call me handsome and i’ll say thanks. call me pretty and i’ll look at the floor, because it hits somewhere i’ve spent thirty-one years pretending doesn’t exist.
handsome is safe. strong is safe. hot is easy, guys say hot to me at the gym all the time. i’m broad through the shoulders, big thighs, beard i keep trimmed tight, the kind of guy people assume lifts boxes for a living. i’m a project manager. i don’t lift anything heavier than a laptop. but i look the part, and for a long time that was the whole deal. pretty was a word that belonged to somebody else.
then eight months into dating ezra, he said it by accident.
we were half asleep on the couch with my head in his lap, the tv muttering, his fingers going through my hair. he looked down at me and said, “you’re pretty when you’re tired.”
i went completely still. everything in me stopped.
his hand stopped. “bad word?”
“no.”
my face was burning. i couldn’t look at him. “say it again.”
he’s twenty-nine, two years younger than me, sharper than i’ll ever be, and he got it slowly, then all at once.
“pretty.”
i felt my breath change. i felt it in my stomach, in my cock, in the back of my throat. a word i’d wanted for years and filed under things guys like me don’t get.
i told him all of it that night. years of wanting softer words. feeling like wanting them meant giving something up. he listened, didn’t laugh, and then he said, “you don’t become less masculine because you like one adjective.”
“easy for you to say.”
“so don’t believe me. tell me what you want tonight.”
i looked at him. my heart was pounding.
“call me pretty.”
“pretty.”
it was like a hand on the back of my neck. i made a noise i’d never made around another person.
ezra grinned slow. “come here.”
i climbed over him on the couch. broad shoulders, heavy thighs, jeans straining, and a guy twice the size of what the word usually goes with, practically vibrating over his lap because of three syllables. ezra put both hands on my waist. his eyes were dark.
“pretty,” he said again.
“fuck.”
“look at me.”
i looked. he kissed me, slow, his tongue soft in my mouth, and i felt it everywhere. then he pushed a hand between us and palmed my cock through my jeans and my hips jerked forward into it like i had no say.
“pretty boy.”
the sound that came out of me was somewhere between a protest and relief. he undid my jeans, shoved them down my thighs with his boxers, and got his hand around me. hot, rough, gripping, and my whole body clenched. i was already leaking over his fingers.
the contrast was the point. nothing about me had gotten less masculine. the word just reached somewhere handsome never had.
he stroked me slow. “pretty.”
my forehead dropped to his shoulder. “again.”
he kissed my temple. “pretty.”
i rutted harder into his fist, no embarrassment left, only wanting. he used the word when i asked for more. he used it when i lifted my head instead of hiding. he used it when my breath started breaking, and every single time something shot through me like a live wire. i got a hand down and shoved his sweats open too, got his cock out, thick and hot and slick at the tip, and wrapped my fingers around it so we were pressed together, my dick sliding against his in his tight wet fist while he whispered into my mouth.
“so pretty. look at you. you like that?”
“yeah.”
“say it.”
“i like it when you call me pretty.”
“good.” his thumb rolled over the head of me. “pretty boy. pretty, pretty boy.”
i was close, so close my thighs shook on either side of him, my hand shaky on his cock, his on mine going faster. i caught his wrist. not to stop him. to keep him there.
“don’t stop.”
he looked right at me. “still pretty?”
i laughed, breathless. “asshole.”
“pretty.”
that did it. i came hard, face buried in his neck, spurting across his hand and his stomach and the front of his shirt, a long broken groan with that word still in the air between us. he kept stroking me through it, slow, wringing out every last pulse, and the aftershocks nearly folded me in half. then he came too, because i’d never let go of him and my thumb was pressing right under the head, and he bucked up into my fist with a gasp and spilled hot over my knuckles.
we lay in a sticky mess on the couch. my face stayed against his chest. his heart was banging as hard as mine.
“i’m gonna say it all the time now,” he said. “you know that.”
i thought about it for a long time, listening to his heartbeat.
“good,” i said.
we left for work at different times the next day. at 10:16 i sent him a selfie from the elevator, because apparently i’m that guy now. then i changed his contact photo from a default circle to the terrible candid i love, him squinting into the sun with a corn dog.
Me: [photo]
ezra: pretty
Me: even in fluorescent lighting?
ezra: especially. adversity builds character
Me: still pretty?
ezra: annoyingly
Me: say it when i get home
ezra: gladly
i laughed at my desk. a coworker looked over. “what?”
“nothing.” i put the phone face down.
i didn’t delete the thread after rereading it, which i always do. i wanted the evidence.
he said it when i got home.
he was in the kitchen in his work shirt with the sleeves rolled, stirring something in a pan, and i came up behind him and put my face between his shoulder blades and just breathed. he turned the burner off without a word. turned around. looked at me for a long second, hands on my hips.
“pretty,” he said.
my knees actually went. he caught me against the counter and kissed me, and i kissed him back like i’d been starving all day, and somewhere between the kitchen and the bedroom my shirt came off and his belt came off and my beard was scraping his jaw raw.
i lay back on the bed. he stripped me slowly, kissing every inch he uncovered, my chest, my stomach, the soft place inside my hip, and every few kisses he’d murmur it against my skin. pretty. pretty. pretty. by the time he got my jeans off i was hard and dripping and so embarrassed i put my forearm over my eyes.
“hey. no hiding.”
i moved my arm.
he got between my legs. i’d never let anyone see me like this before, spread wide, wrecked, hips lifting every time he said the word. he wet his fingers and worked me open, slow, patient, curling them until i was cursing at the ceiling and fucking down onto his hand. then he lined up and pushed into me, thick and hot, one long slide, and the stretch took my breath out of my body.
“look at me.”
i did. my legs were over his shoulders. he was inside me and his face was open in a way i’d never seen, and he whispered it again, “pretty,” and i clenched around him so hard he groaned.
he fucked me slow at first, deep, dragging out almost all the way before sliding back in. i held onto his forearms. every thrust punched a sound out of me, and every sound got an answer. pretty. good. so pretty for me. my cock bounced against my stomach, leaking in a string, and when he finally took it in his fist, still driving into me, i felt the whole thing building in my spine.
“ezra, i’m”
“say it.”
“call me pretty.”
“pretty.”
i came untouched in his fist and all over my chest, shouting into his shoulder, my body locking down around him so tight he couldn’t hold on. he came a few thrusts later with a broken curse, deep inside me, hot and pulsing, his forehead dropped to mine.
he kissed the wet corners of my eyes and didn’t say a word about them, just pulled me against his chest and let me shake, one big hand moving slow down my back. i’d spent thirty-one years being the guy who held it together, and here i was with a stranger’s tenderness in my own bed, except he wasn’t a stranger. he was mine.
we lay there tangled. the dinner on the stove was cold. neither of us moved.
“still pretty?” he asked, eventually, into my neck.
i laughed. i was crying a little, which was stupid, and i let him see it.
“yeah. still pretty.”
