Back Under the Hood
Monday morning smelled like optimism and high-octane fuel. I walked into Volkov Auto with a fresh thermos of coffee and a resolve to be the most professional, least obviously-gay mechanic this side of the Mississippi. Not that I was out, but I had made a vow to not hide it either.
That resolve lasted about thirty seconds.
Ivan was at the far bay, a mountain of quiet concentration, his entire focus on the undercarriage of a BMW hoisted on the lift. The coveralls did nothing to hide the way his shoulders shifted as he worked. My brain, the traitor, immediately supplied a very detailed, very unprofessional image. I decided right then that my new life’s mission was to see what that man looked like when he smiled. A real one.
“You must be the new guy.”
I tore my eyes away from the Ivan-shaped distraction to see a beefy man with a permanent grease stain on his cheek and a toothpick tucked in the corner of his mouth. The same married guy I blurted out to when I first walked into the garage. The big, solid just-my-type-married-man. Doug Smith, he introduced himself, Smitty, they called him. My babysitter for the day.
“That’s me. Troy.” I swallowed, hearing that closet door slamming shut as I took in the frown on his face and the sexist calendars so typically placed around the garage of the big breasted women for all to see.
He gave me a once-over that was significantly less appreciative than the one I’d just given the boss. “Quarterback, huh? Think you can handle real work pretty boy?”
I swallowed down all my unspoken courage and bravery as this beefy man glared at me. I had a feeling I was not going to end up in a hotel room with this man, moaning out his name as he fucked me and how I wished he’d leave his wife. More like him beating the shit out of me in the back of an alley. “The only thing I’m fumbling these days is a stubborn oil filter,” I said with a grin.
He snorted, not quite a laugh, but it wasn’t hostile. Progress.
He led me to a beat-up Ford F-150 that was making a sound like a bag of spanners in a blender. “Alright, hotshot. Let’s see what you’re made of. Diagnose that.”
It was a test. A welcome one as I pushed away the image of this man naked and focused on my work. I popped the hood and let the familiar, logical part of my brain take over. The noise, the smell, the slight shudder… it was a puzzle. A solvable one. This was my element.
As I worked, the chorus of the garage started up. Big Ray, another human refrigerator, was telling a long, convoluted story about a fishing trip. This garage was full of testosterone and big built men and macho attitude which was worse than the locker rooms. Smitty was complaining about his brother-in-law. The radio was tuned to a classic rock station. And then, the commentary started again, and I flicked the lock on that closet door.
A commercial for a body spray came on, featuring a shirtless guy with abs you could grate cheese on. I glanced up at it, thinking his abs looked better than mine, and how I could lick that torso all the way up, or down. It made me think back to the early days, when Coach ran his big hand over my abs that first time. How I had shivered. How he had looked at me. I had watched his big manly hands, the ring on his finger shining like a beacon for me to stare at as his big fingers danced over each ripple and divot of my six pack washboard abs. How I watched that hand glide underneath the waistband of my gym shorts and underwear, the coldness of his hand meeting the heat from my dick.
While his left hand gripped my impressive cock, his right had found its way to my neck and he pulled me closer to his face, his breath a mixture of coffee and lust.
“You like this don’t you?” He had asked me.
I remember nodding, standing there like a goon, my mouth open.
“I could tell.” Bill had said, pulling my face to his. That first kiss was amazing, his scruffy chin rubbed against my own, our tongues swooping in like they belonged in each other’s mouths, my hand instinctively reaching for his bulge, and moaning into his mouth as my own cock hardened even more in his tight grasp as I longed to free his.
Smitty’s raunchy voice erupted, breaking me from my memory. “Ugh, would you look at that,” Smitty muttered, shaking his head. “Pretty boy. Bet he doesn’t know which end of a wrench to hold.”
“Probably not, but I’m sure he likes to grab different kinds of wrenches, am I right?” Big Ray chimed in with a good-natured chuckle. “Needs to get some dirt under those fingernails, and get his hands properly dirty under a real hood, know what I mean?”
I put my head back down, my hands buried in the engine bay covering the wash of shame from that first kiss with a man. Don’t react. Don’t smile. Don’t frown. Just be a rock. It was a familiar drill, a lot like ignoring trash talk on the field. But this felt different. This was my new home, and they were casually talking about how people like me were… I don’t know, less?
My mind flickered back to my ex, that closeted coach and what we did that first time in his office. My first kiss. My first taste of a man’s cock. My “ex.” Is that what I would call him? The king of “us vs. them,” as long as no one knew he was one of “them.” I pictured Ivan Volkov, just once, looking at my ex/Coach/Bill with those cool grey eyes of his. One look from that man, and my ex would have probably spontaneously combusted from sheer, unworthy inadequacy. The thought was deeply, darkly satisfying.
I found the problem—a shredded serpentine belt and a seized idler pulley. “It’s the pulley,” I called out to Smitty, holding up the evidence. “Seized solid. Wrecked the belt.”
Smitty ambled over, peered in, and gave a grudging nod. “Huh. Not bad. Not bad at all. Looks like our pretty boy here knows his shit.”
It was the highest praise I was going to get.
The day flew by in a blur of grease, gasoline, and the low, steady rumble of Ivan’s voice giving orders. I stole glances whenever I could. The size of his hands. The way he handled a heavy transmission like it was nothing. The shape of his perfect looking ass. The focused frown as he read a diagnostic computer. The width of his shoulders, leading up to his sizeable neck. The sheer, uncomplicated competence of him.
By the time five o’clock rolled around, my back ached and my hands were stained, but I felt more alive than I had in months. The work was real. The satisfaction was tangible.
As I was cleaning up, Ivan walked over. He stopped a few feet away, his gaze sweeping over the now-quiet F-150. I inhaled a bit, got a whiff of his scent, all oil filled and musky, with a hint of something slightly citrus.
“Smitty says you did good,” he said, his voice that same low diesel rumble that I could picture purring in my ear, the way Bill’s voice still lingered there some days and nights in my head, whispering that he loved me.
A bolt of pure, stupid pride shot through me. At least, I hoped it was pride. “It was a straightforward fix.”
He nodded, his eyes meeting mine for a second. Just a second. But in that look, I saw it again—that flicker of recognition. The shared language of fallen athletes who had found a new field to play on. And my eyes flicked down to his big hands wiping themselves on a cloth, and I think my lips parted slightly in awe.
“See you tomorrow,” he said, and turned to leave.
I watched him go, his bubbled ass giving me a little show underneath those baggy overalls, my heart doing a weird little flip-flop in my chest. The garage was a minefield of casual homophobia. Smitty was a skeptic. Big Ray even worse. My fantasies about any of them, especially the boss were wildly inappropriate and probably doomed.
But the work was everything I’d hoped it would be.
And the boss? Well, let’s just say that night, in the confines of my small shower in my one room apartment, after I had shaved my cock and balls smooth, my erection grew in my hand as I thought about him. With one hand on the shower wall, my right fist gripping my 8 inches of cut meat, I pictured what it would be like to see him out of those overalls, to feel the heat of his dick buried deep inside my ass, those thick lips in my ear as he fucked me, telling me he loved me as he bred me. It was easy to picture all that, given the sheer sight of him. Even easier to blast a wad of cum onto the shower wall in front of me as I pictured it.
Yeah. I was already completely, utterly gone on him.
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