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It is among Felix’s unsung virtues that, at this stage in his life, he can decide to coexist with a problem instead of exacerbating it. Even if the problem recurs weekly. Even if the problem begets more problems.
After their workout, Felix turns the corner for the gym showers and Dimitri turns away. He ducks his head under Felix’s gaze, dismissing himself without a word. It’s the same polite disengagement every time, and Felix knows Dimitri is aware of the tension that springs up, a little rent in the air between them. Felix imagines stepping over the divide. Forcing the issue. Pinning Dimitri against a wall, maybe, and bringing to light both sides of what’s bothering Felix here.
But no. Felix is civil now. He’s matured. And Dimitri, instead of arguing, instead of showering, would rather sit in the car in his sweat-dark t-shirt and listen to an audiobook while he waits for Felix to rinse off so they can drive home. The same as he always does.
Felix is still chewing the problem of it while he scrubs himself with brisk strokes. It’s impossible, seeing Dimitri hangdog and in retreat without having a fresh feeling about it. It pulls on too many strings, some very old, all interconnected.
It is Felix’s opinion that Dimitri’s body is fine. More than, though that’s a point better contemplated elsewhere. And of course Dimitri has final say in who sees his scars. But it’s ridiculous that he would shape his life around the fear of judgement. He shouldn’t have to sweat in his layers and subject himself to discomfort.
It is Dimitri’s choice; Felix still suffers for it. He considers Dimitri, stewing in the heat of himself as he waits in the car. He sucks in a quiet breath.
Felix towels off his hair, ties it up still mostly wet. He’s always quick but today he’s quicker. He shuts the gym locker a little too hard.
The brightness and the heat slam into Felix when he steps out into the parking lot, the sun glinting blindingly off the rows of cars. Summer lies over them heavy as a panting dog. It touches everything. Felix finds his mouth dry as he hitches his duffel bag up his shoulder and steps off the curb. The walk across the parking lot seems long. A tug of anticipation catches Felix around the navel.
When Felix slides into the passenger seat, he is all at once surrounded by the smell of Dimitri.
Dimitri doesn’t even like to run the air conditioner while he waits: some misguided notion about conserving fuel, probably, with a dose of self-punishment mixed in. Instead he cracks the window and sits there in his full-coverage workout gear, his gym shorts over his compression leggings. The result, on summer afternoons, is Felix feeling like he’s crawling through a bath of Dimitri. This is the other problem, one Dimitri unknowingly insists on by refusing to shower: Felix, half-hard for the length of the drive home.
It’s the smell of his sweat and his deodorant and his body wash, and something beneath that, richer: the smell of just Dimitri. Felix clenches his jaw. It makes him want to worry his teeth on something, the scent and the ambient heat of Dimitri’s body. Their arms nearly touch over the center console. He takes a deep breath; it’s the opposite of calming. Need, nearly as harsh as anger, scratches at him from the inside.
“All ready?” Dimitri smiles like he has no idea what Felix is suffering. And he doesn’t. It makes things worse. Felix, alone in this, is left to toss and writhe.
Dimitri drives with the window half-down, enough for the air to pick up his hair in wild flurries. Felix watches this from the corner of his eye. With the car in motion Dimitri’s scent is not so all-encompassing, but this only puts in Felix the desire to root it out, dig for the core of it, agitated by its nearness.
“Are you going to shower when we get home?” Felix asks.
Dimitri keeps his eye on the road, his hands at 10 and 2, textbook.
“Yes,” he says slowly, feeling out the intent. “Same as always. Why do you ask?”
Felix asked because it’s all that is available to him. He asked because five minutes into a fifteen minute he feels as stir crazy as if he’d been locked in a cupboard.
Felix taps his fingers sharply against the armrest. Exhales. “No reason.”
Felix’s restlessness is gaining momentum at a speed he thinks even Dimitri should recognize. He wonders about it himself. Why this time? And not all the other times? It is exactly because there are so many other times, and Felix has restrained himself every time. Held himself back from arguing with Dimitri over showering, held himself back from making Dimitri hold up his own shirt with his teeth and licking the sweat off his stomach. It’s summer, Felix thinks, and he is boiling.
He inhales again; the smell of Dimitri is almost-there. He wonders if Dimitri might let Felix undress him when they get home. Frequently Dimitri demurred. He’d half-smile, sweetly, and complain, I’m sweaty. He ought to bend Dimitri over in the foyer and fuck the manners right out of him.
Felix is by now suffering an incredible amount of jaw tension. The heat pounds a tattoo behind his forehead. He puts a hand on Dimitri’s thigh. Maybe he had not made himself clear, in the past. Perhaps he had let the wrong things go unargued, in the name of their peace.
Felix feels the muscle in Dimitri’s thigh flex. Dimitri lets out a small, barely audible breath.
“Felix,” he says quietly. Still focused on the road.
“Dimitri,” Felix says. He’d checked already for nearby cars. He’s not an idiot. The road is clear, that lone lane that winds through orchards that Dimitri prefers for its scenery and the quiet. Felix looks at the whir of greenery blurring past and slides his hand higher.
Dimitri’s voice is tight. “I have to focus.”
“Then focus,” Felix says.
“You’re making it challenging.”
“You choose what you pay attention to.”
Dimitri shakes his head briefly, then signals, to the benefit of no one on the empty road, and pulls the car off into the dirt turn-out. Exactly as Felix expected he would. The sound of loose gravel crunches under the tires. The car is still. The air settles thick around them, taxed with anticipation.
Dimitri begins, “While I appreciate the sentiment—“
Felix clicks his tongue. He thinks of the fruit in the trees around them: heavy on the branch, sun-hot with its skin taut, nearly splitting.
“You’d appreciate the sentiment better if you pulled down your pants.”
Dimitri shudders visibly, but his voice is level. “Setting aside indecent exposure, I’m sweaty, Felix. And I don’t imagine I smell all that good right now, either.”
Felix could laugh. Dimitri really has no idea, then. That’s Felix’s failure. Felix unclips his seatbelt, leans over the console and licks a stripe up Dimitri’s neck from his collar to his ear. He tastes the salt-tang of sweat and noses in for more.
“Felix,” Dimitri says, with a helpless note creeping in.
“Say you don’t like it and I’ll stop.”
“I like it,” Dimitri says. “God, of course I like it.”
“Seems simple then,” Felix says, dragging his teeth along Dimitri’s throat.
“It’s not. Even the, the mechanics of it— The car is simply not spacious enough.”
“The mechanics,” Felix scoffs. He slides a hand beneath Dimitri’s shorts and feels his cock thickening, hot and trapped in his leggings. “Don’t say you don’t know about not having enough room.”
“Felix,” Dimitri says again. “I believe in your, ah, abilities. But anyone could drive by and see.”
“They’d only see your mouth hanging open. I’ll be out of sight.”
He watches Dimitri swallow. His single eye skitters across the landscape, the quiet road and the rows and rows of trees, nested in deep pools of shade. He blinks, hard, as if trying to disavow himself of some unwanted piece of knowledge.
“Oh,” Felix says, looking from the trees to Dimitri. “That’s way worse than the car.”
“I’m not suggesting—“ Dimitri begins weakly.
Felix does not have it in him to play this game long. Not when the answer is obvious. He wraps a hand around Dimitri’s wrist. “But you’re imagining it. It’s fine. Let’s go.”
“Felix.”
“I won’t let anything happen to you.”
The depth of his conviction seizes Felix very suddenly. He’s never gotten to say this aloud before. These are not the circumstances he imagined for it, though of course it would come out this way. Low stakes and ridiculous context and the wild leaping feeling of thirst. Felix watches as Dimitri swallows and his eye slides briefly closed, drawn into himself to consider.
“Okay,” Dimitri says, after a moment, licking his lips and looking to Felix. “Okay.”
Felix takes Dimitri’s hand outside of the car. The dirt is loose under their feet, pebbles skidding away beneath their shoes, little clouds kicking up where they step. The sun presses down on everything with an indiscriminate palm.
The temperature drops a few degrees in the orchard where the canopy thickens. It smells different, too. The ripe, almost cloying scent of fruit. The richness of dirt; a cool, silty note of dust. Felix leads Dimitri as it’s clear Dimitri wants to be led. They move deep into the grove, where the road is mostly a hypothetical behind them, and the sounds are that of birds and bugs, trilling invisibly all around them.
“Good?” he asks Dimitri, and Dimitri looks around like there’s anything to see.
It’s only furrows, only trees, stretching away in every direction. Felix presses Dimitri back against one in demonstration. See? Solid. Dimitri makes a little grunting sound as he goes. He licks his lips and looks at Felix, and Felix likes that. He leans in for a kiss that Dimitri opens to instantly, the blue of his eye going fuzzy the closer Felix gets.
Dimitri’s tongue moves hotly against his and he crushes his hands against Dimitri’s waist. Dimitri puts his arms around Felix’s neck, as if giving himself fully up to it. It stokes a dark and prideful feeling in Felix, to be trusted this way.
He slips a hand under Dimitri’s shirt, rucking it up, grabbing at his tits. Dimitri watches, the whole time, eye cracked open, vulnerable and wet. Felix wants to be seen. Not for himself, but for what he does. He pulls back from Dimitri’s mouth to breathe in the space between his neck and shoulder. It’s Dimitri, nearly all Dimitri, but there’s that baked-earth smell of the orchard, and that’s unexpectedly good, too.
Felix bites down through the fabric of Dimitri’s shirt. It blunts his teeth so he bites hard. Dimitri gasps against Felix’s temple. He hears Dimitri curse, harsh and wanting; the sound drags down through Felix like someone petting his spine from the inside.
When Felix finds Dimitri’s eye again, it’s animal-sharp, dark and given over to instinct. Two creatures, alive but not human, and watchful of each other.
Felix goes questing with his face to Dimitri’s chest, his neck, biting as he feels the need to bite. Dimitri grinds in bare movements against the thigh Felix has shoved up between Dimitri’s legs. Restrained, like it makes it better for him not to get the full scope of what he wants all at once. It’s cute, Felix thinks, while he bites at Dimitri’s jaw, his chin, nosing into Dimitri’s shirt collar.
The smell of him, far from sating Felix, makes him feel unglued. He presses his face to Dimitri’s underarm, and Dimitri lets him, groaning, raising his arm for better access. Felix breathes in. He couldn’t even articulate what does it for him. It’s vital, masculine and heady. Dimitri’s so much, of everything. Felix licks him through the fabric and tastes sweat and cotton.
“Felix,” Dimitri gasps.
“Yeah,” Felix says. “I’m here.”
Dimitri’s pupil is blown wide. His face is pink with exertion and with the heat. “You like that,” he says. “My smell. The sweat.”
“Yeah,” Felix says, sinking into a crouch, watching Dimitri track him and swallow. “It’s good. You’re perfect.” Felix leaps over the absurdity of hearing a word like that in his own voice. He looks Dimitri in the face, challenging, doubling down.
Dimitri is flushed to the tips of his ears. His mouth hangs open just slightly. “You don’t really think that.”
“About this I do.” Felix says. He yanks Dimitri’s basketball shorts down to his ankles, and rolls down the top of Dimitri’s compression leggings beneath. “That’s what I’ve been fucking telling you.”
Dimitri lets slip a strangled whimper when Felix bares just his cock, his waistband pushing down on his balls, because he knows Dimitri, and if Dimitri can have a little bit of pain mixed in, all the better.
He skims over Dimitri’s dripping cockhead to put his mouth to the root, dragging his lips and tongue over it, nosing Dimitri’s pubic hair.
“Oh, god,” Dimitri says thickly above him, sounding wrecked already.
Felix digs a thumb into the crease between Dimitri’s hip and thigh. He makes his way back down and huffs a little breath against the tip of Dimitri’s cock that makes him twitch in Felix’s hand. Felix cuts a look up at Dimitri, his rosy face and parted lips, his sweat-mussed hair and his hands disappearing somewhere behind him, presumably gripping the tree trunk for dear life.
“Won’t shower in public,” Felix says, his lips moving against the tip of Dimitri’s cock, “but you’ll let me have you here, a couple hundred yards from the road.”
“Trust you,” Dimitri breathes out. He meets Felix’s eye, and his conviction, as ever, is radiant and nearly overwhelming.
Felix would say something but there’s nothing for it. He feels an almost violent assertion rise in him in agreement. Not a thing he wouldn’t do, to keep Dimitri safe, keep him happy. He slides his tongue over Dimitri’s cock and doesn’t look away from his face. Dimitri mouths a curse, his throat working.
Felix wants him delirious. He swallows Dimitri’s cock as far down as he can and watches him jerk with an obvious urge to double over. He bows over Felix, one hand just barely skimming his hair.
Felix holds him there, leaking pre-come down Felix’s throat, breathing in the musk of him with his head spinning. Dimitri makes a choked, desperate sound. His hips twitch forward in spite of his obvious restraint, fucking into the hot clutch of Felix’s throat. Good. Felix wouldn’t mind if he lost it. Wouldn’t mind being the cause of all that sweat. After an eternity of ignoring the pulsing between his own legs, Felix palms the front of his leggings, gripping the line of his cock.
It wouldn’t be hard, coming just like that. Wretched little sobs work out of Dimitri while Felix bobs, the noises wrenched out in a rhythm like Dimitri were being fucked. He’s tossed himself entirely on Felix’s mercy once more. It’s so big, so vulnerable a gesture that Felix conflates it with light, with the sun, something so bright it hurts. He closes his eyes for a second, rolling his hips against his own hand, his mouth and nose and brain all full up on Dimitri.
“Felix,” Dimitri slurs, his voice thick. Felix flicks his gaze up and finds him with unshed tears glazing his eye. He flinches and shudders when Felix makes eye contact, and Felix feels smug and satisfied already.
“Oh, god,” Dimitri says, the tendon in his neck jumping. Felix can hear his hands slipping against the tree bark, unseen. “You feel— God, I’m close, Felix.“
He always warns Felix. Felix thinks it’s sweet, and stupid, which is to say unnecessary. With one hand he yanks down the top of his own leggings, just enough to free his cock. His other hand slides from the top of Dimitri’s thigh to the thatch of his pubic hair, where Felix makes a fist, looks up at Dimitri, and pulls, sucking him hard.
Dimitri yelps and convulses and loses it, spills into Felix’s throat so fast he can’t possibly work in another warning. It does it for Felix, too, the sight and feel of Dimitri undone—he shudders and his hand works frantically over his slick cock, his world narrowed to swallowing and crashing through his own orgasm while his hips fuck briefly forward into nothing.
He pulls off a moment later, gasping, shaking through the comedown, his cock going soft in his fist.
“Fuck,” he gasps, his voice rough to his own ears.
He feels a touch on his hair; Dimitri’s hand, come to rest on the side of his head, his big, warm palm. He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just reaches out like that, chest heaving, and looks at Felix like his tether to the world.
“Hey,” Felix croaks out a moment later.
“Can I help you up?” Dimitri asks, and Felix lets him.
Dimitri’s nose wrinkles, albeit with some fondness as Felix wipes his hand clean on his own shirt. Felix looks around, feeling slightly displaced.
“Regret it?” Dimitri asks, watching him.
“Of course not. Not that it was my fantasy,” Felix says, starting to pick his way back to the car. “Did you want to get caught? Maybe run off by some farmer with a pitchfork?”
Dimitri shrugs one shoulder. “You wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
Dirt crumbles satisfyingly under Felix’s feet. He feels loose. There’s even the suggestion of a breeze whispering through the orchard. “You expect I would fight a farmer for you. An armed one, at that.”
“Of course I don’t want bloodshed,” Dimitri says. “So I expect you to disarm him first.”
Felix barks a laugh. Dimitri offers a rare grin; he grabs Dimitri by the shirt and pulls him close to kiss him. Making some point, he thinks, though he’s not sure what. Maybe that he’d fight a hundred farmers for Dimitri. Or that he’d give any of Dimitri’s silly fantasies a fair shake, given that Dimitri has met Felix’s own eccentricities in kind.
Dimitri unsticks himself from Felix to meet his gaze. “I think I’m sweatier now than I was before,” he whispers, like it’s some sort of confession.
“You could have showered.”
“Yes, I know your feelings about it.” Dimitri pauses. “Or I thought I did. Do you still want to argue in favor of it?”
Felix clicks his tongue. “You can do anything you like.”
Dimitri, with his sun-warm, peaceful face, hums a quiet note. He raises the neck of his shirt to his nose, and sniffs it curiously. “Not without consequences, it seems.”
“You do learn,” Felix says, and reaches up to pluck a fruit, so that they might share.