18% Gray

by Anne Tenino

  Copyright

  Published by

  Dreamspinner Press

  4760 Preston Road

  Suite 244-149

  Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  18% Gray

  Copyright © 2011 by Anne Tenino

  Cover Art by Anne Cain annecain.art@gmail.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034

  http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

  ISBN: 978-1-61372-078-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition

  August 2011

  eBook edition available

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-079-0

  Prologue

  March 2104

  MATT spent the time on his knees thinking. Oh, he should have been concentrating on the dick in his mouth, but he’d lost interest in it a few weeks ago. About one week after he’d started putting said dick in his mouth.

  Actually, it wasn’t so much the dick in his mouth he was sick of; it was the dick attached to it.

  “Dude, deep-throat me,” Steve begged in a whiny voice.

  Matt had learned from recent experience that snorting in derision when you were giving a guy a blow job didn’t end well for either party. He sent Steve a scathing look. Yeah, that’s gonna happen.

  If Matt weren’t a hormonal, sex-deprived sixteen-year-old, he probably wouldn’t even be hard.

  Oblivious to Matt, Steve thrust his hips a little. Matt planted his hands on Steve’s hips and held them still against the tractor Steve was leaning on. The dumbass moaned.

  Matt was so getting a blow job this time. No more letting Steve get away with the hand job treatment. He’d managed to convince Steve to blow him—what? Three times, maybe? And in that same period of time Matt was sure he’d given Steve… let’s see… two to three blow jobs a week—he’d call it 2.5—for five weeks was… 12.5 blow jobs.

  Look, ma! He could suck cock and do math at the same time!

  He should have made Steve blow him first. He sighed around Steve’s erection. Live and learn.

  “Oh, yeah, suck it, baby,” Steve moaned. This guy watched too many porn vids. To pass the time, Matt reviewed how he’d ended up here on his knees.

  Fact: Matt was the only out kid in their high school. Announcing you were gay wasn’t that typical in a small town, even in a state like Oregon, where ninety-five percent of the people had joined the Blue States of America after the Split in ’56. Oregon had mostly just lost Ontario and a little of the southeastern corner in ’56 when Idaho went Red.

  Fact: Statistically, Matt knew there had to be about fourteen other queer guys in his school. There were 230 kids in the whole K-through-12 school in Weimer. If about twelve percent of the population was queer, that meant there were twenty-eight gay or lesbian kids in school. Half of them were of no interest to him, having the wrong equipment and all. That left fourteen potential playmates for him. But they could be in kindergarten for all he knew.

  Fact: Weimer was the largest town in the county, at just under 3,000 people, plus another couple thousand on outlying ranches. The closest school district to Weimer was 120 kilometers away, and it had fewer than one hundred kids in it.

  Fact: He could forget sex with some sympathetic guy out of high school (or, you know, some elderly pervert—he was sixteen; he wasn’t that picky). Matt wouldn’t be of age for two more years, and no one would fuck with an underage kid in his family. Most of his cousins—and his mom—knew three ways to eviscerate someone with their pinky nail. Crap, he knew that. It was a requirement of growing up in the Kell-Viteaux clan.

  Conclusion: It was going to be really fucking hard for him to get any action in this town. Like, ever.

  Clearly, tactical planning was necessary. So, he’d come up with a simple two-step plan.

  Step 1: He was a horny sixteen-year-old queer boy in an isolated, conservative community. He also happened to be relatively attractive. Instead of hunting his prey, it seemed easier to become the prey. So he very publicly came out in September.

  Step 2: Wait to be caught.

  Result? By February not a single underage, horny, closeted guy had come on to him. It looked like the plan was a bust.

  So when Steve came on to him one drunken night last month? Matt was so happy for another guy to touch him that he jumped at the chance. Literally. Climbed right up Steve.

  So now he had a closeted boyfriend. Really, fuck-buddy was a more accurate term.

  So, yay! Matt was fucking around with the quarterback of the football team, but no one knew it except Matt’s family (well, he hadn’t worked up to telling Dad yet, but Mom and the grampas knew). Not only could he not brag about his hot fuck-buddy, but the fuck-buddy had misplaced his personality to top it off.

  Somehow, this wasn’t as great as he thought it would be when he had come up with the grand plan to get some action. Too bad his closeted fuck-buddy didn’t blow him more, to make up for it. And, you know, for being generally boring. But Steve was the only game in town, and they both knew it.

  Steve started to make those noises he made when he was getting close, and Matt snapped back to attention. Oh, yeah. Sucking cock. Matt glanced up at Steve.

  Ugh. He was too… classically handsome. Dark hair, built, tall, perfect nose. Too cliché. Of course the totally hot quarterback was gay! Matt closed his eyes and imagined Steve as someone else. It was the only way he was going to get this done. Matt just wasn’t capable of giving it that necessary extra little bit if he had to give it to Steve.

  Matt imagined the guy he imagined every time he sucked Steve off anymore. The guy who probably wasn’t gay, but telling himself that hadn’t stopped Matt from wanting him. James Ayala. Steve’s best friend.

  James didn’t go in for a lot of the high school hubris Matt saw in most jocks (exhibit A? Fucking his mouth). James had self-confidence, and he didn’t need to treat anyone like shit to make himself feel better. He never bullied or ridiculed. He was the original strong, silent type, who understood what personal integrity was before most guys had even heard of it.

  And if James was a little less than classically handsome? Something about the way he was put together, and the way he moved, and the way Matt felt when James looked at him more than made up for it.

  So it was James’s hard cock he was sucking right now. He could feel James’s hand in his hair, gripping it tight, almost painfully tight. Forcing him to take it. Matt shivered at the idea and sucked harder, humming a little.

  Steve gave a grunt, ruining Matt’s good time.

  Why was that fantasy a turn-on when he imagined James doing it, but if Steve did it Matt felt compelled to twist his sac?

  Matt opened his eyes and started pulling off Steve. He didn’t know if he could finish if the guy was going to make noise and ruin his fantasy.

  That’s when Matt saw the guy standing in the door of Steve’s family’s machine shed. Backlit, he was mostly a silhouette, but there was just enough interior light that Matt could make out his face.

  “James,” Matt breathed.

  Steve froze and then gave himself whiplash cranking his head toward the door.

 
; “Fuck, dude!” Steve yelped, pushing on Matt’s shoulders.

  “Shit,” Matt groaned, pulling his hands off Steve’s hips. He didn’t see how this could be good.

  “Jesus Christ!” James spat, his face going red with anger and… was that hatred?

  Then James turned and walked out.

  STEVE tried to get Matt to finish but Matt told him to fuck off and left, looking for James. Matt climbed on his crotch rocket, not entirely sure what he was doing but knowing he needed to talk to him. It wasn’t like they were close friends, exactly, but James had been really cool to him. They were friendly.

  He found James outside his family ranch house, plugging in his own crotch rocket. Matt pulled up silently, just the gravel crunching under his wheels. He raised the shield on the rocket, apprehensive and unsure what he was going to say.

  Shit. He knew James could hear him, but he kept his back to Matt. Matt figured his best approach was a brazen one. He got off the bike.

  “Th’fuck?” Matt asked James, walking up behind him.

  James stood up from where he’d been stowing his helmet behind the seat. “I didn’t know you were a fag,” James said coldly, not even turning around.

  Matt felt like someone had kicked him in the nuts. No one said the F-word anymore. Unless they were one. Then it was okay. But otherwise? Nuh-uh.

  But it was so much more than that.

  “How could you not know I was queer, James? Everyone knows I’m queer. Somebody lased it into the bathroom wall! ‘Need your cock sucked? Call Matt Tennimore.’”

  “Yeah, I saw it.” James wouldn’t look at him, disgusted. “I just thought it couldn’t be true about someone like you.”

  “Whadya mean, ‘someone like me’? Someone skinny and short and kinda effeminate?” It was a measure of how upset Matt was that he called himself effeminate. Most of the time he refused to admit he might be.

  Not that there was anything wrong with it, of course.

  “No!” James finally looked at him, the same look in his eye that he’d had when he’d found Matt on his knees in front of Steve’s cock. “Someone I liked.” James turned and stalked off toward his front door.

  “But if you like me….” Matt wanted to kick his own ass as soon as he opened his mouth.

  James turned but just gave Matt that stony look he was so good at. He snorted in disgust. “Gimme a fucking break. You think I’m going to hang out with a faggot like you?”

  “What about Steve? He’s a fag too! He still your friend?” Matt called after him.

  All he got in reply was a slamming front door.

  Matt waited a minute. He felt hot and cold by turns, and his fists were clenched so hard he could feel the nails bite into his palms. It wasn’t the worst treatment he’d gotten in this fucking town, but it hurt the most.

  This can’t end like this.

  But it did, of course.

  FOR the next four months of school, James was Matt’s enemy. Cold looks, snide comments in class, and a lot of James pretending Matt didn’t exist.

  Finally James went off to Oregon State, and Matt breathed a sigh of relief. Probably partly because Steve went off to college too. Matt was pretty fucking sick of Steve by then.

  Not that he ever touched him again after that day, but Steve kept bugging him to.

  James’s leaving felt like a splinter in his chest. Not because he gave a shit, but because what a fucking dick! No one gave him that kind of shit! He had relatives in Special Ops, and they’d kick James’s sorry ass for calling Matt a fag.

  Except he didn’t ever tell them about it, because he didn’t want anyone to know what a loser he was. It certainly wasn’t because he wanted to save James’s ass.

  Chapter 1

  October 2111

  MATT walked into the QESA office first, but no one was there except Bull. Bull had gotten his nickname for very obvious reasons, and Matt thought it was kinda funny to see a huge, broadly muscled guy two meters tall scrunched down at the dispatch center, hunching over the embedded vid-datascreen. Bull had been seriously injured on an extraction last week and was apparently still taking it easy.

  “Queer Extraction Services Association, can I help you?” Bull was saying into the vid-datascreen.

  Matt waited for him to finish the call and said hi.

  “Wish I was out in the fucking field,” Bull grouched when Matt asked him what was up. “Lance is in the house,” he added before Matt could ask.

  “How much longer you stuck being the receptionist?”

  “Nothing wrong with bein’ a receptionist.” Bull scowled sulkily. “Known some pretty hot receptionists.”

  “Yeah? So you’re thinking about quitting fieldwork and making this a permanent gig?”

  “Fuck no!” Bull’s voice went so high it almost cracked. “’Sides, gotta get outta here. Make room for the new trainee tomorrow.”

  “New trainee, huh?”

  “Yeah, you’re gonna love workin’ with him.” Bull was smirking.

  “Yeah? He hot?”

  Bull gave another little smirk. “Oh, he isn’t really your type.”

  “Is he your type?”

  Bull looked thoughtful. Then he shook his head. The vid-datascreen chimed again. Another incoming call.

  So Matt went on in to the old farmhouse to find Lance. The house was almost 250 years old and had been in the family since it was built. It was kind of nice to have that kind of connection to the past. Although it was ridiculously outdated. No house-bots, no sonic shower, no embedded tech (other than security devices). The list went on.

  “Lance?” Matt hollered as soon as he was in the back door. Nothing. “Grampa?” Sometimes Lance refused to answer to anything but Grampa, but not when it was work. Judging from the message Matt had received, this was work.

  “Grampa?” Matt tried again.

  Still nothing. Matt started searching the house, but he ran across Lance and Sid almost immediately, making out on the couch like they were in their twenties and not their seventies. Well, Lance was in his seventies.

  “Aaaaaahh! My eyes! I’m blind!”

  All he got was a pissy look. “Go back in the kitchen and make coffee,” Lance told him grumpily. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Didn’t you guys hear me come in?”

  “We were busy.” Grampa Sid smiled at him, his leg still wrapped around Lance’s thigh.

  Horny old bastards.

  Matt went into the kitchen. If he was going out on a job, this might be one of the last chances he’d have for home-brewed coffee for a while. He was going to enjoy it.

  He stood in front of the coffeemaker, tapping his fingers impatiently while it got its shit together and ground up some beans. He glanced up at the wall behind it.

  Jesus, these old people.

  “Lance!” he hollered.

  “Right behind you,” Lance answered practically in his ear, making Matt jump. Show-off.

  “You may still be all ninja quiet, old man, but you guys haven’t changed the damn calendar since last year. It’s not even a digital calendar. It’s October and this thing is on December 2110.”

  Lance shrugged. “Sid likes the picture. I keep it there for him. Makes him happy.”

  “Where’d Grampa Sid go, anyway?”

  “Why does he get to be called Grampa Sid, but I just get Lance?”

  “You’re my boss. Where is he?”

  “He has a new hoverboard he’s trying out.”

  “Jesus, Lance! Those things are dangerous. He’s almost seventy. He shouldn’t be riding that.”

  “I make him wear a harness.”

  “Yeah, but does he?” Sid was a fucking daredevil on a board, in spite of being generally subdued otherwise.

  “Yep.” Lance smiled a little evilly. “Surprise inspections. And if he doesn’t pass, the consequences are grave.”

  Matt so didn’t want to know what the consequences were. He poured them each a cup of coffee.

  “What are you doing here
?” Lance asked him when Matt handed over the coffee.

  “You sent me an encrypted text telling me you needed me to check in. The mind really is the first thing to go.” Matt shook his head in mock sorrow.

  “Didn’t think you’d come by in person. Expected you to vid or something. I thought your mom said you’d be at home this week.”

  “Yeah, well she isn’t totally up-to-date with my social calendar. I went to the beach to see Simon.”

  “Thought you guys broke up.”

  “We did, but we weren’t really serious, anyway. He wanted me to meet his new boyfriend, so I came, I saw, I met, and I was underwhelmed.”

  “That why you’re grumpy?”

  “No.” Yes.

  “Ah.” Lance just looked at him over the rim of his mug. He wanted details, but he had some weird idea that he wasn’t a nosy old man, and wouldn’t pry. So he liked to use silence instead.

  Matt quirked an eyebrow at him.

  Lance smiled back mildly, steaming coffee mug in one hand, other hand in his pocket. Rocking back and forth on his feet.

  Matt debated waiting this out but decided he didn’t have the patience. “There’s nothing to tell. So, you got a job for me or what?”

  Lance walked over and sat down at the kitchen table, planting his elbows. He looked apprehensive. “Yeah, I do, but it’s not an easy one.”

  Matt shrugged. “Easy isn’t really my thing.”

  “Like we haven’t known that since you were born?”

  Matt ignored that. “So, c’mon, tell.”

  “I got an encrypted file from Special Operations Unified Force last night. They want to contract for the extraction of a SOUF Lieutenant in Red Idaho. He was captured in Boulder, then identified as gay in POW camp. He’s out of re-education now, and SOUF wants him back.”

  “’Kay, what’s the hard part?”

  “He’s only been out of re-education for three weeks. He’s a level-one parolee.” So, he was tracked twenty-four hours a day via satellite by a dedicated Artificial Intelligence, not spot-checked.