded him of the stories his grandmother used to tell him of los indios de las aguas—painfully beautiful, with a heart to match, but cross him and he’d drag you away. He’d told Antony it was his ability to give so much that made him fall in love, but it was his bite that made Curt ache at inconvenient times, like when he let his mind wander to the spicy flavor of Antony’s warm umber skin. Forever the poet.

  Antony continued to play with Curt’s hair, eyes closed and mind miles away. A yawn escaped him, all the trauma, the stress, and finally Curt breaking through all the tension in his body allowing him to relax. “We have to board up that window,” he said lazily.

  Curt bent down and took Antony’s mouth. “Later,” he said, giving Antony only a moment to reacquaint himself with air. “Right now I can think of parts of your body that need more of my attention.”

  5

  “JESSE,” ANTONY said with an ache in his voice. “You don’t have to do this.”

  Jesse sighed. It was a week before the end of the school year. Antony and Curt were still trying to navigate the madness of teaching when the parents wanted them kicked out of town, and things were just… hard. It would’ve been difficult for Jesse not to know what was happening to Antony and Curt, and Antony could tell just from how distant Jesse had become with the staff how hard he was taking it. This wasn’t the town they loved, the people whose children they took care of. These people were scared, and in their fear, they started acting like psychopaths. It was a shame what fear fueled by bigotry could do to decent people. Antony wasn’t stupid, nor was he blind to the escalating stress his friend was under. Whether he liked it or not, Jesse had to do something, for his own sake. It seemed in Jesse’s mind, leaving was the right choice.

  “I have to do what I think is best for the school. I can’t have this level of mistrust among the parents. The staff.” He shook his head. “It’ll just make things worse for everybody.”

  “Well, what about your wife? What does she have to say about all this?” Antony asked.

  “Carlita understands. We’ve talked about this, and we have a plan. Don’t worry.”

  “But resigning?” Curt’s brow was furrowed, a series of deep cavities that seemed to age his face about ten years. “Do you really think that will make things easier? That it’ll change how people think around here?”

  “Probably not,” Jesse said.

  “Then why?”

  The breath came out thick. “Because you two are my friends. And quite frankly, that makes people think that I favor you. Mr. Simmons is good friends with my father, so….”

  “So yet again you’re being put under fire because of your dad,” Curt finished for him.

  After a moment’s pause, Jesse nodded. “Yeah.”

  Antony had no words. His mind was buzzing with anger. He closed his eyes and attempted to calm his breathing, then startled when Curt touched his shoulder.

  “Nene? You okay over there?”

  Antony didn’t say anything for a few moments, his teeth going to work in his mouth, nibbling at the inside of his cheek to keep himself from exploding.

  When he managed to get under control, he nodded once. “I’m fine. Just… just pissed as hell.”

  The three friends sat around the dining room table in silence.

  “If this is what you feel you have to do,” Antony said after a few long moments, “we can’t… we won’t stop you. But just promise me something, Jesse.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Promise me you won’t give it up. No matter where you end up, don’t stop teaching. Promise me.”

  Jesse smiled. “Let ’em try and stop me.”

  “AND SO it’s with great sorrow that I step down as principal of Pauline Central.”

  The small group of journalists who had gathered at the front of the Burnett Center started talking all at once. Cameras flashed here and there. The story of the superintendent’s son being appointed principal of one of Topeka’s top schools had been big news in Shawnee County. His resignation, in light of the scandal in which two of his teachers were at the center, caused an even bigger stir in the community.

  “Is this because of your relationship with the two gay teachers at PC?”

  “We heard you’ve been getting threats. Is that why you’re stepping down?”

  “Does your wife know you associate with homosexuals?”

  “Jesus,” Antony said. “Are they really that repulsive?”

  Curt didn’t answer, just stayed glued to the television, watching Jesse navigate the shitstorm he’d sailed into with his decision to make his resignation public.

  “I mean, what was th
e point of making a big deal out of this anyway? He knows they’re gonna nail him to the cross for this.”

  “You know why, nene,” Curt said quietly. “He wanted to take the heat off us.”

  “But why? We were in the wrong, and we’re taking our punishment, right? I don’t get why he’s doing this.”

  “…really none of your business. If there’s nothing else, my wife and I have to pick up our children from daycare. Thank you all for your time.”

  Jesse and Carlita walked back into the Burnett Center, no doubt to wait until the press dispersed. Curt shut the television off, then turned to Antony, whose mouth was downturned into a miserable frown. God, he missed his lover’s smile so much. The last couple months had been hell on them both, but especially Antony, who only wanted to teach and love Curt in peace. He wanted to… needed to make this up to him. It was his inability to retain his composure that got them here in the first place.

  “I can hear you thinking again,” Antony said.

  Curt sighed, then slung his arm over Antony’s shoulder.

  “Wanna share with the class?” Antony asked.

  Curt just snorted and shook his head. “You already know.”

  “And you already know what I’m going to say to that.”

  “But it’s true. I got us into this mess. And I haven’t done anything to answer for it. I mean, you have to stop teaching at PC. Jesse quit to take the focus away from us. But me? Coño, I was gonna quit at the end of the year anyway. How is that fair?”

  “Babe, life’s fucked-up that way.”

  “But why? And why aren’t you more pissed at me?” Curt looked Antony in the eye.

  “I tried being mad at you. For a minute. Then I realized, look, we’re both still alive, still young. We both have each other. We can get through anything, even our own stupidity, so long as we’re together, right?”