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His phone is ringing.
It’s two thirty in the morning, and his phone is ringing.
Sighing, Hellboy rolls over, away from the bright blue of his clock radio display and towards the tinny sound of his phone, muffled in a pile of clothes. The BPRD finally let him get a cell phone--a real one, not just a walkie talkie for missions--one of those nice ones with a keyboard and a camera. Though he had to be careful about which hand he held it with.
He already has a suspicion about who might be calling, and a glance at the ID confirms it; Meyers. It wasn’t that he hadn’t yet gotten the hang of the time difference; in fact, he was pretty good with that aspect. It’s just that he was still so pissed about being transferred to Antarctica, he felt the need to deprive Hellboy of precious sleep. For the past couple months, he’d get a phone call at some ungodly hour. It wasn’t every day, which was either because Boy Scout didn’t care enough to keep a schedule, or he just liked to keep Hellboy on his toes.
Still, Hellboy answers. He likes to humor the kid.
“Hey, John, what’s up?” he tries to sound as awake as possible and doesn’t do too good a job, voice a little hoarse and slow.
“It’s cold,” John bitches, just like he does at the beginning of every call. At least by now it’s just a bored proclamation, has lost the pitiful shivering misery that soaked the first handful of calls.
“Cold, in Antarctica? No way.” Hellboy deadpans, leaning back against the headboard, shutting his eyes and promising he’d not fall asleep until he was done laughing at Meyers.
“Y’know...fuck you.” That gets his attention. Boy scout doesn’t swear often. “Do you really hate me this much, you had to get me sent here?”
“Hey, hey!” Hellboy wakes up a bit. At first the insults and whining had been amusing, but by now he was starting to feel guilty. “That wasn’t…totally my fault.”
“Whatever.” John sighed. There was a pause. “Anyway, it’s not so bad. I’m adjusting.”
It‘s a surprising relief to hear that. To know that the guy wasn‘t miserable. “Good. Anything exciting happening?”
“Eh. We’re having a bit of a wendigo problem, actually…might need help soon. We think they’re moving further north. Because of the climate change.”
“Wendigo, huh? Never tangled with one of those before.”
“It’s not that fun.”
“Oh yeah? Think I'd differ with you there.”
“Mm. Actually…got grabbed by one the other day. It started to--you know what they do, right?--yeah, it started dragging me. It only got a couple yards, though, before Agent Constant took it down.”
“Constant. He’s the werewolf, right?”
“Mhm.”
There’s a long pause. By now they’ve had so many phone conversations, pauses don’t matter all that much. Hellboy nearly goes back to sleep, sitting up against the headboard. His room is warm and dark, smells like cats and burnt things.
“So, how’re you and Liz?”
Well, that wakes him back up. “Well…” Hellboy begins uncertainly, which is really all John needs to hear.
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I guess…we’ll work it out.” They’d fought more and more often. It wasn't something he was eager to think about.
“Yeah,” John sighs, and Hellboy can hear him shifting around on the other end.
“Where are you?” Hellboy asks. He looks around for the remote. There was probably a casette still in one of his TVs.
“In bed,” John sighs. “I’m not sure what time it is. It’s just dark here, and it’s warmest under the covers. So I figured, why not take a nap.” On the other end of the line, Jon nervously fiddles with the sheets. “You’re probably in bed, too.”
Something about Jon’s tone puts Hellboy on edge. It‘s too hesitant to be innocent. “Yep,” he answers, tersely. “It’s almost two AM here.”
Another long pause. John rustles around, doing whatever, and Hellboy contemplates trying to end the conversation right there.
But John is speaking again; “Miss you,” he says, tone unabashedly breathy and low.
Hellboy winces. “Kid,” he growls, “stop.”
“Oh, but, come on--,” John whispers half formed protests. “Just--just talk to me.” A half-stifled moan, distant like he’d turned away from the phone to let it out.
“What the hell are you doing,” Hellboy sighs. It’s a rhetorical question, devoid of actual punctuation. A rush of breath. Long pause. John’s uneven breathing on the other end of the line.
“Thinking about you,” John's voice has a little smile in it, though it cracks. “I'm touching myself,” he mentions, like an afterthought. It's so ridiculous, Hellboy snaps himself out of it with a snort of laughter.
“Smooth as sandpaper, boyscout,” he rumbles, and gets a little whimpery laugh in response. He has his flesh hand already cupping the swelling heat in his shorts. He needs to hang up. He can’t.
Squeeze. Hips restless against the skewed sheets. Head back ‘til it bumps against the headboard, but his eyes are closed and he’s in the dark, warm, small world behind his eyelids.
“I wanna,” John stammers, “I mean, I keep thinking about sucking you off, that time right before I left.”
Hellboy hisses through his teeth. His tail curves up to trail over his torso while his flesh hand is busy in his lap. “Yeah,” he responds, a little slowly, voice dragging through his chest like gravel, “been thinkin' about that too.” It had been hurried and nasty and he'd come faster than he ever had before. As he gets harder his cock falls out through the opening of his shorts, and with a sigh he wraps warm fingers around himself. “About you trying to choke yourself on me—damn.” Hellboy bites the sentence off with a soft curse, stroking a little faster, thumb slipping over the broad, hot head.
“You barely fit in my mouth.” John's voice is so shaky. Over the connection the sound of his hand on himself is like loud white noise.
“What can I say? I'm well proportioned.” Even now Hellboy cracks a cheesy grin, hand stilling on his cock to squeeze. The end of his tail slowly strokes back and forth over the groove of muscle at his hip.
“I'm definitely not complaining,” John continues, with genuine, clumsy enthusiasm. The shitty metal springs on his bed creak over the phone. He hears Hellboy's truck bed give an answering creak.
It had been pretty obvious how few complaints the kid had. Hellboy had looked down to check on him and found John staring up at him, flushed and red-mouthed, gasping as he came over his own fist. Though he was still shivering, he smiled.
“Could you take it if I fucked you?” Hellboy murmurs. He's very glad of his soundproofed, vault-locked room right about now. He's never said anything like this before, but somehow it gives him the same kind of thrill he got from bullying Meyers.
John muffles a moan into one of his blankets. He's getting close, getting past words. “Yeah, I could,” he pants, “but what if I wanted to fuck you?”
Hellboy grunts, feeling his whole body draw up tight. Almost unconsciously the round tip of his tail is rubbing against his hole; there's no lube around but just the touch is good enough for now. “God damn,” he says. Fragmented attempts at wry remarks swim through his head and all he can manage is another, more strained, “god damn.” He can't help stroking himself faster, broad chest rising and falling in an uneven rhythm.
“Wow, I didn't think you'd be so into the idea.” John is struggling to speak now, but there's still a smile in his voice. Hellboy wants to scrub it off his face – with a kiss or a smack, he can't decide. “You like to be fucked?” John continues.
“Careful,” Hellboy growls, voice dropping to a deep seismic tremor as his feet plant and his hips lift off the bed.
John just moans, gulps for air. “I'm close,” he says, “you?”
Hellboy is there already, heart pounding, pulsing in his own fist. He tries to hold it back but the groan that comes out of him is loud, rolling up from his chest as he curls forward. Over the racket of his own pulse he hears John gasp and the rustle of his blankets as he thrashes.
For a while they stay on the phone breathing loudly into each other's ears.
Hellboy wipes his sticky hand on his boxers, listening to John's breathing slow and deepen. “Hey,” he murmurs, “you awake?”
There's silence, and John says, “I'm sorry.”
Hellboy sighs, an inch away from sleep himself. “Don't be.”