• • •
In the kitchen, Ethan sits at Robert's breakfast bar and skips coffee but eats a bowl of oatmeal with another big glass of water as he tells Robert about his seizures. A lot of it sounds technical, and as Ethan talks, Robert finds himself watching Ethan's hands--the way he waves his spoon around for emphasis and runs his fingertips along the edge of his bowl.
Robert's primary takeaways are that Ethan was having a seizure in the bed when Robert found him--but not the big shaky kind he's seen on TV--and that Ethan is possibly the most endearing human being he's ever laid eyes on. Or fucked the night before.
The more they talk, the weirder it seems, as if they've done this backwards somehow, beginning with the day Robert first saw Ethan at the Compound--when Ethan was volunteering to be tied up during a seminar on Japanese rope bondage. Ethan had been so still that day, contorted and tight, his palms pressed together behind his head as if in prayer. Robert had assisted the instructor with one simple binding, adjusting a knot that abruptly released the pressure down Ethan's core, prompting him to exhale a hoarse, low moan.
Robert had jerked off to it that night at home, picturing Ethan's dimpled skin and swollen cock and his dry, pink lips.
"You're not... uncomfortable with me now?" Ethan asks. "Right? I mean if you are, that's fine. God. I'm bugging you out, I can tell."
"No, I was thinking about your mouth, and fucking it," Robert says.
Ethan blinks. "Oh. Good."
Robert leans onto the bar on his elbows and looks at Ethan closely, wondering how the hell this much personal space feels tense now when just last night he had his mouth on Ethan's very personal space. "But you're... okay, right?"
A shy smile spreads across Ethan's face slowly, ending with a squint and a partial dimple. "Yeah I'm fine. I just can't drive right now," he says, touching the side of his head absently. "But I don't have a brain tumor or anything, if that's what you're asking."
"Good. Jesus Christ," Robert says, more loudly than he means to.
Ethan's eyes widen before he starts to laugh.
"Shut up," Robert says. "I'm feeling a little attached to you, okay?"
"Really? I guess my complete stalker instincts were spot on."
"Do you usually go home with complete stalkers?"
"Only if," Ethan starts to say. His expression sobers as he huffs out a wry sound and shakes his head. "No. I don't."
• • •
By 9am they're both on the couch, and Ethan is still naked.
Robert mouths at his nipples ruthlessly, scraping his teeth and tormenting them one at a time until they're both pink and hard and flushed and Ethan's wriggling and clawing at Robert's shoulders.
"This isn't fair," Ethan says.
"Why is that?" Robert asks, hot under the duvet that's migrated from his bedroom to the couch and now covers both of them, more or less.
"Because you're too bugged out to fuck me."
"I prefer reasonable. Prudent."
"Let me suck you then," Ethan says, before he yelps when Robert nips a fold of skin at his belly.
"Why don't you just relax," Robert says. Then he bites Ethan again--lightly, just a pinch, just enough to leave a faint mark that fades almost as soon as it pinkens Ethan's skin.
"Very funny."
Gripping the back of the couch and the edge of the cushion beside Ethan's hip, Robert slides up and manages to work his cock against Ethan's. "Hold us," he says, voice low, as commanding as he can manage when all he wants to do is rut like a teenager. "Use your hands, both of them."
"What will you give me if I do?" Ethan asks, a little cheeky, but a little desperate too. He's already reaching between, fitting his warm palms and long fingers against their cocks to hold them together as Robert pumps his hips.
Robert can think of several better answers, but still blurts out, "What do you want?"
"Dinner. I mean at a restaurant. A date. Oh, God. Robert, faster. Oh, fuck."
"I thought you didn't date?" Robert asks, going slow just to watch Ethan tremble beneath him.
"It's the... oatmeal talking," Ethan says, a hot laugh blasting out of him as he flushes and tosses his head back and forth. "Please don't tease me, I'm bad at this."
"I think you're very good at this," Robert says, and kisses him. He quickens the pace, pressing and sliding his cock against Ethan's and into Ethan's hands. It doesn't take long to come like that, not when he's been looking at Ethan's body all morning, smelling him and watching him and trying not to consider that he'd like Ethan to be here all the time, lounging in blankets and playing with spoons and laughing. His orgasm hits him like an ache, rattling out of his body and making him cry out.
"God damn it," Ethan says, jerking his hips at Robert's, moving in a way he never would in the only place they've known each other until now. He's needy and graceless with desire. "So close. Let me, let me," he says, grasping himself and pulling hard and fast. His wrist slides in Robert's come, working it into the dark hairs that stretch to his navel.
"You're impatient," Robert says. He stills Ethan's hand with a tight grip and slinks back down the couch until his cheek is pressed against Ethan's tight shaft.
"I am." Ethan tosses his head back and closes his eyes. "Robert," he says, like it hurts, like he's dying for it.
Robert closes his mouth around the salty head of Ethan's cock and sucks hard. He thinks about Ethan at the Compound--giving himself up to be pushed down and twisted inside out and opened up until all that's left is bare, raw, ready. What it is that they do isn't hurried and hot like this, it isn't messy and it doesn't make Robert feel this exposed, this vulnerable.
When Robert submits, he feels safe. Here, getting Ethan off, riding the shuddering thrusts of Ethan's hips, he feels like he's falling and there's nothing that's going to soften the blow unless Ethan catches him, and God, his mind is reeling.
Then Ethan comes, thick and hot and sour at the back of Robert's throat, and Robert swallows and gently coaxes every drizzling aftershock out with long, hard licks.
"Holy shit," Ethan says, recovering with deep gasps. "Aren't you a pretty cockslut?"
Robert actually blushes as he wipes his mouth. It feels good, like a light slap. "So I've heard."
• • •
They end up spooning on the couch, barely fitting. But Ethan is narrow, and feels nice along Robert's body. It's warm and drowsy under the blanket.
"You're a teacher?" Robert asks, pushing his nose at Ethan's sweaty hair and stroking his hip.
"TA."
"English?"
"Human-Computer Interaction, dick."
Robert laughs. "Sorry. You look bookish to me."
"Shockingly, I still encounter books and, you know, study." Ethan twists abruptly, turning over so they're face to face and he's hanging onto Robert to keep from tumbling off the couch. "What are we doing?"
"I don't know," Robert says, trying not to sound terrified that this is the part where Ethan says thanks for the sex and see you around and doesn't obtain so much as an email address on the way out the door.
Ethan closes his eyes, and his lashes tickle against Robert's face. "I like you."
"Dinner sounded good. I'd like that. And I want to play with you more. I want... " Robert exhales thickly, wondering how on Earth that, at twenty-eight, he's working on another erection already. "I want to do so many things to you."
Ethan is silent for a while, lipping at Robert's jaw. "Fuckbuddies, or...?"
"I don't think that'll work out."
"Oh." Ethan tenses in quiet, shivery ways Robert would never notice if he wasn't touching so much of him all at once.
"Only because," Robert says, closing his eyes too, and speaking softly. "I'm having... kind of intense thoughts about you."
"You'd rather scene then? Mistress Vanessa might--"
"Like thinking about making you a key to my apartment. Buying you flowers. Installing a heated towel rack. Giving you a drawer."
"Kinky," Ethan says unsteadily.
"Who's bugged out now?"
"I'm not." But Ethan's heart is beating fast. Robert can feel it.
"Are you afraid?" Robert asks, no longer teasing. He rolls them again, until Ethan's beneath him, and even their feet are touching.
"A little."
"The bad kind?"
Ethan licks his lips once, looking thoughtful. His heart still races, but he's smiling.
"The good kind," he says.
About the Author
Emory Vargas loves knitting scarves, but only has about three weeks a year to wear them thanks to living in an obnoxiously tropical climate. Emory enjoys writing about tentative sexual encounters and amorous cephalopods, though not always at the same time. Her short story,
The Cormorant
, can be found in
Shifting Steam
from Torquere Press.